The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Chapter 4

The phone call came that evening during dinner at the gracious brown-brick Georgian home of Pat Graham, in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., where Rhett and Dixie had gone to await developments out West. The attorney general left the dining room to take the call in her study, and when she returned her face was grave.

Rhett reached for Dixie’s hand. “News?” he asked quietly.

“That was Vernon,” Pat said as she seated herself. Her movements were slow and careful, and her eyes didn’t quite meet those of her guests. She placed her napkin across her lap. “They heard from the Navajo Tribal Police. A sheep-herder named Billie Chee reported finding your daughter’s truck and trailer around noon today abandoned on the Big Reservation near Window Rock. Vernon’s people are going over it now.”

Rhett nodded; he’d been prepared for something of the sort but felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach nonetheless. “From what you’ve told me about these people, I doubt they’ll find much,” he said flatly. “Any word from McCullough’s ranch? Do they know where he’s holding her?” Curled inside his, Dixie’s fingers felt like ice.

Pat Graham picked up her knife and fork, stared at her plate for a moment, then carefully laid the utensils back down. “Vern and Henry both have their people out there in force. They’ve had the place under surveillance since about eight this morning, local time.” Rhett made a sharp sound. The attorney general glanced at him. “Nobody’s gone in or out since then, but that doesn’t mean much. McCullough would have been expecting something of the sort, I’m sure. He wouldn’t keep Lauren there-most likely moved her out during the night. They could have her stashed just about anywhere by now-there’s a lot of wide-open country out there.”

Dixie clapped a hand over her mouth. Unable to sit still, Rhett pushed back his chair. “I need to be out there,” he muttered, driving a hand through his hair. “I can’t just…sit here, while my daughter’s out there somewhere-God knows where-held hostage by some damn…militia!” He was standing, now, gripping the back of Dixie’s chair. He wondered why it didn’t snap in his hands.

Pat rose, too, and leaned toward him, bracing her hands on the white linen tablecloth. “Rhett, I know how you must feel.” Her umber eyes were intent, her voice low and earnest. “But I can only advise you very strongly not to do that. We cannot have the media getting hold of this. We’d be putting your daughter in grave danger if we do. SOL’s instructions were very emphatic on that point. You must proceed with the campaign schedule as if nothing’s wrong, right up till the convention.”

Rhett expelled a breath. “Where I will regretfully decline the nomination for president.”

Pat nodded. “Once you’ve done that, your daughter will be released unharmed. So they say.”

Pacing, Rhett uttered a profanity. “They can’t be al lowed to get away with this,” he growled. “Think what it would mean-hell, it amounts to a coup! The end of our political system as we know it, the rule of law, the will of the majority-”

“Rhett.” Dixie caught his hand and held on to it.

He halted and passed a shaking hand over his eyes. “She’s my child, my little girl. I don’t know what I’d do if…” He sought Dixie’s eyes, like chips of an autumn sky, and clung to them as if they were the light of hope.

“We’re going to get your daughter back,” the attorney general said with quiet conviction.

Rhett threw her an angry look. “Seems to me you’ve got to find her first. Is Vernon certain she’s not at McCullough’s?”

She hesitated a beat too long. “Not absolutely certain, no. And there’s no way they can be until they get in there. But rest assured, he and Henry will take no overt action until they know your daughter is out of harm’s way.”

“Pat, this isn’t a damn press conference,” he snapped, then immediately followed that with a heavy, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

Only once before in his life had the future seemed so black, so terrifying, ironically also a time when he’d feared his children might be lost to him forever. Sixteen years ago, and it seemed like yesterday. Back then, too, it had looked as if he might be forced to make an unthinkable choice. Back then the choice had been between his children and Dixie, the woman who had become as essential to him as the air he breathed. Now, as then, the stubbornness inherent in his nature insisted there had to be another possibility. A third choice.

