The Coltons: Nick, Clay & Jericho

“Don’t you law enforcement types always want coffee?” she asked, trying her best to maintain a friendly atmosphere. Her mother always said that honey worked better than vinegar. “Or is that against some Secret Service agent code?”

Another dig. Still, after standing there for eight hours, he was hungry enough to eat a post. Coffee would help fill the hole in his stomach for the time being. “Coffee’ll be fine” Nick heard himself saying.

With the fire illuminating the living room, he shut the door behind him. As he did so, he flipped the light switch.

Nothing happened.

Rising to her feet, Georgie paused, one hand fisted at her hip. Rather than be angry, she found herself mildly amused at this overdressed, albeit fine specimen of manhood.

“You want to play with the other switches, too?” she asked. She pointed to the kitchen and then down the hall. “There’re about six more. None of them will turn on the lights either.”

This was just getting weirder and weirder. “Why isn’t there any electricity?”

“Because I don’t have money to throw around,” she suggested “helpfully.” “There’s no phone service either, so don’t bother picking up the receiver.” She nodded toward the phone on the kitchen wall. “If it makes you feel any better, they’ll both be on in the morning. I got home ahead of schedule.”

Ahead of schedule. That meant that he would have gone on waiting for her to arrive all night until the next morning.

The very thought of that intensified the ache in his shoulder muscles.

Of course, she could just be making the whole thing up and she and the pint-sized terror could have been coming back from visiting someone. “So you’re sticking to your story about being out of town?”

“It’s not a story, it’s the truth,” Emmie insisted angrily, stomping over to him, her hands on her hips, her head tilted back like a miniature Fury. “Mama doesn’t lie. She says only bad people lie.”

Georgie had her back to him. He watched the way her long braid moved as she arranged something in the hearth.

“No,” he told the child while watching the mother, “sometimes good people lie, too.”

Georgie straightened to go get the coffee pot from the cabinet in the kitchen. He was trying to trip her up, and he was just wasting his time. Because he had the wrong person. The sooner she convinced him of that, the sooner she could get down to the business of settling in.

“Ask anyone in town,” Georgie urged him. The warm glow from the fireplace cast itself over her, coloring her cheeks, lightly glancing along her frame. “They’ll all tell you the same thing. That I was out on the rodeo circuit. Around here, everybody knows everybody else’s business.” That used to annoy her. It didn’t anymore. Now it just gave her a feeling of belonging.

“And what is it you do on the rodeo circuit?” Nick asked, not that he really believed her. Men who wore oversized hats and walked as if born on a horse hit the rodeo circuit, not a little bit of a woman with a big mouth and a child in tow.

“Win,” Georgie answered tersely. “You’d better like your coffee black,” she informed him, raising her voice as she walked into the small, functional kitchen and poured water into the battered coffee pot. “Because I don’t have any milk handy. The last of it was used to drown a few chocolate chip cookies who were minding their own business about five hours ago.”

Georgie looked at her daughter and grinned, remembering the snack they’d shared during the impromptu picnic she’d arranged for the little girl. She’d done it to lift Emmie’s spirits because her daughter had been so sad about leaving the rodeo circuit. Georgie had talked at length about the ranch in glowing terms, reminding her daughter about all the people who loved her and were looking forward to celebrating her fifth birthday next week right here in Esperanza. By the time the cookies were gone, Emmie couldn’t wait to get home.

“Black’ll do fine,” he told her.

As he watched, he saw Georgie stretch up on her toes, trying to reach the two white mugs on the top shelf. Crossing over to her, he took the mugs down and placed them on the counter. Georgie scooped them up and made her way back to the hearth.

He found himself following her.

Nick could feel Emmie’s eyes boring into him, suspiciously watching his every move like some stunted hawk.

“This doesn’t change anything,” he warned Georgie, referring to her effort at hospitality by making him something to drink.

“It’s coffee, not a magic elixir,” she responded. “I didn’t think it was going to turn you into a prince. I’m just being neighborly.”

“I’m not your neighbor.”

“And for that, I am eternally grateful,” Georgie told him. With the coffee brewing, she turned her attention to the center of her universe, her daughter. “Okay, Miss Emmie,” she took Emmie’s hand, “time to get you ready for bed.”

But Emmie wiggled her hand out of her mother’s grasp. Her large green eyes darted toward the stranger in their house, then back at her mother. “Mama, please?” Emmie pleaded.

