Ranch Hideout

by Sandra Robbins

  SPECIAL AGENT by Valerie Hansen

  BOUNTY HUNTER by Lynette Eason

  BODYGUARD by Shirlee McCoy

  TRACKER by Lenora Worth

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  Guardian

  by Terri Reed

  PROLOGUE

  The daylight broke over the horizon of the Los Angeles industrial district and muted morning light slashed through the high windows of the large two-floor warehouse. FBI agent Leo Gallagher pressed his back to the wall inside the cavernous structure’s south entrance. The air was cool, but heavy with a mix of anticipation and vigilance.

  His heart rate increased, not much, but enough that he took a calming breath. He tightened his hold on the leash of his canine partner, a chocolate Labrador named True.

  The open floor plan of the bottom level was filled with containers and pallets that provided too many hiding places. That could be a problem. Shadows lurked above and in the recesses of the corners. No one said this job was easy. Far from it, and sweat beaded on his forehead behind his helmet.

  Almost time? Leo glanced at fellow FBI agent Jake Morrow and his canine, a Belgian Malinois named Buddy.

  Behind his tactical face guard, Jake nodded and signaled for Leo and True to proceed into the murky depths of the purported hideout of the notorious Dupree syndicate, the criminal organization that the elite FBI Tactical K-9 Unit had been working around the clock to bring down for months.

  But every time the team got close, the crime boss, Reginald Dupree, and his uncle and second in command, Angus, managed to escape.

  Not going to happen again. The first time could have been coincidence, but after the second and third instances, he knew something else was going on. That was why Leo’s boss had been tight-lipped about this raid. No one outside the tight circle of the team knew of today’s operation in case there was a leak somewhere in the Bureau.

  The Tactical K-9 Unit was a special, classified branch of the FBI that had settled in a nondescript building in downtown Billings, Montana. The secret nature of the team’s cases needed anonymity to function. They worked across the country, under the radar, to solve tough crimes and deliver swift justice.

  The thought of someone they knew and trusted double-crossing them burned, and Leo hoped that wasn’t the case, but lives were at stake, either way. He took a silent step. True stayed at his side.

  Eerie silence scraped along Leo’s nerves. The anonymous tip they’d received, sending the team to this location, had guaranteed them that Reginald and Angus would be here. Plums ripe for the taking.

  Across the expanse of open space, Leo saw fellow team member Harper Prentiss, along with Star, her German shepherd, and their boss, special agent in charge Max West and his canine, a boxer by the name of Opal, slip through another door and climb a staircase to the second floor.

  A strange itch at the back of Leo’s neck had him tensing. He’d been in this situation many times before, but this didn’t feel right.

  Glancing upward at the second-story balcony that rimmed the edges of the warehouse, he narrowed his gaze on the office doors. That itch worsened. Were Reginald and Angus Dupree up there? Waiting? Planning an ambush? If so, his team members would be in trouble.

  Needing to provide his boss and fellow agent cover, Leo gestured to Jake. Morrow gave him the thumbs-up sign. In tandem they carefully moved farther into the warehouse, not wanting to draw attention to their presence.

  True’s ears perked up. The scruff of his neck rose. A deep growl emitted from his throat.

  Breath stalling, Leo paused as he scanned the perimeter for whatever threat his partner sensed.

  Then total pandemonium broke out.

  Four men with automatic weapons appeared from around the sides of the two containers. A barrage of gunfire erupted. The deafening noise bounced off the walls.

  Leo’s heart revved into overdrive. Adrenaline surged. His pulse pounded in his ears as he dropped to one knee to return fire.

  “Down!” Leo shouted to True. The dog dropped to his belly.

  “Take cover!” Jake yelled.

  Leo grabbed True’s collar and tugged him behind a large container.

  Something metal hit the concrete floor and a hissing filled the air, followed by a cloudy haze. Leo gritted his teeth and fought past the stinging in his eyes and nose from the pepper-infused smoke sneaking beneath the face shield on his helmet.

