Cowboy Behind the Badge

by Delores Fossen

  She only shook her head, not budging, so Tucker moved between her and the road just in case the gunman was stupid enough to make a repeat appearance.

  “What do we do now?” Laine whispered.

  Only then did Tucker realize just how shaky she was. It’d been a bad morning, what with seeing Dawn’s body and then this. Sadly, Tucker couldn’t even assure her the worst was over.

  “We wait and keep investigating,” he answered. “But I’d rather you do your waiting inside.”

  She followed his gaze to the road. No one was there other than some ranch hands milling around, but someone could easily come driving up.

  Someone like the killer.

  If that person wasn’t already on the porch with them. Either way, Tucker wanted her inside. She nodded, obviously ready to do that, but then she stopped when his phone rang. Colt again.

  “I’ll bet you’re ready for some good news,” Colt said, and the moment Tucker heard that, he put it on speaker so Laine could hear, too. Yeah, he was ready for something good. “Gene Buford, the gunman we have in custody at the jail, says he’s ready to make a plea deal.”

  “What kind of plea deal?” Tucker asked.

  “Says he’ll give us information about Dawn in exchange for immunity and placement in witness protection.”

  “About Dawn and not the person who set all of this up?”

  “Just Dawn,” Colt answered. “Anything you don’t know about her yet?”

  “Probably. But this guy tried to kill us,” Tucker mumbled. So, he wasn’t sure he wanted the guy to walk, no matter what kind of info he provided. Still, he wanted to hear what the idiot had to say.

  “How soon can you have him brought over from the jail?” Tucker asked.

  “Soon. I can call there now.”

  Good. The jail was just up the block from the sheriff’s office, but it still would take some time to arrange for a guard to have Buford brought over for questioning. The sheriff’s office did have a holding cell in case the timing didn’t work out so that Tucker could speak to him right away. If necessary, Tucker could go to the jail, but he preferred to do this at the sheriff’s office so he could kill two birds with one stone.

  “I’ll talk to the gunman when I come in to interview Darren,” Tucker told Reed. “See you in about a half hour if I can get things settled here that fast.”

  Tucker ended the call to see how things were about to play out with Hague, but he, too, had finished his call and was glaring at Tucker again. He slammed his phone shut and jammed it back into his pocket.

  “Go inside,” Tucker whispered to Laine. “Check on the babies.”

  That got her moving. Good thing, too, because Tucker thought this situation with Hague might turn even uglier than it already was.

  “A plea deal, huh?” Hague made a sound that could have meant anything. “Maybe that means this situation with Dawn will be over soon.”

  “Maybe.” And Tucker left it at that. He wasn’t exactly pleased that Hague had overheard that conversation, but something like that wouldn’t stay a secret for long, especially since the district attorney would have to be brought into any plea-deal talk.

  “My supervisor wants to talk to me,” Hague grumbled a moment later. “So help me, you’d better not have done anything to compromise my job.”

  “And you’d better not have done anything to compromise those newborns’ safety.”

  Hague’s mouth tightened, and he started down the steps. “I’ll try to find Rhonda, and I’ll tell her to get in touch with you so you can hear it from her own lips that I had nothing to do with her kidnapping or the baby farms.”

  “You said you didn’t know where she was,” Tucker reminded him.

  He threw open the door and looked at Tucker from over the roof of the car. “I don’t, but I can call some of her friends on the drive back to my office. When you’ve heard from her, I want you to back off. I’m not the only one with a conflict of interest here, Sergeant McKinnon.”

  Since Tucker already knew that, and since he was more than thankful just to put an end to this—even a temporary one—he turned and went inside. Laine was waiting for him by the door, and he wasn’t sure who made the first move or even how it happened, but she ended up in his arms.

  Strange that this kept happening, although it shouldn’t have. Even a hug of comfort was a Texas-sized reminder that Laine was the one in his arms. Nothing good could come of this.

  Well, nothing reasonable anyway.

  Maybe it was because every inch of him was on edge that he even thought of holding her for stress relief. Yeah, for a second or two, it was relief, but what always followed were some crystal clear reminders of why they shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

  The heat between them.

  The bad blood, too. Hard to hang on to bad blood, though, when the blasted attraction kept getting in the way.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, her breath and body still trembling.

  Definitely something he’d keep to himself. Tucker went with the topic that should be on his mind.

  “If I’m wrong about Hague, I’ll apologize,” Tucker mumbled. He truly hoped he was wrong about the social worker.

  He was already battling a major suspect, Darren, without adding Hague to the mix. Especially since Hague could eventually get his hands on the newborns. Not by kidnapping them, either, but with that dang court order. Of course, Darren could take them, too, if it turned out he was the father. Still, it would be hard to claim his babies if he was sitting in a jail cell for killing their mother.

  “You need to get ready for your meeting with Darren,” she reminded him, easing away.

  He nodded. Didn’t move. Hated that he felt the loss of her body heat.

  Really?

  He had to deal with this now. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything to do other than stand there and mentally whine about her body heat. Or her scent. Or the stupidity of wanting her right back in his arms again.