In tune with her daughter, Georgie didn’t need Emmie to spell it out for her. She could all but read her mind. Tired or not, there was no way the little girl was going to fall asleep a full three rooms away from here. Emmie was far too agitated about what was going on. She stood a better chance of having her daughter nodding off here, safely in her company.

Georgie surrendered without firing a shot. “Okay, pumpkin, take the sofa.”

Relief highlighted the thousand-watt smile. Emmie wiggled onto the leather couch. “Thank you, Mama,” she said happily.

Other than his own horrific childhood, Nick hadn’t been around kids for more than a minute here or there. He had absolutely no experience when it came to dealing with them. Nor did he really want any. Kids had their own kind of logic and he had no time to unscramble that.

But his gut told him that what had just transpired was wrong from a discipline point of view. “You always let her win?” he asked Georgie.

Georgie watched him for a long moment, debating whether to tell him to butt out. But saying so wouldn’t be setting a good example for her daughter. “I pick my battles,” she told him. And, to be honest, she felt better being able to watch over Emmie right now. She didn’t fully trust this character, Secret Service agent or not. “Arguing over everything never gets you anywhere.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I have no desire to fool you, Mr. Secret Service agent—”

“My name’s Nick Sheffield.” He knew he was telling her needlessly. After all, she’d read as much on his ID—if she bothered reading it.

Georgie started again from the top. “I have no desire to fool you, Nick Sheffield,” she told him. “I just want you to go away.”

That made two of them, but under a different set of circumstances. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen right now,” he informed her tersely.

Georgie sighed. “So much for my lucky streak continuing.”

Behind her, the coffee pot had stopped percolating. She turned toward it, and, taking the two mugs she’d brought with her from the kitchen, she poured thick, black liquid into both. She set the pot back on its perch and brought the mugs over to him. Georgie offered him one.

He took it from her a bit leerily and she laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pour it onto your lap.” She couldn’t resist a quick glance in that area. “Although the thought did cross my mind.”

Thank God for small favors, he thought. But she’d stirred his curiosity. “Why not?”

“Because if I did that,” she said only after she’d paused to swallow a mouthful, “then you’d think I was guilty. And I’m not,” she pointed out.

“What if I think it anyway?”

“Then you’re dumb,” she told him simply. “Because that means that you’re either not looking at the evidence—or ignoring it.”

No, he thought, wrapping his hands around the mug, he had to admit that he wasn’t looking at the evidence at the moment. He was looking at her. And God help him, he did like what he saw.

Chapter 4

Moving back toward the fireplace, Georgie pushed the coffee pot back on the grating. He heard her ask, “To your liking?” The woman didn’t even bother looking over her shoulder as she carelessly tossed the words at him.

The question, coming out of the blue, caught him completely off guard. Was she referring to herself? Did she somehow sense that he was watching her, or was his reflection alerting her to the fact that he was studying her?

“What?”

“The coffee.” Turning around, she nodded at the mug he was still holding in both hands. “Is it to your liking?”

Lost in his thoughts, some of which he shouldn’t be having, Nick hadn’t sampled the coffee yet. To rectify that, he took a sip—and discovered he had to practically chew the mouthful before he could swallow it. Accustomed to the coffee from a lucrative chain this offering she had prepared tasted almost raw to him. It certainly brought every nerve ending in his body to attention.

Nick cleared his throat after finally swallowing what he had in his mouth. He looked at her incredulously as she sipped, unfazed, from her mug.

“It’s a little thick, don’t you think?” he asked, pushing out each word. Was it coffee, or had she substituted tar?

Georgie seemed mildly surprised at his comment. “Most men I know like their coffee strong.”

“You might not realize it, but there’s a difference between strong coffee and asphalt.”

Georgie lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” she told him, reaching for the mug.

He drew the mug back out of her reach, knowing that to surrender it would somehow diminish him in her eyes. Nick had a feeling he was going to need all the edge he could get.

“That’s okay,” he assured the woman. “I’ll drink it.”

Nick saw a slight, amused smile curve the corners of her mouth. He had the uncomfortable feeling she was looking right through him. “Nobody said ‘I double-dog-dare you,’ Mr. Secret Service agent—sorry, ‘Mr. Sheffield,’” she corrected herself. “If you don’t like the coffee, don’t drink it.”

He held on to the mug anyway. “Just takes some getting used to.” Like you, he added silently. Looking around at the darkened room, he changed the topic. “You really turned off the electricity.”

