Diana Palmer - Bound by Honor

She felt a chill go down her arms as she remembered who Lopez was. “What will he do if I testify against his men?”

“You let me worry about that,” Eb told her, and his eyes were like green steel. “Nobody touches you without going through me.”

Her heart jumped right up into her throat as she stared at him. She was a modern woman, and she probably shouldn’t have enjoyed that passionate remark. But she did. Eb was a strong, assertive man who would want a woman to match him. Sally hadn’t been that woman at seventeen. But she was now. She could stand up to him and meet him on his own ground. It gave her a sense of pride.

“Debating if it’s proper for a modern woman to like being protected?” he chided with a wicked grin.

“You said yourself that none of us are invincible,” she pointed out. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to admire a man’s strength, especially when it’s just saved my neck.”

He made her feel confident, he gave her joy. It had been years since she’d laughed so much, enjoyed life so much. Odd that a man whose adult years had been imbued with such violence could be so tender.

“Okay now?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m okay.” She glanced toward the road and shivered a little. “They won’t come looking for me?”

“Not in that condition they won’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they’re very lucky,” he added, his whole face like drawn cord. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been so gentle.”

Both eyebrows went up at the imagery.

“You know what I was,” he said quietly. “Until comparatively recent years, I lived a violent, uncertain life. Part of the man I was is still in me. I won’t ever hurt you,” he added. “But I have to come to grips with the old life before I can begin a new one. That’s going to take time.”

“I think you’re saying something.”

“Why, yes, I am,” he mused, watching her. “I’m giving notice of my intentions.”

“Intentions?”

“Last time I stopped. Next time I won’t.”

Her mind wasn’t quite grasping what he was telling her. “You mean, with those men…?”

“I mean with you,” he said gently. “I want you very badly, and I’m not walking away this time.”

“You and what army?” she asked, aghast.

“I won’t need an army. But you might.” He smiled. “Go on in. I’m having the house watched. You’ll be safe, I promise.”

She pulled his shirt closer. “Thanks, Eb,” she said.

He shrugged. “I have to take care of my own. Try to sleep.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. You, too.”

He watched her go up onto the porch and into the house, waiting for Dallas, who came out tight-lipped with barely a word to Sally as he passed her.

He got into the truck with Eb and slammed the door.

“What happened to Sally?” he asked, putting his cane aside.

“Lopez’s men rushed the truck when she had a flat. I don’t know if it was premeditated,” he added coldly. “They could have lain in wait for her and caused the flat. The tire was almost bald, but it could have gone another few hundred miles.”

“She looked uneasy.”

“They assaulted her and may have raped her if I hadn’t shown up,” Eb said bluntly as he backed the truck and pulled out into the road. “I want to have another look, if the ambulance hasn’t picked them up yet.”

“You sent for an ambulance?” Dallas asked with mock surprise. “That’s new.”

“Well, we’re trying to blend in, aren’t we?” came the terse reply. He glared at the tall blond man. “Difficult to blend in if we let people die on the side of the road.”

“If you say so.”

They drove to where Sally’s pickup truck was still sitting, but there was no sign of the two men. The house nearby was dark. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

As Eb digested that, red lights flashed and a big boxy ambulance pulled up behind the pickup truck, followed closely by a deputy sheriff in a patrol car.

Eb pulled off the road and got out. He knew the deputy, Rich Burton, who was one of the department’s ablest members. They shook hands.

“Where are the victims?” Rich asked.

Eb grimaced. “Well, they were both lying right there when I took Sally home.”

The deputy and the ambulance guys looked toward the flattened grass, but there weren’t any men lying there.

“Unless one of you needs medical attention, we’ll be on our way,” one of the EMTs said with a wry glance.

“Both of the perps did,” Eb said quietly. “At least one of them has broken bones.”

The EMT gave him a wary look. “Not their legs, by the look of things.”

“No. Not their legs.”

The EMTs left and Rich joined Eb and Dallas beside the truck.

“Something’s going on at that house,” Rich said quietly. “I’ve had total strangers stop me and tell me they’ve seen suspicious activity, men carrying boxes in and out. That’s not all. Some holding company bought a huge tract of land adjoining Cy Parks’s place, and it’s filling up with building supplies. There’s a contractor been hired and a plan has gone to the county commission’s planning committee about a business starting up there.”

“How much do you know about the men who live here?” Eb asked coolly.

Rich shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like to. But my contacts tell me that there’s a drug lord named Manuel Lopez, and the talk is that these guys belong to him. They’re mules. They run his narcotics for him.”

Eb and Dallas exchanged quiet glances.

“What sort of business are we talking about?” Eb queried.

“Don’t know. There’s a huge steel warehouse going up behind Parks’s place,” Rich replied, and he looked worried. “If I were making a guess, and it is just a guess, I’d say somebody had distribution in mind.”

“A DISTRIBUTION CENTER,” Eb said curtly. “With Manuel Lopez, the head of the most violent of the international drug cartels, behind it! That’s just what we need in Jacobsville.”

“That’s right,” the younger man replied. He scowled. “How do you know about Lopez?”

Eb didn’t answer. “Thanks, Rich,” he said. “If I hear anything about the men who attacked Miss Johnson, I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks. But I’d bet that they’re long gone,” he said carelessly. “They’d be crazy to stick around and face charges like attempted rape in a town this size. Lopez wouldn’t like the notoriety.”

“My guess exactly. So long,” Eb said, motioning to Dallas. Rich drove off with a wave of his hand. Eb hesitated, and once Rich was out of sight, he looked for and found a board with new nails sticking through it. It was lying point-side down, now, but the wood was new and there was a long cord attached to it. Evidently it had been placed in the road just as Sally approached, and then jerked away once Sally had run over it. That meant that there had to be a fourth man involved, besides the man on the porch and the two men who’d assaulted Sally. That disturbed Eb.

“They set a trap,” Dallas guessed. “She ran over this. That’s how she got the flat.”

“Exactly.” Eb threw the board in the bed of the truck before he climbed in under the wheel. “There were at least four men in on it, and I don’t think assault was the sole object of the exercise. I think I’ll go over and have a talk with Cy Parks first thing in the morning. He may know something about that new construction behind his place.”

CY PARKS WAS GRUMPY. He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, and he was groggy. Even after four years, he still had nightmares about the loss of his wife and five-year-old son in a fire back home in Wyoming. He’d moved here to Jacobsville, where Ebenezer Scott lived, more for someone to talk to than any other reason. Eb was not only a former comrade at arms, but he was also the only man he knew who could listen to the unabridged horror of the fire without losing his supper. It kept him sane, just having someone to talk to. And not only could he talk about the death of his family at Lopez’s henchmen’s hands but also he had someone to help him exorcise the nightmares of the past that he and Ebenezer shared.