Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle)

TWICE A TARGET

Susan Vaughan

“Strong characters and plenty of romance.”

–Kat Martin, New York Times Bestselling author

TASK FORCE EAGLE - When federal agents Rick Cruz, Jake Wescott, and Holt
Donovan go after a Mexican cartel kingpin, they face unexpected hazards—to
their hearts.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

He doesn’t want a woman he can’t trust, and she
doesn’t want a man who won’t let himself trust her.

Disaster strikes DEA Agent Holt Donovan twice, when a
gunfight ruins his mission and a car crash kills his brother and sister-in-law.
Home on the Colorado ranch to raise his infant nephew, Holt enlists a nanny,
Maddy McCoy, who once jilted his brother and is now a nomadic photographer. As
they cope with old resentment and new desire, their investigation of the crash
leads them into danger and a shocking discovery.

Published by
Gullwood Press

Copyright 2013 Susan Hofstetter Vaughan

Cover design and digital layout by
www.formatting4U.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at
[email protected]. This book is a work of fiction. The characters,
events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination
and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

For more information on the author and her works, please see
http://www.susanvaughan.com

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to author and
friend Ann Voss Peterson for your advice and expertise about horses. And much
appreciation to Luanna Nau for the final read and for the baby advice.

Dedication

For my friends and critique partners Diane Drew, Lois Winston, and Karen
Davenport, and for my husband, who has my back. Always.

Prologue

March 10

Mexico

By afternoon the notorious drug kingpin known as El
Águila would be history.

If everything went as planned.

DEA Agent Holt Donovan slipped on sunglasses against
the Baja California sun. The light breeze blowing in off the water helped about
as much as a folded paper fan. He reached back to adjust the SIG-Sauer
automatic pistol hidden beneath the loose tail of his sport shirt. Sweat glued
the holster to his heated skin. Ducking beneath a shade umbrella, he peered at
the hotel’s side exit. Nobody yet.

Not a bad setting for a stakeout. The towers of the
Hotel Corona Royal rose as regal and white as a wedding cake. Beyond the snowy
sands of the Playa Royal, the rolling Pacific waters gleamed azure under the
relentless sun.

He and other agents of the DEA, U.S. Customs and
Border Patrol, and the Mexican Federal Police had spent months tracking the
cartel kingpin’s movements, hoping to set up a trap. No luck until now. They
spent the past week at the resort scoping out his routine and planning
strategy. No pictures existed of the secretive man. The agents were operating
only on a sketchy description from hotel employees. But frightened workers
didn’t necessarily impart the complete truth.

Once every ten days or so, the man registered as Juan
Perez and a small entourage left the penthouse for the maze of Tijuana streets
and other parts unknown. Juan Perez—that was an alias if Holt had ever heard
one, the Spanish equivalent of John Smith.

Today they would get no farther than the parking lot.

While he waited for his quarry to descend from the
penthouse, he tipped down his Broncos cap and scanned the crowd at the wedding
reception on the patio. Might as well enjoy the view.

Dressed in Spanish lace, the fresh-cheeked bride
smiled. The groom, in the traditional silver-braided Mexican tuxedo, stood
attentively at her side. Perfect. Holt hoped what would go down would disturb
none of the celebrants. Families deserved peace for such occasions.

He sure as hell recalled a humdinger in his family.
Maddy leaving his younger brother red-faced at the altar had trampled the whole
family like a cattle stampede. Rob was married to someone else now. Maybe he’d
let it go, but Holt wouldn’t forget—or forgive. His involvement in the mess
didn’t bear examining.

A detour to Colorado before he had to return to his
regular post in the New England DEA offices in Boston would suit him fine. He
had yet to see his nephew, less than a month old. Once they had El Águila
plucked and stowed, Holt had some time coming. Leaving Rob to run the Valley-D
chafed at him, but that was the decision they’d made years ago when their dad left
them the family ranch.

