Lone Rider Bodyguard
But Daniel Tyler Bird already had everything he would ever need. His young mother had a wisdom far beyond her years, rooted in the values and morals of the family she’d spoken of.
And Daniel Tyler was loved by Susannah Bird.
“The honor’s mine, Suze,” Tye said huskily. “I’d be proud to have your son carry my name.”
“FROM WHAT you described, sounds like both mama and baby came through the whole thing just fine.” The gray-haired man wedged between Tyler and the driver on the front seat of the ambulance shot a glance in the direction of Tye’s clenched jaw. “Me and Wesley here saw the California plates on that fancy chopper you parked outside my clinic. You in these parts scouting movie locations?”
Tye shook his head. “I’m just here to look up an old friend,” he said, not taking his eyes from the highway ahead.
He didn’t elaborate. As if sensing his preoccupation, Dr. Jennings let the subject drop, and as he and the driver fell into conversation Tye’s thoughts returned to the woman he’d left nearly an hour ago.
Susannah had nodded when he’d told her he saw no choice but to leave her and Danny while he went into Last Chance to get medical help. “That May sun’s going to turn this car into an oven, Tye,” she’d said, concern darkening her gaze. “You’re right, we can’t just hope someone’s going to come along. Except for you, there hasn’t been a vehicle go by the whole time I’ve been here.”
He hadn’t corrected her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he’d promised. “There’s nothing else left to tie off or take care of or—”
Her laughter had been low. “No, that’s it. Granny Lacey couldn’t have done a better job of cutting the cord.” She’d hesitated. “I—I’m glad it was you who stopped, Tye. And not just because of how you helped Daniel and me.”
He hadn’t told Doc Jennings anything close to the truth, Tyler thought now. He hadn’t come back to Last Chance to look up Hawkins, he’d come because Del had called him with an urgent and unprecedented request for his help. But even before Del had called he’d been trying to find some excuse to make the trip back here to New Mexico, because for the past few years everything he’d worked for, everything he’d thought he wanted out of life, had begun to seem meaningless. And when one day last month he’d looked into his shaving mirror and for a split second had seen the face of his father, he’d felt real fear.
He’d needed answers. He hadn’t really been sure what his questions were. But when he’d put Susannah Bird’s newborn son into her arms and she’d given him that glance of purest joy, all his unasked questions and unknown answers had been swept away.
“What fool would throw a jacket onto the side of the road?” Mild as it was, Jennings’s quizzical question broke into Tyler’s thoughts.
“Tourists.” At the wheel, Wesley snorted. “More money than—”
“Turn around.” At his terse command, Tye saw the driver and Jennings exchange glances. He spoke again, his tone still sharp. “I think that’s my jacket. I left it on the roof of her car.”
“I thought you said her vehicle had broken down.” As Wesley maneuvered the ambulance onto the hard-baked shoulder and began executing a cautious three-point turn, Jennings frowned. “Besides, a woman who’d just given birth couldn’t hop into the front seat and drive off, Adams.”
“I know that.” Tye felt the knot in his stomach tighten. “But this is where I left her, I’m sure of it.”
Unwilling to wait, he opened the ambulance door and jumped out. Sprinting the hundred yards or so back to the discarded leather jacket Jennings had seen, he picked it up.
It was his. High up on the right sleeve was the gaping slash where her bullet had sliced through. At his feet was a darker patch in the parched dust, and on either side of the patch were the shallow impressions where her heels had dug in.
“I can’t explain now, but it appears like someone’s looking to bring harm to me and my baby….”
Despite the heat, suddenly he felt encased in ice.
He’d left her and Daniel Tyler unprotected. And now they were gone.
Chapter Two
“Do you know what today is, little one?”
Susannah adjusted the flame of the oil lamp on the dresser until the warm glow reflected off the adobe walls just enough to illuminate the two objects hanging on their otherwise unadorned smoothness. One was a large canvas, its jewel-like colors shimmering richly. On the opposite wall hung a plain olive-wood cross. Walking to the handmade cradle by the bed, Susannah bent over her sleeping son.
“You’re a whole week old today, starshine,” she said softly. “Happy birthday, Daniel Tyler.”
