Hell, he needed that weight gone. Needed her.
Raleigh had given him a reason to let the past die. She’d given him something to look forward to after all these years. One look from her—one touch—and the chaos he’d warred with for twenty years calmed, and he couldn’t give up on that. Because she hadn’t given up on him. Now it was his chance to return the favor.
Beckett reached for his phone, the screen brightening as he raised it, and sent the ranch’s coordinates to the rest of the team. He pressed his boot flat against the accelerator to push the vehicle faster. The ultrasound he’d tossed into the passenger seat sat stark in his peripheral vision against the muted background. He reached for it, switching his attention between the dark photo of his and Raleigh’s growing baby and the road ahead.
He’d known the day he’d have to face Hank was coming, and if there’d ever been a reason better than to settle the past, it was to save the two people who held his future. “I’m coming, Raleigh. For both of you.”
* * *
EVENING LIGHT SLANTED at her feet through the old slats nailed over the only window in the room.
Raleigh rolled her head to one side. The out-of-date wainscoting at her back dug into her spine, her hands restrained overhead to some kind of exposed metal plumbing. Dust danced in the rays of sun, making it hard to decipher between the white spots still clinging to her vision and spores. Chunks of drywall littered the peeling linoleum flooring near the legs of an old kitchen set with a single chair. A vanity dresser took up most of the opposite wall, an odd choice considering this room had obviously once been a kitchen, but the framed photos lining the bottom of the mirror told of a family-centered space.
She closed her eyes as pain splintered through one side of her head. She and Beckett had been in an accident, which accounted for gravel embedded in the first few layers of skin of her shoulder. Beckett. He’d been shot, and... She couldn’t remember anything after that. Light green flowered wallpaper curled along her side as Raleigh pulled at the rope to sit up.
“I always loved this wallpaper,” someone said from beside her.
She jerked as far away from that voice as she could, but the ropes didn’t have much give. Her heart shot into her throat as she realized how close he’d gotten. “Calvin. What...what are you—”
“Took us three months to agree on this paper.” His navy blue suit jacket and slacks accentuated dirt and dust streaking along his tall frame. Dark brown shoes knocked against hers as she leveraged her heels into the aging floor. Calvin’s arms framed either side of his head, blocking her view of his face, but she’d know that voice anywhere. She’d trusted that voice for three years, never knowing what kind of man he really was, how far he’d go to hurt the people who cared about him the most. Not just her but Beckett, the families he’d conned twenty years ago, the women who wouldn’t get the help they needed from the foundation they’d started together. Gray stubble peppered what she could see of his jaw, the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth somehow more pronounced.
He twisted his entire upper body to face her, steel-blue eyes putting her directly in his crosshairs, and her gaze lifted to the rope wrapped strategically around his wrists. Just like she’d been restrained. “My first wife and me. She would’ve liked you, you know. I knew the moment I met you at that charity function all those years ago, she would’ve liked you. In some ways you remind me of her. Headstrong. Stubborn. Guess she had to be, considering she’d been married to a man like me.”
“You mean the kind of man who steals money from innocent, hardworking families and people in need?” Raleigh couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone, even with them both tied to the same damn line of plumbing. He obviously hadn’t been the one to cause the crash when the shooter had put a bullet in his son, but that didn’t make Calvin—Hank—innocent either. “I know who you are, Hank Foster. I know what you’ve done and the people you’ve hurt.”
His chin dipped toward his chest, that all-too-familiar voice tainted with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Beckett.”
“He told me everything. You target innocent victims, prey on marks you can manipulate into doing what you want, consequences be damned.” Years of trust, of friendship, slipped away as she faced him, and Calvin suddenly looked far older than she remembered. He might not be the current threat, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. He’d stolen victims’ life savings, retirements, everything they’d had, and disappeared as though it’d never happened. “Was that what I was for you? Another mark in the long line of easy targets? Is that why you approached me at that charity event? You saw something you could take advantage of and turn a profit, no matter how many people got hurt in the process.”
