The Texas Lawman's Last Stand

by Delores Fossen

  Well, he hoped she had anyway.

  “She’s here,” Tolivar insisted. He fired another glance over his shoulder. “And you’re to release her to my custody immediately.”

  “I’m not going with you,” Mattie insisted right back.

  Bo couldn’t fault her for speaking up, but he would have preferred to take care of this himself. He could have sent Tolivar on his merry way and then five minutes later done the same for Mattie. Now he was in some kind of jurisdictional contest with a federal agent.

  Or was he?

  Tolivar had apparently been an agent at one time, but Bo had no idea if that were still true.

  Bo kept his gun ready and took out his phone again. He called Sergeant O’Malley and asked for verification. Before Tolivar could give him an outraged look, Bo used his phone to click the man’s picture, and he fired the image off to O’Malley.

  “Just double-checking,” Bo remarked.

  “Check all you want, but the bottom line is that Mattie Collier is coming with me. She’s in danger and needs protection.”

  Mattie moved to Bo’s side. “Don’t make me laugh. The closest I’ve come to dying was when I was in your agency’s custody. I entered the program voluntarily, and now I’m voluntarily leaving it.”

  She glanced at Bo, and the confidence that had been in her voice wasn’t in her eyes. Those green eyes looked to be on the verge of spilling some tears. She also seemed to be asking for his help. Great.

  Now they were playing allies, when both of them knew they were enemies at heart.

  “You can’t leave the program,” Tolivar insisted. “You’d be dead within an hour.”

  “I’ve done pretty well on my own for the past nineteen months.”

  “But there’s a new threat.” Tolivar huffed and switched his attention back to Bo. “You have to convince her to come with me.”

  “Maybe I will if you can explain how you knew she was here.”

  The arrogance returned to his lean expression, but then he glanced around them again. “Look, it’s not a good idea to be standing out here in the open.”

  “Then talk fast,” Bo suggested. “Because I’m not letting you in unless I have confirmation you’re who you say you are.” He glanced down at his phone. “No confirmation yet. So start talking.”

  Tolivar’s mouth twisted, and he mumbled some profanity. “We’ve been keeping tabs on Mattie. And you.”

  Bo went still. “Me?”

  The marshal nodded. “We were able to follow Mattie the day she went into labor. We were in the process of dispatching someone to return her to our custody and stay with her while she was in the hospital. Then the hostage situation happened, and we couldn’t get to her.”

  “You knew I was at the hospital?” Mattie asked, her voice trembling a little now.

  “We knew.” No tremble for Tolivar, but he certainly wasn’t as cocky as he had been earlier. Especially when his gaze came back to Bo. “We got access to the security feed, and we deduced that Mattie had been with or near your wife.”

  Bo let each word sink in.

  “We caught just a glimpse of Mattie when she was sneaking out of the San Antonio Maternity Hospital,” Tolivar continued.

  “How?” Bo demanded. “Because I studied the surveillance tapes, and I didn’t see when or where she left the building.”

  Tolivar glanced away. “I was there, and we had several agents watching. We thought she might try to get out before anyone could find her. And we were right. We got just a glimpse of her coming out of the service entrance.”

  Bo shook his head. “The cops were watching that entrance.”

  “Not by then. The gunman had just driven off with a hostage, and most of the other officers, including you, had raced into the building.”

  Later, Bo would make this moron give an official statement as to why a federal marshal had seen a possible witness escape and hadn’t alerted the police.

  “As I said, we got just a glimpse of Mattie as she was leaving, but we lost her soon afterward,” Tolivar added. “And because we didn’t know where she’d gone, we kept looking for flags. You, Lieutenant, were one of those flags.”

  That hung in the air a few seconds before it hit Bo like a heavyweight’s fist. Mattie had a similar reaction, because she gasped and elbowed her way in front of Bo.

  “Are you saying—” But she couldn’t finish.

