Stone Cold Christmas Ranger

by Nicole Helm

  As long as she could get rid of the Texas Ranger trying to protect her.

  Chapter Three

  Bennet wanted to argue, but he had to keep too much of his attention on following the men who’d been following Alyssa to try to outtalk this girl.

  Let them take her? “Are you crazy?”

  “We both know it’s someone from my family, or sent by them anyway. If I let them take me, I get information.”

  “And end up like your mother.” Which was probably too blunt when she’d only just found out about her mother, but he couldn’t keep compassion in place when she was talking about getting herself abducted.

  He heard a motorcycle engine roar past him, and swore when Alyssa waved at him.

  He tossed his phone into the passenger seat and followed. It was reckless and possibly stupid not to call for backup. But while Captain Dean had given him the go-ahead to take on this case, Bennet wasn’t ready to bring in other people yet. He needed more information. He needed to know what he was dealing with.

  The fact of the matter was he had no idea what he was dealing with when it came to Alyssa Jimenez.

  She cut in front of the car that had originally been following her. He watched the streetlights streak across her quickly moving form, and she waved at those guys too.

  She was crazy.

  While Bennet had been worried in the beginning that the tail’s goal had been to hurt Alyssa, it was clear they were after something else. If they wanted to hurt her, they could run her off the road and drive away. No one would know the difference except him, and Bennet didn’t think they knew they had a tail.

  It was clear they wanted Alyssa. Whole. She had wanted him to let them take her, so it seemed she knew she wasn’t in imminent danger from these people, as well.

  Was she working with them? Was he the fool here?

  Except when she finally quit driving, he could only stare from his place farther down the street. She’d led them to the public parking of the Texas Rangers headquarters.

  What on earth was this woman up to?

  She parked in the middle of the mostly empty parking lot—employees parked in the back and public visitors rarely arrived at night. The car that had been following her stopped at the parking lot entrance. Clearly her followers didn’t know what to do with this.

  Bennet made a turn, keeping the parking lot in view from his rearview window. When the car didn’t follow, the occupants instead kept their attention on Alyssa, he knew they hadn’t seen him following them.

  He made a quick sharp turn into the back lot and then drove along the building, parking as close as he could to where Alyssa was without being seen. He got out of his car and unholstered his weapon. He crept along the building, keeping himself in the shadows, watching as the car still idled in the entrance while Alyssa sat defiantly on her motorcycle in the middle of the parking lot, parking lights haloing her.

  That uncomfortable thing from before tightened in his gut at the way the light glinted off her dark hair when she pulled off her helmet. Something a little lower than his gut reacted far too much at the “screw you” in the curve of her mouth. She looked like some fierce warrior, some underground-gang queen. He should not be attracted to that even for a second.

  Apparently some parts of his anatomy weren’t as interested in law and order as his brain was.

  “What are you guys? Chicken?” Alyssa called out.

  Bennet nearly groaned. She would have to be the kind of woman who’d provoke them.

  “How about this—you send a message to my brothers. You tell them if they want me, they can come get me themselves. No cut-rate, brainless thug is going to take me anywhere I don’t want to go.”

  The engine revved, and Bennet moved closer. He wasn’t going to let these men take his only lead on this case. Even if she was trying to get herself killed.

  But in the end, the car merely backed out and screeched away.

  Leaving him and Alyssa in a mostly empty parking lot.

  She turned to face him as if she’d known he was there all along. “I bet that got their attention, huh?” she said. She didn’t walk toward him, so he walked to her.

  “Yes. How smart. Piss off your criminal brothers you claim to have nothing to do with so they come after you.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I thought you wanted me to let them take you.” Which he never would have done.

  “I was going to, but then I saw what cut-rate weaklings they sent after me. Afraid of a little Texas Ranger parking lot.” She made a scoffing sound. “The only way to really get some answers is to get inside again, but guys like that? Dopes with guns? Yeah, I’m not risking my life with them. My brothers can come get me themselves if it’s that important to them.”

  “You’re not going back inside that family.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when did you become my keeper?”

  “Since I’m the reason you think you need to go back there. We’ll investigate this from the outside. You don’t need to be on the inside.” He’d sacrifice a lot to actually accomplish something, but not someone else’s life.

  “Shows what you know. Not a damn thing. I’ve been gone a long time, but I still know how the Jimenez family works. I can get the answers we need.”

  “We need?”

  She looked at her motorcycle, helmet still dangling from her fingertips. He’d watched her shake and tremble apart after seeing her mother’s picture, but she was nothing but strength and certainty now.

  Again, Bennet couldn’t help but wonder if he was the sucker here, if he was being pulled into something that would end up making a fool out of him. But he’d come too far to back out. Gotten the okay on this case, gotten to Alyssa. He had to keep moving forward.

  “My brothers didn’t murder our mom,” she said, raising her gaze to his. Strong and sure. “I know they didn’t. I’m going to prove it. To you. And when you find out who really did it, you can bring them to justice.”

