The Lawmen of Silver Creek Ranch

Chapter Four

Kayla was trembling, but that didn’t stop her from marching across the foyer to see what had caused the Rylands to turn those accusing stares on her. And then she saw the cell phone screen.

No, it couldn’t be. But it was.

It was her name and number.

“Why did the gunman call you?” Dade demanded.

“He didn’t,” Kayla answered as quickly as she could get out the words.

“The phone says otherwise,” Mason Ryland growl.

“Then it was faked somehow.” She hated the quiver in her voice. Hated even more that she cared one iota what these Rylands thought of her, but by God she’d had no part in this attack. “I wouldn’t have hired someone to shoot into a house where my son was staying.”

The trio exchanged glances. A united brotherly front against her. They didn’t just look alike—they had the same scowls. And they were also waiting for more of an explanation. However, Kayla didn’t have one.

“Where’s your phone?” Dade asked after first giving an impatient huff.

She glanced around but didn’t see it and remembered she hadn’t seen it upstairs, either. Just moments before Dade’s arrival, she’d been searching through her purse for it. “I must have left it in my car.” She pointed to the side of the estate where she’d parked.

Even though none of the lawmen came right out and accused her of lying, it was clear from their deepening scowls they didn’t believe her.

“I’ll look for it,” Mason insisted, and he strolled out, leaving her to face the remaining two.

“I didn’t speak to the gunman,” Kayla tried again. “And if he called me, it was to set me up.”

“Why would he do that?” Grayson asked.

Kayla didn’t have to think too hard to come up with an answer. “Maybe to try to discredit my testimony. Charles could have hired the gunman to do that because if he could prove I had an association with a killer, then it might make a jury less likely to believe anything I say.”

Another exchange of glances before Grayson spoke again. “Or you could have hired the gunman to make Brennan look guilty of attempted murder. A crime that could put him away for life and not just the twenty years he’d get for the other charges.”

Oh, mercy. As theories went, it wasn’t a bad one, and Kayla had no idea how she would convince the Rylands that she was innocent.

“Maybe your sister is the one who did the hiring.” Dade tossed that out there, not tentatively, but it wasn’t a roaring declaration of Kayla’s innocence, either.

But what had she expected?

Yes, Dade had saved her life. Had even been wounded in the process, but to him she was lower than dirt. Well, except for those heated looks that he hadn’t quite been able to suppress. Kayla was too familiar with those looks. Her late-husband, Preston, had certainly given her enough of them, and she was painfully aware of where that had gotten her.

“I’ll call my sister,” Kayla mumbled and started for the house phone that was on a table in the foyer. Of course, to get to it, she would literally have to walk through her dead bodyguard’s blood.

“Here,” Dade offered, handing her his cell.

Kayla took it, her hand brushing against his. Not a gentle hand, either. It was rough. No doubt from the physical labor of ranch work.

The adrenaline was playing havoc with her body and memory so it took her a while to remember Misty’s number. She began to press it in when she heard Robbie. Not crying, but he was making fussy sounds, and those sounds were getting closer. Kayla looked at the stairs and saw her nanny, Connie, making her way toward them. The petite brunette looked completely weighed down with Robbie in the crook of her left arm and a suitcase gripped in her right hand.

Kayla stopped the call so she could go help, but Dade motioned for her to finish it. Instead, he hurried to the stairs, took the suitcase himself and set it on the floor. Robbie was rubbing his eyes and fussing when his attention landed on Dade. The fussing stopped, and much to Kayla’s surprise, her son mumbled something indistinguishable and reached for the lawman.

Her surprise grew to shock when Dade reached out as well and eased Robbie into his arm.

“I have two other suitcases upstairs,” Connie let him know, and she looked at Kayla. The nanny’s eyebrow lifted to verify if it was all right for Dade to have hold of her son.

It wasn’t all right, and Kayla moved to do something about that.

Just as her call to Misty went straight to voice mail.

“I’ll get the suitcases,” Grayson offered. “Show me where they are,” he directed to Connie, and the two started up the stairs.

“Misty,” Kayla said when the voice mail instructed her to leave a message, “call me immediately. I have to talk to you. It’s important. I need to know if you told anyone where I’d be staying.”

And with that done, Kayla hurried to Dade and practically wrenched Robbie away from him. That didn’t make her son or Dade happy. The baby immediately started to cry, and Dade winced when she bumped against his wounded arm.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Kayla eased Robbie’s head against her shoulder and began to rock.

Dade gave her a flat look after he was done wincing. “I wasn’t going to kidnap him.”

“I know. It’s just …” But she had no idea how to finish that explanation. At this point it would sound petty if she admitted that she didn’t want her son in a Ryland’s arms. “Misty didn’t answer her phone, so I left a message.”

Dade waited a moment, his stare drilling through her, and she earned another of those impatient huffs. “You do realize I’ll be around the baby and you while you’re in my protective custody?”

Kayla was sure she blinked. “But you’re injured. I thought someone else would guard us.” Preferably someone who wasn’t a Ryland.

“No…. ” He stretched out the word. “This isn’t an injury. It’s a scratch, and it won’t affect my aim if I need to take out another gunman.”

Another gunman. That sent an icy chill through her. Thankfully, it was a chill her son didn’t seem to notice because he finally calmed down and started to go back to sleep. But Kayla knew there would be no sleep for her in the immediate future.

