Читать книгу Desperado Dad - Linda Conrad - Страница 8

Manny Sanchez decided the pounding rain did have one advantage—it helped to hide his stealthy nighttime chase. He rode his Harley through the bitter, biting and brutal sleet, torn between cursing the storm and being grateful for the added cover.

In the next instant the minivan he’d been following slowed. When its brake lights glowed red, memories of devastating car wrecks flashed before his eyes. He’d seen plenty of twisted metal in his thirty-four years, and a flashback of his own agony clutched at his chest.

Damn. Not this time. A baby boy was riding inside that van. Life had always been cruel as far as Manny was concerned, but the baby’s short, tragic life simply must not end this way. Manny couldn’t let that happen—not again.

Through his rain-distorted visor, he watched horrified as the minivan carrying the coyote and his cargo came to a low-water bridge. They hit a patch of icy highway and slid sideways. Manny winced.

¡Ay, Dios mio! No one will get out alive!

Suddenly his bike hit another frozen spot and he lost control. He cut the power, laying the bike down into the gravel covering the side of the road. His leather-clad, left shoulder took the entire brunt of the roadway collision, but a combination of adrenaline and freezing cold numbed him to the effects he knew were sure to follow.

Luckily the bike slid across the asphalt, scattering sparks and landing in a field, while he sprawled down the gravel in the other direction. His heavy jeans protected him from the rocks and wet pavement.

When his forward momentum finally eased, he jumped to his feet, relieved he was still able to walk. But there wasn’t time to check for broken bones or bleeding. He ripped off his helmet, flung it aside and ran toward the bridge.

In terrifying slow motion, Manny watched the minivan lose contact with the asphalt as it hit the rushing water. Within the space of a heartbeat, the boxy little vehicle turned on its side and was swept into the furious torrent.

A breath hitched in his throat as he stood paralyzed, seeing the scene unfold before him. Shock and a fleeting sense of sorrow and guilt overtook him. Why hadn’t he found a way to end this assignment earlier today—or yesterday? Or, hell, last week before things had gotten so out of hand?

He clearly heard the eerie shriek of twisting metal over the sounds of howling water as torrents assaulted the minivan with a devastating rampage. The incessant beating of the rain competed with the hammering of his heart.

Without a moment for recriminations and once again burying his emotions, he reacted to the tragedy the way he’d been trained—don’t hesitate, act.

Just then the minivan snagged itself on a pile of debris clogged against willows at the side of the raging river. It was all the advantage Manny would get, and he ran toward the van before it broke loose and dashed farther downstream.

By the time he reached the car, lying precariously driver’s side down, he’d made an assessment of what he could do, and what the chances were that anyone had survived. The van was submerged a good three feet deep, and the black water still rose against it. Since the roof was all he could see from the bank, he couldn’t be sure, but…

Manny scrambled up the hood and scaled the front window, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Slick and slippery, the van rocked gently as the cascading water tore at it, making any assent more than hazardous.

After too many precious minutes, he made it to the passenger side and knelt, yanking on the front passenger door. It took a supreme effort, but the door finally opened, revealing the murky interior.

“Hey, can you hear me?” he shouted.

He bent closer and realized no one sat in the passenger seat. For a second the silence from inside was so complete he wondered if the worst had already happened.

He began lowering himself into the front toward the spot where a driver should be, when a child’s cry pulled him up short. The baby was still alive! But Manny couldn’t see him for all the darkness and water.

With another small whimper from the back seat, Manny quickly reached into the murky water where the driver should be and found—nothing. The smuggler that had been driving must have been thrown out as the van went over.

As fast as he could, Manny dragged himself out of the van and wrestled with the sliding back door. The more he pulled the worse his shoulder throbbed.

The door eventually gave way to his efforts. Manny saw the kid, still strapped in his child-carrier and hanging sideways as the water rose to meet him.

Please don’t let him die.

