The Call of Bravery

CHAPTER SEVEN



LIA CLIMBED THROUGH the fence rails, wanting a barrier of some kind between her and Conall. As if it would do her any good at all.

After hopeful and unfruitful nudges at her empty jeans pockets, horse and pony wandered a few feet away and began to graze. She crossed her forearms on the fence.

“My mother was here illegally.” She grimaced. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

He rested one booted foot on the lowest rail and nodded.

“Mom came here with two of her brothers. I guess they stayed in the L.A. area for a bit, then gradually headed north. None of them wanted to work in agriculture. My uncle Guillermo is a mechanic and Uncle Jorge mostly did construction, I think. Mom found jobs as a maid.” This wasn’t the painful part of the story for her. Very aware of Conall’s keen gray eyes, she continued.

“Mom met my dad when she was cleaning offices. Dad is an electrical contractor. They had a thing, she got pregnant, but they didn’t get married at first. Maybe he was embarrassed by her, I don’t know.”

“Why would he be embarrassed?”

“She was uneducated, a maid. I doubt she’d picked up more than broken English by then. She still has a really strong accent.”

“Is she as beautiful as you are?”

That made her cheeks heat. “I— Mom is pretty. But she’s darker-skinned, of course.” Dad and Mom hadn’t done much socializing, and by her teenage years Lia had suspected he was still embarrassed by his obviously Hispanic wife. Lia had never been sure; her father wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy kind, so maybe he simply hadn’t made friends.

“But he did marry her.”

“Not at first. We lived with him, but…it was more like she was his housekeeper. Mostly I remember Mom yelling a lot and him getting stony-faced and slamming his study door.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “When I was five, Mom and I were deported.”

Shock showed on Conall’s face. “What?”

“She was cleaning rooms at a hotel and she’d taken me to work with her that day. There was a raid, and we were rounded up with a bunch of other maids and, I don’t know, I think a gardener and a maintenance guy—all illegal. Of course Mom didn’t have my birth certificate with her, and I doubt it would have made any difference if she had had it.” Lia toed a rough clump of grass, focusing on it. “I remember being scared. They weren’t very nice to us. It was like we were cattle. We got taken to some kind of processing place where there were a couple hundred other people they’d rounded up. We slept on pallets and then they flew us to Mexico.”

“Was your mother able to contact your father?”

“I don’t think they gave her the chance. She did later, once we were in her home village, and that’s when he decided to marry her. But getting papers for us even after they were married wasn’t easy. We stayed there for a year and a half.” She swallowed and said with quiet force, “I hated it.”

“Mexico?”

“Yes…no. It was being transplanted like that. I had nightmares for a long time about being rounded up. I think I got separated from Mom once. At least in my nightmares I always did.” She hadn’t had that one in a long time, but it had made occasional appearances even when she was in her twenties. “These men were laughing and grabbing at me…” Her throat closed at the memory. “Probably they were trying to help, but they scared me. Even once we got there and Mom’s family took us in, I never fit in the village even though I spoke Spanish.” She laughed a little. “Honestly, I was probably a spoiled little princess. It was really primitive compared to what I was used to. I became painfully shy and I clung to Mom but I was mad at her, too, because she didn’t take me home.”

“Thus Arturo and Julia.” The understanding in his eyes twisted something in her.

“Yes. Maybe for kids like them it would be less traumatic to have stayed with their mom, but I’m not convinced. I’d like to think the process isn’t as brutal now as it was when it happened to Mom and me, but I’ve heard some awful stories. And also…” She hesitated. “Well, obviously the kids weren’t with their mother when she was arrested. If she’d told immigration agents where to find her children, she’d have been ratting on a bunch of other people who probably didn’t have papers, either. If they’d been family, they probably would have taken care of Arturo and Julia, but they weren’t. There’s this sort of, um, underground network for making sure the children stay safe when that kind of thing happens. Sometimes when the kids leave me they do go back to Mexico or the Dominican Republic or wherever their parents are. Sometimes another family member eventually comes for them. And sometimes…” She flicked a glance at him.

