Stone Cold Texas Ranger

by Nicole Helm

  Apologies didn’t mean a thing when her sister was gone. Eight years. And Natalie was the only one who held out any hope, and now her hope was...

  Well, it had just gotten kicked in the teeth.

  She managed to walk stiffly to the door and stepped out, the Jerk of the Manor still behind her. Too close behind her and crowding her out and away.

  “I’ll see you all the way out of the building, Ms. Torres,” he said, sounding so smug and superior.

  She walked down the hall, still a little shaken. But shaken had no hold on her anger. She glared at the man striding next to her. “You got me fired, you lousy son of a—”

  “I’d reconsider your line of thought and blame, Ms. Torres.” He continued to look ahead, not an ounce of emotion showing on his face. “You got yourself fired. Now, stay out of this case. If I catch a whiff of you being involved in it anywhere, I will not hesitate to find out every last thing about you and connect you to whatever dirty deeds you’re hiding.”

  “I am not hiding any dirty deeds.” Which was the God’s honest truth. She hadn’t stepped out of line in eight years. Or ever, really, but especially since Gabby had disappeared.

  His eyes met hers, a cold, cold stormy blue. “We’ll see.”

  She shivered involuntarily, because that look made her feel like she had done something wrong, which was so absurd.

  Even more absurd was the idea of her staying out of the case. She’d take what little information she’d gathered and follow it to the ends of the earth.

  Because she refused to believe her sister was dead. A body had never been found, and that Herman man had said...he’d said he keeps the girls. Not kept. Not got rid of. Keeps.

  Maybe Gabby wasn’t one of those girls, but it was possible. More than that, she thought. The Texas Rangers might be a mostly good bunch, but they had rules and regulations to follow. Natalie Torres did not.

  God help the man who tried to stop her.

  Chapter Two

  The phone ringing and vibrating on his nightstand jerked Vaughn out of a deep sleep. He cursed and answered it blearily. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good, but they always had to be answered.

  Much to his ex-wife’s constant complaints throughout the duration of their marriage.

  “Cooper,” he grumbled into the speaker.

  “You’re going to need to get out here.”

  He recognized his captain’s voice immediately. “Text the address.”

  “Yup.”

  Vaughn rubbed his hands over his face, then went straight to his closet where a row of work clothes hung, always a few pressed and ready to go. He never liked to be caught without clean and ironed clothes on the ready, even in the middle of the night. He looked at the clock as he dressed. Three fifteen.

  He strode through his house, gave the coffeemaker a wistful glance. Even though he always kept it ready to go, he didn’t have time to sit around waiting for it to brew. Not at three fifteen.

  With a stretch and a groan, he strapped on his gun and tried not to wonder if he was getting too old for this. Thirty-four was hardly too old. He had a lot of years to go before he could take a pension, but more...

  He had a lot of cases to solve before his conscience would let him leave. So, he needed to get at it.

  He got in his car, and when his phone chimed, he clicked the address Captain Dean had texted and started the GPS directions. It took about fifteen minutes to arrive at his destination, a small neighborhood a little outside the city that he knew was mainly rental houses. Single-storied brick buildings, a few split-levels. Modest homes at best, flat out run-down at worst.

  Fire trucks and police vehicles were parked around a burned-out and drowned shell of a house. Though it still smoked, the house had obviously been ravaged by the fire hours earlier.

  Vaughn stopped at the barricade, flashed his badge to the officer guarding the perimeter and then went in search of Captain Dean. When he found him, he was with Bennet. Vaughn’s uneasy dread grew.

  “What’ve we got?”

  “This is the hypnotist’s house,” Bennet said gravely.

  The dread in Vaughn’s gut hardened to a rock. The house was completely destroyed, which meant—

  “She’s fine. She wasn’t home, which is lucky for her, because someone was. Herman.”

  “Dead?”

  Captain Dean nodded. “He didn’t start and botch the fire, either, at least from what information I’ve been able to gather. We’ll have to wait to go over everything with the fire investigator once she’s done, but I think it got back to somebody Herman squealed. Body was dumped.”

  “The hypnotist? Where was she?”

  “With her mom,” Bennet offered, “who works at a gas station down on Clark. We’ve got guys going over surveillance, but so far she’s on the tape almost the entire night. She came home just after some neighbors called 9-1-1. She’s innocent.”

  Innocent? Maybe of this, but Natalie Torres was hardly innocent. The day was full of far too much weirdness for her to be innocent. “You sure about that?”

  “Cooper,” the captain intoned, censure in that one word. “Do you know the kinds of background checks we did on her when she got a contract with us? I know you don’t agree with it, but using a hypnotist to aid in witness questioning isn’t some random or careless decision. We have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it legal. She’s clean. Now she’s in danger.”

  Vaughn wasn’t certain he believed the first, but he knew the latter was fact.

  “Ideas, gentlemen?”

  “Well, she’ll need protection.” Bennet rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’d say that’s on us, and it’ll make certain nothing dirty’s going down.”

