Fire Brand (23 page)

A white-faced man whom Gaby recognized as a local farmer out of work stood up. “Did you say a white four-by-four?” he asked huskily.

Bowie stared at him. “That's right, McHaney,” he returned coldly. “Just like the one your oldest son drives. And if the police find a spare tire with a shotgun blast through it on that truck, your son is going to find himself in one hell of a mess.”

“Riley wouldn't,” he said heavily. “He just wouldn't!”

“Good for Riley!” one of the younger men piped up. “We need jobs here in Lassiter, not desert!”

“Do we need them badly enough to kill for them?” came a quiet, feminine voice from nearby. “Tell me that, Jake Marlowe,” she added. “Well, do we?”

The man sat back down, glowering at her.

“Now, now,” the mayor said. “This can't turn into a slinging match. We're here to discuss how the town can help.”

“The town could help the most by not involving itself in a plot to force landowners to sell their land,” Bowie told him coldly. “Now, let me ask you something. You're free and easy with the water on my land, but the aquifer here is dropping, and we're in trouble. You've already got a ban on outdoor watering. You tell me what you're going to do when you fìnd that aquifer being pulled down even more by a huge conglomerate that depends on enormous stores of groundwater. What about herbicides and pesticides contaminating that fragile water store? What about the erosion that's going to result from wholesale tilling of dry soil when the topsoil starts blowing away? What about the damage to the ecology and the threat to ranchers and housing developments and tourist areas?”

“That's right!” Mrs. Lopez seconded, standing. “Let me show you these photographs.” She held them up and explained them.

She was only the first; there were others. The ecology societies had representatives, who seconded Bowie's concerns, outnumbering the venomous people who wanted those jobs Bio-Ag would provide without counting the cost.

It very nearly became a riot, but the police calmed it down, and the mayor finally adjourned because not one item of regular business could be heard. He mumbled something about a meeting to discuss raised water rates and new contracts for police cars and grading, but he didn't make another sound in Bio-Ag's favor.

Mr. Logan came up to Bowie outside, after the meeting. “I just wanted to tell you that I'm genuinely sorry about the attempted shooting,” he said, and meant it. “I wouldn't have bloodshed over this thing for the world. We really think we can help the local economy. I wish you'd talk to us, and give us a chance to explain our position. Miss Cane changed her mind when she heard me out.”

Bowie glanced at Gaby and then back to Mr. Logan. “Gaby will have controlling interest in Casa Río in a few weeks,” he said. “You can always try to coax her out of her part, but I'll warn you that the water is on my part,” he added dryly, “and I won't sell. I've heard of your Mr. Samuels. I'm twice as determined now to hold on to my water rights. You can tell him I said so.”

Mr. Logan frowned. “I don't understand.”

“How long have you been with Bio-Ag?” he asked Logan levelly.

“Well, for about six months...”

“I suggest you find out a little something about your employer, Mr. Logan,” Bowie said quietly. “You need to know exactly what you're fighting for. And now, you tell me what kind of crops you mean to plant, or I'll go to the media.”

Mr. Logan swallowed. “I don't know,” he confessed. “Mr. Samuels won't say. He keeps mentioning soil surveys and studies.”

“I'll bet you ten to one he's planning to plant cotton on that land,” Bowie said, surprising even Gaby. “Cotton is what it's best suited for. It takes more water than you'd believe to irrigate that crop, and it exhausts the soil and lowers the aquifer. If you don't believe that, you look at the soil studies back in the southeast, where cotton was grown until it wore out the ground it was planted in. It's a good cash crop for a quick profit, but it's devastating in the long run. It has to be extensively sprayed, and you won't need a handful of people to take care of it. You understand me? You're talking about one or two combines and few trucks—that's all. That will do the economy about as much good as opening a laundry here.”

“I'm sure Mr. Samuels has good intentions. You might speak to him...oh, there he goes,” he sighed, nodding toward the gray Mercedes that was just pulling out of the parking lot and speeding away.

“He won't speak to me,” Bowie said. “He knows what I have to say. Good evening, Mr. Logan.” He caught Gaby's arm and led her to the Scorpio.

“Do you mind?” she laughed breathlessly. “I wanted to talk to him.”

