Laine was there by the door, waiting for him, and Tucker wasn’t sure who made the first move or even how it happened, but she ended up in his arms.

Strange that it kept happening, and it shouldn’t. Even a hug of comfort was a Texas-sized reminder that it was Laine in his arms and that nothing good could come of this.

Well, nothing reasonable anyway.

Maybe it was because every inch of him was on edge that he even thought of holding her as a stress reliever. Yeah, for a second or two, it was relief, but what always followed were some crystal clear reminders of why they shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.

The heat between them.

The bad blood, too. Hard to hang on to bad blood, though, when the blasted attraction kept getting in the way.

Cowboy Behind the Badge
Delores Fossen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling author DELORES FOSSEN has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.dfossen.net.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Texas Ranger Tucker McKinnon—The bad boy lawman of the McKinnon family. He’s not daddy material, or so he thinks, until he’s forced to protect two newborns and the woman he’s long considered his enemy.

Laine Braddock—A child psychologist. She’ll do anything to protect the babies she’s rescued, even if it means turning to Tucker, the last man on earth who’d want to help her.

The newborns—They’re too young to realize the danger or the people willing to risk their lives to keep them safe.

Dawn Cowen—A missing woman at the center of a black market baby farm investigation.

Martin Hague—A social worker who seems too eager to take the rescued babies from Tucker and Laine.

Darren Carty—Laine’s ex-fiancé, who might have a personal stake in not just the investigation but in the babies that Laine rescued.

Rhonda Wesson—Once a victim of a notorious black market baby farm, but does she know more than she’s saying?

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

About the Author

Cast of Characters

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 Nineteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Tucker McKinnon heard the sound the moment he stepped from the shower. Someone was moving around in his kitchen.

He opened his mouth to call out to his brothers, the only two people who would have let themselves into his house, but then he remembered. His older brother, Cooper, was on his honeymoon, and his kid brother, Colt, was working at the sheriff’s office in town.

So, who was his visitor?

He didn’t like most of the possibilities that came to mind. Heck, it could even be someone connected to the arrest he’d made just hours earlier. The dirt-for-brains fugitive that Tucker had tangled with could have sent someone out to settle the score with the Texas Ranger who’d hauled his sorry butt off to jail.

If so, the score-settler wasn’t being very quiet, and had clearly lost the element of surprise.

Tucker dried off, wincing when he wiped the towel over the cuts and bruises. He wasn’t that old, just thirty-four, but he was too old to be getting into a fistfight with the fugitive who’d gotten the jump on him.

Hurrying, Tucker pulled on his jeans and eased open the door so he could peek inside his bedroom. No one was there, so he grabbed his gun from the holster he’d ditched on the nightstand and stepped into the hall.

The sounds continued.

Someone mumbling. Other sounds, too. He heard the click of the lock on the back door. His intruder, whoever it was, had locked them in together.

Probably not a good sign.

Since he was barefoot, his steps didn’t make any noise on the hardwood floors, and with his gun ready, Tucker inched down the short hall, past the living room, so he could look into the kitchen.

There was still plenty of light outside, but the trees next to his kitchen window made the room pretty dark and filled it with shadows. None of the shadows, however, looked like an intruder.

He saw the pantry door slightly ajar. A door Tucker was darn certain he’d shut because he was always stubbing his toe on it.

Someone was in there.

He glanced out the window. No vehicle other than his own truck. The sky looked like a crime scene, though. Bruise-colored storm clouds with a bloodred sunset stabbing through them. He hoped that wasn’t some kind of bad sign.

“Not very bright,” Tucker tossed out there. “Breaking into the house of a Texas Ranger. We tend to frown on stuff like that.” He slapped on the lights.

“No,” someone said. It was a woman, and even though her voice was only a whisper, there was as much emotion in it as if she’d shouted the word. “Turn off that light. I don’t want them to see us.”

“Them?” Tucker questioned.

“The killers.”

Okay. That got his attention in more ways than one. Despite the whisper, he recognized the voice. “Laine?”

