Looking for a Cowboy

by Donna Grant

  “That’s what they do,” Marlee said. “What they do is brutal. And slow.”

  Cooper walked to Marlee and retook her hand. He gave it a squeeze, letting her know that he was there to help in whatever capacity she allowed.

  She gave him a nod before pointing to the next section, which was significantly smaller. “I also began making a note of who investigated the crimes to see if I could connect them.”

  “You think they could be working with someone?” Jace asked as his head snapped to her.

  Marlee shrugged. “At this point, I’ll consider anything. I’m ruling nothing out. Including the authorities working with each other to keep things quiet or working with the criminals.”

  “I agree, it’s a possibility,” Cooper said.

  Jace shrugged. “And these photos?”

  “That’s everyone that I’ve found who is connected to the adoption agency in some form or fashion,” she explained.

  Cooper let his gaze move slowly over the various pictures. Below each one was a name and their role with the company. “I suppose you already looked into these people?”

  “Yes. It’s ongoing, however.”

  He nodded slowly. “Anything useful with any of them?”

  “A couple.” Marlee walked to the wall and pointed to a middle-aged woman and a younger woman. “These two.”

  Jace eyed both of them. “What about them?”

  “On two separate occasions when pregnant women were killed and their babies stolen, both of these women were out of the office.”

  Cooper thought about that for a moment. “Separately? Or together?”

  “Together,” Marlee said. “I could’ve overlooked one incident as someone calling in. But twice?” she asked, her brows raised.

  Jace snorted. “That would make me do a double take, as well. How far away were the pregnant women killed?”

  Marlee walked to the bed and sat as she pulled open a notebook. It took her a few minutes of flipping through the pages before she said, “One was eighty miles away, another was nearly two hundred miles away.”

  “Easy driving distance,” Jace said as he looked at Cooper.

  Cooper blew out a breath. “That it is. Have you found other timetables with them or other employees at this agency?”

  “I’ve been looking, but I’ve not found anything yet,” Marlee replied. “I had to focus on where I thought I could gain the most intel.”

  Cooper rubbed his hand over his chin. “Understandable. Let’s come back to this because I’ve got a feeling there’s something there.”

  “I do, as well. I’ve just not been able to devote the time and resources to it as I’d like.” Marlee turned to another wall. “This is, well … all of you. Whenever I’m looking into a family, I expand out as far as I can with friends and family. Most times, there isn’t anything there. But there have been occasions where something connects, and it gives me what I need.”

  Jace shrugged and shot her a grin. “I’d do the same in your shoes. But I’m curious what you found on everyone. There has to be some secret Cooper has that I don’t know about. I mean, I have known him since we were five, so I’m pretty sure I know everything. Still, any chance I can see the file?” he joked.

  “Not happening,” Marlee said with a laugh.

  Cooper shook his head while grinning at his best friend. “I tried to keep a secret from you once. You remember how that turned out?”

  Jace busted out laughing to the point where he bent over, his eyes squeezed shut.

  Cooper turned his attention to Marlee. “From the moment Jace and I met, we just clicked. We were inseparable, really. Thankfully, our parents let us hang out all the time. We shared everything. People began thinking we were brothers, not friends. Because we were always together.”

  “We shared everything except girls, of course,” Jace said, his smile wide.

  Cooper rolled his eyes. “When we got older and started taking an interest in girls, I was able to talk to them, but not Jace. He’d get all tongue-tied and spew nonsense.”

  “It was horrible,” Jace said, pulling a face. “It was like I was speaking in tongues. The words were in my head, but I couldn’t get them out of my mouth. And the girls would laugh, which made it worse.”

  Marlee looked between them, her interest evident.

  Cooper drew in a deep breath and released it. “Then, one day, Jace saw Katrina Thompson and fell head over heels. She was the new girl in school, and very pretty. Katrina and I had English together, and she sat right beside me. We flirted, and I asked for her phone number. When I met up with Jace for lunch to tell him, he started talking first. He went on and on about how he’d finally found a girl he knew he could talk to.”

  Marlee’s eyes widened. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jace said with a grin. “And do you know what Cooper did? Instead of telling me he already had her number, he told me to go talk to her.”

  “Awww,” Marlee said as she looked at him. “That was sweet.”

  Cooper shrugged. “I wanted to help my best friend.”

  Marlee frowned as she cut her eyes to Jace. “That’s the story? That’s all? What’s so funny about that?”

  “Well,” Jace said, drawing out the word.

  Cooper pointed a finger at him. “My story. I get to tell it.”

  Jace held up his hands, conceding as Marlee laughed.

  “As I was saying,” Cooper said, smiling at Jace, “you see, I thought I was doing a good deed. For the first time, I didn’t tell him about a girl I liked. I had no idea that it would backfire on me so spectacularly.”

  “What? What happened?” Marlee pressed when he didn’t immediately continue.

  Cooper chuckled. “Jace, feeling confident as hell, went right up to Katrina the next day. He talked to her with words, even some complete sentences.”

  “I practiced those lines all night,” Jace said, nodding. “I was smooth, articulate, and wooed her like she’d never been wooed before.”