  “This is escalating.” Captain Dean shook his head gravely. “If it goes much further, it becomes less our business and more current crime’s business. We should be working with Homicide now. Cooper? What are you thinking?”

  Vaughn didn’t answer right away. He caught a glimpse of Ms. Torres standing next to a fireman. She had a blanket wrapped around her, and she was looking at her burned-to-ash house with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  He looked away. “We’ve got to get her out of here.” He didn’t particularly like the idea that came to him, but he didn’t have to like it. Bottom line, everyone else trusted this woman way too much, so if she was going to come under their protection, it needed to be his protection, so he could keep an eye on her.

  It couldn’t be anywhere near here. “My suggestion? Stevens works with Homicide, then maybe you put Griffen on it too. I take the woman up to the cabin in Guadalupe. I go over things there, keep her safe and make sure she’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s gonna necessitate a lot of paperwork,” Captain Dean grumbled.

  “She can’t stay in Austin. We’ve got to get her out of here. We all know it.”

  The captain sighed. “I’ll call the necessary people. I can’t argue with this being the best option. But, you know who is going to argue?” He pointed at Ms. Torres.

  Vaughn looked at her again. She wasn’t crying anymore. No, that angry expression that she’d leveled at him earlier today had taken over her face. He didn’t have to be close to remember what it looked like.

  Big dark eyes as shiny as the dark curls she’d pulled back from her face. The snarly curve to those sensuous lips and—

  No, there was no and. Not when it came to this woman.

  “She’ll agree,” Vaughn reassured the captain. He’d make sure of it.

  * * *

  WHEN RANGER JERK stepped next to her, Natalie didn’t bother to hide her utter disgust. “Well, thanks for getting to my house after it burned down. Add that to me losing my favorite job—also your fault. Would you like to, oh, I don’t know...” She wanted to
say something scathing about what else he could do to ruin her life, but...

  Everything she had was gone. Her house, every belonging, every memento. Worst of all, years’ worth of research and information she’d gathered on Gabby’s case. All gone. Everything she owned and loved gone except for her car and what she’d had in it.

  She tried to breathe through a sob, but she choked on it. The tears and the emotion and the enormity of it all caught in her throat, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from crying out.

  She’d been here for hours, and she couldn’t wrap her head around it. She hadn’t even been able to text her mom the full details because she just...

  How had this happened? Why had this happened?

  She sensed him move, and she hoped against hope he was walking away. That he wouldn’t say a word and make this whole nightmare worse. All of this was terrible, and she didn’t want Ranger Jerk rubbing it in or—worse—feeling sorry for her.

  But he didn’t disappear. She didn’t hear retreating footsteps as tears clouded her vision. No, he moved closer. She hadn’t thought much about this guy having any sort of conscience or empathy in him, but he put a big hand on her back, warm and steady.

  She swallowed, wiping at the tears. It wasn’t an overly familiar touch. Just his palm and fingers lightly flush with her upper back, but it was strong. It had a remarkable effect. A strange thread of calm wound through her pain.

  “This is shocking and painful,” he said in a low, reassuring voice. “There’s no point in trying to be hard. No one should have to go through this.”

  She sniffled, blinking the last of the tears out of her eyes. Oh, there’d be more to come, but for now she could swallow them down, blink them back. She stared at him, trying to work through the fact he’d spoken so nicely to her. He touched her. “Are you comforting me?”

  He grimaced. “Is that considered comfort? That’s terrible comfort.”

  She laughed through another sob. “Oh, God, and now you’re being funny.” Obviously she was a little delirious, because she was starting to wonder if Ranger Jerk wasn’t so terrible after all.

  Then she looked back at her house. Gone. All of it gone. There were rangers and police and firemen and all number of official-looking people striding about, talking in low voices. Around her house. Gone. All of it gone.

  Ranger Jerk could be reassuring, he could even be funny, but he couldn’t deny what was in front of them. “This was on purpose,” she said, her voice sounding flat and hopeless even in her own ears.

  He didn’t respond, but when she finally glanced at him, he nodded. His gaze was on the house too, that square jaw tensed tight enough to probably crack metal between his teeth. He made an impressive profile in the flashing lights and dark night. All angles and shadows, but there was a determination in his glare at the ruins of her house—something she’d never seen in all those other officers she’d talked to today, or eight years ago.

  Confidence. Certainty. A blazing determination to right this wrong—something she recognized because it matched her own.

  It bolstered her somehow. “That’s why you’re here. It’s about this morning.” She watched him, and finally those cool gray-blue eyes turned to her.

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here,” he replied, his voice still low, still matter-of-fact.

  Natalie had spent the past eight years learning how to deal with fear. The constancy of it, the lack of rationale behind it. But this was a new kind, and she didn’t know how to suppress the shudder that went through her body.

  “We’re going to protect you, Ms. Torres. This is directly related to the case we brought you in on, and as long as you agree to a few things, we can keep you safe. I promise you that.”

  It was an odd thing to feel some ounce of comfort from those words. Because she didn’t know him, and she really didn’t trust him. But somehow, she did trust that. He was a jerk, yes, but he was a by-the-book jerk.