As in Laine Braddock, a child psychologist who sometimes worked with the Rangers and the FBI. Since they weren’t on good terms—not on speaking terms, in fact—Tucker had worked with her as little as possible. After all, his mother, Jewell, had been charged with murdering Laine’s father. That didn’t create a warm, fuzzy bond between them.

Not now, anyway.

Once, when they were kids, Laine and he had played together almost every day. And she’d been on the receiving end of his very first kiss.

That wasn’t exactly something he wanted to remember at this moment, though.

Tucker went closer to the door, and despite the fact he knew her, he didn’t lower his gun. Everything inside his severely banged up body was yelling for him to stay alert so he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of another butt-whipping. Especially since Laine might not be alone.

“What killers?” he asked.

“The ones who could have followed us here.”

Tucker didn’t miss the us.

There was no us when it came to Laine and him. Except they had run into each other about a week before, when he was called to assist the FBI with investigating a black-market adoption ring. Laine had been there on standby in case any of the children were recovered, but Tucker and she hadn’t exchanged anything other than some frosty glares.

And that told him loads.

Even if so-called killers were involved, he was the absolute last person on God’s green earth that Laine would have come to, and yet here she was.

“How’d you get in?” he demanded.

“Through the back door. It wasn’t locked.”

Not locking up was a bad habit that Tucker would remedy the moment he got her out of there. “So you let yourself in. Not a smart thing to do, since you knew I’d be armed.”

“It was a risk I had to take,” she mumbled.

That only added to the whole puzzling situation. Why come here? What risk was worth a visit with the enemy?

Maybe she hadn’t come here by choice.

“Come out so I can see you,” Tucker ordered, because he wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t holding a gun on her. Maybe it was those killers she’d warned him about.

“Turn out the lights first, please. I don’t want them to see us.”

Her presence, combined with the fear in her voice, was enough to make Tucker do as she said. He turned off the light, let his eyes adjust to the darkness and moved closer in case he had to fight off someone holding her hostage.

The hinges on the pantry door creaked a little when she fully opened it, and she stepped into the doorway. Yeah, it was Laine all right, and even in the dim light, Tucker could see that something was wrong. Everything about her was disheveled, from her brown hair to her clothes. There was mud or something on her jeans, shoes and white top.

She made a slight gasping sound and reached out to touch him, but then she jerked back her hand. “You’ve been hurt. Did they come here already?”

“No one’s been here. I got this while making an arrest.” He must have looked downright awful for her to notice something like that at a time like this. “How’d you get out here? Where’s your car? And why would someone have come here already?”

Laine pressed her hand to her head as if he’d just doled out too many questions. Heck, he was just getting started.

“I parked in the woods by the road and walked through the pasture to get here,” she finally said. “I didn’t want them following me, but they could come here looking for me.”

Her voice was shaking. So was she. And she latched her hands onto the doorjamb as if that were the only way she could keep on her feet.

That unsteadiness sent a new round of concern through him. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

“I wasn’t hurt.”

She swallowed hard, pushed herself from the doorway and came toward him. Despite the fact he still had a gun pointed at her. She landed in his arms before Tucker could stop her, and she started to cry. Not just any old crying, either. Sobs punctuated with hard breaths that made a hiccupping sound.

Oh, man.

Whatever this was, it was really bad.

Tucker would’ve needed a heart of ice not to react. And he reacted, all right. He slid his left arm around her. He kept his grip loose. Very loose. But it didn’t matter. Basically, Laine was plastered against him, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He could feel pretty much every inch of her trembling body.

“They killed her right in front of me,” Laine said through the sobs.

That pushed aside anything he was feeling from the unexpected hugging session. “Who was killed?”

“A woman. I don’t know her name.”

Tucker eased back, met her gaze. “Start from the beginning. What happened?”

And then he’d want to know why she hadn’t taken this to the local cops. After all, his brother was the sheriff, and his brother, Colt, the deputy. Yet, Laine had come all the way there to his family’s ranch, which wasn’t exactly on the beaten path.

“Remember that undercover assignment I was on last week?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “We were working on it together, but you got me fired.”

Yeah, he remembered. “Not fired. I just asked for you to be reassigned somewhere not near me.”

