Free Mercenary's Woman by Diana Palmer

assaulted
her and may have raped her if I hadn't shown up," Eb said bluntly as he backed
the truck and
    pulled out into the road. "I want to have
another look, if the ambulance hasn't picked them up yet."
    "You sent for an
ambulance?" Dallas asked with mock surprise. "That's new."
    "Well, we're
trying to blend in, aren't we?" came the terse reply. He glared at the tall
blond man. "Difficult to blend in if we let people die on the side of the
road."
    "If you say so."
    They drove to where
Sally's pickup truck was still sit ting, but there was no sign of the two men.
The house nearby was dark. There wasn't a soul in sight.
    As Eb digested that,
red lights flashed and a big boxy ambulance pulled up behind the pickup truck,
followed closely by a deputy
sheriff in a patrol car.
    Eb pulled off the
road and got out. He knew the deputy, Rich Burton, who was one of the department's ablest members. They shook hands.
    "Where are the victims?" Rich asked.
    Eb grimaced. "Well, they were both
lying right there when I took Sally
home."
    The deputy and the ambulance guys looked toward the flattened
grass, but there weren't any men lying there.     "Unless one of you needs medical
attention, we'll be on our way," one of the EMTs said with a wry glance.
    "Both of the
perps did," Eb said quietly. "At least one of them has broken bones."
    The EMT gave him a
wary look. "Not their legs, by the look of things."
    "No. Not their
legs."
    The EMTs left and Rich
joined Eb and Dallas beside the truck.
    "Something's
going on at that house," Rich said qui etly. "I've had total strangers stop me
and tell me they've seen suspicious activity, men carrying boxes in and out.

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    MERCENARY'S WOMAN

That's not all. Some holding company
bought a huge tract of land adjoining Cy Parks's place, and it's filling up
with building supplies.
There's a contractor been hired and a plan
has gone to the county commission's planning com mittee about a business starting up there."
    "How much do you
know about the men who live here?" Eb asked coolly.
    Rich shrugged. "Not as much as I'd
like to. But my contacts tell me that there's a drug lord named Manuel Lopez, and the talk is that these guys belong to him.
They're mules. They run his narcotics for him."
    Eb and
Dallas exchanged quiet glances.
    "What sort of
business are we talking about?" Eb que ried.
    "Don't know.
There's a huge steel warehouse going up behind Parks's place," Rich replied, and he looked worried.
"If I were making a guess, and it is just a guess, I'd say somebody had distribution in mind."
    Chapter Five
    A distribution
center," Eb said curtly. "With Manuel Lopez, the head of the most
violent of the international drug cartels, behind it! That's just what we need in Ja- cobsville."
    "That's
right," the younger man replied. He scowled. "How do you know
about Lopez?"
    Eb didn't answer.
"Thanks, Rich," he said. "If I hear anything about the men who attacked Miss
Johnson, I'll give you a call."
    "Thanks. But I'd bet that they're
long gone," he said carelessly,
"They'd be crazy to stick around and face charges like attempted rape in a town this size. Lopez wouldn't
like the notoriety."
    "My guess
exactly. So long," Eb said, motioning to Dallas. Rich drove off with a wave of
his hand. Eb hesitated, and once Rich was out of sight, he looked for and found a board with
new nails sticking through it. It was lying point-side down, now, but the wood was new and there was a long cord attached to it. Evidently
it had been

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    MERCENARY'S WOMAN
    DIANA PALMER
    75

placed in the road just as Sally approached,
and then jerked away once Sally had run over it. That meant that there had to
be a fourth man involved, besides the man on the porch and the two men who'd assaulted
Sally. That disturbed Eb.
    "They set a
trap," Dallas guessed. "She ran over this. That's how she got
the flat."
    "Exactly."
Eb threw the board in the bed of the truck before he climbed in under the wheel.
"There were at least four
men in on it, and I don't