Invincible

He gaped at her.

She smiled shyly. “I collect famous generals. Sort of. I have books on famous campaigns. My favorites were American, of course, like General Francis Marion of South Carolina, the soldier they called the ‘Swamp Fox’ because he was so good at escaping from the British in the swamps during the Revolutionary War,” she laughed. “Then there was Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost of the Confederacy. I also like to read about Crazy Horse,” she added shyly. “He was Oglala Lakota, one of the most able of the indigenous leaders. He fought General Crook’s troops to a standstill at the Battle of the Rosebud.”

He was still gaping.

“But my favorite is Alexander the Great. Of all the great military heroes, he was the most incredible strategist...”

“I don’t believe it.” He perched himself on the edge of her desk. “I know South Africans who couldn’t tell you who de Wet was!”

She shrugged. “I used to spend a lot of time in the library. They had these old newspapers from the turn of the twentieth century. They were full of the Boer Wars and that famous Boer General de Wet,” she laughed. “I almost missed class a couple of times because I was so entranced by the microfilm.”

He laughed. “Actually, I’m distantly related to one of the de Wets, not really sure if it was Christiaan, though. My people have been in South Africa for three generations. They were originally Dutch, or so my mother said.”

“Rourke is not really a Dutch name, is it?” she asked.

He sighed. “No. Her name was Skipper, her maiden name.”

“Was your father Irish?”

His face closed up. That one brown eye looked glittery.

“Sorry,” she said at once. “That was clumsy. I have things in my past that I don’t like to think about, either.”

He was surprised at her perception. “I don’t speak of my father,” he said gently. “Didn’t mean to unsettle you.”

“No problem,” she said, and smiled. “We’re sort of the sum total of the tragedies of our lives.”

“Well put.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I might reconsider about that marriage thing...”

“Sorry. My lunch hour’s over.”

“Damn.”

She laughed.

He studied her with real interest. “There’s this do, called a Valentine’s Day dance, I think. If you need a partner...?”

“Thanks, but I have a date,” she said.

“Just my luck, being at the end of the line, and all,” he chuckled.

“If you go, I’ll dance with you,” she promised.

“Will you, now? In that case, I’ll dust off my tux.”

“Just one dance, though,” she added. “I mean, we wouldn’t want to get you gossiped about or anything.”

“Got it.” He winked and got to his feet. “If you’ll pass that note along to the chief, I’ll be grateful. See you around, I expect.”

“I expect so,” she replied.

* * *

WHAT A VERY strange man, she thought. He was charming. But she really didn’t want to complicate her life. In his way, he seemed far more risky than even Carson, in a romantic sense.

When she got home, she mentioned his visit to her father.

“So now you know who Rourke is,” he chuckled.

“He’s very nice,” she said. “But he’s a sad sort of person.”

“Rourke?” he asked, and seemed almost shocked.

“Yes. I mean, it doesn’t show so much. But you can tell.”

“Pumpkin, you really are perceptive.”

“He said he’d take me to the Valentine’s dance. That was after he reconsidered the wedding, but I told him my lunch hour was over...”

“What?” he blurted out.

“Nothing to worry about, he said he wasn’t free today anyway.”

“Listen here, you can’t marry Rourke,” he said firmly.

“Well, not today, at least,” she began.

“Not any day,” came an angry voice from the general direction of the front door. Carson came in, scowling. “And what did I tell you about keeping that cell phone with you?” he added, pulling it out of his pocket. “You left it on your desk at work!”

She grimaced. “I didn’t notice.”

“Too busy flirting with Rourke, were you?” Carson added harshly.

“That is none of your business,” she said pertly.

“It really isn’t,” her father interjected, staring at Carson until he backed down. “What’s going on?” he added, changing the subject.

Carson looked worn. “Dead ends. Lots of them.”

“Were you at least able to ascertain if it was poison?”

He nodded. “A particularly nasty one that took three days to do its work.” He glanced at Carlie, who looked pale. “Should you be listening to this?” he asked.

“I work for the police,” she pointed out. She swallowed. “Photos of dead people, killed in various ways, are part of the files I have to keep for court appearances by our men and women.”

Carson frowned. He hadn’t considered that her job would involve things like that. “I thought you just typed reports.”

She drew in a breath. “I type reports, I file investigative material, photos, I keep track of court appearances, call people to remind them of meetings, and from time to time I function as a shoulder for people who have to deal with unthinkable things.”

Carson knew what she was talking about. His best friend, years ago, had been a reservation policeman. He’d gone with the man on runs a time or two during college vacation. In the service, overseas, he’d seen worse things. He was surprised that Carlie, the innocent, was able to deal with that aspect of police work.

“It’s a good job,” she added. “And I have the best boss around.”

“I have to agree,” her father said with a gentle smile. “For a hard case, he does extremely well as a police chief.” He sighed. “I do miss seeing Judd Dunn around.”

“Who’s Judd Dunn?” Carson asked.

“He was a Texas Ranger who served on the force with Cash,” Jake said. “He quit to be assistant chief here when he and Christabel had twins. But he was offered a job as police chief over in Centerville. It’s still Jacobs County, just several miles away. He took it for the benefits package. And, maybe, to compete with Cash,” he chuckled.

“They tell a lot of stories about the chief,” Carlie said.

“Most of them are true,” Reverend Blair replied. “The man has had a phenomenal life. I don’t think there’s much he hasn’t done.”

