Long, Tall Texans: Fearless Part 1

FEARLESS.

DIANA PALMER.

In memoriam:.

James M. Rea, Attorney-at-Law.

My first boss.

1.

"I WON'T GO," GLORYANNE Barnes muttered.

Tall, elegant Detective Rick Marquez just stared at her, his dark eyes unyielding. "Hey, don't go. No problem. We've got a body bag just your sized own at the medical examiner's office."

She threw a wadded up piece of paper across the desk at him.

He caught it with one lean hand and raised an eyebrow. "a.s.sault on a peace officer..."

"Don't you quote the law to me," she shot back, rising. "I can cite legal precedents from memory."

She came around the desk slowly, thinner than she usually was, but still attractive in her beige suit. Her skirt flowed to midcalf, above small feet in ankle-strapped high heels that flattered what showed of her legs. She perched herself on the edge of the desk. Her high cheekbones were faintly flushed from temper, and something more worrying. She had very long, light blond hair which she wore loose, so that it fell in a cascade down her back almost to her waist. She had pale green eyes and a wide forehead, with a perfect bow of a mouth under her straight nose. She never wore makeup and didn't need to. Her complexion was flawless, her lips a natural mauve. She wouldn't win any beauty contests, but she was attractive when she smiled. She didn't smile much these days.

"I won't be any safer in Jacobsville than I am here," she said, trotting out the same old tired argument she'd been using for the past ten minutes.

"You will," he insisted. "Cash Grier is chief of police. Eb Scott and his ex-mercenary cronies live there, as well. It's such a small town that any outsider will be noticed immediately."

She was frowning. Her eyes, behind the trendy frames of the gla.s.ses she occasionally wore in place of contact lenses for extreme nearsightedness, were thoughtful.

"Besides-" he played his trump card "-your doctor said..."

"That's not your business." She cut him off.

"It is if you drop dead on your desk!" he said, driven to indiscretion by her stubbornness. "You're the only witness we've got to what Fuentes said! He could kill you to shut you up!"

Her lips made a thin line. "I've had death threats ever since I got out of college and took a job here as an a.s.sistant district attorney," she replied. "It goes with the work."

"Most people don't mean it literally when they threaten to kill you," he returned. "Fuentes does. Do I really have to remind you what happened to your co-worker Doug Lerner two months ago? Better yet, would you like to see the autopsy photos?"

"You don't have any autopsy photos that I haven't already seen, Detective Marquez," she said quietly, folding her arms across her firm, small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I'm not really shockable."

He actually groaned out loud. His hands moved into his pockets, allowing her a glimpse of the .45 automatic he carried on his belt. His black hair, almost as long as hers, was gathered in a ponytail at his nape. He had jet-black eyes and a flawless olive complexion, not to mention a wide, sensuous mouth. He was very good-looking.

"Jason said he'd get me a bodyguard," she said when the silence grew noticeable.

"Your stepbrother has his own problems," he replied. "And your stepsister, Gracie, would be no help at all. She's so scatterbrained that she doesn't remember where she lives half the time!"

"The Pendletons have been good to me," she defended them. "They hated my mother, but they liked me."

Most people had hated her mother, a social-climbing antisocial personality who'd been physically abusive to Glory since her birth. Glory's father had taken her to the emergency room half a dozen times, mumbling about falls and other accidents that left suspicious bruises. But when one bout of explosive temper had left her with a broken hip, the authorities finally stepped in. Glory's mother was charged with child abuse and Glory testified against her.

By that time, Beverly Barnes was already having an affair with Myron Pendleton and he was a multimillionaire. He got her a team of lawyers who convinced a jury that Glory's father had caused the injury that her mother had given her, that Glory had lied out of fear of her father. The upshot was that the charges against Beverly were dropped. Glory's father, Todd Barnes, was arrested and tried for child abuse and convicted, despite Glory's tearful defense of him. But even though her mother was exonerated, the judge wasn't convinced that Glory would be safe with her. In a surprise move, Glory went into state custody, at the age of thirteen. Her mother didn't appeal the decision.

When Beverly subsequently married Myron Pendleton, at his urging, she tried to get custody of Glory again. But the same judge who'd heard the case against Glory's father denied custody to Beverly. It would keep the child safe, the judge said.

What the court didn't know was that Glory was in more danger at the foster home where she'd been placed, in the custody of a couple who did as little as possible for the six children they were responsible for. They only wanted the money. Two older boys in the same household were always trying to fondle Glory, whose tiny b.r.e.a.s.t.s had begun to grow. The hara.s.sment went on for several weeks and culminated in an a.s.sault that left her bruised and traumatized, and afraid of anything male. Glory had told her foster parents, but they said she was making it up. Furious, Glory dialed the emergency number and when the police came, she ran out past her foster mother and all but jumped into the arms of the policewoman who came to check out her situation.

