Fearless Read online

  Glory grimaced. “He’s right,” she told her assistant sadly. “I’d love for you to go with me, but it’s risky.”

  Haynes looked miserable. “I could wear a disguise.”

  “No,” Marquez said quietly. “You’re more useful here. If any of the other attorneys find out something about Fuentes, you’re in the perfect position to pass it on to me.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Haynes said. She glanced at Glory with a rueful smile. “I’ll have to find a new boss while you’re gone.”

  “Jon Blackhawk over at the FBI office is looking for another assistant,” Marquez suggested.

  Haynes glared at him. “He’ll never get another one in this town, not after what he did to the last one.”

  Marquez was trying to keep a straight face. “I’m sure it was all a terrible misunderstanding.”

  Glory let out a chuckle in spite of herself. “Some misunderstanding. His assistant thought he was very attractive and asked him over to her place for dinner. He actually called the police and had her charged with sexual harassment.”

  Marquez let out the laugh he’d been holding back. “She was a beautiful blonde with a high IQ and his own mother had recommended her for the job. Blackhawk phoned his mother and told her that his latest assistant had tried to seduce him. His mother asked how. Now she’s outraged over what he did and she won’t speak to him, either. The girl was her best friend’s daughter.”

  “He did drop the sexual harassment charge,” Glory pointed out.

  “Yes, but she quit just the same and went online to tell every woman in San Antonio what he did to her.” He whistled. “I’ll bet he’ll grow gray hair before he gets a date in this town.”

  “Serves him right,” Haynes muttered.

  “Oh, it gets worse,” Marquez added with a grin. “Remember Joceline Perry, who works for Garon Grier and one of the other local FBI agents? They gave Jon’s work to her.”

  “Oh, dear,” Haynes murmured.

  Joceline was something of a local legend among administrative assistants. She was known for her cutting wit and refusal to do work she considered beneath her position. She would drive Jon Blackhawk up the wall on a good day. God only knew what she’d do to him after the other secretary quit.

  “Poor guy,” Glory murmured. But she grinned.

  Haynes glanced at Glory with a worried look. “What are you going to do on the farm? You wouldn’t dare go out and hoe in the fields, would you?”

  “Of course not,” Glory assured her. “I can can.”

  “You can what?” Haynes frowned.

  “You have heard of canning?” Glory replied. “It’s how you put up fruits and vegetables so that they don’t spoil. I can do jam and jelly and pickles and all sorts of stuff.”

  Marquez raised an eyebrow. “My mother used to do it, but her hands aren’t what they used to be. It’s an art.”

  “A valuable skill,” Glory said smugly.

  “You’ll need to wear jeans and look less elegant,” Marquez told her. “No suits on the farm.”

  “I lived in Jacobsville when I was a child,” Glory reminded him with a forced smile, without going into detail. Marquez was old enough to have known about Glory’s ordeal. Of course, a lot of people didn’t, even there. “I can fit in.”

  “Then you’ll go?” Marquez persisted.

  Glory sat back against the desk. She was outnumbered and outgunned. They were probably right. San Antonio was a big city, but she’d been in the same apartment building for two years and everyone who lived there knew her. She’d be easy to find if someone asked the right questions. If she got herself killed, Fuentes would walk, and more people would be butchered in his insane quest for wealth.

  If her doctor was right—and he was a very good doctor—the move right now might save her life, such as it was. She couldn’t admit how frightened she was about his prognosis. Not to anyone. Tough girls like Glory didn’t whine about their burdens.

  “What about Jason and Gracie?” she blurted out suddenly.

  “Jason’s already hired a small army of bodyguards,” Marquez assured her. “He and Gracie will be fine. It’s you they’re worried about. All of us are worried about you.”

  She drew in a long breath. “I guess a bulletproof vest and a Glock wouldn’t convince you to let me stay here?”

  “Fuentes has bullets that penetrate body armor, and nobody outside a psycho ward would give you a gun.”