  The sound of a dog’s yelp jolted through Leo. His heart slammed against his ribs. True! He quickly checked the dog’s taut body for injury. None.

  It had to be Buddy. Leo searched the gloom for Jake and his dog. He couldn’t see either one. Had they retreated? Was Buddy hurt? Jake?

  Leo flattened himself on the ground next to True, then tapped the canine on the flank. Together, they scuttled backward toward the door, keeping their heads down and out of the line of fire. A squad of Los Angeles police officers, dressed in tactical gear, filed past them.

  With the arrival of backup, relief flooded through Leo.

  Outside, he found Buddy lying on the ground, blood oozing from a wound in his hindquarters. Leo’s stomach dropped. He knelt beside the dog, tore off his glove and used it as a compress against Buddy’s injury. The dog whimpered.

  “Where’s Jake?” Leo rasped, wishing the dog could speak.

  The whir of rotors close by had him jerking to his feet.

  Buddy barked and, in a burst of energy, jumped up and took off, leading Leo and True around another building just as a black helicopter with no markings lifted from the ground. Buddy whined and continued to bark, his agitation clear as he sniffed a puddle of blood near where the helicopter had sat. Jake’s blood?

  A vise tightened around Leo’s heart. He shaded his eyes but couldn’t see inside the tinted windows of the bird as it disappeared from view. This wasn’t one of theirs. That meant...

  “Gallagher!”

  Leo turned to see his boss escorting Reginald Dupree from the warehouse while other officers brought out several of Dupree’s henchmen.

  Agent Harper Prentiss jogged over. “Angus Dupree escaped but we got Reginald.” She tilted her head. “You okay?”

  “No.” His voice sounded ragged, the way he felt inside. He glanced at Buddy. The dog’s distress tore at Leo. “Jake’s been taken.”

  The team had captured the head honcho of the Dupree crime syndicate, but they’d lost a good agent in the process.

  Guilt ate through Leo’s gut like acid. He’d failed his team. He’d failed Jake. With fists clenched, Leo vowed he’d track down Angus Dupree and rescue his comrade, if it was the last thing he did on this earth.

  ONE

  “Mommy, where are the fishies?”

  “Hey, be careful, buddy. Don’t slip off the rock.” Heart lurching, Alicia Duncan grabbed her son, Charlie, by the back of his green life vest. If he leaned over any farther, he would go headlong into Wyoming’s Blackthorn River. His fishing pole clattered against the outcropping of smooth rocks, where they’d plopped down to fish. The exact place she’d fished from as a kid and teen. “Hang on to your pole, sweetie.”

  Heat bounced off the stones and reflected off the river water from the unseasonably warm April morning sun, making perspiration break out at her nape beneath her long dark hair. It was a beautiful spring day for spending time outdoors with her son in the middle of Wyoming’s northwestern mountain range. The clear, smog-free air smelled sweet with the scent of ponderosa pines. So different from city life. A welcome change.

  Alicia had always loved the river. About five miles downstream, the lazy flow of water cut a path through the rural town of Settler’s Valley, where she’d grown up. There was something soothing, comforting ev
en, about the way the mountain runoff filled the riverbed.

  Especially in this particular area, where the river pooled into a deep canyon with high cliffs across the bank and more cliffs a little ways upstream. The water was deep enough here that she and her friends would jump off the cliffs into the river. Those had been the days when her husband had been her boyfriend and had promised her the world.

  She sighed wistfully, as the bittersweet memories washed over her.

  The summer after high school she’d married local football hero Jeff Duncan. She’d believed his promise. She’d believed him.

  How innocent she’d been...

  She and Jeff had escaped their small-town life for the city of Tacoma, Washington. He’d been her hero, both personally, as the love of her life and the father of her child, and professionally, as a highly decorated police officer. But nothing had been as it seemed.

  Now eight years later, she was back home in Wyoming. A widow, raising her son and caring for her elderly father.

  Oh, and let’s not forget, licking her wounds. She hadn’t even known until after the funeral that her marriage had been a sham. That Jeff hadn’t been the man she thought he was.