Manny reached for the carrier’s seat belt and gave it a jerk. Nothing happened. The damn thing was stuck, so Manny lowered himself into the car, sliding past the suddenly too-quiet child and landing in the freezing water.

Standing upright in the back, waist deep, with his feet resting on the car’s left side window, he reached into his jeans pocket for his knife. As Manny’s fingers grasped the pocket knife, a small hand reached out to touch his face.

“Hi, baby, are you hurting?” He tried to keep the tension from his voice. “I’ll have you out of here in a minute.”

The dark-haired child, dressed in nothing but a red sweater and diaper, started to sob. It wasn’t a loud cry, but a soft, heart-wrenching sound that tore into Manny’s soul.

“Pa…ba?” The baby patted Manny’s face and reached grasping fingers toward his jacket.

“I’m not your papa, hijo, but there’s no need to be afraid. I won’t let anything else happen to you.”

A flash of memory passed through Manny’s mind, reminding him that this little one had already lost his father and his mother forever. That was enough. Manny vowed to keep him safe from now on—no matter what it took, and no matter who didn’t care for the idea.

With more effort than Manny’s shoulder should handle, the seat belt finally gave way to his sharp blade. The baby grabbed him around the neck and hung on desperately.

Manny flipped the blade closed and jammed it back into his pocket while he experienced the closest thing to sheer panic he’d ever felt. How in the world was he going to lift himself and the boy out of the back seat and onto the car’s side with this injured shoulder?

“Hand the baby to me.”

“What the…?” The woman’s voice coming from above startled the hell out of him.

When he looked up, all he could make out were long slender arms reaching down into the open doorway. Where had she come from? Had she been inside the van and gotten out by herself? Impossible. But then where…and how…?

“Hurry up. I don’t think we’ve got much time.” The woman’s demand shocked him into movement. He lifted the baby up with his good arm. The seemingly disembodied arms from above grabbed hold of the boy securely.

The baby gasped and tightened his grip on Manny and wailed.

“Easy, sweetheart, I’ve got you.” The woman’s voice turned soft and pleading.

Manny pried the boy’s arms from his neck as gently as he possibly could. Meanwhile the woman made soothing noises, pulling the baby upward. Once they had disappeared from view, Manny used his good arm and his legs to drag himself up and out of the car.

When he found a steady perch on the car’s side, he looked over to the woman, who had the little boy wrapped securely in her arms. She looked hesitantly over the slippery roof to the ground just beyond reach.

The rain still pulsated down on them, making every movement difficult. Manny made a quick decision. He slid down the roof and managed to find a fairly solid foothold on top of wet debris and clogged tree branches.

He reached his good arm up toward the woman and child. “Hand him back to me, then slide down. I’ll steady you.”

She hesitated. “Your arm’s hurt. Can you hold him?”

“It’s nothing. Just a bruised shoulder.”

She looked unsure but lowered the baby to him. The boy grabbed a handful of black leather jacket and held on in a death grip. Meanwhile the mysterious woman eased herself down the roof while Manny steadied her with his body.

Within seconds they were standing on muddy ground.

“Is there anyone else in there?” she shouted over the roar of the wind and water.

Manny shook his head.

She turned to the car and then swirled back with an undecided glance. For the first time, Manny noticed what their mysterious savior looked like: about half a foot shorter than his six feet, her long soggy hair hung down her back in wet strands. She wore a neon yellow slicker that looked three sizes too big and hung on her slender frame, making her appear younger than the midtwenties he guessed she must be.

It was her eyes that really grabbed him, though. Wide with questions, Manny couldn’t tell exactly what color they were in the blackness of the night surrounding them. Full of all the emotions that he knew swirled inside her, those eyes made her look sweet and strong, and right this minute, downright scared.

He spent one precious second considering the slim chance that the baby-stealing minivan driver still lived. It seemed like a tough ending for the man who’d obviously panicked back in Del Rio and had appeared to be headed straight for his boss. Mother Nature hadn’t read him his rights.