  “All right,” she said heavily. “I’ll go. Do I have to ramrod this farm?”

  “No, Jason’s put in a manager.” He frowned. “Odd guy. He isn’t from Texas. I don’t know where Jason found him. He’s…” He started to say that the manager was one of the most unpleasant, taciturn people he’d ever met, despite the fact that the farm workers liked him. But it might not be the best time to say it. “He’s very good at managing people,” Marquez said instead.

  “As long as he doesn’t try to manage me, I guess it’s okay,” she said.

  “He won’t know anything about you, except what Jason tells him,” he assured her. “Jason won’t have told him about why you’re there, and you can’t, either. Apparently the manager’s just had some sort of blow in his life, too, and he’s taken the job to get himself over it.”

  “A truck farm,” she murmured.

  “I know where there’s an animal shelter,” Marquez replied whimsically. “They need someone to feed the lions.”

  She glared at him. “With my luck, they’d try to feed me to the lions. No, thanks.”

  “This is for your own good,” Marquez said quietly. “You know that.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She moved away from the desk. “My whole life, I’ve been forced to run away from problems. I’d hoped that this time, at least, I could stand and deliver.”

  “Neat phrasing,” Marquez mused. “Would you like to borrow my sword?”

  She gave him a keen glance. “Your mother should never have given you that claymore,” she told him. “You’re very lucky that the patrol officer could be convinced to drop the charges.”

  He looked affronted. “The guy picked the lock on my apartment door and let himself in. When I woke up, he was packing my new laptop into a book bag for transport!”

  “You have a sidearm,” she pointed out.

  He glowered at her. “I forgot and left it locked in the pocket of my car that night. But the sword was mounted right over my bed.”

  “They say the thief actually jumped out the window when he brandished that huge weapon,” Glory told Haynes, who grinned.

  “My apartment is on the ground floor,” Marquez informed them.

  “Yes, but you were chasing the thief down the street in your…” She cleared her throat. “Well, you were out of uniform.”

  “I got arrested for streaking,” Marquez muttered. “Can you believe that?”

  “Of course I can! You were naked!” Glory replied.

  “How I sleep has nothing to do with the fact that the guy was robbing me! At least I got him down and immobilized by the time the squad car spotted me.” He shook his head. “I told the arresting officer who I was, and he asked to see my badge.”

  Glory put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  “Did you tell him where it was?” Haynes asked.

  “I told him where he could put it if he didn’t arrest the burglar.” He moved restlessly. “Anyway, another squad car pulled up behind him, and it was an officer who knew me.”

  “A female officer,” Glory told Haynes, with glee.

  Marquez’s high cheekbones actually seemed to flush. “The burglar’s tote came in handy,” he murmured. “At least I got to ride back to my apartment. But the story got out from the night shift, and by the next afternoon, I was a minor celebrity.”

  “What a pity you didn’t get caught by the squad car’s camera,” Haynes giggled. “They could have featured you on that TV show, Cops.”

  He glared at her. “I was robbed!”

  �
��Well, he didn’t actually get to keep anything he took, did he?” Haynes asked.

  “He fell on my new laptop when I tackled him,” Marquez scoffed. “Trashed the hard drive. I lost all my files.”

  “Never heard of backing up with hard copy, I guess?” Glory queried.

  “Who expects to have someone break into a cop’s apartment and rob him?”

  “He does have a point,” Haynes had to admit.

  “I guess so.”

  Marquez looked at his watch and grimaced. “I have to be in court this afternoon to testify for a homicide case,” he told them. “I can tell my boss that you’re going to Jacobsville, right?”

  She sighed. “Yes. I’ll go tomorrow morning, first thing. Do I need a letter of introduction or anything?”

  “No. Jason will let the manager know you’re coming. You can stay in the house on the property.”

  She hesitated. “Where is the manager staying?”

  “Also in the house.” He held up a hand. “Before you say it, there’s a housekeeper who lives in the house and cooks for the manager.”

