He wasn’t going to dignify that question with a response. Helicopter blades thumped loud from overhead. Last he’d checked, the dogs had tracked Raleigh’s trail north, but they’d lost her scent as soon as she and whoever’d gotten her out of the SUV had crossed the river about two hundred feet into the woods. They had the entire Oregon US Marshals Service working this manhunt, but Raleigh was smart. She’d managed to escape federal custody once. He should’ve expected her to try again. “Any sign of her?”
“The footprints we tracked disappear at the river. Looks like whoever’d shot you and pulled her from the SUV carried her out, but we managed to pick up tire tracks on the other side until they meet up with the main road.” Remi studied the scene as the sun arced over the western half of the sky. “Whoever was behind the wheel most likely headed west, but enough time passed between the accident and when we arrived on scene, they could be anywhere right now. We’re running matches to narrow down the make and model of the vehicle from the tires and putting checkpoints in place. We’ll catch her.”
“She won’t go back to her aunt’s cabin. Too risky.” Damn it. There was a piece of this case he wasn’t seeing, something his gut had been trying to tell him from the start. He just couldn’t think straight enough to figure it out. “What about Calvin Dailey? Any luck tracing the call he made to my cell?”
No. Not Calvin Dailey. Hank Foster. His bastard of a father was still hurting anyone he came into contact with, consequences be damned, only this time Beckett would be ready for him. He’d do whatever he had to, to make sure the SOB didn’t hurt Raleigh. For his daughter’s sake. Pressure built behind his chest as he studied the wreckage. He’d cuffed her to the handle above the back seat. She wouldn’t have had any way to fight off the shooter if she was, in fact, innocent, as she’d claimed. The new set of stitches in his side stung, keeping him in the moment. There was no point imagining what’d happened after the crash. Raleigh wasn’t innocent.
“The call was rerouted using an internet service. No location, but we’ve got units at the foundation and his home, and his photo and a list of possible aliases sent to every law-enforcement agent and officer in the state.” Remi’s ocean-blue gaze locked on him as Beckett shoved to his feet, her mouth lifting at one corner. “I’m sorry. Are you wearing one of Reed’s superhero T-shirts?”
He stared her down. “They were the only clean clothes he had on hand.”
“If you say so.” The chief deputy surveyed the other marshals around them, her expression weary as she stepped into him and lowered her voice. The side of her weapon caught on his shirt. After reaching into her pants pocket, she handed him a thin piece of paper. “There was something else we found while we were following Wilde’s trail to the river. Something I have a feeling you wouldn’t want anyone else to know about.”
Beckett smoothed the thin paper, and a crushing weight took hold of his insides.
The ultrasound.
“You two were together twenty weeks ago,” Remi said. “The baby’s yours. That’s why you wanted to help her clear her name.”
Panic cemented his feet in place. His blood pressure spiked as he ran one hand through his hair. Raleigh had done everything she could to hang on to the evidence of her pregnancy these past three days. Hell, she’d slept with the ultrasound right next to the damn bed and kept it in her sweats pocket when she was up walking around the cabin. He ran his fingers over the fresh fold marks. No exceptions. She never would’ve left this behind.
Not unless she’d been unconscious.
Or taken against her will.
Which could mean… Raleigh was in danger. “Where did you find this?”
“Northwest. About fifty feet past the tree line.” Authoritative blue eyes steadied on him, but Beckett was already maneuvering around his superior. “Beckett, she’s a fugitive. You knew that when you took on this assignment, and I can’t protect you if—”
“I don’t need your protection. I’m going to save my family. With or without your help.” The scene vanished to the back of his mind as he headed for the nearest SUV. Raleigh was out there. She was in the hands of a killer who’d used her to play out his sick game, and Beckett had accused her of being one of the masterminds. Damn it, how could he have been so stupid? He’d let his hatred for Hank Foster destroy the last remaining chance he had of moving on with his life, of having everything he’d ever wanted, because he couldn’t let go of the past. If his father so much as broke a hair on her head, he’d kill the man himself.
