Love Under Two Wildcatters (22 page)

On her downward stroke, she extended a single finger on each hand, using them to caress scrotums that felt hot and full, and her men both groaned in appreciation.

She knew how to touch them now, could easily give each that little extra pressure or elongated caress they craved.

Ryder put his hand over hers, not to stop her but to silently ask for a firmer hold. She gave him what he needed then offered Colt the same.

Wordlessly, they neared their pinnacles, and Susan opened her eyes, gazed at first one and then the other of her lovers. Ryder and Colt wore similar expressions of need, of striving, eyes closed and heads back. Their breathing rasped, just a little, as their chase began.

Faster, firmer, her thumb braiding over equally hot and primed cockheads, she brought them both to climax, savoring the moment when they stiffened, groaned, and granted her the gift of their seed.

“Jesus, woman, you take me apart and put me back together every damn time,” Ryder said.

“Damn straight.” Colt stole Ryder’s usual quip.

Susan felt her smile spreading. Yes, for this one night, it was definitely enough.

* * * *

Damn their fucking lucky hides! Morton knocked back another shot of Jack. He’d managed to drive past the house on Barclay Drive and was left wishing he hadn’t. How could that house still be standing? How could those bastards have escaped without so much as a trip to the emergency room?

You’re a complete and total loser. You can’t do one damn thing right, can you? All your big talk about your power over the explosives and you don’t have one fucking clue what you’re doing.

“Shut up! I planted that C4 right! Must have been something wrong with that batch, or maybe it was the wire. Could happen to anyone.”

And yet it only happens to you.

“Shut the fuck up! Shut up, do you hear me?” Morton hurled his empty glass against the wall. It crashed against the baseboard, shards of glass and the stench of Jack going everywhere. It had to be this library, he thought. He grabbed the half-full bottle and retreated to his den. He still had a chair there, and his television.

Picking up the remote, he turned it on then selected the news network. He sat down, watching the headlines and the stories while his mind wandered. Those bastards were pissing him off. First, they weren’t on the site where they were supposed to be, and now, somehow, they had escaped getting killed at their own house.

What kind of grown men share a house, anyway? Morton shook his head. A picture on the news grabbed his attention, and he focused on the story. Yes, there. That was it!

He listened, perusing the scene—lots of fire trucks there, even an EMT vehicle. The news camera caught the three people huddled in the driveway, a paramedic hovering. He recognized Evans and Magee straight off. He laughed because those two surely didn’t look very happy. No, siree, they didn’t look happy at all.

Then he noticed the woman with them, caught her in profile as she turned to say something to Evans. Morton realized she was the same woman he’d seen with those two on the news report from San Angelo. She’d seemed familiar to him then somehow, as if he’d seen her or met her at some point.

Putting his attention back on the screen, he had that sense again now. As he watched, Magee put his hand on her back, and she looked up at him and nearly right into the camera.

Recognition hit him. My God, that was the Benedict woman, the daughter of the wealthy family from out Waco way. He’d figured a woman of her background would have better morals than to be going around with a man like Ryder Magee.

He narrowed his eyes, tried to recall the images he’d seen the other day of her. Yes, then it had seemed to him she’d been with Evans.

Didn’t matter. Morton perked up when the on-site reporter began to speak.

“…so far, Anthony, there’ve been no real leads in this attack. Although police refuse to comment on whether or not they’re looking for a white Cadillac or Lincoln seen in the vicinity just hours before the blast.”

Morton shivered. No! Damn it, he’d been so clever! He got up and turned off the television.

It might be smart to get out of Houston for a little while. Only for a few days until things blew over.

“Until things blow over.” He laughed out loud at the joke he’d made. Then he sobered. He knew just where he’d go, too. Those two bastards would likely turn tail and run now, the only place two sniveling coward bastards were likely to go—behind a woman’s skirts…or in this case, her family.

It wouldn’t likely take him long to find out what he needed to know on the Internet. Morton smirked because his daddy didn’t have any damn clue how to use a computer or the Internet. But Morton knew, he’d taught himself, and was pretty damn good at ferreting out information like where people lived.

So he’d take a look-see, and then he’d pack the rest of his C4 and his daddy’s shotgun. Morton thought that maybe he wouldn’t be coming back to this house. Maybe the C4 had a better use than what he originally thought. That would leave him with his daddy’s twelve gauge, and against a woman, a twelve gauge was plenty.

He set to work at his computer, but the fact was, he knew quite a bit about the Benedicts already, as his daddy had once told him it would be a good family for him to marry into. He was glad now he hadn’t.

Be kind of hard to take up arms against kin.

Chapter 18

“One thing for certain, these weren’t random acts,” Caleb Benedict said. “No way in hell.”

Susan noticed the sparkle in her father’s eyes. Nothing Caleb Benedict liked better than a whiff of the job he’d loved for so many years. That had become especially apparent in the last little while. He’d perked right up a few months before when Kelsey had been in danger, relishing the opportunity to put his mind to work on the situation. She knew her cousin Adam would, from time to time, consult with Caleb—even, Susan suspected, when Adam didn’t really need the help.

This time was different because now her men were in danger, and she wanted her father’s help, desperately.

“This kind of targeted attack is personal,” Jonathan, Susan’s other father, said. “With you two men as the target.”