“Sometimes Mom or Dad sneaks across the border and comes to pick up their own kids.”

“Yes. I never meet them. Matteo is my main contact.” She narrowed her eyes at Conall. “Will you report him?”

He shook his head. “I said I wouldn’t get you in trouble, Lia. As far as I’m concerned, Matteo was never here. I didn’t meet him. Some caseworker picked up the kids. Why would I pay attention?”

“Thank you,” she made herself say.

“You don’t have to thank me, Lia.” His voice was like a soft touch, one that raised goose bumps on her arms. He sounded…tender, a word she immediately tried to reject. She had to be imagining it.

“Yes, I do.” She stiffened. “Does Jeff know, too?”

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t said anything and neither have I. I don’t get the feeling he’s all that observant.”

Lia didn’t, either. “But he’s a DEA agent.”

“He’s good for this kind of job, but I don’t think he’s done much undercover work. He hasn’t learned to watch everyone, always.”

“How can you do that? Doesn’t the stress kill you?”

“It becomes habit. Everybody has an intuitive awareness of their surroundings. It’s a survival skill. Most people deliberately tamp it down. They convince themselves it’s unnecessary. For me it is.”

That simple. He was matter-of-fact about it. He did a dangerous job and needed to be preternaturally aware of everyone and everything around him. She’d never had a hope of avoiding his sharp eye, Lia realized. She was lucky, that’s all, because he’d deemed what she did harmless enough not to weigh against her usefulness. He was being practical, that’s all. For him, the mystery was solved. For her…well, she either had to trust him or to say no the next time—and every time—Matteo called.

“Will you ask your brother who he heard the rumor from?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Are you close to your parents?”

Lia gave a choked laugh. “You noticed, huh? I talk to Mom regularly. Dad only when he happens to answer the phone. He’s a really distant guy. I love him, but I’m not sure I like him very much. He and Mom still have kind of a strange relationship. She waits on him, he takes her for granted.” She laughed again. “Okay, maybe not so strange. There are probably lots of marriages like that.”

“No sisters or brothers?”

“Mom got pregnant once after me, while we were down in Mexico. She started hemorrhaging and ended up not only miscarrying but having to have a hysterectomy. It was…really awful.” Another shadow on her memory of that time.

“You relate well to the kids who come to you because you know what it feels like to be abruptly transplanted.”

“I suppose so.”

“You really do care about them all.” His tone was odd and she looked at him in surprise.

“Of course I do.” Understanding, she tilted her head to one side. “You thought I did it for the money.”

“Do you blame me for wondering?”

Lia spread her arms out. “Do I look like someone who is very interested in money?”

Conall sighed. “No. Call me a cynic. I’ve never had occasion to meet anyone prepared to give their all to someone else’s kids.”

Or their own? His parents apparently hadn’t given much of anything to their sons.

“No, I don’t blame you for being a cynic. And I can’t deny there are people who do foster for the money. That’s not the end of the world if they’re reasonably kind. They still give refuge to kids who need it. And really, no matter how much we love our jobs, we expect to be paid, right? For me, though, fostering children is more of a vocation.”

“Yes.” He studied her then with minute attention to detail, as if she was a curiosity he never expected to encounter again and wanted to remember. Lia was uncomfortable but withstood it.

After a minute she said, “I had the impression your brother Niall loves his stepchildren. He was really good with them.”

“I noticed. He said our children.”

“Desmond is quite a character.”

“Yeah.” Conall smiled. “Not what you’d call shy.”

Relaxing finally, Lia giggled. “Definitely not shy. Walker and Brendan didn’t know what had hit them.”

“What do you think about those swimming lessons? Will they be here with you long enough?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Does the state fund stuff like that?”

“When they don’t, I do. I treat the children I have as much as if they were really mine as I can.”

“And then you let them go.” The understanding in his eyes shattered her.

Her voice a little thick, Lia said, “Yes. I have to.”

“Are you ever tempted…?”

“Of course I am.” She tried to smile. “Most of the time, my keeping them isn’t even a possibility. They’re here while their own families work out their problems. It’s unusual for me to have kids who have been released for adoption.”

