Chapter 7
Seven
She rode around with Raines for two weeks, except for the day before Thanksgiving Day. Surprisingly, a Big Spur ranch truck
pulled up in front of her motel room that day and John Everett got out. He looked absolutely disgusted when he knocked on
her door. That was when she realized why he’d come. She had to smother a laugh. Unless she missed her guess, he’d been sent
by his mother to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner! This was going to be a very interesting conversation, she told herself amusedly.
John Everett was wearing a spotless blue chambray shirt with jeans and black boots, and a black Stetson cocked over one eye.
His hair, thick and blond and clean, glimmered in the sunlight.
Josie opened the door and stared at him. She was wearing jeans and boots, too, with a white turtleneck sweater, her wavy red-gold
hair loose and curling around her shoulders down to her waist in back. A line of freckles ran over her nose and cheeks. She
looked up at him with faint surprise.
“Mr. Everett?”
He glared at her. “My mother sent me,” he said with absolute disgust. “She wants you to come for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. JJ misses you.”
“How very nice of her,” she said with a smile. “I was planning on a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee.”
“She figured that.”
“What time?”
“I’ll pick you up about nine in the morning, if that’s acceptable.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
His pale blue-gray eyes narrowed. “I’ll see you then,” he said curtly. He tipped his hat, turned and stomped back to his truck.
She managed not to chortle as he pulled out of the parking lot, scattering loose gravel.
But when she got back into her room, she let it all out. He was livid! She was going to be very polite and treat him like
a long-lost relative, she decided. But she really needed to wear a dress for this occasion. He had such a low opinion of her
that he probably expected her to turn up in jeans and boots. She was going to enjoy this . . .
One thing she needed badly to do was get in touch with her boss, without the possibility of being overheard or, worse, recorded.
One of her covert devices had given her the alarming news that the public phone down the road was compromised. It wasn’t necessarily
compromised because of her calls. It could be the drug cartel trying to muscle its way into a small rural community, bereft
of close federal agencies. But she couldn’t really chance using it again.
The logical solution to the problem would be burner phones, but there wasn’t even a Walmart close enough by that she could get to to buy one.
She certainly couldn’t ask her partners in crime to help her do it.
Raines was already suspicious of her. She had to hope that Velasquez and Vega didn’t have similar concerns.
She hated not having her own transportation. She’d come down here as a nearly impoverished member of a lesser thieving cartel.
Her specialty was supposed to be cattle rustling, with a public disguise as a Realtor from back East selling property. But
a friend with a confidential informer in league with the Texas drug lords had found a jailed associate, who was cooperating
for a reduced prison sentence. He’d lauded Josie to the Velasquez people as a low-level but intelligent drug dealer. She had
the best of both evil worlds as recommendations. But having a car, even a mostly useless one, wouldn’t fit that profile. She
was supposedly so broke that she could barely afford food. It had worked to her advantage so far, from having Raines drop
her off at the Everett ranch in the beginning of her assignment as a spy. John Everett had hurt and helped with the deception.
Taking her to his mother had given her an entrance into the Everett clan that made her path so much easier. And adding JJ
to her small circle of acquaintances had been, despite the tragedy of its beginning, the stuff of dreams.
She already loved the boy. He was like the brother she’d lost so many years ago, a baby brother who’d died of a bronchial infection that hadn’t been caught in time.
Incredible, she often thought, that pneumonia could still kill people in the twenty-first century.
It had been a sad time in her life and even her father’s.
It had destroyed her mother. She’d blamed herself for being so involved in social work in her community that she hadn’t listened when a friend had commented that the little boy was sicker than his mother realized.
Josie, already away at college at the time, hadn’t been around, or she would certainly have said something, done something.
The child was a late-in-life baby with many health issues.
Her mother had been in her forties when she suddenly fell pregnant, and a termination was never considered.
Little Bobby was born with a hole in his heart, which had required immediate pediatric surgery.
There had been other issues as well. By that time, Josie’s mother was established as a social worker in their community, and she took her responsibilities far too seriously.