Glory was taken to the emergency room, where a doctor, sickened by what he saw, gave the police enough evidence to have the foster parents charged with neglect, and the two teenage boys with a.s.sault and battery and attempted sodomy.

But the foster parents denied everything and pointed out that Glory had lied about her mother abusing her. So she went back to the same house, where her treatment became nightmarish. The two teenage boys wanted revenge as much as the spiteful foster parents did. But they were temporarily in juvenile detention, pending a bond hearing, fortunately. The foster parents weren't, and they were furious. So Glory stuck close to the two younger girls, both under five years old, whom she had been made responsible for. She was grateful that they required so much looking-after. It spared her retribution, at least for the first few days back at the house.

Jason Pendleton hated his stepmother, Beverly. But he was curious about her young daughter, especially after a friend in law enforcement in Jacobsville contacted him about what had happened to Glory. The same week she was sent back to the foster home, he sent a private investigator to check out her situation. What he discovered made him sick. He and his sister, Gracie, actually went themselves to the foster home after they'd read the investigator's covertly obtained police report on the incident-which was, of course, denied by the custodians. They pointed to Glory's attempt to blame her mother for the abuse that had sent her father to prison, where he was killed by another inmate within six months.

The day the Pendletons arrived, the two teenage boys who had victimized Glory were released to the custody of the foster parents, pending trial. Glory had been running away from the teenagers all day. They'd already torn her blouse and left bruises on her. She'd been afraid to call the police again. So Jason found Glory in the closet in the bedroom she shared with the two little girls, hiding under her pitiful handful of clothes on wire hangers, crying. Her arms were bruised all over, and there was a smear of blood on her mouth. When he reached in, she cowered and shook all over with fear.

Years later, she could still remember how gently he picked her up and carried her out of the room, out of the house. She was placed tenderly in the backseat of his Jaguar, with Gracie, while Jason went back into the foster home. His deeply tanned, lean face was stiff with bridled fury when he returned. He didn't say a word. He started the car and drove Glory away.

Despite her mother's barely contained rage at having Glory in the same house where she lived, Glory was given her own room between Gracie's and Jason's, and her mother was not allowed near her. In one of their more infamous battles, Jason had threatened to have his own legal team reopen the child abuse case. He had no doubt that Glory was telling the truth about who the real abuser was. Beverly had stormed out without a reply to Jason's threats. But she left Glory alone.

It became a magical time for the tragic young girl, belonging to a family which valued her. Even Myron found her delightful company.

After Beverly died unexpectedly of a stroke when her daughter was fifteen, Glory's life settled into something approaching normalcy. But the trauma of her youth had consequences that none of her adoptive family had antic.i.p.ated.

Her broken hip, despite two surgeries and the insertion of a steel pin, was never the same. She had a p.r.o.nounced limp that no physical therapy could erase. And there was something else; her family had a history of hypertension, which Glory inherited. No one actually said that the stress of her young life had added to the genetic predisposition toward it. But Glory thought it did. She was put on medication during her last year in high school. Severely overweight, shy, introverted and uncomfortable around boys, she was also the target of bullies. Other girls made fun of her. They went so far as to put false messages about her on the Internet and one girl formed a club devoted to ridiculing Glory.

Jason Pendleton found out about it. The girls were dealt with, one charged with hara.s.sment and another's parents threatened with lawsuits. The abuse stopped. Mostly. But it left Glory feeling alone and out of place wherever she went. Her health, never good, caused many absences during the time of turmoil. She lost weight. She was a good student and made excellent grades, despite it. She went on to college and then to law school with the support of her stepsiblings, and graduated magna c.u.m laude. From there, she went to the San Antonio District Attorney's office as a junior public prosecutor. Four years later, she was a highly respected a.s.sistant prosecutor with an impressive record of convictions against gang members and, most recently, drug smugglers. Her weight problem was in the past now, thanks to a good dietician.

But in her private life, she was alone. She had no close friends. She couldn't trust people, especially men. Her traumatic youth in foster care had predisposed her to be suspicious of everyone, especially anyone male. She had male friends, but she had never had a lover. She never wanted one. n.o.body got close enough to Glory Barnes to hurt her.

Now this stubborn San Antonio detective was trying to force her to leave her job and hide in a small town from the drug lord she'd prosecuted for distributing cocaine.

Fuentes was the newest in a long line of drug lords who'd crossed the border into Texas, enlarging his drug territory with the help of his street gang a.s.sociates. One of them, with the promise of immunity from Glory, had testified in the trial and despite his millions, the drug czar had been facing up to fifteen years in federal prison for distribution of crack cocaine. A hung jury on that case had let him walk.

