Protector Page 6

  “Miss Raynor?” a deep, faintly accented voice inquired.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a message for your houseguest.”

  “Who is this?” she asked belligerently.

  “My name is not important. Please tell Sheriff Carson that a more accurate marksman is being engaged.”

  He hung up.

  Minette stared at the phone, but she didn’t hang it up. She pulled out her cell phone and called Zack. She explained the phone call she’d just received and asked if he could have the telephone company run a trace. He agreed to try and hung up.

  Bill Slater stuck his head in the door. “Trouble?” he asked.

  She sighed. Her managing editor looked capable of standing there all day unless she told him. “I think whoever hired the attempt on Sheriff Carson just called me,” she confided. “He had a message for Hayes. They’re hiring a better shot,” she said coldly.

  “Well, that’s brassy,” Bill replied.

  She nodded. She felt sick to her stomach. They couldn’t watch Hayes night and day. And a good sniper was invisible.

  “Zack’s good,” he reminded her. “So is Yancy.”

  “I wonder if we know anybody in the mob,” she wondered aloud. “Fight fire with fire?” she mused with a laugh.

  “Bite your tongue. Hayes will lock you up for just suggesting it.”

  She sighed. “No doubt.” She worried her hair. “It’s got to be connected with the turf war,” she added. “Hayes interfered. They don’t like that.”

  “Tell me about it. Our recently departed ace reporter almost got you killed and us burned alive with his unmasking of the rougher elements of the drug trade,” he added darkly. “I could have punched him. Insolent little toad.”

  “He wasn’t so bad,” she replied with a sad smile. “At least he had the guts to dig out the bare facts of the conflict.”

  “And almost got us killed,” Bill repeated. “If it hadn’t been for some quick work by the fire department, and then Chief Grier, who found the perp, we’d both be toast.”

  “That’s the truth.” She pursed her lips. “You know what, I think I’ll wander over to the police department and have a word with Chief Grier.” She got up, and pushed her chair toward her desk. “You’ll need to have Jerry prompt the florist about that display ad they want—we can’t wait too long on the copy.”

  “I’ll tell Jerry to sit on them.”

  She made a face at him. “Don’t sit too hard. We’re hurting for advertising.”

  “So I’ll stand on street corners and sell great package deals,” he chuckled.

  “I don’t think it would help. But it’s a kind thought. I’ll be back when I can. Call if you need me.”

  He nodded.

  * * *

  Cash Grier was intimidating, even to a woman whose job it was to interview all sorts of personalities. He seemed very businesslike and unapproachable. He was tall and dark, with a handsome face and intelligent black eyes. He’d been married for a couple of years to a former movie star, and they had a little girl. Tippy Grier’s young brother also lived with them.

  “What can I do for you?” Cash asked when she perched forward on a chair in front of his massive cluttered desk.

  She was staring at piles of paper haphazardly stacked on either side of a cleaned-off spot.

  He gave her a haughty look. “I’ll have you know that those files are logically stacked in priority of need. I myself went through each one with no assistance from my secretary who doesn’t know how to file anything!” he added, raising his voice so that the demure, dark-haired young woman in the outer office could hear him through the half-open door.

  “Lies,” came a lilting voice in answer.

  “I can’t even find the menu for Barbara’s Café!” he shot back.

  With a resounding sigh, the young woman walked through the door, dark-haired, slender and neatly dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt with a knee-length sleeved sweater over it. “There,” she said, putting the menu neatly on his desk. She glared at him. “And the files would be in order, sir, if you’d just let me do my job...”

  “Those are secret and important files,” he pointed out in his deep voice. “Which should not be the subject of local gossip.”

  “I never gossip,” she replied blandly.

  “You do so,” he retorted. “You told people all over town that I carry a sidearm!”

  The secretary looked at Minette, rolled her eyes and went back out again.

  Minette was distracted. She stared at Cash Grier curiously. Their very few meetings had been businesslike and brief, mostly when she interviewed him about criminal investigations—and there had only been a handful lately.