  Cooper could barely hold in his laughter. “All the other girls around Katrina stopped and took notice of Jace. A few of them even had drool running down their mouths.”

  Marlee playfully hit him. “They did not.”

  “Oh, they did,” Jace stated emphatically.

  Cooper shrugged. “Every female there—including any teacher that was nearby—became instantly smitten with Jace. Every female, that is, except Katrina.”

  “Here I am, pouring my heart out to this girl,” Jace said, smiling, “and all the while, she’s looking at me as if I’ve grown horns. When I finished and proceeded to tell her how much I was in love with her, she thanked me politely and walked straight to Cooper.”

  Cooper threw up his hands. “I had no idea she’d do that.”

  “The one time you kept a secret, and it changed my life for the better.” Jace shook his head as he looked at Cooper. “From that day on, I never had a problem talking to women.”

  Cooper snorted. “From that day on, women were all over you. You’ve never lacked for female companionship.”

  “Nope. I sure haven’t,” Jace replied with a half-grin.

  Marlee laughed. “You two are something else, that’s for sure.”

  The story had alleviated some of the heaviness of their situation, at least for a moment. But it was time to get back to work. Cooper faced the last wall. “What is all of this?”

  “Pictures of people I have yet to identify or even know if they’re connected to the adoption agency, the authorities, or the murderers and kidnappers,” Marlee told them. “I keep them there in case I see them in another picture to connect them somehow.”

  Jace moved to the large section of the wall that looked like one of the boards that authorities put together on crime shows, showing how everyone was connected, the timeline of events, and any missing parts. “This is a lot of information.”

  “More than you know. I couldn’t put it all up there because there simply isn’t room. I did the major dates of t
hings, like when my client’s wife was murdered, and her son cut from her and—”

  “I’ve got a question,” Cooper interrupted her. “What made you believe that the child you were searching for was the one Brice and Naomi adopted.”

  Marlee turned and grabbed a stack of papers from the bed. “Precisely twelve hours after the baby was kidnapped, three calls went out from the adoption agency. One was for a little girl, two were for boys. The first call went to a couple in Fort Worth. They had suffered several miscarriages and tried IVF multiple times before turning to adoption. They wanted a child and didn’t care what race or sex it was. The baby boy they were called about was of Asian descent, which didn’t match the child I was looking for. So, my attention turned to the only other call that night.”

  “The one to Brice and Naomi,” Jace said.

  Marlee nodded. “Exactly.”

  “What is so important about that time? Why not the earlier calls? Or the next day?” Cooper asked.

  Marlee flattened her lips as her expression fell. “Just like people want to adopt puppies and kittens instead of older dogs and cats, the same goes for children. Newborns are highly sought after. Those of us in this line of work have learned that twelve hours is the sweet spot. Could it be earlier or later? Yes, of course. But the timing of those calls caught my attention. I also believe they placed several calls at once to throw off anyone who might be investigating them.”

  “What if they didn’t make a call at all?” Jace asked.

  Marlee’s face went blank, her lips parting as if she hadn’t thought of that.

  Cooper nodded. “If two of the three calls were for newborn males, and we know that neither of them was the right infant, then…”

  “Then I messed up,” Marlee said. She sank heavily onto the bed. “I must have missed something.”

  Cooper put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed it. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. It happens.”

  “No, it shouldn’t,” she told him. Her anger wasn’t at him but directed at herself. “I know better. I’ve done this for too damn long to make such a stupid mistake.”

  “Unless it wasn’t a mistake,” Jace replied. He looked from Marlee to Cooper. “What if those calls were done intentionally, just as you said? What if they wanted you to come here and look into Naomi and Brice?”

  Cooper frowned as he tried to see where Jace was going. “I get the calls, but why would they care about Naomi and Brice? Why them?”

  “Why, exactly?” Jace said. “Remember the map? Remember what was situated nearly in the middle of everything?”

  “Holy shit,” Cooper murmured.

  Marlee frowned. “What are you two talking about?”

  Cooper looked at her. “Earlier, when I told you that Jace and I looked at a map of Texas and began marking where the babies had been kidnapped and the women killed, there was a central location—us. Right here in this town.”

  For several moments, Marlee didn’t speak, she just blinked as she stared at Cooper. “The timing of those calls was on purpose. I know that in my bones. And the more I hear you and Jace speak, the more I think that someone sent me here, knowing the newborn I was looking for wasn’t the one your friends adopted. They could be throwing me off the trail, but they could’ve done that with another couple. No, I was sent here on purpose. And if that’s the case, then there’s something here I need to find.”

  “Like those doing the kidnapping and selling the babies,” Cooper replied. “It makes sense. Nothing has happened here, but there have been attacks all around us.”

  Jace leaned back against a wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s only one thing to do in times like these. We go hunting.”

  Chapter 25

  The longer Stella sat in her office and thought of all the things that had gone wrong for her over the last decade, she couldn’t deny that the main cause was Marlee Frampton. The fact that she had known the Framptons shouldn’t make a difference. But it did.

