Covert Cowboy

She drained her scotch. “But that’s not your problem, Burke. You and I agree you’re not team material, so don’t worry about it.”

Take the pain away…

He’d known the Langworthy baby was still missing, and his private opinion had been that Sky had been snatched by someone desperate for a child of their own. There’d never been a ransom demand. So for three months he’d tried to shut out the memory of the agony in Marilyn’s voice when she’d spoken of her kidnapped nephew, since unless and until the U.S. Marshalls were called in on the matter his hands were tied.

That was still the case, Con thought heavily. As the oldest federal law enforcement agency in America, the mandate of the Marshalls was primarily centered on federal fugitives, money-laundering prosecutions and the witness protection program. They cooperated with other levels of law enforcement, but only when specifically requested to.

He frowned. Knowing all that, why had Wiley sent for him?

“It’s got everything to do with you, Con.”

Wiley had shaken his head at Colleen’s earlier offer of a drink. Now he hesitated, and pulled the bottle of scotch toward him.

“My ulcers are going to play me hell for this,” he muttered as he poured himself a shot and swallowed it neat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But then, my ulcers have been giving me hell lately anyway. Ever since Helio DeMarco’s name cropped up in this investigation,” he added, his suddenly grim gaze fixing on Con.

“Helio DeMarco?”

Con felt as if the blood in his veins had suddenly turned to ice. He heard something strike the floor, and looking down, he saw the silver dollar had slipped through his fingers. With a swift movement he bent to pick it up, grateful for the chance to avert his face.

“You know of him?” Colleen’s tone was still barbed. His own was flat as he answered her.

“You could say that. A year ago in New Orleans a protected witness in a case the Marshalls were building against DeMarco on money-laundering charges was killed by him. Then DeMarco contacted Roland Charpentier, one of our agents, and said he wanted to cut a deal.”

“But instead the Marshalls obviously let him get away, since he’s surfaced here in Colorado,” the ex-cop said disgustedly. “Was Charpentier on the take?”

“Colleen—” Wiley began warningly, but Con didn’t let him finish.

“No, cher’, Roland wasn’t on the take,” he drawled. He met her eyes. “I’d have known if he was. Charpentier’s my best friend—in fact, I visited him earlier today, just before I caught my flight to Denver.”

Her gaze wavered. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions,” she muttered. “So how did the Marshalls lose Helio, or Lio, as he now calls himself?”

Instead of answering her question, Con asked one of his own. “Everyone’s heard about the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, but do you know what our other big day is, cher’?”

Annoyance reappeared on her features. “The name’s Wellesley, Burke. And no, I don’t know. I also don’t care.”

“You should,” he informed her. “Because there’s a kind of poetic justice involved you might appreciate. Our other big observance is November the first. Today,” he added softly. “The Day of the Dead, when we visit the graves of our loved ones and remember how much they meant to us.”

He glanced down at the yellow flower in his lapel. “The custom is to lay chrysanthemums by the headstone and have a little chat with the deceased.” He shrugged. “Some families even bring a picnic lunch, make a day of it. I didn’t have time to do that so I just laid my flowers down and made the same vow I always do.”

“Charpentier’s dead, isn’t he?” Belated comprehension filled Colleen’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Burke, I didn’t know. What’s the vow you make?”

“That I’m going to take down the bastard who killed him. That I’m going to take down Helio DeMarco.”

Con flipped the silver dollar into the air. It flashed upward and then tumbled down again, throwing off glints of light before he one-handedly caught it. Slapping his palm and the coin in it flat against the pine bar, he looked at her.

“Call it,” he said tonelessly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Heads.”

He lifted his hand. “Tails. I’ll work with Colorado Confidential, cher’, but on my own terms. No boss, no partners, no rules.”

“No deal,” Colleen riposted. She turned to Wiley. “For God’s sake, Longbottom, this is the maverick you’re considering to head the New Or—”

“I think you should take him up on his offer.” Con heard a hint of steel in the DPS director’s normally mild tones. “If Burke says he’ll deliver Helio to Colorado Confidential he will. Right now that’s all that matters—especially since this whole thing could blow up in our faces if it’s not taken care of quickly.”