“You can talk to him later, honey. I want to see about that bullet. By God, if it was McHaney's son, I'll beat the hell out of him! He could have hit you.”

She was frightened and delighted at his reaction. “I'm okay. It was you I was worried about. Bowie, it's going to get worse. You won't even consider selling?”

“Not now,” he replied as he cranked the car, his face set in determined lines. “I'll be damned if I'll be intimidated by bullets, or public opposition, or anything else.”

She leaned her head back against the headrest and sighed.

The police found the man who took the shot—and it was McHaney's eldest son, Riley, a wild boy with a quick temper. Gaby felt rather sorry for the old man, because he was a hard worker. But the boy should have known better than to try such a stupid thing, and on Bowie, of all people.

She set up the story for the next week's edition, and then she began to make telephone calls. She'd been given blanket permission from Bob to do that while she checked out the Bio-Ag story. She played on every source she could think of, finally calling the
Phoenix Advertiser
and going directly to Johnny Blake.

She explained the problem and he promised to see what he could find out and get back to her.

She didn't even realize that she'd worked right through lunch. Bowie had gone back to Tucson late the night before, worried and scowling, his reluctance to leave obvious as he kissed Gaby good night and made her promise not to venture out after dark until he was back on the weekend. She knew that if he hadn't had an early morning meeting in Phoenix, he'd never have left her. Besides, they had a new closeness that alleviated all her fears. The only thing she was worried about now was Bio-Ag.

Three hours after lunch, she was poring over every bit of information she'd gleaned on Bio-Ag and waiting for phone calls to be returned. It was Friday, so she had to hurry before everything closed for the weekend. She had hardly missed lunch, so she was surprised to find Harvey, of all people, standing at her desk with half a ham sandwich in his pudgy hand.

“You haven't eaten,” he said gruffly. He put the sandwich down and walked out, without a word.

She was touched beyond words. Amazing, when he was doing everything he could to make life hard for her, that he'd do such a thing. She frowned at the sandwich, wondering if maybe he'd put a poisonous mushroom in it, or sprinkled it with arsenic. But hunger got the best of her and she ate it, washing it down with lukewarm coffee.

She stopped by his office on the way out. “Thanks for the sandwich,” she said hesitantly. “I know you don't want me here, and I'm sorry, but I wasn't really trying to foul up your job, you know.” She shrugged helplessly. “I just wanted to be near Bowie, because we were engaged. I broke off the engagement, but Bowie's mother had already split the property between us. Now I'm staying to sort of look after my half. I've burnt my bridges in Phoenix. I don't have a place to go back to.”

Harvey shifted uncomfortably. “It isn't that I mind your being here,” he said after a minute, and a ruddy flush moved over his cheeks. “Bob made a big fuss over you, and I had visions of being tossed out on my ear,” he confessed.

“How silly,” she told him. “You're a marvelous reporter, even if you don't like controversy that much. You're great on politics and think pieces, and you get along well with local officeholders. They'll tell you things that they won't tell me.”

He nodded. “Sometimes.” He pursed his lips. “Has it occurred to you that Bowie may have a valid point about the agricultural project?”

“More and more,” she agreed. “Especially after he got shot at. I'm digging as deeply as I can. I've got one contact in Colorado who thought he remembered a company with a similar name causing some trouble up there,” she added. “And another contact is looking down in south Texas for me. But I don't have much time.”

He frowned. “I've got some contacts of my own. Could I help?”

She grinned. “Would you? That would be super, Harvey.”

“I'll do what I can,” he promised. “Actually, I'm in agreement with your...with Bowie. I talked to a friend of mine at the U.S. Soil Conservation Service office across the mountain.” He pulled his pad closer and began to decipher his notes for Gaby.

There was a big cotton growing operation in the area some years ago, he said, and water in the wells was falling five feet per year because of the increased usage. There was also a possibility that water pollution from fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides could get into the San Pedro and into the shallow aquifer. There was, as he already knew, no reliable surface water for irrigation, so it would have to come from wells, and they required a permit.

“That could be a way out,” Harvey told her. “If worst comes to worst, the opposition could protest the permit.”

“There are plenty of wells on Casa Río property,” she told him, “although Bowie uses them for his livestock. But they might require more than he's pumping if they had wholesale irrigation. Okay, what about efficiency if they don't use tail-water from a pit and reuse it for irrigation?”

