She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Mason couldn’t help it. He cursed again. “And you thought it was okay to bring this kind of danger to the ranch without warning anyone? Someone other than you could have been killed tonight.”
He knew that sounded gruff. Insensitive even. But no one had ever accused him of putting sensitivity first. Still, he felt…something. Something he cursed, too. Because Mason hated the fear in Abbie’s voice. Hated even more the vulnerability he saw in her eyes.
Oh, man.
This was a damsel-in-distress reaction. He could face down a cold-blooded killer and not flinch. But a woman in pain was something he had a hard time stomaching. Especially this woman.
He blamed that on the flimsy gown. And cursed again.
“I need details,” he demanded. “Why are you in witness protection, and why would someone want you dead?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could say anything, Mason heard Grayson call out to them. “Are you two okay?”
Mason was, but Abbie looked ready to keel over. “We’re not hurt,” he shouted to his brother. Because the gunman was probably long gone, Mason turned in Grayson’s direction so he could get to him faster. “The guy shot at Abbie.”
“Abbie?” Grayson questioned. Like the other half dozen or so ranch hands with him, he was armed.
“She’s the new cutting-horse trainer I hired,” Mason explained. “And she’s in witness protection.”
The news seemed to surprise Grayson as much as it had him.
“I don’t know who tried to kill me,” Abbie volunteered.
Her voice wasn’t just shaky, it was all breath and nerves. She let out a small yelp when she stumbled. Probably landed on a rock, because there were plenty enough to step on. That did it. Mason put his gun in the back waist of his jeans and scooped her up. He didn’t forget that it was the second time tonight he’d had her in his arms—and neither circumstance had been very good.
Too bad she felt good.
She smelled good, too, even though he could pick up traces of the smoke. Her scent, the feel of her, stirred things he had no intentions of feeling, so he told those feelings to back off. Way off. He wasn’t going there with Abbie.
Then he looked down at her. Saw the shiny tears in her eyes. Heard the slight hitch in her breath when she tried to choke back those tears.
“I’ve been in witness protection for twenty-one years,” she whispered.
Mason did the math. If he remembered correctly, Abbie was thirty-two. That meant she’d entered the program at age eleven. A kid.
“And nothing like this has ever happened to you?” Grayson asked, sounding a little too much like a hard-nosed cop for Mason’s liking.
That was a big red flag, because Mason remembered that it was a question he should have asked. No. He should have demanded. He forced himself to remember that he was a deputy sheriff and that Abbie had put them all in danger.
Still, he felt that twinge of something he rarely felt. Or rarely acknowledged anyway.
Sympathy.
He’d rather feel actual pain.
“Years ago, someone tried to kill me,” Abbie answered. And she paused for a long time. “Not long after my mom and I entered witness protection, someone fired shots at me.” Another pause. “They killed my mother.”
Oh, hell.
Nothing could have stopped that slam of sympathy. Nothing.
Mason and his brother exchanged glances, and Mason knew there’d be more questions. Had to be. Grayson would need to investigate the fire and shooting. One of them would also need to contact the U.S. Marshals who ran witness protection and let them know that Abbie’s identity had been compromised.
Still, twenty-one years was a long time to go without a compromise. And Mason considered something else. Why had it happened now, only three days after Abbie had arrived at the Ryland ranch?
A coincidence?
His gut was telling him no.
Mason kept that to himself and trudged the last leg of the distance to the ranch. He headed straight for his office, and this time he didn’t intend to let Abbie run away.
The first thing Mason did was place her on the sofa again, and despite all the sympathy he was feeling, he gave her a warning glance to stay put. Grayson followed him inside, no doubt ready to question Abbie, but Mason didn’t plan to start until he’d located a few things. First, he got Abbie a blanket and then he found her some socks.
“Who killed your mother?” Grayson started. “And why?”
Abbie put on the socks, mumbled a thanks and pulled the blanket around her.
Her sigh was long and weary. “My mother and I went into witness protection after she testified against her boss, Vernon Ferguson, a corrupt San Antonio cop.” Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. “Ferguson got off on a technicality, and shortly afterward he sent a hired gun named Hank Tinsley after us. Tinsley turned up dead a few days later.”
Mason figured there were plenty of details to go along with that sterile explanation. The stuff of nightmares. Something he knew a little about because his grandfather Chet had been shot and left to die. Mason had been seventeen, and even though nearly twenty-one years had passed, the wound still felt fresh and raw.
Always would.
Not just for him but for all his brothers.
That wound had deepened to something incapable of being healed when his father had left just weeks later. And then his mother had committed suicide.
Oh, yeah. He could sympathize with Abbie.
But sympathy wasn’t going to keep her safe.
“You think this Vernon Ferguson came after you tonight?” Mason asked. He stood over her, side by side with Grayson.
Abbie shook her head. “Maybe.”
It was a puzzling answer, and Grayson jumped on it. “You have somebody else other than Ferguson trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know. Over the past twenty years, Ferguson has managed to find me two other times, and both times he sent hired guns. Nothing recent, though. Mainly because we’ve been very careful.”