  “What things do I need to agree to?” she asked. How much longer would her legs keep her up? She was exhausted. She’d come home after dropping her mom off at her apartment to find the neighbors in the streets and fire trucks blocking her driveway, and her house covered in either arcs of water or licks of flame.

  Then, she’d been whisked behind one of the big police SUVs, made not to look at her house burning to ash in front of her, while officer after officer asked her question after question.

  Oh, how she wanted to sleep. To curl up right on the ground and wake up and find this was all some kind of nightmare.

  But she’d wanted that and never got it too often to even indulge in the fantasy anymore. “Ranger J—” Oh, right, she shouldn’t be calling him that out loud. “Ranger Cooper, what do I need to agree to?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her misstep, but he couldn’t possibly guess what she’d meant to call him just from a misplaced j-sound.

  He pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants, looking so pressed and polished she wondered if he might be part robot.

  It wasn’t a particularly angry movement, sliding his hands easily into the folds of the fabric, and yet she thought the fact he would move or fidget in any way spoke to something. Something unpleasant.

  “You’re going to have to come with me,” he finally said, his tone flat and his face expressionless.

  “Go with you where?”

  He let out a sigh, and she got the sinking suspicion he didn’t like what was coming next any more than she was going to.

  “You need to get out of Austin. There isn’t time to mess around. Herman is dead. You’re in imminent danger. You agree to come with me, the fewer questions asked the better, and trust that I will keep you safe.”

  “Herman is... How? When? Wh—”

  “It isn’t important,” he said tonelessly, all that compassion she thought she’d caught a glimpse of clearly dead. “What’s important is your safety.”

  “But I...I didn’t do anything.”

  “You were there when Herman talked. That’s enough.”

  She tried to process all this. “Doesn’t that put you in danger too? And Ranger Stevens?”

  He shrugged. “That’s part and parcel with the job. We’re trained to deal with danger. You, ma’am, are not.”

  She wanted to bristle at that. Oh, she knew plenty about danger, but no, she wasn’t a ranger, or even a police officer. She didn’t carry a weapon, and as much as she’d lived with all the possibilities of the horrors of human nature haunting her for eight years, she didn’t know how to fight it.

  She only knew how to dissect it. How to want to find the truth in it. She needed...help. She needed to take it if only because losing her would likely kill her grandmother and mother like losing Gabby had likely killed Dad.

  Natalie swallowed at the panic in her throat. “My family? Are they safe? It’s only my mother and my grandmother, but...”

  “We’ll talk with different agencies to keep them protected, as well. For the time being, it doesn’t look like they’d be in any danger, but we’ll keep our eye on the situation.”

  She nodded, trying to breathe. Mom would hate that, just as she hated all police. She’d hate it as much as she hated Natalie working for the Texas Rangers, but Natalie couldn’t quite agree with Mom’s hate.

  Oh, she’d hated any and all law enforcement for a while, but she’d tirelessly tried to find her own answers, and she knew how frustrating it could be. She also knew men like Ranger Cooper, as off-putting and as much of a jerk as he was, took their jobs seriously. They tried, and when they failed, it affected them.

  She’d seen sorrow and guilt in too many officers’ eyes to count.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said, her voice a ragged, abused thing.

  His eyes widened, and he turned fully to her. “You will?” He didn’t bother to hide his s
urprise.

  She was a little surprised herself, but it would get her the thing she wanted more than anything else in the world. Information. “I will come with you and follow whatever your office suggests in order to keep me safe. On one condition.”

  The surprise easily morphed into his normal scowl of disdain. “You’re being protected, Ms. Torres. You don’t get to have conditions.”

  “I want to know about the case. I want to know what I’m running from.”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “You’re taking me ‘away from Austin’ to protect me. I don’t even know you.”

  He gave her a once-over, and she at once knew he didn’t trust her. While she was sure he was the kind of man who would protect her anyway, his distrust grated. So, she held her ground, emotionally wrung out and exhausted. She stood there and accepted his distrustful perusal.

  “I’ll see what information I’m allowed to divulge to you, but you’re going to have to come down to the office right now to get everything squared away. We’ll be leaving the minute we have it all figured out with legal.”

  “Will we?”

  “You don’t have to do it my way, Ms. Torres, but I can guarantee you no one’s way is better than mine.”

  She wouldn’t take that guarantee for a million dollars, but she’d take a chance. A chance for information. If she was going to lose everything, she was darn well going to get closer to finding Gabby out of it.

  “All right, Ranger Cooper. We’ll do it your way.” For now.

  Chapter Three

  Vaughn was exhausted, but he swallowed the yawn and focused on the long, winding road ahead of him.

  Natalie dozed in the passenger seat, making only the random soft sleeping noise. Vaughn didn’t look—not once—he focused.

  The midday sun reflected against the road, creating the illusion of a sparkling ribbon of moving water. They still had another three hours to go to get to the mountains and his little cabin. Which meant he’d spent the past four hours talking himself out of all his second thoughts.