Loe raamatut: «Cowboy Behind the Badge»

USA TODAY bestselling author DELORES FOSSEN has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.dfossen.net.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Texas Ranger Tucker McKinnon—The bad boy lawman of the McKinnon family. He’s not daddy material, or so he thinks, until he’s forced to protect two newborns and the woman he’s long considered his enemy.

Laine Braddock—A child psychologist. She’ll do anything to protect the babies she’s rescued, even if it means turning to Tucker, the last man on earth who’d want to help her.

The newborns—They’re too young to realize the danger or the people willing to risk their lives to keep them safe.

Dawn Cowen—A missing woman at the center of a black market baby farm investigation.

Martin Hague—A social worker who seems too eager to take the rescued babies from Tucker and Laine.

Darren Carty—Laine’s ex-fiancé, who might have a personal stake in not just the investigation but in the babies that Laine rescued.

Rhonda Wesson—Once a victim of a notorious black market baby farm, but does she know more than she’s saying?

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

About the Author

Cast of Characters

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Tucker McKinnon heard the sound the moment he stepped from the shower. Someone was moving around in his kitchen.

He opened his mouth to call out to his brothers, the only two people who would have let themselves into his house, but then he remembered. His older brother, Cooper, was on his honeymoon, and his kid brother, Colt, was working at the sheriff’s office in town.

So, who was his visitor?

He didn’t like most of the possibilities that came to mind. Heck, it could even be someone connected to the arrest he’d made just hours earlier. The dirt-for-brains fugitive that Tucker had tangled with could have sent someone out to settle the score with the Texas Ranger who’d hauled his sorry butt off to jail.

If so, the score-settler wasn’t being very quiet, and had clearly lost the element of surprise.

Tucker dried off, wincing when he wiped the towel over the cuts and bruises. He wasn’t that old, just thirty-four, but he was too old to be getting into a fistfight with the fugitive who’d gotten the jump on him.

Hurrying, Tucker pulled on his jeans and eased open the door so he could peek inside his bedroom. No one was there, so he grabbed his gun from the holster he’d ditched on the nightstand and stepped into the hall.

The sounds continued.

Someone mumbling. Other sounds, too. He heard the click of the lock on the back door. His intruder, whoever it was, had locked them in together.

Probably not a good sign.

Since he was barefoot, his steps didn’t make any noise on the hardwood floors, and with his gun ready, Tucker inched down the short hall, past the living room, so he could look into the kitchen.

There was still plenty of light outside, but the trees next to his kitchen window made the room pretty dark and filled it with shadows. None of the shadows, however, looked like an intruder.

He saw the pantry door slightly ajar. A door Tucker was darn certain he’d shut because he was always stubbing his toe on it.

Someone was in there.

He glanced out the window. No vehicle other than his own truck. The sky looked like a crime scene, though. Bruise-colored storm clouds with a bloodred sunset stabbing through them. He hoped that wasn’t some kind of bad sign.

“Not very bright,” Tucker tossed out there. “Breaking into the house of a Texas Ranger. We tend to frown on stuff like that.” He slapped on the lights.

“No,” someone said. It was a woman, and even though her voice was only a whisper, there was as much emotion in it as if she’d shouted the word. “Turn off that light. I don’t want them to see us.”

“Them?” Tucker questioned.

“The killers.”

Okay. That got his attention in more ways than one. Despite the whisper, he recognized the voice. “Laine?”

As in Laine Braddock, a child psychologist who sometimes worked with the Rangers and the FBI. Since they weren’t on good terms—not on speaking terms, in fact—Tucker had worked with her as little as possible. After all, his mother, Jewell, had been charged with murdering Laine’s father. That didn’t create a warm, fuzzy bond between them.

Not now, anyway.

Once, when they were kids, Laine and he had played together almost every day. And she’d been on the receiving end of his very first kiss.

That wasn’t exactly something he wanted to remember at this moment, though.

Tucker went closer to the door, and despite the fact he knew her, he didn’t lower his gun. Everything inside his severely banged up body was yelling for him to stay alert so he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of another butt-whipping. Especially since Laine might not be alone.

“What killers?” he asked.

“The ones who could have followed us here.”

Tucker didn’t miss the us.

There was no us when it came to Laine and him. Except they had run into each other about a week before, when he was called to assist the FBI with investigating a black-market adoption ring. Laine had been there on standby in case any of the children were recovered, but Tucker and she hadn’t exchanged anything other than some frosty glares.

And that told him loads.

Even if so-called killers were involved, he was the absolute last person on God’s green earth that Laine would have come to, and yet here she was.