“You were never a mark, Raleigh, and I never profited from our foundation. Not a single penny. All my salary checks for the past three years? I donated them right back into the foundation we built together. I didn’t want any of it.” Hank Foster set the crown of his head back against the wall, staring up at the dilapidated ceiling threatening to crash down on them at any moment. He closed his eyes. “I stole that money twenty years ago. I did, and it destroyed my family. It got my wife—Beckett’s mother—killed, left my son orphaned, and I’ve never been able to forgive myself since. The day I heard about what’d happened to her, that Beckett had been there to witness the entire thing, I gave it all back to the people I’d stolen from. Every dime.” He locked trusting blue eyes on her. “When I met you, when you reminded me so much of my late wife, I realized starting this foundation with you would be a step in the right direction to fixing what I’d done. It might never be able to make up for all those people I hurt—especially my son—but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”
Truth resonated in his voice, and an acrid taste filled her mouth. Her stomach knotted. Everything that’d happened since the moment she’d been arrested had been carefully planned, calculated, but the tired-looking man restrained next to her didn’t fit that description. Emotions she’d shut down after Beckett had arrested her and accused her of partnering with the thief surged to the surface. Relief, fear, guilt and curiosity tumbled over one another, and she didn’t know which to process first. Her throat seized. “You...didn’t steal the money, did you?”
“No.” Footsteps echoed off the walls of an adjacent room, and Calvin turned toward the sound. “But I know who did.”
A familiar outline centered in the doorway across the room, and a rush of memories materialized. The comfortable—almost caring—voice Raleigh hadn’t been able to place after the crash, the oversize bolt cutters that’d snapped the links of her cuffs, the surprising strength it’d taken to pull her from the wreckage. Her attacker’s long, lean frame shifted beneath a denim jumpsuit, shiny brass buttons and jewelry reflecting the dim light. Caramel highlights stood out from the waves of long blond hair fluttering around the woman’s shoulders, and there, that beautiful, straight smile that’d welcomed Raleigh into her home so many times over the years flashed wide.
“Julia,” she said.
Julia Dailey, Calvin’s current wife, revealed the pistol in her hand. “I’m glad to see the little hit on the head I gave you didn’t cause too much damage, Raleigh. There’s still a lot we need to talk about since you shot the woman I sent to get me the information I needed from you.”
Air evacuated from Raleigh’s lungs as her fingers recalled the feel of pulling that trigger. She’d done it to save Beckett’s life, just as she’d wielded that rock to save her brother’s, but the blood was still on her hands. Always would be. “You hired Emily Cline to kill me.”
“Yet here you are. Stubborn and determined as ever. I’ve always liked you. There was a point over the past few years I’d considered you a daughter, seeing as how Calvin and I never had children of our own, but you refused to play your part in my plan. Bringing Calvin’s, or should I say Hank’s, son into the investigation... Well, I couldn’t have th
at. I’ve worked too hard and for too long to let you take this from me.” Dark brown eyes settled on Calvin. Drywall debris skidded across the aged linoleum as Julia’s muddied boots carved a path through the kitchen. Pink-tipped fingers smoothed over the gun in her left hand as Julia crouched beside her husband. “I lost count of how many times he’d tell me a story about Beckett, or his wife, or this place and how happy they’d been before she’d died. No matter how much I tried to be there for him, to be the wife he could be proud to have on his arm, I never came close to her, did I, Hank? Not once. Fifteen years of feeling unwanted, used, alone.” Dejection surfaced as she rested the barrel of her gun over Calvin’s heart. “Do you have any idea what that kind of pain does to a person?”
“You feel worthless. Underappreciated.” Raleigh’s throat dried as echoes of Beckett’s accusations of conspiring against him and her own foundation pierced straight through her. Her heart pounded loud behind her ears. She knew what that kind of pain did to a person, what it’d done to her over the years. But what hurt more? Having it done by the one person in the world who’d convinced her she’d been valuable, who’d promised to always be there for her. For their daughter. Her voice hollowed as she retreated into the familiar sense of numbness she’d cultivated over the years. Only that space had shrunk over the past few days to the point she could barely get a grip. “You convince yourself there must be something wrong with you, that you’re not worth being loved, and that there’s no point in getting close to anyone because they’re just going to discard you anyway. So you go numb to deal with the rejection, whether it’s real or not, to feel like you have the slightest bit of control.”