After she lost the drug case against him, she'd been sitting in the hall when Fuentes came out of the courtroom. He couldn't resist bragging about his victory. Fuentes sat down beside her and made a threat. He had worldwide connections and he could have anybody killed, even cops. He had, he said, taken out a persistent local deputy sheriff who'd hara.s.sed him by hiring a contract killer only two weeks ago. Glory would be next if she didn't lay off investigating him, he'd added with an arrogant smile. Sadly for him, Glory had been wearing a court-sanctioned wire at the time. His arrest had come the very next day.

His fury had been far-reaching. Someone had actually fired a gun at Glory when she walked out of the courthouse two days ago, missing her head by a fraction of an inch. She'd turned to look for her bus when her a.s.sailant fired. It had been such a close call that Detective Marquez was determined not to risk her a second time.

"Even if he gets me, you've still got the tape," she argued.

"The defense will swear it's been tampered with," he muttered. "It's why the D.A. didn't put it in evidence."

She swore under her breath. Her color was higher than usual, too.

As if on a signal, the door opened and Haynes walked in with a gla.s.s of water and a pill bottle. Sy Haynes was Glory's administrative a.s.sistant, a paralegal with a sharp tongue and the authority of a drill sergeant. "You haven't taken your capsule today," she muttered, popping the lid on the medicine bottle and shaking one capsule into Glory's outheld hand. "One close call a month is enough," she added, referring to what Glory's doctor had termed a possible mild heart attack arising from the pressure of the trial. A stress test had detected a problem that might require surgery if Glory didn't take her medicine and keep to her low-fat diet and adopt a low-stress lifestyle.

Marquez wanted her to leave town and she didn't want to go. But what her doctor had said to her was something she wasn't willing to share with Marquez or Sy. He'd told her that if she didn't get out of town, and into some sort of sedentary lifestyle, she was going to have a major heart attack and die at the prosecutor's table in her courtroom.

She swallowed the capsule. "The d.a.m.ned things include a diuretic," she said irritably. "I have to go to the bathroom every few minutes. How am I supposed to prosecute a case when I have to interrupt myself six times an hour?"

"Wear a diaper," Haynes replied imperturbably.

Glory gave her a glare.

"The D.A. doesn't want you to die in the courtroom." Marquez pressed his advantage now that he had backup. "He might not get reelected. Besides, he likes you."

"He likes me because I have no private life," she retorted. "I carry case files home with me every night. I'd miss yelling at people."

"You can yell at the workers on the Pendletons's organic truck farm in Jacobsville," Marquez a.s.sured her.

"At least I do know something about farming. My father had a little truck farm..." She closed up like a flower. It still hurt, after all these years, to remember the pain of seeing him taken away in an orange jumpsuit, cringing when she sobbed and begged the judge to let him go.

"Your father would be proud of you," Haynes interjected. "Especially now that you've cleared his name of that child abuse charge."

"It won't bring him back," she said dully. Her eyes narrowed. "But at least they finally found the man who killed him. He'll never get out now. If he ever goes up before the parole board, I'll be sitting there with pictures of my father at every hearing for the rest of my life."

They didn't doubt it. She was a vengeful woman, in her quiet way.

"Come on," Marquez coaxed. "You need a rest, anyway. It's peaceful in Jacobsville."

"Peaceful," she nodded. "Right. Last year, there was a shootout in Jacobsville with drug dealers who moved hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the city limits and kidnapped a child. Two years before that, drug lord Manuel Lopez's men were stormed on his property in Jacobsville in a gun battle where his henchmen had stockpiled bales of marijuana."

"n.o.body's been shot at for two months," Marquez a.s.sured her.

"What if I'm recognized by any leftover drug smugglers?"

"They won't be looking for you on a farm. San Antonio is a big city, and you're one of dozens of a.s.sistant district attorneys," he pointed out. "Your face isn't that well known even here, and certainly not in Jacobsville. You've changed a lot since you went to school there. Even if someone remembers you, it will be for the past, not the present. You'll be a quiet little woman from San Antonio with health problems watching over several fields of vegetables and fruit, thanks to your friends, the Pendletons."

He hesitated. "One more thing. You can't admit that you're related to them, or even that you know them well. n.o.body in Jacobsville, except the police chief, will know what you really do for a living. We're giving you a cover story that can be checked out by any suspicious people. It's foolproof."

"Didn't they say that about the t.i.tanic's design?"

"If she goes, I have to go with her," Haynes said firmly. "She won't take her medicine if I'm not there pushing it under her nose every day."

Before Glory could open her mouth, Marquez was shaking his head.

"It's going to be hard enough to help Glory fit in," he told Haynes. "If she takes you with her, a gang member who might not recognize you alone might recognize the a.s.sistant who goes to court with her most of the time. Most of the gangs deal in drug trafficking."

Glory grimaced. "He's right," she told her a.s.sistant 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sistant," 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 a.s.sistant thought he was very attractive and asked him over to her place for dinner. He actually called the police and had her charged with s.e.xual hara.s.sment."

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 a.s.sistant 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 s.e.xual hara.s.sment 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 a.s.sistants. 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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.