She’d made the right decision, she told herself, stroking a fine curl of hair from his delicately veined temple. She and her baby had disappeared without a trace. She’d bought them time, and for now Danny was safe.
That safety had come at a cost.
“I know there’s people who don’t believe in miracles, Danny, but that’s like not believing in rain or puppies or fresh-baked bread,” she murmured. “God gives us presents every day. He gave me you. And the day you were born, two more miracles dropped into my life.”
She bit her lip, her gaze darkening. “One of them was Tyler Adams, the man who made sure you came into this world safely,” she whispered.
When he grew old enough to ask questions, what would she tell her little boy about the man whose name he bore? she wondered. That even when she’d first laid eyes on him, convinced he was working for the killers who’d been hunting her for the last nine months, she’d thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen? That his hair had been the color of burnished gold, his eyes bluer than the sky? That he’d been so tall and broad-shouldered he’d blocked out the sun?
He’d stood there gazing down at her, his perfectly chiselled features remote and unreadable, his skin slightly windburned. Under his unzipped leather jacket she’d seen the white of a T-shirt. There’d been an oil smear high up on one hard cheekbone, and his jeans and boots had been grimy with road dust.
He’d looked dangerous and beautiful at the same time. He’d looked like a picture she’d seen long ago in a children’s book of Bible stories, of an angel who’d fallen from grace.
She’d come close to blowing her miracle away with a .38 caliber bullet.
“I could have killed him.” In the quiet room her voice was hoarse with remembered horror. “He must have thought I was crazy—but still he stayed.”
He’d not only stayed with her, he’d delivered her baby. And when he’d gently put Daniel Tyler into her arms, he’d looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Unconsciously Susannah pressed her palms to her cheeks, feeling hot color rise under her fingertips. After a minute, the heat subsided and she dropped her hands to her sides.
She had to have imagined that part, she told herself.
“You were the first miracle,” she said to the tiny sleeping form in the cradle. “Tye was the second. And Greta was the third.”
“As a hard-headed Minnesota Swede, I don’t believe in miracles.” The comment came from the tall blonde in the doorway. “I certainly don’t see myself as one.”
Her stride, long-legged and elegant as she approached, was in contrast to the paint-smeared jeans and shirt she wore. Platinum strands escaped the careless braid hanging halfway down her back.
“But if I did, I’d say this angel definitely qualified.” Placing a finger on the edge of the cradle, she gave it a gentle push. “I would have liked to have had one just like you, little man. I would have traded everything else for that.”
The ice-blond braid swung forward over the denim-clad shoulder. She met Susannah’s gaze. “Instead I had ten years on the covers of Vogue and Harper’s, and when I walked away from it all I was free to devote the rest of my life to my painting.” Her smile was crooked. “I should be ashamed of myself, crying for the moon.”
“But sometimes the moon’s so pretty, isn’t it?” Unnecessarily Susannah adjusted Danny’s blanket again. “Sometimes a body just can’t help wishing she could haul it down from the sky and hold on to it for a while.”
Greta’s cat-green gaze softened. Slinging an arm over Susannah’s shoulder, she steered her toward the door. “If it really was the moon either one of us was talking about, the solution would be easy. There’s going to be a full one tonight and I thought we could sit out on the portale and watch it rise over the desert. White wine for me, guava juice for you,” she added, her perfect nose wrinkling.
As they entered the spacious, stone-flagged kitchen, she shot Susannah a glance before opening the refrigerator door. “You still feel guilty about that Adams man, don’t you?”
“He did me a kindness.” Susannah looked away. “I don’t feel right about the way I repaid him.”
“You did what you had to.” Chunking a couple of cubes of ice into a tall glass, Greta filled it to the brim with pink juice. Pouring a glass of wine for herself, she took a sip. “Salut,” she said briefly. “Let’s go smell my roses and howl at the moon.”
Startled into laughter despite herself, Susannah followed her new friend into the living room. A traditional kiva fireplace and exposed beams on the ceiling were striking focal points, as were the three unframed abstracts hanging on the walls—abstracts, she’d learned from Greta’s offhand comments, that would each bring a small fortune if they were ever placed in a New York gallery. Blocks of color danced joyfully across the canvases. Only on second look did a viewer notice the underwashes of dark blues and purples anchoring the backgrounds.