  Bo, however, could finish. He pushed Mattie back behind him and grabbed on to Tolivar’s lapels, pulling the man closer so that Bo was right in his face.

  “You knew Mattie had been in the room with my wife?” Bo clarified, though he couldn’t stop the anger from raging through him.

  “We deduced it after reading through all the notes of the investigation and eyewitness reports.” Tolivar’s breathing suddenly became uneven. “We knew Mattie and your wife had been in labor rooms next to each other and that they disappeared before the gunmen could round them up with the other hostages. We didn’t know exactly what went on between the women, but we thought that eventually Mattie would come to you. Maybe because of something that…happened when she was with your wife.”

  Bo had to get his teeth unclenched. “Say it, you SOB. Say that you knew Mattie was pregnant when she went in the hospital but didn’t have a baby with her when she came out. Say it!”

  “We didn’t know for sure what had happened,” Tolivar insisted.

  But they sure as hell had guessed. “You waited, watching, for her to come to me.”

  Tolivar didn’t deny it, and even if he had, Bo wouldn’t have believed him. He cursed and wanted to ram his fist into this man’s face. And he might have done just that if Mattie hadn’t pulled him back. She couldn’t have done that unless Bo had allowed it, but he was so riled that he didn’t trust himself to settle for just one punch. He wanted to clean his porch with this guy.

  “Just leave,” Mattie told the marshal.

  Good idea. That way, Bo could try to deal with what he had just learned. Hell. Everything he’d believed about the past thirteen months had been a lie.

  Tolivar shook his head. “I can’t leave, not until I convince you to come with me.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” she assured him. She reached for the door to slam it shut.

  “There’s an assassin after you,” Tolivar said, blocking her attempt to shut the door.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” And Mattie tried to shut the door again.

  “An assassin who was hired today,” Tolivar continued. “This afternoon, as a matter of fact. We have reason to believe he knows about your connection to the lieutenant.”

  Bo just stared at the man and didn’t know whether to laugh or curse again.

  Mattie’s gaze met Bo’s, and he saw the fight in her eyes turn to pure, raw frustration. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “And you still don’t,” Bo quickly assured her. “The marshal here could have made up the assassin story to get you to go with him.”

  Why the heck he was volunteering that, Bo didn’t know. He probably needed his head examined, but by God, he didn’t want this swaggering fed to ride roughshod over a woman who had already had enough people run over her.

  While he was at it, Bo decided this bozo could be lying about the baby situation, as well. He didn’t believe anything that came out of Tolivar’s mouth.

  “You’ll be sorry, and dead, if you don’t come back into our protection,” Tolivar warned Mattie.

  That was the last straw. Bo slammed the door in the marshal’s face, locked it and set the security system.

  “Is everything okay?” Rosalie called out.

  Since Bo didn’t know the answer, he settled for saying, “Just stay put. I’ll be in there soon.”

  First, he had to figure out how to diffuse a very big bomb.

  Bo kept an eye on Tolivar. The marshal did indeed return to his vehicle, and he sped away. Bo didn’t think for one minute that this was the last they would see of him. Tolivar would likely
go to his office and return with backup.

  Well, maybe.

  Legally, there was no way anyone in Witness Protection could force Mattie to return, since she wasn’t under any obligation to testify. But that meant Bo had to figure out what to do with her.

  “Keep an eye out. See if Tolivar comes back,” Bo told Mattie.

  She went over to the window, freeing him to keep an eye on the area where his children were. He also took out his phone, and this time he called his boss, Captain Shaw Tolbert. Since Shaw’s own wife had also been a maternity hostage, the captain had personal knowledge of what had gone on that day.

  Hopefully, not too personal.

  Hell. No one in SAPD better have known about Mattie leaving her baby behind while she went on the run.

  “Bo,” Shaw answered, obviously seeing his name on the caller ID. “I just got a call from a marshal over in Witness Protection.”