Carson put Carlie’s phone on the table beside her and glanced at his watch with a grimace. “I have to get going. I’m still checking on the other thing,” he added to Reverend Blair. “But I... Sorry.”

Carson paused to take a call. “Yes, I know, I’m running late.” He paused and smiled, gave Carlie a smug look. “It will be worth the wait. I like you in pink. Okay. See you in about thirty minutes. We’ll make the curtain, I promise. Sure.” He hung up. “I’m taking Lanette to see The Firebird in San Antonio. I have to go.”

“Lanette?” Reverend Blair asked.

“She’s a stewardess. I met her on the plane coming down with Dalton Kirk a few weeks ago.” He paused. “There’s still the matter of who sent a driver for him, you know. A man was holding a sign with his name on it. I tried to trace him, but I couldn’t get any information.”

“I’ll mention it to Hayes,” Reverend Blair said. “He’s still hoping to find Joey’s computer.” Joey was the computer technician who’d been killed trying to recover files from Hayes’s computer. The computer itself had disappeared, leading Hayes to reset all the department’s sensitive information files and type most of his documentary evidence all over again.

Carson’s expression was cold. “Joey didn’t deserve to die like that. He was a sweet kid.”

“I didn’t know him,” Reverend Blair said. “Eb said he was one of the finest techs he’d ever employed.”

“One day,” Carson said, “we’ll find the person who killed him.”

“Make sure you take a law enforcement officer with you if it’s you who finds him,” Reverend Blair said shortly. “You’re very young to end up in federal prison on a murder charge.”

Carson smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “I’m not as young as I look. And age has more to do with experience than years,” he said, and for a minute, the sadness Carlie had seen on Rourke’s face was duplicated on Carson’s.

“True,” Reverend Blair said quietly.

Carlie was fiddling with her phone, not looking at Carson. She’d heard about the stewardess from one of the sheriff’s deputies, who’d heard it from Dalton Kirk. The woman was blonde and beautiful and all over Carson during the flight. It made Carlie sad, and she didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to care that he was going to a concert with the woman.

“Well, I’ll be in touch.” He glanced at Carlie. There was that smug, taunting smile again. And he was gone.

Her father looked at her with sympathy. “You can’t let it matter,” he said after a minute. “You know that.”

She hesitated for a second. Then she nodded. “I’m going up. Need anything?”

He shook his head. He took her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Life is hard.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and tried to smile. “Night, Dad.”

“Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

* * *

SHE PLUGGED IN her game and went looking for Robin to run some battlegrounds. It would keep her mind off what Carson was probably doing with that beautiful blonde stewardess. She saw her reflection in the computer screen and wished, not for the first time, that she had some claim to beauty and charm.

Robin was waiting for her in the Alliance capital city. They queued for a battleground and practiced with their weapons on the target dummies while they waited.

This is my life, she thought silently. A computer screen in a dark room. I’m almost twenty-three years old and nobody wants to marry me. Nobody even wants to date me. But I have bright ideals and I’m living the way I want to.

She made a face at her reflection. “Good girls never made history,” she told it. Then she hesitated. Yes, they did. Joan of Arc was considered so holy that her men never approached her in any physical way. They followed her, a simple farm girl, into battle without hesitation. She was armed with nothing except her flag and her faith. She crowned a king and saved a nation. Even today, centuries later, people know who she was. Joan was a good girl.

Carlie smiled to herself. So, she thought. There’s my comeback to that!

* * *

SHE WAS TYPING up a grisly report the next day. A man had been found on the town’s railroad tracks. He was a vagabond, apparently. He was carrying no identification and wearing a nice suit. There wasn’t a lot left of him. Carlie tried not to glance at the crime scene photos as she dealt with the report.

Carson came in, looking weary and out of sorts.

She stared at him. “Well, it wasn’t you, after all,” she said enigmatically.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“We found a man in a nice suit, carrying no identification. Just for a few minutes, we wondered if it was you,” she said, alluding to his habit of going everywhere without ID.

“Tough luck,” he returned. He frowned as he glanced at the crime scene photos. He lifted one and looked at it with no apparent reaction. He put it back down. His black eyes narrowed on her face as he tried to reconcile her apparent sweetness with the ability it took to process that information without throwing up.

“Something you needed?” she asked, still typing.

“I want to speak to Grier,” he said.

She buzzed the chief and announced the visitor. She went back to her typing without giving Carson the benefit of even a glance. “You can go in,” she said, nodding toward the chief’s office door.

Carson stared at her without meaning to. She wasn’t pretty. She had nothing going for her. She had ironclad ideals and a smart mouth and a body that wasn’t going to send any man running toward her. Still, she had grit. She could do a job like that. It would be hard even on a toughened police officer, which she wasn’t.

She looked up, finally, intimidated by the silence. He captured her eyes, held them, probed them. The look was intense, biting, sensual. She felt her heart racing. Her hands on the keyboard were cold as ice. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. It was like holding a live electric wire...

“Carson?” the chief called from his open office door.

Carson dragged his gaze away from Carlie. “Coming.”

He didn’t look at her again. Not even as he left the office scant minutes later. She didn’t know whether to be glad or not. The look had kindled a hunger in her that she’d never known until he walked into her life. She knew the danger. But it was like a moth’s attraction to the flames.

She forced her mind back on the job at hand and stuffed Carson, bad attitude and blonde and all, into a locked door in the back of her mind.

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