Under Cover Of Darkness Read online

  Hurt and confused, Meg had considered looking elsewhere for a job. But after a week of prayer and fasting, she regrouped, took her career delay in stride, and began to learn the landscaping business, quite literally, from the ground up.

  The year would be up next Friday.

  Unfortunately, Kenneth Warner could extend her probation for as long as he chose.

  Meg yanked off her gloves and wiped her sweaty hands on the seat of her pants. She knew she had to show at least outward respect for this wretched man.

  Scowling, Warner stepped out of the BMW and picked his way up the sidewalk, which was still littered with flats of monkey grass. In spite of the heat, he wore a red silk tie Windsor-knotted at the throat of a crisp blue-striped Oxford. His dark-blond hair was carefully combed back to disguise its thinness. He was a smart, handsome man, and had a knack for dropping into conversations the fact that he’d put himself through college by modeling for Neiman’s.

  Warner approached, sharp blue eyes scouring Meg. He stopped, hands thrust into the pockets of immaculate Armani trousers. “May I have a moment of your time, Ms. St. John?” He ignored Tomás, who stole surreptitious glances at that brilliant tie.

  Meg hated the way Warner looked at her. A couple of months ago he’d offered to take her to lunch—alone. Knowing he was married, she’d refused. Since then he’d treated her with roving eyes and patronizing sarcasm. Aware that her perfectly modest uniform shirt was drenched with sweat, she shifted her shoulders to loosen it.

  “Sure.” She hit the boom box to turn off Ricky Skaggs. Since Warner apparently hadn’t noticed the absence of half her crew, Meg couldn’t imagine what the man wanted. He rarely visited job sites, preferring to spend his days in the office dishing out orders by phone. “Have you met Tomás?”

  Warner looked as startled as if she’d offered to introduce him to a boxwood. “Uh, no. Does he even speak English?”

  Like most of her crew, Tomás understood more English than he actually spoke. But since he’d moved to the trailer for more shrubs, Meg shook her head. “What can I do for you, Mr. Warner?”

  “The first thing you can do is check your cell phone and make sure it’s charged up and turned on. I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

  Meg gulped. No wonder he’d risked soiling his Italian shoes. “Oops. Sorry. I always forget about it.”

  “Well, welcome to the twenty-first century. I have a lunch appointment in ten minutes, so I’ll get right to the point. Crowley has come up with a new project for you, starting Monday.”

  “Really?” Meg’s emotions skidded in all directions. Since her original interview, she’d seen the owner of the company half a dozen times. She’d been afraid he had forgotten about her.

  “Yes. But I warn you, this won’t exactly be a cushy job.”

  Meg thought she detected a vindictive gleam in Warner’s expression. So much for career advancement.

  “Okay,” she said cautiously, “so what sort of project is it?”

  Warner rocked back on his heels. “I suppose you’re aware that Crowley’s sister, Mary Frances Grover-Niles, sits on the board of the Hysterical Society.”

  Meg nodded, refusing to be amused by his snide reference to the Fort Worth Historical Commission. In her opinion they served a valuable community service, and she enjoyed reading their articles in the Sunday paper. “I think I read that somewhere.”

  “Well, it seems they’ve decided to invest in the biggest money pit this side of the Mississippi River. And you, Ms. St. John, have been elected to excavate it.”

  “Me?” Meg’s heart yo-yoed. “So I’m promoted to design?”

  Warner snorted. “Wait until you see the budget before you get all starry-eyed. Over my objections—strenuous objections, I might add—Crowley insisted on bidding on this white elephant and won the contract. Since our other two architects are busy with moneymaking projects, the only way to do this one without putting ourselves out of business is to give it to you. If you bring it in on time and under budget—and if the Commission is completely satisfied, of course—I’ll consider taking you off probation.”

  “A budget,” Meg breathed. She wondered what Warner would say if she broke into a Snoopy dance across the parking lot. “Do I have a deadline?”

  “In my opinion, it would take the next decade to bring the place out of the wilderness, but Mrs. Grover-Niles wants her daughter to be married there the second weekend of August.”

