Murdock's Last Stand

Murdock arrogantly raked his eyes over her. “And, Cat, honey, you have a knack for verbal sparring that can really turn a man on.”

That was it! Catherine had had it with this big, smart-mouthed wise guy! With her hands balled into tight fists, she took that one step that separated them, then lifted her gaze to make direct eye-to-eye contact. That’s when she realized she’d made a mistake. A huge mistake. Murdock was looking at her as if she were the last drop of water in a sweltering, dry desert.

“What the hell,” he said as he reached out and jerked her into his arms. “We might as well get this over with.”

Dear Reader,

Happy New Year! Silhouette Intimate Moments is starting the year off with a bang—not to mention six great books. Why not begin with the latest of THE PROTECTORS, Beverly Barton’s miniseries about men no woman can resist? In Murdock’s Last Stand, a well-muscled mercenary meets his match in a woman who suddenly has him thinking of forever.

Alicia Scott returns with Marrying Mike… Again, an intense reunion story featuring a couple who are both police officers with old hurts to heal before their happy ending. Try Terese Ramin’s A Drive-By Wedding when you’re in the mood for suspense, an undercover agent hero, an irresistible child and a carjacked heroine who ends up glad to go along for the ride. Already known for her compelling storytelling abilities, Eileen Wilks lives up to her reputation with Midnight Promises, a marriage-of-convenience story unlike any other you’ve ever read. Virginia Kantra brings you the next of the irresistible MacNeills in The Comeback of Con MacNeill, and Kate Stevenson returns after a long time away, with Witness…and Wife?

All six books live up to Intimate Moments’ reputation for excitement and passion mixed together in just the right proportions, so I hope you enjoy them all.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Murdock’s Last Stand

Beverly Barton

To Connie,

whose mind is filled with fanciful,

magical and intriguing ideas.

This “protector” is for you.

BEVERLY BARTON

has been in love with romance since her grandfather gave her an illustrated book of Beauty and the Beast. An avid reader since childhood, she began writing at the age of nine and wrote short stories, poetry, plays and novels throughout high school and college. After marriage to her own “hero” and the births of her daughter and son, she chose to be a full-time homemaker, aka wife, mother, friend and volunteer.

When she returned to writing, she joined Romance Writers of America and helped found the Heart of Dixie chapter in Alabama. Since the release of her first Silhouette book in 1990, she has won the GRW Maggie Award and the National Readers’ Choice Award and has been a RITA Award finalist. Beverly considers writing romance books a real labor of love. Her stories come straight from the heart, and she hopes that all the strong and varied emotions she invests in her books will be felt by everyone who reads them.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

Sweat dripped off his forehead and down into his eyes, blurring his vision. Using the back of his hand, he swiped away the moisture. The oppressive heat coated his body, filled his lungs and dulled his senses. He had been in some bad situations before, endured sweltering temperatures just as deadly and lived to tell the tale. But his gut instincts warned him that this time was different. From the minute he and Lanny arrived in Zaraza, he’d had an uneasy feeling that their luck had finally run out. He’d known that sooner or later fate would catch up with them and they’d wind up paying with their lives. He just hadn’t thought it would be this soon. Hell, he was only twenty-six. He was too young to die. Besides, wasn’t there an old adage that said only the good die young? If that were true, he’d live to be a hundred.

“No way we’re both going to get out of this alive, Bubba,” Lanny said.

Murdock lifted his gaze from the tip of his M-16 to his old buddy’s dirt-streaked face. Lanny McCroskey was a good ol’ boy from Tennessee, who had lost his soul back in Nam and had been searching for it ever since.

“We’ve been outnumbered before. We’ll figure a way to get out of this one.” Even as the denial came from his mouth, Murdock knew Lanny was right. They were trapped! And even for a couple of highly trained mercenaries like them, it would take a miracle for both of them and Sabino’s troops to all escape.

“The information has to get back to Burdett.” Lanny opened his canteen, then lifted it to his lips. After taking a hefty swig, he recapped the canteen. “One of us has to hightail it out of here, while Juan and his boys keep Ramos’s men occupied.”