  That relaxed her, but only a little. She didn’t like strange men, especially at close quarters. She decided that despite the summer heat, she’d pack thick cotton pajamas and a long robe.

  JACOBSVILLE SEEMED MUCH smaller than she remembered it. The main street was almost exactly the same as it had been when she lived nearby. There was the pharmacy where her father had gone for medicine. Over there was the café which Barbara, Marquez’s mother, had run for as long as she could remember. There was the hardware store and the feed store and the clothing boutique. It was all the same. Only Glory herself had changed.

  As she turned onto the narrow paved road that led to the Pendletons’s truck farm, she began to feel sick at her stomach. She’d forgotten. The house was the same one she’d shared with her mother and father, until her mother’s explosive temper had shattered Glory’s young body and their family. Until now, she hadn’t thought about how difficult it might be, trying to live there again.

  The old pecan tree in the front yard was still there. She spotted it before she saw the mailbox beside the narrow paved driveway. Years ago, there had been a tire swing on the tree.

  The real surprise was the house. The Pendletons must have spent some money remodeling it, because the old clapboard house of Glory’s youth was now an elegant white Victorian with gingerbread woodwork. There was a long, wide front porch which contained a swing, a settee and several rocking chairs. Far behind the house was a huge steel warehouse where workers were putting boxes of fresh corn and peas and tomatoes and other produce from the large fields on all sides of the house and warehouse. The fields seemed to stretch for miles into the flat distance.

  She pulled up in the graveled parking lot under another pecan tree and cut off the engine. Her small sedan contained most of her worldly goods. Except for her furniture, and she hadn’t even considered bringing that along. She was keeping her apartment in San Antonio. The rent was paid up for six months, courtesy of her stepbrother. She wondered when she’d get to go home.

  She opened the door and got out, just in time to see a tall, jean-clad man with jet-black hair and a mustache come down the front steps. He had a strong face and an athletic physique. He walked with such elegance that he seemed to glide along. He looked foreign.

  He spotted Glory and his taut expression grew even more reserved. He moved toward her with a quick, elegant step. As he came closer, she could see that his eyes were black, like jet, under a jutting brow and dark eyebrows. She had the odd feeling that he was the sort of man you hope you never meet in a dark alley.

  He stopped just in front of her, adding up her inexpensive car, her eyeglasses, her windswept blond hair in its tight bun and her modest clothing. If he was measuring, she thought, she’d fallen short.

  “May I help you?” he asked coldly.

  She leaned heavily on the car door. “I’m the canner.”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  She swallowed, hard. He was very tall and he looked half out of humor already. “I can can.”

  “We don’t hire exotic dancers,” he shot back.

  Her green eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “The can-can is a dance, I believe?”

  “Is it, really?” she asked with a mischievous glance. “Would you like to demonstrate it, and I’ll give you my opinion of whether it’s a dance or not?”

  Incredible, she thought. Until now, she hadn’t really believed that a man’s eyes could explode with bad temper…

  2

  THE MAN’S JAW CLENCHED. “I am not in the mood for games,” he said in coldly accented English.

  “First you talk about dancing, now you’re on about games,” she said. “Really, I don’t care about your private life. I was sent here to help with the canning. Jason Pendleton offered me the position.”

  His eyes were really smoldering now. “He what?”

  “Gave me a job,” she replied. She frowned. “Are you hard of hearing?”

  He took a step toward her and she moved further toward the hinges. He looked ferocious. “Jason Pendleton offered you a job, here?”

  “Yes, he did,” she replied. Perhaps humor wasn’t a very good idea at the time. “He said you needed someone to help put up his organic fruit. I can make preserves and jellies and I know how to can vegetables.”

  He seemed to be struggling with her presence. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy about her coming here. “Jason said nothing about it to me.”

  “He told me he’d phone you tonight. He’s in Montana at a cattle show.”

  “I know where he is.”