  Meg did the math. Today being May twenty-fourth, that left about ten weeks to research, plan, locate plant materials and install a—

  “How big is this place anyway?”

  “It’s a five-acre turn-of-the-century estate called Silver Hill.”

  “That sounds beautiful!”

  “It’s a goat farm,” he said flatly, “so you’d better get right on it. Sam Thornton’s going to meet you out there in an hour to give you the specs.” Warner looked around as if the lack of activity had suddenly penetrated his fog of self-absorption. “This isn’t your whole crew, is it?”

  “Border patrol came by while I was off-site,” Meg blurted, caught off guard. “Apparently somebody hasn’t been real careful about checking documentation.” Then she remembered that Warner was in charge of paperwork. Her eyes widened. “No criticism intended—”

  “Documentation is not your concern,” Warner snapped. Red stripes flagged his sculpted cheekbones. “What were you doing off-site?”

  She might have known this would turn into a power play. “I had to go back to the nursery for—”

  Warner slashed a hand through the air, cutting her off. “Never mind, I’m late for my meeting. Here’s the address.” He handed Meg a computer printout. “It’s in the old Gloriana district.”

  He headed for his car and paused inside the open door. “One more thing. You have to finish this S and L job today. Crowley wants to see Silver Hill sketches next Thursday so he can present them to the board on Friday.” A smirk curved his full lips. “Have a nice day.”

  As Warner’s car slid around a corner, Meg evaluated the crew’s progress. The three of them were working hard, but they’d hardly made a dent in the job. And she was going to have to leave them while she met with Sam.

  Meg pressed her hands to her churning stomach. Oh, Lord, what am I going to do? This isn’t humanly possible.

  The implications of that simple truth struck her.

  For the last year she’d been traveling in a wilderness of suppressed dreams and desires, wondering when deliverance would come. Now she faced equal amounts of opportunity and failure. This was no time to get self-sufficient…or to retreat in fear.

  Heavenly Father, she prayed, help me see Your hand. Help me hold on to You—

  “Ma’am, you okay?”

  Meg’s eyes flew open. Tomás was looking at her over his shoulder, his thin young face creased with concern.

  She whipped the rolled-up blueprint out of her back pocket. “Everything’s peachy, Tomás.” At his confused look, she scoured her meager Spanish vocabulary. All she could come up with was “bueno” and a thumbs-up.

  Tomás’s face cleared, and he went back to work.

  “Gotta spend a little more time with Spanish for Gringos,” she muttered with a sigh.

  When Sam Thornton’s big Ford F-250 truck pulled up along the curb behind her, Meg was sitting in her truck, staring at the front elevation of Silver Hill and repeating, “It’s not so bad. It’s really not.” But she had a sinking feeling even the Munsters would have hesitated to move into this place.

  Sections of green tile roof were visible above a tangle of overgrown trees, briars, vines and crabgrass that had been chopped away to leave a narrow passage down the middle of a broken sidewalk. Through that opening, Meg could see a tiny section of the front porch and brick entryway. A service road leading up from the street had been hacked through the jungle; she assumed the remodeling of the house itself had been completed, but it was impossible to tell from here.

  Why had
she agreed to this project sight unseen? Kenneth Warner must be laughing up his sleeve. For the second time that day she laid her forehead on the steering wheel. “Ay-yi-yi.”

  “This ain’t no time for takin’ a nap, little girl.” Her supervisor’s dark Alabama drawl rolled through her open window, and she turned her head to find Sam opening her door. “Come on out and face the music.”

  Only Sam could call a grown woman “little girl” and get away with it. A fiftyish African-American built like a big black bear—and just about as grouchy—Sam had become more like a favorite uncle than a boss over the past year. In the words of her older brother Cole, Sam Thornton was “the real deal.”

  Meg got out and elbowed the door shut. “Did you know about this?”

  He shook his gray-flecked head. “Um-mm. Mr. Ted kept it quiet until he was sure it was gonna happen. And I can see why,” he added under his breath. “Hoo-boy, that is one whoppin’ mess.”