“Whoever stays is a dead man,” Murdock said.

“You go. I’ll stay.” Lanny chuckled. “We both know that I’ve been living on borrowed time ever since Nam. You’re different. You’re a young man. You’ve still got a chance to have a normal life, if you get out of our line of work.”

Before Murdock could reply, before he could protest leaving his former army sergeant behind, a barrage of enemy gunfire exploded around them. As the ragtag band of rebel soldiers retaliated against the Zarazaian troops, Juan Sabino crawled through the thicket and eased up beside Lanny.

“We can hold them off for a while longer,” Juan said in his native Spanish. “One of you must go now, if there is any hope of getting that information to Burdett.”

“Murdock’s going,” Lanny said.

“Sì. He is younger and stronger than you and has the best chance of getting through.” Juan’s large, dark eyes gazed directly at Murdock, the look a mixture of fear and hope and pleading. “Vaya con Dios, amigo.”

Murdock opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short of uttering a word. He knew that Lanny and Juan were right. And he didn’t have time for long farewells. No time to tell Lanny what the man already knew—that he cared for him like a son cared for his father.

While Juan’s battered and bruised teenage soldiers held the mighty Zarazaian army at bay, Murdock slipped into the thicket of vines and gnarled trees that led into the jungle. He didn’t think, didn’t feel and didn’t look back. On his belly, he made his way over the rough forest floor until he knew he was out of sight and out of range. Just as he rose into a crouching position, a thunderous explosion rocked the earth beneath his feet. He froze to the spot. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. His blood ran cold.

Murdock retraced his path, racing toward the men he’d just left. Pausing briefly as he neared the site, he breathed deeply and pleaded with God. But it was a prayer he already knew wouldn’t be answered. Finding shelter and a modicum of safety behind a stand of massive carnauba palms, Murdock forced himself to face the truth. Billows of black smoke rose into the sky where the explosion had hit. Pieces of trees mingled with body parts. There was nothing he could do to help Lanny and Juan or the boy soldiers.

Lanny! Murdock cried silently. Lanny was dead!

Murdock’s eyelids flew open. He shot straight up. Moisture coated his body as if he’d just returned from the Zarazaian jungle a few minutes ago instead of twenty years ago. Kicking the wrinkled, tangled covers off his feet, he slid out of bed. He padded on bare feet across the wooden floor as he made his way out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room. What he needed was a shot of whiskey.

He retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the makeshift bar on the sofa table by the windows that overlooked Locklin Street. After pouring himself a liberal amount of the liquor, he flopped down in his favorite chair, a brown overstuffed leather seat. As he lifted the glass to his lips, he stretched out his long legs and rested his feet on the huge leather ottoman.

Why the hell had he dreamed about Lanny? About Juan and his soldiers? After twenty years, why couldn’t he forget the past?

Liking the taste of the whiskey, he savored it in his mouth a few seconds before swallowing. The liquid burned a trail down his throat and hit his stomach like a ball of fire, warming his insides.

For the first five or six years after his escape from Zaraza, he’d had the dream on a regular basis, but as time went by, the dream had become less frequent. This particular nightmare hadn’t awakened him once during the past ten years. So why tonight?

An uneasy feeling gnawed away at him. Something was wrong. But what? He was a man who had survived by taking heed when his gut instincts warned him. When he’d been a green kid of eighteen, he had come through the final days of the fighting in Nam without a scratch. He had survived over twenty-five years as a mercenary and a freelance CIA operative by a combination of good instincts and being a damn lucky son of a bitch.

There had to be a reason why he’d dreamed about the last day he had seen Lanny McCroskey alive.

Murdock’s hand accidentally brushed the television remote control. His nerves zinged. That was it! On the world news he’d watched right before going to bed last night, there had been a report about the twenty-year war in Zaraza and how the rebel army had grown in size and strength over the years. The journalist had said that the old regime, controlled by General Ramos, was in a panic. For the first time since the beginning of the civil war, the rebels had a real chance to take over the government.

