Don't Mess With Texans

So easy, so civilized, this reception, he thought, taking a seat. It felt all wrong. All these bitter months, though he’d boxed only shadows, he’d still sensed the presence of an enemy casting that shadow. Someone derisive...intelligent... merciless. Could that all have been his own paranoia? Colton’s ignorance of what was really happening to Tag’s life? An unfortunate misunderstanding blown up into a legal vendetta, like the classic case of two spouses who wanted a friendly divorce, but ended in a bankrupting brawl, thanks to their lawyers? As he sipped Colton’s excellent coffee, for the first time in months Tag allowed himself the barest of hopes. Perhaps a truce might yet be reached.

An hour passed and the hope cooled with the coffee. “How much longer do you think he’ll be?”

The blonde gave him a sunny smile. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

Half an hour later he asked, “Where’s this meeting taking place?”

Her blue-shadowed eyes flicked to the mahogany doors on her left. She smiled. “I’m sure they’re almost done. More coffee?”

He’d give it another fifteen minutes, not a minute longer. Tag prowled from a Palladian window overlooking a broodmare paddock—spring foals butting their dams in the udder or loping alongside them on comically spindly legs—back to blond-and-beautiful’s desk. She looked more anxious each time he made the circuit. He turned from the window at fourteen minutes to find her whispering into her phone.

So give it five more.

The double doors opened at minute nineteen and another blonde stepped through, this one at least ten years older than the receptionist. Polished to a metallic gleam. Soft lips, hard green eyes. She approached with hand extended. “Dr. Taggart? Claire De Soto, Mr. Colton’s assistant. If you’d come through to my office?”

She led him to a corner room. DeSoto had pull, apparently. She put some effort into the hospitality, insisting he take the most comfortable armchair, offering him a mint julep, which he refused. “Now how may we help you, Dr. Taggart?”

“By getting me Colton.” He was out of patience. Smelling rats.

She lifted a plucked eyebrow. “He’ll need to know in regards to what before seeing you, Dr. Taggart. So...?”

So talk or get out, huh? All right. I want my life back. “I’d...like to know what he wants. These lawsuits...they aren’t going to bring back Payback’s—” million dollar balls “—his potency. There’s no way I can give that back to him. And it doesn’t look like Colton needs my money.” Tag glanced wryly to one side. Through the window on the right, he could see a half-mile exercise track in the distance. In the foreground, a groom led a prancing colt across a courtyard. “So what does your boss want from me?”

Tag had apologized last winter, in a letter passed from his lawyer to Colton’s. There’d been no acknowledgment. Still, he’d be happy to apologize for a second time. Because if Payback was the best horse Colton had ever bred, then Tag could sympathize with the man’s outrage. His disappointment. The stud had been much more than an oat-burning money machine. He would have been the foundation of all Colton’s hopes for future generations of wonder horses.

Tag sincerely regretted the part he’d been tricked into playing in blasting those hopes. But surely Colton could see that Susannah had screwed them both. “If it’s an apology he wants...”

“I’m sure he’ll tell you.”

That was all that Tag wanted or needed. To meet Colton face-to-face, without lawyers or tape recorders. Without witnesses. So that he could hear the man out, try one last time to apologize.

And then explain to him calmly and clearly where they were headed if they couldn’t reach a truce. If Colton couldn’t back off, wouldn’t back off, then Tag would have to kill him. It was as simple as that. I want my life back. And I don’t mean to live it looking over my shoulder.

But you didn’t make that kind of threat to lawyers or assistants, then ask them to please pass it on to the boss. Statements like that might be a basic man-to-man truth, but in the eyes of the law, they constituted assault. Seventeen years ago Tag had spent a summer behind bars, and that was enough for one lifetime.

“Is there anything else you need from Mr. Colton?”

One thing. “Susannah Mack’s address.” Her divorce had become final two months ago, he’d learned from the gossip rags, shortly after the charge of horse theft had been dropped. That was the last mention of her he’d been able to find anywhere. The bitch had dropped off the face of the earth. Gone to ground in Texas, maybe? Or some place much fancier? Wherever, she’d be enjoying her pay-off in the unbreachable seclusion that only big money could buy, he supposed. Because the tabloids also noted that, though the terms of her divorce had been settled privately, they were said to be exceedingly generous. Ten million was the figure whispered most often.

Whatever amount Colton had paid her to go away, Tag figured at least half of it was his.

“Oh...” DeSoto hadn’t expected that one. “I see.” She rose. “Well. If you’ll wait one minute, Dr. Taggart...” She shut the door behind her.