In all the years Manny had been undercover chasing these baby smugglers for Operation Rock-a-Bye, he’d never followed any of them so far from the border. Usually the actual kidnapping happened in Mexico or in Europe and then was funneled through Mexico. And it was in the big, Texas cities where most of the baby selling took place. The thought of murderers and scum living in a safe, small town troubled him.

It would be impossible to find the body tonight, so he buried his uneasiness. Right now the living needed tending.

With no hesitation he gathered the woman up next to him and forced his bad shoulder to cradle her, while he tightened his grip on the baby with his good arm. “We need to get out of the rain. Now.”

“My…my truck.”

He dragged her toward the roadway. They hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the raging water finally tore the minivan loose and pummeled it farther down the river.

The sickening sounds of scraping metal against rock forced Manny into action. He picked up their pace and moved the little band of survivors up the incline at the riverbank.

Farther up the hill, parked in the middle of the pavement, Manny saw what had to be the woman’s truck. A fifteen-year-old, four-wheel-drive Suburban sat idling with its lights on.

“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.

She nodded and swung into the front seat. Scooting over to open the passenger door for Manny and the baby, she took the boy while Manny climbed into the truck and, closing the door behind him, gathered the child back into his arms.

Manny unzipped his jacket, put the baby on his chest and zipped the jacket back up over both of them, keeping the baby secure and a little warmer. If this truck wrecked on the icy roads, the baby’s position against him might be dangerous, but without Manny’s body heat the little boy was sure to go into shock.

He looked over to the woman and noticed she’d belted herself in, but her hands shook so badly he was afraid she’d never keep hold of the wheel. Manny reached across the baby and jacked up the heater’s fan.

“You sure you can drive?”

“Ye-e-e-s-s,” she stuttered. “The way the water’s rising, we’re about to be cut off by two flooding rivers. Happens every time things get this bad. My ranch is just a ways up the road. It’s the only possible chance we’ve got.”

Jamming the truck into Reverse, she eased it around on the asphalt and slowly drove away from the river.

He suddenly realized he didn’t know her name, or why she’d been there to help them. “I need to thank you for coming to our rescue. It was a very brave but foolhardy thing to do.” She kept her attention on the slick road, continuing to stare out the windshield.

“I’m Manny Sanchez. And you are…”

“Randi.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s my name. I’m Randi Cullen. And I live on the Running C ranch.”

The Running C? Son of a gun, if that wasn’t the name he’d overheard the smugglers discussing at the café in Del Rio. Was this woman involved with them? All of a sudden it occurred to him that their savior might really be the suspect he’d been seeking. But the only way to find out would be to keep a sharp eye on her.

Manny quickly decided he’d better keep her close—whatever that took and any way he could.

Randi tightened her grip on the steering wheel and slanted a glance at the dark and intimidating man who was scrutinizing her from the passenger seat. The energy emanating from him hummed with tension. Dear Lord, he terrified—and excited—her.

She couldn’t figure out what had possessed her to climb up on that minivan the way she had. There hadn’t been time to consider the ramifications, just like now, when there was no choice but to take this menacing man and his child into her home.

After she’d stopped at the bridge and heard the baby’s cry, all sense of personal danger had deserted her. She could still feel the rush of bravado, sitting here in the front seat with a total stranger. She’d never done anything like this in her entire life. Just thinking about it made her tremble.

Nevertheless, Randi felt more alive in the past half hour than she had in years. Bringing this man home might be a very dangerous thing to do, but she didn’t care. Somehow she felt sure he would be trustworthy. He had an aura about him that reminded her of her old friend, the deputy sheriff.

The stranger had been traveling with his own child. How bad could he be? And what’s more, he and his baby needed help, and she’d been able to do something about it. That frustrating feeling of being unable to do anything to help, the one emotion she’d been so familiar with over the past few years, was slowly washing away as the minutes went by.

