One Lucky Cowboy (31 page)

   "You been there before?"

   "Yep, to a restaurant that serves pretty good gumbo right on the beachfront with a hotel right beside it. We could drive down the coast to Brownsville and turn the car back there or go to San Antonio. Be thinking about it while we are in the air."

   "We can't rent a car. They have to have your driver's license," she reminded him.

   "Then we'll take a taxi to the nearest car dealership and I'll buy a damn car," he said, annoyed that he hadn't thought of that.

   "Good grief, Slade. How much money are you carrying in that kit?"

   "I told you to count it. There was fifty thousand dollars when we left the house. You got that much to repay me when this is done?"

   "With interest. The beach in Galveston sounds wonderful. But why on earth did Nellie have that kind of money in the house?"

   "She grew up in the Depression. She keeps at least fifty thousand in a concealed safe just in case we hit another one."

"Sounds like a smart lady to me."

   "I always thought it was dumb and just humored her until now. Guess the Depression hit in a different way."

They had gumbo and shrimp for supper and spent the night on the second floor of the hotel right next door. The next day Slade purchased a used, eight-year-old Mustang with only forty thousand miles on it. He paid with cash and the dealer put a thirty day tag on it, reminding him to change the license and put the title in his name within that time. They drove from Galveston to Brownsville and ferried over to Brazos Island for a day. From there they went to San Antonio and stayed on the river walk for a night. Then on Thursday they drove to Beaumont and spent a day swimming in the hotel pool and reading two J.A. Jance books they'd picked up at a Wal-Mart store where Jane shopped for T-shirts and shorts.

   Friday found them in Shreveport, where they stayed in a Day's Inn and watched old
Law and Order
reruns on TV all evening. Saturday morning Slade drove to a nearby Wal-Mart and bought a birthday cake and roses.

   Jane fought back tears when he carried them into the hotel room. Watching him leave her in Greenville, Mississippi the next evening was going to be the hardest thing she ever did.

   They'd made it. She was twenty-five and the oil company was hers. Now all she had to do was learn to live without Slade.

   "Please stay until Monday morning. I'm still scared out of my wits until I sign the papers tomorrow morning before the board meeting," she begged Slade on the way to the ranch on Sunday afternoon.

   He nodded. Leaving was going to be difficult no matter when. Today. Tomorrow. It didn't really matter.

   "Besides, I'd like you to see where I live."

   "Maybe I'll buy a horse from you with what's left of our Depression money."

   "Honey, you pick out whichever one you want and it will be delivered to the Double L on Tuesday morning."

ON MONDAY MORNING JANE DRESSED CAREFULLY IN A black power suit with a short skirt and hip-length jacket over an ivory silk blouse. She wore her grandmother's pearl earrings and bracelet and her mother's pearl and diamond ring. Her lawyer and Slade had stayed at the ranch the night before.

   Slade left at the break of dawn, taking her heart with him. She hadn't known what to say or do when he threw his new duffle bag into the Mustang. "Call me when you get home," she'd said.

   "I will. You could call Nellie and tell her I'm on the road."

   "I'll do it—and Slade…" she'd stopped because the words wouldn't come out past the lump in her throat.

   He took two steps forward and hugged her fiercely. "You don't have to say a word. Just remember that phone line works both ways. You call me when you have time to catch your breath. You're going to have a lot of decisions to make. Good luck today." And then he was gone. She watched the tail end of the silver Mustang until it turned at the end of the lane and was gone. Then she went to her room and got the crying jag over with all alone.

   James, the lawyer, would go to the board meeting with her, taking a whole briefcase full of papers. He'd managed to get done in two weeks exactly what she wanted, which was just short of a miracle.

   She was ready two hours before time to go, so she paced the floor, talking herself out of going to the board meeting and going after Slade. The doorbell rang and she took off downstairs without putting on her spike heels, hoping that Slade had turned around and come back for her.