  “I have trouble getting good help,” he said with an angelic smile.

  “I’m the best help you’ve ever had, sir, because I can spell and type and answer the phone!”

  “Well, you can’t do them all at once, Carlie, now can you?” he shot back.

  There was a muttered sound, followed by the muted one of fingers on a computer keyboard.

  “What can I do for you?” Cash asked belatedly.

  “It’s about Sheriff Carson,” Minette replied.

  “Yes. We’re working with his department to find out who shot him, although frankly, it’s causing some headaches.”

  She nodded. “I just had a call from someone who said the next person they send would be a better shot. That’s just a summary. I brought the recording with me.” She took out a small cassette and put it on the desk. “We routinely record all our calls. We’ve had some issues in the past.”

  “Yes, when someone tried to firebomb your office, I remember. He’s doing five to ten up in state prison, one of the few arsonists who ever got convicted.” Cash took out a small device from his desk drawer, inserted the tape Minette had brought and played it with his eyes shut. He did that again. He opened his eyes. “Northern Mexico,” he murmured, thinking aloud. “But with a hint of Mexico City. A native speaker. Calling from somewhere near a highway.”

  “You got all that from a few words?” Minette asked, impressed.

  He nodded, all business. “I still have a few skills left over from the old days, and I’ve dealt with telephone threats before. This is gloating, pure and simple. He thinks he’s too smart to be caught.” His eyes narrowed. “Hayes still at your place?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s resisting attempts at rehabilitation and pretending that he doesn’t need all that nonsense.” She sighed. “He may never leave, at this rate.”

  He got up from the desk, towering over her. “I’ll go out and have a talk with him,” he said. “I’ve been in his situation a few times. It might help. Mind if I hold on to that tape?”

  “No. And if we get any more calls, I’ll bring them to you.” She hesitated. “I have two little kids living in my house, not to mention my elderly great-aunt,” she began.

  “And you’re wondering how safe they are,” he replied. He smiled gently. “I’ll take care of that. No worries. You just save the world one article at a time.”

  She laughed. “Okay.”

  He walked her out. Carlie looked up from her desk with shimmering green eyes.

  “The mayor called,” she told Cash. “He wants to know if you’re coming to the city council meeting.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I’ll tell you what to tell him...” Cash began heatedly.

  She held up a hand. “Please. My father is a minister.”

  Cash made a face at her and walked Minette to the front door. “I’ll see what I can do to motivate Hayes.” He hesitated. “Has he still got that huge reptile?”

  Minette nodded.

  “Is it living with you, too?” he asked with a grin.

  She laughed. “No. I’m not going to be lunch for any enormous holdover from the dinosaur age,” she promised him.

  * * *

  Later, at Minette’s house, Cash was less humorous. Hayes had
received a call, also.

  “The coward was bragging about his marksman’s skill. He said that I moved or I’d be dead now,” Hayes muttered.

  “Good thing you did move,” Cash replied. He drew in a breath. “I gather you’ve had the number checked out already?”

  Hayes gave him a long-suffering look, and Cash laughed.

  “Yes. It was a cell phone that’s no longer in service. Probably one of those throwaway types. We traced a call one of the cartel mules placed from our jail the day before I was shot. Same story.”

  Cash nodded. “We’ve dealt with our share of those,” he agreed. He leaned forward in the chair he was occupying beside Hayes’s bed. “Lawmen make enemies,” he added. “But this is an exceptional one. Do you have any idea who’s behind the assassination attempt?”

  Hayes nodded. “My investigator dug out a privileged little piece of dark information about a month ago. He was able to tie the death of a border agent with the one they call El Ladrón.”

  “The thief,” Cash translated. He laughed. “How appropriate.”

  “His men don’t call him that,” Hayes said. “Only his enemies.”

  “We can only hope that he has enough of those to help bring him down.”

