Her Cowboy Defender

She didn’t hear anything, but the shot must have hit, because the car wavered slightly, sliding across the road. Satisfaction surged inside her, but she never let the vehicle out of her sights, matching her movements to it.

Confident she had another shot, she took it.

The windshield cracked.

She shot twice more in quick succession.

The glass cracked farther, the webbing spreading across the windshield. If she wasn’t mistaken, there was no way the driver should be able to see through it.

As if to confirm it, the car suddenly skidded across the road. Seconds later, it went right over the edge of the shoulder, disappearing from view.

A triumphant grin briefly flashed across her lips, the feeling unfamiliar, before she sobered, pulling her arms back into the truck and turning to the cowboy.

“I guess you really do know how to use that,” he said drily.

“And don’t forget it.”

He didn’t reply, frowning slightly. She watched his eyes lower to the panel in front of him. It was only then she realized they were gradually losing speed.

“Why are you slowing down?”

“Something’s wrong.”

She cocked the gun. “Knock it off. We don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” he snapped. “I think he got one of the tires.”

“He couldn’t have. The tire would have blown.”

“Then something must have ricocheted into it or we hit something.”

Dread shot through her. “Ignore it. Keep going.”

“I can’t ignore it. The truck isn’t going to let me.”

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“Too far. We’ll never make it.”

Before she could argue further, he was already easing off the accelerator and pulling over onto the shoulder.

She opened her mouth to tell him once more to keep going, but even as she did, she could feel the truck was starting to list on its left rear tire.

The cowboy shifted the truck into Park and shut off the engine, then opened his door and stepped out without even acknowledging her. Piper quickly scrambled across the seat and followed.

To her horror, the tire was already half-deflated. It must have been a graze or a nick or something, since the tire hadn’t exploded, though it might as well have for what the damage meant.

They didn’t have time for this. “Change the tire,” she ordered.

“I’m going to,” he grumbled. “It’s the only way I can get out of here.”

“How long is it going to take?”

“Long enough.”

“I only have fifteen minutes!”

He finally glanced back at her. This time there was a trace of sympathy in his eyes that shook her more than anything he could say. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

She raised the gun at him. “Not good enough.”

He simply shook his head and turned away. “You can shoot me, but it won’t change anything.”

She didn’t want to believe him. She wanted to scream, call him a liar.

But as she watched him work, she realized with a sinking heart that he was right. Changing a tire on a pickup truck was a bigger task than on a passenger car. He didn’t seem to be taking his time, but it was still taking far too long. And even if he managed to get the tire changed quickly, they still had to travel to their destination.

She peered down the road, raising a hand to her face to shade her eyes. There was nothing but the strip of highway and endless stretches of desert as far as the eye could see. No indication that they were anywhere near where she needed to be.

Finding it suddenly hard to breathe, she pulled the cell phone out of her bag with one hand, even though there wasn’t much of a point. She couldn’t even call the kidnapper to beg for more time. The two times she’d spoken with him, he’d called her from an unlisted number. All the contact came from his end. She had no way of reaching him.

All she could do was stand there, feeling time—and Tara’s life—slipping away from her with each passing moment.

She watched in horror as her watch counted down to the appointed meeting time all too quickly, then reached it.

No.

She stood frozen, waiting for something to happen. Something should happen. The end of her world, the end of her sister’s life, couldn’t just pass like this, uneventful, in silence.

At exactly two minutes past, the cell phone suddenly rang. She glanced at the screen even though there was no one else it could possibly be. As expected, the caller was identified only as “Unlisted Number.”

She quickly took the call. “Hello?”

A long silence echoed across the line before the silky, superior voice she expected finally spoke.

“It would seem I overestimated how much your sister means to you, Ms. Lowry.”

“I would have been there if your people hadn’t tried to force me off the road! What were you trying to do, get the drive without having to release my sister? We had a deal!”

She’d responded without thinking, the panic and anger inside her too fierce to hold back in the face of the man’s condescension and everything that had just happened. She fell silent just as quickly, a fresh wave of panic washing over her. She couldn’t afford to make him angry, not if there was any chance left of getting Tara back, not when he held all the cards.

His silence lasted for a torturous eternity.

“I assure you, Ms. Lowry, no one who works for me tried to force you off the road. It’s like you said. We have a deal. I wouldn’t jeopardize that with foolish tactics that could prevent me from getting what I want.”

Of course he was right. If she’d been thinking clearly she would have realized that. “Then who—”

“It would seem that someone doesn’t want you to give me the information.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask who that was, but that was exactly what she couldn’t do.

“So what happens now?” she made herself ask calmly instead.

Another silence. She almost wondered if the bastard was really considering his answers this carefully or if he simply enjoyed tormenting her by dragging them out.

