The Texas Ranger

Josette came around the desk and walked right up to him, unafraid.

“I’m not prejudging anyone implicated in this case. That means you can’t, either,” she said deliberately. “I know what that—” she indicated his Ranger badge “—means to you. My job means just as much to me. If we’re going to work together, we have to start now. No acid comments about the past. We’re solving a murder, not rehashing an incident that was concluded two years ago. What’s over is over. Period.”

His gray eyes narrowed so that they were hidden under his jutting brow and the cream-colored Stetson he slanted at an angle over them. Until he’d seen her again, he hadn’t realized how lonely his life had been for the past two years. He’d made a mess of things. In fact, he was still doing it. She held grudges, too. And he could hardly blame her.

“All right,” Brannon said finally.

“I’ll keep you posted about anything I find, if you’ll return the courtesy.”

“Courtesy.” He turned the word over on his tongue. “There’s a new concept.”

“For you, certainly,” Josette agreed with an unexpected twinkle in her eyes.

The Texas Ranger

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my grandfather,

Edward Thomas Cliatt,

who made childhood an adventure.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

There were framed black-and-white photographs of Texas Rangers on the walls of the San Antonio Texas Ranger office. Like sepia ghosts of times gone by, they watched over the modern complex of telephones and fax machines and computers. Phones were ringing. Employees at desks were interviewing people. The hum of working machines settled over the office, oddly comforting, like an electrical lullaby.

Sergeant Marc Brannon was sitting kicked back in his swivel chair, his wavy blond-streaked brown hair shimmering under the ceiling lights as he pondered a stack of files on his cluttered desk. His narrow, pale gray eyes were almost closed as he thought about a disturbing recent mishap.

A close friend and fellow Texas Ranger, Judd Dunn, had been almost run over by a speeding car a few weeks earlier during a temporary assignment to the San Antonio office. There were rumors that it had something to do with a criminal investigation into illegal gambling that the FBI was conducting on local mob boss Jake Marsh in San Antonio. Dunn had been working with the FBI on the case, but shortly thereafter, Dunn had transferred down to the Victoria office, citing personal problems. Brannon had inherited the Marsh investigation. The FBI was also involved—rather, an agent Brannon knew was involved; a Georgia-born nuisance named Curtis Russell. It was curious that Russell should be working on an FBI case. He’d been with the Secret Service. Of course, Marc reminded himself, men changed jobs all the time. He certainly had.

Apparently, Russell was knee-deep in the Marsh investigation. Attorney General Simon Hart had spoken with Brannon on the phone not two days ago, grumbling about Russell’s tenacity. The former Secret Service agent was now in Austin giving the local officials fits while he dug into state crime lab computer files on two recent murders that he thought were tied to Marsh. And who knew, maybe he was right. But pinning anything on the local mobster was going to take a miracle.

Marsh had his finger in all sorts of pies, including blackmail, prostitution and illegal betting, mostly in San Antonio, where he lived. If they could get something on him, they could invoke the state’s nuisance abatement statute, which permitted any property to be closed down if it were used as a base of operations for criminals. Since Marsh was known to be involved in prostitution and illegal betting at his nightclub, all they had to do was prove it to oust him from the premises. Considering the real estate value of that downtown property, it would hit Marsh right where he lived. But knowing he was conducting illegal operations and proving it were two whole different kettles of fish. Marsh was an old hand at dodging investigators and searches. Doing things by the book sure seemed to give career criminals an advantage.

Pity that you couldn’t just shoot the bad guys anymore, Brannon thought whimsically, eyeing a hundred-year-old framed photograph of a Texas Ranger on horseback with a lariat pulled tight around a dusty and wounded outlaw.