But it was a lie. Because there was always the chance someone would come along and rip that control away. As Beckett had done for her. He’d broken through her internal armor. He’d forced her to confront and question her deepest beliefs about herself, to feel things she’d closed herself off from for so long, and Raleigh feared she’d never be able to rebuild that wall. She didn’t have the strength.
The weight of Julia Dailey’s attention constrained the air in her lungs. A distance infused her voice, her expression smooth, and suddenly Raleigh had a vision of what her future looked like if she continued down this path. “Spoken like someone with firsthand experience. I think I’ll be doing you a favor by putting you out of your misery sooner rather than later.”
“Where is my son, Julia?” Calvin asked.
“You know, for a con man, you didn’t do a very good job covering your tracks.” Julia pushed to her feet. She studied the cracks in the walls, the single chair at the kitchen table, kicked at a stray root that’d worked through the flooring. “You’ve always talked about coming back here, renovating the property, working the land like you used to. You never told me the exact location, but it wasn’t hard to find once I did a bit of digging through public records and put all the pieces together. Fitting this is going to be the place they find your body.”
Calvin tried to lunge for his wife but came up short as the ropes held him back, and Raleigh pressed her lower back into the wall to counter the fear clawing through her. “Where is my son!”
“Don’t worry, Hank. You’ll be joining him very soon.” Julia’s low-pitched laugh filled the room. Her gaze flickered to Raleigh, her weapon still aimed at her husband. “Both of you will. Just as soon as Raleigh hands over my money.”
Chapter Fourteen
Beckett parked the SUV about a quarter mile down the road from the ranch he’d grown up on and hit the headlights. Shadows closed in around him, and he shouldered out of the vehicle. Cool air mixed with dirt and the slight spice of trees as he rounded to the cargo area and popped the latch. Righting the storage container every deputy marshal under Remington Barton’s purview was required to carry, he unhinged the lid and took what he needed. He strapped the extra Kevlar vest to his chest, the wound in his shoulder and side lighting up with a renewed edge of pain, and maneuvered the AK-15 strap over his neck. Extra mags and ammunition, a flashlight with fresh batteries and an additional handgun. Armed, he shut the case and secured the hatch.
His father had surprised him by hiring Emily Cline to do his dirty work, but the con man wouldn’t see him coming this time. Neither would anyone who got in his way.
Keeping low, Beckett moved through the trees surrounding the property he hadn’t ever expected to step foot on again. His boots suctioned in the mud with each step, the gear he carried getting heavier by the second, but he only pushed himself harder. Whoever’d opened fire on him and Raleigh had left the scene of the accident more than an hour ago. Hank had obviously needed Raleigh for something—maybe to access the secondary account she’d uncovered during her own investigation—but that didn’t leave much time.
Twigs snapped under his weight as he circled closer to the fenced property line and crouched behind one of the largest pines to the west to get his bearings. He’d memorized every foot of this place and the surrounding woods when he’d been a kid, but a lot had changed since then. The stable roof had started caving in the middle, the wooden fence posts sagged toward one another and nature had overgrown the family cemetery less than fifty feet off to his left. The top of one tombstone—his mother’s—stood out against the backdrop of night. Nobody had been here to take care of the land after he’d joined the Marshals, and for that he was sorry. He’d held the deed and paid the taxes all these years, but the thought of coming back here, of reliving that fearful night... It’d been too much.
Until now.
Beckett surveyed the shadows, focused on the slightest hint of movement near the main house.