   Agent August waited on the other side of the door, a serious look on his wide face. "Ellacyn Hayes, I need to talk to you."

   "There's nothing to say. I'm twenty-five. It's over and my life can get back to normal. I'm mad as hell at you for that phony safe house, but I'll get over it."

   "I owe you an explanation. May I come inside?" he asked.

   She stood aside and let him enter her home but didn't offer him a chair. The foyer was wide with doorways showing a sitting room, a dining room, a formal living room, and a winding staircase wide enough for six people to walk down together side by side. Shiny hard wood floors, crystal chandeliers, and the aroma of fresh flowers in sparkling vases all attested to the fact that the man who'd put the contract out on Ellacyn had indeed had his eyes on her physical worth. Too bad he hadn't seen the strength the little lady had beforehand or he'd have known she was a fighter.

   Agent August was intrigued by the house but his business wasn't a tour of an old plantation home. "You have a lovely home."

   "Thank you but I don't think you came all the way to Mississippi to take a look at the house," she said.

   "You are right. I came to tell you that Agent Jones and John were distant relatives and both served on the same special ops team in Iraq. He was Ramona and John's inside man. He and John are both dead.

   Jane gasped. One was a son-of–a-bitch, the other his accomplice, but still death was so final. Besides she'd pictured them both in prison for the rest of their lives, not dead.

   Agent August went on. "It's probably best because he authorized government equipment to set up the safe house bombing. If he wasn't dead, he'd be on the run or spending the rest of his life in prison. Ramona used her lawyer to send out a message to an accomplice who took care of John and Agent Jones the day after the bombing. If you would have called in, we could have saved you a lot of running and hiding. John is dead so he can't talk, and Agent Jones is also dead so there's no one to talk there, either. She won't hang for the crimes against you because there are only dead ends, but we've got her for previous crimes."

   "The lawyer?" Jane asked. It was hard to wrap her mind around the fact that John was really dead and that the nightmare was over.

   "His only crime was being an idiot. She slipped the note into his pocket and someone slipped it out. The only way we discovered it was when we watched the surveillance tape from her cell for the hundredth time. She sneezed. He offered her his handkerchief. She put a small piece of paper in it when she handed it back. He stopped at a convenience store on the way home and got his pocket picked. Handkerchief, wallet, and comb all in one swift motion. He reported it to the police. Found it all crammed down into a trash can not a block from the store. Money gone. Everything else intact," the agent said.

"How'd she get paper and pencil or pen?"

   "She is very good. It had to be from the lawyer but neither he nor we can figure out how. She's still up for previous crimes and they'll put her away for a long, long time. But I thought you deserved to know what happened out there and that John is dead."

   "Thank you," she murmured. She had loved the man enough to give him her heart and soul and all she felt was immense relief. A rock had been lifted from her heart and she was free at last but some where down deep lurked a guilty feeling at the news of his death.

   "I'll be going now. Hopefully, I'll never have contact with you again."

   "That would be a good thing. Good-bye." She showed him to the door and watched as he drove away.

   She met her lawyer, James, coming down the stairway as she started back to her bedroom located on the ground floor of the huge house.

   "You are ready early," he said.

   "No, I'm not ready at all, but I will be shortly. Have you had breakfast?"

   "Yes, ma'am. You have a wonderful cook. I tried to steal her away from you. I've been out to see the horses and talked to Lanson. You want to sell this place?"

   "You want to buy it?"

   A wide grin split James' face. "Always wanted a horse ranch but thought I'd settle in Texas. Got any good-lookin' women around these parts?"

   "Few," she answered.

   "Let's take care of the oil company and when that's done have a serious talk about your ranch."

   She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You serious?"

   "Could be if the price was right. Besides you owe me enough for the down payment already."

   "I'll think about it," she said.