Murdock downed the last drops of whiskey, set the glass aside and closed his eyes. Lanny, Juan and a bunch of teenagers masquerading as guerrilla soldiers had sacrificed their lives that day—for the cause. And by dying, they had saved Murdock. Saved him to deliver a message to their CIA contact, Rick Burdett.

In the dark, lonely moments when a man questioned what his life had been worth, Murdock asked himself why he’d been the one spared. What made him so all-fired special that God had let him live when better men had died? But he’d never found the answer.

Chapter 1

Catherine Price rose from her chair, smoothed the wrinkles from her blue linen skirt and squared her shoulders. The moment the door to her office opened, she took a calming breath and prepared herself to meet the government official who had telephoned her that morning. Rickman Burdett had identified himself as a CIA Deputy Director.

“I have information about your father,” the man had told her. “This is something I prefer to discuss with you in person.”

Jane Farr, Catherine’s secretary, ushered the gentleman into her office. Mr. Burdett was a tall, slender gentleman with a mane of white hair and a set of piercing brown eyes. Except for those cold, calculating eyes, he looked like any ordinary, grandfatherly businessman.

As Catherine rounded her desk, she extended her hand in greeting. “Mr. Burdett.”

Burdett clasped her hand in his. His cool, slender fingers gripped loosely, his handshake reserved. “I appreciate your seeing me, Ms. Price. I realize that I probably made this matter sound mysterious when I phoned you and for that I do apologize. However, the news I have for you is the kind that should be delivered in person.”

Catherine had no idea what this man would tell her about her father. After all these years, she didn’t really care. Lanny McCroskey had been dead since she was sixteen and hadn’t really been a part of her life even before his death. His military career had sent him to Vietnam when she was a mere child and when he had returned, he’d been a stranger to her and to her mother. Her parents had divorced five years before her father’s mysterious death in Zaraza and during those five years, she hadn’t seen her father once.

“Won’t you sit down.” Catherine waved her hand in a well-mannered invitation.

“Thanks.”

Burdett waited for her to return to her tufted-leather chair behind her antique oak desk before he sat.

“Now, what is this information you have about my father that prompted you to fly to Tennessee to tell me in person.”

“Have you been watching the televised reports on the war in Zaraza lately?”

“Not really. I don’t watch much television. I prefer to spend my leisure hours reading.”

“Then let me bring you up to date on what’s going on there.”

“Is that really necessary?” Catherine glanced at her diamond-studded gold watch. Whatever this man had to tell her, she hoped he’d make it quick. She had a busy day ahead of her and she hated the thought of wasting time listening to some old war story about her father.

“Ms. Price, what if I told you that your father didn’t die in Zaraza twenty years ago?”

“What?” A nervous unease fluttered in her stomach.

“We have reason to believe that Lanny McCroskey was taken alive by the Zarazaian government and has spent the past twenty years in prison there.”

Catherine laid her tightly balled fists on top of her desk. She had understood Mr. Burdett’s words, but her mind refused to accept their meaning. “What makes you think that my father is a prisoner in Zaraza?”

“We received a letter—” Burdett reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a tattered envelope “—from General Ramos, the Zarazaian dictator.” Burdett held out the missive toward Catherine.

She stared at the envelope. She didn’t want to touch it. Didn’t want to become involved in whatever game this man was playing. Her father had died twenty years ago. The U.S. government had officially informed her mother of that fact.

“I don’t believe my father is alive and I have no intention of sitting here listening to any wild stories you’ve fabricated about—”

“Lanny McCroskey is alive!” Burdett lifted a photograph from the envelope. “He’s twenty years older and looks like hell, but I recognize the man in this picture. It’s your father, Ms. Price.” He laid the six-by-four-inch color snapshot on her desk.

Catherine fought the urge to swipe the picture off into the trash. But despite her doubts that it was possible for her father to still be alive, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from leaning forward slightly and glancing quickly at the photograph. Her heart caught in her throat as she looked at the vaguely familiar face. Without hesitation, she snatched the snapshot from her desk and lifted it for closer inspection.

