The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TARA TAYLOR QUINN

With more than forty-five original novels, and published in more than twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than six million copies sold. She is a winner of the 2008 National Reader’s Choice Award, four-time finalist for the RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for the Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Bookseller’s Best Award and the Holt Medallion, and appears regularly on the Waldenbooks bestsellers list.

Ms. Quinn is a past president of the Romance Writers of America and served for eight years on the board of directors of that association. She has a wide range of experience as a public speaker and workshop presenter for writers’ groups around the country. When she’s not writing or fulfilling speaking engagements, Ms. Quinn enjoys traveling and spending time with her family and friends.

For me.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“MAMA! MAAMAA!” Ryan’s scream tore through her fog of sleep.

Beth Allen was out of bed and across the room before she’d even fully opened her eyes. Heart pounding, she lifted her two-year-old son out of the secondhand crib, pressing his face into her neck as she held him.

“It’s okay, Ry,” she said softly, pushing the sweaty auburn curls away from his forehead. Curls she dyed regularly, along with her own. “Shh, Mama’s right here. It was just a bad dream.”

“Mama,” the toddler said again, his little body shuddering. His tiny fists were clamped tightly against her—her nightshirt and strands of her straight auburn hair held securely within them.

“Mama” was what he’d said when she’d woken up alone with him in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with a nasty bruise on her forehead, another one at the base of her skull. And no memory whatsoever.

She didn’t even know her own name. She’d apparently checked in under the name Beth Allen and, trusting herself to have done so for a reason, had continued using it. It could be who she really was, but she doubted it. She’d obviously been on the run, and it didn’t seem smart to have made herself easy to find.

She didn’t know how old she was. How old her son was. She could only guess Ry’s age by comparing him to other kids.

Stoically, Beth stood there, rocking him slowly, crooning soothingly, until she felt the added weight that signified his slumber. Looking at the crib—old brown wood whose scars were visible even in the dim August moonlight coming through curtainless windows—Beth knew she should put him back there, should do all she could to maintain some level of normalcy.

But she didn’t. She carried the baby back to the twin bed she’d picked up at a garage sale, snuggled him against her too-skinny body beneath the single sheet and willed herself back to sleep.

In that motel room in Snowflake, she’d seen a magazine article about a young woman who’d run away from an abusive husband. Like someone drawn in mingled horror and fascination to the sight of a car crash, she’d read the whole thing—and been greatly touched to find that it had a happy ending. The woman had run to someplace called Shelter Valley, Arizona.

Desperate enough to try anything, Beth had done the same.

But after six months of covering her blond hair and hiding her amnesia, she was no closer to her happy ending.

Neither, apparently, was her son. Spooning his small body up against her, she tried to convince herself that he was okay.

Ryan had only had a nightmare. Could have been about monsters in the closet or a ghost in the attic. Except that the one-bedroom duplex she was renting had neither a closet nor an attic.

No, there was something else haunting her child, giving him these nightmares.

It was the same thing that was haunting her.

Beth just didn’t have any idea what it was.

NEARLY BLINDED by the sun-brightened landscape, Sheriff Greg Richards scanned the horizon, missing nothing between him and the mountains in the distance.

A young woman had been rear-ended, forced off the road. And when she’d rolled to a stop, two assailants had pushed her into the rear of her Chevy Impala. She’d never even seen the car that hit her; she had been overtaken too quickly by the men who’d jumped out of its back seat to notice the vehicle driving off.

Stillness. That was all Greg’s trained eye saw. Brownish-green desert brush. Dry, thorny plants that were tough enough to survive the scorching August sun. Cacti.

Another desert carjacking. The third in three months. A run of them—just like that summer ten years before. Yet…different. This time, instead of ending up dead or severely injured, the victim, Angela Marquette, had thrown herself out of the car. She’d flagged down a passing car and used a cell phone to call for help.

Greg continued to scan the surrounding area, but there was no sign of the new beige Impala. Not on the highway—patrols had been notified across the state—nor in the form of glinting metal underneath the scarred cacti and other desert landscaping that had witnessed hideous brutalities over the years. In the places it was thickest, a hijacked car or two, even an occasional dead body, could easily slide beneath it undetected.

Patrol cars and an ambulance ahead signaled the location of the victim. Pulling his unmarked car off the road and close to the group of emergency personnel, Greg got out. The immediate parting of the crowd always surprised him; he hadn’t been the sheriff of Shelter Valley long enough to get used to it.

As he approached the victim, he noticed that she was shaking and in shock. And sweating, too. The young woman, her brown hair in a ponytail, leaned against one of the standard-issue cars from his division. One of the paramedics shook his head as Greg caught his eye. Apparently she’d refused medical attention.

“Angela, I’m Sheriff Richards,” he said gently when her gaze, following those of his deputies, landed on him.

