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16
Diego was nearly done eating when Rudy and Jorge joined him. He gave them each a nod but said nothing as he continued eating his flapjacks. He’d hardly had any sleep the night before. All he could think about was that his father had somehow received word of the beautiful young actress in Los Angeles.
They had met at a horse race, and Diego had thought her one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. She was alone in California, trying to find work as an actress in the new moving pictures, yet there was a naïveté and innocence about her that he couldn’t resist. He had figured her an easy mark for a short period of fun. Instead, she had played hard to get, demanding they marry before she would do anything more than kiss. Her father was, after all, a minister in Kansas and would never forgive her if she turned away from her upbringing.
Diego had been so fascinated by her determination that she became a challenge to him. He talked his father into buying a small house in Los Angeles, since he often insisted Diego go to the city for business dealings related to the ranch. It was quite a distance to travel, and Diego had always hatedthe trip, but once the game started with his actress, he was more than happy to run errands for his father.
He had considered moving on to another actress, one of her friends, but for the life of him, Diego couldn’t ignore Collette DeMeire. The more he tried to forget her, the worse it was for him, and finally he found himself proposing to the poor daughter of a Kansas preacher.
But as for being married, no, they were not legally wed. Diego had staged the whole thing. She was, after all, an actress. She should have known better. Hiring a character to play a parson hadn’t been hard in a town starting to become crazy for role-playing. He’d given the actor twenty dollars for his performance and silence.
Afterwards, Diego had whisked away Collette DeMeire—whom he learned during the vows was actually Lucy Meyers—to a honeymoon hotel on the ocean. Diego then put her in the little house his father had purchased and saw her whenever he came to town. Until the day she told him she was going to have his baby. It had been a wonderful arrangement until then.
Diego had confessed his trickery just after Lucy gave birth and it became clear she expected him to be a better husband and a good father. She had been shocked and devastated when he explained they weren’t really married. Her tears had come in buckets, and he honestly didn’t know which had been worse, her crying or the baby’s. Still, he had prided himself on not leaving her there to figure out what to do. He’d been very responsible in buying her a train ticket and giving her money for food on the trip home.
“Are you even listening?” Rudy asked, sounding frustrated.
“What?” Diego let his memories fade.
“We’re wondering about that plan you had for making money.”
Diego picked up his coffee mug. “I’m looking for the right time. I don’t think we can count on Miss Garcia’s help, however. Would you still want in on it?”
Rudy looked at Jorge, who was shoveling flapjacks into his mouth. “I don’t have a problem with it,” he said, nudging Jorge. “What about you?”
Jorge mumbled something with his mouth full. Diego took a long drink of coffee and considered the situation. Once his father investigated the matter with Lucy, he would know the full truth, and he would follow through on his threat to disinherit Diego. There was also no chance Daniel Garcia would let Diego marry Isabella now. This scheme might be his only chance to regain the fortune that was rightfully his.
“Empty your mouth, stupid, and then tell us,” Rudy said, giving Jorge a hard jab.
“Ow. I said she’ll know who we are after it’s all done with. If Miss Garcia isn’t going to help us, how do we keep her from identifying us?”
“You’ll wear masks.”
“You’ll?” Rudy questioned, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you and Jorge will have to be the ones to kidnap her and get her to the cabin. After we get the money, I can pretend to rescue her and be the hero. You two will wear masks, and no one will know who you are. You’ll kidnap her and leave her tied up and blindfolded in the mountain cabin. You’ll come to work the next day as if nothing happened and go back to check on her at night.”
“How’s that going to work?” Jorge asked. “She’ll need to use the facilities and eat and drink.”
Diego grimaced. Why did everything have to be complicated? “I intend for this to last no more than twenty-four hours. We can coordinate it with the payroll coming in onthe train. Garcia will have plenty of cash on hand. We’ll take her and then give him twenty-four hours to deliver the money, and then I’ll sweep in like a hero from a storybook and rescue her.” He glanced around, hoping he’d kept his voice sufficiently low.
“The plan will only work if we have as little to do with her as possible,” Rudy said thoughtfully. “We should even disguise our voices. Otherwise she might hear us sometime in town and remember it was us who took her.”
“Whatever you think is best,” Diego said. “The point is you two will grab her, and I will act the hero’s part and rescue her.”
“Grab her where?”
Diego thought for a moment. “Isn’t there some sort of Founder’s Day celebration coming up?”
“Yeah, in a few weeks at the beginning of April,” Rudy replied. “It’ll be on Saturday, and the payroll train will come in on Friday, so the money will be in the bank.”
That was longer than Diego wanted to wait, but it would probably be their best bet. “Let’s plan for the day of the celebration. Isabella will be a part of it, since her father is the founder.”
“I heard he was sick,” Jorge threw out before starting in again on his breakfast.
“He is, but not so much that he won’t be there at some point for the celebration, and if not, then he will want his daughter to be there in his stead. At least we can hope for that. We will have to wait until that day to narrow down the exact way to take her hostage, but for now we can plan everything else.”
“There will be a special train that day,” Rudy offered. “There always is, because sometimes Mr. Garcia’s friends from the Santa Fe come down from San Marcial and Albuquerque.”
