The Warrior - Dinah McCall

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the exact moment of its appearance, and because she was so focused on the sky, she didn’t see the man swimming in the water below. But then the sun broke, and all of a sudden the day was there. She smiled slowly in appreciation and was about to turn back when she saw him, waist deep and emerging from the ocean as steadily as the sun had appeared from below the horizon.

      The first thought that crossed her mind was awe. The second was lust.

      He’d been a commanding figure in clothes. Naked, he was magnificent. Even from this distance, the copper perfection of his body was impossible to ignore. Muscles everywhere they should be, wet and glistening in the new light of a new day. Then she looked past the obvious to the way his head was hanging, and the slight but weary slump of his body. He walked across the sand as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and something told her that had nothing to do with a strenuous workout.

      A lump rose in her throat. Then he paused. When she saw him cover his face with his hands, her vision blurred. She could feel his sadness from here. But why? She thought of the way he’d spoken about his wife, and her heart ached. She’d never known love like that.

      It wasn’t until John dropped his hands and looked up the bluff toward his house that Alicia realized he could see her. Now she was stuck. If she moved suddenly, he would think she was ashamed to be caught spying on him. So she did the only other thing she could; she waved and called down, “The sunrise was beautiful!” Then she waved once more and walked back into the house and up to her room.

      She swiped angrily at the tears in her eyes as she dug through her suitcase for a clean change of clothes. He could think what he wanted. It was his own fault for walking around naked. Ignoring him would have been a whole lot easier if he had a potbelly and thinning hair.

      A few minutes later she was dressed in a pair of blue shorts and a loose white blouse. She walked barefoot down the hall to the kitchen, hoping for a cup of coffee. But she got way more than she hoped for when John came in the back door.

      “Good morning,” he said, and strode through the kitchen, leaving sandy footprints on the wood floor.

      Alicia nodded, but the answer she might have given was stuck in the back of her throat. He was still unashamedly naked, but that wasn’t what had caused her heart to skip.

      It was the scars.

      Small ones.

      Large ones.

      All over his body.

      All she could think was, what in God’s sweet name has happened to this man?

      Three

      Dieter was heartily glad that there were several states between him and Richard Ponte as he listened to his boss berate him up one side and down the other. He shifted the phone from one ear to the other while walking to the impound yard, confident that whatever it was he’d missed hearing wasn’t going to kill him, although Richard might.

      “Do you have any idea where she’s gone?” Richard snapped.

      Dust puffed up on Dieter’s pant legs as he walked, but he didn’t have the luxury of caring. “Not yet. I just got out of jail, and I’m on my way to get my car out of impound.”

      Richard’s voice was quiet, steady—the antithesis of what he was feeling.

      “You’d better be in a hurry. You’d better be running, boy,” Richard said. “You’d better finish what I sent you to do or don’t bother coming back, because if you come back without my daughter, I’ll kill you myself.”

      Dieter picked up his step, telling himself it was just a figure of speech, that Ponte didn’t really mean it. Then Ponte’s voice got even quieter.

      “Do we understand each other?” Richard asked.

      Dieter changed his mind. Ponte’s threat was more than serious.

      “Yes, sir. I understand. I’ll call you as soon as I have her located again.”

      “Make it quick.”

      “Yes, sir,” Dieter said, praying for the disconnect. When it clicked in his ear, he breathed a sigh of relief, dropped his phone in his pocket and lengthened his stride.

      A short while later he had his car out of impound, heartily thankful that, if this had to happen, it had occurred in such a backwater place as Justice. He’d checked the trunk of his car to find everything he’d had with him was still in place. The black duffel bag was still lying at the back of the trunk, behind a spare tire and tools. He pulled it out, grunting with satisfaction as he checked through the contents, making sure everything was still there.

      Two handguns with a fairly large supply of ammunition. A nice set of lockpicks, along with a couple of small hand drills—tools any burglar would want. A first-aid kit with two different vials of drugs meant to render someone unconscious, along with the necessary supply of syringes. Any cop worth his salt would have searched and confiscated all this. He thought of the skinny, smart-ass jailer who’d smirked at him, and snorted. The laugh was on them, and they didn’t even know it.

      Satisfied that all was in place once again, he zipped up the bag, shoved it back behind the spare tire and slammed the trunk lid shut. As he got back in the car, he already knew his next destination would be the last place he’d seen Alicia Ponte. At a place called Marv’s Gas and Guzzle.

      

      Daisy Broyles had come to work for Marv Spaulding on her sixteenth birthday and had been here ever since. Job security had been assured after she’d turned nineteen and married Marv. Now they lived in the little brick house behind the store, which suited Daisy just fine. She liked small-town living, and Justice, Georgia, was small-town personified.

      This morning was passing much like every morning did. Herbert and Hubert Cooper, two old bachelors who happened to be identical twins, had come in around seven o’clock, downed their usual three cups of coffee and two of Daisy’s fresh-baked cinnamon rolls apiece and then left with a wave and a promise to be back tomorrow.

      Marshall Walters’ daughter, Sue, had stopped by for gas to mow their lawn.

      Three little boys came in with a dollar apiece and spent fifteen minutes arguing between themselves before settling on pop and candy. And the morning went on, with a steady flow of locals stopping by.

      The morning scent of cinnamon rolls was slowly being replaced by the food Daisy was preparing for the lunch rush. She already had a dozen burritos fried up, a pan of crusty chicken strips, a big bowl of potato salad and a bowl of slaw. She was wrapping her chocolate-chip cookies in clear plastic for individual sale when she saw a car pull off the highway and park near the door.

      She frowned, recognizing the car. No one had ever pulled a stunt like that here. Passing out drunk at one of her gas pumps was ridiculous. He could have killed someone driving drunk. Yesterday, it was all anybody had wanted to talk about when they’d come in. She was tired of the subject, and tired of the jackass who’d done it. Marv had reminded her last night that they’d been lucky the sorry sucker had stopped before he’d passed out. Like Marv told her, if the drunk had still been driving when he’d conked out, they might have had a mess on their hands. What if he’d hit the pumps? What if he’d run into another customer? Finally Daisy had relented, admitting Marv had a point.

      But seeing the man walking toward the door didn’t mean she was ready to sell him some more booze so he could get behind the wheel and drive again. With that thought in mind, she braced herself against the counter, crossed her arms over her ample bosom and set her jaw. Southern women had their ways. If he argued with her, she would show him what a real steel magnolia was all about.

      Dieter didn’t know he’d already been made, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Finding Alicia’s car parked right beside his in the impound yard hadn’t made him feel any better about the situation. It was his own fault for giving away the GPS business. He’d just assumed she would have known. Now she was running again, but in what—and with whom? He needed to find out who that big Indian was she’d

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