“Like Walker and Brendan.”

“Yes.” Part of her hoped they were taken away soon. If they stayed too long, saying goodbye might kill her. She wanted so much to see them happy again. She straightened her shoulders. “Speaking of which, I’d better go in.”

“Yeah, I should probably relieve Jeff or try to get some more sleep.”

“You keep weird hours,” she observed, as she ducked through the fence.

He fell in at her side when she started for the house. “You get used to that. Bad guys tend to be nocturnal.”

“I suppose it makes sense that they like to operate under the cover of night.” She glanced at him. “Are you nocturnal?”

“I…adapt.” His face gave nothing away. “I’m good at adapting.”

Why did that make her sad? Because she wondered how much of himself he held on to, beneath the ever-changing protective coloration? Would she even recognize him in a different role? Would he be as…kind, if he had become someone else entirely?

I will always recognize him, an inner voice whispered. The set of his shoulders, the long lazy stride, the way his mouth tightened or shadows crossed his eyes. The flicker of his smile, the rough texture of his wavy, too-shaggy hair.

Shocked, Lia kept her gaze fixed on the house. She was halfway to falling in love with a man who she really, truly didn’t know. Who was so not a settling down kind of guy.

A picture of him running through the sprinkler, laughing at Arturo, coaxing Brendan and Walker to dip their toes back into life, passed through her mind and so did a wistful belief. He could be.

Dream on, she thought wryly. He was sexy, he was nice to the boys, and here she was having fantasies about him transforming into a family man. A guy who’d obviously rather be in a gunfight than spend a sunny spring afternoon with the family he did have.

Yes, but…

Forget it, Lia told herself firmly. If she ever had a real relationship, it would be with a man who could love each and every child she took in as much as she did. And face it, guys like that were thin on the ground. Maybe nonexistent.

Conall might be attracted to her, too—not might be, was—but he hadn’t even tried to kiss her. He knew how ill-suited they were.

She should be glad. He was temporary. She’d really like not to have to cry when he left.

* * *

CONALL’S INSTINCT WAS to sneak past the living room, where the boys were, once again, watching… He paused to hear a line of dialogue from the movie. Yeah, what else, The Transformers. One, two or three, he wasn’t sure. Only that this could not possibly be healthy for them.

He stifled a groan. Lia was out weeding her vegetable garden. He’d seen her from the window, watched hungrily for several minutes as she looked up to watch a robin, a smile lighting her face with joy he could see even from a distance. Damn it, she should have dragged the boys out with her whether they wanted to go or not.

Stepping into the doorway, he said, “Hey.”

They both glanced away from the TV, which was progress from the first time he’d met them.

“It’s a nice day. Why are you in here? I’ll bet Lia could use some help outside.”

“We don’t want to weed. She said we didn’t have to.”

Well, okay. He guessed that forcing foster children to provide free labor might get her into trouble. Or maybe she thought they shouldn’t have to do chores yet. She was wrong, but that was her business.

He hesitated. He had told her he’d try to spend some time with the boys, and it wasn’t as if he had anything important to do right now. He’d slept for close to six hours—enough for him—and had eaten lunch.

“Let’s do something fun,” he suggested. “We can throw the ball a little.” If there was a baseball to throw. Or mitts to catch with, come to think of it. “Let me check with Lia and see what she has.”

They studied him then looked at each other. It was Brendan who finally said, “Okay.” He didn’t exactly sound excited, but willing was good enough.

Lia was on her knees in the middle of a row of…something. The label at the end said carrots. Did carrots from your own garden taste any better than ones from the grocery store?

His speculation was mere distraction from the woman. She wore faded overalls that would probably be sacky were she standing…but she wasn’t. The denim pulled taut over a tight, firm ass that had already been fueling his dreams. Only one shoulder strap was fastened; the other hung down her back beside that fat, glossy braid. She wore only a thin tank top beneath the overalls, exposing her shoulders and arms, both tanned to a pale gold. He wanted desperately to drop to his knees behind her, shift her braid aside and explore her neck with his mouth while feeling her rump against his groin.