  Never again would she fall for charm and slick promises.

  She shook her hands as if somehow the motion would relieve the restlessness that seemed to plague her these days.

  “But I want to catch a fish,” Charlie grumbled. Sunlight reflected off the water and lightened the blue of his eyes, shaped exactly like his father’s. She could see Jeff in the jut of Charlie’s chin as well. Only on Charlie it looked good, not arrogant, the way it had on Jeff.

  Okay, she was being uncharitable. There’d been a time when she’d loved her late husband. When he’d been everything to her. But that was before.

  Alicia sighed and ruffled Charlie’s thick dark hair, which he got from her gene pool. They’d been out fishing for over an hour without even a nibble. In the world of fishing, an hour was nothing, but with a three-year-old it was more than enough. So much for trout for dinner tonight. “I know, sweetie. They don’t seem to be biting today.”

  She reeled in the lure on the fishing rod she’d borrowed from her father’s collection. A fat worm still dangled from the hook. “How about we call it a day and treat ourselves to rainbow sherbet?”

  “Yay! Sherbet.” Charlie swung his legs in anticipation. His rubber boots slapped against the rock. She helped her little boy to his feet. He stood with his back to the water. She kept a hand on his shoulder in case he took a step backward.

  The sound of a powerboat echoed off the walls of the stone cliffs rising up on the far side of the river. A boat, traveling downstream, rounded the bend into the mouth of the canyon. Alicia didn’t pay the noise any attention as she gathered their fishing gear.

  The motor sputtered to a halt. Silence echoed off the walls of stone. She glanced up to see a sleek, fiberglass sport boat floating in the middle of the river.

  That was a little odd. The boat looked more like one used for waterskiing, not fishing.

  A large man lifted a slim woman into his arms. Her head fell back, her long red hair cascaded in loose waves over the side of the boat and her arms hung limp at her sides. Was she asleep?

  At this distance, about the length of a football field, Alicia couldn’t tell. She frowned as her pulse sped up. What was he doing with the woman?

  Without hesitation the man tossed the woman into the water. Her body splashed and then disappeared beneath the surface.

  Alicia gasped and held her breath. Unwilling to believe what she’d just seen, she prayed the woman would come bursting to the surface. She didn’t.

  Shock punched Alicia in the stomach. She took a deep breath, and then another. She’d just witnessed a murder. Or rather, the woman was probably already dead and the man was disposing of her body.

  A cold shiver of fear slithered down Alicia’s spine. She glanced at Charlie, who studied a bug crawling on a nearby rock, and was grateful to realize he hadn’t witnessed the horrifying scene.

  When she returned her gaze to the boat, the killer shaded his eyes and locked his gaze on hers.

  “Oh, no,” Alicia breathed out in a panic.

  The powerboat’s engine roared to life, spurring Alicia into action. Her and Charlie’s only chance was to get to the shelter of the forest along the riverbank and make their way to the marina, about a half mile away. She knew this part of the river like the back of her hand. She and her school friends had spent almost every summer day along the shores of the Blackthorn River.

  “Charlie, we need to go,” she urged. “Now.”

  “Why, Mommy?”

  This was one time she couldn’t explain her rationale. She hated when parents of the kids she taught gave their kids commands without explaining the reasons why the child needed to comply. “Because I said so” wasn’t an acceptable form of communication in Alicia’s book.

  But right now she didn’t have the mental or emotional wherewithal to use her words, let alone explain that she’d just witnessed a man dump a woman into the river and now said man was coming after them. She needed Charlie to do as she asked. “Charlie, please, do as I ask. Get up.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. The sport boat was closing the distance. Was that a gun the man held in his hand?

  Terror fastened around her throat like a noose. Please, Lord, protect us!

  She hooked her hobo bag with one hand, slipped the strap over her shoulder to hang across her body and grabbed Charlie around the waist with her other arm and drew him to her chest, using her own body as a shield against the man with the gun.

  “Mommy!” Charlie protested. “Too tight.”