“We will have to arrange another meeting,” he said finally. “I will be in touch—”

“But Tara—”

“Your sister is fine for the time being,” he interrupted with a trace of impatience. “And will remain so as long as you do as you are told.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? How do I know you didn’t try to get to me because my sister is already dead and you didn’t have anything to exchange?”

“I suppose you have no choice but to trust me.”

“Not good enough—”

“You will be allowed to speak with her when we set up the meeting.”

“No, I want to talk to her now—”

He’d already disconnected the call.

A sob rose in her throat, and she nearly gagged holding it back. She couldn’t give in to it. If she lost control, she might never get it back again.

The gun was suddenly snatched away from her, far too quickly for her to tighten the grip she’d unwittingly loosened.

She jerked her head up to find the cowboy standing over her, her gun now clenched in his hand. He didn’t point it at her. He simply held it as he stared down at her, his expression thunderous.

“From the sound of your half of that conversation, the immediate danger is over. Now I want to know what the hell is going on.”

Chapter Four

Cade knew he was capable of being intimidating. He was a big man, and his sheer size alone was enough to inspire a certain wariness in people at times. He didn’t get angry often, certainly not truly angry, but when he did he knew it came across loud and clear. He’d seen more than one ranch hand who’d pulled something over the years cowering in the face of his anger, and after everything this woman had put him through in the past thirty minutes, he was angrier than he’d ever been in his entire life.

The woman didn’t even blink. She simply stared up at him, her eyes so bleak and tired he almost felt an involuntary twinge of sympathy before he stifled the feeling.

She gave her head a little shake. “Trust me, you don’t want to be involved any more than you already are.”

He couldn’t argue with her on that. He didn’t want to be involved in this. But as long as he was, there was no turning back at this point. “So what now, you want me to just leave you here and be on my way?”

“I would appreciate a ride back to my car so I can call for a tow truck, but I’m sure that’s too much to ask.”

“Yeah, it is, especially since your friend who was shooting at us is back in that direction. You don’t think he won’t open fire again if he sees us passing by, or he won’t try to make his way to you while you’re waiting for your tow to show up?”

She frowned, her forehead furrowing, and he could tell she hadn’t thought about it at all. “You’re right. Then if you could take me to the next town, wherever that is—”

“I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on.”

Alarm flared in her eyes. “But we can’t stay here. What if that man passes by while we’re just standing around—”

“Then you’d better start talking fast.”

She scowled at him, her jaw tightening. He could tell she wanted to argue, but must have read in his expression that it wouldn’t do her any good.

Finally she cleared her throat. “My sister Pam is an FBI agent—”

“I thought you said your sister’s name is Tara,” he said sharply, wondering if she was lying to him already, if she hadn’t been all along.

“Tara’s my younger sister. Like I said, she’s only twenty years old. Pam is my twin sister. She’s an FBI agent. Late last year she was assigned to the field office in Dallas.”

He suddenly realized he didn’t know her name. “What about you? What’s your name?”

This time she did blink at him. “Oh. It’s Piper. Piper Lowry.”

He couldn’t have said why, but it suited her. “Okay. Go on.”

“Two days ago, I was notified that Pam was in a car accident that left her in a coma. I immediately flew to Dallas from Boston—that’s where I live. I went straight to the hospital from the airport. The accident was pretty bad. She’s in stable condition, but the doctors have no idea when she might wake up. I didn’t really get many details about what happened—her doctor made some reference that there was evidence she was driven off the road, but said I should talk to the police. I went there next. The detective I spoke to confirmed that it looked suspicious and said he’d been in contact with the FBI since Pam was a federal agent. He asked if I had any idea who might want to harm her. I told him I didn’t.

“After that I went to Pam’s house. When I got there, the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it, but when the answering machine picked up, this man—older-sounding, with a slight accent—began speaking. He said they knew I was home and that I’d better stop playing games and pick up the phone if I ever wanted to see my sister alive again.

“I picked up, of course. My first thought was that the man was talking about Pam. I had no idea Tara was missing or in any way involved. The man said he was aware of my accident, which is the only reason he allowed me to miss the original deadline, but he still wanted the information he asked of me.”

“He thought you were Pam,” Cade concluded.

“Exactly. Obviously I wasn’t the sister he was talking about, and we only have one other, so I knew he had to be talking about Tara. I immediately asked if Tara was okay, and he said she was for the time being, but wouldn’t be if I didn’t have the information he wanted.”

“What information?”

“I had no idea. I couldn’t tell him that, because then he’d know I wasn’t Pam. I was afraid that if he knew she was in a coma and incapable of providing any information, he might decide Tara was no use to him anymore and do something to her. So I said I had it. He told me to check the mailbox. There was an envelope in it with a cell phone they would use to contact me, and he would be in touch with further instructions. He hung up, and I immediately went to the mailbox. The phone was exactly where he said it would be.