“This man Henry’s got on the inside-the one he says is going to keep my daughter safe. What have you heard from him? Seems to me if anybody’d know where Lauren is being held…” He paused at something in the attorney general’s eyes. “What?”

The woman’s face was a study in mute sympathy. “I wish I knew. At last report he hadn’t checked in since the night before Lauren was taken. Henry hasn’t heard from him in almost forty-eight hours. We don’t even know if he’s-”

“Alive?” Rhett finished for her.

Pat shrugged and looked away.

They arrived at the entrance to the camp around midnight, by the light of a full moon. Bronco suspected Lauren had been dozing in the saddle for the past hour or so, but she came wide awake when he spoke to the sentry. As they rode close together through the barbed-wire gates, she murmured in a voice slurred with exhaustion, “Where are we?”

He allowed himself a wry smile, knowing she couldn’t see it in the moonlight. “Welcome to Liberty.”

“Liberty?” Though her face was turned toward him, its expression was hidden from him by shadows. He could only hear her confusion in her voice.

He didn’t even try to keep the irony out of his. “That’s the sovereign and independent nation of Liberty. The laws of the oppressive and totalitarian regime known as the United States of America have no dominion here.”

“You people have your own country?” She had missed the irony. No longer sounding the least bit sleepy, her voice cracked on the last word.

He gave it some thought, debating whether to point out to her that, as a matter of fact, his people were indeed a sovereign nation. “Well, now, I’m not sure whether you could call Liberty a country, at least not yet, but we have declared our independence from the U.S. of A., yes, ma’am.”

“Why?”

He intoned, “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights-”’

“You’re quoting me the Declaration of Independence?” Lauren squeaked, edging toward outrage before adding sourly, “And, anyway, it’s ‘inalienable rights.’ At least get it right!”

“You sure about that?” Bronco pretended surprise.

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s ‘inalienable’-everybody knows that.”

Her tone-huffily superior-amused him. “Well, now,” he said somberly, “maybe you ought to look it up before you go and bet the farm on that.”

“Bet! Who said anything about a bet?”

“So, you’re not sure.”

“Of course I’m sure-I’m a lawyer, dammit! Don’t you think I know the Declaration of Independence?”

“And I’m a revolutionary,” Bronco countered in an even tone. “We take our creeds pretty seriously. And by the way, it goes on to say that ‘whenever any form of government becomes destructive to those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…as shall seem to them most likely to effect their safety and happiness.’ End of quote. That’s all we’re doing here-exercising our rights as set forth by our founding fathers.”

“Your founding fathers! You just said you people declared yourself independent of the ‘U.S. of A.’ What, you get to pick and choose what parts you want to keep?” She was wide awake now and becoming more and more incensed by the minute. So incensed, in fact, that Bronco wondered if maybe it was some kind of protective mechanism kicking in, so she wouldn’t have to think about the position she was in and how scared she was.

He, on the other hand, was enjoying himself more than he had all day. More, in fact, than since he’d had the in credibly bad judgment to dance with the woman at Smoky Joe’s.

He watched the dark shapes of rabbits bounding through the silvery meadow like fish jumping in a moonlit ocean, and said serenely, “That’s about the size of it. Throw away the stuff that doesn’t work, keep what does. What’s wrong with that?”

“Well…sure.” Her tone was grudging. “But you don’t do it with violence!”

“Who said anything about violence?”

“Oh, I suppose I’m here because you asked me nicely to please come and help you blackmail my father out of the presidential race! And what about that guard back there? You think I didn’t notice he had a gun? A very big gun.”

The shadow of a hunting owl brushed silently past them and the rabbits vanished. But an instant later Bronco heard a high-pitched squeal, cut ominously short. “He has a gun,” he said mildly. “He’s exercising his constitutional right to bear arms.”

Apparently too preoccupied to have noticed either the owl or the rabbits, Lauren turned her face toward him. In the moonlight her eyes looked like soot smudges on blue marble. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” she said in a cold contemptuous voice. “That’s all you militia types care about. Guns. You know what my father stands for.” Swearing angrily under her breath, she shifted around to face forward again.