A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you, Sheffield? But she kept the observation to herself and replied, “That’s what I said.”

Then how had she sent those e-mails? he caught himself wondering. Eyeing her thoughtfully, Nick came up with the only alternative he could think of off the top of his head. “Then you took your computer with you?”

She thought of the refurbished tower and monitor she’d bought roughly six months ago, a couple of weeks before she’d gone back on the road with Emmie. She’d had the previous owner set it up for her, but personally had no interest in exploring its properties. It was like an alien entity to her.

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Now why would I do that?”

It took him a moment to realize she was serious. His own computer was almost an appendage with him. He took the notebook everywhere he went and couldn’t conceive of a day going by without his checking his e-mail account. In his opinion, doing so was what kept the world small and manageable. He liked being in control, in the know. This was the best way.

“To stay in touch,” he finally said when he saw that she was waiting for a response.

Georgie frowned. The man was obviously just another drone. Too bad, but then, what had she expected? He worked for the government. A clone without an imagination—except where it didn’t count.

“They’ve got phones for that, Sheffield.” She could see that her answer didn’t make an impression on the Secret Service agent. “As I said before, I don’t believe in computers,” she told him. “I don’t believe in sitting on my butt, sending messages to people I don’t know—” what the hell was a “chat room” anyway? “—and living vicariously through someone else’s stories. I’m out there, every day, experiencing life, I don’t have to get mine secondhand.” And then she gave him a reason she was certain he couldn’t argue with. “Besides, my computer is too damn big to cart around across the state.”

It was time he stopped trading words with this woman and start investigating. He was better at that anyway.

He’d already given the inside of the house a once-over when he’d first arrived on the property. “That tower in the bedroom room is the only computer you have?”

“Yeah. Why? How many computers do you have?”

Presently, he owned three. He had the one in his office at the Senator’s headquarters, plus a full-sized one in his apartment. And, of course, there was the one that he always took with him, the notebook that contained everything the other two did, plus more. But he had no intention of telling her anything.

“This isn’t about me,” he reminded her.

Georgie lifted her chin defensively. Every time she started to think that maybe the man was human, he suddenly sprang back to square one all over again. It was like trying to take the stretch out of a rubber band and having it snap back at you.

“It’s not about me, either,” she retorted tersely. “Whoever you’re looking for,” Georgie informed him, “it isn’t me.”

What else could she say? He laughed dryly. “Mind if I don’t take your word for that?”

“I’d like to say that I don’t mind—or care—about anything you do, but because it affects me and mine—” she glanced over toward the sofa and Emmie, who, by virtue of her silence, she knew to be asleep “—I do. I mind very much.”

“Afraid of what I’ll find?” Nick asked. He was already on his way to her bedroom. The fact that she had it set up in her bedroom rather than out in plain sight told him that she was probably trying to keep her little girl away from it and unaware of what she was doing. From what he’d observed she was a decent mother.

“No, I’m afraid that you’ll plant something,” she shot back, abandoning her mug as she hurried after him. “Hey, do you have a search warrant?” she challenged, suddenly remembering that on the TV dramas she’d occasionally watched, they always asked for a search warrant before allowing the police to turn their homes upside down. “Well, do you?”

“Patriot Act,” Nick cited, reaching her bedroom. The existence of the act allowed for shortcuts and he mentally blessed it now. “I don’t have to have one.”

“That has something to do with finding suspected terrorists,” Georgie remembered. The second the words were out of her mouth, her eyes widened in utter stunned surprise. She could only come to one conclusion. “So now you think I’m a terrorist?” This was becoming too ridiculous for words.

“Lots of definitions of a terrorist,” he told her, pushing open her door. The small bedroom had only moonlight, pouring in through the parted curtains, to illuminate it. “Not all of them come with bombs strapped to their chests. The definition of a terrorist is someone who brings and utilizes terror against their victim.”

This time, when he entered the room, Nick noticed something that had escaped his attention the last time he’d looked around the bedroom.

The computer tower and small monitor were set up on a rickety card table with a folding chair placed before it. The set-up stuck out like a sore thumb. What hadn’t stuck out—at first glance—was the rectangular item stashed underneath the table. Pushed far back, it was attached to both the computer and the monitor.

“What’s that?” he asked her.