The hotel’s double doors opened, and two burly men
stepped outside. Like him, they wore cotton shirts, loose over their khaki
trousers to conceal weapons. One was a hawk-faced man Holt had seen in the
elevator. The other sported a bushy mustache. Bodyguards.

The remainder of the group exited. In the center of
the group walked a stocky, older man wearing a white open-collared shirt and
dark trousers.

El Águila
. The Eagle.

Holt thumbed the speed dial on his secure cell phone.
“The bird is on the wing,” he said into his headset.

“How many in the flock?” came the response.

“Six. Our bird and five chicks. Four muscle and one
lieutenant.”

“We’ll have ‘em on camera as soon as they move to the
parking lot. The Federales have picked up the driver. Our bird has no getaway
car. We’re set.”

“Roger.” Success depended on patience and strategy,
waiting until their prey entered the trap before dropping the net. Could be a
problem if some of the newer agents didn’t understand that timing meant as much
as action. If not more.

Like any flock, the group moved and stopped as one.

“Hold on. They’ve pulled up twenty feet away.” He sat
on the lounge chair beneath the umbrella. To appear in casual conversation, he
continued to mutter an inaudible—he hoped—description of the action into the
receiver.

At his boss’s side, the lieutenant, young and tall in
a flashy red shirt, spoke quietly. Perez nodded. Then the lieutenant issued a
brief order to Hawkface. The bodyguard dashed off to the wedding tent. A moment
later he returned with a paper plate stacked with wedding delicacies.

With apparent reluctance, Perez sampled a cake. In his
fifties or sixties, he wore his hair slicked back, as did many Latino men, but
its unnaturally black color betrayed his vanity. His sharkskin gray complexion
and cavern-deep eyes gave him an appearance both repulsive and fascinating.

“He just sampled the wedding goodies. Here they go.”
Holt waited until they’d passed well ahead of him. “I’m moving in behind.”

A flagstone path wound through bougainvillea,
flowering trees and hibiscus toward the sprawling parking area and beyond that
a three-story parking garage. The little flock would soon enter the open area.

Keeping behind the shrubbery, Holt followed his
quarry. He drew his pistol and flicked off the safety.

Behind him, mariachi music cranked up. The celebrants
would dance and dine until the sun dropped into the Pacific and the moon rose
to take its place.

Hawkface and Mustache, bringing up the rear, glanced
around, but didn’t make him.

Ten more steps brought them to the edge of the net.
Holt could hear the agitated voices, enough words to catch Perez’s irritation
at the driver’s tardiness. Now they would move out into the open, and agents
would surround them.

“¡Alto!
Federal Police. Drop your weapons and
surrender!”

Holt’s gut clenched and his heart rate shot up. Shit!
Some Federale jumped the gun. Instead of inside a circle of agents, the
gangsters stood at the brink of the net.

At the brink of escape.

Then all hell broke loose. Two of the bodyguards
hunkered down behind hibiscus bushes. They drew handguns and fired volleys at
their unseen enemy.

From all sides, agents returned fire. Bullets slammed
into the ground. Shots ricocheted off the flagstones around the shooters. One of
the gunmen went down.

Holt ran forward.

Hawkface, Mustache, and Redshirt began to edge their
leader away from the danger.

“¡Alto!
You cannot get away,” Holt called in
his American-accented Spanish. “Agents surround you.” He ducked behind a tree
as skinny as a flagpole and about as much protection. The others should be
moving in to flank them and cut off their escape.

At his warning, the bodyguards wavered. Redshirt drew
a pistol and pushed his boss behind him. The others raised their weapons in his
direction.

He knelt to form a smaller target. Put himself in the
zone. Calm. Focused. Where the hell were the Federales and the American agents?

Gunfire boomed from the perimeter of the parking area.

El Águila stood his ground. He stared at Holt,
challenge in his eerie gaze. But not fear. The malignant intelligence in his
sunken eyes scrutinized him as if he could see through the scrawny tree. Damned
clear why the criminal was named for a bird of prey.

