TRAPPED (18 page)

Brody grabbed Elle and kissed her soundly.

“We getting married,” he said, enunciating carefully, to make sure she got it. “I can’t wait to meet Mia.”

Epilogue

It was a sunny, warm June day in the Colorado mountains. Crow Hollow was normally a quiet place, but today there was activity everywhere.

A triple wedding caused that kind of commotion.

At two in the afternoon, Ethan Moore married Chandler McCann. Then Hope Minnow became Mack McCann’s wife. And finally, at a little after two-thirty in the afternoon, with a dark-eyed, dark-haired eleven-year-old serving as maid of honor, Elle Vollman
finally
married Brody Donovan.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from COWBOY BEHIND THE BADGE by Delores Fossen.

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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.