“It’s someone looking for me,” Sierra concluded, her voice filled with nerves.
No one in the room disputed that.
Jaycee and Josh moved back so Dade could ease Sierra onto the small leather sofa in Grayson’s office. Dade got her a bottle of water, then excused himself, saying he needed to go help Mason and the deputy deal with those vehicles.
Sierra had a hefty sip of water before the tears came spilling down her cheeks. “I can’t believe I got away from them. They’ll come for me,” she added in a broken whisper.
“Where were you when you escaped?” Jaycee asked.
Sierra looked at her as if she hadn’t noticed her before in the room despite Jaycee asking her a question earlier. “I’m not sure. I’ve already told the sheriff that it was about a mile or so from the gas station. I stole a phone before I got away, but there wasn’t any service until I actually got to the gas station.”
“There are a lot of dead spots for cell phones out there,” Grayson added. “But we’ve called the Texas Rangers so they can comb the area.”
“They have to find it,” Sierra said. “There are other women being held captive.”
It sickened Jaycee to hear that, but if Sierra was telling the truth, those women stood a good chance of being rescued tonight.
“Your sister came in earlier,” Josh tossed out there. “And Bryson.”
At the mention of those names, Sierra’s tears dried up and her mouth tightened. “Let me guess. They had all sorts of lies to tell about me.” Not exactly a question.
Josh lifted his shoulder. “Bryson said you tried to blackmail him over some sex tapes.”
Sierra didn’t blush, didn’t even dodge his intense lawman’s stare. “I simply asked him to pay me for the tapes. Did he also tell you that he broke into my place to get them?”
Josh nodded. “If you want to file charges against him, I’ll put you in contact with someone at SAPD.”
“That’s water under the bridge.” Sierra got that distressed look again as if she might start crying. “I’m the victim here. Not my money-grubbing sister and my ex-boyfriend. In fact, you should look at both of them, because either of them could be behind these baby farms.”
Great. The sisters had now accused each other of running this heinous business. “You have any proof that they’re responsible?” Jaycee pressed.
Sierra quickly nodded. “I do. I have some of Valerie’s bank records at my apartment. They prove that she was withdrawing huge sums of money from her trust fund.”
Grayson and Josh exchanged glances. “How’d you get these records?” Grayson asked.
Now Sierra’s gaze darted away. “I saw them in her office and copied them, all right? I knew she was up to no good, and I wanted some proof.”
So she’d stolen them. And tried to use a sex tape to extort money from her former lover. Sierra definitely had some credibility issues, but at least she didn’t seem to be dodging their questions.
“Does your sister need money or something?” Josh pressed. “I ask because I’m just wondering why you’d think she would do this.”
“Money, definitely,” Sierra said. “Yes, she’s got plenty of it, but she’d love to have much more. With Valerie it’s always more, more, more, and she doesn’t care who she steps on to get it.”
Obviously, they needed to take a hard look at Valerie’s financials. Of course, this could all be lies. Or not. Sierra certainly seemed shaken, but Jaycee had to admit that it could all be an act.
Sierra gave a weary sigh. “I know it’s hard to think this about one’s own sister, but I believe Valerie could have had me kidnapped so she could sell my baby to Bryson.”
Interesting.
Jaycee couldn’t completely dismiss that theory. From everything she’d seen, Bryson would indeed pay a huge ransom to get his heir. Of course, Bryson himself could be behind this, too. He could have had Sierra kidnapped to ensure that he got his hands on the baby.
So now they had three suspects.
Sierra, Bryson and Valerie.
Jaycee didn’t have a gut feeling about any of them except that she didn’t intend to trust any of them.
“Can someone call Bryson and tell him I’ve been rescued?” Sierra asked.
The request was a surprise, considering that minutes earlier she’d accused him of telling lies about her.
“I can call him,” Grayson finally said, though he sounded as suspicious as Jaycee felt. “Anything specific you want me to tell him?”
“Yes. Tell him if he cares about this baby at all, he’ll get his butt down here to Silver Creek right away or he’ll never see his child.” But Sierra waved that off and sniffled again. “It’s just the nerves talking.”
Sierra paused, gathered her breath. “Bryson cut me to the core when I told him I was pregnant. I wanted him to divorce his cold fish of a wife and marry me. But he refused.”
Of course he did. His rich wife gave him the standing in the community that he wanted. But what about that standing once everyone learned he’d cheated on his wife and gotten another woman pregnant? He might collect his inheritance but could lose everything else.
Grayson’s phone rang, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Mason,” he told them, and answered it. “What’d you find out about those suspicious vehicles?”
Jaycee couldn’t hear what Mason said, but the call was short. Grayson ended it and looked at Sierra. “False alarm on the vehicles. Some kids on a class trip got food poisoning, and this was the nearest hospital. Come on. I’ll take you to see the doctor.”
Sierra didn’t argue. She wobbled a little when she stood and touched her hand to her head. “Someone please call Bryson and tell him what I’ve been through.”
“I will,” Josh assured her.
“Tell him to come to the hospital,” Sierra added. “I need to see him.”
Josh just nodded, and they watched as Grayson took her by the arm and led her back out to the squad car.