His lean hand went to the dark wood butt of the Colt .45 he wore in a holster on his hip. Since Rangers didn’t have a specified uniform, they were allowed some personal choice in both dress and weaponry. But most of the men and women in the office wore white shirts and ties with their star-in-a-circle signature badge on the shirt. Most of them also wore white Stetsons and boots. To a Ranger, they were neat, conservative, polite and professional when they were on the job. Brannon tried very hard to adjust to that image. Well, he tried to, most of the time. He was more cautious about his job now than he ever had been before. He’d made the mistake of his life two years ago, misjudging a woman he’d grown to…care for, very much. His sister said that the woman didn’t blame him for the mess he’d made of her life. But he blamed himself so much that he’d quit the Rangers and left Texas for two years to work with the FBI. But he’d learned that running from problems didn’t solve them. They were portable. Like heartache.

He could still see her in his mind, blond and sassy and full of dry wit. Despite the miseries of her life, she’d been the brightest, most delightful person he’d ever known. He missed her. She didn’t miss him, of course. And why should she? He’d hurt her terribly. He’d ruined her life.

“Nothing to do, Brannon?” a female Ranger drawled as she passed him. All the women thought he was a dish, lean and slim-hipped, broad-chested, with that square sort of face that once graced cowboy movie posters. He had a sensuous mouth under a nose that had been broken at least once, and an arrogant sort of carriage that excited more than it intimidated. But he wasn’t a rounder, by anybody’s estimate. In fact, if he dated, he was so discreet that even the office gossip couldn’t get anything on him.

“I am doing something,” he drawled back with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’m using mental telepathy on escaped criminals. If I’m successful, they’ll all be walking into law enforcement offices all over America as we speak, to turn themselves in.”

“Pull the other one,” she chuckled.

He sighed and smiled. “Okay. I just got back from testifying in a court case. I’ve got half a dozen cases to work and now I have to decide on priorities,” he confessed. He flicked a long finger at the file stack. “I thought I might flip a coin…”

“No need. The captain has something urgent for you to do.”

“Saved by new orders!” he joked. He jerked forward and his booted feet slammed to the floor. He got up and stretched enormously, pulling his white shirt with the silver Ranger badge on the pocket tight over hair-roughened, hard chest muscles. “What’s the assignment?”

She tossed a sheet on his desk. “A homicide, in an alley off Castillo Boulevard,” she told him. “White guy, mid-to-late-twenties. Two detectives from CID and a medical examiner investigator are already on scene, along with a couple of EMTs and patrol officers. The captain said you should go right now, before they call a contract ambulance to transport the dead body.”

He scowled. “Hey, that’s in the city limits. San Antonio PD has jurisdiction…” he began.

“I know. But this one’s tricky. They found a young white guy with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, execution-style. Remember what’s on Castillo Boulevard?”

“No.”

She gave him a smug look. “Jake Marsh’s nightclub. And the body was found in an alley two doors down from it.”

He broke into a smile. “Well, well! What a nice surprise to drop in my lap, and just when I was feeling sorry for myself.” He hesitated. “Wait a minute. Why’s the captain giving it to me?” he asked suspiciously, glaring toward the head Ranger’s closed door nearby. “The last assignment he gave me was looking into the mysterious death of a mutilated cow.” He leaned down, because he was a head taller than she was. “They thought it was aliens,” he whispered fervently.

She made a face. “You never know. Maybe it was!”

He glared at her.

She grinned. “He’s just ticked because you got to work with the FBI for two years, and they turned down two applications from him. But he said you could have this murder case because you haven’t embarrassed him this month. Yet.”

“It won’t be uncomplicated. In fact, I’ll bet a week’s pay that by dark it’s going to turn into a media feeding frenzy,” he said.

“I won’t take that bet. And, by the way, he said you should stop getting gas at that new all-female gas station downtown, because it’s giving the department a bad name.”

He lifted both eyebrows. “What’s he got against women pumping gas?” he asked innocently.

“Gas isn’t all they’re pumping.” She flushed when she realized what she’d said, gestured impotently at the assignment sheet and exited in a flaming rush.

Brannon grinned wickedly as she retreated. He picked up the sheet and went out of the office, grabbing up his off-white Stetson on the way.

In Austin, a slender woman with her long blond hair in a bun, wearing big gold-rimmed glasses over her twinkling dark brown eyes, was trying to console one of the state attorney general’s computer experts.