“That’s a kind of unusual name for a woman, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Randi? It was my grandmother’s nickname.” At his seemingly confused look, she explained, “Short for Miranda…?”

“I wasn’t questioning it. I think Randi is a beautiful name.”

She could feel the flush stealing over her face. Glancing over at him, she found a smirk of amusement. The smile lit up his entire face, making him the most magnetic man she’d ever laid eyes on.

Oh, not handsome in the standard movie star way, his jaw was too sharp and his nose too long and broad for that. But he was intense, dark and a little rough around the edges, as if a thin veneer of civilized behavior covered a raging beast inside. And he was big—broad. Her breathing faltered when she realized how much of the front seat he really occupied.

“My mother named me,” she managed shakily.

“Well, Randi.” He repeated her name with emphasis. “Far be it from me to question good fortune, but what the heck were you doing out here in this deluge?”

“I…” She had to swallow down the lump in her throat and put aside her jitters. “I was on my way home from town. When I heard about the storm, I stopped at the grocery store after work. That’s why I’m late.” She was babbling and tried to slow down.

She took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of wet leather, sweat and musky man. An odd sensation, one she couldn’t name and had never felt before, coiled inside her.

Randi found herself sneaking a peek at his ring finger.

“I saw a car’s headlights turn at the creek road,” she began. “Everyone who lives around here knows not to take a low-water bridge road in a storm, so I figured it must be strangers. I knew there’d be trouble.”

Empty. No rings on his hands at all. But that didn’t mean much in these modern times. And there was the matter of his baby.

Randi suddenly remembered the child. When she turned her head to check on him, she was surprised to see the shaggy, black-haired desperado of a man gently patting the back of the baby who lay quietly on his chest.

“We can’t make it to the hospital before the highway is flooded out. Is the baby going to be all right? Will you manage?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” he mumbled.

“What’s the baby’s name?”

“Uh, I don’t…Ricardo…Ricky,” he finally stammered.

Maybe Manny was as flustered by the circumstances as she was? Nope. Not the gritty and unswerving male who’d helped her and the baby off the slick minivan in the middle of the storm.

“And I think he’s going to be fine. He stopped shivering a few minutes ago.” Manny glanced down at the top of the toddler’s head, then peered out the window into the dark night. “I would like to get him dried off, though.”

“Right. Looks like we beat the water. We’re almost there.” As a matter of fact, at that moment the rusty gate bearing the Running C brand came into view.

Randi threw the car into Park and jumped out to open the gate—which turned out to be not an easy task with all the mud flowing across the gravel road.

She groaned internally at the thought of how rutted and pocked her road would be after the rain. And she didn’t have enough money to have it graded this time, either.

Gritting her teeth with frustration, Randi shoved at the heavy gate and then plowed her way back to the truck. The darn thing could just stay open. She didn’t care. No way was she getting out of the truck again to close it in this downpour.

Back in the driver’s seat, Randi could feel icy water dripping on her neck. The droplets didn’t stop there, but ran under her collar and slithered down her back. She started to shiver involuntarily but pressed her lips together and kept driving.

Only another half a mile to go.

It seemed like an hour’s drive, but actually within a few minutes she pulled up in the yard. Ignoring her usual parking spot under the tree, Randi drove as close to the back porch as she could manage.

“This is it. Let me put on a light and then I’ll come back out and help with the baby.” She ducked her head as she opened the truck door against the heavy rain and wind.

Just inside the door to the house, Manny stomped his boots and tried to shake the bulk of the water from his body, without much luck. He was soaked clean through.

When Randi had turned on the porch light, he’d caught a glimpse of her ranch house through the pouring rain. It hadn’t made much of an impression. From what Manny could see, the porch stairs leaned precariously to one side and the back door could obviously stand a new coat of paint.

Now he found himself in an old-fashioned mud room, with thirty-year-old linoleum on the floor and yellowing wallpaper on the walls. He clutched the baby to his chest, not wanting him to get a chill. Manny could still see his breath in the air even though they were inside the house.