“What’s what?” she snapped. Was he talking about the computer? He would have had to have been blind to miss it. Just because she had a computer didn’t mean she was guilty of sending threatening e-mails to his precious Senator Colton.

Damn it, Clay had told her to keep a gun in the house and she would have, if Emmie wasn’t around. Not that she thought the little girl would play with it. Emmie knew better than that. But she knew her daughter. In a situation just like the one that had gone down in the front yard, if there’d been a gun around, Emmie would have grasped that instead of the tire iron—and used it. Emmie was very protective of her.

Almost as protective of her as she was of Emmie.

As she watched, Sheffield toed the rectangular object under the card table she’d put up. “This.”

She looked down at it, then at him. Georgie shook her head. This was the first time she was seeing it. “I have no idea.”

Squatting down, he used what moonlight was available to examine it. “Well, I do.”

“Then why d’you ask?”

He ignored her annoyed question as he rose again to his feet. Nick dusted off his knees before answering. “It’s a generator.”

“No, it’s not,” she countered. She jerked her thumb toward the back of the house, beyond the bedroom. “The generator’s outside, just behind this room—and it’s broken,” she added before Sheffield was off and running again. Repairing the generator was one of the things on her “see-to” list. The one that was almost as long as Emmie was tall. The house needed a lot of work, but because she was going to be home from now on and she was pretty handy, she figured she’d be able to finally get around to getting those things done.

If she could ever get rid of this man.

“Yes, it is,” he informed her. “It’s a portable generator.”

As if to prove it, he switched the generator on. It made a churning noise, like someone clearing his throat first thing in the morning. The uneven symphony took a few minutes to fade.

Once all the lights on the machine’s surface had come to life and ceased blinking, remaining on like so many small, yellow beacons, Nick rose and turned on the computer. It made even more noise than the generator, including a grinding noise that didn’t sound too promising.

Georgie stared angrily at the portable generator. Sheffield had to have planted it earlier. There was no other way it could have gotten into her house. “That’s not mine.”

He ignored her protest. It was in her house, in her bedroom. Whose would it be if not hers?

The tower’s hard drive continued grinding as it went through its paces. He half expected it to freeze up on him.

“You really should think about getting a laptop,” he commented.

“What I should get,” Georgie retorted, gritting her teeth, “is a gun so that I could keep trespassers off my property.”

He wasn’t listening. The grinding noise had finally abated and the hourglass had faded from the screen. Sitting gingerly down on the folding chair, he began to type. Braced for resistance, Nick found he was able to logon with no trouble. No password was necessary. The woman hadn’t even taken the simplest of precautions. Go figure.

“And when you get that laptop,” he commented, “you need to think about getting it encrypted.”

Georgie watched him intently, convinced he would do something to her machine to make her look guilty. She only hoped she could stop him before he did it—not too likely because she had absolutely no idea what she was looking for him to do. “Encrypted?”

“Yes.” He glanced at her for a second. She didn’t know what he was talking about or she was pretending not to. “You know, password-access only. That way people wouldn’t be able to get onto your computer.”

She’d heard that if someone was really determined to get into your computer, they’d find a way. “But you would.”

Nick couldn’t help the tinge of satisfaction he felt from surfacing. He’d come a hell of a long way from that bully in the school yard.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I would.”

She crossed her arms before her, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard. Something was not right about a man being able to type that fast. Hands like that should be roping in a steer, not typing.

“So the people I should be protecting myself against with that password thing could still—what’s the word? Hack?—into my computer.”

“That’s the word,” he confirmed. “Hack.” Nick laughed under his breath, although there was no humor to the sound. She played the innocent well, he’d give her that. “Guess you’re right. Having a password wouldn’t help. It would be pointless.”

An uneasiness descended over her as she listened to the keys clicking on the keyboard. “So is your nosing around on my computer,” she insisted.

Bingo, he thought. He’d gotten into her online account and accessed her recent activities. It was right there in living color.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Rising from the chair, he started to turn the monitor toward her so that she could see what he knew she was already familiar with. He felt the card table begin to wobble.

Quickly bracing it, Nick muttered a few choice, ripe words under his breath. They mingled with his suppressed sigh.

Well, that hadn’t taken very long, he thought sarcastically. And he had just begun entertaining the idea that maybe, just maybe, she was telling him the truth about not having sent those e-mails. Just went to show that con artists came in all sizes and shapes. Even pleasing ones.

Especially pleasing ones, he reminded himself. People like the Grady woman capitalized on their looks.