One minute turned into ten. Twenty. Enough. Tag stood, and standing, glanced up at the far corner above the chair that DeSoto had chosen.

The lens of a camera gazed blankly back at him. Hair prickled at the nape of his neck. A security camera within an office? Aimed at the window, surely? He turned. No, aimed at his chair. “You son of a bitch!” Had he been watching all this time?

“Dr. Taggart?” DeSoto stood in the doorway, an odd little smile curving her lips. “Mr. Colton won’t be able to see you today, after all.”

Two hours on ice. Suckered into hoping again. And all for what? For the same reason children pulled wings off flies—because they could?

And, clever boy, Colton had used women to do his petty work. Much as Tag needed to punch somebody, he didn’t punch women. “Where is he?”

“Why, there he is now!” DeSoto nodded at the window. “He must have stepped out the back.”

Out in the courtyard between the office and the nearest barn, a man stood by the door of a red Ferrari convertible, looking up. Gold wire rims, impeccable seersucker suit. As their eyes locked, Colton grinned, waved jauntily, got in the car.

Tag started for the door, the roar of a big engine reaching him faintly through the glass. He swept DeSoto out the exit before him, then swung to look back. As he’d thought, she couldn’t have seen Colton from where she’d been standing. A setup from start to finish. “Where’s he going?” And by God, she’d tell him!

Out in the corridor, DeSoto smiled demurely from beyond a wall of muscle—two guards built like linebackers, each with a hand resting on a bolstered gun. “Would you show Dr. Taggart to his car, please, Peterson?”

Tag wanted a fight so badly, he could taste its blood in his mouth.

The smile on the larger guard widened. He rocked on his heels. Come on then, his eyes invited. You and me.

With pleasure! Tag took a step forward—and saw beyond his mark another camera, tucked up in a far corner of the hallway. If he fought these two, he’d be fighting for Colton’ s entertainment. And if he lost, Colton would see him beaten. Tag pulled in a shaking breath. I play by my rules, you bastard, not yours.

“Thank you,” he said, and no two words had ever come harder.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY ESCORTED HIM in smirking silence to his car, then tailgated him all the way to the front gates, the grill of their outsized pickup filling his rearview mirror with glinting chrome. Swearing helplessly, Tag gunned his engine as he shot through the gates, but the truck was faster. “Crap!” His head snapped backward as they bumped him. “That’s it.” He swerved to the shoulder and stopped. “You want a fight, you got it.”

As Tag stepped out, the driver popped the truck into reverse. With the shotgun rider waving cheerily through the windshield, it roared backward down the road, past the gates, then shot forward and through. The gates closed behind it. The truck tootled farewell as it vanished up the avenue of trees.

Bastards, bullies, thugs! Somebody’s going to pay for this! Someday, somehow... But not today. He glared at the white board fences extending either side of the entry. Electrified, naturally. So-o-o... “Later.”

Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, he headed back toward Lexington. What now, what now? And using what for money? He had four hundred left in cash, the remains of his final paycheck from the dog pound in Buffalo. That job had ended three days ago, when the pound had run out of funding for his position. Third job that had fallen out from under him in the past six months.

When that final, dreary attempt to get on with his career aborted, something had snapped. Never mind the lawyers, he’d thought. He’d deal with Colton himself. Reach a truce somehow, then ask for Susannah’s address. No reason her ex should protect her, he’d figured.

He’d figured wrong every which way, regarding Colton. Petty bastard.

A horn sounded behind him and his teeth snapped together. Didn’t they know when to back off? The truck behind, Fleetfoot green like the guards’ truck but smaller, beeped again. “All right then, dammit!” He pulled over, climbed out and stalked back to where the truck had stopped on the shoulder behind him.

The driver didn’t step out to meet him. A small, stocky man. Sandy hair, pug nose, Irish face. Shrewd gray eyes studied Tag through his rolled-up window.

“What d’you want?” The guy looked too short to make a satisfying opponent, though Tag knew well enough from his Boston years how fierce the Irish could be.

The window rolled down an inch. “I heard you might be looking for Susannah.”

Yes! “Who’s asking?”

“I’m a trainer back at Fleetfoot. Friend of her and Brady.”

Brady? An image of a silver flask skated across his mind—that Brady? “Who told you I was looking?” He was in no mood to trust, but still, to get his hands on Susannah...

The window rolled the rest of the way down and the trainer grinned. “Ah, they sneeze up at the big house, we’re wiping our noses in minutes down in the barns.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I can’t stop long. If anybody sees me—”

“So you know where she is?” Don’t look too eager. If this guy was her friend, he wouldn’t want to send her trouble.