And she knew who to thank for that.

“I need to make another call,” she told Dade, and she didn’t wait for his permission to use his cell. Nor did she have to try to remember this particular number. She’d seen it countless times on her own phone.

Charles Brennan answered on the first ring.

“Dade Ryland?” Charles greeted, though he sounded more amused than concerned. “Why would the deputy sheriff be calling?”

“No, Charles. It’s me,” Kayla informed him.

Dade rolled his eyes and reached for the phone, but she moved away from him and held on tight to both Robbie and Dade’s cell.

“Did you send someone to kill me tonight?” she demanded from Charles.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

She listened for any differences in his voice. Anything that would confirm that he was behind this attack. But he sounded like his normal arrogant self.

“Someone hired a gunman to come after me,” Kayla clarified, even though she was certain he already knew what she meant.

“And where are you exactly?” Charles asked. Still no change in his inflection.

Even though she doubted Dade had actually heard Charles’s question, he got right in her face, and his scowl intensified. Something she hadn’t thought possible.

“I’m at a place where I won’t be much longer,” Kayla answered. “And I want you to stop this now. Robbie could have been killed tonight.”

“What?” Charles barked, and it had a cold, dangerous undercurrent to it.

“You heard me. The idiot you hired could have killed us all. Call off your dogs, Charles, and take your punishment like a man.”

“I wouldn’t have sent an idiot after you.” And there was the change of inflective. It sounded as if he were telling the truth.

Sounded.

But Kayla had learned the hard way that Charles was capable of deception in its purest form. He certainly hadn’t denied that he’d hired a hitman.

“The gunman phoned one of your goons,” Kayla informed him, even though Dade gave her a have-you-lost-your-mind look. “I want you to call whomever it takes to make this stop.”

Charles didn’t answer right away. “I’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.

Dade threw up his hands and winced again. “Did it occur to you to ask me before you made a call to our number-one suspect?”

“I thought I was your number-one suspect,” she snarled and thrust his phone at him.

He opened his mouth, probably to confirm that she was, but he didn’t. Dade just shook his head, snatched his phone from her hand and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. “That call accomplished nothing.”

“Well, it made me feel better,” Kayla fired back. It didn’t. Nothing would make that happen, not with her bodyguard dead and the body of a hired assassin on her front porch.

Dade mumbled some profanity. “Don’t do anything else that might end up helping your father-in-law, understand?”

Oh, that stung. She would never help Charles. Never. “Look, I know you don’t believe me, but we’re on the same page when it comes to my late-husband’s father. It’s possible Charles was responsible for your sister-in-law’s death. Likely, even. But you couldn’t possibly want him in jail more than I do.”

Dade met her eye-to-eye. “Wanna bet?”

Kayla didn’t dodge him. She held her ground. “As long as Charles is free, I’m not. And neither is my son.” Because she needed it, she brushed a kiss on Robbie’s forehead. “It’s not my fault that Charles isn’t behind bars. If you want someone to blame, blame the cops who investigated Ellie Ryland’s murder.”

Dade didn’t flinch, but it was close. Probably because his brother had been in on the investigation. Heck, all the Rylands had, even though it hadn’t been their jurisdiction. In fact, the case had gone to the FBI when the lead investigator had uncovered some evidence of Charles’s money laundering that was linked to a federal case.

“The FBI’s search warrant was screwed up. It didn’t include the storage facility at his estate,” Dade reminded her. “And that meant all those files and records that were seized there couldn’t be used to convict Brennan. To add insult to injury, there was no more proof to arrest him, much less get a conviction.”

Kayla knew all of this by heart because she’d read the reports too many times to count. “Then blame the FBI. Blame Charles’s team of lawyers who challenged the warrant in the first place. But know this—if I get the chance to put Charles away, I’m taking it. Not for you. Not for your late sister-in-law. But for my son. When are you going to believe me?”

The fit of temper and energy went as fast as it came, and Kayla felt beyond drained. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t heard Mason come back into the house. And he wasn’t the only one to reappear. Grayson was at the top of the stairs, a suitcase in each hand, and all of them were staring at her again.

“Maybe we’ll believe you when there’s proof that you’re innocent.” That came from Mason—the dark and dangerous Ryland. The one who made her more nervous than even Dade. “Your phone wasn’t in the car. I searched every inch of it.”

Kayla wearily shook her head. “Then I must have lost it or left it at the condo where I was staying.”

“Convenient,” Mason mumbled.

“No, it’s not,” she argued, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. “I wish I could produce the phone so you’d know I had no part in this.”

“Call her cell,” Grayson said, making his way down the stairs. “The number is there on the dead gunman’s phone.”

Kayla huffed and was about to tell any Ryland who would listen that calling her on the missing phone would be useless. She didn’t have it with her in the house, and she honestly had no idea where it was. But she decided just to let them have their way.

Mason lifted the gunman’s phone so he could see the numbers through the plastic bag, and he used his own cell to make the call.

Kayla’s heart nearly stopped.

Because the moment that Mason finished pressing in the numbers, the sound shot through the foyer.

While the rest of them watched and while Kayla held her breath, Mason followed the sound.

He didn’t have to go far.

Just a few feet away from her.

There, under the foyer table, at the edge of the pool of blood, her missing cell phone was ringing.

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