  “Sorry, honey,” she muttered but didn’t lessen her hold as she stepped carefully off the rock, leaving behind the fishing gear. Dad would be irritated, but she didn’t have the time to grab the poles and tackle box. She’d have to come back later, when it was safe.

  She slipped slightly in the soft dirt along the shore, but the bottoms of her boots dug in and kept her upright. She was thankful she’d worn her hiking boats instead of the deck shoes she’d almost put on this morning. With the roar of the powerboat drawing closer, she ran into the woods and headed south. There wasn’t a clear trail, but she didn’t hesitate. She knew her way around these woods and just hoped whoever was on the boat didn’t.

  The sudden quiet sent a fresh swell of terror hurtling through her. Had the man reached the shore? Behind her, something crashed through the forest. A loud pop and a thud in the tree to her right startled her. Debris spit from the tree trunk. The killer was shooting at them!

  Using every ounce of strength she possessed, she forced her legs to pump faster. She zigzagged through the trees and scrub brush. Jeff had always said a moving target was harder to hit, especially an erratic one.

  “Hang on to me, Charlie,” she said softly as she hunkered down, trying to make them as small a target as possible.

  She broke through the trees to the marina’s gravel parking lot. She ran down the parking lane, intending to head straight to the boathouse for help. But her car was right there. The forceful thought to get away, to put as much distance between her and the killer, pounded inside her head.

  She jammed her hand into her hobo bag, and her fingers curled around her key fob. She pressed the button that unlocked the doors and ducked behind a car parked two spaces from her own white all-wheel-drive hatchback. She needed to catch her breath. To think.

  Charlie’s hands grasped her face. “Scared, Mommy.”

  “Yes, I know, sweetie. A bad man is after us.” Staring into her son’s trusting gaze, Alicia vowed she’d do whatever it took to keep her son safe. “So I need you to be very quiet, okay?”

  The skidding of feet on the gravel echoed through the still air. The killer had reached the parki
ng lot. She shuddered with dread.

  Please, let him think we went to the boathouse, Alicia prayed.

  She scooted closer to the car so that her feet were blocked by the tires in case he looked beneath the undercarriages of the row of vehicles hoping to pinpoint where they were. Terror ricocheted through her and she held her breath. As if sensing her fear, Charlie buried his face in the side of her neck and grabbed fistfuls of her shirt.

  Listening intently, she made out the crunch of heavy steps on the loose rock as the killer moved closer. She tilted her head and closed her eyes. He was coming down the lane to her right. Adjusting her grip on Charlie, she edged to the left and around the back of the vehicle.

  In a low crouch, she risked sprinting to the rear end of the next vehicle. She pressed her back to the tailgate of a truck and waited. After a moment, she darted to her car. Carefully, she opened the back passenger door far enough for her and Charlie to climb inside.

  Pulling the door closed but not latching it for fear the click would alert the killer, she squatted awkwardly on the floor and set Charlie on the seat. She quickly undid his life vest and set it aside. “Charlie, I need you to get into your seat and buckle up, okay?”

  He nodded solemnly, his eyes big and his lower lip quivering. She hated scaring him like this, but there was nothing to be done. They needed to get away.

  She stayed crouched behind the driver’s seat until he was secured in his car seat. She grabbed the life vest and pressed it to his chest. “Hold on to this, okay?”

  It wouldn’t stop a bullet but she had nothing else to provide a barrier.

  Taking a deep breath, she squeezed herself across the middle console and climbed into the driver’s seat. She slunk down in the seat and could barely see over the dashboard. Adrenaline surged as she saw the back of the killer’s head as he lumbered toward the boathouse. She hesitated with her hand on the key in the ignition. The second she fired up the engine, he’d know where they were.

  When the killer reached the boathouse and disappeared inside, she sprang into action. She started the car, threw the gearshift into Reverse and stepped on the gas. Heart in her throat, she barely managed to brake before hitting the car parked in the opposite space. She spun the wheel, put the vehicle into Drive and stomped her foot on the gas pedal. The car tires spun and found traction, and they hurtled forward.