In the background she heard the alarm go out to local police. There was static, the dispatcher"s steady, firm voice, and a clear, answering "10-76" in a deep voice, followed by a wailing siren that she heard simultaneously on the phone and outside. There must be a squad car nearby if the dispatcher said he could make it to Glory in two minutes. It was a big county.
Now if the police just made it in time...!
There were heavy footsteps, muttered curses when they tried the locked bedroom door. Glory moved barefooted to behind the door and lifted her cane over her head. If anybody managed to break in that heavy old door, she was going to get in the first blow. d.a.m.n Fuentes! She thought furiously. d.a.m.n him for a coward, sending other people to do his dirty work for him!
What sounded like a boot slamming into the door echoed in the hall, but it didn"t budge. Then a shoulder hit the door, with the same result. She heard curses in Spanish and then, suddenly, furiously, gunshots went right into the door, where she would have been standing if she hadn"t gotten the idea to ambush her attackers. One of the bullets shattered the wood around the doork.n.o.b and another took out the keyhole.
"Got you now, blondie!" the drawling voice carried.
But even as the door started to open, the siren grew loud and a car could be heard racing up to the porch. Her heart was racing, too. The old familiar pain came with it, stinging down her left arm. But she was full of bravado, nevertheless.
"What the h.e.l.l...!" one of the voices exclaimed.
"It"s the heat! She called the cops!"
"And now you can try shooting at them!" she raged.
"I"ll get you next time!" a cold, angry voice in accented Spanish came through the wood. "I swear I will!"
"Like h.e.l.l you will!" muttered a new, deeply drawling male voice.
There were thuds and running feet, a gunshot that sounded farther away than the hall, and then even louder thuds echoed in the hall. Then there was silence.
"Ma"am, are you still on the line?" the dispatcher asked worriedly.
"Yes," Glory a.s.sured her. "There"s fighting in the hall and a gunshot outside. I"m locked in my bedroom."
"Just stay there."
"You bet!"
Another exclamation, another thud. Then silence.
There was a knock on the door. She heard the same deep voice that had answered the intruder. "Ma"am, it"s the police. You okay in there?"
She didn"t know whether or not to answer.
There was static outside the door and she heard the same voice come over the line when the dispatcher answered the call.
"It"s really the police," the dispatcher a.s.sured her. "You can open the door now."
"Thanks," Glory said huskily. "Thank you very much."
"My pleasure."
Glory hung up the phone and opened the door, carefully. A tall, powerful looking police officer with black hair and glittery pale gray eyes was towering above her. He noted the upraised cane.
"Oops. Sorry," she said, lowering it to her side. "Sorry."
He managed a faint smile. "Going to brain the guy, huh? I don"t know if it would have helped, he"s so thick-skulled."
She moved out into the hall and noted, shakily, that a man was facedown on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him. She knew before they turned him over and helped him up that it was Marco.
He glared at her with hateful black eyes. "I"ll be out by morning, blondie," he spat at her. "And you"ll be dead by night!"
"Oh, I wouldn"t bet on that," the policeman drawled.
"No, me either," his younger companion, also in uniform, agreed. He had blond hair and a nice smile. "You okay, ma"am?"
"I"m fine, thanks to both of you," she replied.
"Do you know this man?"
"Yes," she said. "He"s our cook"s son."
"There are bullet holes through your door there. Was he trying to shoot you?" the first officer asked.
She hesitated. She didn"t dare tell them the truth. Marco knew that, and he was grinning in a sarcastic fashion.
"I don"t know," she lied.
Marco only laughed. "Smart girl," he said.
The officers were looking suspicious. Glory looked past them, and Cash Grier walked in. "I just got word," he told Glory. He looked at his two patrol officers. "Take him by the dentention center. We"ll charge him with aggravated a.s.sault. I"ll walk her through the statement."
"I never tried to hurt her!" Marco argued. "I only wanted to talk to her."
Cash looked pointedly at the bullet holes that went through Glory"s bedroom door. "Badly, apparently," he said.
"It"s her word against mine," Marco said smugly. "I"ll be out in twenty-four hours. I get to call my lawyer, right?"
Fuentes would have the best lawyers money could buy. Glory had never felt so frustrated. She glared at Marco. It would almost have been worth blowing her cover to charge him with attempted murder and give the reason, which would lead back to the man she was certain he worked for-Fuentes.
"Take him out of here," Cash told the officers. "I"ll be along."
They walked Marco down the hall.
Glory leaned against the door facing, catching her breath. Her heart was pounding, and she had pain down her arm.
"Sit down," Cash said, easing her into a chair just inside her room. "Do you have medicine?"
She shook her head. "Not with me." It was hard to breathe. Harder to talk.
"I can call an ambulance."
She swallowed. That would complicate things even more. She concentrated on breathing steadily. Slowly the pain began to ebb. She looked up at Cash. "I"ll be all right," she said softly. "This isn"t the first time I"ve had this problem."
"It"s angina, isn"t it?" he asked.
She nodded. "They gave me nitroglycerin tablets," she said, pausing to breathe again. "But I"d rather do anything...than take them. They hurt my head."
He leaned against the dresser, frowning. "Knowing your medical history, I have to wonder if you"re suicidal, considering your line of work."
"How odd," she mused. "That"s exactly what my doctor said."
"Maybe you should listen to him. Right now, I"m all for putting you in a safe house under protective custody."
She shook her head. "If you do that, Fuentes wins. Marco missed. He thinks he"ll walk. Now Fuentes will do his best to have Marco killed, too. He doesn"t forgive slipups."
"You think? I"m wondering why a man as dangerous as Fuentes would send a drug-crazed teenage gang member to do a professional hit."
