Home To Texas - Ransom My Heart Part 28

"With a lot of help from his somewhat ruthless ancestors.

Forgive me, Miss Kincaid. I didn't intend to express a disdain for your money. It is, as I told your friend, as I certainly have cause to know, a very valuable tool."

Samantha had fought her entire life against the implications of her family's wealth and against the easy judgments people made about her because of it. She understood, probably better than he did, all the things that money represented.

More important, she even understood about the lack of it. She had known enough about that during the last five years. She knew that she would again.

"Whatever you feel about the Kincaids or about their money," she said, "we've done what you asked. It's at end. Whatever use you have for the money you've stolei I hope that it gives you some kind of pleasure," she not bothering now to hide her contempt.

Using her foot, she pushed the canvas bag she'd up at Sam's to his side of the table. Despite the noise that surrounded them, the dragging sound the bag made across the floor could clearly be heard, so she knew he'd been aware of what she was doing.

She stood. She took a ten out of her billfold, preparing to pay for her dinner and then leave. She was almost fumbling in her haste, suddenly needing to be out of here, needing to know about Chase, about what was taking him so long.

As she reached down to put the money on the table, kidnapper's hand, his fingers long and brown and very strong, closed suddenly around her wrist. Startled, she looked up into his black eyes, filled now with the same anger she had seen in them only once before, When Chase had kicked over the suitcase in the dusty street of the mining camp.

"Pleasure?" he repeated softly, as if the word itself were an insult.

She didn't say anything, nor did she struggle to pull her wrist from his grasp.

"I hope I'm not interrupting something," Chase said.

He was standing almost beside the table. She hadn't been aware of his approach because her attention had been focused on the kidnapper's reaction and on the pain of his gripping fingers. Slowly he released her wrist, the marks his hand had made red against her pale skin, and his gaze flicked upward to Chase.

"Is something wrong?" Chase asked.

Samantha's eyes examined him also, checking to see if he was all right. In the dimness, his face looked strained, but he was here. At least he was here.

"I was getting a lecture on money," she said.

"On its ut4y rr of/l uses. On being a Kincaid." There was a trace of bitterness in her tone, and Chase held her eyes for a second before he turned back to the kidnapper.

"You have your money," he said.

"Consider yourself a lucky man, lucky to be alive. If I'd been with them the day you put a gun to my daughter's head and to hers, you wouldn't be. In the future, you stay the h.e.l.l away from the people who belong to me."

The dark eyes that locked on his were unashamed and unafraid, just as they had been from the start, Chase realized.

"I'd like to show you something," the man said after he had held Chase's cold, angry gaze a long moment.

"There's something I would like both of you to see."

"I don't think we have time to visit any tourist attractions," Chase said.

"You ready?" he asked, turning to Samantha, deliberately breaking the compulsion that was in the kidnapper's black eyes.

"It won't take long," the man with the mustache said softly.

"Five more minutes out of your lives, and then you may write an end to this. I swear to you on my mother's grave you will have no more dealings with me."

"We don't owe you five minutes," Chase said.

"We don't owe you anything."

"Then my information didn't prove helpful in finding what you sought?"

There was silence for a moment, the crowd noises again intruding into the quiet circle the three of them made--unwillingly joined by danger and betrayal and honor. And by a little girl who was safer tonight because of what this man had told them.

"Five minutes," Chase said.

THE HOUSE HE LED THEM TO had been very close, within easy walking distance. It was in a mildly affluent area of the city, but Chase had wondered as they had followed the man through the dark streets what possible purpose this ............. j ...... il could serve. Another wild-goose chase. At least it would be the final one. , The woman who opened the door was obviously surprised that he had brought visitors. She was his sister, the kidnapper explained, but he made no introductions. He said something to her, the words too quietly spoken for them to overhear, and they were aware that she argued with him, shaking her head, but in the end she did as he had instructed.

The bedroom she led them to was very clean, its spa.r.s.e furnis.h.i.+ngs orderly. Against one wall was a child's bed, hardly larger than a crib. The slight form that disturbed the smoothness of the coverlet was visible in the dimness.

It was the kidnapper and not his sister who walked to the table by the bed and lit the half-dozen candles in the small shrine that occupied the top. At their sudden illumination, the sleeping child stirred, opening and then rubbing her eyes, which seemed too large for her thin face.

"Papa?" the little gift said, questioning their presence in rd room in the middle of the night, but she didn't sit up.

he'I have brought someone to meet you," the man with the mustache said.

Her eyes focused on Samantha, who was standing now almost beside the bed, drawn closer by the sight of the child. She was near enough that the candles not only brought to luminous life the gold threaded in the halo her curling hair created but changed the translucent purity of her skin to alabaster.

"An angel, Papa," the little girl whispered.

"You'.ve brought me an angel."

"No," Samantha denied quickly, smiling at her.

"Only ... a friend."

"You look like an angel," the child said.

"Just like the angels in my books."

"Thank you," Samantha whispered.

There was something wrong here, she realized. The girl was tiny, only the size of a two-year-old, perhaps, but her : lu yt vY ttSutt speech marked her as older. Turning away from the child and toward her father, Samantha asked very softly, speaking to him in English, "What's wrong with her?"

His dark eyes remained on the little girl, and his mouth beneath the soft mustache never lost its smile.

"Unfortunately," he said, "my daughter was born with.." some damage to her heart. A malformation. Easy to repair with the right surgeons, the right facility. Except ... those are not here, not in my country, and they are not for people like us." His eyes moved to meet Samantha's briefly and then back to his daughter's, which were still s.h.i.+ning with wonder at her unexpected visitors.