“We’ve got her full report.” Deputy Burt Culver stepped up to Greg. “We just finished.” Burt, only a few years older than Greg, had been with the Kachina County Sheriff’s Department when Greg had first worked there as a junior deputy. Other than a short stint with Detention Services—at the one and only jail in Kachina County’s jurisdiction—Burt had been content to work his way up in Operations, concentrating mostly on criminal investigations. He was one of the best.

Culver had never expressed much interest in administration, had never run for Sheriff, but Greg was hoping to talk him into accepting a promotion to Captain over Operations. No one else would be as good.

Greg glanced down at the report. “This is a number where we can reach you during the day?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied, her voice as shaky as her hands. “And at night, as well. I’m a student at the University of Arizona. I live at home with my parents.”

“The car was theirs?” Greg asked her. Chevy Impalas weren’t cheap. Certainly not the usual knock-around college vehicle. She would probably have been perfectly safe in one of those. These hijackers didn’t go for low-end cars.

“No, sir, it’s mine. I also work as a dance instructor in Tucson.”

Greg looked over the pages Burt had handed him, confident that everything was complete. That he wasn’t needed here, at the scene of the crime. Still, he thumbed through the report.

Two men had done the actual hijacking. Young, in their late teens or early twenties. One Caucasian. A blonde. The other had darker skin, brown eyes and black hair. They’d both been wearing wallet chains, faded jeans—in the one-hundred and ten degree heat—ripped tank T-shirts, medallions. The blonde—the driver—had a tattoo on his left biceps and he’d been wearing dirty white tennis shoes. They’d had her radio blaring.

“Neither of them spoke to you?”

The young woman shook her head, the movement almost spastic. Other than a couple of bruises, she’d escaped physically unharmed. But she’d probably carry mental scars for the rest of her life. Greg stared into the distance for a moment, focusing his concentration. He was the sheriff now. Personal feelings were irrelevant.

The carjackers of ten years ago had been silent, as well. No accents to give any clue that might imply one social group or school over another.

“I just remembered something,” the girl said, her brown eyes almost luminescent as she struggled against tears and sunshine to look up at him. “Just after they pushed me…over the seat…one of them said something…about this ‘counting double.’ They turned the radio on at the same time and I was so scared… I could be wrong….” She shook her head, eyes clouded as she frowned up at him. “Maybe I’m not remembering anything at all.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like the paramedics to take a look at you?” Greg asked.

She shook her head again. “I’m fine…just a little sore…” She attempted a smile. “I called my parents.” Her words suddenly came in a rush. “They’re on their way to get me.”

Nodding, Greg handed the report back to a sweating Culver. “See that I have a copy of this on my desk ASAP,” he said, then added, “Wait here until her folks arrive. I want them to be able to get the assurances they’ll undoubtedly need from the man in charge, not from a junior officer.”

“Got it, Chief.”

Unsettled, dissatisfied, glad only that Culver was in charge, Greg gave the young woman his own card with the invitation to call if she needed anything now or in the future, and headed back to his car.

He could keep trying to pretend that this case wasn’t personal, but either way, he was going to get these guys. There was simply no other choice. With every carjacking that went unsolved, there was a greater chance that another would follow.

That was the professional reason he wasn’t going to rest until the perpetrators were caught.

And the personal one…

His father’s death had to be avenged.

He entered Shelter Valley city limits an hour later and drove slowly through town, glancing as he always did, at the statue of the town’s founder, Samuel Montford, that had appeared while he’d been away.

There was no reason for Greg to stop by Little Spirits Day Care. Bonnie, founder and owner of the only childcare facility in Shelter Valley—and Greg’s only sibling—would be busy with all the “little spirits” in her care, doing the myriad things an administrator at a day care did.

He pulled up at Little Spirits, anyway. It was Friday. After a week of day care, maybe Katie, his three-year-old niece, needed to be sprung.

Even if she didn’t, Bonnie would pretend she did. Bonnie understood.

Sometimes Greg just needed a dose of innocence and warmth, sweetness and love, to counteract the rest of his world.

“Dispatch to 11:15…” The words came just as Greg was swinging shut the driver’s door. With an inner groan, he caught the door, sank onto the seat again and listened.

Two minutes later, he was back on the road. There was a warrant out for Bob Mather’s arrest. As far as Greg knew, the man he’d graduated from high school with hadn’t been in Shelter Valley for more than five years, but his parents’ place was listed as his last known address.

Which meant Greg had to pay the sweet-natured older couple yet another unpleasant visit, when he should’ve been watching ice cream drip down Katie’s dimpled chin.

This was not a good day.

TOILETS WEREN’T HER SPECIALTY. But Beth made the white porcelain bowl, the fifth she’d faced that day, shine, anyway. A job is only worth doing if it’s done right.