There. At the southeast corner. His finger slipped alongside the trigger of the rifle he carried close to his chest as a single armed operative tossed a cigarette at his feet and ground out the ashes. Movement pulled Beckett’s attention to the other side of the house. Another gunman, not quite as large as the first, but Beckett would assume just as deadly. Both his shoulder and thigh wounds burned in remembrance of the kind of violence Emily Cline had been capable of—of the type of people Hank had hired to keep his hands clean—and Beckett double-checked that the sonogram of his and Raleigh’s baby was still in his pocket. He’d been trained in criminal apprehension for the past fifteen years, and nothing would stop him from getting to his fugitive. Raleigh was all he had left.
He hauled himself between the backer rails of the fence and took cover behind the west side of the stable. The second operative disappeared behind the house. Twenty feet separated him and his target. He had to move. Now. Back to the stable wall, he gripped the rifle between both hands and approached the far side. The odor of cigarette smoke and sweat burned the back of his throat, and Beckett pulled up short of rounding into the gunman’s sights and raised his weapon. Hesitation pulsed through him. He couldn’t take the shot. Not without tipping off the second operative and whoever Hank had inside with Raleigh. He couldn’t force her abductors to panic and do something brash. Damn it. Beckett repositioned the rifle at his back. His hands curled into fists.
He rushed forward. Beckett closed the distance between them fast, rocketing his fist into the side of the gunman’s face. Bone crunched under his knuckles, but one shot didn’t take the hired gun down. Clamping on to the operative’s shoulder, he hiked his knee into the man’s gut. The gunman blocked the hit with a groan, fisted Beckett’s vest and threw him to the ground. The air crushed from his lungs a split second before a fist landed a hard right hook to his jaw.
Beckett’s eyes watered as agony ripped through his head, but he managed to dodge the second hit aimed at his face and pushed to his feet. Dirt worked into his lungs as he wrapped the guard in his arms from behind and threw the man to the ground. Keeping hold of one wrist, he threaded the bastard’s arm between his thighs and increased the pressure on the gunman’s shoulder until a pop broke through their heavy breathing. A scream gurgled up the man’s throat, and Beckett hauled the heel of his boot i
nto the guy’s head, knocking him unconscious.
“There goes the element of surprise.” The gunman’s scream had most likely given away his position. He unwound his legs from around the guard and got to his feet, but not fast enough.
The barrel of a pistol scratched the oversensitized skin along his scalp. “Drop the rifle, kick it away. Slowly. Along with any others you’re carrying, Marshal Foster.”
“You know me?” The muscles down his back hardened with battle-ready tension. The second operative. Damn it. Beckett turned his head enough to keep the gunman in his peripheral vision as he raised his palms shoulder height. He had no intention of giving up the rifle or any other weapons.
“I know enough.” The second man tugged Beckett’s backup weapon from his shoulder holster, along with the extra magazines he’d stocked on one side of his vest. A strong hand grasped Beckett’s wounded shoulder and shoved him down before maneuvering the rifle strap over his head. “On your knees.”
“If you say so.” The pain flaring from the gunshot wound stole the oxygen from his chest but kicked his central nervous system into high gear. He’d come here to save Raleigh and his baby, and he wasn’t leaving without them. Loose rocks ground into Beckett’s knee as he turned around and shot both hands into the gunman’s wrist and pushed upward. A gunshot arced wide before he pried the steel from his attacker’s hand and tossed the weapon, but he couldn’t let that slow him down. Straightening the shooter’s arm, Beckett hauled his attacker into the side of his childhood farmhouse face-first.
The shooter wrenched his wrist out of Beckett’s hold and swung a hard left hook. White lights raced across his vision as the hit threw him off-balance. He stumbled back, throwing his hands up to block the next hit, but his assailant was too fast. Another punch knocked his head straight back on his shoulders. Beckett struck out with a solid hit, but the gunman caught his fist and twisted until the muscles in his arm screamed. He shot his injured arm forward, connecting with the side of his attacker’s head, but at the cost of tearing the stitches Reed had sewn in only recently. Undeniable agony tore through him, but he couldn’t stop. Not until he’d found Raleigh.
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