Vickie Taylor - The Last Honorable Man

The ranger jerked as if he had been slapped. She tried to shoulder past, but he let go of his hat with one hand and captured her arm. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

The breath whooshed out of her. Up this close, she could see the deep lines of strain that channeled out from the corners of his eyes and mouth. What worries weighed on him? The death of an innocent man? Surely not. He was policía. Heartless.

So what did he want with her?

“How do you know about my baby?” she asked.

“I felt it,” he ground out as if his jaw were frozen. “When we were wrestling at the warehouse.”

She yanked her arm free of his grip and smoothed her hand over her swelling abdomen. “Yes. I carry Eduardo’s child. So you see with your carelessness you took not one life, but three—the man, the husband and the father.”

This time the ranger didn’t flinch. He frowned. “Husband? You were married?”

“We were to be.”

His shoulders sagged. He blinked slowly. “I’m sorry. If there was anything I could do…”

She passed by him. This time she would not be stopped. Behind her, he cleared his throat. “I just want you to know you have my sympathy.”

She turned in the chapel doorway. “Sympathy from the devil is little comfort, Ranger.” Then she stepped over the threshold, into a Texas heat surely hotter than hell.

Del stood still as marble, a testament to the discipline ingrained in him by four years in the Army Special Forces and fourteen as a cop of one sort or another. It took every bit of will he had, and then some, not to place his fist through the pretty little stained-glass panel beside the door.

This was why he’d wanted to see her, he realized. So she could lay him open. Maybe in that way he could honor his debt in one bloody stream instead of paying slowly, drop by drop.

Only, it hadn’t worked. Instead of the anger he’d expected from her, he’d gotten only cold contempt, and instead of making payment, he’d found his debt tripled. She’d said he killed three men, and she’d been right. The sheer magnitude of what one pull of the trigger—his pull of the trigger—had cost her was incomprehensible.

One thing he did comprehend, though. A debt like that could never be repaid. Never. He closed his eyes. God help him. Maybe he should find a confessional after all.

He stood there for what seemed like a long time, fighting the invisible steel bands squeezing his chest with each breath he drew. He’d done what he had to do, he told himself. Saved Hayes’s life.

So why did he feel like he’d committed a mortal sin?

Feeling much older than his thirty-eight years, he finally sighed and managed to uncrimp his fingers from the ruined brim of his hat. He moved toward the door, but before he’d finished a step, a missile of a sharp-tongued woman crashed into his chest, her chocolate eyes wide with alarm.

“What?” he asked, setting her back on her feet. Her shoulders jutted through the thin blouse beneath his hands. She felt frail. Broken inside. But her disdain was intact.

She brushed off his touch as if he was an insect and pushed them both deeper into the stone chapel. “Reporters,” she said, checking over her shoulder.

Del leaned around her, looked out the door and cursed. A van with a KDAL logo cruised down the gravel lane. “Where’s your car?”

She clutched her pack to her chest. “I don’t have one.”

Without looking down, he saw in his mind the dust rimming the hem of her black skirt. How far was it from wherever she was staying to the cemetery? The nearest hotel had to be four or five miles. “You walked?”

She answered by narrowing her eyes, as if pregnant women always walked miles on the highway in 103-degree heat. Saving his disbelief for later, he pulled her back toward the door. “Come on.”

Her hand was in his just long enough for him to register the clammy feel of her palm. Then she recoiled. He gritted his teeth, motioning for her to go first. “After you.”

She didn’t budge.

“That’s my Land Rover out front. We can get away before they make us.”

“I will go nowhere with you.”

The rebuke blew away another chunk of what was left of his self-respect. She needed his help, whether she realized it or not. So far, Garcia’s involvement with a woman had been held to speculation. He could only guess she wasn’t interested in publicity, otherwise all four local channels would have plastered the face of the grieving fiancée on the TV news every night this week.

“Look,” he urged. “The press is still in a feeding frenzy over the shooting. Finding either one of us in here alone would provide a passable story for the bloodsuckers, but finding us here together will make for a regular tabloid extravaganza. Our pictures will be on sale at every grocery store checkout from here to Minnesota. They will hound us—you—night and day. Is that what you want?”

Her face paled to the same light ivory as her blouse. “No.”

He resisted the urge to steady her on her feet, doubting she’d appreciate the sentiment. Instead he pulled his own shoulders back, hardened his gaze to match hers. “Then what’s it going to be, lady? Ready to make a deal with the devil?”

“Where do you want me to take you?” the ranger asked.

“Just stop the car.”

Elisa pressed her forehead against the cool window. Across the six lanes of cement on the other side of the glass, a pasture dotted by mesquite trees and cows with extraordinarily long horns bordered the parking lot of a modern sports stadium with a gigantic hole in the roof. Rural Texas gave way to urban in a dizzying blur.

A big truck sped past, rocking the vehicle. Elisa rested her palm on her churning stomach and looked away. Everything was so different here than in her country. So big. So fast. In her village, two cars couldn’t have passed on the main road without scraping door handles, and the normal flow of traffic was foot speed.

Except when the soldiers came.

The hand on her stomach fisted. “Please stop the car.”

The ranger’s jaw ticked, but his eyes stayed on the road. The ruddy spots on his cheeks darkened. “I told you, I am not dumping a pregnant woman on the side of the highway in this heat. In any weather, damn it.”

“There is no need to curse.”

“Curse? What…? ‘Damn it’?”

She frowned at him.

“Aw, hell,” he muttered, then shot her a look. “I mean heck. Look, just tell me where you want to go and I’ll drop you off.”

“You don’t understand.” She clutched her pack to her side. It was all she’d brought to America. All she’d had. “I—”

Too late.

Elisa’s eyes went wide as the wave began low in her body and rolled upward. One hand flying to cover her mouth, she fumbled at the window control with the other.

“What the—” The ranger stepped on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder.

Elisa was out before the car came to full stop. At the guardrail, she fell to her knees and lost what little she’d eaten that day. When it was over, she hung across the steel barrier, limp as yesterday’s laundry, clammy and shaking. She dragged in a breath of air, tasted exhaust and nearly choked again. Thankfully, the ranger had left her to her peace. The only thing more humiliating than being sick would have been to have him standing over her, watching.

A moment later she realized she’d offered her thanks too soon. Her stomach turned once more at the sound of his boots crunching across gravel. He stopped beside her and a column of shade fell over her where he blocked the sun. Grudgingly she huddled in the cool swath. She should get up, walk away. But she was so hot… “Leave me alone.” Her voice sounded miserable. Pitiful.