At Redshirt’s signal, El Águila’s protectors fired.

Splinters erupted above Holt’s head. The hibiscus
blossom beside him exploded red petals. He dropped to his belly and squeezed
off four rounds.

Hawkface dropped his pistol and clutched at his arm.
The younger lieutenant fell like a heel-looped calf.

Holt fired another round into the ground before them.
“Drop your weapons.”

El Águila roared like a wounded puma and knelt beside
his downed man. Still firing, the winged goon dragged him away. Mustache heaved
the young man over his shoulder. The four of them melted into the bushes.

The rattle of shrubbery announced the cavalry.

About damn time. “Through there,” Holt yelled to the
approaching agents. “Don’t let them get away.”

*****

March 24

San Diego

Holt tapped computer keys as he completed yet one more
report on the Operation Bird Net fiasco. He’d had the man in his sights. Could
have taken him down, but stopped because higher-ups wanted the scum alive.
Fuck. That might’ve been his only chance at El Águila.

In the confusion, somehow the gangster’s party
escaped. To show for their trouble, the task force had one clear photograph of
the missing men. The two captured bodyguards and the driver weren’t talking.

For two weeks they combed Tijuana and environs for any
sign of their fugitives. No sign of the kingpin and the three men who’d escaped
with him. No doctor or hospital reported gunshot wounds, but that was no
surprise. Such a powerful underworld figure would have resources.

“Yo, Donovan,” Another DEA special agent across the
room said. “There’s a phone call for you. From Colorado.”

“Must be my brother.” Holt punched the Save button.

“Guy says his name’s Luke Rafferty.”

“Rafferty?” Unease crawled over Holt’s skin. If the
deputy sheriff tracked him down in Californis, it wasn’t with good news.

He reached for the phone.

Chapter 1

April

Colorado

Holt stared at the mountain vista he’d missed like a
lost limb. April’s snow-edged meadows rose into the verdant shades of Ponderosa
pines and budding aspens. To the distant southeast, the lowering sun painted a
magenta wash on the slopes of Pikes Peak. He swore in this valley he could hear
the heartbeat of the mountains.

He should be enjoying the spring with Rob. Grief
squeezed his heart. A man wasn’t supposed to lose his younger brother. And sure
as hell not the way he’d planned to return and take up the reins of the ranch.
With his mug of coffee in hand, he turned away and sank onto a chair at the
kitchen table.

“I’d stay if I could, you know I would.” Esperanza
O’Grady folded the dishtowel on its rack over the sink and flicked off the
country music radio station she favored. She cocked her head and smoothed back
raven hair edged with silver. The housekeeper’s Ute heritage shone in her
burnished visage. “Two days a week is all I can give you from now on.”

“That’s okay, Espie. Two days is all I can afford
after this. You’ve done more than anybody else, and I appreciate it.”

Espie’d worked part-time on this ranch since he was a
kid. Her tenure began before his and Rob’s mother left and continued after Rob
married. Gradually, her cleaning business expanded with her family. Cleaning
wasn’t what he needed the most, even if he could afford full time.

“I’ll lose my other customers if I put them off any
longer. You won’t need me forever, and I need to keep the fridge stocked. Danny
and Sean would devour the shelves.” She slipped on her jacket, and then lifted
her leather tote to her shoulder.

“I’ve left you a casserole for tonight and a chicken
dish in the freezer. See that you eat proper, now. You need your strength.” She
wagged a finger at him.

“You’re not kidding.” He levered to his feet, removing
his broad-brimmed black Resistol and holding it over his heart. “My hat’s off
to single parents everywhere.”

“Single is the key word. What you need is a wife.”

The word made him shudder. “A wife would only
complicate a situation already as convoluted as a Rocky Mountain pass.”

He needed help big-time, and fast, but not the kind
she meant. He slapped his hat on the table and crossed to the door. “Before you
can say it, not a mother either. Last person on earth I’d call.”

