A CALLAHAN CHRISTMAS MIRACLE (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

When little Mack Galen came home the next day from the hospital, the Christmas spirit finally hit Rose. “My boy is home!” she exclaimed. “It’s almost a merry Christmas!” She smiled at Galen and reached to take her son in her arms. “Although it breaks my heart that your baby brother is still at the hospital. I’ll go see him tomorrow.” She looked up at Galen. “How is Riley?”

“Our mighty little mouse,” he said. “Not much bigger than a mouse, squeaks like a mouse and sometimes makes faces like a mouse.”

“Galen!” Rose gave her husband a reproving look, even though part of her wanted to laugh. She knew he was teasing—and yet it felt mean to tease about little Riley when he couldn’t be home with the family.

“I’m sorry. I think of Mighty Mouse when I think of that sprig off the family tree. You know he’s going to grow up to be a cattle puncher or a monster rodeo cowboy.”

“I hope so.” She gazed down at Mack, her father’s namesake. “My sons are growing like tigers.”

“Not tigers,” Galen said. “They’re growing like Callahans.”

He handed her a bouquet of flowers—a beautiful knot of lilies and roses—surprising her. “What’s this for?”

“Because you’re my wife.” He flung himself down next to her and grinned at the two babies she held. “A beautiful, patient wife.”

“I’m not patient. Whoever told you that?”

“Fiona.” His brow lifted. “Don’t believe me?”

“There’s no telling what your aunt might say about anything, but I doubt she ever claimed I was patient.”

“She did say you had the soul of a saint to put up with me.”

Fiona’s earlier words lingered in Rose’s mind. She’d tried hard not to think about them in the last week, but they were hard to forget. “Galen, remember when you said we didn’t have to stay together? That you didn’t want our relationship to be like your brothers’, where they had to catch their wives after they’d gotten them pregnant?”

“Yeah. You see that my way worked much better. You’re here with me, there’s no drama and the kids are happy. We’ll be a big happy family by Christmas.”

“You do recall you mentioned something about us not needing to stay together if—”

He kissed the words right off her lips. “I know what I said to convince you it was safe to marry me, doll. But it was all a pretty trap, I’m afraid, and you fell for the shiny object. You’re stuck with me.” He took Mack from her and lay back with the baby on his chest. “Yes, stuck like peanut butter to the roof of a horse’s mouth.”

“Galen!” She laughed, relieved, happy to have her worries brushed away. But underneath the happiness, Rose knew she had decisions to make, for her sons’ sakes.

* * *

“H
ERE
’
S
THE
DEAL
,” Galen told Running Bear when they met in the canyons that night. “Everything went wrong. And when it went wrong, it went really wrong. I can tell my little wife is having serious second thoughts. There’s got to be a way to fix all this, before it blows up in my face. My boys’ first Christmas, my first with my wife, our first Christmas as a family, is in two weeks. The last thing I want is Wolf’s shadow bunging up the holiday spirit. Help me, Grandfather.”

Running Bear looked over at the canyons. They sat in his lair high above the deep arroyos. “They are coming closer all the time.”

“I know.” There were days Galen wasn’t certain if he could hold them off any longer. “What do the cousins say?”

“That they’re worried. They want to help you.” The chief chose his words carefully. “They feel they’ve abandoned you to fight their battle.”

“No.” Galen shook his head. “My cousins didn’t abandon us. We understand the mission. They have families.”

“You, too, have a family. Which is what makes them feel maybe they’ve asked too much of the Chacon Callahans.”

“Not to worry.” He’d been on many missions, some longer than this one. “None of my siblings have mentioned leaving Rancho Diablo. Some go, some return. In the end, we all stay.” He didn’t mention that he’d felt Rose’s doubts recently. She hadn’t said anything, but he knew her well enough to figure out what she was thinking. Her fears were clearly written on her face—had been since the night her father and home had been attacked. Fear for her father, fear for the children—fear in not knowing what was to come.

She was the bravest woman he knew outside of his family, and he could clearly feel that fear had become part of her thoughts. “I’m going to have to do something about Rose.”

“I know.” Running Bear nodded. “In time, you will know, too.”

