Renegade (22 page)

“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head. Now!” Cash yelled at the man, with his pistol leveled at the man. He hoped he sounded calm. His heart was about to beat him to death. He'd been so afraid that he'd be too late to save Tippy.

“I can't…lift my arms,” the man sobbed. “She hit me! She tried to kill me! I want protection!”

Rory came into the kitchen and out on the back stoop,
rubbing his eyes, still dressed in pajama bottoms. He started when he saw all the police cars. “What's going on?” he asked Tippy, drawing attention to her.

The police officers, including Cash, suddenly noticed Tippy, too. She was holding a huge iron skillet in both slender hands. Her flaming hair was rayed around her flushed face like a halo. She was still wearing her green satin pajamas and the loose robe, and she looked so beautiful that for an instant, the policemen were simply starstruck.

“Cuff him!” Cash yelled at two of his officers, who managed to pull out of their trance and get to work on the suspect.

Tippy was breathing hard. Her green eyes were still flaming. She came down the steps toward the intruder.

He screamed. “Save me! I'll tell you everything! Just get me away from her!”

By now, neighbors on both sides of the street were standing on their lawns, gaping at the unexpected bit of theater that broke the monotony of a routine Monday morning. One of the elderly women was openly chuckling.

“Tippy?” Cash asked softly as he moved toward her. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

She nodded, breathless at the endearment and the concern.

She lowered the frying pan. “I thought it was you, until he rattled…the doorknob and started breaking in.” She took a deep breath, her eyes on the suspect, who was being led away to a police car.

Cash was still getting his own breath back. He holstered his service revolver blindly, his dark eyes rapt on her face. “Are you sure he didn't hurt you?”

She smiled weakly. “It was sort of the other way around. I got really mad when I saw the gun in his hand,” she confessed.

Cash's eyes flashed. “Gun?”

She nodded. “It's on the floor in the kitchen. I knocked it out of his hands.” She swayed a little. “I feel sick.”

“Don't let them see it,” he said quickly, catching her under the elbow. “You'll spoil the image.”

She sucked in a breath. “I'm okay,” she whispered. “Just don't let me fall.”

“Not a chance,” he promised.

She turned to the officers gathered around. “Thanks, guys,” she said in her pretty, breathless voice. She smiled and they just stared raptly. “His pistol is on the floor in the kitchen. I think he meant to shoot me.”

“He was armed?” one of the young officers asked, aghast.

She nodded. “It looked like a .45 to me,” she added.

“I'll retrieve it. Get me an evidence bag, Harry, and call in our investigator. I know it's his day off,” Cash added, when the young officer seemed hesitant. “He won't mind. Trust me.”

“Sure,” the officer said at once. “Glad you're okay, Miss Moore,” he added with a smile.

She smiled back. The other officers were still staring.

“You hit him with a frying pan?” Rory was trying to get a handle on the situation. “Gosh, that was brave!” he added. “I'm going to call Jake and tell him!” He took off toward the living room.

“Come on,” Cash told Tippy, with an arm around her waist. “I'll carry the skillet for you, darling,” he whispered mischievously and with a wicked grin. “We wouldn't want you to strain yourself or anything.”

She burst out laughing as she handed it over. “Going to arrest me for assault?” she whispered.

“That depends. Are you planning to assault me?”

“First chance I get,” she replied, teasing.

He went inside with her, his eyes angry on the busted door
and doorjamb, and more angry when he saw the .45 automatic on the floor. He imagined all sorts of horrible scenarios. He and his men would never have made it in time to save her, despite their haste. If she hadn't had that skillet…!

He pulled her against him and kissed her with feverish desperation. She clung to him, giving back the hard kiss. He was passionately aroused. She felt it down to her bones. Her legs began to shake, with mingled excitement and delayed fear.

“He could have killed you,” he ground out as his mouth slid down to her silky warm throat. A shudder went through his powerful body. “Damn him!”

She slid her arms around his hard waist and laid her cheek on his uniform shirt. “I wasn't even afraid when it was happening,” she said wearily. “I guess you're rubbing off on me.”