“He really likes you, Phil,” Josette Langley told the young man, who was in the first month of his first job out of college. He looked devastated. “Honest he does.”

Phil, redheaded and blue-eyed, glanced toward the door of Simon Hart, Texas Attorney General, and flushed even redder. “He said it was my fault his computer locked down while he was talking to the vice president on-line about an upcoming governors’ conference. He got knocked off the network and couldn’t get back on. He threw the mouse at me.”

“Lucky you, that it wasn’t attached to the CPU at the time,” she said with a wicked grin. “Anyway, he only throws things when Tira’s mad at him. It doesn’t last long. Besides, the vice president is his third cousin,” she pointed out. “And mine, too, come to think of it,” she added thoughtfully. “Never mind, Phil, you have to learn to just let it wash over you, like water on a duck’s back. Simon’s quick-tempered, but he gets over it just as fast.”

He gave her a baleful look. “He never yells at you.”

“I’m a woman,” she pointed out. “He’s very old-fashioned about yelling at women. He and his brothers were raised strictly. They don’t move with the times.”

“He’s got four brothers and he says they’re all just like him. Imagine that!” he said.

She remembered that Phil was an only child, like herself. “They’re not just like him. Anyway, they live in Jacobsville, Texas. The married ones are a lot calmer now.” She didn’t dare allow herself to think about the two remaining Hart bachelors, Leo and Rey. The stories about their homemade biscuit-craving and the things they did to satisfy it was becoming legendary.

“The bachelor ones aren’t calm. One of them carried a cook out of a Victoria restaurant kicking and screaming last week, and they sent the Texas Rangers after him!”

“They sent Judd Dunn,” she replied. “He’s our cousin, too. But it was a joke, sort of. And she wasn’t exactly screaming…Well, never mind. It’s not important.” She was talking too fast. She felt her face go hot at the mention of the Texas Rangers.

She had painful memories of one particular Texas Ranger, whom she’d loved passionately. Gretchen, Marc Brannon’s sister, had told her that Marc Brannon had gone on a drunken rampage two years ago, just after they broke up and ended up on opposite sides of the courtroom in a high-profile murder trial. Marc had left the Rangers shortly afterward and enlisted with the FBI. He was back in San Antonio now, back with the Rangers again. Gretchen also said that Marc had almost driven himself crazy with guilt over an even older incident when Josette was fifteen and he was a policeman in Jacobsville. Odd, she thought, remembering the painful things he’d said to her when they broke up.

Josette had told Gretchen that she didn’t blame Marc for his lack of belief in her innocence. Part of her didn’t. Another, darker part wanted to hang him by his spurs from a live oak tree for the misery of the past two years. He’d never really believed her story until their last disastrous date, and he’d walked out on her without another word, after making her feel like a prostitute. She’d loved him. But he couldn’t have loved her. If he had, he’d never have left Texas, not even if the murder trial had set them at odds.

She cleared her throat at the erotic images that flashed through her mind of her last date with Marc and turned her attention back to poor, downcast Phil Douglas.

“I’ll square things with Simon for you,” she promised him.

“I really like working here,” he said eagerly. “You might mention that. And I promise I’ll fix the computer next time so that his e-mail won’t ever lock down again. I’ll put it in writing, even!”

“I’ll tell him, Phil. Right now, in fact. I have to see him on a question one of the district attorneys faxed in this morning. Chin up, now. The world hasn’t ended. Everything passes with time—even things you think will kill your soul.”

And she should know, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.

When she walked into Texas Attorney General Simon Hart’s office, she found him scowling at the telephone as if he’d just taken a bite of it and found it rotten.

“Something wrong?” she asked as she paused in front of his desk.

He shifted, the artificial hand resting on the desk looking so real that sometimes it was hard to remember that he was an amputee. Simon was big, dark-haired, pale-eyed and formidable. His gorgeous redheaded wife, Tira, and his two dark-haired young sons smiled out from a jumble of framed photographs on a polished table behind him. There was one of him with his four brothers just after he’d been elected attorney general. His brothers were giving him apprehensive glances. She smiled. Disabled or not, Simon was a force to behold when he lost his temper.