  “Where are the babies?” he asked. Yet another subject he should be dwelling on.

  She fluttered her fingers toward the stairs. “Rosalie and Mary put them in the crib. They’d just had their bottles before Hague got here, and according to Rosalie, newborns usually sleep after they eat.”

  “Not much different from the rest of their day, then. They sleep all the time. Well, except at night.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted. “Fatherhood not suiting you much?”

  Tucker found himself frowning before he even realized he was going to do it. “I get that a lot. I’m not sure it’s all warranted.”

  “Really?” Laine said, with far more surprise than was necessary. “You’re a player.”

  Again he frowned and started for the downstairs office he’d been using. Laine followed right behind him. “I’m not a player. I’m just not interested in anything long-term.”

  She chuckled. “Which more or less qualifies you as a player.”

  He shrugged, wrestling with another frown. “Haven’t heard of you trying to settle down with any one particular guy since you split with Darren.”

  Of course, he hadn’t heard of her sleeping around, either, which was essentially what she’d just accused him of doing.

  Tucker couldn’t deny it, so he shut up and hoped she’d move on to a different subject.

  “I’ve hit a nerve,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  So much for her moving on. So much for him shutting up, too. He just kept blathering. “I doubt that. Well, you may be sorry that I’m giving you the stink eye, but I doubt you’re sorry you brought it up. I know you don’t approve of my lifestyle.”

  “It’s not that.” She hesitated, shook her head, mumbled something he didn’t catch. “How many real kisses have you had?”

  �
�Excuse me?” Tucker felt another frown coming on. Possibly more blathering, too.

  “A real kiss,” she repeated. “And I don’t mean those unzip me kisses with your conquests from the Outlaw Bar. I mean real honest-to-goodness kisses that you feel in more than just one part of your body?”

  Okay, so Laine had moved on from semisafe conversation about relationships to this. Whatever this was. Well, if she wanted to hold a mirror up to his face, she was about to get one turned right back on her.

  “How many?” Tucker repeated. “Two. One was with you right there in the kitchen at my granddaddy’s house. Yeah, we were just kids, but trust me, it was real.”

  She swallowed hard, and her forehead bunched up. “And the second kiss?”

  “This one.” Before he could talk himself out of it, Tucker slid his hand around the back of Laine’s neck, hauled her to him and did the one thing he was pretty sure he shouldn’t do.

  He kissed her.

  For real.

  There it was. The slam of her body heat and taste all at once. Yeah, he remembered it from all those years before, but it was even better now. Of course it was, because if it hadn’t been, Tucker might have stood a chance of giving this particular mistake a fast ending. As it was, fast didn’t even appear to be an option. Not to his fired-up body, anyway.

  He dragged her closer and made things even worse by deepening the kiss. That taste set him on fire, and the rest of her didn’t help cool him down, either. Probably because Laine did some dragging of her own, pulling him closer and closer until they were plastered against each other. He could feel parts of her that he had no right to feel.

  But he did, anyway.

  Her breasts against his chest. Her sex close to his. Her taste, her breath. Everything.

  It was too much to feel all at once. Too much to stop, too, with parts of him already begging for more. Much more. Like them naked on a bed. That’s why he was a little surprised when Laine managed to stop.

  She stepped back again, her gaze meeting his, and he saw the same What the heck did we just do? expression on her face that was no doubt on his. So much for holding up a bloomin’ mirror to her face.

  Now he’d be lucky if he could walk.

  “How bad are you regretting that?” she asked, sliding her tongue over her bottom lip. That simple gesture caused his body to clench and beg for more.

  “As much as you are,” Tucker settled for saying.

  She shook her head, pushed her hair from her face. “Good.”

  But she didn’t clarify what that good meant. Nor did she move too far from him. “Remind me not to play a dangerous game like that with you again.”

  Right. Maybe he should tell the sun not to rise, too. He might have better success there. “You think a reminder will fix this?”

  “This?” she questioned.

  The heat. The need. And even the little niggling feeling that it had been more than a blasted kiss. Which it couldn’t have been, so he darn sure wasn’t about to describe it to her. “I’ll explain it if you’ll explain your good.”

  Though he had a pretty solid idea of that good, too. Like him, Laine wanted one of them to stay sane during all this close-quarters stuff.

  Best of luck with that.

  Laine immediately backed up. Smart woman. They were indeed playing a dangerous game, and Tucker couldn’t be certain they both wouldn’t play another round the next time their guards were down.

  His phone rang, yanking him back to his senses. Not exactly where he wanted to be at first, but seeing the name on the screen, he mentally adjusted.

  “It’s Rhonda Wesson,” he told Laine.

  He doubted this was a coincidence. Doubted, too, that Hague hadn’t known exactly where she was, because obviously he’d managed to get in touch with his cousin shortly after driving away from the ranch.

  “Sergeant McKinnon,” she greeted. “My cousin said I should call you.”

  He waited for her to verify that Hague was innocent and had nothing to do with the baby farms.

  She didn’t do that.