“How’d you get in?” he demanded.

“Through the back door. It wasn’t locked.”

Not locking up was a bad habit that Tucker would remedy the moment he got her out of there. “So you let yourself in. Not a smart thing to do, since you knew I’d be armed.”

“It was a risk I had to take,” she mumbled.

That only added to the whole puzzling situation. Why come here? What risk was worth a visit with the enemy?

Maybe she hadn’t come here by choice.

“Come out so I can see you,” Tucker ordered, because he wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t holding a gun on her. Maybe it was those killers she’d warned him about.

“Turn out the lights first, please. I don’t want them to see us.”

Her presence, combined with the fear in her voice, was enough to make Tucker do as she said. He turned off the light, let his eyes adjust to the darkness and moved closer in case he had to fight off someone holding her hostage.

The hinges on the pantry door creaked a little when she fully opened it, and she stepped into the doorway. Yeah, it was Laine all right, and even in the dim light, Tucker could see that something was wrong. Everything about her was disheveled, from her brown hair to her clothes. There was mud or something on her jeans, shoes and white top.

She made a slight gasping sound and reached out to touch him, but then she jerked back her hand. “You’ve been hurt. Did they come here already?”

“No one’s been here. I got this while making an arrest.” He must have looked downright awful for her to notice something like that at a time like this. “How’d you get out here? Where’s your car? And why would someone have come here already?”

Laine pressed her hand to her head as if he’d just doled out too many questions. Heck, he was just getting started.

“I parked in the woods by the road and walked through the pasture to get here,” she finally said. “I didn’t want them following me, but they could come here looking for me.”

Her voice was shaking. So was she. And she latched her hands onto the doorjamb as if that were the only way she could keep on her feet.

That unsteadiness sent a new round of concern through him. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

“I wasn’t hurt.”

She swallowed hard, pushed herself from the doorway and came toward him. Despite the fact he still had a gun pointed at her. She landed in his arms before Tucker could stop her, and she started to cry. Not just any old crying, either. Sobs punctuated with hard breaths that made a hiccupping sound.

Oh, man.

Whatever this was, it was really bad.

Tucker would’ve needed a heart of ice not to react. And he reacted, all right. He slid his left arm around her. He kept his grip loose. Very loose. But it didn’t matter. Basically, Laine was plastered against him, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He could feel pretty much every inch of her trembling body.

“They killed her right in front of me,” Laine said through the sobs.

That pushed aside anything he was feeling from the unexpected hugging session. “Who was killed?”

“A woman. I don’t know her name.”

Tucker eased back, met her gaze. “Start from the beginning. What happened?”

And then he’d want to know why she hadn’t taken this to the local cops. After all, his brother was the sheriff, and his brother, Colt, the deputy. Yet, Laine had come all the way there to his family’s ranch, which wasn’t exactly on the beaten path.

“Remember that undercover assignment I was on last week?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “We were working on it together, but you got me fired.”

Yeah, he remembered. “Not fired. I just asked for you to be reassigned somewhere not near me.”

“You got me fired,” she repeated, sounding not too happy about it. “Anyway, about an hour and a half ago, I got a call from a woman who wouldn’t tell me who she was. She said she’d been held captive by guards at the place we were investigating. But she escaped today.”

Laine stopped, shuddering, and pressed her fingers to her mouth.

Good grief. He hoped this wasn’t going where he thought it was. “Please tell me you didn’t go out to meet this woman alone?”

“I didn’t have to go anywhere to meet her. She was in the parking lot outside my office in town. Hiding behind my car. She said she was making the call from a prepaid cell phone that she had stolen from her captors.”

Tucker groaned and hoped the rest of this conversation would go a whole lot better than what he’d heard so far. “And at that point, you should have called my brother. Colt’s been on duty all day, and he would have responded immediately.”

Laine didn’t argue with that, even though Tucker was dead certain she didn’t trust Colt any more than she trusted him or the rest of his family.

“The woman said not to contact the cops, that I had to see her alone. So I went out to the parking lot,” Laine continued.

But she stopped, and the tears returned. Worse, her hands twitched as if she might reach for him again. She didn’t, thank goodness. Instead, Laine held on to the counter by the sink.

“What happened?” Tucker pressed. He hated to sound impatient and insensitive, but if a murder had truly taken place, he needed to report it.

“The woman was scared. Terrified,” Laine corrected. “And she only had a chance to say a few words to me when a car came screeching into the parking lot. She told me to run and hide. So I did. She said I was to stay in hiding, no matter what happened. I ducked behind the Dumpster.”