“How’s that?” Con frowned at his friend, but Colleen answered him before Wiley could speak.

“We think one of the Langworthys has gone over to the other side,” she said coldly. “There was always a possibility Sky’s kidnappers had help from a member of the family, and with what we’ve found out about Helio’s involvement, that now seems to be a certainty. A former intern of a certain Senator Franklin Gettys, Nicola Carson, came close to being killed by a DeMarco hit man when she discovered a link between the senator, the mobster and a mysterious chemical mist that was being tested on sheep at Gettys’s ranch, the Half Spur. Fibers found in Sky’s crib after his abduction came from the type of sheep on the Half Spur. And Gettys’s ex-wife, Helen Kouros, gave us information she copied on a disk from the Half Spur’s computer that backs up our belief that some kind of bio-weapons research is being done there.”

She paused. “But you guessed about the Q-fever virus, didn’t you? I’d forgotten—Wiley’s ‘conscience’ recommended we look into the flu that swept Silver Rapids earlier this year.”

“I told him it might be worthwhile to check out any recent influenza-like outbreaks that might have occurred in the area,” Con said. “Since I didn’t realize this investigation was centered in Colorado I wasn’t aware there’d been one in Silver Rapids. But it fits. DeMarco’s always been intrigued by nerve gas, biological weaponry, that kind of thing. He’s responsible for at least six murders I know of that were passed off as deaths from natural causes, and Roland’s was one of them.”

He hoped his voice revealed none of the pain that suddenly swept through him. A vision filled his mind of Roland’s lifeless body, slumped over his desk, his hand still gripping the silver pen that had released the deadly vapor which had instantly killed him. That pen had been given to him by Helio DeMarco, it had later been established.

He felt a muscle in his jaw tighten. With difficulty he posed his next questions.

“But where’s the connection between DeMarco and the Langworthys? And which Langworthy is under suspicion, anyway?”

“The Ice Queen.” Colleen’s voice hardened. “Marilyn Langworthy, Holly’s half sister and Sky’s aunt. Her nickname’s apt. Even pregnancy hasn’t thawed her out.”

She was pregnant.

Just for a moment Con let himself imagine how he would feel if there was any possibility that the child she was carrying could be his, and fierce joy shafted through him, so powerful and piercing it felt like pain. He wrenched himself back to reality.

She’d had his body. Whether she ever knew it or not, she had his heart and his soul. But the one thing he was incapable of giving Marilyn Langworthy or any woman was a child, he thought bleakly.

So the baby she was carrying had to be—

“We believe that the father of her child is a certain Tony Corso.” Colleen frowned. “Since you’re an expert on DeMarco, you probably know Corso’s his nephew.”

Con reached for the bottle of bourbon and poured himself a second shot, more to have something to do than because he needed another drink. He tossed it back.

Marilyn was pregnant, and by a man who’d walked out of her life. Since earlier this year his own investigation into Corso as a lead to DeMarco had failed to turn up the mobster’s nephew, he didn’t need Wellesley to fill him in on Corso’s absence, he thought grimly as she continued talking, just as he hadn’t needed her to fill him in on a number of other details. He wasn’t going to tell her that. His flying visit to Denver three months ago, including what had happened between him and Marilyn that night in her office, was none of Colorado Confidential’s business and he intended to keep it that way.

There were other aspects to his involvement with this case that he had no intention of sharing, he admitted. Wiley almost certainly knew some of them, but it seemed he hadn’t felt the need to alert Colleen Wellesley to the situation, so that was all right.

That was the only thing that was all right.

Marilyn Langworthy had had an ill-advised affair—an affair she’d later regretted, judging from her assessment of Corso that night in her office—with a man who had connections to a mobster, unbeknownst to her. She gave the impression of being standoffish and unemotional.

If Colleen Wellesley or Longbottom or anyone else associated with Colorado Confidential thought they could hang her out to dry for reasons as flimsy as those, Con thought savagely, it would be his pleasure to set them straight right now. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, Wiley put a hand on his arm.

“If that were all we had on her we’d just keep her under surveillance on the off-chance she could lead us to DeMarco. But there’s more. It’s pretty damning.”