  “Are you all right?” Tucker asked.

  Rhonda didn’t say anything for several seconds. “No. I need to talk to you. I need help.”

  “What’s wrong?” he couldn’t ask fast enough.

  “I’m in hiding,” Rhonda answered. “Because someone’s trying to kill me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Laine watched through the observation glass as Tucker finished up his interview with Darren. Her ex hadn’t said anything remotely incriminating and had instead stuck to his broken record claim that he was innocent in Dawn’s death.

  And maybe he was.

  Still, Laine was glad that Tucker was being thorough with this interview. If he cleared Darren as a suspect, and the DNA results came back proving the babies were his, then Darren would walk away with them as fast as he could. He’d be doing it legally, too.

  Hide them. Protect them, Dawn had said to Laine just seconds before those men had gunned her down, and Laine intended to do everything she could to carry out the woman’s dying request.

  It was odd that Tucker had taken on the same mission. Not just the investigation. He wouldn’t have let go of that. But he also didn’t seem ready to let go of the babies. He was definitely not the old Tucker.

  Well, at least not in that way.

  The kiss had certainly been evidence of the charmer cowboy who’d coaxed plenty of women into his bed. Laine had to be careful that the same didn’t happen to her. The last thing she needed was to be another notch on his rodeo belt.

  Even if that kiss had made her think differently.

  For a few heated moments anyway, it’d caused her common sense to take a serious nosedive. Best to avoid future kissing so she could keep a clear head. Too bad just a mental warning wouldn’t be enough.

  Not even close.

  She had to figure out a way to put some physical distance between her and Tucker. Without sacrificing the safety of the babies, of course.

  She and Tucker had left them at the ranch with Colt, his father, Rayanne, Rosalie and Mary. In addition, Tucker had put some of the ranch hands on alert. They weren’t trained guards by any means, but they were all armed. Hopefully their presence would prevent the missing attacker from trying to get on the grounds.

  Maybe Tucker and she would get some other help with that, too.

  Just up the hall in one of the other interview rooms, the gunman that’d already been arrested, Gene Buford, was waiting with his lawyer to talk to Tucker about a possible plea deal in exchange for information about Dawn.

  “Are we finally finished here?” Darren said, his voice stern enough to snap Laine’s attention back to the interview.

  “For now.” Tucker stood when Darren did, and they faced each other across a gray metal table. “I’ll let you know about the GSR test.”

  Darren mumbled something she didn’t catch and scowled, clearly not happy. Tucker had swabbed Darren’s hands for gunshot residue—something that could have perhaps linked him to Dawn’s shooting.

  GSR alone wouldn’t be enough to charge him, since Darren could always say he’d fired a gun elsewhere. It wasn’t that unusual for a rancher to have to shoot a rattler or some other predatory animal that’d strayed onto the property. But the GSR might cast enough suspicion that Tucker could get a court order to examine Darren’s bank account and maybe get a search warrant for his house.

  Darren and Tucker were still in a glaring match when Reed appeared in the doorway of the observation room.

  “Rhonda Wesson just arrived,” Reed told her.

  Laine stepped out, not sure she would even recognize the woman. She hadn’t been part of the rescue of the women and babies from the farm where Rhonda had been held, but there had been some photos of her in the
news. Laine remembered a scraggly looking pregnant woman dressed in green scrubs.

  Which was very unlike the woman she saw now.

  It took Laine a moment to connect the tall blonde to that rescued woman.

  Definitely no scrubs today. Rhonda was wearing dress pants and a white top. Not a strand of her hair was out of place. She seemed more suited to being in a boardroom than to being in hiding, but there was concern in her cool green eyes as they swept around the sheriff’s office and landed on Laine.

  “You must be Dr. Braddock,” Rhonda said, coming toward her with her hand extended. From the looks of it, she’d recently had a manicure.

  “Call me Laine.” She shook hands with her, and even though Rhonda held eye contact for several seconds, her attention drifted to the closed doors of the interview rooms.

  “Excuse me,” Rhonda said when she noticed that Laine’s gaze had followed hers. “Police stations make me nervous. Actually, being anywhere in public right now makes me feel that way. I don’t want to stay long. I just want to talk to you and Sergeant McKinnon.”

  Laine was about to assure her that would happen just as one of the interview room doors opened, and Tucker stepped out. Darren and his lawyer were right behind him.

  “You need to get off this witch hunt,” Darren snapped, looking at Laine, and then at Rhonda. He barely spared her a glance.

  Rhonda had a much stronger reaction.

  She stepped behind Tucker, her attention fixed on Darren. “I didn’t know he’d be here.”

  “I was interviewing him,” Tucker explained.

  “Railroading me,” Darren corrected. “Is that why you’re here, Rhonda? You planning to railroad me, too?”

  “You know each other?” Tucker asked.

  “Know her? She tried to milk money from me just a few weeks ago.”

  “I didn’t,” Rhonda insisted. “I just wanted to talk to you about Dawn, and I wanted to see if you were the person following me.” She paused, swallowed hard. “Dawn was terrified of you.”