  “Well,” she sighed, “at least it’s my mess, and I can do what I want to with it. Have you got a plot plan and stuff for me?”

  Sam grunted. “Yeah, in a minute, but first I want you to meet somebody.” He lifted a beefy hand and gestured with two fingers. For the first time Meg realized there was a passenger in his truck.

  The man lifted his chin in acknowledgement, then got out and approached with a loose, athletic stride. He stopped next to Sam, thumbs hooked in the back pockets of faded-to-white jeans.

  Meg compared every man she met to her father, and her first thought was, He’s even taller than Daddy. He was probably in his early thirties, with dark hair pulled smoothly into a short ponytail at the back of his neck. A pair of mirrored sunglasses covered his eyes.

  Who was he? Hispanic, obviously, but he didn’t have the wiry, hungry look of the men who worked on her crew. Too rough-edged to be a crony of Warner or Mr. Crowley; a couple days’ growth of black beard shadowed his angular jaw, and a tattoo of some sort stuck out from under the sleeve of his black T-shirt. A thin silver hoop pierced one ear.

  Meg looked at Sam for explanation. Her boss was leaning, arms folded, against the hood of the truck, watching her with a twinkle in his mud-brown eyes. “Torres, this is St. John.”

  Meg felt the stranger’s hidden gaze home in on her face. She thought with an amused inward shudder that if he took off the glasses, his eyes would surely glow red. All he needed was a black leather jacket and a laser gun.

  Killer of plants and planters. Oh, baby.

  “You’re St. John?” he said, a slight Spanish inflection to the way he said her name, half Latino, half Texas cowboy.

  “Last time I checked.” She looked down at her shirt pocket, where her name was embroidered, and gave the Terminator a friendly smile.

  His extraordinary mouth suddenly curled, and she forgot all about cyborgs. He had a very sweet smile for a guy who looked like a dope peddler. The incongruity of those white teeth and the dark hardness of his face got her attention and weakened her knees.

  All Meg’s defenses went up—boom—because Torres, whoever he was, took her back to her painful junior year of high school. The only skipped stitch in the fabric of Meg’s spiritual development had occurred during what her mother liked to call her bad-boys-whatcha-gonna-do stage. A brief flirtation with life on the edge which, fortunately, her parents had put a stop to before she fell off.

  A period which she had no desire to revisit. She jerked her gaze from Torres’s mouth. “Sam thinks having a lady crew chief is funny,” she said, to humor her boss. “I’m Meg.” She waited a moment in vain for Torres to offer her his first name, then gave Sam a confused look. “So what’s up? I have to get back to the savings and loan. Border patrol busted my crew again—”

  “When?” Torres’s posture remained relaxed, though the tone of the question had been abrupt.

  Meg frowned. “Mid-morning. Left me with two days work and only three guys to help me.”

  Sam was shaking his head. “I keep tellin’ Kenny Warner he’s got to be more careful about checking these guys’ papers. We’re gonna get stiffed with a fine one of these days.”

  “Yeah, well, he basically told me to mind my own business.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Sam said dryly. “I’m killin’ two birds with one stone here. Here’s the specs for your job.” He handed her a large yellow clasp envelope. “Plot plan and a few historic pictures to get you started. You’ll want to come back Monday morning with your camera and graph paper. Make some drawings of what’s already here. You know the drill.”

  She did. Her masters thesis project, a design for a Mississippi horse farm, had won several awards.

  Meg hefted the thickly stuffed envelope, resisting the temptation to open it then and there. She wanted to savor the task when she didn’t have another unfinished job hanging over her head. She felt like she’d just been given a birthday present. “Okay. What’s the other bird?”

  Sam nodded at Torres, who had followed their conversation intently. “You’re training him to take over when you move into the office. Besides, you’ll need more help with the heavy stuff on this—” Evidently searching for an apt description, Sam jerked a thumb at the house.

  “Goat farm,” Meg supplied, borrowing Warner’s phrase. She glanced doubtfully at Torres. “Have you ever done landscaping work before?” Maybe in prison?