  Her voice shook at the end, though her shoulders-back, chin-up stance didn’t change.

  He couldn’t trust her. She was related to one of the biggest drug cartels in the state. And while Gabby and Natalie had befriended her, and Vaughn thought she hadn’t had contact with her brothers in years, this felt awfully coincidental.

  She must have seen the direction of his thoughts. “You don’t have to trust me, Ranger Stevens. You just have to stay out of my way.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” No matter what it took, he had knocked over whatever domino was creating these events. He was part of it, and whether he trusted her or not, he had some responsibility for bringing her into this.

  “They must have my office bugged,” Alyssa said, scowling. “The timing is too coincidental, too weird. It’s been two years since the kidnapping rescue, and they’ve left me alone. They had to have heard you questioning me. So, they know. You have to stay out of my way so we can know what’s really going on.”

  “How can you think they had nothing to do with it if they’re stepping in now when they supposedly know what I’m after?”

  “They didn’t kill our mother, but cartel business is tricky. Complicated. Their never identifying her when she was Jane Doe, it could be purposeful or they feel like they can’t now or... I don’t know, but I have to find out. I’m going in. You can’t stop me, and God knows you can’t stop them.”

  He didn’t agree with that. He could put a security detail on her, keep her safe and away from her brothers for the foreseeable future. Even if the Rangers pulled support, he had enough of his own money to make it so.

  But it’d be awfully hard to make it so when she was so determined, and it’d make it harder to get the information he needed. It would make it almost impossible to solve this case.

  He studied he
r, looking at him so defiantly, as if she was the one in charge here. As if she could stand up to him, toe-to-toe, over and over again. Some odd thing shuddered through him, a gut feeling he didn’t want to pay attention to.

  He’d made his decision, so there was only one way to settle this. “If you’re going in, then I’m going in with you.”

  * * *

  AND THIS TEXAS Ranger thought she was crazy.

  “You think you’re going to come with me. You think in any world my brothers would allow a Texas Ranger into their home or office or whatever without, oh, say killing you and making sure no one ever found out about it?”

  “Except you.”

  Unfortunately, he had a point. Also unfortunately, her last name might keep her safe for the most part when it came to the Jimenez family, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt, if she outright betrayed her family, she’d be killed.

  Like your mother.

  She couldn’t get over it, so she just kept pushing the reality out of her mind as much as she could. Still, it lingered in whispers. Murdered. Murdered. Murdered. How on earth could Mom have been murdered? It didn’t make any sense.

  Except she left. Betrayed your father. Maybe it makes all the sense in the world.

  She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She couldn’t focus on possibility. She had to focus on truth.

  “I can handle this,” Ranger Stevens said resolutely.

  “No. You can handle being a Texas Ranger. You can handle being a cop. You can’t handle being inside a drug cartel. Even if they let you, you’d want to arrest everyone. And trust me, that wouldn’t go well for you.”

  “They didn’t hurt you. They ran away.”

  “Of course they didn’t hurt me. Even if I’m not involved in the business, I’m the daughter of a cartel kingpin. I’m the sister of the people who run it. They hurt me, they’re dead. It’s a matter of honor, but that doesn’t mean that protection extends to you.” Or to her, if she betrayed Jimenez.

  “So we’ll have to find a way for them to think it’s a matter of honor not to kill me.”

  “How on earth do you suggest we do that?”

  “I have a few ideas, but I’m not discussing them here in this parking lot.” He gestured toward the Texas Rangers building.

  Alyssa laughed. “I’m not going in there. My brothers are going to think I’m working with you on a lot more than Mom’s...” she cleared her throat of the lump “...murder.”

  “You know it isn’t just me at stake here. Natalie and Gabby. Their families. They’re a part of your life, and now—”

  She took a threatening step toward him—or it might have been threatening, if he wasn’t about six inches taller than her and twice as wide. “You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I have made my life very separate so they would never get pulled into this if I had to be?”

  “I don’t know you at all, Alyssa. I don’t know what your plans are.”

  “My plan is to live a normal life. That’s all I want.” She realized, too late, she’d yelled it, shaking all over again. Normal had seemed almost within reach lately, and then this Texas Ranger had walked into her office and everything had changed.

  She was Alyssa Jimenez again. Not bounty hunter and friend, not even kidnapping victim, or the inconsequential relative of very consequential people. She was in danger and in trouble, and she couldn’t do anything about it.

  He reached out, and she hated that something like a simple touch on her arm could just soothe. She’d never understood it, but Gabby would hug her back in that bunker, and even out here in the open, and everything would feel okay. This guy, this stranger of a Texas Ranger, touched her, and it felt like she could handle whatever came if he was touching her.

  It was insanity.

  “If they bugged your office, it’s likely they’ve bugged your house.”

  Alyssa thought of her little apartment above Gabby and Jaime’s garage. Was it bugged? Was the whole house bugged? Had she brought all of her family’s problems into the house they’d been kind enough to open up to her?