His boots sank in the damp earth as Beckett wrenched open the door to Remi’s SUV and climbed inside. Within seconds, he’d flipped the vehicle around and accelerated down the mountain. Pines thinned at the bottom of the road, his hands aching from his grip on the steering wheel. “I’m coming. I’m going to find you.”
He had to think. Hank had spent the past three to four years as Calvin Dailey, but the man would still have his own habits, locations he would’ve visited over and over aside from the foundation or his home. Things the con man had been doing for so long, no alias could change. Beckett slowed at the bottom of the hill and shoved the vehicle into Park. He shouldered out of the SUV and rounded the hood. Dips in the old dirt road tried to trip him up, but that didn’t stop him from crouching beside the fresh set of tire tracks. Remi had mentioned the driver of the vehicle had most likely turned west to head back to Portland, but this set of muddied tracks leading off the dirt road said otherwise.
East. Toward Mount Vernon.
Beckett straightened, gaze following the length of single-lane asphalt road about a mile off. The bastard was taking her back to where this had all begun twenty years ago. “He’s headed to the ranch.”
New stitches stretched across his wound tight as he hauled himself back into the driver’s seat. Adrenaline brought everything into focus as he dropped the magazine out of the sidearm he’d borrowed from Reed’s home arsenal and counted the rounds. There were no guarantees Hank had been working alone when he’d taken Raleigh. He’d hired Emily Cline to do his dirty work, but Beckett wouldn’t be caught off guard this time. Not when his entire future was at risk.
He put the SUV in Drive and turned east on 26.
An undeniable rift tore through him at the thought of losing that future, at the thought of what he’d accused Raleigh of doing, at the thought of having to go back to the place where he’d lost everything that’d mattered to him as a kid. He’d spent most of his life trying to recover from the single event of losing his mother to violence, of having a father who’d chosen to hurt people. He’d put himself through high school, gotten his criminal justice degree, worked the ranch with his own two hands and gotten away from it all, but somewhere in the process he’d convinced himself he didn’t need anyone. There’d been one person in this world he could rely on when times got tough: himself. But deep down, somewhere he hadn’t dared look in a long time, he knew he couldn’t spend the rest of this life angry. On edge. Alone. Not when there was a woman out there who’d helped him forget all of that over these past few days, who’d…freed him from the control Hank Foster had held over him since he’d been sixteen years old.
Hell, he needed that weight gone. Needed her.
Raleigh had given him a reason to let the past die. She’d given him something to look forward to after all these years. One look from her—one touch—and the chaos he’d warred with for twenty years calmed, and he couldn’t give up on that. Because she hadn’t given up on him. Now it was his chance to return the favor.
Beckett reached for his phone, the screen brightening as he raised it, and sent the ranch’s coordinates to the rest of the team. He pressed his boot flat against the accelerator to push the vehicle faster. The ultrasound he’d tossed into the passenger seat sat stark in his peripheral vision against the muted background. He reached for it, switching his attention between the dark photo of his and Raleigh’s growing baby and the road ahead.
* * *
EVENING LIGHT SLANTED at her feet through the old slats nailed over the only window in the room.
Raleigh rolled her head to one side. The out-of-date wainscoting at her back dug into her spine, her hands restrained overhead to some kind of exposed metal plumbing. Dust danced in the rays of sun, making it hard to decipher between the white spots still clinging to her vision and spores. Chunks of drywall littered the peeling linoleum flooring near the legs of an old kitchen set with a single chair. A vanity dresser took up most of the opposite wall, an odd choice considering this room had obviously once been a kitchen, but the framed photos lining the bottom of the mirror told of a family-centered space.
She closed her eyes as pain splintered through one side of her head. She and Beckett had been in an accident, which accounted for gravel embedded in the first few layers of skin of her shoulder. Beckett. He’d been shot, and… She couldn’t remember anything after that. Light green flowered wallpaper curled along her side as Raleigh pulled at the rope to sit up.