She felt the blood drain out of her face. She hadn"t seen it. Now she realized that it was a setup. The real killer had sent Marco in to test the water, to see the reaction time of local law enforcement, to see how Glory would react.
"It was staged, wasn"t it?" she asked, and horror was in her eyes.
"I think so," he replied. "A test run."
"Yes." She managed to breathe normally again. "So what do we do now?"
Cash was thinking, hard. He wasn"t sure of anything, except that he wished he knew what the DEA was doing in Jacobs County. It had been one of Cash"s new men, the gray-eyed one who"d rushed to Glory"s aid, who"d ignored an order from the DEA to back off when a drug deal went down in Comanche Wells. n.o.body knew exactly who the undercover agent was or what he was up to, and federal agencies tended not to share intel with local police unless they had to.
"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" came a familiar deep, faintly accented voice. Glory looked up and Rodrigo walked into the room. He looked at the bullet holes in the door, at Cash and then at Glory with real concern. "Nia!" he exclaimed gently, modifying his tone as he knelt beside her. "Ests bien?"
Her heart jumped because he"d used the familiar tense, one that Spanish-speaking people only used with loved ones or children. She met his searching black eyes and felt safe. Unthinking, she held up her arms and he went into them, enveloping her against him, rocking her, smoothing her hair. She felt tears pour out of her eyes and hated showing weakness. But she"d been scared. Really scared. Her heart was still acting up. She felt vulnerable.
"What happened?" Rodrigo asked Cash.
"It"s a long story," Cash replied. "I"m not at liberty to divulge what I know."
Rodrigo"s eyes narrowed. He knew this man, and his contacts. He"d been chasing a drug lord, but someone was after Glory. He didn"t know why, and he knew it was useless to ask Cash. Plots within plots, he thought irritably. But at least he was used to secrets.
"Can you tell me who did this?" he asked.
"Marco," Glory murmured against his chest. "Marco did it. Poor Consuelo!"
"Where is she?" Rodrigo asked.
"She had to run to the store. She had a phone call. She looked very strange when she hung up, and she said she had to go out," Glory said, her voice m.u.f.fled against the clean, nice-smelling front of Rodrigo"s chambray shirt.
Rodrigo looked into Cash"s eyes, and the other man knew at once who the DEA had working undercover here. He hadn"t recognized Rodrigo, whom he"d only seen in the dark during a standoff with Cara Dominguez several months ago. He"d rarely seen that look in another man"s face, but it was all too familiar. Rodrigo was obviously involved with Glory in some manner and he looked as if he wanted to take several bites out of Marco. He seemed fiercely protective of Glory. But Cash couldn"t blow Rodrigo"s cover-or Glory"s. If the situation had been a little less potentially fatal, it would have been comedy. Both of them were keeping dire secrets which, apparently, they weren"t willing to share with each other.
"Shhh," Rodrigo whispered at Glory"s ear. "It"s all right. You"re safe. n.o.body is going to hurt you here. Never again. I swear it."
"I was thinking of having someone come over here to work for you, just to keep an eye on her," Cash said.
Rodrigo glanced at him. "That was tried once before and it didn"t work. I"ll take care of her."
It was a veiled warning. When Cash searched his memory, he began to remember other things he"d heard about this agent. The man had been involved in mercenary work for many years. He was so good at what he did that there was a price on his head in almost every country on earth. For the past three years, he"d worked for the DEA out of Arizona. He"d actually gone undercover in Manuel Lopez"s drug operation and helped bring the man down. More recently, he"d been instrumental in Cara Dominguez"s arrest and conviction. Now he was after Fuentes. Cash knew it, but he couldn"t admit it; certainly not in front of Glory.
"I was hiding behind the door when he tried to come in," she muttered, wiping her eyes as she pulled gently away from Rodrigo"s comforting arms. "I was going to brain him with my cane. But he started shooting instead."
"Thank G.o.d you were behind the door instead of in front of it," Rodrigo said tersely.
"What will you do with Marco?" she asked Cash.
"Book him, lock him up and hope the judge will set bail at a million dollars."
Glory chuckled. "Oh, I think Mary Smith will do that if you ask her to. She"s a renegade. She hates drug dealers."
"You know a judge?" Rodrigo asked her with narrow, suspicious eyes.
Her heart skipped. "I know of her," she said. "One of my cousins got in trouble with the law and she heard his case," she lied calmly.
"I see."
"You"ll have to testify," Cash told Glory. "You"re the only eyewitness I"ve got."
Story of my life, she thought. "I didn"t see him, though," she replied sadly. "I only heard him."
"Try to get a conviction on that evidence," Rodrigo murmured absently as he examined the bullet holes. "A good defense attorney will swear that Marco came to her a.s.sistance and was falsely accused."
"But there"s the gun," Glory began.
Cash ground his teeth together.
"What?" she asked.
"We didn"t find a gun."
"There goes your case," Rodrigo replied dryly.
"There were two of them," Glory said. "The other one, the one who got away, probably took the gun with him when he heard the sirens. Marco was busy telling me that he"d get me next time. So you got him."
"I"ll keep him as long as I can," Cash promised. "But it won"t be the only attempt."
"She"ll be safe here." Rodrigo repeated. He looked from Glory to Cash and back again. "I don"t suppose either of you would like to tell me why my cook"s a.s.sistant is attracting hired killers?"
Cash and Glory exchanged glances.
"So we play musical chairs and twenty questions, while Marco"s boss plans a foolproof way to take her out, is that it?" Rodrigo asked.
"We think this was a dry run," Cash said. "To see about response time, and Glory"s reaction to an intruder."
"He"ll be wiser next time and hit in the middle of the night when she"s asleep," Rodrigo said calmly.
"If someone would loan me a gun..." she began.
"No!" Cash said at once.