“You mean something that would have incriminated Christian as their boss,” Egan finished for her.
She nodded, and now she looked at him. But it wasn’t heat and attraction he saw in her eyes now. It was a boatload of concern. “If so, Christian could have wanted to silence her by setting up Drew Paxton to murder her.”
Egan had already reached that same conclusion, but it still felt like a punch to the gut to hear it spelled out for him. Drew had been the one to pull the trigger and put a bullet in Shanna, but if Christian had provoked him in some way to do that, then Christian was equally guilty of her murder.
But that was a big if.
Leeroy and Kirk might not have had anything to do with Shanna’s murder, but either of them could be behind these attacks. What they needed was an ID on the gunman Jordan had killed, and they might be able to link him to one of the suspects. Right now, that seemed their best shot at solving this.
Egan took out his phone to see if there was a CSI available to come to the ranch, but his phone dinged before he could make the call, and it was Court’s name that popped up on the screen.
“Is everything okay?” Egan asked the moment he answered.
“More or less. I’m still at the crime scene with the dead woman. The CSIs just arrived, and I had them check the wallet first. No driver’s license, but there’s a photo ID. It’s Irene Adair.”
Jordan’s arm was right against his so he felt her go stiff. Of course, they’d been expecting this, but there was no way to prepare for hearing that another of Shanna’s recipients had been murdered.
“Of course, I’ll get her next of kin to confirm it, but the woman matches her photo, and it’s a legit ID from where she works.”
Egan didn’t doubt this was indeed Irene. But he still didn’t know if her murder was actually connected to Shanna or if someone just wanted to make it look that way.
“Any chance you can spare one of the CSIs?” Egan asked. “I’d like them to take a look at the dead guy here at the ranch.”
“There are three here, and I’ll send out one of them. I’ll see if Griff can spare someone from the rangers, too.”
Egan thanked him, ended the call and then turned to Jordan to see how she was handling this. Not well. Her eyes had watered, the tears threatening, and her bottom lip was trembling.
“This has to end,” she whispered. Jordan was still fighting the tears, but it was a battle she was losing.
Egan wasn’t immune to those tears, either. Seeing her like this caused his chest to tighten until it felt as if someone had latched on to his heart and was squeezing hard. He had no idea what to do to make this better. But he apparently had a bad way of trying to fix it.
He kissed her.
He felt her go stiff, probably because she was stunned that he was doing this. Egan was stunned, too. Kissing Jordan was the last thing that should be on his mind, but he didn’t stop. In fact, he made things worse by pulling her to him. She not only landed in his arms. Jordan also slid her hands around the back of his neck.
She made a sound of pleasure. Something soft and silky. Something that loosened up the muscles in his chest, but it tightened other parts of him. Specifically, that stupid part of him behind the zipper of his jeans. The kiss was reminding him of the times when they’d been lovers, and it was starting to feel more like foreplay than just a simple kiss. Of course, nothing stayed simple when it came to Jordan and him.
Egan was mindful of her injury and tried not to hurt her, but he deepened the kiss. And the taste of her slammed through him. It was a familiar taste, one that stirred not just the old memories but also the heat and the attraction that was quickly racing out of control.
That still didn’t stop him.
He kept kissing her. And Jordan certainly wasn’t doing anything to stop it or even slow it down. She lowered her hand from his neck, sliding her palm down his back until she reached the waist of his jeans. This was the problem with them being past lovers. It was the next step of foreplay for her to go after his zipper. And for him to go after hers. But Egan couldn’t risk having sex with her now. Even if that was exactly what his body wanted him to do.
He pulled back from her at the exact moment that she pulled away from him. For a moment he thought that was a timely coincidence, but then he felt her take out her phone from her pocket.
“I had it set on vibrate,” she said. “And I have a call.”
Egan was actually thankful for the interruption. At least he was thankful until he saw the screen.
Unknown Caller.
Hell, this couldn’t be good.
Jordan looked at him, silently asking him what to do. “Answer it,” he said. “But put it on speaker.”
She gave a shaky nod and did as he said. It didn’t take long for the caller to start talking. “Jordan,” he growled.
At least Egan thought the caller was male. It was hard to tell because he seemed to be speaking through some sort of voice scrambler.
“Who is this?” Egan demanded.
Again, it didn’t take long for the guy to respond. “I’m the person who’ll kill Jordan, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Chapter Twelve
I’m the person who’ll kill Jordan.
Jordan had no trouble hearing what the caller had just said. No trouble believing that was his intention, either. And it sent a chill straight through her. Egan had a different reaction, though. He cursed and snatched the phone from her.
“Who the hell is this?” Egan snapped.
“Oh, you want my name? Sorry, but you can’t have that.” And it sounded as if the caller laughed. “If you want to catch me, you’ll have to do your job. I’m not going to make this easy for you.”
This could be someone playing a hoax, but she didn’t think so. No. This was the real deal. The man behind the attacks and murders along with being the person who’d left that note with Lorena Lovett.