  “He has one major enemy who’s fighting him for control of Cotillo,” Hayes said. “A reclusive, very dangerous leader of a South American cartel making inroads into the Mexican drug trade.”

  “This reclusive drug trader, do we know who he is?”

  Hayes nodded. “The son of an American heiress who ran away with a charming but deadly Mexican gang leader. He used his mother’s money to avenge his father, who was killed by agents of El Ladrón.”

  “Deeper and deeper,” Cash mused.

  “It gets worse.” Hayes’s jaw was taut with stress. His dark eyes narrowed. “This reclusive drug lord has ties to our country in a way that could cause some very harsh problems locally.”

  “Don’t tell me. He’s related to the mayor of Jacobsville,” Cash chuckled.

  “Much worse.” He drew in a breath. “He has a daughter. She doesn’t know it.”

  Cash frowned. “There’s a new wrinkle. Her father is a notorious drug dealer and she doesn’t know about him?”

  Hayes nodded. He felt a twinge of guilt. “He’s the one who supplied Brent and Ella Walsh, who gave Rachel Conley the coke that she injected my brother, Bobby, with...a fatal dose of narcotics.”

  “Sorry,” Cash said gruffly. “That must make it harder.”

  “It does.” He leaned back against the pillows. He felt older than his years. “My father, Dallas, was sheriff here for many years, right up until he died, as you must know. He told me about the connection, in case I ever needed the information, but he made me swear that I’d never tell the woman what I knew about her real father.” He made a face. “It’s tied my hands in terrible ways.”

  “I can imagine.” He cocked his head. “Which means you can’t tell me, either.”

  “That’s the case.” Hayes drew in a long breath. “I’m not sure what to do,” he confessed. “I don’t know how she’d react. I don’t know,” he added, “if her father even knows about her. But I have to assume that he probably does. If that’s the case, and he finds himself in a corner, he might try to use her to help him out of it.”

  Cash’s eyebrows arched. “She has influence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “I never thought I’d have to wrestle with a decision like this,” he replied. “It’s keeping me awake at night.”

  “Family secrets,” he murmured. “Tippy and I have had to deal with those, too. She still doesn’t know who her real father was. Her mother couldn’t tell her, although her brother’s dad is a police chief in Georgia.”

  “I heard about that,” Hayes replied, and frowned.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Hayes shrugged, wincing when it made his chest uncomfortable. “I’m not sure. It depends on circumstances.” He met Cash’s eyes. “I’m putting Minette’s family in danger by staying here,” he added unexpectedly.

  “Not really.” Cash’s dark eyes were amused. “Things are going on that you don’t know about.” He held up his hand when Hayes tried to speak. “Better you don’t know.”

  “I gather our every move is being watched,” Hayes mused.

  “Oh, you can count on that.” He propped his forearms on his knees. “Now about this physical therapy thing...”

  “Stop right there,” Hayes muttered.

  “Sorry, I promised. I always keep my promises. I know what it’s like to be shot, and I have vaster experience than you do,” he added. “You don’t want to end up losing the use of that arm, do you?”

  Hayes’s eyes popped. “What do you mean?”

  “Surely the doctor explained how muscles atrophy?”

  “Well, he said something of the sort. I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to get him to sign me out of the hospital at the time. I’d have agreed to paint his house if he’d asked.”

  Cash chuckled. “I’ve been there, too.” He pursed his lips. “It’s just a little sacrifice, having that treatment and doing the exercises. You don’t want to have to hire somebody to carry your gun and shoot it for you,” he added.

  “I have been shot before,” Hayes argued.

  “Yes, but not this seriously,” Cash replied. His dark eyes narrowed. “You know, most people who carry more than two gunshot wounds would be said to have gone looking for trouble.”

  Hayes glared at him.

  “I won’t believe you’re suicidal, Hayes,” Cash continued. “But you do walk in blind. I don’t want to have to learn how to work with a new sheriff,” he added meaningfully. “It would be time-consuming.”