  Guilt swamped her, pain. Tears threatened, but she wouldn’t be that weak. She’d fix this. She had to fix this.

  “Come home with me.”

  She jerked her head up to look at Ranger Stevens and carefully pulled herself out of his grasp. Everything in her rebelled at the idea of going home with him. His house. His life. Him.

  “I have a big house. Multiple rooms. You can have your own bathroom, your own space. We can get some sleep, and in the morning we can talk knowing that no one has bugged my place.”

  “They know who you are now. If they bugged my place, they know your name. They know what you’re after.”

  He seemed to consider that with more weight than she thought he would. “All right. I have somewhere else we can go. It might require a little bending of the truth.”

  Alyssa frowned at him. “What kind of bending of the truth?”

  “We’ll just need to pretend this isn’t related to my job. That you’re not so much a professional acquaintance but a, ah, personal one.”

  “Where the hell are you taking me?” she demanded, touching her bike to remind herself she was free. He couldn’t take her anywhere unless she agreed.

  And if you go home, would you be putting Gabby and Jaime in jeopardy?

  “My parents have a guesthouse. I use it on occasion when necessary. I can say I’m having my house painted or remodeled or something and they’ll believe it, if they’re even home. But if I’m bringing you with me, they’re going to need to think...” He cleared his throat.

  Alyssa’s mouth went slack as it dawned on her what he was suggesting. “You want me to pretend to be involved with you like...sleeping-over involved?” Her voice squeaked and her entire face heated. Her whole body heated. She’d never been sleeping-over involved with anyone, and she was pretty sure that was a really lame way of putting it, but she didn’t know how else to say it.

  She didn’t know how to wrap her head around what he was suggesting.

  “My parents aren’t invasive exactly. Actually, they’re incredibly invasive, but like I said, it’s unlikely they’re there. They have some of the best security in Austin, so we’ll be safe, or at least forewarned. Should one of the staff mention I had a woman over, then they’ll assume it’s personal and we’ll just go with it.”

  “Your parents have a guesthouse and staff?”

  “Your father runs a drug cartel?” he returned in the same put-off tone.

  She wanted to laugh even though it wasn’t funny in the least little bit. “No one’s going to believe I’m involved with...you.”

  Something in his expression changed, a softening followed by an all-too-charming smile that had her heart beating hard against her chest.

  “Am I that hideous?” he asked, clearly knowing full well he was not.

  “You know what I mean. I look like a street urchin,” she said, waving a hand down her front. “You look like...” She waved her hand ineffectually at him.

  He cocked his head. “I look like what?” he asked, and there was something a little darker in his tone. Dangerous. But cops weren’t dangerous. Not like that.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered, knowing she had to be blushing so profusely even the bad lighting couldn’t hide it. “A guy who has servants and guesthouses and crap.”

  “They’ll believe it because there’s no reason not to. Street-urchin chic or no, my parents wouldn’t doubt me. They might assume I’m trying to give them an aneurism, but they won’t suspect anything.”

  Alyssa looked at her bike. She could hop on, flip him off and zoom away. Zoom away from everything she’d built in the past two years, zoom away from everything that had held her prisoner for the first twenty-two.

  But she hadn’t left Austin
on her release from her kidnapper, and she had people to protect now. She couldn’t leave Gabby and Natalie in the middle of this, even if they were both married to men or living with men who would try to protect them.

  She studied Ranger Stevens and knew she had to make a choice. Fight, and trust this man. Or run, and ruin them all.

  It wasn’t a hard choice in the slightest. “All right. I’ll go.”

  Chapter Four

  Bennet drove from the Texas Ranger offices to his parents’ sprawling estate outside Austin. It wasn’t the first time he’d been self-conscious about his parents’ wealth. Most of the cops and Rangers he knew were not the sons and daughters of the Texas elite.

  Nevertheless, this was the life he’d been born into, and Alyssa hadn’t been born into a much different one. Just on opposite sides of the law, but if her father was the Jimenez kingpin, then she’d had her share of wealth.

  She followed him, the roar of her motorcycle cutting through the quiet of the wealthy neighborhood enough to make him wince. There would be phone calls. There would be a lot of things. But the most important thing was they were going somewhere that couldn’t have been infiltrated.

  He drove up the sprawling drive after entering the code for the gate and hoped against hope his father was in DC and his mother was at a function or, well, anywhere but here. Because while they might ignore his presence, maybe, they would never ignore the presence of the motorcycle.

  Parking at the top of the drive, he got out of his running car and punched the code into the garage door so it opened.

  “This is a guesthouse?” Alyssa called out over the sound of her motorcycle.

  Bennet nodded as the garage door went up. He walked back to his car and motioned for her to park inside the garage. Maybe if the evidence was hidden, and it was late enough, it was possible no one would notice the disturbance. A man could dream.

  Alyssa walked her motorcycle into the garage and killed the engine. She pulled off her helmet. It seemed no matter how often her hair tumbled out like that, his idiotic body had a reaction. He really needed to get a handle on that.