“That was the assistant district attorney in San Antonio,” he said, indicating the phone. “They’ve got what looks like a mob-related hit in an alley just a few steps from Jake Marsh’s nightclub.” He glanced at her. “A local mob figure,” he added. “Ever heard of him?”

“The name rings a bell, but I can’t place it. That case won’t concern us, will it?” she asked.

He was tracing a pattern on his desk. “As a matter of fact, it might. It depends on whether or not we can tie Marsh to the murder. I don’t have to tell you how hard the district attorney in San Antonio has been trying to shut him down. The D.A. phoned the deputy chief of police and cleared it to have the Texas Rangers send an officer over there to assist in the investigation. If the case can be tied to Marsh, we’ll be looking at multiple jurisdictions and we’ll end up in a high-profile case. In a senate election year here,” he added solemnly, “crime will be a campaign issue. I don’t want Texas in the spotlight again. Neither does the D.A. in Bexar County, so she’s making sure every step is documented and backed up.”

He was holding something back. She could see it in the way he looked at her.

“You know you can’t hide things from me,” she said abruptly. “What is it you don’t want to tell me?”

He shook his head and laughed. “I forgot that uncanny ability of yours to sense what people are feeling. Okay. They’re sending Marc Brannon to look into it,” he told her finally. He held up a hand when she froze and started to speak. “I know there’s bad blood between you, but Marsh is notorious. I want him as much as the D.A. does, so I’m going to send you over there to run liaison for my office during the investigation. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

She wasn’t listening. She had a bad feeling about it, too. Her heart was racing. Two years. Two years. “You’ll have a worse feeling if you send me there. Can you see me and Brannon, working together? It will only be possible if they confiscate all his bullets and make me leave my stun gun here in Austin.”

He chuckled. Despite her tragic life, she was strong and independent and dryly funny. He’d hired her two years ago when nobody else would, largely thanks to Brannon, and he was glad. She had a degree in criminal justice. Her choice of jobs was to be an investigator in a district attorney’s office. Fate had landed her here, working on the Prosecutor Assistance and Special Investigation Unit for Simon. She could be loaned out to a requesting district attorney, along with other investigative personnel and even prosecutors, providing resources for criminal investigation.

It was a harrowing job from time to time, but she loved it. She had access to the respected Texas Crime Information Center. It boasted a statewide database on wanted persons and provided real-time on-line information to law enforcement agencies. Josette counted it as one of her biggest blessings during investigations, particularly those involving cybercrime.

“It’s nothing definite yet,” Simon added. “They’re still at the scene. The murder may not even be connected with Marsh, although I hope to God it is. But I thought I’d prepare you, just in case you have to go out there.”

“Okay. Thanks, Simon.”

“We’re family. Sort of.” He frowned. “Was it your third cousin who was related to my stepgrand-mother…?”

“Don’t,” she groaned. “It would take a genealogist to figure it out, it’s so distant.”

“Whatever. They can’t accuse me of nepotism for hiring you, but we’re distant cousins anyway. Family,” he added, with a warm smile. “Sort of. Like the staff.”

“I’m glad you think of them like that, because ‘Cousin’ Phil wants you to know that he likes his job and he’s sorry he messed up your e-mail,” she told him, tongue-in-cheek. “And he hopes you won’t take away his job with the Internet Bureau.”

His light eyes flashed. “You can tell Cousin Phil to kiss my…!”

“Don’t you say it,” she warned, “or I’ll call Tira and tell on you.”

He ground his teeth together. “Oh, all right.” He frowned. “That reminds me. What do you want in here, anyway?”

“A raise,” she began, counting on one hand. “A computer that doesn’t crash every time I load a program. A new scanner, because mine’s sluggish. A new filing cabinet, mine’s full. And how about one of those cute little robotic dogs? I could teach it to fetch files…”

“Sit down!”

She sat, but she was still grinning. She crossed her legs in the chair across the desk and went over the question she’d been faxed from a rural district attorney, who’d asked for a legal opinion. For Simon’s sake, she acted unconcerned that fate might fling her in the path of Marc Brannon for a third time.