Tucker knew that parking lot and the position of the Dumpster. Laine’s office was on the far edge of Sweetwater Springs, in a small cottage that shared a back parking lot with three other small buildings. Two were empty, and the third was a law office. Tucker hoped someone else was in that office to witness what’d gone on, in case this turned into an investigation.

“If I’d known what was going to happen,” Laine continued, “I wouldn’t have hidden. I would have tried to get help.” She pulled in a long breath, and the trembling got worse. “The car came to a stop, and two men jumped out. They were wearing police uniforms.”

That gave him a moment’s pause. “What kind?” The cops in Sweetwater Springs didn’t often wear uniforms, but when they did, they were khaki-colored.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. They were blue, and they had badges and guns.”

Maybe they had been from another town or jurisdiction and they’d tracked the woman to Laine’s office. “Did they try to arrest the woman?”

A sob tore from her throat. “No. She motioned for me to stay put and she ran. She bolted toward the street, and they shot her. Oh, God. Tucker, they shot her.”

It didn’t matter that he was a lawman. Hearing about a shooting hit him hard. Except something about this wasn’t adding up. “Why didn’t anyone report the shots? Why didn’t you report them?”

“They used guns with silencers.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth a moment. “They shot her in the back as she was running. She was dead. I could tell by how limp her arms and legs were when they picked up her body and threw her in the trunk of their car.”

Hell.

Since it hadn’t started raining yet, there’d be blood. Maybe even some other evidence.

Tucker’s cell phone was in the bedroom by his holster, and he didn’t want to leave the room to go get it. Instead, he reached for the landline on the kitchen wall. He had to call Colt and get him to the scene ASAP.

“Don’t.” Laine latched onto his wrist. “They had a police radio in their car. I heard it. And if you call the sheriff’s office, they’ll hear it, too. They’ll know I came here.”

Tucker blew out a long, frustrated breath. Not good about the police radio, but like uniforms, they could be faked or stolen. It didn’t mean cops had actually killed the woman.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

Laine let that question hum between them for several moments. “Because I knew the lawman in you would help me.”

Tucker let her answer hum between them a couple of moments, too, even though he couldn’t argue with it since it was the truth. “The murder has to be reported, but I’ll tell my brother not to put any of this on the police radio. Did you get the license plate on the car?”

“No. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Another sob. “I should have done something to stop them.”

“If you’d tried, they likely would have killed you, too.” It was the truth, and even though Laine and he were essentially enemies, he didn’t wish that on anybody. As it was, this nightmare would be with her for a long time.

He reached for the phone again, but once more Laine stopped him. “I stayed hidden like the woman told me to do. I did everything she insisted that I do.” Her voice was frantic now, and she sounded like she was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. “And the words she said to me keep repeating in my head.”

Everything inside Tucker went still. “What words?”

“‘Hide them. Protect them.’” She turned, maybe to bolt out the door, so he took her by the shoulders.

“Who’s them?” He groaned. Were there more women still being held at the baby farm? That wouldn’t be good, because if everything Laine had told him was true, their captors were cold-blooded killers.

She pried off his grip and went back to the door of the pantry.

Tucker braced himself to see his pantry crammed with women who were on the run from the men who’d gunned down one of their fellow captives.

But there were no women.

In fact, because the lights were off, Tucker couldn’t see anything other than the food on the shelves.

“I have to protect them,” Laine repeated, her voice breaking.

Tucker went closer to the pantry and looked around. On the floor was a rumpled blanket.

Except it wasn’t just a blanket.

Wrapped in the center of it was something he’d never expected to find in his pantry.

Two sleeping newborn babies.

Chapter Two

Laine tried to brace herself for Tucker’s reaction. By all accounts, he was a good lawman, so she doubted that he would just toss the babies and her out the door. It was one of the reasons she’d come to him. That, and there being literally no one else she could trust.

She wasn’t sure she could trust him, either.

But she was certain that he’d do what was right for the babies.

“They need to be protected,” Laine said when Tucker just stood there volleying glances between her and the babies. “The killers will be looking for them. And for me.”

Tucker shook his head, obviously trying to process this. She wished him luck with that. She’d had more than an hour to process it, and it still didn’t make sense.

“Why are you so sure the killers will be looking for you?” he snapped.

“Because if they don’t know already, they’ll find out I’m the person renting that office space, that it was my car the woman was hiding behind. And that I had a connection to the illegal adoption investigation.”

He made a sound of agreement with frustration mixed in. He tore his gaze from the babies. “How’d this woman know to come to you?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t get a chance to tell me.” In fact, the only thing Laine was certain of was the woman’s warning that kept repeating through her head.