“That’s all of it.” Randi came back through the door, carrying two bags full of groceries. “Come into the kitchen, while I light the stove. It’ll only take a few minutes to warm up.”

She dragged off her slicker, shaking it as she hung it on a peg. Leading the way through the mud room and into the kitchen, she turned on lights as she went.

Without the raincoat, she looked like a drowned rat. Well, actually, more like a drowned mouse. Thin and pale, her long, straight hair had almost dried, and he noticed only that it was the color of dishwater. She had on a dark pants outfit that appeared to be permanently wrinkled and stained by the rain.

The only memorable things about her were her eyes. In the light he saw their magical color. Hazel, he supposed they’d call them on a rap sheet. But one minute they were pale green ringed by steel blue, the next minute they were a deep gold with bronze flecks. The vulnerability he’d found within them haunted him more than the interesting colors.

Suddenly conscious of what a wet mess he was making, Manny stepped onto one of the braided rugs covering the wooden plank floor. Holding the baby against his shoulder, he silently apologized to the child for having to make up a name and for continuing to drag him along during an investigation. He stayed at the far end of the room and let his eyes adjust to the dim light.

He slowly focused, staring into the wide-open area that served as a kitchen and looked as if it had been furnished in the forties. His gaze took in all the details of the room: the propane-powered icebox with the fan on top, the floor-to-ceiling, free-standing breakfront, used as a pantry, and the two-foot thick, butcher block table in the middle of the room.

The out-of-date feel to the place reminded him of Mexico. Everything here was well-worn but also well cared for and spotless.

Randi busied herself shoving chopped wood into a cast-iron stove, the kind that had become very trendy in some areas of the West. Manny seriously doubted if she’d bought the thing to be fashionable. It looked ancient, but usable.

She lit the fire and fiddled with a damper. “It won’t be long now.” Her gaze caught his and flicked away. “Let me get some towels and a blanket for your baby.”

When she disappeared down a hall, Manny was shocked to realize he’d been studying her with more than just the professional eye of an undercover special agent. He found he’d been sidetracked once again by those amazing hazel-green eyes.

As she spoke, she’d looked like a timid fawn. Her skin was pearly with a dash of freckles across the nose. Only average height and a little too thin, as well, he thought. But her hips did curve rather seductively in the dressy slacks she wore.

All in all there wasn’t a reason in the world for the lick of desire he’d felt when their gazes met. He’d most assuredly felt it, though. And was, in fact, still trying to recover from the jolt.

Randi came back into the room with an armful of linens. “Here, let me have Ricky. You get out of that jacket and start drying off.”

After she set the pile of towels and blankets on the counter, he handed her the little boy and peeled off his soggy leather jacket. Manny was surprised to find the room considerably warmer than it had been just a few minutes earlier. He didn’t bother trying to figure out whether the warmth was related to the temperature or came from the nearness of the woman.

He took a deep breath and smelled a heady combination of mesquite smoke, dried herbs and tangy oranges. Reaching to pull off his boots, he had the weird sensation of being here before, of feeling at home. Maybe it was because the place felt like a safe haven, reminding him of his grandmother’s house in Mexico.

Manny stood transfixed, with a water-filled boot in each hand, watching as Randi undressed the baby and towel dried his hair. She was easy with Ricky, warm and motherly, and she turned Manny’s senses to mush.

Son of a gun. This innocent couldn’t possibly be involved with the baby smugglers. It wouldn’t be fair.

For the first time since he’d taken the oath, he hated what he did for a living. Hated having to pretend to be something he wasn’t. Hated having decent people be afraid of him.

But the truth was, when push came to shove, if Randi was involved with the smuggling ring, he’d do his job and take her down. The ruthless, international baby snatchers deserved no mercy. He just had to pray this guileless young woman was exactly as she seemed.

As soon as humanly possible, Manny needed to banish his emotions once more and get out of her house and her life—with his libido and his soul safely intact.