   Her mind raced as she took off the expensive suit, threw it on the bed, and pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt from San Antonio with a dolphin on the front. She kicked her panty hose and high-heeled shoes into a corner and picked up the cowboy boots she'd worn the night before when she showed Slade the horses. She wished she would have slipped into his room and spent the night making love to him until dawn.

   The cheval mirror at the foot of her bed was a reflection of Jane, not Ellacyn. Jane had survived the six-week experience, and Jane would walk into the boardroom and deliver her news.
Burn the house
down,
like Bob Lee said in the movie she'd watched with Slade. Paul had put out a contract on Ellacyn; Jane would bring the consequences.

   James didn't even raise an eyebrow when she declared she was ready to go to the board meeting. She looked a lot more confident in her jeans and boots than she had all nervous in that black power suit, anyway. That stepfather of hers would run and hide if he knew what kind of woman was on her way to the office.

   The conference room at the Ranger Oil Building was long and narrow with raised panel oak siding stained a rich cherry and enough glass on the east side to make the department heads around the table feel as though they were sitting outside beside the river. The glass-topped oak table had twelve padded chairs around it, eleven filled and one empty chair waiting on Ellacyn to fill it.

   When Jane slung open the double doors, Paul had just stood up at the head of the table and begun to talk. He stopped mid-sentence and turned an ashy gray when he saw Ellacyn with several serious-faced men and women behind her, taking up places around the room like sentinels in a castle. Paul had always been handsome beyond words with his premature gray hair, angular face, and clear blue eyes. Everything about him said, "Trust me. I would never take advantage of you or hurt you in any way."

   He opened up his arms and smiled brightly, "Ellacyn, darlin', you've come home. I've been so worried. What are you doing here, though? You need to be resting. I'll call Dr. Harrison to come take a look at you. You have dark circles under your eyes and my God, Ellacyn, you've never come to the office looking like that."

   "Paul, this is my company now. I intend to fire your sorry ass, but I've got a few things to say first."

   "I'm sure you are under duress still. Take a few days. Are you sure you don't need professional help? Are you mentally stable, Ellacyn? You're acting crazy and you never come into the office looking like that," he repeated himself, groping nervously for something solid to convince everyone that she was insane. "I'm thinking maybe I should send you to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation."

   "I said sit down and I don't mean in my chair," she said.

   With a wave of the hand meant to tell eleven other people that he was merely appeasing his stepdaughter, he took the empty chair midway down the table. "Oh, by the way, happy birthday, Ellacyn. I'd planned a company party, but you were gone. Maybe later you can tell me what happened between you and that nice man you were supposed to marry. He was devastated."

   Any other time Paul would have intimidated her. Everyone else around the table looked confused. Eight women in black suits with their makeup and nails done to perfection; three men in various shades of custom made suits and power ties.

   "That nice man I was supposed to marry is dead. You hired him and his girlfriend to kill me before my twenty-fifth birthday, but he's dead and she's in prison," she said.

   "Hey, that's a pretty heavy accusation. Can you back it up with facts?"

   "Yes, I can. You put out a hit on me. Ramona gave the job to John, who took out a million dollar life insur ance policy on me so he could get paid double. He's dead so he's not talking. Ramona is in custody and she's not saying a word about the assassination attempts. Yes, there were many this past six weeks. I overheard John and Ramona talking about it the night before the wedding and believe me, your name was brought up."

   "I didn't…" Paul started.

   Everyone else was deadly silent.

   She shook her head. "No excuses necessary. While I was running away from bullets and bombs I hired a lawyer and gave him access to everything in the company. Even though I couldn't legally have it all until I was twenty-five, I still had a password and enough clout to look at everything. It's amazing what I
can
prove, isn't it Paul? And I am filing charges against you for embezzlement. I'd love to file on you for murder because I'm sure you had my father killed as well as my mother, but I can't prove it at this late date. This morning I signed the papers and this oil company is now a part of Tex-Okie oil out of Houston, Texas. Please meet the new staff. Heads will roll. Heads will stay. It's up to them, not me."