Hide them. Protect them.

“I don’t know anything about these particular babies,” Laine said. The panic started to crawl through her again. “But I’m sure they’ll be hungry soon. I figured since you have a nephew, you might be able to get some baby supplies.”

What Tucker did do was curse and reach for the phone again. Once again, she tried to stop him, but before he could make a call she didn’t want him to make, the phone rang. The sound shot through the room and sent her heart slamming against her chest. It also caused the babies to stir.

“Colt,” Tucker said when he answered. Someone that she knew well. Colt was his kid brother and the deputy sheriff of Sweetwater Springs. He was also someone else she wasn’t sure she could trust. “I was just about to call you.”

Tucker still had his gun gripped in his hand, and he turned his steely-gray lawman’s eyes to the window when he put the call on speaker.

“I tried your cell phone first and when I didn’t get an answer, I called the landline. Good thing you’re there. Just had an interesting visit from two San Antonio cops looking for Laine Braddock,” Colt continued. “They said they had a warrant for her arrest.”

Oh, mercy. It was a lie, of course. There was no warrant out on her, but this had to be the two men who’d killed the woman.

“Are they still there?” Laine blurted out. “If so, arrest them.”

“Laine?” Colt mumbled. He said her name like profanity. “Tucker, what the hell’s she doing at your place?”

“I’m trying to figure that out now. Why’d the men want to arrest her?”

“Aiding and abetting an escaped felon.” Colt paused. “Did she?”

“No!” Laine insisted.

At the same moment, Tucker said, “I’m trying to figure that out, too. Was there anything suspicious about these men?”

“Nothing that I noticed. Why?”

“Just check and make sure they’re really cops. I have an old friend in SAPD, Lieutenant Nate Ryland. Call him and make sure these two guys are from his department. Another thing I need you to do is get someone out to Laine’s office ASAP and check the back parking lot for any signs of an attack.”

“An attack? What the devil’s going on?” Colt pressed.

“Just send someone over there and let me know if there’s anything to find.”

“And don’t use your police radio,” Laine insisted. “The men are probably monitoring the airwaves, and they might try to go back and clean up before you can investigate the scene.”

Colt, no doubt, wanted to ask plenty more questions, but Tucker cut him off. “I’ll be in touch after I’ve made some more calls.” With that, Tucker hung up and headed out of the room and into the hall.

“What calls?” Laine asked, following him. She couldn’t go far in case the babies started to cry, but thankfully the hall wasn’t that long.

Tucker ducked into a room—his bedroom, she soon realized. He grabbed a black T-shirt that’d been draped over a chair. He slipped it on.

No more bare chest.

And she hated that she’d even noticed something like that at a time like this. Of course, it was hard not to notice a man who looked like Tucker McKinnon. That rumpled sandy-brown hair. Those eyes.

That amazing body.

Laine was counting heavily on him using that lawman’s body if it came down to protecting the babies.

He looked up at her as he tugged on his boots, and his left eyebrow slid up. Only then did Laine realize that she was gawking at him.

“What calls?” she repeated. Obviously, the murder she’d witnessed had caused her brain to turn cloudy.

“Social services, for one. We have to turn these babies over to the proper authorities.”

“What if these killers have connections there, too?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s too risky to call anyone now. We need to find someone we can trust before we let anyone know we have the babies.”

Tucker gave her a flat look, as if she’d lost her mind. Heck, maybe she had.

“Look, you’ve been through a bad experience,” he said, his tone not exactly placating, but close enough. “And because someone else broke the law, that doesn’t mean we have the right to do the same. The babies need to be turned over to social services so they can find out who they are. It’s possible the woman who was hiding behind the car isn’t even their mother.”

That hit her like an avalanche. Because it might be true. God, why hadn’t she thought of that? Except she remembered the look of desperation on the woman’s face. Her plea for help.

Hide them. Protect them.

And Laine had to shake her head. “She sacrificed her life for them. Only their mother would have done that. A kidnapper would have just handed them over to the killers to save herself.”

Tucker stared at her. And stared. Before he mumbled some profanity and snatched up his phone from the nightstand. “A friend of a friend is married to a social worker. I’ll arrange a meeting with her.”

A meeting like that still wasn’t without risks, but it was better than involving the cops. Of course, if Colt found blood or something else in the parking lot, Laine seriously doubted that he would keep the information to himself.

At some point, all of this had to become official.

Laine heard a soft, kittenlike sound and hurried back to the pantry. One of the babies was stirring. The other was still sound asleep. Laine went closer, knelt beside them and tried to gently rock the baby with her hand.