A moment later the gray mare broke into a gallop. Not as if the woman was seriously trying to escape, Bronco realized. More likely her horse had picked up on some unconscious need to blow off steam. It was a condition he more than understood, but even so he wasted no time catching up with her. He’d hate for the sentries tracking their progress across the meadow with infrared cameras, high- powered binoculars and night-vision scopes to get the wrong idea.

“Lady, it’s too damn late and too damn dark to be doin’ that,” he scolded as he took hold of the mare’s bridle and slowed them back to a walk. “It’s a rough trail. Take it easy. You may’ve been napping in the saddle since dark, but the horses are dog tired and so am I.”

She glanced at him and didn’t say anything, and he was glad he couldn’t see the look in her eyes.

Actually, he decided he rather liked having her mad at him. He’d a lot rather have her riled up than the way she’d been this morning when he’d found her hanging on to the gray mare’s saddle, looking about one good gulp of air away from breaking down.

Bronco wasn’t exactly known for his tender heart, except where horses were concerned, and it had surprised him more than he cared to admit how close he’d come to gathering her into his arms right then and there. How much he’d wanted to stroke his fingers through that hair of hers that reminded him of a high-country meadow in the wintertime and tell her if she’d just trust him, everything was going to come out all right.

He’d thought about telling her the truth right then, just to keep her from trying anything stupid, if nothing else. Thing was, he didn’t know whether he could trust her. In the end he’d decided he couldn’t take the chance that she might, in some small way, maybe with a look or a gesture, give him away. He’d been under a long time-too long. The number-one commandment of the undercover operative-Thou shalt not blow thy cover-was so ingrained in him it was a natural part of who he was. He wasn’t even sure there was still the capacity for truth in his soul.

They crossed the rest of the meadow in silence. Lauren kept her eyes fixed on the road-no more than a track, really, gravel or trampled grass in places, marshy in low spots where water had collected from a recent thunder shower-and tried not to think about what lay ahead. Liberty. She shuddered and wished she could find something amusing in the irony of that. But her sense of humor had deserted her. Everything she could recall reading about militia organizations involved well-publicized acts of violence, and her circumstances seemed far too perilous for levity.

It occurred to her, though, that under different circumstances the night might have held a certain magic. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine it, a moonlight ride through a high-country meadow with a man who stirred her senses and ignited the romantic fires in her soul-fires she thought she’d snuffed out long ago, but that, it now appeared, had only been temporarily banked.

A pine-scented breeze stirred her hair, and she opened her eyes to find that the man riding beside her, prudently close enough to grab her mount’s bridle if she tried to run away, was still Johnny Bronco-a charming lying renegade Apache with nothing less than the violent overthrow of the U.S. government on his agenda. The last man on earth she’d have chosen to be alone with on a lovely moonlit night.

But the instant the thought formed in her mind, she knew there was something wrong with it, something that didn’t fit, something she’d overlooked. But as she chased it through the chaos in her mind, trying her best to pin it down, the stallion, Cochise Red, suddenly bugled a warning. Beneath her she felt the gray mare tense and tremble with her own shrill reply. A moment later, dark shapes emerged silently from the trees to surround them with guns at the ready. Welcome to Liberty.

The armed guard escorted them through a forest of tall pines, a ghostly landscape of deep shadows and slanting streaks of moonlight that seemed eerily busy in spite of the quiet, as if unseen beings lay watching, listening, marking their passing. Overhead the trees made soft swishing sounds in the breeze. The nighttime chill seeped through the sweatshirt Bronco had given her and into her bones, and deep inside she began to shiver.

The forest ended at a wide, upward-sloping stretch of bare ground that gleamed like a snowfield in the moonlight. At the far end of the clearing, tucked under the overhang of a looming escarpment and probably almost invisible from above, stood a house-just a cabin, really-made of logs. Incongruously charming, it had a wide porch that extended across the front, a stone chimney at one end and, opposite that, a long extension that looked as though it might once have been an open-sided shed, enclosed now with walls of rough-cut logs.