“You believe her?” Jaycee asked.
Josh shrugged. “I believe she’s a gold digger, and that means I automatically distrust her.”
Yes, so did she. Besides, Sierra was giving off mixed signals about Bryson. In one breath she was bad-mouthing him, and in the next she wanted to see him. Of course, she could have wanted to see him just to try to get money out of him. Still, that seemed a strange reaction considering the ordeal she’d just been through.
Josh located Bryson’s contact number in Grayson’s files, and he made the call. “No answer,” he muttered after letting it ring a half dozen times, and he left a message for the man to contact him ASAP.
“What about Valerie’s financials?” Jaycee asked.
Josh nodded, and he fired off a text. This time to his cousin Kade Ryland, who was an FBI agent. He asked not just for info on Valerie but for a search warrant for Sierra’s apartment.
“The warrant shouldn’t be hard to get,” Josh said to her when he finished texting. “We can tie it to her kidnapping and the baby farm investigation.”
“Good. And during the search maybe they’ll run across those bank statements that Sierra said she had. If not, I figure Sierra would gladly hand them over since they seem to implicate her sister of some wrongdoing. Or not,” Jaycee quickly added.
“Yeah. This could be just a bad case of sibling rivalry.”
He checked the time and tipped his head to the door. “Ready to get out of here? I can have Gage or Bree escort us back to the ranch.”
Jaycee hated to tie up so much manpower just to protect her and now Sierra. However, after what’d happened on their last drive to the ranch, she welcomed the extra security.
“Let me get everything ready,” Josh said, but he didn’t even make it a step before his phone rang.
Jaycee expected it to be
Bryson returning his call, but she saw emergency dispatcher on the screen.
“Deputy Ryland,” Josh answered. And since he didn’t put the call on speaker, Jaycee moved close enough to hear. She prayed this wasn’t yet more bad news.
“There’s another woman trying to contact you,” the dispatcher told Josh. “She says her name is Miranda Culley and that it’s important. Could be some kind of prank—”
“I’ll talk to her,” Josh interrupted. “You know her?” he mouthed to Jaycee.
But she had to shake her head.
“Deputy Ryland?” the woman said the moment Josh answered. “I heard them say your name so that’s why I asked for you.” Her breath was gusting and her words rushed together. “I knew it was safe to call you. Because I figure if they want you dead, then you’re not working for them.”
“Who wants me dead?” Josh asked.
“The guards.” A sob tore from her throat. “Four months ago I was kidnapped. And I gave birth to my baby yesterday. The guards took her. I don’t know where. But they were going to kill me, and I managed to escape. I can’t look for my baby on my own. I need your help.”
Oh, mercy. This didn’t sound good at all.
“Escaped from where?” Josh pressed.
“A ranch out in the middle of nowhere. I need your help, please,” she repeated. “And I need you to find my baby and arrest the person who did this to us.”
The muscles in his jaw turned to iron. “You know who the person is?”
“I know.” The woman made another ragged sound.
And the line went dead.
Chapter Ten
“Miranda?” Josh repeated, though he knew it was useless. The call had ended, and he didn’t know if the woman had done that herself or if someone else was responsible for the disconnection.
Josh immediately phoned back the dispatcher. “What’s the number Miranda Culley was calling from?”
“It’s from a prepaid cell phone.”
Josh groaned. There was no way to trace that, but it did make him wonder where she’d gotten the burner. Maybe like Sierra, she’d stolen it from one of the guards.
“If she calls back, put her straight through to me,” Josh instructed.
“You know her?” Josh asked Jaycee when he ended the call with the dispatcher.
“No.” Jaycee shook her head and moved to Grayson’s laptop. “I’ll check NCIC.”
The National Crime Information Center was a database for missing persons. It was a good start, but it’d be even better if Miranda called back and told them where the heck she was.
And if she gave them the name of the person responsible.
They needed that info from Miranda so they could make an arrest and put an end to not just the baby farms but the attacks, as well.
“She’s missing, all right,” Jaycee confirmed several moments later. “Miranda Ann Culley is twenty-eight, single and worked as a waitress in Kerrville. No immediate family, but her boss reported her missing two months ago.”
“No mention of the father of her baby?”
Another head shake and more clicks on the computer keyboard. “She does have a record, though. Busted for drugs six years ago. Nothing since.”
So she’d cleaned herself up. Maybe. Or maybe she just hadn’t gotten caught. And that led Josh to something else he had to consider. “This could be a setup to lure us out into the open.”
Jaycee met his gaze from over the top of the computer. “Sierra wasn’t a setup.” She paused, groaned softly. “I don’t want it to be a setup. If she was held captive like I was, then I want her rescued.”
Survivor’s guilt. Something Josh recognized because he felt it himself. His partner, Ben, had died, and he hadn’t. It didn’t matter that he’d had no say in the matter as to who had lived and who had died. Jaycee hadn’t had a say in her captivity and rescue, either.
But the guilt was still there.
“I want all of them rescued,” Jaycee added. Her voice trembled, and she cursed. “Damn hormones.”
