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.
The knock on the door came just as he was pouring his second cup of coffee. It was probably his foreman. Harley Fowler was an adventurer wannabe who fancied himself a mercenary. He was forever reading a magazine for armchair adventurers and once he’d actually answered one of the ads for volunteers and, supposedly, had taken a job during his summer vacation. He’d come back from his vacation two weeks later grinning and bragging about his exploits overseas with a group of world-beaters and lording it over the other ranch hands who worked for Cy. Harley had become the overnight hero of the men. Cy watched him with amused cynicism. None of the men he’d served with had ever returned home strutting and bragging about their exploits. Nor had any of them come home smiling. There was a look about a man who’d seen combat. It was unmistakable to anyone who’d been through it. Harley didn’t have the look.
None of the ranch hands knew that Cy Parks hadn’t always been a rancher. They knew about the fire that had cost him his family—most people locally did. But they didn’t know that he was a former professional mercenary and that Lopez was responsible for the fire. Cy wanted to keep it that way. He was through with the old life.
He opened the front door with a scowl on his lean, tanned face, but it wasn’t Harley who was standing on his porch. It was Ebenezer Scott.
Cy’s eyes, two shades darker green than Eb’s, narrowed. “Lost your way?” he taunted, running a hand through his thick unruly black hair.
Eb chuckled. “Years ago. Got another cup?”
“Sure.” He opened the door and let Eb in. The living room, old-fashioned and sparsely furnished, was neat as a pin. So were the formal dining room—never used—and the big, airy kitchen with not a spot of dirt or grime anywhere.
“Tell me you hired a housekeeper,” Eb murmured.
Cy got down an extra cup and poured black coffee into it, handing it across the table before he sat down. “I don’t need a housekeeper,” he replied. “Why are you here?” he added with characteristic bluntness.
“Did you keep in touch with any of your old contacts when you got out of the business?” Eb asked at once.
Cy shook his head. “No need. I gave it up, remember?” He lifted the cup to his wide, chiseled mouth.
Eb sipped coffee, nodded at the strength of it, and put the mug down on the Formica tabletop with a soft thud. “Manuel Lopez is loose,” he said without preamble. “We think he’s in the vicinity. Certainly some of his henchmen are.”
Cy’s face hardened. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why is he here?”
“Because Jessica Myers is here,” Eb replied. “She’s living with her young son and her niece, Sally Johnson, out at the old Johnson place. She got one of Lopez’s accomplices to rat on Lopez without giving himself away. She had access to documents and bank accounts and witnesses willing to testify. Now Lopez is out and he’s after Jess. He wants the name of the henchman who sold him out.”
Cy made an impatient gesture. “Fighting out in the open isn’t Lopez’s style. He’s the original knife-in-the-back boy.”
“I know. It worries me.” He sipped more coffee. “He had three, maybe four, of his thugs living in a rental place near Sally’s house. Two of them attacked her last night when her truck had a flat tire just down the road from them. It was no accident, either. They’ve obviously been gathering intelligence, watching her. They knew exactly where she was and exactly when she’d get as far as their place.” His face was grim. “I think there are more than four of them. I also think they may have the same sort of surveillance equipment I maintain at the ranch. What I don’t know is why. I don’t know if it’s solely because Lopez wants to get to Jessica.”
“Is Sally all right?”
Eb nodded. “I got to her in time, luckily. I broke a couple of bones for her assailants, but they got away and now the house seems to be without tenants—temporarily, of course. Have you noticed any activity on your northern boundary?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Cy replied, frowning. “All sorts of vehicles are coming and going. They’ve graded about an acre, and a steel warehouse is going up. The city planning commission chairman says it’s going to be some sort of production and distribution center for a honey concern. They even have a building permit.” He sighed angrily. “Matt Caldwell has been having hell with the planning commission about a project of his own, yet this gang got what they wanted immediately.”
“Honey,” Eb mused.
“That isn’t all of it,” Cy continued. “I investigated the holding company that bought the land behind me. It doesn’t belong to anybody local, but I can’t find out who’s behind it. It belongs to a corporation based in Cancún, Mexico.”
Eb’s eyes narrowed. “Cancún? Now, that’s interesting. The last report I had about Lopez before he was arrested was that he bought property there and was living like a king in a palatial estate just outside Cancún.” He stopped dead at the expression on his friend’s face. Cy and Eb had once helped put some of Lopez’s men away.
Cy’s breathing became rough, his green eyes began to glitter like heated emeralds. “Lopez! Now what the hell would he want with a honey business?”
“It’s evidently going to be a front for something illegal,” Eb assured him. “He may have picked Jacobsville for a distribution center for his ‘product’ because it’s small, isolated, and there are no federal agencies represented near here.”
Cy stood up, his whole body rigid with hatred and anger. “He killed my wife and son…!”
“He had Jessica run off the road and almost killed,” Eb added coldly. “She lived, but she was blinded. She came back here from Houston, hoping that I could protect her. But it’s going to take more than me. I need help. I want to set up a listening post on your back forty and put a man there.”
“Done,” Cy said at once. “But first I’m going to buy a few claymores…”
It took a minute for the expression on Cy’s face, in his eyes, in the set of his lean body to register. Eb had only seen him like that once before, in combat, many years before. Probably that was the way he’d looked when his wife and son died and he was hospitalized with severe burns on one arm, incurred when he’d tried to save them from the raging fire. He hadn’t known at the time that Lopez had sent men to kill him. Even in prison, Lopez could put out contracts.
“You can’t start setting off land mines. You have to think with your brain, not your guts,” Eb said curtly. “If we’re going to get Lopez, we have to do it legally.”
“Oh, that’s new, coming from you,” Cy said with biting sarcasm.
Eb’s broad shoulders lifted and fell as he sat down again, straddling the chair this time. “I’m reformed,” he said. “I want to settle down, but first I have to put Lopez away. I need you.”
Cy extended the hand that had been so badly