“That’s not very helpful.” Galen sighed. “On another topic, I think Fiona and Burke need to leave Rancho Diablo. I’m not comfortable with them here. Fiona has done her time. She needs to move on, to relax and enjoy life instead of being a convenient target for Wolf.” Galen studied the burned land across the canyon, the blackened earth clearly visible. Egyptian legend claimed that the phoenix burned every five hundred years, only to rise from the ashes better than ever.

Maybe they would all rise, strong and fearless.

“I wish he’d pick on one of us,” Galen said, “instead of a helpless old woman, and my pregnant wife. Seems very small of him.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

Galen snorted. “I could never regret wishing that it was me instead of Fiona or Rose. My wife is very different now, and it’s not just that she’s a new mom. Where she was once fearless, she now tastes fear.”

“Yes.” Running Bear nodded.

There wasn’t much Galen could do about that at the moment except protect her and his children, and Mack. He still had Sawyer on duty, along with a rotating team of other guards. “I don’t understand what happened. Rose has nothing to offer Wolf. It’s his same old bag of tricks.”

“The object is to let us know we are always in danger, that he has eyes in many places.”

“Which is why I think Fiona and Burke need to go. With fewer targets, we’re not as interesting to hunt.”

“Will you be the one to tell Fiona she has to leave?” Running Bear asked. “I would not relish that task.”

“I know she wouldn’t thank me for my opinion.”

“No. And you wouldn’t find any lunch bags or cookies with your name on them for many moons.” Running Bear nodded. “Be careful of her feelings.”

“What’s Storm’s role in all this?”

“Fear. Same as what you now know. He, too, has a family he wishes to protect.”

“So he’s a victim?”

“We all choose to be a victim or not.”

“Great.” His grandfather was being even more sphinxlike than usual. “Is he on our side or Wolf’s?”

“He was on no one’s side except his own. Now his nieces have been used against each other. If you fear for someone, fear for Storm. He has a lot to lose.”

Galen’s mouth twisted. “You’re asking me to feel sympathy for a neighbor I never really trusted.”

“How can you know the man unless you wear his shoes?”

Galen stood. “Should I mention to Fiona that perhaps she and Burke should consider—”

“At your peril.” Running Bear waved a hand at him. “Look for the answers inside yourself. Meditate. You can’t solve everything yourself. In the tribe, you learned to trust each other and your guide. Don’t turn away from that now.”

Galen blinked at the sudden cloud of dust that swept up the canyon, obliterating the ledge where his grandfather had been seated. Minutes later, only some swirling dust let him know his grandfather had been there, that his spirit still remained.

Galen went off to find his family. If Running Bear was all about teamwork, then it was time to meet with the team.

* * *

T
HE
FAMILY
MEETING
was a tense, uncomfortable affair. No one passed tumblers of whiskey around that night, no one laughed or teased him about being a new father. Everyone was on edge after the recent attacks.

Grandfather was right: the enemy was getting closer all the time, now almost lodged in their psyches.

“Decisions must be made,” Galen said. “Hard decisions, but it’s time to face them.”

His brothers and sister looked at him, their faces dark with concern, as they had been the night he’d gathered them together to tell them their parents had gone.

That had been a hellish night. There’d been so much he couldn’t tell them—and yet explaining to them they were now on their own had been hard enough. He’d borne that burden carefully, jealously, for all these many years, a fierce caretaker of his family then as now.

Only he and Running Bear knew where Carlos and Julia, their parents, were. Witness protection was a mysterious refuge, and the secret would go with him to his grave. He couldn’t tell his family anything—and yet now he had to tell them that the very mission was in jeopardy.

“I know you know that Rose and her father, Mack, were attacked the night she went into labor,” Galen began. “Sawyer Cash and Somer were involved.”

“Which I haven’t quite wrapped my head around,” Jace said. “I thought Sawyer was long gone and never looking back.”

“She was. She called me about work. I had a job for her.” Galen leveled a gaze on his brother.

“You could have mentioned it,” Jace said.

“No. I could not have mentioned it. It was not my secret to tell.” Galen laid a map he’d drawn of Rancho Diablo, the canyons and their neighbors to the east and west out on the table. “This map details our position. Here you have the burned land we’ve recently purchased—”

“You’ve recently purchased,” Jace interjected.

Galen turned to face his brother. “If you have a problem, share it.”