But when Josette left Simon’s office, she was almost shaking. It had to be an easily solvable murder, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t be thrown into Brannon’s company again not when she was just beginning to get over him. She went through the rest of the day in a daze. There was a nagging apprehension in the back of her mind, as if she knew somehow that the murder in San Antonio was going to affect her life.

Her grandmother, Erin O’Brien, had been Irish, a special woman with an uncanny ability to know things before they happened. The elderly lady would cook extra food and get the guest rooms ready on days when the Langley family dropped in on “surprise” visits. She could anticipate tragedies, like the sudden death of her brother. When Josette’s father had stopped by her small home to tell her the bad news, she was wearing a black dress and her Sunday hat, waiting to be driven to the funeral home. It was useless to try to watch murder mysteries with her, because she always knew who the culprit was by the end of the first scene. Erin was Josette’s favorite person when she was a child. They shared all sorts of secrets. It had been Erin who told her she would meet a tall man wearing a badge, and her life would be forever entangled with his. When Marc Brannon had rescued her, at the age of fifteen, from a wild party and near-rape, Erin had been waiting at her parents’ home when Brannon drove her there in the Jacobsville police car, with her arms open. Marc had been fascinated by the old woman, even that long ago. Erin’s death before the family moved to San Antonio had devastated Josette. But, then, so had losing Marc two years ago. Her life had been an endurance test.

That evening, she went home to her tomcat Barnes in her small efficiency apartment and deliberately got out her photo album. She hadn’t opened it in two painful years, but now she was hungry for the sight of that tall, elegant, formidable man in her past.

She’d loved Marc Brannon more than her life. They’d come as close to being lovers as any two people ever had without going all the way, but he’d discovered a secret about her that had shattered him. He’d dragged himself out of her arms, cursed her roundly and walked out the door. He’d never looked back. Scant days later, Josette had gone to a party with an acquaintance named Dale Jennings and a wealthy San Antonio man had died there. Josette had accused Marc’s best friend, and a candidate for lieutenant governor, of the murder, citing that he was the sole heir of the old man. Brannon had used her past against her in court to clear his friend. They hadn’t spoken since.

It had been a fluke, that whole situation. She couldn’t really blame Brannon for defending his best friend. But if he’d loved her, he couldn’t have walked away that easily. And he wouldn’t have treated her like trash, either.

Most people around San Antonio said that Brannon wouldn’t know love if it poked him in the eye. It was probably true. He was a loner by nature, and he and his sister, Gretchen, had suffered terrible poverty in childhood. Their mother had died of cancer two years ago, not long after Josette had split up with Marc. Gretchen had been wined and dined and then horribly jilted by an opportunist when he discovered that she inherited little more than debts. Like her, both Brannons had known betrayal.

Barnes purred and rubbed against her arm, diverting her from her sad thoughts. She petted him and held him close. His loud purr vibrated against her skin and gave her comfort, like the weight of his big, furry body. He was a battle-scarred alley cat who’d needed a good meal and a bath. Josette had needed something to come home to after a hard day’s work. She’d never been able to walk past anything that was hurt or deserted, so she’d loved Barnes on sight. She’d taken him to the veterinarian for a checkup and shots and then she’d taken him home with her. Now, she couldn’t imagine life without him. He filled some of the empty places inside her.

“Hungry?” she asked, and he rubbed harder.

“Okay,” she said, sighing as she got to her bare feet and stretched lazily, her slender body twisting with the motion. Her hair was down around her shoulders. It fell like a golden cascade to her hips in back. Brannon had loved her hair like that. She grimaced. She had to stop remembering!

“We’ll split a hamburger, Barnes. Then,” she added with a wince, “I have to comb through a thousand files and download a dozen pages into the laptop for Simon. After that, I have to write a summary and take it back to Simon so that he can compose an opinion on it. Then I have to fax it to the district attorney.” She looked down at Barnes and shook her head. “Oh, for the life of a cat!”