Night Hawk

“And you work with metal?”

“Of course,” Kai said. “If we had to replace a fender or some metal skin that took a bullet hole in an Apache, it was up to us to fix it. I’m good at welding, Talon. I’m qualified in specialty metals. I can do all this for you. But I need a good machine shop to do it in. And Harper runs a clean place and he’s got all the latest equipment to make my job easy and fast.”

Talon glanced at Gil. “Is Harper the only game in town?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“And the next closest machine shop would be Idaho Falls, Idaho. That’s a six-hour round-trip and that doesn’t account for the time Kai would have to spend at a machine shop,” Talon said.

“I know for a fact what he charged us today is about one-third less than what a regular machine shop would charge us,” Kai pointed out.

“Cass?” Talon held up the paper toward him. “Have you seen this yet?”

“No,” he said, taking the papers and quickly parsing the numbers. His brows moved up. “Well,” he murmured, looking at Talon, “Kai is right—these numbers are lower than normal.”

“Because Harper wants something in return from you, Kai,” Gil ground out.

All heads turned toward him.

There was no mistaking Gil’s words or his barely closeted anger. Kai shook her head. “I think all of you are going overboard,” she stated flatly. “Harper did not accost me this afternoon. I worked with José. I never saw him again.” She saw Gil grit his teeth. The man was jealous as hell.

Cass sat there scribbling some numbers on the back of one of her notebook pages. “Boss? If we assume each piece of equipment is going to need this kind of do-over, then we’ll easily save one-half of what was going to be spent on those repairs. That’s a considerable sum when you look at the totals here.”

Kai couldn’t stand being near Gil anymore. He felt like a nuclear power engine that was about ready to explode. “Look, Talon, when you guys figure out what you want to do, let me know? I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Good night...”

* * *

GIL WATCHED KAI walk away, the soft sway of her hips reminding him starkly of far too much from their past. He swung his head toward Talon. “You cannot let her do this. You know Harper is into the sex-trafficking trade and drugs. There are two women he was dating and both are gone. Disappeared without a trace. Do you want to guess where they probably ended up? In some Eastern European slave trader’s hideaway to be sold to the highest bidder.”

Talon held up his hand. “Look, I’m aware of the gossip about Harper. No one’s proved anything, Gil. At least—” he sighed “—not yet.”

“What if one of us went with her?” Cass asked, giving the two men an inquiring look.

Talon’s mouth quirked. “Like any of us have time to babysit her for fear Harper will steal and sell her?”

“Look,” Cass said reasonably, opening his hands, “why not go talk to law enforcement? The sheriff’s office is in town. Talon? You could swing by—”

“I’ll do it,” Gil muttered. “No one is handling this except me.” He gave Talon a look of warning.

Shrugging, Talon said, “Fine by me. I’ll tell Kai to not go back there until you’ve talked to the sheriff’s department about Harper.”

Gil rose. “She needs to be protected from that bastard,” he growled, and left.

Cass gave Talon an amused look. “Did I miss something here? Or did your SEAL nose catch it, too?”

“What?” Talon asked.

Cass sat back in the chair, rocking it on its two hind legs, hands resting on his thick thighs. “I might be wrong about this, but I sure think there’s something simmering between Kai and Gil. Did you pick up on it?”

“No,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “I’m so damned busy trying to coordinate everything else, I’m probably missing a lot.”

Cass smiled a little. “She’s a pretty lady. I’m surprised she’s single.”

Talon shook his head. “She was married to a Delta Force operator for three years until he got killed in a firefight.”

Brows drawing down, Cass said, “Yeah, she told me earlier about it. Probably why she’s still single.”

“Well,” Talon said, standing, “I wonder if Gil knew her husband. Maybe there’s a connection there you’re picking up on.”

Cass grinned a little as he rose. “What I felt was definitely interest on Gil’s part toward her. He’s like a nighthawk around her.”

Talon shook his head. “A nighthawk is the wrangler who protects the herd during the night from all kinds of danger. Gil is protective of Kai. You have eyes in the back of your head, Cass. You always did.”

Giving him a wicked look, Cass slid the chair up to the table. “Yes, and I can count how many times we saved your sorry ass out on an op, too, because of it.”