The older man’s expression was shuttered. “Marilyn Langworthy arranged a visit to Silver Rapids with Holly just before the flu outbreak, Con. It looks as if the Ice Queen deliberately exposed her half sister to the Q-fever microbe during Holly’s pregnancy with Sky.”

Chapter Three

“Hold the elevator!”

Marilyn hoped the note of panic in her voice wasn’t as obvious to Jim Osborne and Dan Curtis, her neighbors, as it was to herself. Hastening across the gleaming heartwood floor of the loft complex’s foyer—waddling, more like, she thought despairingly—she found herself calculating the number of seconds before she reached her apartment and made it to the bathroom.

Living in a trendy converted warehouse had cachet, but there were definite drawbacks. For starters, the elevator had been originally built for freight, and it was slow. Jim and Dan would be getting off at the second floor, so their exit would tack on another ten or twenty seconds. Add thirty more for the mad dash up the industrial-style metal staircase that linked her open-concept lower floor to the upper one where the bathroom and bedrooms were, and there was a chance she wasn’t going to make it.

Everything she’d ever read about the physical side effects of pregnancy had emphasized benefits like glowing skin and silkier hair. She’d never expected to be at the mercy of a bladder that felt roughly the size of a pea.

Bad choice of word. As she scooted into the elevator she attempted to maintain a modicum of cool decorum by smiling her thanks at the two men.

“Mama’s been shopping for maternity fashions,” Dan teased, casting an eye at her parcels and releasing the elevator door. Beside him, Jim raised an eyebrow.

“I saw that look of desperation often enough on my sister’s face when she was expecting. Gotta go, sweetie?”

The Marilyn Langworthy of three months ago would have frozen him with a look, she thought. Now she felt grateful for his perception.

“Let’s just say I’ve decided to pack away my favorite CD of Handel’s Water Music until after next April,” she admitted. “There isn’t a warp speed button on that panel, is there?”

“Sorry, no.” His pleasant features crinkled into a grin. “But we’ll go straight to your floor first. Will that help?”

“You’re an angel,” she breathed fervently.

As the oversize freight doors clanged shut and the elevator began its noisy and excruciatingly slow ascent, surreptitiously she eased her left foot out of its leather flat and felt instant relief. She looked up in time to see both Jim and Dan glance politely away.

Her beloved collection of size seven Manolos were a dim memory, Marilyn thought wryly. Ditto for her wardrobe of designer suits and dresses, all of which she’d seemed to balloon out of within days of learning she was pregnant. Once upon a time she’d concentrated on the label of a garment, but now she’d acquired the habit of riffling through racks of clothes, extracting a likely looking top or skirt, and tugging ruthlessly at the waist-line to judge how much stretch it had.

Of course, her shopping expedition today had been only a cover. She’d needed to get away from the office and come to some hard decisions.

She was a thirty-one-year-old expectant single mother. She’d lost her figure, her reputation and after what she’d discovered this morning, quite possibly her job. And she had to go to the bathroom like nobody’s business.

Joy soared through her, so pure and exhilarating she felt a prickling moisture behind her eyes. She was going to have a baby. She was going to have a baby.

“…bring a plate up to you later, if you’d like.”

She’d missed the beginning of Dan’s comment, but it was obvious from his expression that he hadn’t been expecting tears in reply. She mustered a shaky smile.

“Sorry, hormone overload. It’s gotten so bad lately I have to keep a box of tissues by the television in case a heartwarming advertisement comes on. What were you saying?”

“I’m making my special moussaka tonight. I thought if you didn’t feel like cooking—” He stopped as Marilyn hastily tried to erase the moue of instant nausea that had shown on her face. “Vine leaves and ground lamb not on the menu these days?”

“I’m finally over the morning sickness, thank goodness,” she said as the elevator lurched to a stop at her floor and the doors began to open. “But certain foods still seem to flick the queasiness switch with me. I’ll take a rain check on that moussaka for about six months from now, if that’s all right with you.”