The cabin door stood open, and Lauren could see the man who waited silently on the porch outlined against the soft glow of light from inside. Gil McCullough. She knew him at once, even from a distance, by his faintly military stance-feet apart and firmly planted, arms confidently folded across his chest-and by the pewter shine of his crewcut hair.

The militia leader started down the steps as Bronco brought all three horses to a halt just below the porch and slid lightly from the saddle. Lauren noticed that only one of their armed escort was still with them; the others had melted soundlessly away. The remaining guard waited a short distance away, eyes watchful in his blackened face, automatic weapon cradled in his arms, while Bronco spoke briefly in an undertone to McCullough.

Then Bronco slipped past the gray mare’s head, clucking to her as he slid his hand along her neck. He gathered the reins from Lauren’s slack fingers and, with one arm resting on the pommel of her saddle, said in the same gentle tone he’d used with the horse, “Are you gonna get down offa there or not?”

But Lauren sat frozen in the saddle, glued to it by pride and the steadfast resolve that she would sooner die where she was than ever let him know-let any of them know-how stiff and saddle sore she was. She was accustomed to riding, but she’d never spent nearly eighteen solid hours in the saddle before.

“Need a hand?”

“No, I don’t need a hand.” Her voice matched the bone-chilling cold in her heart; if she’d never fully understood the term “cold-blooded murder” before, she did now. “If you would, please, get out of my way?”

Bronco instantly stepped back with a gesture of mocking gallantry. Summoning every ounce of willpower she had, Lauren gripped the saddlehorn, swung her leg around, disengaged her boot from the stirrup and eased herself to the ground.

When she did, it seemed as though every muscle from her waist on down screamed in agony. A groan pushed against her clenched jaws and a gasp lay locked inside her chest as she let go of the saddle and slowly turned.

“A little stiff?” Bronco inquired.

“A little.” She said it lightly, striving to keep her breathing inaudible.

She was also trying, under the guise of brushing herself off and setting her clothing to rights, to stretch the stiffness out of her legs. With three men watching her, she would not walk up that hill bow-legged and rump-sprung. She wouldn’t.

But the minute her clothing shifted and the air hit the four spots on her body-two on the insides of her knees and two more on her backside-that had been rubbed raw by the friction of the saddle, they began to burn like fire. Exhausted tears sprang to her eyes. She was sure she’d never been more miserable, or in more pain, in her life.

The next thing she knew, Bronco was taking her arm, guiding her up the slope to the foot of the steps with such gentleness, such subtle solicitude, that she felt bewildered, almost undone.

What was this? Compassion? Sympathy? Kindness? From her jailer? Perversely, instead of gratitude, now it was anger that made her eyes sting with helpless tears. To feel beholden to her kidnapper seemed the final insult-salt on her wounded pride.

Furious and seething, she jerked her arm from Bronco’s grip just as he was presenting her to Gil McCullough like the spoils of some great conquest.

McCullough chuckled; she could see the arrogant gleam of his teeth in the moonlight. “Well, Lauren. Welcome to Liberty. I guess you’re probably tired and hungry after your long ride. Come on inside-there’s a pot of stew keepin’ warm on the stove. After you’ve had something to eat, we’ll talk about living arrangements.” And as he spoke in warm cordial tones, he was taking her arm, moving her along beside him as if, Lauren thought, she was an honored guest being invited in for dinner.

It was an illusion that was shattered a moment later when the armed guard in his camouflage clothes and blackened face moved in on her other side.

Suddenly irrationally frightened, she looked for Bronco and just caught a glimpse of him as he was leading the three horses across the cleared slope and into the trees. Of course, she told herself, he’d see to the horses before his own needs-any good wrangler would. She had no idea why she suddenly felt so bereft without him when a moment ago she’d bitterly resented so much as the man’s helping hand on her arm.