The man’s hair was gray, as was his beard and mustache. He was thin, haggard, weary. Slumped shoulders. Hollow eyes. An aura of defeat surrounded him. This was an old man. A pathetic old man. This wasn’t the Lanny McCroskey she remembered. Big, robust, intimidating. Gone was the tanned skin and black hair. Gone was the virile, almost swaggering persona that had been a part of her army sergeant father. But the eyes were the same. A pure sky blue. Despite the misery she saw in his expression, she couldn’t mistake the resemblance between her own eyes and those that stared back at her from the photograph she held in her trembling hand.

“My God!” She clutched the picture with both hands, then brought it upward to cover her mouth with it as she closed her eyes. Tears lodged in her throat.

Burdett stood abruptly. “General Ramos is asking $100,000 in exchange for Lanny’s release.”

Catherine’s eyelids flew open. “What—what did you say?”

“It seems General Ramos is well aware that his dictatorship is nearing its end, so he’s selling his foreign prisoners back to their families for as much cash as possible. The asking price for Lanny’s freedom is $100,000 in U.S. currency.” Burdett offered Catherine the letter once again.

“Officially, we—the U.S. government—can’t become involved. But unofficially, I want to help you and am willing to put up part of the money, if—”

“I have the money,” Catherine said, her voice a mere whisper. “I can give you a check today.”

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.” Burdett frowned, wrinkling his brow and deepening the lines around his mouth. “If you’ll read the letter, you’ll see that, in Lanny’s case, General Ramos is demanding that you deliver the money in person to the capital city of San Carlos. This holds true for all the political prisoners the governor is selling. By extorting money from individuals and not governments, he stands a better chance of finding a government that will give him asylum when he flees Zaraza.”

Catherine grabbed the letter from Burdett, unfolded the wrinkled page and scanned the message hurriedly. The conditions of the exchange were spelled out quite succinctly. No room for doubt. One hundred thousand dollars, U.S. currency, hand delivered by Lanny’s daughter, Catherine McCroskey Price, directly into General Ramos’s hands.

“I’ll provide the money, Mr. Burdett, but I will not take the money to Zaraza.” Lanny McCroskey was her father, she reminded herself, and she’d never miss the hundred thousand, which was only a pittance in comparison to the ten million Rodney had left her. But she didn’t really owe her father anything. And she certainly wasn’t ready to risk her life entering a South American country embroiled in a twenty-year civil war. “Surely you can send a female agent into Zaraza. Someone who can pose as Lanny’s daughter.”

“Ms. Price, if General Ramos knows you exist, knows your name, then our guess is he has a way to identify you. Perhaps recent pictures of you.”

Catherine shuddered. The thought that some stranger working for the Zarazaian government might have snapped her picture without her being aware of it both frightened and outraged her.

“Are you saying that the only way I can save my father is by actually going to Zaraza?”

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Burdett told her. “Of course, it’s your call, Ms. Price. We can’t force you to rescue your father. However, if you decide to go, I can guarantee you a professional bodyguard to accompany you on the trip.”

“A professional. Do you mean a government agent?”

“No. As I told you, the government can’t become involved in this.” Burdett cleared his throat. “The man I have in mind has worked for Dundee Private Security and Investigation for over a year now, but before that he was one of the best mercenaries around. If anyone can get you in and out of Zaraza safe and sound, it’s Murdock.”

“Murdock? Aloysius Murdock?” Catherine asked.

A hint of a smile curved Burdett’s lips. “No one calls him Aloysius and lives.”

“This Murdock was in Vietnam with my father, wasn’t he? And he was in Zaraza with him twenty years ago, too! I vaguely remember my mother mentioning once that Mr. Murdock paid her a visit after my father was killed.”

“Will you go to San Carlos and deliver the money to General Ramos?” Burdett asked. “Remember, you’ll have Murdock at your side the whole time.”