They were like their creator, she reflected. Although she had to be in her forties, Greta Hassell’s beauty was still the first thing a stranger would see, but behind that flawless facade was a compassionate woman with her own hidden pain.
Tye had been gone less than ten minutes when the pickup had pulled over and the slim blonde had gotten out. Her perfect features had paled in shock as she’d taken in the situation—Susannah, her obviously newborn baby at her breast, freezing in the act of grabbing for the revolver at her feet as she realized the newcomer was a woman. The blonde’s lips had tightened.
“You’re in trouble,” she’d said shortly. “And your baby should get out of this heat. I’m taking you to my place.”
Automatically Susannah had started to explain the situation. Then she’d stopped, her gaze going to her son.
“I—I need to disappear,” she’d said after a moment, her tone low and rapid. “Disappear completely—right down to this no-good vehicle that stranded me here. If you can help me do that I’d be obliged, ma’am.”
“There’s a tow-hitch on the back of my truck.” The emerald eyes had narrowed to slits, but Susannah had seen faint humor in them. “The deal is you tell me what this is all about when you and your baby are rested up.” The woman had leaned into the sedan, one arm going around Susannah’s shoulders to help her up. “And call me Greta, not ma’am, sweetie.”
Just like that they’d become friends, Susannah thought, entering the miniature courtyard—what Greta called the portale—attached to the house. Wrought-iron gates set into the enclosing adobe walls kept the outside world at bay, the walls themselves pierced here and there with small openings. Inside each opening sat a small flickering candle in a votive holder.
“If your little guy wakes up we’ll hear him easily enough.” Greta set Daniel’s baby monitor on the glass-topped table, two tiny lines between her brows. “You know I’ve been careful not to buy Danny’s diapers and supplies in Last Chance, Susannah, but when I ran into town yesterday to get turpentine I kept my ears open. No one was talking about a woman and a baby going missing.”
“Maybe after Tye sent the ambulance to get me he decided to continue on his journey instead of waiting around. Heaven knows he didn’t owe me any more of his time.” Susannah looked toward the house, her glance going to the window of Daniel’s room. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time the paramedics went out on a call that didn’t pan out, so they wouldn’t have seen any need to raise a hue and cry about it. But that doesn’t change the fact I did him a wrong, Greta.”
The other woman hesitated. When she spoke again she seemed to be choosing her words with care. “I didn’t hear any gossip about strangers poking around, either,” she said quietly. “Tell me—how sure are you that someone’s after you?”
“As sure as I am of the fact that Frank Barrett was killed,” Susannah said flatly. “I identified his dead body, Greta. And a few weeks after I had him laid to rest I saw the owner of the diner where I worked killed by a bullet meant for me.”
Restlessly she stood. Through the iron lace of the gates the moon Greta had promised hung, full and orange, over the desert. “I just don’t know who’s after me or why, which is why every time I’ve gone to the police I sound like a crazy wom—”
“What is it?” Greta’s glance went to the baby monitor at Susannah’s quickly indrawn breath.
“Not Danny.” Susannah shook her head. “Someone’s coming. Were you expecting company?”
Greta was already standing, but as the headlights that had caught Susannah’s attention came closer her posture relaxed. “I know better than ever to expect Del Hawkins. Every so often the man simply shows up, and I’m fool enough to run into his arms when he does,” she said dryly. “That’s partly what was behind our little tiff last week just before he left—although he’s back a day earlier than I thought he’d be.”
She shrugged. “But I’ve bored you with that story more than once, sweetie. Do you want to meet my tough old mustang or would you feel better if he didn’t know you were here? You can trust him to keep his mouth closed about seeing you,” she added, her eyes still on the approaching truck.
He was the reason Greta had never married, and why she’d taken up residence in this remote chunk of New Mexico when she’d decided to concentrate on her painting. If only for those reasons it would be interesting to see just what kind of a man he was, Susannah thought. But even if he and Greta had been no more than acquaintances, his arrival still would have been momentous.
Because if he was the Del Hawkins she’d been looking for, her twenty-five-hundred-mile journey had just come to an end.