“We’re primitive here, as you can see,” Gil was saying in an apologetic tone. “This is a wilderness survival training camp, so we’re a little bit lacking in the amenities, but we’ll do our best to see you’re comfortable. Since you’re apt to be with us for a while, we’d like for you to feel at home.”

Speechless, Lauren could only stare at him. He gazed blandly back at her and motioned for her to precede him.

She entered the cabin cautiously, walking as if the floor under her feet might vanish; nothing seemed real to her. The cabin and its contents were so incongruous that for a moment she felt as though she was dreaming in weird double exposure, or had somehow fallen into overlapping worlds. Modern military juxtaposed against a backdrop of the Old West-steel folding tables and chairs, a laptop computer, ham radio outfit, battery packs, charts and maps and miscellaneous equipment, the purposes of which Lauren could only guess, occupied most of the space in a room constructed of rough wood planks, old and weathered to a silvery gray. A modern stainless-steel kettle shared space on a cast-iron wood-burning cookstove with an old-fashioned enameled coffeepot. The light in the room was the cold blue of modern Coleman lanterns, but the smells that permeated the cabin were the pungent down-home aromas of grass-fed beef and simmering coffee.

“I expect you’d like to wash up before you eat.” Gil motioned toward the back wall of the cabin opposite the door, where an enameled pot and basin sat atop a wooden dry sink in front of the room’s only window. As he spoke he was moving among the steel tables and chairs, his attention already returning to whatever it was he’d been involved in when interrupted by her arrival. He seemed completely relaxed and unconcerned by her presence.

And why not? He’d know she posed no danger or flight risk. What could she do, where could she go, one woman in the middle of a camp filled with men, in the middle of a wilderness, in the middle of the night? And that was even assuming she could somehow get past the armed guard planted like a medium-size tree in front of the doorway.

Burning with resentment and trembling with fatigue and helpless fury, Lauren crossed the plank floor on legs she feared might buckle at any minute. The water in the pot was warm. She dipped some into the basin with a large ladle that was hanging on the side of the pot and lowered her hands into it, trying not to weep with the sudden longing for a whole tubful in which to immerse her aching body. In spite of her efforts a few tears mingled with the water in her cupped hands as she leaned over the basin to wash her face. And what a blessed relief it was-both the lovely warm water and the tears. Safe tears, camouflaged by the process of washing.

Feeling somewhat restored, she dried her hands and face on a towel she found hanging on a nail beside the window. A glance at Gil told her he was engrossed in his laptop, so she wandered over to the cookstove and lifted the lid from the stew pot. She’d already decided, childishly perhaps, that she would not speak to her captors unless asked a direct question. A small defiance, but it seemed important to her to retain even the tiniest measure of self-determination and control.

A rough wooden cupboard beside the stove yielded stainless-steel bowls, mugs and eating utensils. Lauren ladled a hefty helping of stew, thick and rich with chunks of beef, potatoes, onions and green peppers, into a bowl, filled a mug with coffee that looked almost as thick as the stew and went back to the sink. Leaning her backside against it, she took a sip of the coffee and thought wistfully of cream and sugar, then set the mug on the sink behind her and dug her spoon into the stew.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Gil said, glancing up from his computer and pulling out a folding chair next to him. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Lauren thought of the places on her body that were burning like fire, two of which were located exactly where that metal chair would meet her bottom. “I’m fine,” she said distantly.

Gil aimed a glance at her over the tops of rimless glasses, then shrugged and muttered, “Suit yourself,” as he went back to his laptop. A moment later, though, he looked up again. This time he took off the glasses and placed them on the table, then sat and regarded her thoughtfully.

Lauren did her best to ignore the silent scrutiny, forcing herself to think, instead, about how unexpectedly good the stew was, trying to identify the seasonings, wondering who’d made it. But in spite of her efforts, her heartbeat quickened when Gil got up from his chair, picked up a lantern and went down two steps into the long shed that was attached to the cabin.