He grimaced. “Fifty percent. In some instances, only twenty-five.”

“Then, why do they want the land?” she persisted. “Just for the water rights? Or could there be some more unsavory purpose?”

“There are outfits that buy up land as sites for dumping toxic wastes,” he reminded her. “There are others that buy it as a front for some potential polluter. There are still others that purport to plant cotton and then go after government subsidies to keep from having to plant it.”

She whistled. “I don't like this.”

“Neither do I. What are we going to do about it?”

She grinned. “Get on the telephone,” she said.

“You bet,” he said, and grinned back.

She went back to her office and started phoning. It looked like she and Harvey just might make a team yet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

B
Y
QUITTING
TIME
, Gaby was frustrated and gnawing her lips numb. She couldn't pin anyone down on anything. One of her contacts in Texas had suspicions, but it was going to require some deep checking into legal action, which meant spending the better part of a morning in the county courthouse poring over old newspaper stories in the bound editions of the county organ—the weekly newspaper there.

Her other contact in Colorado had drawn a temporary blank and had been sent out of town to cover a breaking story in California. She'd hoped to wrap it up over the weekend, and now she was back to first base. Harvey hadn't had any more luck than she had, unfortunately. If there was any free time this weekend, she had one more card to play. She'd managed to get the home telephone number of the prosecuting attorney in the small Texas town where Bio-Ag had last reported an operation. None of the new officials knew anything, but the then-district attorney might. She'd tried the number, only to be told that he was out of town until Sunday. Good enough. She'd try him then, and hope for the best.

Bowie came in very late Friday night. Gaby had been lying awake, worrying over Bio-Ag and the continuing controversy in town over the project. She worried about Bowie, even if he refused to worry about himself. Some of that concern was centered on Aggie, too. Aggie had looked bad when she had left, and Gaby still hadn't managed to track her down. She'd tried calling the people in Nassau with whom the older woman had been staying, but they hadn't heard from her, either.

It was one thing after another, Gaby thought miserably—broken engagements, her helpless fear of the past catching up with her, the unreasonable fear of intimacy that had cost her Bowie, the attempted shooting, the controversy over land use, Bowie's new tenderness with her that might only be pity, and Aggie's continuing absence. It was a good thing that she wasn't prone to ulcers, she told herself.

There was a faint tap at the door and Bowie came in, smiling at the picture she made sitting up in bed in her pale blue negligee, with her dark hair around her shoulders as she halfheartedly scanned the pages of a new novel.

He was wearing gray slacks, and his white shirt was open down the front, as if he'd just come in and was starting to get ready for bed.

“I thought I'd say good night,” he mused. “Unless you'd rather I called it from the doorway?”

She smiled shyly. “Well, no, I wouldn't,” she said.

He sat down beside her, casually eyeing the book before he tossed it aside on the coverlet. “Any trouble today?” he asked, his black eyes narrowed.

She shook her head. “Not really, except that old man McHaney's son was arrested and bail hasn't been set.”

“I didn't want him arrested,” he murmured. “I wanted ten minutes alone with him.”

“He missed,” she reminded him.

“By an inch.” He sighed heavily. “Heard from Aggie?”

“No. Have you?”

He laughed gently. “Would she be likely to call me? The whole thing's my fault.”

“Not really. They just disagreed.” Her fingers touched his big hand where it rested on the bed. She loved its very bigness, its lean strength. “Sometimes people can't work things out, even when they love each other,” she said wistfully.

“Like us?” He sighed, closing his fingers around hers. His dark eyes slid over her face like a caress, and he brought her hand gently to his mouth. “I wish I could go back in time,” he mused softly. “And that it was my family your father had worked for. I wish I'd found you in the barn. I wouldn't have been drunk, and you'd have been secretly in love with me. Of course, you'd have had to be three or four years older than fifteen at the time.” He brushed his lips over her palm, feeling her finger curl with pleasure. “I'd have taken you into one of the empty stalls—there would have been plenty of clean, fresh, unbriared hay, since we're imagining.” He grinned. “And then I'd have undressed you, very, very slowly.” The smile faded as his eyes cut into her fascinated ones. “I'd have shown you what physical pleasure was long before I took off my own clothes. And then,” he breathed, bending toward her mouth, “I'd have eased you down into the hay and tasted you with my mouth until you began to moan, and then to twist under me, and then to cry out with the anguish for fulfillment.” His lips touched her trembling ones, his voice deep and slow and soft in the stillness. “I'd have put my mouth against yours, just like this, Gaby,” he breathed, fitting it to hers. “And then I'd have done this to you, with my body...”