“What do you want?” Jordan asked. She was glad that her voice sounded a lot stronger than she felt.
“First of all, don’t bother to trace this call. It’s a burner cell. No way to find me with a trace. And now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s what I want you to do. Meet with me. Just you and me. You can’t bring Egan with you. Then you and I will have a little chat.”
“You mean a chat where you’ll try to kill me,” Jordan said.
The caller certainly didn’t jump to deny that. “You have to admit you’ve been living on borrowed time. Drew Paxton’s bullet hit you in the side and damaged both your kidneys so badly that you needed a transplant. If it weren’t for Shanna, you’d be dead by now.”
That sounded like something Leeroy would say. Of course, the person could want them to think that Shanna’s father was responsible.
“You want to put an end to the attacks and the killings?” the caller went on. “You want to save Egan?”
“You know I do.” She didn’t even have to think about that.
“But saving me isn’t what you have in mind,” Egan said to the caller. “You want to use me to get to Jordan. I have something different in mind. I want you to stop these games and turn yourself in to the cops.”
He laughed again. “Dream on, cowboy. That’s not going to happen. But you and I can put an end to things if you’ll just have that chat with me. I’ll tell you all about why I’ve done these things.”
“Dream on,” Egan repeated like venom. “Because Jordan’s not meeting with you.”
“Too bad because that means someone else will die.”
There was another sound. Not laughter this time, but Jordan couldn’t tell what it was since it was filtered through the scrambler. However, it sounded as if someone was with the caller.
Oh, mercy.
The fear slid through her again, and she prayed this snake didn’t have another soon-to-be victim
with him.
“Haven’t you killed enough?” Jordan pleaded with him. “Please, just let this end.”
“I’ve told you the only way it can end. By meeting with me. But I can tell that’s not going to happen. That’s okay. But just remember—you could have stopped this, and you didn’t.”
Even though the scrambler was still on, Jordan was certain of the next sound.
A scream.
The kind of scream a person made when they were in severe pain. Terrified. Or being murdered.
“Stop, please!” Jordan shouted into the phone.
But she was talking to the air because the caller had already hung up.
Jordan immediately turned to Egan, hoping that he could stop whatever was happening. She knew that wasn’t possible, though. They didn’t even know where the caller was.
“The scream could have been fake,” he reminded her, and he took out his own phone.
Jordan so wanted to latch on to that and believe it. And it very well could be true. The caller obviously wanted to draw her out into the open so he could kill her, and an easy way to do that was to make her think someone was being hurt, or worse, because of her.
“Text Thea and give her the caller’s number,” Egan instructed. “It’s a long shot, but he might have lied about it being a burner.”
True, and while Jordan sent that text, Egan made a call. Not to Court or one of the other deputies. Instead, he pressed Leeroy’s number, and the man answered on the first ring.
“What do you want now, Egan?” Leeroy barked.
“Where are you?” Egan snapped right back.
“I’m about to head home. If you’re calling to have me come back in for questioning, don’t bother. Thea already set me up with another appointment for tomorrow morning.”
If Leeroy had been the one to make that scrambled call, he certainly wasn’t showing any signs of it. He sounded as angry and ornery as he usually was. Of course, that could be an act. He could have put away the burner cell and scrambler to answer the call from Egan.
“Don’t be late for your interview tomorrow,” Egan warned the man.
He ended the call and immediately went to one of their other suspects. Christian. Unlike Leeroy, however, he didn’t answer.
“I can call Christian’s office at San Antonio PD,” Jordan offered.
She waited for Egan to nod in agreement before she searched through her contacts and found the number for Detective Marvin Daniels, Christian’s partner. And he did answer almost right away.
“This is Jordan Gentry,” she greeted. “I’m trying to get in touch with Christian—”
“So am I,” Marvin interrupted. “What the hell is going on with him?”
That certainly wasn’t the response she’d expected. “What do you mean?”
“He just called me and said someone tried to kill him.”
Jordan tamped down the slam of emotions and tried to see both sides of this. Yes, someone could have attacked Christian, but it was possible this was part of the ruse to make him look innocent.
“How long ago did Christian call you?” Jordan asked.
“Five minutes or so. Maybe a little longer. Why?”
If it was longer, then that would have been when Egan was still on the phone with the scrambled caller. And that meant it couldn’t have been Christian. Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have hired someone to make that call.
“Jordan?” Marvin pressed when she didn’t say anything.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” she answered. “Do you have any idea if Christian is all right?”
“I don’t know. I’m on the way to the hospital now.”
“Hospital?” Jordan repeated on a rise of breath. If this was a ruse, then Christian was making it look very real.
“Yeah. He’s driving himself there, so I don’t know how bad he’s hurt. You want me to have him get in touch with you when he can?”
“No. That’s all right. But if you could text me and let me know his condition, I’d appreciate it.”
“Will do,” Marvin agreed before he hung up.