Beth squirted a little glass cleaner on the chrome piping and handle to make them glisten, then wiped efficiently, satisfied when she saw an elongated version of what she supposed was her chin in the spotless flush handle. She ignored the pull she felt as the quote ran through her mind again. A job is only worth doing if it’s done right.

How did she know that? Had someone said it to her? Many times? Her mother or father, perhaps? A boss?

There was no point traveling in that direction. The blankness in her mind was not going to supply the answer. And Beth didn’t dare look anywhere else.

But she made a mental note to write the thought down in her notebook when she got home that night. Because these obscure recollections were her only link with a reality she couldn’t find, she was cataloguing everything she remembered—any hint that returned to her from a past she couldn’t access.

And making up new rules to live by, as well. Creating herself.

Bucket full of cleaning supplies in hand, Beth blew at the strand of hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail. Only one more bathroom to go, and Beth’s Basins could chalk up another good day’s work. She still had to vacuum the Mathers’ carpets and water mop the ceramic tile in the kitchen and baths, but those jobs weren’t particularly noteworthy. Beth measured the progress of her day by bathrooms.

The doorbell rang in the front of the house. Stopping only to rinse her hands in the sink she had yet to clean, Beth wiped her palms along the legs of her overall shorts and hurried to the door. The Mathers had told her they were expecting a package, and she didn’t want to disappoint them by failing to get to the door in time.

The man waiting outside was uniformed in brown, but he wasn’t the UPS deliveryman she’d been expecting.

“Sheriff?” Between the hammering of her heart and the fear in her throat, she barely got the word out. His face was grim.

Ryan! He has to be okay! They can’t take him! Have they found me out? What do they know that I don’t? The thoughts buzzed loudly, making her dizzy.

“Beth!”

She almost relaxed a notch when Greg Richard’s stern expression softened.

“I didn’t know the Mathers were one of your clients.”

“Just this month,” she said. He hadn’t known she was working there. So he hadn’t come after her.

Thank God.

But then…that meant he was there to see the sweet older couple she’d met in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center at Montford University six weeks before.

“I take it Bob, Sr. and Clara aren’t home?” he asked.

He had the most intense dark green eyes.

Still holding the door, Beth told him, “They went to Phoenix to have lunch and see a movie.” She frowned. “Is something wrong?” Bob, Sr. had lost both his parents during the past few months. Surely they’d had their share of bad news for a while.

Greg shook his head, but Beth had a feeling that it was the “I’m not at liberty to say” kind of gesture rather than the “no” she’d been seeking.

“I just need to ask them a couple of questions,” he added, “but it sounds like they’ll be gone most of the afternoon.” His gaze was warm, personal.

“I got that impression.”

Hands in his pockets, Greg didn’t leave. “I’ll catch them later tonight, then. If you don’t mind, please don’t mention that I’ve been by.”

“Of course not.” Beth never—ever—put her nose in other people’s business. She didn’t know if this was a newly acquired trait or one she’d brought with her into this prison of oblivion. “I won’t be seeing or talking to them, anyway. I just leave their key under the mat when I’m through here.”

“So what time would that be?”

Beth glanced at her watch—not that it was going to tell her what jobs she had left or how long they would take. “Within the hour.” She was due to pick Ryan up from the Willises at five.

Ryan couldn’t be enrolled in the day care in town. Not only was Beth living a lie, without even a social security number, but she couldn’t take a chance on signing any official papers that might allow someone to trace her.

Especially when she had no idea who that someone might be.

So she left the toddler with two elderly sisters, Ethel and Myra Willis, who adored him. And she only accepted cash from her clients.

“How does an early dinner sound?”

That inexplicable headiness hadn’t left her since she’d answered the door. “With you?” she asked, stalling, putting off the moment when she had to refuse.

He nodded, the movement subtly incorporating his entire body. It was one of the things that kept Greg on her mind long after she’d run into him someplace or other—the way he put all of himself into everything he did. You had to be sincere to be able to do that consistently.

“I have to feed Ryan,” she said, only because it was more palatable than an outright no. It still meant no.

Pulling a hand from his pocket, he turned it palm upward. “The diner serves kids.”

Beth’s eyes were automatically drawn to that hand and beyond, to the pocket it had left. And from there to the heavy-looking gun in a black leather holster at his hip.

“Ry’s not good in restaurants.” Her mouth dry, Beth knew she had to stop. Too much was at stake.

Yet she liked to think she was starting a new life. And if she was, she wanted this man in it.

If he weren’t a cop. And if she weren’t afraid she was on the run from something pretty damn horrible. If she were certain she could trust him, no matter who she might turn out to be, no matter what she might have done.

“He’s two,” Greg said. “He’ll learn.”

“I have no doubt he will, but I’d rather get him over the food-throwing stage in private.”

