Home To Texas - Ransom My Heart Part 23

"Miss Kincaid?" he said.

"Yes." For some reason, her heart was pounding. Even knowing that Mandy was sleeping in the next room, she was still anxious, still frightened that this man should know her phone number, that his deep voice should speak her name.

"I would like for you to deliver a message," he said.

He was still speaking English. Very good English, she realized.

"A message?" she repeated.

"For our ... mutual friend."

Chase, she realized. Something about the exchange. The sick fear in her stomach eased. Nothing to do with Mandy.

No threat. Just instructions for the exchange.

"All right," she said.

"Tell him..." The pleasant voice hesitated, seeming almost unsure of the message, and then finally he continued.

"Tell him that the ambush was not what he thought. Not the man he thought."

She waited, thinking that there must be more, some e -planation, some other meaning behind that cryptic phrasing.

The "man he thought" would be the one who had recognized Chase in the shop that sold the painted other kidnapper. If he wasn't the ambusher... "What does that mean?" she asked.

"The plan for the ambush originated on your side of border," the voice said softly, almost as if he were of being overheard.

"Our side? From the States? Someone up here?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" she asked, trying to think what meant. It didn't make any sense. If it wasn't nappers and not the man who had recognized Chase Melchor Mfizquiz, then who had lain in wait for them the rock face overlooking that mountain road? Who taken the rest of the ransom?

"How can you be sure that?" she questioned.

"As our friend realized, I know a great many here, and I have ... other contacts. Tell him what I said Kincaid. I believe he should be aware of the danger he brings the rest of the money."

"Do you..."

She stopped because the connection had been She stood for a moment, holding the dead receiver in I hand and then she reached out and placed it carefully t on the cradle.

Above the border. Someone here in Texas had the ambush. But no one in the States had known about the payoff. Chase had insisted on that.

Except, she realized, someone obviously had. If the man who had just called was right. This was a warning by someone who had a vested interest in seeing that Chase would be able to deliver the rest of the ransom. Why would the man with the mustache lie? Why would he even call unless he really believed what he had just told her?

Unconsciously, she shook her head. It couldn't be someone from up here. There was no one else. No one but the three of them had known about the arrangements. No one but the three of them, she repeated.

And thinking that, she picked up the phone again and began to punch in the familiar number.

Chapter Twelve.

Jenny was on the phone when Chase walked into the kitchen. After he'd left Samantha and Mandy, he'd driven 'll around for a while, trying to sort through all the emotions )l that had been stirred up this afternoon.

He'd ended up again on the bluff overlooking the river.athad From there he had watched darkness creep over wh once been McCullar land. It touched the low hills across I the Rio Grande, painting them with purple shadows so that! their harsh details softened and then eventually faded intoI the blue-black descent of night. He had watched the first il stars come out and the lights in the two ranch houses come"

on, flickering faintly through the clear desert air.

He had tried to think about it all. About all of the people he loved or had loved. About his family. About his father's '}l betrayal and about Rio's. Even about Sam Kincaid. There ii were no revelations about any of them. Or about himself, :}!

he guessed, but he felt better-for trying to face some things that for years he had refused to think about.

When he drove into the yard at Jenny's, he cut off engine and the lights and sat for a few minutes in the quiet darkness. He dreaded going in, dreaded facing Jenny, he guessed. There was nothing he could say to defend himself against the charge she'd made, no explanation he could offer as a defense.

Finally, he got out of the truck and walked up the back steps and across the wooden porch. He knew she would hear him. The back door had been left unlocked, and he went through it and into the kitchen.

There was a plate with a cloth napkin spread over it on the back of the stove. That was where Jenny had always left Mac's supper when he was working late. Chase lifted the napkin, but his stomach roiled suddenly at the idea of eating. Mac's house, he thought again, and then he laid the cloth carefully back over the food Jenny had fixed for him tonight and went down the hall toward the den.

He could hear her voice, and he wondered for a second who had come to visit this late before he realized he was eavesdropping on his sister-in-law's telephone conversation.

He had even taken a step away, intending to go on to his room and save the apologies he needed to make to her for the morning, when what he overheard stopped him.

"Because I didn't have a chance to tell him about us," Jenny said.

"It wasn't the right time. We argued about his obsession with Mac's death, and then things just went.." downhill from there."

Chase waited, trying to quell a resurgence of the nausea he'd felt in the kitchen.