She looked at Egan again to see his reaction to what they’d just heard about Christian, but he had already moved on to calling their third and final suspect, Kirk. While Egan was waiting for him to answer, however, he got another call from Thea, and he immediately answered it.
“I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I have to ask. By any chance did you leave your truck on Smith Road by the Welcome to McCall Canyon sign?” Thea asked.
“No. It’s still in the repair shop.”
“That’s what I figured. Well, there’s a truck identical to yours back there. I’m thinking it’s the one used in the attack since the windshield is shot up. And guess who found it?”
“Kirk?”
“Leeroy,” Thea answered. “He says he spotted it a couple of minutes ago when he was driving home.”
That was possible since Smith Road led to his place. Still, it seemed a huge coincidence that one of their suspects would be the one to find it. Unless someone had set it up so that Leeroy would be the one who stumbled on it. Plus, it sounded as if the truck hadn’t exactly been hidden away.
“Please tell me that Leeroy didn’t touch the vehicle,” Egan said.
“He claims he didn’t. Griff and I are on our way there now to check it out, and I told Leeroy to get back in his own truck and wait for us,” Thea went on. “He said he would, but he claims that there’s blood on the outside of the door.”
“The killer threw the dead woman out of the truck,” Egan reminded her. “And she’d been shot and stabbed so it could have gotten there then.”
“Yeah,” Thea agreed. Then, she paused. “But Leeroy is insisting this blood isn’t from the other attack. He’s saying this is fresh.”
* * *
FRESH BLOOD.
That was not what Egan wanted to hear. Especially coming on the heels of the phone call from a thug claiming that he would kill someone else if Jordan didn’t meet with him. This might not even be connected to that call, but Jordan would almost certainly think it was.
“Call me when you get to the truck,” Egan insisted. “And if the connection’s good enough, make it a video call so I can see what’s going on.”
“Will do,” Thea assured him before she hung up.
Even though it would likely be only a few minutes before Thea and Griff got there, he wanted to use that short amount of time to try to calm that look on Jordan’s face. And this time, he wouldn’t kiss her to do that.
“Leeroy could be wrong. It might not be fresh blood,” he reminded her. “And even if it is, he might have been the one who planted it there.”
She nodded, but the agreement didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “I need to figure out a way to stop this.”
Since she looked ready to panic—or agree to the meeting that the killer wanted—Egan took her by the shoulders. “Someone could have set all of this up just to draw you out.”
“But Irene—”
“She could have been dead long before the thug called you and asked you to meet him.”
Jordan still didn’t look convinced so Egan pulled her into his arms. No kiss. But he did hold her. It wasn’t much, but then there wasn’t a lot he could do to help her until he caught the piece of dirt who was behind all of this.
His phone rang, and Egan answered it right away when he saw Thea’s name on the screen.
“We’re pulling up to the truck now,” Thea said the moment she was on the line. Just as they’d agreed, it was a video call with audio so he could see Thea. “Leeroy’s sitting in his own vehicle just like I told him to do.”
Good. That was something at least. If they found any prints or DNA from Leeroy, Egan didn’t want the man claiming that it had gotten there just now because he’d touched
something.
“Leeroy’s getting out of his truck,” Thea went on, “but I’ll have Griff deal with him while I take a closer look.”
Thea turned the phone in the direction of the truck as she approached it, and Jordan stood right next to him, watching and listening to everything. The truck was indeed identical to his, including the license plates, which were obviously a fake duplicate. It wouldn’t have been especially hard for someone to create a bogus tag, but it did let Egan know that this person had gone to a lot of trouble to make everyone believe that he’d been the one behind the murder.
But why?
Egan could only guess about that, but it might have been so that he would be blamed for Lorena’s, and Jordan’s, murders. For that to happen, though, there would have had to be a witness. There hadn’t been. But since the attack had happened on a road, maybe the killer had been planning for any contingency.
Thea continued to move closer to the truck, and in the background Egan could hear Leeroy arguing with Griff. He didn’t catch every word that Leeroy was saying, but the gist was that Leeroy was worried about being blamed for this. Of course, that could be all hot air since maybe he was indeed responsible.
“There’s the blood,” Thea said, aiming her phone camera at the driver’s-side door. There was certainly something there. And it looked like blood spatter. The kind of spatter that could result from a gunshot wound or high-velocity spatter from an impact wound.
“I don’t want to touch the door handle,” Thea said. “There might be prints or DNA on it.”
Egan was about to agree with her, but then he heard Thea mumble some profanity. “There’s a body on the floor by the passenger’s seat.”
Jordan gasped and touched her fingers to her mouth. She hadn’t exactly looked steady before Thea’s second call, but now it was worse.
“Is it Tori?” Jordan asked.
“No. It’s a man. And I think he’s alive. Griff, call an ambulance,” Thea shouted, and while she was still holding her phone, she hurried to the passenger’s door and threw it open. There was indeed a man on the floor, and he was in between the seat and the dash. His hands were tied, and he had a gag around his mouth. But Egan had no trouble recognizing him.
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