Texas…Now and Forever Read Free Page A

deep enough to make him a target for the feds or for rival mob members if the right hints were dropped in the wrong ears. The threat was still hanging heavy on her mind when Frank slid a diamond ring onto her finger.
    Then Ricky and Luke and their friends had volunteered for a highly classified, dangerous missionduring the Gulf War. To this day Haley knew only vague details of that mission. Her brother never talked about it. Nor did any of the other four. All she knew was that they’d been dropped behind enemy lines, destroyed a biological weapons manufacturing plant, were captured and spent agonizing months as POWs until their commander, Phillip Westin, mounted a daring rescue raid.
    The Fabulous Five came home to a hero’s welcome. Haley would never forget the parade held in their honor one blazing June morning. Or their wild, lakeside celebration that night.
    That was the night Haley Mercado died.

Two
    More than a decade earlier
    â€œG uys! Hey, guys!”
    Waving wildly, Haley shouted to the occupants of the powerful speedboat cutting across Lake Maria.
    â€œLuke! Ricky! Over here, darn it!”
    With a disgusted huff that lifted the tendrils of her mink-brown hair, Haley gave it up as hopeless. The long shadows creeping across the lake had reached the dock. They couldn’t see her, and she knew they couldn’t hear her above the engine’s roar.
    Retreating to the sleek little two-seater sports car she’d parked at the head of the pier, she groped for the headlight switch. It took several bright flashes, but she finally caught the boaters’s attention. The man at the wheel waved, leaned right and brought the craft into a sharp turn.
    Haley drifted back down to the dock to await its arrival. Her brother, Ricky, and his four buddieshad been water-skiing all afternoon, slicing through the water with reckless abandon. She could certainly understand their craving to feel the sun and the wind on their skin.
    They’d more than earned these hours on the lake, considering the morning they’d just put in. From nine o’clock on, the returning POWs had been on display. After all, folks around here considered them gen-u-ine Texas heroes, not to mention poster ads for the United States Marine Corps. Spit-shined, square-shouldered, and heart-stoppingly handsome in their uniforms, they’d ridden in the parade organized in their honor. Then, of course, they’d had to sit under the hot sun, steaming in their high-collared dress blues, while local dignitaries gave long-winded speeches about South Texas’s own. They’d even signed autographs for the kids who’d swarmed the platform after the speeches.
    The minute the crowds had dispersed, however, they’d shed their decorum along with their uniforms and headed for the lake. They’d been here for a good five hours, tossing down beer and celebrating their hard-won freedom. The sun was now a flaming ball hanging low above the hills surrounding Lake Maria. If they didn’t come in and dry off soon, they’d be navigating in the dark. More to the point, they’d miss the lavish barbecueIsadora and Johnny Mercado were throwing at their lakeside cottage to welcome Ricky and his friends home.
    Leaning her hips against a piling, Haley peered across the rippling water at the approaching boat. Her heart contracted painfully as she made out the features of the man at the wheel. Luke Callaghan stood wide-legged and strong, his bare chest glistening in the slanting rays of the sun. Leather-tough Tyler Murdoch sat beside him. Although she couldn’t make out the figures in the back of the boat, she knew their faces as well as her own. Too-serious Flynt Carson. Intense, intent Spence Harrison. And Ricky, Haley’s adored older brother.
    Thank God they’d all made it back safely, she thought on a wave of bone-deep relief. With their return, at least one of the worries that had kept her sleepless and hollow-eyed these