  She’d never intended for Macey to be harmed. Chuck had been told to stay away from the Frampton twins, but he hadn’t been the one to kill Macey and take the baby. That had been another employee, Martin—an ex-military friend of Chuck’s—that she had hired that very day. He was supposed to sit back and watch how things were done before he got his assignment. He’d been driving around to gather information on pregnant women and saw Macey walking. He’d taken the opportunity that presented itself and grabbed her.

  Stella leaned back in her office chair and looked at the ceiling. In all her years, she’d had very few that she had called friends. Her relationship to the Framptons had been by accident, really. She’d rented the house next to theirs when she first got back on her feet. None of her business had been conducted there, so no one knew anything. She left for work every day, just like everyone else. Except the Framptons wouldn’t leave her alone. Diane spoke to her first. The matriarch of the family had been kind, bringing over fresh-cut flowers. Macey and Marlee had been young children at the time.

  Stella kept her distance from the family, but every time Diane saw her, she’d wave. And Stella would wave back. After a year of that, they began chatting a little. Small talk, really. But it was something Stella hadn’t had since Jenny died. She enjoyed seeing the family and how kind they were to her.

  She stayed in that house for another five years before she moved to another state. By that time, Diane had her number and called her regularly to make sure she was all right. Despite knowing how dangerous it was, how it increased the possibility of being found out, Stella not only took Diane’s calls, she also made her own.

  Another five years passed before Stella returned to California and the small town of Shell Ridge. She told herself it was ripe with pickings to keep her ever-growing business running, but that was only part of it. She wanted to be near Diane again. As soon as Stella moved back, she and Diane met for lunch and made it a weekly occurrence.

  Diane—and the entire family, really—became a friend again.

  So, when Macey was murdered, and her baby was stolen, Stella hadn’t known what to do. She had briefly considered ordering Chuck to return the newborn to the family. Yet, she didn’t. Martin’s skill and speed had been incredible. He had taken Macey during the day, and no one had seen him. Chuck rarely worked during the day, and while she hated that Macey had been killed, she was running a business.

  Stella forced herself to pay her respects to the family as they grieved. Diane didn’t seem to even be aware that she stopped by on several occasions. Her visits tapered off until she finally stopped going altogether. She no longer lived beside them, so no one knew where she was at any given time. After about six months, she moved away again, but not before giving Diane a call. Just as Stella expected, Diane hadn’t been around to answer the phone. Stella left a message and told Diane to call her whenever she could.

  It took another eight months, but the phone rang. Stella almost hadn’t answered it. She’d really hoped that Diane would never call her again. They chatted for a few minutes where Stella learned of Diane’s husband’s stroke and how Marlee had been doing her own investigating on the side. That made Stella nervous because she knew how good Marlee was at her job.

  The fact that Marlee was a police officer had been something Stella had kept a sharp eye on. Because Marlee could ruin everything for her if she looked closely enough. But Marlee hadn’t. Or at least she hadn’t until her sister was killed. Then, Marlee had become relentless, looking into everyone who might have had a connection to Macey, and anyone Marlee deemed relevant.

  It was no surprise when Marlee got in touch with Stella. The phone conversation had lasted no more than ten minutes. Still, in that time, Stella became aware that Marlee was weighing every word Stella said—and would continue to do so long after they hung up.

  From that moment on, Stella had looked over her shoulder. Marlee had gotten close, but never close enough to take her down. How many more times would Stella get away, though? The business was s
till doing well. Well enough that she had enemies. No matter what type of business someone had, there would always be competitors. A few of hers had tried to take her down, but Stella was nothing if not determined. She had clawed her way out of the gutter, and she was never going back. Death was preferable to living on the streets, starving and fending off others. So, she’d done whatever had to be done to keep her enemies away—even if that meant killing.

  Stella had gained a reputation as someone who got the job done. She had never failed to procure a newborn for someone willing to pay for it. The one thing that kept her from being betrayed was that she kept her business small. Only a handful of people worked for her, and when she needed new hires, she lured them away from her competitors with money. Those who had never been in the business weren’t even considered anymore. There were too many ways they could be undercover Feds. No, she kept to people she knew who had been working for a while and had proven themselves.

  It was one of the reasons she did so well. She didn’t trust anyone, and she listened to her instincts. And right now, they were telling her to get out of Texas. Except if she did, it might bring more attention to her than if she stayed put. She’d tested those waters twice, choosing a different option each time.

  The time she ran, Marlee had missed her by thirty minutes. The time she stayed, Marlee hadn’t gotten near her. Now that Stella had the same choice again, she wasn’t sure which one to choose. If it were up to Chuck, he’d kill Marlee and be done with it. He thought that was the answer to everything, but it wasn’t. The fact that Marlee was spending time with Cooper Owens, who had ties to not only the Harpers but also the Easts, made Stella uneasy.

  She knew firsthand what could be done when someone had money to spend to get—or track down—what they wanted. Chuck would likely argue that Marlee hadn’t had time to develop strong enough ties with any of them. And he was probably right. But Stella also knew how quickly attraction could bind two people, and if that attraction began to shift to love? Well, all bets were off.

  “What do I do?” she asked herself.