He gritted his teeth and managed to ask his question with only a slight huskiness in his voice to betray him.

She turned in surprise, blinking up at him. “Baseball mitts? Sure, there’s a whole bin full of sports equipment out in the barn. It’s on the left side, made out of plywood, with a lid that lifts.”

“Right.” He remembered seeing it.

“Watch out for spiders.”

“Good thought,” he muttered.

“Thank you,” she said, which left him irritated.

“Damn it, would you quit that? I live here with you, I have time on my hands and I’m decent enough to spend time with the kids. That doesn’t make me a saint, and it’s sure as hell no reason for you to be grateful.” He stalked away without giving her a chance to respond.

Decent. Was he really? He’d been standing there with a damned hard-on imagining taking her from behind, and she was apparently oblivious and probably eager to get back to pulling weeds.

Conall growled a few obscenities under his breath, just to get them out of his way, then commandeered the boys and dragged them out to the barn with him.

There were spiders in the bin, but he brushed them off. Grinning at the boys who’d leaped back in obvious horror, Conall said, “These are nothing. You ever see a tarantula?”

“My third grade teacher had one,” Brendan said cautiously. “He brought it to school a couple of times. In an aquarium.”

“They’re all over in Mexico and farther south. I was taking a shower one time and when I reached for my towel my hand brushed this black, hairy tarantula. Had to be this big.” He made a circle with his hands. “Scared the…uh, crap out of me.”

They giggled.

“Like I said, these itty-bitty spiders are nothing.”

Walker broke into a sing-song. “The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout…”

They all laughed.

Conall found mitts that fit their hands pretty well, and one for himself, too. Lia had baseballs, softballs and a variety of bats. Not to mention soccer balls in a couple of sizes, ditto basketballs, even what looked like, when he partially untangled it, a net for badminton. Hey, that might be fun. He hadn’t played it since he was a little kid. Yeah, when he dug deeper there were rackets and shuttlecocks buried at the bottom. He dragged them out and set them aside.

Then he and the boys threw the ball for a while, with him making a few suggestions and watching their aim and velocity improve. Brendan, it developed, had played Little League for a couple of years, Walker T-ball when he was really young.

“Lots of the kids at school are playing Little League right now,” Walker said, sounding envious.

“Next year, I bet you can, too,” Conall said. “In the meantime, we’ll work on your skills. What do you say?”

They thought that sounded fine. When their arms started to get tired, he brought out the bats and created a makeshift home plate from a piece of plywood he found in the barn. Lia had damn near everything in there, although some order might make it easier to find things. Maybe while he was here he’d offer to put up some racks for tools, clean up a little. Make himself useful. The boys could help. Helping would be good for them, and learning some basic construction skills wouldn’t hurt, either.

Brendan had a good eye, and popped up some nice fly balls and one line drive that got by Conall, to the boys’ delight. Conall began to wonder whether Walker was seeing the ball very well, but he didn’t say anything.

“We’ll try you out as pitchers tomorrow,” he suggested. “Nope, not today. We don’t want to wear out your shoulders. Come on, why don’t you help me set up that badminton net? I’ll bet Sorrel would like to play, too.”

They decided to set it up at the side of the house, so as not to get in the way of their baseball field in front. Lia came to see what they were doing and helped.

“I think I hear the school bus,” she said. “Girls against the boys.”

Conall mostly coached from the sidelines, but a few times he got talked into substituting for one of the boys. Lia played with vigor if not a lot of skill. She got pink-cheeked and sweaty and stubborn, refusing to lose. Lucky for her, Sorrel was good with the racket.

“We play in P.E. sometimes,” she admitted. “I like to win.”

“Me, too,” her partner declared.

Conall was in at match point. He blasted the shuttlecock over the net and laughed aloud at the sight of Lia diving for it. Somehow she scooped it up and it fluttered weakly over the net where he was waiting to slam it back at her. He hadn’t paid enough attention to Sorrel, though. She blocked it and dumped it over the net and to the ground on the guy’s side before either Walker or Conall could get to it.