Jim and Dan were good neighbors, she thought as she sped through her open-concept living area and clattered up the metal stairs. That was important, especially in an unconventional building like this. The former warehouse was divided into only three spacious loft apartments, one of which was vacant at the moment, its owners being away in Europe.

“And the best thing about them is that right from the first they were happy for me when I told them I was expecting,” she said out loud a few minutes later as she descended the staircase and bent with difficulty to pick up the shopping bags she’d dropped on her frantic way in. “Which is a whole lot more than I got from either the Langworthy or the Van Buren side of my family.”

She felt suddenly too weary even to unpack her purchases. Tossing the bags onto the sofa and dropping into an oversize velvet-upholstered club chair, she closed her eyes.

Immediately he was there, the way he always was when she let down her guard.

Sometimes she could almost persuade herself that that whole night three months ago had been a dream—an erotic, sex-charged dream, in which she’d acted with an abandon that was totally unlike her waking self. And Connor Ducharme fit the profile of a dream lover perfectly, right down to his lazy sensuality, his tall, leanly muscled build, his New Orleans drawl. If that night really had been only a dream she would have been able to handle it, Marilyn thought bleakly. But it had happened. She’d slept with a stranger—not once, but three times that night. And she’d loved it.

That was the part she found hardest to live with.

She opened her eyes. From the soaring ceiling twenty-odd feet above her swooped a perfectly balanced wire and metal mobile, its impressive span in keeping with the spaciousness of the loft but its delicate construction a counterpoint to the exposed brick and heavy wooden beams that were an indication of the building’s original function as a turn-of-the-century warehouse. A current of air caught the mobile and it swirled lightly, like a swallow changing direction in midflight.

She’d actually phoned the New Orleans police department a week later and asked for him. It had taken seven sleepless nights for her to come to that decision, and when she had she’d felt like the weakest of weak-willed females. She was well aware she’d sent him away, had told him she wanted to pretend the previous few hours had never happened, but illogically, that hadn’t mattered. She’d wanted to hear his voice. She’d found herself needing his touch. She’d craved him.

So she’d set aside her pride and phoned, and at first she’d had the terrible suspicion that he’d duped her. The desk sergeant had asked her to repeat the name of the detective she was inquiring about, and had put her on hold for what seemed an eternity. At long last he’d come back on the line, only to inform her that Ducharme wasn’t in the precinct building at the moment.

But by then she’d lost what little courage she’d had. She’d hung up without leaving her name.

She’d never attempted to contact him again, not even when she’d found out she was pregnant.

Connor Ducharme was a dangerous man. He’d seemed to know instinctively what she’d wanted that night and he’d let her believe he could give it to her. But although he’d made her melt, although his mouth, his hands, his whole body had brought her to mind-shattering ecstasy, what made Detective Ducharme so very, very dangerous was that he’d known just how much more she’d needed. He’d pretended to give her that, too.

For a few delirious hours he’d made her believe she was loved.

Marilyn closed her eyes again. Her right hand slid unconsciously to the swell of her belly, and despite the confusing ache in her heart and the problems she knew she was facing at Mills & Grommett, the beatific smile she’d once so envied on Holly’s face crept over her own.

And immediately faded.

“I thought I knew what she was going through, but before now I had no idea,” she whispered. “Sky was her whole world, and he’s still missing. I’d die if anyone tried to take my baby—”

A loud clanking, the signal that another arduous ascent had begun for the freight elevator, drowned out the rest of her words. Almost grateful for the interruption, with an effort she pushed herself out of the chair and began gathering up her shopping bags for the second time.

A visitor for Jim and Dan, she surmised as the clanking continued. She couldn’t remember the last time the elevator had stopped at her floor with a guest, and as far as she knew the Dickenson’s apartment above hadn’t yet been sublet.

She put her idle speculations aside as her gaze lit upon a fuchsia sleeve dangling from one of the bags. Heart sinking, she pulled the garment out. It was a blouse, made of some silky blend and with ruffles spilling down the low-cut front. The black pants that went with it were what the salesgirl had called a yoga style—stretchy and form-fitting, with a very slight flare at the bottom. The low-rise waistband was meant to sit below the swell of her belly.