Greg stared down at his feet, shod, as usual, in freshly shined black wing tips. “In all the months I’ve known you, I’ve never done one thing to give you reason to doubt me, but you always brush me off,” he said eventually.

“No, I…” Beth stopped. “Okay, yes, I am.”

“Is it my breath?”

“No!” She chuckled, relaxing for just a second. With the truth out in the open, the immediate danger was gone.

“My hair? You don’t like black hair?” He was grinning at her, and somehow that little bit of humor was more devastating than his earlier intensity.

“I like black just fine. Tom Cruise has black hair.”

“Dark brown. Tom Cruise has dark brown hair. And he’s the reason you’ve come up with an excuse every single time I’ve asked you out?”

“No.”

“It’s the curls, then? You don’t like men with curls?”

“I love your curls.” Oh God. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her throat started to close up again. She couldn’t do this.

And she couldn’t not do this. Beth’s emotional well had been bone-dry for so long she sometimes feared it was beginning to crumble into nothingness. She had no one else sharing her life—her fears and worries and pains; worse, she didn’t really even have herself. She was living with a stranger in her own mind.

“Ryan has curls,” she finished lamely.

Greg’s expression grew serious. “Is it the cop thing? I know a lot of women don’t want to be involved with cops. Understandably so.”

His guess was dead right, but not in the way he meant. “I’m not one of them,” she said, compelled to be honest with him. About this, at least. “I’d consider myself lucky to be involved with a man who’d dedicated his life to helping others. A man who put the safety of others before his own. One who still had enough faith in society to believe it’s worth saving.”

“Even though you’d know, every morning when you kissed him goodbye as he left for work, that you might never see him again?”

“Every woman—and man—faces that danger,” she said. “I’ll bet that far more people die in car accidents than on the job working as a cop.”

“Far more,” he agreed.

“And, anyway,” she said, feeling a sudden urge to close the door, “who said anything about kissing every morning?”

“I was hoping I’d been able to slide that one by you,” he said.

“Nope.”

“So—” his gaze became challenging “—if it’s not the cop thing and it’s not my breath, it must be you that you’re afraid of.”

“I am not afraid.”

He sobered. “If you need more time, Beth, I certainly understand. We could grab a sandwich as friends, maybe see a movie or something.”

More time? She frowned.

“It’s been—what?—less than a year since you were widowed?” he asked, his face softening.

Widowed. Oh yeah, that. It was the story she’d invented when she’d come to town. She was a recent widow attempting to start a new life. You’d think she could at least manage to keep track of the life she’d made up to replace the one she couldn’t remember.

“Look,” she said, really needing to get back to work. Ry was going to be looking for her soon. Routine was of vital importance to her little boy. “If you were serious about the friend thing, I could use some help.”

She was testing him. And felt bad about that. But not bad enough to stop herself, apparently.

“Sure.”

“I just bought a used apartment-size washer and dryer.” Taking a two-year-old’s two and three changes a day to the Laundromat had been about to kill her—financially and physically. “I need someone with a truck to go with me to pick it up and then help me get it into the duplex.”

He’d know where she lived, then. But who was she kidding? He was the county sheriff—a powerful man. And Shelter Valley was a small town. He’d probably known where she lived for months.

“I have a truck.”

“I know.”

She’d passed him in town a couple of times, feeling small and insignificant in the old, primer-spattered Ford Granada she’d bought for five-hundred dollars next to his beautiful brand-new blue Ford F-150 Supercab.

“If I offer to help are you going to brush me off again?”

“No.”

“You aren’t just setting me up here?” He was smiling.

“No!” Beth said indignantly, but she was smiling, too.

“I’m tempted to force you to ask, just to win back a little bit of the pride you’ve been quietly stripping away for months. But because I’m afraid to chance it, I’ll ask you, instead. May I please help you bring your new appliances home?”

Beth laughed out loud…and was shocked by the sound. She couldn’t remember having heard it before. Couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with bruises and a child who called her Mama crying on the bed beside her.

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind, I could sure use the help,” she said, all laughter gone. She had no business even thinking about flirting with the county sheriff, but she and Ryan needed those appliances. And she couldn’t get them to the duplex alone.

“What time?”

“Tonight? After dinner?”

“Sure we couldn’t do it before dinner and just happen to eat while we’re at it?”

“I’m sure.”

Beth hated the conflicting emotions she felt when he gave in with no further cajoling and agreed to pick her up at six-thirty that evening for the ten-minute drive out to the Andersons’. They were remodeling the one-room apartment over their garage and no longer needed the appliances, which, while five years old, had hardly been used.

Conflicting emotions—one of the few experiences Beth knew intimately. Intermittent relief. Disappointment. Resignation. Fear.

Peace. That was, and had to be, her only goal. Peace for her. And health, safety and happiness for Ryan.

Nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER TWO