“My friend didn’t answer,” Tucker said, coming back into the kitchen. “So I left a message.” He tipped his head to the babies. “Are they boys or girls?”

“I don’t know.” She’d been so focused on getting them to safety that she hadn’t considered anything else. But Laine considered it now.

Both babies wore full-length body gowns with drawstrings at the bottoms. She loosened the one on the squirming baby and peeked inside the diaper.

“This one’s a boy,” she relayed to Tucker. She had a look at the other one. “And this one’s a girl.”

The different sexes could mean they weren’t twins after all, though they looked alike and appeared to be the same age. But what if the dead woman had rescued her own child and then someone else’s? It could mean there was another woman being held captive.

Or another woman who was already dead.

That sickened Laine even more.

“If my friend doesn’t call back in the next few minutes, we’ll need to get someone else out here to take them,” Tucker explained. “I mean, we don’t even have any way to feed them. My nephew’s two, and he doesn’t drink from a bottle. I doubt we’d even have anything like that around the ranch.”

Laine couldn’t dispute what he was saying. Nor could she push aside the feeling that these babies felt like her responsibility now.

Tucker mumbled something she didn’t catch and went to the kitchen window to look out again. When the baby kept squirming and started to fuss, Laine eased him into her arms.

She had little experience holding a baby, and even though she’d run through the pasture with them, the babies had been wrapped in that bulky blanket. With nothing but the gown and his diaper between them, the baby felt as fragile as paper-thin crystal.

Tucker glanced at her and frowned. “You know what you’re doing?”

“No.” But the baby did seem to settle down when she rocked him, so Laine kept doing it. “I’m sorry for bringing them to your doorstep, but I drove out of town as fast as I could and didn’t know where else to go.”

She glanced around the kitchen. “We used to play here when we were kids.”

“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s house.”

The explanation was clipped, as if it were the last thing he wanted to discuss with her. Maybe because they’d done more than just play in this house. They’d shared a childhood kiss there. She had been ten. Tucker, eleven. Twenty-three years ago.

Just days before her father’s murder.

After that, there’d been no kissing.

No more playing together. No more friendship.

Even though she’d just been a kid, it hadn’t taken long before Laine had realized what gossip everyone was spreading—that Tucker’s mother, Jewell, and her father, Whitt, had done something bad. Later, she would come to understand that something bad meant they’d been lovers. And that Jewell had murdered her father when he’d tried to break things off and work on saving his marriage. A murder that Jewell had yet to be punished for. At least now the woman was in jail, awaiting trial.

“Don’t,” Tucker warned, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I don’t want to take any trips down memory lane right now.”

Fair enough. His mother was a touchy subject for both of them. From everything Laine had heard, Tucker and his brothers weren’t disputing Jewell’s guilt. They only wanted the woman who’d cheated on their father and abandoned them to get out of their lives and leave Sweetwater Springs.

Tucker’s cell phone rang, causing the baby to fuss again, and Laine leaned in so she could see the caller’s name on the screen.

Colt.

The fear returned with a vengeance, and she prayed that Tucker’s brother had found something—anything—that would help her keep the babies safe.

Laine leaned in so she’d be able to hear what he said. Obviously she leaned too close, because her arm brushed against Tucker’s chest. He shot her a “back off” scowl and hit the speaker function so she’d be able to hear.

“Just got off the phone with Lieutenant Ryland,” Colt immediately said. “He doesn’t know a thing about two SAPD cops coming to Sweetwater Springs.”

“So they’re fake,” Laine concluded.

“Looks that way. And there’s also no warrant for your arrest.”

She hadn’t expected to feel as much relief as she did. Laine knew she’d done nothing to have an arrest warrant issued against her, and the last thing she needed right now was real cops trying to arrest her for a fake warrant.

“What about the parking lot?” Tucker asked. “You find anything?”

“I sent Reed to check it out. Still waiting to hear from him.”

He was talking about Reed Caldwell, one of the deputies. Laine hoped the two men who’d fired those shots had managed to leave some kind of evidence behind. And then she thought of something else.

“Maybe the dead woman’s fingerprints are somewhere on my car? She had her hand on the door when I first spotted her.”

“Dead woman?” Colt questioned.

Tucker groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Laine thinks she witnessed a murder.”

“I don’t think it. I know I did.”

“She witnessed a shooting,” Tucker said, “by two men dressed as cops. Her car’s parked in the woods near my place. When Reed’s done with the parking lot, can you send him out to check for prints?”

“Sure. But you know as well as I do, if there was really a murder, I need Laine down here now to make an official report.”