“I don’t think you have a right to keep an operative’s location secret from us, for one thing,” Jace said.

“Sawyer’s life is her own. Anything else?”

His brothers and sister stared at him curiously.

“We should all be part of the land purchase,” Jace added.

Galen shrugged. “I’ve done what Grandfather asked. I know that originally Fiona offered that land as incentive for all of us to marry—”

“Which you’ve most conveniently done,” Jace stated.

Ash reached over and pinched him. “What is your problem tonight?”

“He’s jealous,” Dante said.

“Angry,” Tighe said. “In a knot over Sawyer.”

“That’s just too bad,” Ash said.

Galen knocked on the table to bring their attention back to the matter at hand. “All personal issues get left outside. We have to attack this problem as a team—a tribe—or we’re gonna lose.”

Jace sat back, grumbling under his breath. Galen continued. “On this side is Bode Jenkins, a neighbor we haven’t talked to much, but who’s related by marriage to our Callahan cousins. That’s a safe zone.” He marked that area in red. “On this side is Storm. We would like to call his ranch a safe zone, but at the moment we have to color it gray. Storm’s working his own demons, and there’s no telling how Wolf’s going to try to play that, however unfortunate for Storm.” Galen marked that area off. “Back here are the canyons, and beyond that, the new land parcel. All to be marked blue, no longer safe. We know that,” he said, looking at his siblings, “because Wolf’s men have infested the area.”

He took the blue marker, and over Rancho Diablo drew slashing lines. “Call this area Rancho Diablo Hell, because that’s what it is. Underneath the ranch we may have our own man-made canyons, built by and maintained by the cartel. The same folks our parents and our Callahan cousins’ parents were fighting against. We know they have tunneled under the acreage I just bought. The farmer was too old and didn’t maintain his land well. Never saw anything, and I doubt he even left the house much.”

Galen turned to gaze at his family. “We discovered this underground world less than a year ago. I’ve talked to the sheriff, and he’s bringing in the Feds. We have no choice. I can think of no other way to save Rancho Diablo and our families.”

His siblings looked astonished.

“You can’t make those decisions on your own,” Jace said.

“I had counsel,” Galen answered. “And after the shooting at Mack’s place, I knew we’d run out of options. Wherever we go, Wolf’s going to have us covered. That’s his message to us. Even if he has to use our own employees, we won’t be safe. That’s not so much a problem for me as it is for you, and your wives.”

“What does that mean?” Ash demanded.

“It means that I took care of all of you when you were young. But I can’t protect you anymore,” Galen said. “The enemy is strong, so strong that even the strongest among us may be in danger.”

“Pessimism never won the day,” Ash retorted. “Let’s not be dramatic, Galen. We can take care of ourselves.”

“True, but not, perhaps, our families.”

His sister shook her head. “Nobody has been seriously hurt.”

His brothers stared at her.

“You can’t mean that,” Sloan said. “We’ve had wives held prisoner for months in Montana. Aunt Fiona was kidnapped. We’re barely hanging on here, Ash. Galen’s right.”

“I don’t know that he is,” Jace said, obviously still smarting from the whole issue with Sawyer. He glared at Galen. “Why isn’t Running Bear telling us all this? We should hear it from him.”

Galen shrugged. “Ask him yourself.” He turned back to the map. “Given that we’re surrounded, the Feds are treading lightly. We’re to stay in the background, not get in their way.”

“I’ve never trusted the damn government,” Ash snapped, and her brothers stared at her again. “Why should we rely on outside forces?” she asked. “I say we go it alone.”

“I vote with Ash,” Jace said. “This is family business.”

Dante stood, finally taking the whiskey decanter and pouring himself a drink. “We stay together. Whatever decision is made by the majority, we live as one.”

“I can’t,” Ash said. “Galen’s wrong. He’s gone around us and made several decisions without discussing them with us. Hiring Sawyer as his personal guard, now bringing in the Feds...” She glared at him. “You’re not the patriarch of this family, Galen.”

“I’d say he is,” Tighe said, taking the bottle from his twin and pouring a drink for himself. “As the brother whose wife was held prisoner by Wolf for several months, and who still smiles at the sound of lightning, thanks to the party favor Fiona ignited on Wolf’s den, I’m agreeing with Galen. We need help.”