“That's what it looks like to me, too,” came an amused drawl from the door.

She peered across Cash's chest to see Judd Dunn walking into the room.

Cash glanced at him and smiled. “She took him on by herself with this,” he lifted the iron skillet in his free hand. “When we got here, he was crawling away from her at top speed screaming for help.”

Judd's eyes twinkled and he burst out laughing. “I'll be damned.”

“The neighbors will live on this for weeks,” Cash sighed, looking down into Tippy's soft eyes. “Rory's in the living room calling his friends to brag on his sister. Elegant, famous Miss Moore, foiling an assassin with a cast-iron skillet.”

“I didn't get my eggs,” she muttered. “I was just put ting the pan on the stove when he came along. Do you think he's part of Sam Stanton's outfit?” she added. “The one who got away in New York?”

“Likely,” Cash replied. “But he seemed willing to confess to anything a minute ago, if we'd save him from you,” he added with a chuckle.

“If I don't get my breakfast soon, he's going to need saving,” she said. She moved away from Cash and reclaimed her skillet. “Eggs, anyone?” she asked, moving nonchalantly back to the stove, while the two men looked on with pure delight.

 

T
IPPY HAD COOKED SUPPER
for the three of them despite Cash's objections. He felt that she needed rest after the ordeal earlier, and offered to take them out to a restaurant. She wouldn't let him. She needed to keep busy, she told him. It wouldn't do to brood about something that was already over.

“She's like that,” Rory told Cash with a grin, giving his sister a teasing glance. “She never complains, no matter how bad things get.”

“I noticed,” Cash replied. He finished his piece of steak and washed it down with coffee. He was still steaming over the ease with which the third kidnapper had made his way into town and into his house without arousing suspicion. He scowled at the coffee as if it were responsible for all his problems.

“Is it too weak?” Tippy asked immediately.

He glanced at her. “What? The coffee?” He lifted it to his lips. “No. It's just right.”

“You're upset because the man got into the house…” she began.

Cash's scowl grew thunderous.

“You'll just have to get used to it,” Rory told him conversationally. “She reads minds.”

“I noticed,” Cash said, his lips making a thin line. Then he realized that he was being difficult, when she was the one who needed comfort and understanding. “Sorry,” he added.

She only smiled. “It's okay,” she replied. “I should be apologizing. I don't mean to be obnoxious.”

“You just read minds,” he finished for her.

“Only mine and yours,” Rory told him. “She can't do it with other people.”

Cash stilled. “She can't?”

Rory shook his head, finishing his mashed potatoes. “She tries, but it never works.”

That made a huge difference. It was as if he and Rory were part of her. He'd never felt that way before, not even during his brief marriage.

What was really bothering him was the fear he'd felt when he knew that an intruder was in his house, that Tippy was in danger, and he hadn't anticipated it. During the scant minutes it took him to get to the scene, he'd had hell imagining what might be happening to her. He'd been impotent, and he didn't like it. Worse, the fear he'd felt for her safety was different from any fear he'd ever felt in his life. She was already part of him, part of his life. If he lost her…!

“Want some ice cream?” Tippy asked to divert him. “We've got chocolate.”

“I'm not really hungry for dessert.”

“Me, neither,” Rory confessed. “It's been a long day.” He got up, excusing himself from the table formally, and went around to hug his sister close. “I'm glad you're okay,” he said in a husky tone. His eyes closed. “You're all I've got.”

“Not true,” Cash said quietly. “You've got me, too.”

Rory lifted his head and looked with faint surprise at the older man. He'd been thinking of himself as a nuisance for weeks now. But Cash was smiling.

Rory smiled shyly. “Thanks. It works both ways, you know,” he added. “I'd save you, if I could.”

Cash's expression was curious, mingling affection with quiet pride. He smiled back. “I'll remember that.”

“I'm going to watch that new adventure movie you brought home, if it's okay,” Rory told Cash.