His tongue went slowly, silkily into her mouth and she moaned. The words had been arousing, but the gentle, deep thrust of his tongue was so graphic that it was like possession. Her brows drew together and her body went rigid with unexpected desire as his hands slid under her shoulder straps. He half lifted her and slowly peeled the gown away. She felt his hands, gentle on her bare breasts. He was kindling a fever in her skin, in her mind.

Her fingers stroked his thick, cool hair and speared into its softness with helpless pleasure. She lifted up against his hands, savoring their expert tenderness on her body. She opened her mouth to admit an even deeper penetration from his tongue, and heard him groan softly.

She whispered his name, her old fears forgotten in her first flush of real desire. It was more than a spark this time. It was a fierce, urgent need that made her body move restlessly under the soft caress of his hands. She felt him sliding the gown around her hips and down her legs, but it was more a relief than a threat. It was sweet to feel the cool air on her heated flesh, to feel his hands smoothing over her soft skin.

“Sweet,” he breathed against her swollen lips. “You're so sweet, Gaby.”

She pulled his mouth down to hers again, hungry for its hard pressure. She hardly felt what he was doing until his fingers slid down her soft belly, and then it was suddenly too late to protest.

His mouth caught the first frightened cry and lazily stilled it, his touch sure and swift and determined. He felt her begin to move with him, and when he was certain of her response, he lifted his head to look at her face.

“Don't be afraid,” he whispered, because there were remnants of fear in her eyes, despite her shivering helplessness and the rhythmic gasps that were pulsing out of her throat. “I want you to feel it,” he breathed, bending again to her parted lips, feeling the excitement trembling in them as his own mouth lay gently against them. “I want you to feel it shuddering through your body like flame.”

She felt her nails digging into his shoulders with a sense of shock, because there was a faint violence building in her, along with a tension that stretched her helpless body into unbearable torment. She couldn't breathe. He seemed to know that, because his mouth lifted and smoothed down over her taut breasts, stroking them as tenderly as his hand was working its magic.

When he felt her sudden rigidity and heard the shocked little cry that was torn from her throat, he smiled against her breast. He wanted to look, but that might have embarrassed her.

She clung to him, crying softly, tears softly tumbling down her cheeks. He lifted his head when he heard her. His mouth smoothed the tears away, tenderly caressing her flushed face and neck, comforting her.

“Oh, Bowie,” she whispered tearfully. She couldn't meet his eyes. She buried her face in his warm throat and clung to him, feeling his big body stretch out beside her, his arms around her, holding her close.

“That's what you were afraid of,” he said softly. “It isn't so very terrifying now, is it?”

“But it wasn't...all the way,” she whispered.

“All the way is just like that, Gaby,” he murmured against her throat, “except that I'll have to hurt you just a little, the first time. You're very much a virgin.”

“I wouldn't have felt pain,” she whispered, spellbound by what she'd experienced. “My goodness, I wouldn't have felt a bullet...!”

“I know.” He rolled over onto his back with a heavy sigh, bringing her gently closer against his side. “I didn't want to shock you, but I thought it might help if you understood what lovemaking is like.”

She was hardly breathing at all. “Would it feel like that?”

“Eventually. I won't lie to you. At first you're going to be uncomfortable, and there may not be a great deal of pleasure.”

Her cheek moved onto his hair-roughened chest. “Show me,” she whispered, surprised at her own forwardness.

He chuckled softly. “No. Not tonight. Petting is one thing, sex is something else.”

She lifted her head and searched his face. “I don't understand.”

“I don't have anything with me,” he explained. “Sweetheart, I could make you pregnant.”

Arrows of feeling penetrated her skin, sensation piling on sensation. She thought of a small boy with blond hair and black eyes, and his father laughing as he wrestled with him in front of the television. Her eyes grew soft with longing. She'd never had much of a childhood, and neither had Bowie, but their child would be wanted and loved.