  Her hip was throbbing. She didn’t want to mention it. He was irritated enough already. “Would you like me to sleep in the car?” she asked politely.

  He seemed to realize where they were, as if he’d lost his train of thought. “I’ll have Consuelo get a room ready for you,” he said without enthusiasm. “She’s been putting up the jellies and preserves herself. It’s a new line. We have a processing plant for the vegetables. If the fruit line catches on, we’ll add it into the plant. Consuelo said the kitchen here is plenty large enough to do for a sampling of products.”

  “I won’t get in her way,” she promised.

  “Come on, then. I’ll introduce you before I leave.”

  Was he going to quit already, then, to keep from having to work with her? she wanted to ask. Pity he had no sense of humor.

  She reached back into the car for her red dragon cane. She had an umbrella stand full of the helpful devices, in all sorts of colors and styles. If one had to be handicapped, she reasoned, one should be flamboyant about it.

  She closed the door, leaning on the cane.

  His expression was inexplicable. He scowled.

  She waited for him to comment about her disability.

  He didn’t. He turned and walked, slowly, back to the house, waiting for her to catch up. She recognized that expression. It was pity. She clenched her teeth. If he offered to help her up the steps, she was going to hit him right in the knee with her cane.

  He didn’t do that, either. He did open the door for her, grudgingly.

  Great, she told herself as she walked into the foyer. We’ll communicate in sign language from now on, I guess.

  He led the way through a comfortable living room with polished bare wood floors, through what seemed like pantries on both sides of the narrow passage, and into an enormous kitchen with new appliances, a large table and chairs, a worktable, and yellow lace curtains at all the windows. The floor was linoleum with a stone pattern. The cabinets were oak-stained, roomy and easy to reach. There was a counter that went from the dishwasher and sink around to the stove. The refrigerator was standing alone in a corner. It must have offended the cook and been exiled, Glory thought wickedly.

  A small dark woman with her hair in a complicated ponytail down her back, tied in four places with pink ribbon, turned at the sound of footsteps. She had a rou
nd face and laughing dark eyes.

  “Consuelo,” the tall man said, indicating Glory, “this is the new canner.”

  Consuelo’s eyebrows arched.

  “I told him I can can and he called me an exotic dancer,” Glory told the woman.

  The other woman seemed to be fighting laughter.

  “This is Consuelo Aguila,” he introduced. “And this is…” He stopped dead, because he didn’t know who the new arrival was.

  Glory waited for him to get on with it. She wasn’t inclined to help out.

  “You didn’t ask her name?” Consuelo chided. She went to Glory, with a big smile. “You are welcome here. I can use the help. What is your name?”

  “Gloryanne,” came the soft reply. “Gloryanne Barnes.”

  The tall man raised both eyebrows. “Who named you?”

  Her eyes grew solemn. “My father. He thought having a child was a glorious occasion.”

  He was curious about her expression. She seemed reluctant to add anything more.

  “Do you know who he is?” Consuelo asked her, indicating the tall man.

  Glory pursed her lips. She shook her head.

  “You didn’t even introduce yourself?” Consuelo asked the man, aghast.

  He glowered at her. “She won’t be working with me,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, but she’s going to live in the house…?”

  “I don’t mind sleeping in my car,” Glory said at once, very pleasantly.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he growled. “I have to go to the hardware store to pick up some more stakes for the tomato plants,” he told the small, dark woman. “Give her a room and tell her how we work here.”

  Glory opened her mouth to protest his attitude, but he whirled and strode out of the room without another word. The front screen door banged loudly as he went out it.

  “Well, he’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Glory asked the older woman with a grin. “I can hardly wait to settle in and make his life utterly miserable.”

  Consuelo laughed. “He’s not so bad,” she said. “We don’t know why he took over when Mr. Wilkes resigned. The boss—that’s Mr. Pendleton, he lives in San Antonio—told us that Rodrigo had lost his family recently and was in mourning. He came here to pick up his life again.”