Jumping up and down, Sorrel yelled, “Yes, yes, yes!” Lia hugged her and did some jumping up and down, too.

Conall grinned and bent to put his mouth closer to Walker’s ear. “They’re not what you’d call gracious winners, are they?”

Brendan had come over and heard him. “We’ll beat their pants off tomorrow.”

Conall really wanted to see Lia with her pants off. He wanted that more than he’d wanted anything in a long time. But if it happened—when it happened—it would be a private event.

“Darned straight,” he told the boys, his eyes meeting Lia’s laughing, triumphant gaze.

* * *

IT WAS A GOOD WEEK.

Except for the job, that is. The surveillance was going nowhere fast. Duncan had talked to the owner of the pizza place, but next thing Conall knew there were pizza boxes from a couple of different restaurants in the trash. No interesting mail. No more late-night visitors. Two men came and went a few times, during the day. Henderson followed them once and came back reporting that they’d grocery shopped and filled the pickup with gas. He’d gotten close enough in the grocery store to see that they were buying mostly frozen food and packaged cookies, plus some magazines and the Sunday Seattle Times. Neither of the two were familiar to either Conall or Henderson. They took pictures and sent them off to see if a match could be made. Conall waited semi-patiently for the late-night visitors to return, but it didn’t happen.

He marveled at how little he minded. He should be getting irritable by now. Two weeks, and no breaks. That wasn’t unusual, but he preferred action of almost any kind to these long, wait-and-see-what-happens gigs. This time…okay, this time he was enjoying himself. He decided he would think of it as a vacation. He didn’t often do those, but this could be a good, if unlikely, substitute.

He mentioned to Lia his observation about Walker, and she made an appointment to take him to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam. The kid came home wearing glasses. He looked surprisingly cute in them, and he kept saying in amazement, “Wow. I never noticed before.” He spent a lot of time staring at blades of grass or spiderwebs in the barn and even faces. Heck, The Transformers would probably seem new to him.

They played baseball every day, the boys noticeably gaining strength and skill until they were keeping Conall on his toes. Neither had ever played soccer, so he taught them that sport, too.

“You must have played when you were a kid,” Lia said at dinner one evening, but he shook his head.

“Little League, but not soccer. These past few years I’ve spent a lot of time in Latin America. Everyone plays. Well, the boys and men play,” he amended, grinning at the way Lia’s eyes narrowed.

“The village where I lived had a soccer field,” she said. “Not really a field because it was bare dirt, but that’s where they played.”

“Most of them are bare dirt. Not only in Mexico. South Africa, Greece…” He shrugged. “Any place with a dry climate where they can’t afford to water a field that isn’t productive.”

Brendan wanted to know what he meant about productive, and he explained, “Where they grow food. Or grass to feed animals that provide food.”

“Oh. Like Lia waters her garden.”

“Right.” They were eating the first green beans from her garden tonight, and they were really good. Jeff and Conall alternated nights at the dinner table, although Jeff had mostly conceded him the days downstairs.

“Those boys freak me out,” he’d said. “They’re like zombies. I don’t know what to say to them.”

“You were supposed to be the expert on kids.”

“I guess I’m not that good with them. My own are— They’re normal. You know?”

“Because their father didn’t walk out on them and their mother hasn’t died.”

He’d flushed, and Conall regretted his harsh tone. Henderson was an okay guy, but he’d grown up in a normal family himself and then found himself a nice wife. He wasn’t what you’d call imaginative. Conall found himself spending more and more waking hours downstairs with Lia and the kids. He felt a little guilty about that, but Jeff bored him.

Conall should be bored with eight- and ten-year-old boys, too, but he wasn’t. These two were really growing on him. He liked less and less thinking about what their future held. They could be happy here with Lia, couldn’t they? Why shouldn’t she keep them?

Conall knew they’d been curious about what was happening in the attic, so when Brendan asked to come upstairs and see the equipment the men were using to spy on the house next door, Conall agreed. Lia looked a little more doubtful, but finally said, “Well, I guess.”