  They worked fast, and that meant Bo had to play catch-up. “Mattie Collier,” Bo started. He walked down the hall toward the nursery. “She’s here at my house. You happen to know why?”

  “If I’m to believe what Marshal Tolivar said, Mattie gave birth to a baby girl and left the newborn with Nadine.” The captain paused. “Is it true?”

  Bo cracked open the nursery door and peered inside. Rosalie was seated in the rocking chair and had a baby in the crook of each arm, much the way Nadine had been holding them when Bo had found her in the nurses’ lounge after the end of the hostage incident.

  Rosalie glanced up but continued to read a Dr. Seuss book to Jacob and Holly. There was nothing unusual about that. Rosalie and Bo both read to them a lot. It was part of their nightly routine.

  Tonight, it caused his heart to ache.

  He’d taken moments like this for granted. He had thought that because he’d endured Nadine’s death, there wouldn’t be any more nightmares to face.

  Well, he might be facing one now.

  He couldn’t lose his little girl. He just couldn’t. It would be like losing Nadine all over again.

  “Bo?” the captain said. “Is it true?”

  “I’m not sure,” he whispered. Bo stepped back and closed the door so his conversation wouldn’t disturb story time or alarm Rosalie.

  That obviously wasn’t the answer Shaw wanted to hear, because he cursed. “What do you want to do about it?”

  Nothing. Bo wanted to send Mattie on her way and pretend this night had never happened. But he couldn’t do that. Damn it. He couldn’t live his life with his head in the sand, even if that’s exactly what he wanted to do right now.

  “Mattie just gave me a sample of her DNA,” Bo continued. “I can use the cheek swab on Holly. The samples need to be compared.”

  Compared. That was such a benign word for something that could change his and his family’s lives forever.

  “I’ll have someone pick up the samples tonight,” Shaw concluded. “I can log them in under my name so that it won’t be connected to you or Mattie. The lab will put a rush on them, and you should know something by tomorrow.”

  Bo didn’t thank his captain because the words would have stuck in his throat. He was already dreading that the tests had to be run, but what he was dreading more were the results.

  He took a deep breath to try to steady his knotted stomach, and Bo forced his mind back on the next task at hand. Mattie was still by the front window, and she was volleying glances outside and at him.

  What are you going to do? she seemed to be asking.

  Bo was wondering the same thing.

  “If Tolivar is telling the truth, then there’s an assassin after Mattie,” Bo informed the captain.

  “It’s possible. I’ve been checking her records while we’ve been talking, and while she was in Witness Protection, her identity was compromised.”

  “How?” Bo wanted to know. “And who did it?”

  “As for the how, someone hacked into the computer database. They don’t know who was responsible, but the department believes this goes back to Mattie’s uncle, Kendall Collier.”

  Yeah. He certainly had the most to gain by finding her.

  Revenge.

  God knows what Collier would be prepared to do to find a niece who had, in his mind, betrayed him.

  “Collier’s a rich, powerful man,” Bo pointed out. “Is it possible he has this Marshal Tolivar on his payroll?”

  “It’s possible. It would have taken money and resources to hack into the Witness Protection database. Collier has the money, and Tolivar has the resources.” Shaw’s quick response meant he’d already thought of it. “Let me handle looking into that. In the meantime, we have this situation with Miss Collier.”

  Yeah, it was a situation, all right. She was looking at him with those sad doe eyes again.

  “Mattie needs to be in protective custody,” Shaw added.

  Bo snapped back his shoulders. “You aren’t suggesting we turn her over to Witness Protection.”

  “No. Besides, I doubt she’d be too eager to go with them.”

  “You’re right about that.” It was stupid to feel even mildly relieved that she wouldn’t go back into a system that had nearly gotten her killed. “So, what do we do with her?”

  “We protect her,” Shaw simply stated. “She did law enforcement a huge favor by testifying against her uncle, and it wasn’t her fault that the FBI screwed up the search warrant and got most of their evidence thrown out.”