Mason didn’t miss the we, and later he would ask who this person was in her life. Because it might be important to the investigation. Not because he was thinking she had a boyfriend stashed away. On her job application she had said she was single, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in love with someone.
And for some reason, a reason Mason didn’t want to consider, that riled him a little.
Abbie closed her eyes a moment and when she opened her eyes, she turned them on Mason. “My caseworker is Deputy U.S. Marshal Harlan McKinney over in Maverick County. He’ll need to know about this.”
Mason nodded, but it was Grayson who reacted. “I’ll call him. And check in with the fire chief.” Grayson glanced at her shoeless feet peeking out from the blanket. “I’ll also ask my wife about getting you some clothes.”
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper. Abbie didn’t move until Grayson was out of the office and had shut the door. Then she sat up as if ready to leave.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mason reminded her.
She blinked. “But I figured you’d demand that I leave. It’s not safe for any of you with me here.”
“That’s probably true, but you’re still not going anywhere.” In case she’d forgotten, he took his badge from his desk and clipped it to the waist of his jeans. “You’ve got six lawmen on this ranch.”
Her gaze came to his again. “And yet someone still got to me.”
Yeah, and that meant whoever had done this was as bold as brass, stupid or desperate. Mason didn’t like any of those scenarios.
“Why would Ferguson still want you dead if he got off on the charges with a technicality?” Mason asked. He located a black T-shirt in the closet and pulled it on. He grabbed his black Stetson, too.
“Maybe he still considers me a loose end.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
And that only reinforced the fact that something ju
st wasn’t right here.
Mason pulled his chair over to the sofa and sat so that he’d be more at her eye level. Abbie adjusted her position, too, easing away from him, and in the process the blanket slid off her.
Great.
He felt another punch of, well, something stirring below the belt when he got another look at the gown. And at her breasts barely concealed beneath the fabric. Not a good combination with that vulnerable face and her honey-brown eyes.
“I swear, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. “I didn’t know Ferguson could find me. I’ve always been careful.”
Mason made a heavy sigh and reached out. He doubted his touch would give her much comfort, but he had to do something. He put his fingertips against her arm. Rubbed gently.
And he felt that blasted below-the-belt pull happen again.
Their gazes met, and the corner of her mouth lifted. Not a smile but more of a baffled expression. Either she figured out he was going nuts or else she was feeling something, too.
“For the record, I didn’t think you’d be like this,” she said.
The cryptic remark got his attention, and Mason would have asked what she meant. If her gown hadn’t shifted. Yeah, he saw her breasts. The tops of them anyway. And while they snagged his attention in a bad way, it was what was between her breasts that snagged it even more.
The pendant.
Or rather, the silver concho.
He instantly recognized it because he had one just like it. All of his brothers did. A custom-made gift from their father with their initials on the back. A blood gift he’d given them all just days before he’d run out on them.
Abbie gasped when she followed Mason’s gaze, and she slapped her hand over the concho. Mason just shoved her hand away and had a better look at the front of it.
And there it was.
The back-to-back Rs for the Ryland ranch. This wasn’t a new piece either. It was weathered and battered, showing every day of its twenty-one years.
Abbie tried again to push his hand away, but Mason grabbed both her wrists. He turned the concho over, even though it meant touching her breasts. But it wasn’t her breasts that held his attention right now. It was the other initials on the back.
B.R.
For his father, Boone Ryland.
Mason let go of the concho, leaned down and got right in Abbie’s face, but it took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched so he could ask her the mother of all questions.
“Who the hell are you?”
Chapter Four
Abbie knew her situation had just gone from bad to worse. She also knew that Mason wasn’t just going to let her run out of there again. Not that she could.
Not now.
Not after the gunman’s attack.
She’d opened this dangerous Pandora’s box and had to stay around long enough to close it. If she could. But closing it meant first answering the Texas-sized question that Mason had just asked.
Who the hell are you?
“I’m Abbie Baker,” she said, knowing that didn’t clarify anything, especially because it was a name given to her twenty-one years ago by the U.S. Marshals when she and her mom had entered witness protection.
Her real name was Madelyn Turner. Maddie. But she no longer thought of herself as that little girl who’d nearly died from a hired gun’s bullet.
She was Abbie Baker now.
And she had a thoroughly riled, confused cowboy lawman looming over her. He was waiting for answers that didn’t involve her real name or anything else so mundane. Mason’s attention and narrowed glare were on the concho.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
Abbie considered another lie. She’d gotten so good at them over the years, but no one was that good. There was no way she could convince Mason that she’d found the concho and then had coincidentally applied for a job at the Ryland ranch.
There was nothing chance about it, and now she might have endangered not just Mason but also his entire family. Someone had come after her tonight, and she had to get to the bottom of that—fast.
First, though, she had to get past Mason, literally. And that meant giving him enough information to satisfy him but not so much that he would have a major meltdown.
“Where did you get the concho?” he repeated.