Maybe he shouldn’t be sharing so much with the kids, but he couldn’t see how they’d be a risk. They never went anywhere or talked to anyone outside the household. Sorrel was a different story; Conall still worried about her opening her mouth at the wrong time or place. But what was the harm in giving Walker and Brendan something new to think about?

Walker almost immediately became distracted by the other wonders the attic held. He bounced on the bed and said wistfully, “It would be fun if we could sleep up here.” The naked mannequin was a source of great fascination for him.

Conall, grinning, asked, “Haven’t you ever seen a girl naked before? Or your mom?”

Walker’s eyes got wide and he shook his head so hard he had to grab for his new glasses. “My mom? I barely even saw her in a bathing suit. Right, Bren? And I never saw a girl without her clothes on.” He sounded aghast but simultaneously intrigued by the idea, which amused Conall. Brendan didn’t say anything, but his cheeks colored some.

Jeff let him look through the scopes and the binoculars and see what the digital video looked like when they ran it back. He asked if they could hear what the people over there said, and Conall explained why they couldn’t but how listening devices worked when it was possible either to get close enough to utilize them, or for a bug to be inserted.

“You’ve seen on TV shows how the cops use a van that’s filled with computers? That works in a city where no one notices an extra van with darkened windows parked down the block, but not so well here in the country.”

The boy nodded, his forehead furrowed.

“If we could set up a sort of satellite dish listening device close to the house—say, right at the fence line—we could probably hear what they say when they’re outside, but that’s not practical. The dogs would hear us if we got that close, for one thing, and the men would come to investigate. Our cover would be blown.”

“Would they shoot you, like on TV?”

Conall hesitated, wondering how Lia would want him to handle a question like that. “That depends what they’re up to. If they’re dealing marijuana, they might not even have guns, and they sure wouldn’t take a chance on shooting a law enforcement officer. If they’re doing something really bad, they might think it was a risk worth taking.”

“So how would you get one of these bugs in their house?” Brendan asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, Conall watched Walker who had begun cracking open boxes and peering at the contents. He wasn’t dumping things out, though.

“Depends,” Conall said. “Sneak over there, maybe, or get really clever.” He explained about the pizza box idea and why it had been a no-go so far. He also explained a little about laws and warrants and what he and Jeff had to do to make sure any evidence they gathered would be admissible in court, and why illegally acquired evidence wouldn’t be.

The kid listened solemnly, soaking it all in. Conall was afraid he had become the object of a minor case of hero worship. Still, what had it hurt to indulge Brendan’s curiosity?

Walker materialized at his side. “Can we go outside? I want to practice batting now that I can see.”

“Why not?” Conall gripped his shoulder. “Let’s be careful not to break those new glasses, though. Lia wouldn’t be happy with us.”

“She bought insurance,” Walker told him happily. “She said she expects I will break them.”

“Sensible woman. Bren, you up to doing some pitching?”

The older boy looked up from the array of small listening devices he’d been examining. “Huh? Oh, sure. Yeah.” Politely he turned to Jeff. “Thank you for showing everything to me.”

Smiling, Henderson said, “My pleasure.”

“Remember,” Conall cautioned as he escorted the boys downstairs, “the attic is still off-limits. Okay?”

“I wish we could have a sleepover.” Walker looked up at him hopefully. “I’d really like that.”

“Nope.” Conall made sure he sounded firm. “When we’re up there, we have to concentrate. What we’re doing isn’t fun and games. We’re trying to catch some criminals. That’s an important job. Do you understand that?”

They both nodded.

“Cuz you’re the good guys,” Walker said, “and they’re the bad guys.”

Conall tugged his hair affectionately. “You got it.”

“Can I bat first?”

“If it’s okay with your brother.”

Brendan rolled his eyes. “I’d rather pitch anyway.”

“That makes me the catcher.”

“I bet Lia would play outfielder. Do you think she would?”

Lia hated playing outfielder. But Conall laughed. “Never hurts to ask, does it?”