  No. It wasn’t her fault. And it wasn’t his that this mess had been brought right to his home.

  “What are you suggesting?” Bo asked.

  “Probably something you don’t want to do, but hear me out, Bo. Mattie Collier is already there, and until I can make other arrangements, that’s the safest place for her.”

  There went another shot of adrenaline and anger. Because so many objections came to mind, it took Bo a moment to pick which one to verbalize first. “There’s an assassin after her and maybe even a corrupt federal marshal. My kids are here in the house.”

  “Yeah. I know, and as a dad myself, I know your twins are your first priority. That includes Holly.”

  That knot in his stomach twisted and tightened. Bo knew what the captain meant. If Collier, the assassin or anyone else after Mattie suspected that Holly was her daughter, they might try to take his little girl to get Mattie to cooperate.

  Hell.

  It wouldn’t even have to be true that Mattie was Holly’s biological mother. The SOBs would just have to think that it was.

  When he looked at Mattie this time, he was sure his eyes were narrowed to slits. How dare she bring this danger right to his babies.

  She shook her head, obviously not understanding the venom he was now aiming at her.

  “What are you asking me to do?” Bo questioned the captain. And he held his breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  “I’ll get to work on a safe house, one under our jurisdiction. One where I can control the security until we can get this all figured out. I would move you now, but this is going to require a lot of work to make sure we’re not taking you from the frying pan and into the fire. I want to make the arrangements myself and keep it out of anyone else’s hands. Until I can work out everything, I’ll send a couple of officers to sit in front of your place in a patrol car. That should deter an assassin or anyone else.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Bo managed to say.

  The captain paused. “I’ll make things as safe for your family as possible. But in the meantime, Mattie Collier stays there, with you, in your protective custody.”

  Chapter Six

  Protective custody.

  To Mattie, this arrangement didn’t feel so protective, not with Bo’s obvious disapproval at her presence in his house. He had made her feel totally unwelcome, and it had started before the conversation with his captain had even ended.

  After that call, Bo had grumbled that she would be staying at his house for the night, and then he’d promptly disappeared into the
nursery, leaving Rosalie to show Mattie to the guest room. Rosalie had relayed Bo’s order for Mattie to stay put in the guest room until morning. In other words, he didn’t want her sneaking out to look at Holly.

  Of course, she couldn’t blame Bo and Rosalie for the chilly reception. Mattie had made a massive mistake by coming to Bo’s.

  But then, maybe not.

  If Kendall had suspected that Holly was her baby, then it was just a matter of time before he would have used the child to get to her.

  That didn’t make Mattie feel any better.

  Her baby was still in danger, and even though she might be one step closer to proving that Holly was hers, what good would that do unless she could neutralize the danger?

  As she’d done many times over the past year and a half, she wished Kendall were in jail where he couldn’t be as much of a threat. But since he wasn’t, that meant Mattie had to deal with the devil himself. She had to call Kendall and try to negotiate a deal with him.

  Her life for Holly’s safety.

  Of course, there were no guarantees that Kendall would agree or, even if he did, that he would abide by any agreement with her. Plus, Mattie didn’t want to die. She had been on the run for so long that fighting for her life was as natural as breathing. Still, if it came down to it, she would turn herself over to Kendall for a guaranteed assurance that Holly would be okay.

  Mattie glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed. It was 5:00 a.m. She’d gotten maybe an hour’s sleep, and with every sound she heard, she’d reached for her gun. Bo had no doubt done the same, especially since he’d spent the night in the nursery. She knew this because the guest room was next to the nursery, and before the babies had fallen asleep, she’d heard Bo playing with them. She hadn’t heard the door open or him walk out.

  The sounds of Holly’s laughter had filled Mattie with more love than she could have ever imagined. It had also caused her heart to ache. She had missed so much already. Thirteen months was a lifetime when it came to a baby. And her little girl was no longer a newborn but a toddler learning to walk.