Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier

Harley’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned in a fairly condescending way. “Do you now? Are you using Uzis to load cattle these days, boss?”

Cy realized what he’d said and chuckled. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

“No problem. I noticed a couple of new faces over there,” he added. “Tough-looking men, and they weren’t wearing suits.”

“Get back out there tonight,” Cy told him. “And be very careful, Harley. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.” He didn’t add that he was worried about Lisa. He saw her every other day, and the paperwork had just been completed and signed, ready for the transfer of money and deeds. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Lopez had an informant in town who’d tell him that. It might prompt the drug lord to hasty action, if he thought Lisa was selling the ranch in order to move away. He couldn’t know that Cy planned to rent her the ranch house. He wouldn’t like having to search for her.

Knowing that bothered him, and he mentioned it to Lisa when he stopped by to see her the next day. Harley had seen yet another unfamiliar face on the ware house property, and he’d also seen flat after flat of jars being moved inside the structure. The drug dealers were getting ready to begin operations. Things would heat up very soon, or Cy missed his guess. He didn’t want Lisa in the middle of it.

“Have you got family you could visit out of state?” he asked without preamble as he joined her in the living room, where she had gas logs burning in the fire place.

She curled up on the sofa in her jeans and knit turtleneck white sweater and stared at him curiously. “I don’t have family anywhere,” she confessed. “Maybe a cousin or two up around Fort Worth, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them.”

He sighed heavily and leaned forward in the chair with his arms crossed over his knees. “All right,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “If you leave the house from now on, I want to know first. If you can’t get me, you call Eb Scott.”

“Why?”

He knew she was going to ask that. He didn’t have a very logical reply. “I don’t know what Lopez is up to,” he said honestly. “He may have given up on ideas of targeting you. On the other hand, he may be lulling us into a false sense of security. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“That suits me,” she said agreeably.

“Do you have a phone by your bed?”

“Yes,” she said. “It makes me feel more secure.”

He stood up. “Don’t forget to keep your doors locked, even in the daytime, when you’re home alone.”

“I’m not, much,” she said without thinking. “Harley comes by every day to check on me, sometimes twice a day.”

His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that, although he said, “Good for Harley.”

She caught a nuance of something in his tone. “Do you mind?” she asked deliberately. He’d been remote and she’d hardly seen him since the night of the opera. She wondered if he’d been avoiding her, and she concluded that he was. His manner now was standoffish and he seemed in a hurry to leave. She wanted to know if he was the least bit put out by Harley’s attentiveness.

“It’s your life,” he said nonchalantly, tilting his wide-brimmed hat over one eye. “He’s a steady young man with a good future.”

He couldn’t be thinking…or could he? She started to tell him that Harley was friendly, and that she had no romantic interest in him. But before she could, Cy was already on his way out the door.

She went after him, trying not to be undignified and run. She didn’t catch up to him until he was going down the steps.

“When do we close on the sale?” she asked, having no other excuse for following him.

He turned at the door of the utility vehicle. “The first of next week, Kemp said. It will take that long to get the paperwork filed.”

“Okay. You’ll phone me?”

“I will. Or Kemp will.”

That sounded less than friendly. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned against one of the posts that held up the long porch. “That’s fine, then,” she said with forced cheer. “Thanks.”

He opened the door and hesitated. “Are you in a rush to close?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know when I’d need to start paying rent. I was going to go see Mr. Kemp next week about that job.”

She thought he didn’t want her around, and that was so far from the truth that it might as well have been in orbit. But he didn’t want to rush her, frighten her. Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he said, and got into the vehicle without another word. He didn’t even look back as he drove away.

Lisa stared after him with her heart around her ankles. So much for her theory that he was attracted to her. She supposed that he’d had second thoughts. It might be just as well. He was mourning his son, whom he’d obviously loved even if it wasn’t his own child, and she was a recent widow expecting a child of her own. She’d been spinning daydreams and it was time to stop and face reality. Cy wasn’t her future even if she’d hoped he was hers. She turned and went back into the lonely house, pausing to close and lock the door behind her.

Chapter Five

The first time she heard the noise at the window, Lisa thought it was a squirrel. The old house seemed to at tract them. They often scurried over the roof and came leaping down into the limbs of the big pecan trees that surrounded the porches. But she usually didn’t hear them in the wee hours of the morning, and so loud that they woke her up. She tried to go back to sleep, but then the noise came again. This time it didn’t sound like a squirrel. It sounded more like a window being forced open.

Lisa slipped out of bed in her sweatpants and white cotton top, hesitating at the door that led into the hall. The noise had come from the room next door, the one Walt had occupied for most of their married life.

She heard a faint rubbing noise, like one a man might make climbing in a window. Her heart began racing and she dashed down the hall in her bare feet, down the wooden steps and into the kitchen. Her glasses were still in the nightstand drawer by her bed, and she could barely make out familiar objects in the dim light. She was headed for the back door when she was caught and lifted and a big, gentle hand was clapped over her mouth while she struggled pitifully in an embrace of steel.

“It’s all right,” Cy Parks whispered at her ear. “It’s all right, we know there’s someone trying to break in up stairs. Micah’s rappeling from the roof down to the window of the room across the hall. He’ll have him in a minute. Don’t scream or you’ll give him all the warning he needs to get away. Okay?”

She nodded.

He eased her back onto her feet, taking her soft weight against the black sweater he was wearing with black jeans, one lean arm holding her just under her breasts. She saw the glimmer of metal in his other black-gloved hand. Her frightened eyes drifted up to his face, and all she could see of it was his eyes. He was wearing some sort of black mask.

While she was studying him, she heard a loud thud, followed by a louder groan.

“All clear!” came a loud, deep voice from upstairs.

“Stay here.” Cy let her go and went past her and up the staircase with an economy of motion that made her very glad she wasn’t the enemy.

She leaned back against the counter and almost jumped out of her skin when the back door opened and Eb Scott came in pulling his mask off, grinning.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “But the man Cy had staying in the bunkhouse spotted two suspicious figures outside your window. Unless you’re expecting Romeo, it’s a bit late for social calls.”

“I was asleep,” she said, shaken. “I heard the noise and thought it was a squirrel. I was trying to get out the back door when Cy grabbed me.” She whistled. “I thought my number was up.”

“Good thing you slept light,” Eb said solemnly. “We barely got here in time.”

“Who is it, do you think?” she asked.

“One of Lopez’s goons,” Eb told her flatly. “And this definitely confirms our worst fears. Lopez is after you.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” she said, still shaken from the experience. “Why is he after me?” She brushed back the long, tangled curtain of hair from her flushed cheeks. She felt sick.

“He’s going to set an example for anybody else who might consider trying to infiltrate his organization,” Eb told her. “It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. He doesn’t care. Your husband betrayed him and he wants you to pay for it, too. He wants all the government agencies to know the price for selling him out—their lives and their families’ lives.”

The fear made a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. She sank down into one of the kitchen chairs with a protective hand over her belly. She felt twice her age.

She heard heavy footsteps on the staircase and out the front door before Cy came back into the room, tearing off his mask. He looked even more formidable than usual, and that said something about his present demeanor, Lisa thought.