“I always loved this wallpaper,” someone said from beside her.
She jerked as far away from that voice as she could, but the ropes didn’t have much give. Her heart shot into her throat as she realized how close he’d gotten. “Calvin. What…what are you—”
“Took us three months to agree on this paper.” His navy blue suit jacket and slacks accentuated dirt and dust streaking along his tall frame. Dark brown shoes knocked against hers as she leveraged her heels into the aging floor. Calvin’s arms framed either side of his head, blocking her view of his face, but she’d know that voice anywhere. She’d trusted that voice for three years, never knowing what kind of man he really was, how far he’d go to hurt the people who cared about him the most. Not just her but Beckett, the families he’d conned twenty years ago, the women who wouldn’t get the help they needed from the foundation they’d started together. Gray stubble peppered what she could see of his jaw, the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth somehow more pronounced.
He twisted his entire upper body to face her, steel-blue eyes putting her directly in his crosshairs, and her gaze lifted to the rope wrapped strategically around his wrists. Just like she’d been restrained. “My first wife and me. She would’ve liked you, you know. I knew the moment I met you at that charity function all those years ago, she would’ve liked you. In some ways you remind me of her. Headstrong. Stubborn. Guess she had to be, considering she’d been married to a man like me.”
“You mean the kind of man who steals money from innocent, hardworking families and people in need?” Raleigh couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone, even with them both tied to the same damn line of plumbing. He obviously hadn’t been the one to cause the crash when the shooter had put a bullet in his son, but that didn’t make Calvin—Hank—innocent either. “I know who you are, Hank Foster. I know what you’ve done and the people you’ve hurt.”
His chin dipped toward his chest, that all-too-familiar voice tainted with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Beckett.”
“He told me everything. You target innocent victims, prey on marks you can manipulate into doing what you want, consequences be damned.” Years of trust, of friendship, slipped away as she faced him, and Calvin suddenly looked far older than she remembered. He might not be the current threat, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. He’d stolen victims’ life savings, retirements, everything they’d had, and disappeared as though it’d never happened. “Was that what I was for you? Another mark in the long line of easy targets? Is that why you approached me at that charity event? You saw something you could take advantage of and turn a profit, no matter how many people got hurt in the process.”
“You were never a mark, Raleigh, and I never profited from our foundation. Not a single penny. All my salary checks for the past three years? I donated them right back into the foundation we built together. I didn’t want any of it.” Hank Foster set the crown of his head back against the wall, staring up at the dilapidated ceiling threatening to crash down on them at any moment. He closed his eyes. “I stole that money twenty years ago. I did, and it destroyed my family. It got my wife—Beckett’s mother—killed, left my son orphaned, and I’ve never been able to forgive myself since. The day I heard about what’d happened to her, that Beckett had been there to witness the entire thing, I gave it all back to the people I’d stolen from. Every dime.” He locked trusting blue eyes on her. “When I met you, when you reminded me so much of my late wife, I realized starting this foundation with you would be a step in the right direction to fixing what I’d done. It might never be able to make up for all those people I hurt—especially my son—but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”
Truth resonated in his voice, and an acrid taste filled her mouth. Her stomach knotted. Everything that’d happened since the moment she’d been arrested had been carefully planned, calculated, but the tired-looking man restrained next to her didn’t fit that description. Emotions she’d shut down after Beckett had arrested her and accused her of partnering with the thief surged to the surface. Relief, fear, guilt and curiosity tumbled over one another, and she didn’t know which to process first. Her throat seized. “You…didn’t steal the money, did you?”
“No.” Footsteps echoed off the walls of an adjacent room, and Calvin turned toward the sound. “But I know who did.”