Hiding her heartbreak over her husband’s constant philandering in work, she was home less and less.
There was a teenage girl whom she paid to look after little Bobby, but the girl was having problems with her boyfriend, and she did a less than perfect job as a babysitter.
When the crisis came, Josie’s father was in a nearby city with his latest conquest, and her mother was staying overnight in
another town with a battered woman, trying to save her from a homicidal husband.
Josie, in college and trying to survive exams, had been too far away to do anything.
While the babysitter and her boyfriend were making out in Josie’s old bedroom, the baby died.
There had been an investigation that suppressed the teenager’s neglect, because she was the local sheriff’s daughter. But
everybody in the community, which was close-knit, knew the truth just the same. The next month, they found the babysitter
dead of a drug overdose in her bedroom. A scribbled note addressed to Josie’s mother that just said I’m so sorry was found nearby.
Odd, Josie thought, that she should be thinking about the poor baby now, in the midst of an investigation that put her own
life under threat. Her father didn’t know what she really did for a living. He thought she had an executive office job in
a faraway city. If he thought about her at all. He never seemed to feel much for any member of his immediate family. He hadn’t
even cried at the baby’s simple graveside service.
Josie’s mother had blamed herself, of course, and suffered for it.
Her death from cancer hadn’t been a surprise.
She’d been miserable after chemo and radiation, especially when the cancer reappeared and more drastic surgery had been recommended.
But she’d declined. Too many surgeries and misery already, she’d told Josie during a visit.
She’d smiled sadly. When your time’s up, it’s up, she said softly.
“And I’m very tired,” she’d added. It was something that happened to everybody in the world eventually.
And she was at peace, with herself, and with God, she said, hugging her daughter tightly. Josie would go on and help the world
to be a better place. Her mother loved her dearly. Josie knew that. And she’d done all she could for her mother, which made
the loss a little easier.
But Josie and her mother had been close, and the loss had been felt very severely.
Heather Everett reminded Josie so much of her late mother. She had the same kind heart, the same softness. It was a trait
that Josie felt she lacked. She was hard as steel inside, schooled through several life-or-death assignments on the best way
to stay alive. The lessons had stayed with her. But they’d reduced her as a person. She didn’t feel things as much as she
should. Except . . .
There was the emotion that big blond rancher induced in her every time she was close to him. She hated her reaction to him.
She hated him. Her life was planned.
Dangerous work was exciting. She had no dependents, no real connections to the world except her father, who wasn’t much of
a relative. She liked being anonymous in the world.
But with John Everett, she felt things she didn’t want to feel. She was attracted to him. She’d managed to avoid entanglements
with any men at all during college, except for surface friendships, her choice of professions dictating that close relationships
would be impossible to maintain. Everett threatened her peace of mind. She disliked him, even as she felt drawn to him. He
was dangerous to her.
All the same, she couldn’t avoid thinking about him. And she couldn’t afford to waste time with that. She had a job to do. It was a good job, and she needed to do it right, because many lives depended on her. The last thing she could afford was an entanglement. The very last.
She had a dress in her suitcase. Only one, and a slip and hose and slingback heels to go with it. The dress was silver. It
highlighted her pretty green eyes. It almost matched John Everett’s pale eyes that were almost silver, too, but she wasn’t
going to think about that!
She put her long red-gold hair up in a complicated tangle of curls around the top of her head. She used the lightest touch
of makeup.
There was no place for her sidearm, so it went into her purse, in its pancake holster. She hoped nobody would notice.
She was interested in the guest list at the Everetts’. She knew they had a close acquaintance who had deep mob ties, thanks
to the sheriff. She hoped Tony Garza would be there; he was a great friend and even employer of the Everetts’ daughter-in-law
and was rumored to have feelings for Odalie Everett. He might show up with Odalie, to whom he often gave rides in his private
jet. He was a frequent visitor at the ranch.
If he did show up, she hoped she could get him alone long enough to ask if he had a burner phone she could borrow; he would