Abbie tried not to look as frightened as she felt, but she figured she wasn’t very successful. “Your father gave it to me.”
She saw the surprise go through his eyes. Maybe Mason had thought she’d stolen it or something.
“My father?” he snapped.
Abbie settled for a nod, knowing she would have to add details. But the devil was in those details, and once Mason heard them, he might physically toss her off the ranch. That couldn’t happen at this exact moment.
“When?” he pressed. “Why?”
She had no choice but to clear her throat so she could answer. “When I turned sixteen. He said it was a good-luck charm.”
That was a lie. Actually, Boone had said he wanted her to have it because it was his most valuable possession. Something he’d reserved for his own children.
Nothing about his severe expression changed. Mason’s wintry eyes stayed narrowed to slits. His jaw muscles stirred. He continued to glare at her. For several snail-crawling seconds anyway. Then he cursed. One really bad word. Before he turned and scrubbed his hands over his face. It seemed to take him another couple of moments to get his jaw unclenched.
“So Boone is alive,” he mumbled. “Or at least he was when you were sixteen.”
“He still is alive,” Abbie confirmed. “I talked to him on the phone before I went to bed.” She chose her words carefully. “He met my mother and me about four months before she was killed.”
“Where?” he barked.
“Maverick County. But we’ve lived plenty of other places since then.” She paused because she had to gather her breath. “We move a lot, finding work at ranches all over the Southwest. He’s always worried that Vernon Ferguson will find me.” And finish what he’d started.
Mason’s eyes narrowed even more. “Boone lived with you?”
“He raised me,” Abbie corrected.
That didn’t improve Mason’s ornery mood. More profanity, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a dry smile that held no humor at all.
“He raised you.” And he repeated it. “He couldn’t raise his own sons or be a husband to his wife, but yet he took you in. Why?”
Abbie had asked herself that a thousand times and still didn’t have the answer. “It was either that or I would have had to go into foster care. There weren’t many options for a kid in witness protection.”
“You would have been better off in foster care,” Mason mumbled. “I figured the SOB was dead.” He held up his hand in a stop gesture when she started to speak. “He should be dead.”
That sent a chill through her. That chill got significantly worse when Mason grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
“He sent you here,” Mason accused. “Why? He wants to mend fences with us after all these years?”
Abbie didn’t get a chance to deny it.
His grip was hard and punishing. “Well, you can just go back to Maverick County and tell the bastard that he’s not welcome here. Neither is his lackey. Consider yourself officially fired.”
“He didn’t send me,” Abbie managed to say.
Mason no doubt heard her, but he didn’t respond except to haul her toward the door. Abbie dug in her heels. Or rather, tried. It was like wrestling with an angry bear. She wasn’t a weakling, and her work with the cutting horses had honed some muscles that most women didn’t have, but she was no physical match for the likes of Mason.
Still, she had to make him understand.
“Boone didn’t send me,” she repeated. “In fact, he wouldn’t be happy if he knew I was here.” And that was a massive understatement.
That stopped Mason, finally, even though they were just inches from the door.
Oh, that put some fire into those ice-gray eyes. “He can’t begin to imagine how much I hate him.” His attention dropped back to the concho. “I put a bullet through mine and then nailed it to my bedroom wall so it’s the first thing I see when I wake up. That way, I can remember that the man who fathered me is a worthless piece of dirt.”
Abbie had expected anger, but she hadn’t quite braced herself enough for this outright rage. Boone had been right. He had done the unforgivable when he’d walked out on his family. At least it was unforgivable in Mason’s eyes, and she wondered if she stood a better chance pleading her case to one of his brothers. The problem was, she might not get the chance to do that.
Mason started moving again, toward the door.
“Why did Boone leave Silver Creek?” she asked.
Again, that stopped him. Well, sort of. Mason didn’t open the door, but he put her back right against it, and he kept his grip hard and tight on her shoulders. She was trapped, and Boone’s warning came flying through her head.
Mason isn’t the forgive-or-forget sort.
It was one of the few times Boone had talked about his sons, about the life he’d left behind here in Silver Creek. Boone wouldn’t have wanted her to come here, but she’d had no choice. This was her best bet at finding the answers to why Boone had been so secretive lately. He was definitely keeping something from her, and Abbie was scared that the something meant he was in serious danger.
“You tell me why he ran off,” Mason challenged.
She shook her head. Actually, her whole body was shaking, maybe from the adrenaline. Maybe the cold.
Maybe Mason.
She glanced down between them, at the fact that their bodies were pressed against each other. Not good. After all, despite the anger and Boone’s warning about this particular Ryland, Mason was a man, and she was a woman.
Mason must have realized it, too, because while still scowling and cursing, he stepped back. “Why did Boone leave?” he repeated.
Abbie had to shake her head again. “I don’t know.” It was the truth, but she wished she had the answer because it would no doubt clear up a lot of other questions she had. “He wouldn’t say. But for what it’s worth, he was a good surrogate father to me.”
Mason Page 3