What was I thinking? These aren’t me at all, for heaven’s sake, she thought in exasperation. For starters, I could hardly have chosen a more attention-getting top. And those pants don’t hide a thing. I might as well hang a big Baby on Board sign around my neck.

She was going to have to return them. Sighing, she began to cram them back into the bag, but then she paused.

This pregnancy, unplanned as it might have been, was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. The baby she was carrying was that most precious of all miracles, an evolving little human being. Why would she want to hide it?

“And those pants were a whole lot more comfortable than the ones I’ve got on.” She glanced down in sudden distaste at the navy suit she’d worn to the office that day. Just as suddenly, she began unbuttoning the jacket.

Moments later she was padding barefoot across the carpet to the full-length mirror by the door. She stood in front of it and took a deep breath.

The navy suit’s boxiness had made her look bulky rather than pregnant. But the clinging fabrics of the fuchsia top and the yoga pants hugged her curves—all of her curves, she realized. The ruffled V-neck of the blouse skimmed silkily over breasts that were fuller than she’d ever known them to be, and then stretched even more over her stomach. The low-rider style of the black pants made no apology for the roundness of her belly, but the lean cut also accentuated the length of her legs.

She looked pregnant…and in what she was wearing, pregnant looked sexy. In the mirror she saw faint heat touch her cheeks, and hastily she turned away.

The elevator clanged to a halt outside her apartment.

“Oh, no,” she muttered, aghast. She whirled back to the mirror and her reflection, but even as she fluffed the petal-like ruffles toward the vee of the blouse’s neckline the door buzzer sounded.

The ruffles fell back into place. Exasperated, she gave it up as a bad job, and jabbed the intercom button with her thumb.

“Who is it?”

Marilyn found herself hoping her unanticipated caller was her brother, Josh. Throwing his hat into the political ring seemed to have brought out the stuffed shirt in him and although his recent engagement had loosened him up a little, she was pretty sure the gubernatorial hopeful for the State of Colorado would be none too thrilled with his sister’s pregnancy being flaunted front and center where the electorate couldn’t help but see it.

Except her mystery guest wasn’t Joshua. Even though he didn’t identify himself, she’d heard those burnt brown sugar tones often enough in her dreams these past three months to recognize them immediately.

“Let me in, cher’,” the voice on the other side of the door drawled. “That way you get to tell me to go to hell to my face.”

She’d been planning to contact Connor Ducharme tonight, she thought hollowly. It seemed now she wouldn’t have to.

TRUST HER Beacon Hill upbringing, Marilyn told herself ten minutes later. Grandmother Van Buren had always haughtily held that a real lady never admitted to an awkward situation, and it seemed her lesson had sunk in. On the sofa across from her, Con balanced the bone-china cup of tea she’d offered him on a carelessly crossed knee, and so far neither one of them had been crass enough to tell the other to go to hell.

But she had no illusions. She’d seen the flicker of reaction in his eyes when she’d opened the door and he’d seen she was pregnant. Beneath the veneer of civility they were like two prizefighters circling cautiously, each waiting for the starting bell to ring.

No matter what his original reason for coming here, the possibility that he could be the father of the child she was so obviously carrying had to be in his mind. She needed to dispel that idea before it took root. She knew next to nothing about the man, but it wasn’t inconceivable that he might be attracted to the notion of playing daddy on a part-time basis, and she had no intention of standing by and letting that happen.

No child of mine is going to grow up caught between two worlds, and never fitting fully into either one, Marilyn vowed fiercely. Grandmother Van Buren’s rules of etiquette be damned, it’s time to get a few things clear here.

But she’d left it too late. Before she could speak he beat her to it.

“You once told me you were a coward, cher’.” Leaning forward, he set his cup and saucer on the large Moroccan leather hassock she used as a coffee table. Under dark brows his green gaze held hers and his mouth quirked up wryly.

“Truth is, it’s me you should pin that label on. No matter what you said you wanted at the time I shouldn’t have left things the way I did between us, but every time I thought about contacting you I lost my nerve. I took advantage of the situation that night. It wasn’t anything I felt too proud about the next day, and I figured you’d have every right to slam the phone down on me if I called.”