A sour grin edged Talon’s mouth. “Can’t deny it, bro. I’m going to spend some time with my mother and then I’m hitting the sack.”

“Yeah,” Cass grumped good-naturedly. “All I have to look forward to is swimming in red and black numbers in my office for a couple of hours now.”

Talon looked over his shoulder. “Better be more black than red,” he warned him.

“Doin’ my best, boss,” Cass teased. “We’re slowly eking toward the healthy side of the business ledger. Rebuilding an empire takes time.”

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_260d05a5-cc11-53d7-a2b9-a879354192ee)

TALON HOLT SAT with Gil in his office at the main ranch house. Both were grim. Talon said, “Look, we know that Chuck Harper is being watched by the FBI and ATF for drug running. So far, no one has caught him at it.” Pushing his fingers through his dark hair, he added, “Deputy Sheriff Cade Garner is someone I trust, Gil. You haven’t been here long enough to know that, but if he suggests that someone escort Kai over to the Ace Trucking machine shop, we need to do it.”

“You won’t get any argument out of me,” Gil said, feeling relief start to trickle through him. He would talk to Garner soon. Until then, Gil had made a decision that someone would always be with Kai over at Harper’s machine shop. He had her back. “It’s going to be a balancing act. Needs at the ranch versus needs of machinery being available so we can use it. Right now, I need a horse trailer. And we don’t have one that’s safe enough to use.” He saw his boss sit back in his chair, nodding. “You need to tell me what repair should be first.”

“On another issue, we need to buy a horse for Kai,” Talon said. “Slade McPherson, Griff’s twin brother, owns an endurance-racing horse ranch on the other side of Jackson Hole. Cass has allotted us fifteen hundred dollars for the animal. Can you take Kai over after setting an appointment up with Slade? Let her see what’s available and then you need to get him to agree to our money limit.”

Gil had never met Slade McPherson, but he knew his twin, Griff, who he respected and admired. The man had an MBA, along with horse sense and hard work combined. He was bringing the Bar H back to life. “I’ll see what I can do.” He knew the worth of the horses he had bred and trained.

“Then,” Talon said, talking more to himself as he looked up at the copper ceiling that had been imprinted with hundred-year-old patterns from the past, “get Kai to look over all the equipment. Have her make up a complete repair list. Tell her the double-wide horse trailer has to supersede the tractor for now. If push comes to shove, we can always ask Slade to deliver the horse here and he will. But we need that trailer as bad as we need the tractor.”

“And who do you want to go with her to Ace Trucking?” Gil wanted it to be him. He saw his boss’s expression pinch.

“Whoever is available at the time. Hell, it will be Cass, you or me. Any way you cut it, she’s got a black ops guy at her side. I don’t think Harper will try anything.”

“You want us to pack a weapon?”

Talon nodded. “We all have a license to carry a concealed weapon. I don’t trust Harper. At all. But I sure as hell like the prices he’s giving Kai. If we don’t use his services, that means we’re wasting a day driving to and from, plus, if Kai can’t finish everything off at another machine shop in Idaho Falls, we have to pay for her food and hotel bill. And we’re paying one-third more in costs. It mounts up in a hurry.”

Gil understood Talon’s position. He knew from his own father always battling the accounting ledger that keeping a ranch in the black was the toughest thing to do in the world. And right now, the Triple H was in the red. Cass had a good, solid plan for the ranch, but it was slow going. Rome wasn’t built in a day, he reminded himself. So Talon was going to be damned conservative, and Gil didn’t blame his boss for wanting to use a nearby facility and save money while he was at it. He just didn’t want to put Kai at risk. But neither did Talon. Gil could see he was morally wrestling with the situation. In one way he knew he was putting Kai in a potentially dangerous situation. On the other hand, all three of them were well-trained operators and would be packing a weapon in case shit happened.

“Do you think Harper would try anything while she was in his facility?” Gil wondered.

“No, I don’t. And that’s the only reason I’m willing to even consider this idea. Harper is known to be very low-key. He doesn’t want trouble. There’s been enough of it of late and Cade thinks that he knows the FBI is following him. He employs only Latino workers. Cade thinks most of them are illegals. But the other agencies that usually swoop down and find them are pulling back. The FBI is trying to insert someone into the trucking company, but they know Harper is watching closely.”