Her palms felt suddenly damp. Surreptitiously she pressed them against her thighs.
“Granny Lacey used to say two catbirds sound real sweet singing together, but as soon as a third one shows up the harmony’s gone.” Her smile felt wobbly. “I’m near ready for my bed, and I suspect my little mister’s going to have me up again in a few hours anyway.”
Granny Lacey had also said that not telling the whole truth was as good as a lie, Susannah thought, making her way into the house. That one she didn’t completely hold with.
“If your great-granny was still alive she’d say I was sliding down that slippery slope real quick, starshine,” she murmured to Daniel as she bent over his cradle. “But your mama had to think of something. You’d think nine whole months would have been time enough to prepare myself, but I guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought. Besides, there’s a chance it might not be him.”
She lifted her head, her brows drawing together in a frown as she heard the solid-sounding thunks of not one, but both of the truck’s doors being slammed shut. Del had brought a friend. Even if her hasty withdrawal had been for the sole purpose of allowing Greta a few minutes of privacy it would have been all for nothing, anyway.
“Someone should give that fool male a slap,” she muttered in momentary distraction, stepping to the screened window and looking out at the candle-and-moonlit patio. As she gazed at the man leaning forward to plant a casual kiss on Greta’s slightly parted lips, any last doubts about his identity fled.
He was the Lieutenant Hawkins she’d grown up hearing so much about from her grandmother—the man her father had served under during a long-ago and terrible war, one of only two men Daniel Bird had sworn he would trust with his life. Del had lost both legs in Vietnam and although Greta had told her he’d been liberated from a wheelchair ten years ago when he’d been fitted with prosthetic limbs, the cane he was holding in his left hand was obviously necessary to his balance.
“But you’re still a fine-looking man, aren’t you?” she said under her breath, watching as Hawkins lightly touched Greta’s hair before turning to introduce his companion. “And in love with her, if the look on your face is anything to go by. So why don’t you—”
Susannah froze in shock. Her eyes widened painfully as she stared at the stranger standing with Del Hawkins and Greta.
Except he wasn’t a stranger, she thought faintly. He was a fallen angel, and even while he reached for Greta’s extended hand his attention was fixed on something on the table.
Tyler Adams raised his eyes from the baby monitor, his gaze encompassing the courtyard and then going to the house itself. In the light from the candles the sweep of his lashes cut shadows on the hard ridges of his cheekbones.
And at that instant the night exploded in gunfire.
“Get down!”
There was no way he could see her—but incredibly, Tye’s hoarse shout seemed directed at her. Susannah could have sworn his eyes locked desperately on hers before he turned swiftly to his companions.
Hawkins had already started to act, one muscled forearm shooting forward to knock Greta out of the line of fire coming from the openings in the wall where the votive candles had been moments ago. Even as his arm made contact with the blonde, Susannah saw her slam against him, as if some invisible fist had driven into her chest with enough force to lift her off her feet. Del’s stricken voice rose above the cacophony of gunfire.
“Greta!”
As she slumped against his chest he dropped his cane and took her whole weight with him. His knees crashed onto the brick of the patio but, showing no reaction to the pain, he pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her as if to shield her with his own flesh and bone.
Of course he hadn’t reacted to the pain. He hadn’t felt any. The last time Del Hawkins’s knees had felt pain had been over thirty years ago in a Mekong Delta swamp, Susannah reminded herself. Even that long-ago agony, terrible as it must have been, couldn’t have contorted his features with the anguish she now saw carved into them.
Wrenching free from the paralysis gripping her, she whirled from the window and ran to the cradle. As she bent over it Danny started to scream, his tiny fingers bunched into fists, his eyes wide with shock.
“I’m here, starshine. Mama’s here.” Scooping him into her arms, with shaking fingers she wrapped his blanket tightly around him. Terrified blue eyes stared into hers, and his screams became louder.
A terrible anger rose up in her, hot and clear, and her gaze swung to the olive-wood cross, a stark black silhouette against the shadowed wall.
“He’s only a baby, Lord!” Her protest was harshly agonized. “And that woman outside opened her home to me out of the goodness of her heart. Why are You letting this happen to us?”
