Cowboy Protector Read online

  The door crashed open and uniformed members of the SWAT team, guns at the ready, penetrated the room.

  If they had come sooner, like before Annabeth had seen the thief’s face, he might not be so weighted down by the responsibility of making sure she was safe.

  “Nice to see you guys, even if you are a little too late,” Neil said dryly.

  Whether or not he liked it, until the thieves were caught, Annabeth Caldwell was his concern.

  “THE HOSTAGE AND Barricaded Suspect Team was getting into place just as the criminals made their move,” Detective Dan Wexler explained. “We were in the process of deploying the snipers when they ran.”

  Annabeth figured Detective Wexler to be in his early forties despite the silver feathering thick brown hair that framed a craggy face and vivid blue eyes that crinkled around the corners. He was tall and trim and neatly pressed. His air of authority was comforting rather than intimidating.

  “The man who was shot,” she asked, suddenly having trouble breathing, “is he dead?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The other two got clean away. Our men are working the crowd. But under the circumstances…” He shrugged.

  Despite the fact that crime-scene tape limned the perimeter, Annabeth felt the crowd closing in on her. People of all ages were hanging around, trying to pick up some tidbit about the robbery and hostage situation. While his partner was interviewing Lloyd Wainwright and Peter Telek inside the office, Wexler had taken her and Neil to a bench outside to hear their account of the story.

  “Did they wear gloves at all times?” Wexler asked, leg lifted, polished shoe resting on the edge of their bench.

  Neil shook his head. “Never took them off that I noticed.”

  “Too bad. No fingerprints to lift. I thought maybe we would find some on the saddlebags.”

  “Maybe you still can,” Neil suggested. “Who’s to say these guys were smart enough to wipe it clean of their prints before they set off for the robbery?”

  “Good point. The evidence techs will be thorough. If there’s a fingerprint to be gotten, they’ll find it.”

  “At least they didn’t get away with the money,” Annabeth said, “not that it’s as important as a lost life. Even a criminal’s life. Hopefully not Lujan’s life.”

  “If they’re smart,” Wexler said, “they’ll keep Lujan safe. As for the thief—he wouldn’t have been shot if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary.”

  “I saw it all,” Neil told her. “That guy was going crazy shooting off his revolver. Probably emptied it. He could have killed someone else. He had to have known what would happen to him when he didn’t just try to get away clean. I guess he was afraid of being caught and serious about never going back to jail.”

  She nodded. “He asked for it, then.”

  Like her brother had asked for it. But Larry had been a good little boy and a great kid. Unfortunately, he’d grown into a teenager confused by those who pretended to be his friends.

  And this city was so unbearably unforgiving of mistakes.

  Shoving the memory away, she said, “I can give you a description of one of the men. That would help you catch him, right?”

  “I thought the men were masked at all times.”

  “They were. Except I got a look at the leader—the one the other guy called Nickels.”

  “Nichols?” Wexler repeated, making a notation in his little black book. “I’ll run it through our criminal database to see if we can get a handle on a perp who fits your description.” He gazed at her intently. “So, you got a look at the leader of the gang without his mask.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  Annabeth shuddered. She had come so close to dying that she struggled with the memory. Swallowing hard, she stared down at her hands in her lap, all twisted together as she fought her nerves. Neil reached over and just for a second covered her fidgeting fingers and gave them a light squeeze of reassurance. Unexpected warmth filled her and eased her anxiety enough so that she was able to go on.

  “I’ll never forget his face,” she whispered, picturing it now. “Narrow. Steely-gray eyes and thin lips. A tight mouth. And a faint, white scar here.” She touched the soft area under her right cheekbone.

  “Good.” Wexler was writing furiously in his notebook. “That will help. I’ll bring you down to the area office and you can work with Officer Nuhn. We use a computer program now to fit the pieces together and come up with a likeness.”

  “I can come along, as well,” Neil said. “I had direct contact with the man.” He smoothed a hand over his aching jaw. “I may think of something, be able to help in some way.”

  Wexler nodded. “Good, good.”

  “But you have a timed event that you’re supposed to compete in,” Annabeth protested.

  “Today it was just for show. I don’t need the practice. Besides, no Casper, remember?”

  Reminded of the missing calves, she wondered what could have happened to them.

  Missing calves…missing steers…missing thieves…

  Wexler had a few more questions, but he wound up the interview within minutes. “I’ll just tell my partner I’m taking you two to the station.”

  “I need to talk to my boss for a minute, as well,” Annabeth said. “He’ll have to get someone to cover for me.”

  Neil nodded. “I’ll wait out here.”

  She quickly followed the detective back into the building.

  Lloyd seemed uncommonly quiet for a normally talkative man. Peter Telek was engaged in a dialogue with Detective Ben Smith, a wiry African American in jeans, running shoes and a Bulls T-shirt, as different from Wexler as he could be. Lloyd seemed to have closed himself off from the interview. He leaned back slightly in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest like a barrier to more questioning. Annabeth wondered where that interview had gone sour.