“Yeah, d’you mean to go see her?”

He must believe, as the rest of the world did, that Tag and Susannah had been conspirators. The sleaziest tabloids had even speculated they were lovers, supposing this was how she’d recruited him for the dirty deed. “Thought I might look her up,” he said casually. “But I haven’t heard from her in a few weeks and I was afraid she might have moved on.”

“She has that.” The trainer checked the road behind them again. “Look, I have this message from Brady, but I don’t trust the mail. It’s got to be delivered personal, put straight into her hand. And I can’t get away myself.”

“Be happy to take it.” Finally, finally, something was going his way. “Where’d you say she was?”

“Southwestern Colorado. Little town outside of Cortez. Dawson, it’s called.” The Irishman drew a crumpled envelope from a back pocket. “Here’s the message.” His fingers tightened on one corner as Tag took hold. “I have your word you’ll deliver it to her? To Susannah and no one else?”

“You got it, pal.” He might stick it in her sexy little ear, but she’d get it, all right.

The trainer nodded and let go. “Makes no sense to me, but I guess she’ll know what to do with it. Tell her I found it tucked inside his hatband, the one he wore that night. I was thinking I’d see her at the funeral, but—”

“Brady’s dead?”

The gray eyes narrowed. “Deader than doomails. Fell down some stairs last January. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I...” Think fast. This guy could still contact her, warn her that her hideout was blown. “That was a crazy time for me,” Tag improvised. To put it mildly. “Guess she didn’t want to bother me with it.” Thoughtful Susannah. “I’m very sorry to hear it.”

“Yeah, just about broke my heart, it did.” The trainer started his engine. “Well, I can’t be stopping. Give Susannah my best, will you?”

“Will do.” For the first time in six months, Tag’s smile was genuine as he waved farewell. Nothing but the very, very best for little Susannah!

MESSAGE FROM A DEAD MAN. Lurking in a booth in the far corner of Moe’s Truckstop outside Dawson, Colorado, waiting for a grilled cheese sandwich he didn’t want, Tag drew Brady’s message from its envelope. Unfolding the smudged strip of paper, he studied the penciled scrawl for the fiftieth time in the past three days.

For the fiftieth time, it read as pure gibberish. Was it possible that Brady, owner of a whiskey flask, could have been a raving drunk? That might account for this nonsense and might also, come to think of it, explain his fatal fall. The words were scribbled with blithe abandon or possibly haste, t’s uncrossed, spacing ragged.

Susie, what we were talking about. Decided it might come in handy for leverage. Got it, but couldn’t make it to your car. If you get this, the honey’s where...

Several words were crossed out here. The writer had borne down so hard on his pencil, he’d ripped a hole.

Remember that time I called you a begonia raper? Take care, kid.

Brady.

“Begonia raper”—what kind of nonsense was that? Tag frowned as he folded the paper and put it away. And “honey”—every time he read that word, he tried to make it come out money. His four hundred had dwindled to two and most of that spent for gas, not food or shelter. Till he tapped into Susannah’s bank account, he was counting pennies.

But if she’s loaded, what’s she doing working in a dive like this? When he’d reached Dawson late this afternoon, he’d stopped at the tiny post office, casually asked its ancient postmistress if she knew where his dear friend Susannah Mack might be staying hereabouts?

Stomach growling all the way west, sleeping in his musty heap every night to conserve cash, he’d cheered himself on by picturing the coming reunion. He’d imagined finding his quarry smug and cozy in some new lover’s hideaway, a rustic timber-and-glass ski lodge à la Aspen, which wasn’t so far to the northeast. Or maybe luxuriating in a retreat for the rich and too-famous, an upscale dude ranch or an exclusive health spa, secluded somewhere up in the mountains north of Dawson.

To keep himself awake on the road late last night, he’d fantasized catching Susannah at such a spa, facedown on the massage table and half-asleep, her slender body draped in nothing but a sheet. He’d pictured himself booting the masseuse out of the room, locking the door, then taking her place. He’d rubbed Susannah’s velvety back till she purred and stretched like a cat—then he’d given her shapely rump a resounding whack.

She’d whipped around, losing most of her sheet as she rolled—to reveal big blue eyes blazing up at him from the midst of a gooey, inch-thick, coffee-colored mud pack. Baring his teeth as he leaned over her, he’d pressed a forefinger to the tip of her muddy nose. Had waited while righteous indignation faded to doubt. Then just as her eyes widened in horror, he’d snarled, “Hey, babe! Remember me?”