“As soon as I got back in the house, I tried to reach Tara. I hadn’t spoken to her in a few days, which wasn’t unusual. She’s in college in Pennsylvania, and is busy with school and everything. I couldn’t reach her on her cell, but I did get in touch with her roommate. She said Tara left a few days earlier, leaving a note saying she was heading home for a while because her sister was sick. That would have been before Pam’s accident, and nothing had happened to me, so I figured the kidnappers must have left the note so Tara’s disappearance wouldn’t look suspicious and the police wouldn’t be contacted.”

“Obviously they contacted Pam once they had Tara,” he noted. “She really didn’t give you any idea Tara had been kidnapped? Did she try to reach you? What if you tried to call Tara earlier? You would have known the sick-sister story was a lie.”

Piper shrugged. “Pam tends to do her own thing and likes to handle matters on her own. She probably thought she could handle the situation herself and get Tara back before I even knew anything had happened. Or else she was so busy dealing with the situation she didn’t have time to think about me.”

“So did you call the police?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t want to do anything to endanger Tara, and I couldn’t trust them not to contact the FBI again, which is the protocol in kidnapping cases, especially one involving multiple states, since she was taken in Pennsylvania, not Texas.”

“Why didn’t you want to contact the FBI? Your sister works for them.”

“Exactly. And the information the kidnappers want must be something related to the Dallas field office. Why else would they kidnap the sister of an agent in that office?”

“So wouldn’t the FBI be the best people to contact? They would know who would want the information so badly and probably be able to figure out who’s behind this and how to stop them.”

“Except that’s exactly what Pam would have done, and look what happened to her.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. Who would possibly want to run Pam off the road? The kidnappers wouldn’t. They had no reason to. They wouldn’t have wanted to endanger her and possibly ruin their chances of getting what they wanted. No, it must have been someone else. The most likely possibility I can come up with is that Pam went to one of her colleagues for help, someone she trusted, and instead of providing it, they tried to stop her from giving the information to the kidnappers.”

He gaped at her in disbelief. “You think the FBI would run one of their agents off the road to keep her from releasing classified materials? Wouldn’t arresting her be a lot easier?”

“Not the FBI,” she said patiently, as though he were the one speaking nonsense. “Someone within the FBI who’s acting on their own and willing to do whatever it takes to stop this information, whatever it is, from being shared.” She sent a nervous glance in the direction they’d come from. “I think what just happened to us proves how desperate this person is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I should have realized it wasn’t the kidnappers trying to drive us off the road. I was just so focused on them and trying to get to Tara that, in the heat of the moment, I wasn’t thinking straight. But of course it wasn’t. It’s like the kidnapper said, he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize getting what he wants. It was someone who didn’t want me getting to my destination and making delivery to the kidnappers, the same someone who tried to stop Pam from doing the same thing.”

Cade tried to think of an explanation for who else might have been shooting at them, but came up empty. She seemed to have thought this all out, not surprising, given that she’d had a lot more time to consider all the possibilities than he had.

Not willing to concede she was right just yet, he decided to set the issue aside for the moment. There was a lot more to this story he needed to hear. “Okay, so you decided not to go to the police or the FBI. What did you do?”

“I tried to figure out what I could do to save Tara and waited for the man to call me back. He finally did last night. He instructed me to drive to Albuquerque and arrive by noon. I left immediately. At noon, he called me with the address of a copy shop where he said a fax would be waiting for me. It was that map that I showed you. I was to be at that location exactly at two.”

“What was your plan?”

“I was going to refuse to give them the information until they let Tara go first.”

He frowned again. “Did you really think they would agree to that?”

“I wasn’t going to give them a choice. I brought a flash drive with me and was going to tell them I would only give them the password to unlock the file on it once they let Tara go.”

“Why would they agree to that? They could have just threatened to shoot Tara if you didn’t give it to them.”

“I was going to throw the flash drive on the ground and say that if they did anything to her I would put a bullet through it and destroy it right then and there. If they tried to shoot me, they would risk me pulling the trigger reflexively and destroying the drive anyway. After going to so much trouble to get the information, I was counting on them not being willing to risk losing it when it was so close at hand. We both had something the other wanted. It would be easier to just make the exchange. And if they threatened to kill her outright, I would have threatened to kill myself if they did, because if anything happened to her, I would have just watched my sister die and wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I’d gotten her killed.”

“Even if they agreed to let her go, they wouldn’t have let you go without the password.”

“I know. I was prepared to stay. That was the exchange. Me, the flash drive and the password for Tara.”

An uneasy feeling began to churn in his gut. “Do you have the information they want?”

“No. I still don’t even know what it is. That’s why I had to get them to let Tara go before I agreed to give them the flash drive supposedly containing the information.”