  When Wexler interrupted Smith, Annabeth approached her boss.

  “Lloyd, Detective Wexler asked me to go to the station with him—”

  “What for?”

  “Because I saw the leader’s face. He wants me to help them get a computer image of the guy.”

  He blinked at her through his metal-rimmed glasses. “But I need you here.”

  “Are you saying I can’t get off work?”

  A moment of silence stretched between them before Lloyd shrugged his shoulders and said, “Of course, of course. You have to do whatever you can to make sure that villain is caught,” he said, forcing a familiar smile. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, I’ll get someone to take care of the calves. And don’t worry about coming back here today. You go home and rest those nerves of yours.”

  “Home, right,” she said without enthusiasm. “Thanks, Lloyd. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “I’m sure you will, Annabeth, honey, I’m sure you will.”

  “You might want to be careful how involved you get in this case,” Peter Telek said.

  Annabeth started at the warning. Turning to him, she met a face of stone. “Why?”

  “Because it’s bound to turn out bad for you.”

  A thrill shot up her spine, and gooseflesh spread along her limbs. “Bad…how?”

  “He’ll find you,” the old man predicted. “They always do.”

  Annabeth backed away from him. Great. Just what she needed—dire predictions from someone she didn’t even know. Nickels stalking her…

  She couldn’t get back outside fast enough.

  Neil was waiting for her. Focusing on him made her feel a bit better, a bit less on edge. He was a man with a solid feel, one a woman could count on, she thought.

  But focusing on him brought to her attention something that she had missed. Or perhaps overlooked in light of her own emotional upheaval.

  “Your face—it’s bruised. And your neck. Nickels really hurt you!” She stepped closer and raised a hand as if to touch his face, then changed her mind when she realized she might make him hurt more. “Maybe you should see someone. Get checked over.”


  “I’m fine.”

  She swallowed hard. “You don’t look fine, especially your neck.”

  “I’m just bruised is all,” Neil insisted as Detective Wexler left the office.

  “Ready to go?”

  They followed him to the street, where his vehicle waited. But before they could get in, a squad car pulled up to the curb and the driver’s door opened.

  “Wexler,” the officer who slid out said, “we’ve retrieved our hostage.”

  “What about the thieves?”

  “Never saw them. We found Alderman Lujan wandering through the crowd, kind of, uh…talking to himself. Apparently, the thieves just let him go.”

  He opened the rear door and the alderman stumbled out, looking a bit dazed. The moment he saw Annabeth, however, he pointed a shaky finger at her.

  “You! This is all your fault. You put me in danger. I heard what you did. I wouldn’t have been taken hostage, my life threatened, if you hadn’t stirred things up with that fool escape attempt.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annabeth said, her spirits plummeting once more.

  “Sorry isn’t good enough—”

  “Whoa!” Neil stepped forward so that he was shielding her from the angry politician. “The lady apologized. She thought her life was in immediate danger. You can’t hold that against her.”

  “I certainly can!”

  Detective Wexler stepped in. “Alderman Lujan, we need your statement. My partner is just finishing up with the other hostages. He’ll take care of you. Officer, would you escort the alderman inside. And if he needs anything, see that he gets it.”

  Lujan narrowed his gaze at Annabeth and shook a finger at her. “I’m not through with you, yet,” he warned before stalking off with the officer in tow.

  “Don’t worry about the alderman,” Wexler said. “He tends to overdramatize. He’s upset, but he’ll cool down.”

  Upset? Annabeth thought. He wasn’t the only one.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Neil put an arm across her back and lightly rubbed her arm. Annabeth suppressed a gasp in reaction.

  “C’mon. Forget that loudmouth. You have more important things to take care of.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Right now she was thinking about him. About his hand touching her, stroking her. She fought the insanity and let him help her into the back seat of Wexler’s car. He then slid in next to her.

  On their way to the area office, Neil reinforced that notion of solidity that she had about him. As they sped through the Loop area, he distracted her and kept her talking about her various jobs until the last of her nerves dissipated.

  “So, that lawyer you worked for…you say he was condescending?”

  “And an idiot in general,” she added with a weak grin.

  “How did he get on your bad side?”

  “The morning I showed up on the job, he said he had a backlog of letters for me to type and handed me an audiotape, then left,” Annabeth remembered. “I got myself set up with the computer and Dictaphone, but when I played back the tape, his voice kept going in and out. It was weird—he must have stopped and started a hundred times. I suspect he didn’t really know how to use the machine.”

  “But you told him,” Neil said with a smirk.

  “Well, I tried to be tactful. Really.” But she couldn’t help grinning at the memory. “When I told him about the problem, he grabbed the tape from my hand, said it was obviously defective and chucked it in the wastebasket.”

  Neil chuckled. “Ooh, a little defensive. What then?”

  “Then he told me to do some task I didn’t exactly understand. And when I asked for an explanation, he said he didn’t give instructions, turned his back on me and walked out of the office. I waited for nearly an hour, but he never came back. And there was no one else to ask. Finally, I just got disgusted enough to leave.”