A familiar outline centered in the doorway across the room, and a rush of memories materialized. The comfortable—almost caring—voice Raleigh hadn’t been able to place after the crash, the oversize bolt cutters that’d snapped the links of her cuffs, the surprising strength it’d taken to pull her from the wreckage. Her attacker’s long, lean frame shifted beneath a denim jumpsuit, shiny brass buttons and jewelry reflecting the dim light. Caramel highlights stood out from the waves of long blond hair fluttering around the woman’s shoulders, and there, that beautiful, straight smile that’d welcomed Raleigh into her home so many times over the years flashed wide.
“Julia,” she said.
Julia Dailey, Calvin’s current wife, revealed the pistol in her hand. “I’m glad to see the little hit on the head I gave you didn’t cause too much damage, Raleigh. There’s still a lot we need to talk about since you shot the woman I sent to get me the information I needed from you.”
Air evacuated from Raleigh’s lungs as her fingers recalled the feel of pulling that trigger. She’d done it to save Beckett’s life, just as she’d wielded that rock to save her brother’s, but the blood was still on her hands. Always would be. “You hired Emily Cline to kill me.”
“Yet here you are. Stubborn and determined as ever. I’ve always liked you. There was a point over the past few years I’d considered you a daughter, seeing as how Calvin and I never had children of our own, but you refused to play your part in my plan. Bringing Calvin’s, or should I say Hank’s, son into the investigation… Well, I couldn’t have that. I’ve worked too hard and for too long to let you take this from me.” Dark brown eyes settled on Calvin. Drywall debris skidded across the aged linoleum as Julia’s muddied boots carved a path through the kitchen. Pink-tipped fingers smoothed over the gun in her left hand as Julia crouched beside her husband. “I lost count of how many times he’d tell me a story about Beckett, or his wife, or this place and how happy they’d been before she’d died. No matter how much I tried to be there for him, to be the wife he could be proud to have on his arm, I never came close to her, did I, Hank? Not once. Fifteen years of feeling unwanted, used, alone.” Dejection surfaced as she rested the barrel of her gun over Calvin’s heart. “Do you have any idea what that kind of pain does to a person?”
“You feel worthless. Underappreciated.” Raleigh’s t
hroat dried as echoes of Beckett’s accusations of conspiring against him and her own foundation pierced straight through her. Her heart pounded loud behind her ears. She knew what that kind of pain did to a person, what it’d done to her over the years. But what hurt more? Having it done by the one person in the world who’d convinced her she’d been valuable, who’d promised to always be there for her. For their daughter. Her voice hollowed as she retreated into the familiar sense of numbness she’d cultivated over the years. Only that space had shrunk over the past few days to the point she could barely get a grip. “You convince yourself there must be something wrong with you, that you’re not worth being loved, and that there’s no point in getting close to anyone because they’re just going to discard you anyway. So you go numb to deal with the rejection, whether it’s real or not, to feel like you have the slightest bit of control.”
But it was a lie. Because there was always the chance someone would come along and rip that control away. As Beckett had done for her. He’d broken through her internal armor. He’d forced her to confront and question her deepest beliefs about herself, to feel things she’d closed herself off from for so long, and Raleigh feared she’d never be able to rebuild that wall. She didn’t have the strength.
The weight of Julia Dailey’s attention constrained the air in her lungs. A distance infused her voice, her expression smooth, and suddenly Raleigh had a vision of what her future looked like if she continued down this path. “Spoken like someone with firsthand experience. I think I’ll be doing you a favor by putting you out of your misery sooner rather than later.”
“Where is my son, Julia?” Calvin asked.
“You know, for a con man, you didn’t do a very good job covering your tracks.” Julia pushed to her feet. She studied the cracks in the walls, the single chair at the kitchen table, kicked at a stray root that’d worked through the flooring. “You’ve always talked about coming back here, renovating the property, working the land like you used to. You never told me the exact location, but it wasn’t hard to find once I did a bit of digging through public records and put all the pieces together. Fitting this is going to be the place they find your body.”
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