  Hayes managed a grin. “I’ll buy that. You’re not the easiest acquaintance I know.”

  “I’ll get worse with age,” Cash promised. “The point is,” he sobered, “that you’re less cautious than you need to be. Gunshot wounds add up. They cause problems later in life.”

  “I’m not going to start watching my shadow.”

  “Not asking you to,” Cash replied. “But you need to pay more attention to your surroundings and call for backup. You’re not one of those caped heroes. We don’t have any radioactive spiders around here.”

  Hayes chuckled. “You sure about that?”

  “Go to rehab,” Cash advised. “And take advantage of the last rest you’re likely to get in the coming weeks. I think we’re going to find that we’re in the middle of a drug turf war.”

  “You’ve been talking to Cy Parks.”

  “Yes, I have. You remember that property a former drug trafficker bought that adjoins his?” He waited while Hayes nodded. “Well, it’s never been resold and Cy’s seen some new activity there. Buildings going up, semitrailers coming in. He checked it out, but the workers don’t seem to know much. They say some horse breeder is moving in. Cy thinks it’s going to be a front for drug distribution. He’s worried.”

  “He does love his purebred Santa Gerts,” Hayes agreed, mentioning the one native breed of cattle, Santa Gertrudis, which hailed from the famous King Ranch in Texas.

  “I told him I’d have a few people I know check it out and get back to me. But if you want my opinion, the man behind it is El Ladrón’s competition.”

  Hayes sat straight up. “No. Not him. Not here, for God’s sake!”

  “Afraid so, if my theory is right.”

  “Damn. Damn!”

  “It might work to our advantage,” Cash said. “We’d have him where we could watch him.”

  Hayes didn’t dare say what he was thinking. It would have revealed too much.

  “What if he’s the gent who sent the shooter after me, instead of the other?” Hayes wondered aloud.

  “Not him,” Cash replied. “He’s got too much class for hired assassins.”

  Hayes lifted an eyebrow. “Too much class?”

  “The man goes to church,” Cash replie
d. “He’s devout. He takes care of his workers, buys insurance for all of them, makes sure the kids are educated.”

  “Is he a drug lord or a saint?” Hayes asked, exasperated.

  “Why do you think they call him ‘El Jefe’? They speak of him with reverence. He’s as far removed from the other one as a saint is from sin.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how he ever ended up involved in the drug trade in the first place. He’s independently wealthy. He doesn’t need it.”

  “Maybe he likes the risk and the rep,” Hayes replied.

  Cash chuckled. “Maybe he does.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t send the shooter?”

  “We can’t be sure,” Cash replied. “But the evidence leans heavily toward the maniac down in Mexico. Minette brought a recording of a call she had at the office, threatening to send another shooter,” he added.

  “What?”

  “Just happened, she’ll tell you about it later, I’m sure,” Cash told him. “But I listened to the recording. I have a pretty good ear for accents. This was definitely a native Mexican speaker. From what we know of El Jefe, his hires are mostly American. Get this, he feels it exploits native Mexicans to involve them in something so shady, so he uses American criminals to move his product.”

  “What an interesting guy.”

  “Interesting. Nuts.”

  “Probably both.”

  Cash glanced at his watch. “I have to get home for lunch. You think about what I said. Don’t let pride keep you from getting the treatment you need to mend properly.”

  Hayes sighed. “All right. And thanks for the legwork.”

  “Your investigator’s very good. He’d have turned all this up eventually. I just have deeper sources. Keep getting better.”

  “I’ll do my best. Thanks.”

  Cash shrugged, smiled and left.

  * * *

  Later, Hayes was eloquent about the fact that Minette didn’t phone to tell him about the call she’d received.

  “For heaven’s sake, it was the middle of the day and I had a teacher conference and other things to do besides worry you about phone calls!” she said finally, exasperated.

  “Your family is in as much danger as I am,” he gritted. “In fact, I should really go home...”