“Here y’go!” Tag jumped half a foot as his waitress smacked a plate down on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”

“This’ll do. Thanks.” He’d drunk three cups of coffee already in the hour he’d been waiting. His waitress had told him when he asked that Suzie Zack worked the night shift, nine to dawn. He glanced at the clock over the distant counter. Eight-forty. Twenty minutes till he learned if the postmistress had been correct in claiming that the only newcomer to the county with a name remotely resembling Susannah Mack was Suzie Zack, that new little waitress down at Moe’s Truckstop.

But what the blue blazes would Susannah be doing working in a truckstop? Checking it out from the inside with a notion to buying it?

He was reaching. The tabloids had reported that, according to unnamed sources, Colton had given her a cool ten million and dropped the charge of horse theft—in exchange for Susannah’s granting him a swift, uncontested divorce. Ten million! With bucks like that, she’d be investing in stocks and bonds and diamonds, not truckstops.

The logical explanation was that Suzie Zack the waitress was not, and never had been, Susannah Mack, rich and vengeful hellcat. Still, he sat here sipping coffee and hoping. Because if Susannah wasn’t here in Dawson, then where on earth was she?

Quarter to nine and all that coffee was making itself felt. Leaving his sandwich to cool on the table, Tag tugged the bill of the baseball cap he’d bought for disguise lower over his nose. He headed down a narrow hall that he guessed led to the rest rooms. It did—and also to the phone.

His waitress stood with its receiver jammed to her ear. She smacked the side of the pay phone and swung half-around. “Well, then, where could I—” Her mouth rounded to an O.

Tag gave her an innocent grin and resumed walking. She spun away, stood silent with shoulders hunched till he’d shoved through the door to the men’s room.

Where could I what? he wondered while he took care of business. Where could I score some dope? But a big, motherly rawboned woman in her forties, she didn’t look the sort. Or... His smile faded. Where could I reach Susannah? He slammed out the men’s room door. She’d been giving him looks ever since he’d asked when that new waitress, the little one from Texas who’d served him last week—what was her name, Suzie? —came on duty? He’d figured that was a safe way to pose the question. Because if Zack proved to be Mack, then no doubt all the men were asking for her.

But now he thought about it, his waitress had vanished down this hall only minutes after his first inquiry.

No one stood at the phone now, but the door beside it was just closing. Hell, to lose Susannah now when he was so close! He’d been too impatient. Should have simply watched and waited even if it took her a week to show. Tag opened the door and leaned out to scan a potholed patch of pavement.

A cool, sage-scented mountain wind was blowing. Rolling before it, a beer can tinkled eerily, then came up short against a rock. Somewhere out in the dark a coyote yipped. Nothing else stirred. Whoever had come this way had moved on. Either gone back to the kitchen or to the parking lot out front.

Swearing under his breath, Tag turned back to the eating area. He could leave, then lie in ambush outside the kitchen door, but if for some reason she entered by the front or side door, instead... As he reached the end of the hall he skidded to a stop.

A short, slender woman stood at a table across the room, facing away from him. Taking the order of three trucker types who grinned up at her.

Thank you, God! His heart drumming a hunter’s beat, Tag ambled over to his booth and slipped into it. He pulled the bill of his cap down to his nose and slouched till his eyes barely cleared the back of the opposite banquette. Susannah Mack, as I live and breathe!

Waiting tables. She wore a white butcher’s apron tied over a blue work shirt and jeans. She seemed thinner than he remembered—she turned to take the third man’s order and the overhead lights threw an elegant cheekbone into stark relief. But he’d have known her anywhere, even without those lizardskin boots. She’d pulled her marigold mane back into a prim braid, though wisps of it escaped already to feather her cheeks. She swiped a forearm up across her brow as if she could feel the heat of his eyes, nodded coolly at something one of the customers said, then swung back toward the kitchen.

As she moved away, the biggest trucker grabbed an apron string. The perky bow at her hips unraveled and she stopped.

You—Tag found himself halfway to his feet. He dropped abruptly back into place. He couldn’t walk over there and heave that jerk across the counter without Susannah noticing. And he’d promised himself their first encounter would be private. On his terms. So easy. Cool it.

Besides, his Texas hellion needed no man’s help. She turned with graceful deliberation, said something that didn’t carry to Tag’s ears. Her admirer sat back and clasped his hands on the table, schoolboy with knuckles rapped. Chin high, boot heels clacking, she marched off to the kitchen. When the door swung shut behind her, the trucker’s friends tipped back their heads and roared.

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