“We could have a son,” she said quietly. She smiled. “And maybe a daughter, too. We could give them the love we never really had from our parents.”

That was a profound thought. He rose up and eased her onto her back to look down at her intently. “Do you want them enough to give yourself to me?”

“We won't know until we try,” she whispered.

He was tempted. He wanted her beyond all reason. But despite what she'd felt with him, there was every chance that she would draw back at the last minute. It wouldn't be good for her when they began, and he could scar her even more if she tried to stop him and couldn't. He knew his own limitations. He was on fire for her now, but he didn't dare take the chance.

“Not tonight, honey,” he said softly. “Let's go easy.”

She didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed. She stared up at him with plain confusion until he smiled and kissed her gently, before getting to his feet.

He looked down at her with soft, loving eyes. She realized only then that she was completely bare and gasped, seizing her gown to hold it in front of her.

“So shy,” he murmured softly. “And after what we did.”

She colored. “Shame on you.”

“You loved it,” he said with pure male malice. He bent and kissed her roughly. “You're going to love what comes next, too, but I'm going to make you wait for that. We'll go sightseeing in the morning, so get to bed.”

“Sightseeing?”

“Out to the old camp,” he reminded her. “To see the ruins.” His black eyes twinkled. “And make love on one of those big, smooth boulders...?”

“Someone would see us,” she murmured, blushing.

“Not there, they wouldn't,” he chuckled. “It's as remote as the moon during the summer. And it's on our land, so tourists don't stray past the ‘No Trespassing' signs.”

She wasn't certain if he was serious or not, but she didn't press it. Her body still ached with what he'd done to it, and she tingled from head to toe with new knowledge of him and herself. She smiled at him as he went out the door, delighted to find that she hadn't thought about the past even once.

“Bowie?”

He paused with the doorknob in his hand. “What?”

“What about you?” she asked hesitantly, worried.

“I'm fine,” he said firmly, and managed a smile. “Go to sleep.”

She slid her gown back on when he was gone, and despite a faint niggling of shame at the freedom she'd given him with her body, she couldn't help but delight in the promise of womanhood. She'd never dreamed such sensations were possible, but what she'd felt with Bowie gave her hope. If that was what possession felt like, then it was nothing to be afraid of—except that she might become addicted to it.

The next morning, Montoya packed them a picnic lunch and they headed out toward the canyon.

“What about Aggie?” Gaby asked worriedly. She was wearing jeans and a gray pullover knit top with her Western straw hat and boots.

Bowie glanced at her with a grin. He was wearing jeans and a cream-colored Western shirt with his own hat and boots, and he looked as Western as a rodeo. “Aggie will turn up. The private detective still hasn't come up with Courtland, but he's more hopeful about Aggie. The one piece of information he delved was that Courtland didn't register under that name on the cruise. The next step is to check out the passenger list. We know his age, so that eliminates a good many of them.”

“I hope we can find Aggie,” she replied. “Although it would be interesting to find out who Mr. Courtland really is.”

“That it would.” He turned on the radio, deep in thought, as they drove the miles to the box canyon.

There was something new—a chain across the small trail that led into the canyon. Bowie unlocked the gate, drove the truck through it, and locked it back again.

“I don't want anyone in here defacing the ruins,” he explained. “Now this, little one, is what your friends at Bio-Ag want to level and plant.”

He drove down a long, flat plain that led to the small mountain chain rising right off the desert floor. There was creosote and agave and ocotillo at first, and then mesquite, palo verde, cottonwood, and oak trees leading back to the increasingly dense vegetation of the mountains. He pulled off the road at a grouping of huge, smooth rocks.

“It reminds me of Texas Canyon,” she remarked. “Although that's much farther away.”

“It reminds me of Cochise Stronghold,” he returned, helping her out of the truck, “which is much closer. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Cochise and his band spent time here, too. Come on.”

He took her by the hand and led her through the rocks to the ruins of an ancient camp. “There isn't a lot left,” he said, indicating adobe walls and scattered artifacts. “I've done some digging here, and I've let some archaeologists putter around, but I won't allow anything to be carried away. The Hohokam were here before any of us—even the Pima and Tohono O'odham. They were the ancients. They had the most sophisticated irrigation systems in existence in their time period, and elegant philosophies about life, and time, and the equality of the spirit.”