"He's not home yet," she said after a few seconds.

"But I'm not making any promises. You'll have to let me be the judge of when it's right to tell him."

There was another brief silence. Chase put his forehead against the wall, the pattern of the wallpaper his mother had chosen just before her death right in front of his eyes.

She had loved roses, but they had never flourished in the dry, too-alkaline soil of the ranch, despite her repeated efforts through the years. Finally she'd just given up--like she had given up on so many things--settling for the artificial blossoms that festooned the dark hallway in which he was standing. There his mother's beloved roses still bloomed in an almost-garish profusion of pinks and reds.

Chase put his hand on one of them, long hard fingers tracing slowly over it as he listened.

"I have to go now," Jenny said softly.

"I promise I'll call you tomorrow."

He heard her put the receiver back into the cradle and then he

straightened.

"It's okay," Jenny said, her voice louder now, pitched to reach into the hallway where he was standing.

"I know you're there."

Chase stepped into the doorway and into the light, but he didn't say

anything. Her dark eyes met his without embarra.s.sment and without apology. She didn't owe him either, he knew, but somehow he had thought she might not be quite so open about what was going on.

"That the new boyfriend?" he asked. He leaned his uninjured shoulder against the frame of the door.

"I'm not sure that's the right word," she said calmly.

"What is the right word?"

"For one thing he's not a boy," Jenny said."But he is my friend. Right now that's all he is. He's been a goodfriend. Someone to depend on. Someone I've come to depend on."

Chase nodded, thinking of how long it had been since he'd been in touch.

"Unlike your brother-in-law, I guess."

"I didn't mean that. I always knew you'd come if I needed you, Chase.

And I've always understood why it was so hard for you to come back."

He gestured toward the phone beside her by moving his head in its direction.

"That doesn't make it any easier, Jenny."

"I know that, too," she said.

"But Mac's dead, and I'm still alive. There's nothing I can do to change that, Chase.

And nothing you can do. No matter how much we might wish we could." He nodded, remembering Samantha's words this afternoon about wishing.

"I've always wished Mandy could have known her daddy." Maybe he couldn't do anything about what Jenny was doing, but he could still make that other wish come tree. He still could influence that decision, the decision he had claimed he would leave up to Samantha.

He still had a chance to change the way Mandy's life developed fromhere on out."Somebody I know?" he asked.Jenny nodded, but she didn't offer the information."You're right," he said softly."It's probably better if you don't tell me. Night, Jenny."He turned and disappeared into the shadows of the rose-papered hallway.

"BECAUSE I DON'T believe you," Samantha said furiously.

"I should have known, d.a.m.n it. I should have figured it out, long

before now."

"I had nothing to do with any of--" "What if things hadn't turned out the way you planned?" Samantha interrupted, so angry she was almost

spitting out the words, not even bothering to listen to her father'sdenials. His lying denials."What if you'd gotten Mandy hurt?" she asked.Only as she said it did she begin to realize exactly how dangerous the game her father had played might have been.

"How could you do something like that, Sam? How could you play with

people's lives like that? Just to get your own way. Just to manipulate us all."

"I told you I don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about," Sam said

stubbornly."You even said it to Mandy. She repeated it to me. What we need is adaddy. So you decided to make that happen, to get Chase back down here--" "Now why the h.e.l.l would I want Chase McCullar back in yourlife? Good riddance," he said."I thought that five years ago. I still think it. You don't need McCuUar."

"Except, for some mason you've decided that's not true.

For some reason you've decided to play G.o.d with my life again.

Controlling it, just like you've always tried to control me." "I ain't gonna take a chance on Mandy being hurt. Or you. You know better than that, baby. Thinking I had anything to do with all this is pure crazy, and you know it."

"There was never any danger," she said.

"You sent somebody who can shoot out a tire from a mile away and put a bullet through a jug of water. But then he can't hit me or Chase, despite the fact that we're climbing hills without any cover? Maybe that was because he had orders not to hit us, and you made sure he was a good enough shot to do that."

"And I could control how that car's gonna bounce? I send my only child off the side of a ravine 'cause I want to fix her up with a man I never have thought was good enough for her? Does that make sense to you? Why would I try to stop you from getting to Mandy, from getting her back? Use your head, Samantha. You're smarter than this."

It stopped the flow of invective for a second. She know Sam would never hurt her. Or Mandy. Which meant... "Just smarter than you, maybe. You set that up, too.