At the bitterness he never could quite conceal, Espie
reached up to pat his cheek. “Time you let that go. Bonnie wasn’t cut out for
ranch life. Not every woman’s tough enough. Many can’t take the isolation.”

At least Maddy had bailed out on his brother
before
the wedding. She couldn’t take it either. Lit out for the big time. Violet eyes
and a filly’s long legs flickered in his mind. He shook away the vision, but
the memory stung like a picked scab.

“No wife. No mother. I have a good hand to help me on
the Valley-D. The rest I’ll figure out as we go.”

“A good hand.” She gave a snort as she eased out the
door. “If that old coyote works half as much as he flaps his jaw, I reckon
he’ll do. Don’t you tell him I said so neither.”

Holt watched from the porch as she left in her pickup.
He rubbed a hand over his gritty eyes. Running the Valley-D on the scant sleep
he’d had the last few weeks was taking its toll. Most of the cows and the bred
heifers had calved, so the damn midnight vigils were close to being finished.

The ones outside, anyway.

“That ornery female gone yet?” Bronc Baker, spare and
weathered as an old fence post, sauntered toward the house.

“Ornery? Bronc, I thought you liked Espie. Besides, we
couldn’t have made it these last few weeks without her.”

“Shee-it, I know that.” Bronc removed his tan Stetson
from his grizzled head and whacked it against his grimy jeans. A dust cloud
rose from both hat and pants leg. “But the woman talks all the time. A man
can’t pry in a word with a crowbar. Bronc this and Bronc that. Asks about the
calves, have we got heifers or bulls and will we have a good hay crop and—”

“Whoa, I get the picture.” Holt’s mouth twitched, but
he held back a laugh. Between them, those two jabbered so much a conversation
could kick up a dust devil.

The older man settled his wide-brimmed hat on his
head. “Um, I did mention to her we might need her boys to help with the
brandin’.”

“Good idea. Nothing better than calf roping for
teenaged boys.” Calf roping had kept Rob and him out of trouble for many years.
The memory tightened his chest.

“Anyways, I come to tell you things look peaceful in
the calving pen. Moms and babies is doin’ okay. Lower pen’s quiet too. No signs
of more labor right away.”

“So it looks like I get the night off. I can use it.”

Bronc nodded. “And you’ll get to the field truck
tomorrow? You’re a better mechanic than me.”

“Or Rob, I reckon. The tractor needs some work too.”
Holt scratched his head. His brother’s ranch management was an oxymoron. “Back
east, they thought all we did was ride around on horseback and herd cattle.”

The ranch hand barked a laugh. “City folks don’t know a
rancher’s got to be a mechanic, a vet, and a farmer.”

“Don’t forget shoestring businessman.”

Holt offered to share Espie’s casserole. Bronc excused
himself, saying he had stew on the stove in the mobile home that served as a
bunkhouse.

The peaks beyond the valley drew a lingering look
before grief pulled Holt’s gaze toward the aspen-topped knoll behind the house.
A neat brown scar in the greening grass, Rob’s grave was the newest one beside
their father and two sets of grandparents.

Past regrets and present burdens heaped on his
shoulders, he plodded into the house.

He dug into his dinner like a wolf on fresh kill. Five
o’clock. His daily chores on the land were done, but his nightly ones were
about to begin. Maybe fate would grant him a peaceful evening.

The first plate was finished and a second heaped
before he took time to savor the spicy beef, tortillas, and cheese. He was
rinsing his plate when he heard the engine. He expected no one, and the hairs
on his nape lifted in warning. Lately every new arrival, every phone call
heralded more trouble.

A glance out the window in the kitchen door revealed
the back view of a long drink of female. Mile-long legs in tight jeans and
running shoes, sweetly curved butt, and short blond hair. She was waving
good-bye to the deputy sheriff’s white Cherokee as it chugged down the gravel
drive.