They sat around the dining room table in the Big House, the homestead that Sarah Carmichael Benedict and her two husbands occupied in the late eighteen hundreds. This house had been the heart of the Benedict family from the very beginning of it. This dining room had been the heart of Susan’s family all her life. Here is where they all came to get together for feasts, celebrations, and challenges.

“We’ve been trying to think who we’ve pissed off lately,” Ryder said. “And all we’ve been drawing is a big blank.”

“We just can’t think of anyone who’d hate us enough to try and blow us up,” Colt added.

Her men sat on either side of her, and Susan laid a hand each on their legs. Her mother had brought in some coffee and pastries earlier, and she, too, sat between her men.

Susan caught her mother’s gaze and smiled at the acceptance she saw there. She wondered, then, if her men realized they’d already gained her parents’ approval.

“The problem,” Caleb said as he poured himself another cup of coffee, “is that you’re equating these actions with logic and reason. Sometimes, those two faculties have no bearing on a criminal’s actions.”

“Personally, I’d say we’re dealing with someone who’s plum loco,” Jonathan said. He looked at his brother. “Rigging a bomb to the front door of a house—anyone could have been hurt or killed. Letter carrier, salesman, hell, what if the Girl Scouts had been out yesterday? A sane person wants to kill someone, they aim directly at the target, don’t they?”

“That’s what I think, too,” Caleb said.

“Oh, great. We have someone who’s crazy after us.” Ryder shook his head.

“We tried to think what’s changed.” Colt sat forward. He brought Susan’s hand off his thigh, held it between both of his as he rested them on the table. “We thought that maybe the publicity around the deal we signed with y’all might have been the trigger.” Then he met Susan’s gaze. “Unless you have a couple of unhinged former lovers in your past, sweetheart. Because this is really the major thing that’s changed for us. We found you.”

“All of Susan’s past boyfriends were heartbreakingly boring,” Bernice Benedict said.

“Bernie!” Caleb looked shocked.

“Sweetheart!” Jonathan looked shocked and embarrassed.

“It’s all right, dads. I
know
they were boring, and I know you all thought so, too.” Susan threaded the fingers of her other hand through Ryder’s. She liked feeling connected to both of them at the same time.

Colt smirked. Then he said, “Well, we’re not boring, but we might be the opposite end of that spectrum—too dangerous to know.”

“Don’t you start that again,” Susan said. She narrowed her eyes and pierced him with the hardest look she could muster. “If you think for one minute that I’m going to hide myself away while my men face danger, you’ve got another think coming.”

Susan knew Colt had said that, thinking her fathers would step right up and agree with him. She knew that because the look on his face when her mother spoke up was a study in frustration.

“That’s not the Benedict way, Colt.” Bernice reached over and patted Colt’s hand. “Though her fathers and I do appreciate your desire to keep her safe. You just have to find a way to do that while she’s standing beside you.”

“Hah,” Ryder said. “No offense, Mrs. Benedict, but that would be easier to do if your daughter would just
listen
.”

Caleb laughed. “Good luck with that one,” he said.

“Could we please get back to the matter at hand?” Susan said. “You haven’t told us what your contacts had to say, Dad, about the investigation in San Angelo.”

“There was a great deal of hope when they recovered that one blasting cap. But when they checked the registration number, they discovered the damn thing had been reported stolen.”

“Weren’t they expecting that?” Colt asked.

“Well, yes, but it had been stolen about a decade ago. Reported missing in September of 2000. There’d been a few random thefts of caps and explosives in the Houston area, and those cases of theft had never been solved.”

“A decade is a long time to wait for revenge, isn’t it?” Ryder scratched his chin. “Hell, a decade ago, we were—” He stopped talking, and for a long moment, his expression said he was trying to reason something out.

Colt looked at him and slowly sat forward. “A decade ago, we were calling ourselves a couple of dumb asses because we’d been taken by Barnes and had to work long and hard to be able to start over again.”

“Who’s this Barnes?” Caleb sat straight and reached for the pen and pad of legal paper he had at his elbow.

“Morton Barnes. He threw in with us at the beginning, but then when the profits didn’t roll in instantly, he pulled out,” Colt said.

“Taking all our capital with him,” Ryder added. “He made out all right, he must have gained a few thousand dollars for his trouble. We, however, were left holding the bag.”

“Had to go work as roughnecks on a platform in the Gulf so we could get out of the hole that put us in.” Colt ran a hand through his hair. “And didn’t he start up a construction company right afterwards?”

“Damned if he didn’t,” Ryder said. “Though it didn’t last long. I heard he wasn’t doing too well, financially. That he’d been in some kind of brokerage business that became insolvent with the collapse a couple of years ago.”

“I imagine if he ripped off a couple of men he’d partnered, he may have no qualms stealing some of the supplies he’d need for his construction company,” Jonathan reasoned. “It’s also not too big a stretch imagining someone like that, someone who’d suffered loss after loss, to work himself up when he sees the men he abandoned succeed where he can’t.”

“He was a mean little bastard,” Colt said quietly. “Full of himself, too. The whole time he was in business with us, he looked down his nose at us. One of the reasons we didn’t go after him when he ripped us off.”

“Yeah,” Ryder said. “We thought it worth the few grand to be rid of him. Even before he took off, we wished we’d never taken him on as a partner.”

“Tell me all you know about this sucker,” Caleb said. “And we’ll see what we have.”

* * * *

“You need to settle down some, son.” Jonathan gave Ryder a level look then continued lighting his pipe.