He suspected the hormones weren’t nearly as much to blame as the guilt and Jaycee’s need to get justice for all the women who’d been taken. Josh went to her, knowing it was a mistake to get this close when the emotions were sky-high. It was also a mistake to put his arms around her.
But he did it anyway.
“When you’re nice to me, it only makes it harder,” Jaycee mumbled.
He eased back, looked at her and his eyebrow lifted, questioning that.
“If you’re angry with me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper now, “then I can forget about that night we spent together.”
His eyebrow lifted higher.
“All right, so maybe I can’t forget it entirely,” Jaycee amended. “But I can focus on the anger and nothing else.”
Nothing else as in the heat.
It’d been the overwhelming need for each other that had sent them racing to bed five months earlier. No finesse. No foreplay. Just the fire that had given them no choice. Well, no choice that they’d wanted to take anyway. At the time, Josh hadn’t thought there’d be huge consequences, like a pregnancy.
He had definitely been wrong about that.
“You want me to yell at you?” he joked. And it surprised him that he could make light of something like that. Two days ago, he would have shut her out with his anger and his words.
The kisses had changed everything.
And he added to the change by kissing her again.
Oh, man. He was in big trouble here.
There was no way he should feel what he was feeling. It wasn’t right. Logical. Or any other label he could put on it. But did that stop him?
Nope.
He just kissed her as if the world around them wasn’t a giant powder keg that could explode at any moment. Josh might have kept kissing Jaycee for hours if he hadn’t felt the movement. The soft thuds against his stomach.
“The baby’s kicking,” Jaycee whispered, her mouth still on his.
Josh slid his hand between them and over the kicks. It felt like a rodeo going on in there, and he chuckled before he realized he was even going to do it.
Jaycee pulled back, looking a little stunned. “I’ve never heard you laugh before.”
Josh was about to say that was impossible, but it had been a while since he’d let himself feel anything close to laughter.
More survivor’s guilt.
His dead partner, Ben, couldn’t laugh anymore. Couldn’t live. So Josh had shut down, too. The problem was that he didn’t know how to start back up again. How to forget that Jaycee had been responsible for that attack.
How to forgive.
And it was that reminder that had him pulling away from her. “Sorry.”
He could have added more—exactly what, he didn’t know—but his phone rang again. Josh snatched it up, hoping to see the 911 operator with Miranda’s return call, but it was Grayson.
“We’ve got a problem,” Grayson said the second that Josh answered.
Josh groaned and put the call on speaker so he wouldn’t have to repeat the bad news to Jaycee.
“Sierra sneaked out of the hospital,” Grayson added. “She told us she had to go to the bathroom, but she’s gone. She left a note on the mirror saying that she wasn’t sure she could trust us, that she thought one of us would hand her back over to the kidnappers.”
Josh cursed. This wasn’t just frustrating, it was downright dangerous for Sierra and her baby. Didn’t Sierra realize that?
“I doubt she’ll come to the sheriff’s office,” Josh said. “You have someone out looking for her?”
“Yeah, and I’m about to join them. Just thought you should know that Valerie and Bryson are headed your way.”
Really? He
didn’t need this now. “Why?”
“I contacted Bryson just as Sierra wanted, and he said he was on the way. Just called him back though to say she’d left, but Valerie and he were already en route. Bryson insisted on going to the sheriff’s office to wait for any news about Sierra.”
Of course he would. He wanted to get his hands on that baby, and Sierra was due any time now.
“If Jaycee’s holding up all right,” Grayson said, “then you two stay put awhile longer with Gage and Bree.”
“Will do.” But the words had no sooner left Josh’s mouth when he heard the jangle of the front doorbell. He also heard Valerie’s and Bryson’s voices before he even glanced out of the office and into the reception area.
“How could you possibly let her get away?” Bryson demanded of Gage, who’d been standing guard.
“You’re looking at the wrong guy,” Gage drawled, and then proceeded to frisk them, despite protests from the two. “They aren’t armed,” he relayed to Josh.
With his gun still drawn, Gage stepped just outside the door and looked around. No doubt to see if the pair had been followed or if they had brought any hired guns with them.
“No one let Sierra get away,” Josh informed Bryson. “She lied to the sheriff so she could slip out of the hospital.” Something he was sure Grayson had already told the man.
“Someone let her sneak out,” Bryson argued. “She should have been watched the entire time.”
“She wasn’t under arrest,” Josh fired back. But clearly she’d been a flight risk, something none of them had picked up on. Everything Sierra had said led Josh to believe that she wanted to be rescued. And maybe she still did. She just didn’t trust them to do the rescuing.
“Oh, God,” Bryson mumbled. He touched his fingers to his mouth. “What if those kidnappers took her again and made it look as if she’d left on her own?”
Josh couldn’t totally discount that, but it wasn’t adding up to another kidnapping. Grayson would have told him if there’d been any sign of a struggle or if Sierra had called out for help. Neither of those things had happened.
Valerie frowned. “My sister’s clever, and if she’d wanted to leave, no one would have stopped her. She would have found a way.” Valerie’s attention went to Jaycee when she stepped into the hall. “Good, I’m glad you’re here. It saves me from tracking you down.”
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