“You can’t believe they would have agreed to that without knowing you had what they wanted.”

“It was the only chance I had, the only chance Tara had.”

“But once they found out you’d cheated them, they would have killed you.”

She stared back at him, unblinking. “I know,” she said simply.

He had no response to that, could only stare at her, the magnitude of what she was telling him hitting him square in the chest.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, unable to hide his disbelief. “What good would that have done? Once they killed you, they would have gone after her to prevent her from talking.”

“I was going to try to give her as much time as I could to get away. I have a map in my bag that I was going to leave in the car with a note telling her to drive to Colorado to get to the police or FBI there and to avoid the main roads. I didn’t think they would expect her to go there and would have a harder time tracking her that way. I also didn’t think she could trust anyone around here in case the kidnappers had connections with the police or the locals. There had to have been a reason they chose this area for the meeting. Pam had two guns in her house. I had one on me and left the other in the car for Tara. I also had the suitcase I brought with me to Dallas so she would have clothes, though I didn’t have time to grab it before I got in your truck. My ATM and credit cards are in my bag, along with enough cash to see her through for a few days. I would have left it in the car for her, too. It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment, but I had to pray it would be enough to get her to safety.”

Cade studied her, too stunned to do anything else. She really had thought the whole thing through. There was no doubting it. This had been a suicide mission. She’d come here fully expecting to die, and had done so willingly, to save her sister. No, it hadn’t just been willing. She’d been desperate to do so, fighting tooth and nail and doing whatever it took to get to a rendezvous where she thought she would die.

She had to understand the enormity of the sacrifice she’d been willing to make. Yet there was no sign of it on her face—no pride, no regret, no misgivings. Just simple straightforwardness, as though it was clear what she’d had to do, as though it were nothing at all.

Maybe it was to her.

He tried to think of anyone he’d ever known who would have been willing to do that for him. Not his father, who’d never wanted a kid in the first place and only cared about what he could find at the bottom of the nearest bottle. Certainly not his mother, who’d walked out on them when he was a boy. Not Caitlin, the one person he thought he would have been willing to do anything for—yeah, probably even die—who’d walked out on him, too. There was Matt Alvarez, his right-hand man on the ranch and the closest thing he had to a friend in this world, but he didn’t know if Alvarez would be willing to make such a colossal sacrifice, and frankly, Cade wouldn’t expect him to.

He wondered what this sister of hers was like, wondered if she was worthy of the sacrifice this woman had been willing to make. Obviously Piper Lowry thought so.

It suddenly struck him that he was just standing there, staring at the woman in front of him. He cleared his throat, his anger gone, replaced by an emotion he couldn’t really name. Any doubts he’d had about her story were gone now. It was far too detailed and she’d related it so unwaveringly she certainly hadn’t been making it up on the spot. All that remained was the question of what to do now.

Only one answer came to mind, one he wasn’t happy with. But it seemed he didn’t have a choice any more than she thought she had.

“Come on,” he said roughly. “Let’s get out of here.”

She frowned. “Where are we going? Back to my car?”

“No. My ranch isn’t far from here. It’ll be safer there. We can figure out what to do next.”

“‘We’?” she echoed faintly. “Why would you want to help me?”

It was a good question, one he would have asked if he were in her shoes, one he was still asking himself.

He gave the only answer he could. “Because somebody needs to.”

He damn well wished it wasn’t him. If he had a brain in his head, it wouldn’t be. A smart man would get away from this woman and her mess as fast as humanly possible.

But it seemed he wasn’t that smart. And like it or not—and he sure as heck did not—it looked like he was all she had.

Chapter Five

Esteban Castillo stood at the window of the bedroom he’d commandeered as his own and stared out at the vast landscape behind the house. It was a view he’d contemplated often since his arrival, enough that he seemed to have every inch of it committed to memory. When he’d left the house earlier that afternoon, he’d thought he’d seen the last of it. But here he was again, exactly where he’d been before.

This part of the plan should have been completed. He should have the information he needed, be on his way to carrying out the next step, to finishing this matter once and for all. Instead, the vengeance he’d vowed so long ago had been delayed again.

Impatience churned in his gut, the feeling unusual. He was a man who knew the importance of patience. He’d pulled himself out of poverty, built his businesses, made his fortune by knowing how to bide his time when necessary, knowing how to wait, knowing exactly when he should act.

The skill he’d carefully cultivated over the years seemed to be failing him now. But then, this wasn’t business. This was very personal.

This was family.

The mere thought of the word sent a sharp pain through him; the feeling quickly burned away by the rage that followed closely behind it. He had no family, not anymore. He’d had only one son. He’d certainly never planned it to be that way, but it was the sole instance where his patience was not rewarded. Ricardo had been weak, soft, too much like his mother in many ways. But he’d been his blood, his legacy.