“Sure. Go ahead. There's nothing much on television tonight anyway.”

“Thanks!”

He was gone in a flash, leaving Tippy and Cash alone together at the table. He toyed with his empty cup.

“Want a refill?” she asked, noting the restless movement.

“I wouldn't mind a second cup,” he agreed.

She got up to pour it. But as she put it down in front of him, he caught her hand and pulled her gently onto his lap.

“When I joined the army, I didn't really have a career in mind,” he told her quietly while he settled her comfortably with her head on his shoulder and one of her slender hands in his own. “I finished college there. But in the meantime, my sergeant noticed that I never missed on the rifle range. He recommended me for a special, top-secret unit. I was given an assignment, which I fulfilled.” His hand tightened on hers. “I can't go into particulars. Most of what I did was classified. Suffice it to say that the job required me to kill.”

She didn't move, or speak. She was afraid he'd stop talking. It was the first time he'd trusted her enough to discuss this secret, which she sensed he'd told only one other person in his life. His ex-wife had walked out on him. Tippy knew that she never would, no matter what he told her. She loved him too much.

He looked down at her face. “No comment?” he asked tautly.

“You're talking. I'm listening,” she said softly. “I know this must be hard for you. I'm not judging or criticizing. But I think it would do you good to talk about it.”

He laughed shortly. “That was what I thought once before.”

She reached her hand up to his lean face and stroked his cheek tenderly. “This isn't the past. And I'm no coward.”

He seemed to relax a little. “Certainly you dismissed any discussion about that this afternoon,” he murmured. “You'll be a local legend for the rest of your life.”

She grinned. “You think so?”

“I do.” He shifted her into a more comfortable position, but he was less tense. “I did two black ops jobs be fore it started getting to me. I got out of the army, but my reputation went with me. In no time, I was on everybody's list for special assignments, freelance. I let them convince me that my hang-ups would vanish in time, that I was doing a necessary job to make the world safe. I bought the explanation. I worked for various agencies in our country and others, often cooperating with crack commando units as a sniper. I was fluent in several languages as well, which didn't hurt, and I could repair anything electronic. I was never out of work.”

He drew in a long breath, and his dark eyes became haunted. “Then, one night, I started having nightmares. Real, vivid, screaming nightmares. I saw dead faces. First it was once a week, then every other day.” His face was taut with memory. “I thought if I gave up the job, they might go away. I had all the money I would ever need from the freelance jobs, safe in a Swiss bank. I was living on luck, and it was only a matter of time until it ran out. So I quit and came back to the States. I worked in law enforcement, here in Texas, for years until I ended up with the Rangers. I met a woman at lunch one day—pretty little brunette who was always giving me the eye. She flirted outrageously with me until I gave in and asked her out. After the first date, she moved in with me. Two weeks later we were married.”

Tippy was trying not to feel jealous, and failing miserably.

“That was quick.”

“Yes. Too quick. What I didn't know was that she was a cousin of an old army buddy of mine. He didn't know what sort of work I did for the army, but he did know that I lived high. He told her I had money. She loved diamonds and high fashion. I was too smitten to notice that she only tolerated my touch, and the tolerance got better as the presents got a little more expensive.”

She grimaced. “It must have been painful to learn that.”

“It was.” His face hardened. “I was crazy about her. She seemed to be in love with me, at the time. She got pregnant and I was over the moon. I'd never considered kids until then, but the first flush of impending father hood made a fool of me,” he added, trying to downplay his feelings because of the baby he and Tippy had lost. “So in a fit of honesty, I sat down and told her the story of my life. The rest, you know. She walked out. Later, I heard that she'd planned to get rid of the baby anyway, but she enjoyed putting the blame on me. She thought it would get her more alimony.”

She searched his face. “Did it?”

“I had a good attorney. He was a former merc with great stealth skills. He had her watched, and he had her phone tapped. We had evidence that wasn't admissible in court, but it was enough to frighten her into taking a lump-sum payment. She agreed, I cut the check, and I haven't seen her since.”