"Not an angel, little one, but a princess," he said, speaking to her again in Spanish.

"A fairy princess who lives in a real castle."

"Does she have a magic wand?" the child asked.

The kidnapper looked again at Samantha before he nodded.

"A very magic wand that can change lives. And she has loaned it to us for a little while."

There was silence now in the small dark bedroom. The only light was from the candles and from the twin stars of the child's dark eyes.

"No," Samantha said, smiling at the little girl.

"She has given it to you. May it bring you great joy."

She turned to leave, fighting tears, hot stinging tears that welled because she knew he was right. Money was only a tool and it could be used for so many purposes. And she was also crying, she recognized, because her own daughter was safe, sleeping warm and healthy, protected in the house of her rich and powerful grandfather.

Chase had turned to follow Samantha out of the room when the kidnapper's question stopped him.

"Would you steal to save your daughter's life, Mr. McCullar?" he asked.

"Would you put a gun to someone's head if that was necessary to keep her alive?"

Chase turned back, looking at the little girl in the bed and seeing instead small, trusting fingers that had gripped his hand. Soft lips moving to brash shyly against the c mer of his mouth. And toes, dusty from playing in the yard, touched at their tips with pink polish.

"Yes," he said softly, knowing it was true, and then he pushed by the man and somehow found his way out of the small house.

Samantha was standing in the street. Without thinking; about it, acting on impulse alone, Chase put his good around her and pulled her against his chest. She didn't re-'ll sist, her slender arms automatically locking tightly around ii his midsection.

"It's okay," he said, comforting.

"Everything's okay.

It's all over." :l "Let's go home," she said, her words m.u.f.fled against il the front of his s.h.i.+rt.

"I need to see Mandy. I just need ... to hold her. I need to keep her safe."

SAMANTHA DROVE WHILE Chase talked. His arm and shoulder had begun to hurt like h.e.l.l, whether from tonight's accident or because he had left off Doe's contraption, he didn't know, but having to tell Samantha what Jason Drake had confessed to was a welcome distraction from the pain.

"When the kidnapper took Mandy, Drake thought he saw an opportunit3/to make a fast buck, a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of unmarked and untraceable money, so he took it. To h.e.l.l with Sam. And even with Mandy."

"That rich b.i.t.c.h," Drake had said about Samantha, but Chase didn't repeat those words. They were creel and untrue, and he saw no need to spread that venom. Maybe Drake had been attracted, and Samantha had rebuffed him.

Chase didn't know and he didn't care. None of that would be reason enough for Drake's betrayal.

"Sam trusted him," Samantha said.

"He doesn't trust many people, but I think that during the last couple of years everything was getting to be ... a little too much for him, too much to manage. He needed some help, and he chose Jason Drake. I thought it was all working out. I wasn't there

.Jyc Tv otJt often, not often enough to see anything wrong. Sam's usually a pretty good judge of character."

"Thanks," Chase said.

"I said usually." Samantha glanced over at him. His head was back against the headrest and his eyes were closed.

"And eventually he figured you out," she added. A man of honor, she thought. Sam hadn't been wrong about Chase, no matter how faulty his judgment had been about the other man.

"You keep saying that. I haven't seen any reason to think anything's changed about Sam's opinion of me. Except maybe that I was better, somehow, when I was a lawman."

"Sam liked Mac."

"h.e.l.l," Chase said, "everybody liked Mac."

"That doesn't mean he doesn't like you, too."

"I'm not trying to win any popularity contests with the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d." The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d who was her father, he realized.

"Sorry," he said.

She smiled, her lips tilting in memory of how closely that echoed her own a.s.sessment.

"Conniving old b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she corrected. And then, knowing he couldn't understand what had prompted that comment, she added, "Somehow that makes it even harder for me to understand how he could have so badly misjudged Jason Drake. That's not like Sam."

"You said it yourself. He's seventy-four years old. He needed some help. We all make mistakes about who to trust." "How did Drake do it?"

"Since he's been working there he's just wormed his way into your father's confidence, He had access to almost everything. He'd even figured out the combination to the safe Sam was so careful about," he said. Then he told her, because for some reason it was surprising to him, even a little sad, to think about Sam Kincaid being sentimental, "The combination was based on the numbers of your I.

mother's birthday. I guess everybody does stuff like that, evenSam."i'"So Drake just took out the ransom note and read it."He was ahead of us all the way. He hired a Mexican il shooter to go with him because the guy knew the country :1 and because he worked cheap. They picked us up in Me!-:l chor Mfizquiz and followed us when we left. Maybe that's }l why I kept feeling we were being watched. The shooter il knew the back trails so they could get ahead of us once ".i we'd given away our destination by making the turn to the ;1 west, to the mining camp."

"They intended to kill us?"

il "They intended to get the money, but I don't think Drakeiil put any

limitations on how they did it. I don't think he cared."

"But the guy missed us, How could he miss us and hit everything else?"

l "Good cover fire?" Chase suggested sarcastically."Luck. Moving targets. Even the best hunters miss a lot of1 the time.

And it's a lot harder to make yourself shoot people.""And tonight? How did Drake know about tonight?""Because I told him," Chase said, sharp disgust in his voice."You told him?""At the airstrip. He was still standing around when I told Sam how bad I'd screwed up the original payoff and that the kidnapper wanted the additional half million. I wasn't thinking about who was around because I was so mad that you and Sam hadn't told me about Mandy. And because you let Drake carry her off the chopper."

"McCullar tantrum," she said, remembering Chase's eyes that day.

"When I came to the ranch tonight to pick up the bag that supposedly contained the money, all Drake had to do was follow."