“If Mr. Murdock is a contemporary of my father, then he must be at least in his early sixties. Do you honestly think he’s physically capable of—”

“Murdock’s forty-six. He was just a green kid in Nam, not a career soldier like your dad. And believe me, I doubt any man half his age is in as good a shape as Murdock. Take my word for it, he’s a man of steel.”

The last thing on earth Catherine wanted to do was travel to a third world, war-torn country to rescue the father who had deserted her and her mother long before he’d been reported killed. Why should she risk her life for a man who’d walked out on her without a backward glance? Christmas and birthday presents didn’t really count as far as she was concerned. The fact that he’d sent gifts up until he’d supposedly died in Zaraza hardly made up for his absence.

“I can withdraw the money from my bank this afternoon,” Catherine heard herself saying, despite her uncertainty. “When can you arrange for me to meet Mr. Murdock?”

Dinner had been on the Dundee Agency tonight. Once a year, Sam Dundee dragged himself away from Le Bijou Bleu, his island retreat in the Gulf Coast, to come to Atlanta and inspect the troops. Or, at least, that was the way Murdock thought of the big boss’s visit. The rest of the time, Ellen Denby, Dundee’s CEO, was in charge. Ellen had been the one who had hired Murdock, as well as most of the other current employees, and she was the one who made the decisions. But Sam still owned the agency, despite his retirement several years ago.

A private room at Peaches, a local downtown Atlanta bar and grill, had hosted the crème de la crème of private security agents. Murdock glanced around the table as Sam handed his credit card to the waitress. Over a year ago, after deciding he was getting too old for a life of constant danger, Murdock had retired from his career as a soldier of fortune and come to work for Dundee. The men congregated here tonight were cut from the same cloth as he. Former mercenaries, special forces members, lawmen and government agents. And not a guy under thirty-five in the bunch.

One man—Egan Cassidy—was Murdock’s age and a former Nam vet. Their paths had crossed more than once in the years they’d both been mercenaries. The youngest of the bunch was Joe Ornelas, a former Navajo policeman who had just turned thirty-five.

Murdock had a passing acquaintance with all the Dundee employees, but Cassidy, Ornelas and four others were men whose expertise Murdock knew firsthand and for whom he had the greatest respect. Matt O’Brien, a pretty boy with a mind like a computer. Hunter White-law, the silent, deadly type. Jack Parker, a deceptive charmer. And David Wolfe, a mystery man, who’d been hired personally by Sam Dundee.

And of course, there was Ellen, who was an enigma. Ultra feminine. Beautiful face. Built like a brick out-house. Yet tough, shrewd and a match for any man.

When Jack proposed a final toast, this one to the lovely Ellen, Murdock lifted his beer mug and joined in the good-natured fun. Despite her knockout good looks, Ellen fit in with the crowd of macho men as if she were one of them. She could outdrink, outcuss and outsmart every last one of them and they all knew it.

Murdock had learned about Dundee’s from an old buddy, Gabriel Hawk, who had once been a freelance CIA operative and with whom Murdock had occasionally worked on assignments, especially in the Caribbean and Central and South America. He and Hawk spoke Spanish like natives.

Hawk had left the agency after marrying his last assignment, a former missionary who had tamed one of the baddest of the bad boys when she landed Hawk. Murdock never thought he’d live to see the day a woman would be able to wrap Hawk around her little finger. He’d been wrong.

Murdock had been kicked more than once where it hurt, the first time as a teenager, the last time as a grown man who should have known better. After Barbara, a society beauty who’d used him for “a walk on the wild side”, he’d sworn off relationships.

With the check paid and the last round of beers drunk, the agents began milling around the room, shaking hands and saying their good-nights. Murdock enjoyed a social occasion from time to time, but usually he preferred the solitude of his loft apartment in an old renovated building. Sometimes Cassidy would drop by for a game of pool or several of the guys would come over for poker, but the rest of his free nights, Murdock spent alone. He liked to read, a passion of his since childhood. And sometimes, when he had the urge, he’d find himself a willing woman. One who didn’t mind that he’d leave afterward, long before daylight, and probably wouldn’t call her for a second date.