Splashes of illumination revealed a long wooden table and benches, as well as shadowy piles of boxes and cartons of varying shapes and sizes-presumably the shed served the camp as both mess hall and storage facility. Lauren kept spooning stew into her mouth as she watched Gil pause, then bend over to open a wooden crate. She saw him take something out of the crate, and when she saw what it was, the stew turned to ashes in her mouth.

No. Oh, please, no-not that. Anything but handcuffs!

She didn’t think she’d spoken aloud, but McCullough must have seen the horror on her face, because on the way back into the cabin he set the lantern on the table and held up a hand. In a tone that was part testy, part soothing, he said, “Now, don’t get excited. Doggone it, I hadn’t intended on doing this.” Halfway between her and the guard at the door, he paused and regarded her with his head tilted to one side. After a moment he made an impatient gesture, as if she’d just asked him a troubling question, one he couldn’t answer.

He cleared his throat in an embarrassed sort of way, which Lauren might have enjoyed if she’d been in a frame of mind to think about anything except her fear. “As you can see, we’re not exactly set up here for prisoners of war. We haven’t got a, um…any kind of stockade or anything like that. This cabin is about as secure a location as we’ve got, and it’s not going to be practical to keep you here for…obvious reasons. What I was gonna do was put you in a tent, post a guard, and that would be that.” His perplexed look darkened to a frown. “But now, doggone it, I’m thinking I might have underestimated you. Truth is, you know, I just don’t believe I can trust you.”

Yes! Lauren cravenly thought. Yes, you can-you can trust me. Please don’t handcuff me. Please… But except for a disdainful snort, pride kept her silent.

“I know you’re a smart girl,” Gil went on with a wry little half smile. “What I’m afraid is, you might be just smart enough to think you can figure a way out of here.” His smile changed to a fatherly frown. “I don’t even want to think about what might happen if you were to do that. The last thing we want is for anything bad to happen to you. So I guess you could look at this as a safety precaution-that’s your safety I’m talking about, you understand? At night, mainly. Just to make sure you don’t try anything smart. Okay? You understand?” As if, Lauren thought, he really did want her to.

She thought of the cot in the saddle house, the comforting smell of horses and leather. How relieved she’d been that they hadn’t tied her up.

From a distance she could hear Gil’s voice explaining. “As soon as you’re done eating, Ron here is going to take you to your quarters, get you settled in.” And he was handing the cuffs to the man silently standing at the door.

It was then that Lauren caught the glitter of blue eyes and just managed to hold back a gasp of recognition. She hadn’t known him before with his face blackened, but now she realized that the guard was the same man she’d last seen in McCullough’s living room, when Gil had handed him the keys to her truck. The man with the ice-cold eyes. The man whose look had made her shiver.

She wasn’t shivering now. She just felt frozen. Numb.

Then all at once her mind filled with the image of Bronco’s face-his fierce warlike eyebrows and strangely alluring smile. Without stopping to wonder why, she found herself focusing on that face and that smile with all her energy, all her will. For reasons she could not fathom, she could hear his warm bear-rug voice in her mind, saying, “Rise and shine, Laurie Brown.”

Gil’s hand was gripping her arm; the bowl was being taken from her useless fingers. She felt herself being led like a lamb to where Ron Masters waited-waited with cold eyes gleaming in his sooty face like a hungry wolf’s. Terror-mindless, unreasoning, no doubt a product of exhaustion and all that had happened to her-rose in her throat.

Fingers bit into the flesh of her arms. Though she knew it was futile, she dug in her heels and pulled against them with all her strength as she sucked in a breath for a scream.

At that instant, when she was only a heartbeat away from hysteria, from complete humiliation, the cabin door opened and there was Bronco, with her saddlebags slung over one shoulder.

For a long moment he stood motionless in the doorway, framed against a backdrop of moonlight, casually blocking their exit. No one spoke, but Lauren saw his eyes glitter, then turn hard. And deadly.