The cross swam in front of her burning eyes. It seemed to waver and grow larger, and all of a sudden it was no longer a symbol but two splintered timbers crudely affixed together and set up on a lonely hill, the nine long nails pounded into it put there by human hands, not divine.
It wavered, and once again came into focus.
“I—I’m sorry,” Susannah whispered. “Men brought this evil to us, I know. But I can’t let it touch my son.”
She looked down at the baby in her arms. Bringing her face close to the frightened red one peeping from the blankets, gently she pressed a kiss to Danny’s flushed forehead. His screams subsided into a hiccuping sob.
“The man I named you for is out there protecting you, little one. I wish I could do something to help him, but you’re my first responsibility. We’ll just have to pray he stays safe.”
On the dresser by the now-extinguished oil lamp was her purse. She reached for it with her free hand, slinging its strap bandolier-style across her chest.
“Your mama’s going to get you out of here, starshine. And Lord help me, if I have to use this to do it I will.”
The revolver felt heavy in her grip as she made her way to the door. Cradled against her with her other arm and barely visible in the blanket he was wrapped in, Danny gave a burbling sigh that ended in the softest of baby snores. She risked a glance at him, her lips curving into an amazed smile.
“You’re a real little mountain man, all right,” she breathed. “Fight when you have to, sleep when you can. That lesson’s been bringing Bird males home safely since Zebediah Bird fought the British at New Orleans, Daniel Tyler.”
There was a good chance Tye had managed to arm himself, if Hawkins had told him about the vermin rifle kept in the courtyard’s gardening shed, she thought, creeping through the dark kitchen. Sightlessly she fumbled on the counter for the keys she’d seen there earlier.
Her fingers closed over them. She grabbed them up just as she heard the flat crack of a shot being squeezed off, noticeably different from the more explosive sound of the guns the intruders were using. Tye had found the rifle, she thought shakily. With any luck his first shot had found a target.
He’d seen Daniel’s baby monitor and he’d immediately realized she was here. She didn’t know how she was so sure of that, but she was. She’d felt it—the same current that had run through her when he’d placed a newly delivered Daniel into her arms a week ago.
She hadn’t imagined it then. She hadn’t imagined it tonight. And what it meant she was never going to find out.
He kept saving her. She kept leaving him.
She was going to have to leave him now, and pray he and Hawkins could hold off their attackers until help arrived, she told herself. Her hand shook so badly she could hardly turn the knob on the door in front of her.
Greta’s pickup truck was her workhorse, but the red four-by-four was her pride and joy—which was why she’d had a walk-through garage built for it, complete with an automatic door that opened onto the arrow-straight drive leading to the road. Susannah hastened to the vehicle.
“As soon as that garage door opens Mama’s going to be puttin’ the pedal to the metal, Danny Tye,” she said to the sleeping baby in her arms. “Good thing your aunt Greta bought a car seat for you. She—she said she wanted to take her favorite guy out for a drive one of these days.”
She couldn’t let herself think of Greta right now, she told herself. She couldn’t let herself think of anything or anyone but her baby. His life depended on it.
In a matter of seconds she had Daniel secured. She slid into the driver’s seat, praying that the four-by-four could outrun whatever her pursuers were driving for at least as long as it took to get to Last Chance and alert the authorities.
And to tell Dr. Jennings to get ready for an emergency surgery, she thought. She forced the tears back, her lips tightening. The garage door remote in her hand, she pointed it at the windshield and activated it as she turned the key in the ignition.
The next moment pure terror shafted through her.
“This vehicle moves an inch and the brat doesn’t see his first birthday. Hand over the keys if you want him to live.”
For nine months she’d wondered what the face of evil looked like, Susannah thought in icy fear. Now she knew.
Standing by the opened passenger-side door, with his sandy hair and average height he looked deceptively ordinary except for the ugly black automatic that fit so easily into his hand it seemed to be a deformed extension of it. The flat, compact barrel moved.
“D-don’t hurt him, please.” Her tongue felt as if it had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. The keys jingled crazily in her shaking fingers. As she dropped them into his outstretched palm she tried again, her words spilling out in a moan.
“You couldn’t live with it on your conscience. Do what you want with me, but please don’t hurt my little one.”