So much for believing in fairy tales, he thought. He raised his eyes to hers. Tapping the screen, he asked, “Do you know what this is?”

Georgie narrowed her eyes into angry green slits. “A frame-up.”

Not by a long shot, he thought. “It’s the Senator’s Web site. And these,” he pointed to communication at the bottom of the screen, “are the e-mails you sent to him just in the last couple of days.”

Georgie forced herself to look at the screen. The e-mail Sheffield was pointing to was particularly venomous and it was signed “Lone Star Girl.” But that was no proof that it was her.

This was surreal, she thought, fighting off a feeling of desperation. This wasn’t happening. She was asleep, that was it. She’d fallen asleep behind the wheel of the truck and maybe even crashed into a ditch. She was having hallucinations.

This had to be a hallucination.

This was real. He was real. And he was lying. She didn’t know how he’d managed to do it while she was watching him, but somehow, he’d gotten that e-mail onto the computer.

Her jaw hardened. “No, I didn’t.” And there was no way he was going to get her to say that she did.

No more games, Nick thought. It was time to wrap this up. He pointed to the screen again. “Proof’s right here. This is your computer, your account.”

“I don’t care if that damn message is painted across the Grand Canyon,” she informed him hotly, tired of being intimidated. “I didn’t write to your precious Senator. I don’t even have an e-mail account.”

“Then what’s this?” he asked.

She threw up her hands. How the hell did she know how it got there? “A mistake. A glitch. I don’t know. Machines are prone to errors.” Her eyes blazed as she glared at him. “Nothing is foolproof and this proves it.”

She’d emphasized the word “fool.” Another dry laugh escaped his lips as he shook his head. “Calling me names isn’t going to help you.”

But strangling him might, she thought angrily. Georgie struggled to draw her patience to her and sound calm. “Look, I’m only going to say this one more time. I haven’t been home in the last five months. The computer has. Somebody—”

Georgie clamped her mouth shut as her own words and the thought behind them resonated in her head. Sheffield hadn’t planted this. Somebody had broken in. That had to be it. And if they broke in, there had to be evidence that they’d been here, right? Things would have been moved around, maybe the drawers had been ransacked. Something, anything, to show that someone had trespassed on her property, maybe even stolen her identity.

The idea took root, shaking her down to her very toes. Her throat tightened. Maybe she was overreacting. Oh, God, she hoped so.

Without another word, Georgie spun on the worn heel of her boot and hurried from the bedroom. The second she was out in the hall, she made a beeline for the kitchen.

Catching him off guard, it took Nick a second to realize that she’d bolted. He immediately hurried after her. Unable to refute him, she was making a break for it, he thought. Not on his watch. Not after he’d stood all those hours in this god-forsaken place, waiting for her.

“You can’t run!” he called after her.

The woman didn’t bother to answer him.

Expecting her to dart into the living room to grab her daughter, Nick was more than a little stunned to see Georgie run into the kitchen instead.

Was there a back door? Was she abandoning her daughter and making a run for it?

Nick strode into the kitchen after her and grabbed her by the wrist just as she’d reached the counter, spinning her around.

“Let me go!” she cried in outraged frustration. She struggled to yank her wrist out of his grasp.

For a little thing, she was pretty strong, he thought. Had to be all that rodeoing stuff she claimed to be doing. Well, it wasn’t going to do her any good. As a girl, she was strong, but she was no match for him.

“It’ll go a lot easier on you if you surrender,” he counseled.

“The hell it will.”

Ever since she was a little girl, she’d hated the word “surrender.” It meant weakness to her and she would rather die than admit to that.

Still trying to pull out of his grasp, Georgie raised her knee the way instinct and her older brother Clay had taught her, determined to award Sheffield the kind of pain that would make him set her free.

But Nick anticipated her move. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he cried.

Twisting, he jerked out of the way, throwing her off balance, then bodily pushed her against the wall. Pressed up against her, with his adrenaline running high and her breath hot against his chin, it took Nick a second to catch himself because his body was reacting to hers, taking him to places that his training did not allow for.

For two cents, he’d kiss that mouth of hers into silence.

It would have been the costliest two cents he would have ever had to pay and he knew it.

“You can’t run,” he told her, his breath coming in short spurts.

“I’m not running, I just want to get a damn flashlight,” she cried.

Everything inside of her was scrambling madly—and anger had very little to do with it.