What the hell?
He snatched open the door and
stalked outside.

When the woman turned around, the sight of her face
sucker-punched him in the solar plexus.

“Hi, Holt. Guess you never expected to see me here
again.” Madelyn McCoy propped her hands on her hips and gave him a crooked
smile.

Sweat popped out on his brow. Had he somehow conjured
up Maddy? Same sassy mouth, violet eyes the exact shade of the pansies Espie
planted every May in the window boxes.

“McCoy, you’re the last person I
want
to see.
What the hell are you doing here?” He stopped before his temper got the best of
him. The mere sight of her pushed all his hot spots.

She’d lit out eight years ago a twenty-year-old girl,
pretty and tempting as a mountain spring, but the female who stood hip-sprung
before him was all woman—and twice as sexy.

And twice as deceitful. He’d bet the next newborn calf
on it. The sooner she left the better.

Maddy held out open hands in a peace declaration.
“Look, I know with you I’m
persona non grata
.” Her shoulders slumped,
and her sass slid to sorrow. “Faith Rafferty emailed me...about Rob. I had to
come to pay my respects.”

Faith and Maddy used to be close. So that’s how she
knew. His throat clutched, and he gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to share
his loss with the woman who’d broken Rob’s heart.

Facing Holt showed a measure of unexpected courage. As
children, they’d all been friends, Rob and Maddy and him—kids running wild
during the summers. Even if she didn’t love Rob enough to marry him and stay on
the Valley-D, she once cared for him. Holt had to admit that, at least to
himself.

Much as the sight of her troubled him, he’d accept her
condolences.

He stared at the dust settling on the driveway. She
had no transportation. “Why did Luke Rafferty drive you here? You in some kind
of trouble?”

A shadow flickered across her eyes. Or it could be his
imagination. His DEA work dealing with lowlifes made him as suspicious as a
calf at branding time.

“Just car trouble,” she said lightly, picking up the
metal case at her feet. A fancy camera case, if he wasn’t mistaken. “My Range
Rover broke down in Rangewood. Luke happened to see me at the diner.”

Close up, he saw exhaustion in her eyes. “Reckon I could
drive you back later.”

“How did it happen, Holt? The accident. All Faith said
was a car accident.” She marched up the porch steps toward him like an invading
Amazon.

Damn, he had to tell the story again. His gut twisted
with the prospect. He ran his tongue around his teeth and focused on the
distant peak, still rosy with sunlight. “The crash happened about a month ago.
Rob and his wife were headed down to Cripple Creek for a night out. They took
the shortcut from north of Rangewood that leads southeast to the state road.
Went off the road on a mountain curve and rolled into a ravine.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Holt, how horrible. Did
they...were they—”

“Rob and Sara died quick, I reckon.” He couldn’t let
himself think about their pain and fear. “That old truck barely had seat belts,
let alone air bags.”

There was more to the story. A lot more. Including the
crash was no fucking accident. He had no proof yet, but he knew. Dammit, he
would find the bastard who’d murdered his family. He couldn’t tell Maddy any of
that, and she didn’t need to know. He cleared his throat before he turned back
to her.

Her voice caught on a sob. “I’m so sorry. What a
terrible loss.”

He swallowed his pride. “I appreciate that. You didn’t
have to come all this way though, from Timbuktu or wherever you were.”

“Malibu.” A wobbly smile lifted the corners of her
mouth. “I figured if I telephoned you’d hang up on me. I had to come in
person...to see the grave.”

“Fine. You know where the family plot is.” He sketched
a wave in that direction.

“You don’t give an inch, do you?” Maddy shook her
head, the movement lifting her short blonde hair like a buckskin fringe on a
sleeve. “I’d appreciate the use of your bathroom before I go sit by Rob
awhile.”

Holt’s first instinct was not to let her in the house,
but he couldn’t act the ogre about it. Besides, she was shivering in her denim
jacket. He stepped back and held the door as she sashayed in.