  “And that ended your word processing career?”

  She nodded. “Of course, he told the agency that I was incompetent.”

  They laughed together and Annabeth felt better than she had all day. No, even longer. Maybe all year.

  Glad that she didn’t have to go through this ordeal alone, no matter the reason they were getting along so well after a bad start, she clung to the lifeline of connection with another human being that Neil held out to her, if even for a short while. Bad enough that she would be alone later.

  Even with support, however, she hated having to enter another police station. The wounds were still too raw. But remembering Telek’s warning, she knew she had to shelve her personal prejudice to help catch a real criminal.

  Detective Wexler introduced them to Officer Laura Nuhn and then disappeared. The policewoman was a young, pretty brunette with a quiet demeanor.

  “This way,” she said, leading Annabeth and Neil into her cubicle. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Annabeth sat next to the policewoman, and Neil stood behind them as Nuhn set up her program.

  Too aware of Neil’s presence, Annabeth began to squirm inside. When he leaned over for a better look at the monitor, his hip brushed her shoulder and she shifted in her seat. His tendency to do natural things, like placing his hand on the back of her chair, distracted her.

  And so it took some effort to focus when Officer Nuhn finally said, “Let’s begin with the shape of the face.”

  She called up a screen of different face shapes.

  Annabeth tapped at the one that reminded her of Nickels. “Long and narrow.”

  Nuhn seemed so expert with her computer that Annabeth wondered if the policewoman had been born using one. Her long fingers continually flew over the keyboard as she asked questions.

  “What about his hair? Color, texture, hairline, style?”

  “He was wearing a brimmed hat,” Annabeth said. “It came off for a moment, but that’s when his back was to me. All I can tell you is that it was medium brown and a little shaggy around the neckline.”

  “I got a close-up of the hair since he was on top of me,” Neil said wryly. “Thick but with a widow’s peak.”

  The long and narrow face on the monitor suddenly sprouted a hairline.

  “What about his forehead?” Nuhn asked. “High or low?”

  “High.”

  The forehead stretched a bit.

  “Smooth, creased or wrinkled?”

  “Smooth,” Neil continued.

  “Tell me about his eyes. Color, shape, what kind of eyebrows?”

  Annabeth said, “Pale gray and narrow. His eyebrows were kind of flat.”

  They went through dozens of details, including the shape of his nose and nostrils, the size and prominence of his ears, the line of his mouth, the shape of the chin and the condition of his complexion.

  The face on the monitor was starting to look eerily familiar.

  “Don’t forget the scar,” Annabeth said, “under his right cheekbone.”

  The policewoman added the final detail.

  “There. What do you think?” Officer Nuhn asked. “Is that our thief?”

  Annabeth considered it. “His cheeks were a bit more angular.”

  The policewoman fine-tuned the computer image. “Anything else.”

  “That’s it,” Annabeth whispered, thankful that she had been so observant.

  Neil leaned past her to place a hand across the lower half of the man’s on-screen face as if it were a mask. “Yep. That’s him, all right. You’ve got him.”

  If only that weren’t merely a figurative statement, Annabeth thought as he brushed her once more. Her pulse picked up, but she told herself it was because she wanted Nickels caught and incarcerated before he could do more harm.

  A moment later she held an actual printout of the thief’s face in her hand.

  “Kind of a macabre souvenir of our experience,” she muttered as Detective Wexler rejoined them.

  “That’s Nichols?” he asked.

  “A spitting image,” she agreed.

  “This woman is amazing,”
Neil said. “She didn’t miss a thing.”

  “Good, since this is all we have for now. I ran the name through the database but we didn’t find anyone who even came close to fitting your description. So we’ll be relying on this composite to find him.”

  “How long do you think it might take?” Neil asked.

  “I can’t say. We could find him tomorrow.”

  Or never, Annabeth thought with a shiver. She carefully folded her copy of the printout and slipped it into a back pocket of her jeans.

  “Since Annabeth is your chief witness,” Neil went on, “you’re planning on giving her round-the-clock protection, right?”

  “Not really. She’s in no danger.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The thieves don’t even know her name, and we won’t be releasing it to the media.”

  “But what if he finds out who I am?” Annabeth asked. Now she not only had to dread being alone, she had to worry about it. “Nickels or his partner could ask around the festival grounds and find out where I work.”

  “Doubtful,” Wexler said. “But just in case, perhaps you ought to take off for a few days.”

  “I can’t afford to take off—I have rent to pay. Groceries to buy.”

  “Well, that’s up to you. But if you should see Nickels or get wind of some stranger asking after you, get back to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “So you can help after the fact,” Neil said.

  “Sorry. I might not like it any more than you do, but I can’t argue with the system.” Wexler’s expression was apologetic. “Hang on a minute and I’ll get you both a ride home.”

  Annabeth nodded. Now she was dreading the hours that would stretch out before her.

  “What now?” Neil asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you really going to go home and rest like Wainwright told you to do?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”

  “Well, I was just wondering…if you’re up to it, I mean…would you mind spending a little more time with me?”