  She mentally slapped herself. Don’t judge people on appearances, Meg.

  “I’ve done a little bit of everything,” Torres replied.

  Which didn’t really answer her question. But if Sam recommended Torres, then he would no doubt work out fine.

  Meg nodded. “Okay. Well, I’d better get back to the S and L.” She took a step and paused, glancing at Torres. “Does he have to leave with you now, Sam, or can I borrow him this afternoon?”

  Sam seemed to think that was a funny question. His eyes lit again. “He’s all yours, baby girl. Just return him in the same condition you got him.”

  With that Parthian shot, he lumbered toward his truck, hitching up his pants. He got in and backed into the street, leaving Meg and Torres staring at one another. At least she assumed he was staring. The mirrored shades made it hard to tell.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Torres, folding his arms. The tattoo, Meg saw, was a Celtic cross. Interesting.

  She shook her head. “I think you’re an answer to a prayer, but don’t quote me on that.”

  Chapter Two

  For a long, focused year, Jack had thought of nothing but bringing down the smuggling ring responsible for Rico’s murder. The kingpins had so far escaped identification, and Jack was one of three border patrol special agents chosen to infiltrate companies known for employing large gangs of illegal laborers. He knew he had the training, the experience and the motivation required to follow through with this investigation.

  Or did he?

  Here he was, caught off guard by Sam Thornton’s little joke and thinking he wouldn’t mind belonging to Meg St. John. True, her work boots and muddy uniform were hardly siren material, but that wide, lush mouth was made for kissing. Big, innocent eyes of a dark leaf-green had surveyed him with curiosity and interest. And there was something even more dangerous there, which he might have labeled innocence, if he’d still believed such a thing existed.

  As Meg maneuvered onto the interstate, Jack watched her hands on the wheel. Strong, well-shaped hands with short un-polished nails and not a ring in sight. But there were concessions to femininity in two silver crosses dangling from her right earlobe, neither of which matched a third one in her left ear. No makeup, which was smart, because in her job it would’ve been sweated off in five minutes. Jack didn’t see that she needed it anyway; straight dark brows and lashes marked those intensely colored eyes, and her skin was a perfect, clear olive.

  She glanced over and caught him looking at her. “Where are you from, Torres?”

  “Nowhere in particular.”

  She made a face. “Everybody’s from somewhere.”

&nbs
p; “Well, let’s see. Most recently, I guess, El Paso.”

  “Doing what?”

  He’d thought she would take his laconic response as a hint to mind her own business. Wrong. “Why?” he asked, aware that she had been examining him. “You think I been in prison or something?”

  “Of course not,” she said, sounding exasperated. He watched doubt twitch her eyebrows together. “Were you?”

  Jack tried not to smile. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he said ominously, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one. She was too easy to lead.

  Her mouth fell open. “What did you do?”

  Jack would have given twenty dollars to know what was going on in her head. Women sensed things they weren’t supposed to see, and they were never satisfied with simple explanations. On the other hand, Meg could be a valuable source of information if he didn’t scare her off.

  “I’m yanking your chain, kiddo,” he drawled. “I’m just a boring guy trying to make a living. You wouldn’t be interested in my background.”

  Meg blew out a breath. “Boy, you had me going there for a minute.” She glanced at him, pursing that sweet mouth. “Listen, Torres, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. I’m not usually so suspicious. It’s just that this has been a very…strange day.”

  “You mean the business with your crew?”

  “Yeah. That and Mr. Warner—I guess you’ve met him?”

  Jack had met Kenneth Warner all right. “Why?”

  Meg frowned. “You always answer a question with a question, did you know that?”

  Jack smiled. He did it out of habit, as an investigative technique, but most people didn’t notice. “I do?”

  “Yes. Anyway, about Mr. Warner. He dumped this job on me with no warning, gave me an impossible deadline, and now I’ve got just a skeleton crew to complete it. I’m glad to have your help, but I hope you don’t mind taking orders from a woman. Otherwise this is going to be a very long summer, you know what I mean?”