“You got me fired,” she repeated, sounding not too happy about it. “Anyway, about an hour and a half ago, I got a call from a woman who wouldn’t tell me who she was. She said she’d been held captive by guards at the place we were investigating. But she escaped today.”

Laine stopped, shuddering, and pressed her fingers to her mouth.

Good grief. He hoped this wasn’t going where he thought it was. “Please tell me you didn’t go out to meet this woman alone?”

“I didn’t have to go anywhere to meet her. She was in the parking lot outside my office in town. Hiding behind my car. She said she was making the call from a prepaid cell phone that she had stolen from her captors.”

Tucker groaned and hoped the rest of this conversation would go a whole lot better than what he’d heard so far. “And at that point, you should have called my brother. Colt’s been on duty all day, and he would have responded immediately.”

Laine didn’t argue with that, even though Tucker was dead certain she didn’t trust Colt any more than she trusted him or the rest of his family.

“The woman said not to contact the cops, that I had to see her alone. So I went out to the parking lot,” Laine continued.

But she stopped, and the tears returned. Worse, her hands twitched as if she might reach for him again. She didn’t, thank goodness. Instead, Laine held on to the counter by the sink.

“What happened?” Tucker pressed. He hated to sound impatient and insensitive, but if a murder had truly taken place, he needed to report it.

“The woman was scared. Terrified,” Laine corrected. “And she only had a chance to say a few words to me when a car came screeching into the parking lot. She told me to run and hide. So I did. She said I was to stay in hiding, no matter what happened. I ducked behind the Dumpster.”

Tucker knew that parking lot and the position of the Dumpster. Laine’s office was on the far edge of Sweetwater Springs, in a small cottage that shared a back parking lot with three other small buildings. Two were empty, and the third was a law office. Tucker hoped someone else was in that office to witness what’d gone on, in case this turned into an investigation.

“If I’d known what was going to happen,” Laine continued, “I wouldn’t have hidden. I would have tried to get help.” She pulled in a long breath, and the trembling got worse. “The car came to a stop, and two men jumped out. They were wearing police uniforms.”

That gave him a moment’s pause. “What kind?” The cops in Sweetwater Springs didn’t often wear uniforms, but when they did, they were khaki-colored.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. They were blue, and they had badges and guns.”

Maybe they had been from another town or jurisdiction and they’d tracked the woman to Laine’s office. “Did they try to arrest the woman?”

A sob tore from her throat. “No. She motioned for me to stay put and she ran. She bolted toward the street, and they shot her. Oh, God. Tucker, they shot her.”

It didn’t matter that he was a lawman. Hearing about a shooting hit him hard. Except something about this wasn’t adding up. “Why didn’t anyone report the shots? Why didn’t you report them?”

“They used guns with silencers.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth a moment. “They shot her in the back as she was running. She was dead. I could tell by how limp her arms and legs were when they picked up her body and threw her in the trunk of their car.”

Hell.

Since it hadn’t started raining yet, there’d be blood. Maybe even some other evidence.

Tucker’s cell phone was in the bedroom by his holster, and he didn’t want to leave the room to go get it. Instead, he reached for the landline on the kitchen wall. He had to call Colt and get him to the scene ASAP.

“Don’t.” Laine latched onto his wrist. “They had a police radio in their car. I heard it. And if you call the sheriff’s office, they’ll hear it, too. They’ll know I came here.”

Tucker blew out a long, frustrated breath. Not good about the police radio, but like uniforms, they could be faked or stolen. It didn’t mean cops had actually killed the woman.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

Laine let that question hum between them for several moments. “Because I knew the lawman in you would help me.”

Tucker let her answer hum between them a couple of moments, too, even though he couldn’t argue with it since it was the truth. “The murder has to be reported, but I’ll tell my brother not to put any of this on the police radio. Did you get the license plate on the car?”

“No. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Another sob. “I should have done something to stop them.”

“If you’d tried, they likely would have killed you, too.” It was the truth, and even though Laine and he were essentially enemies, he didn’t wish that on anybody. As it was, this nightmare would be with her for a long time.

He reached for the phone again, but once more Laine stopped him. “I stayed hidden like the woman told me to do. I did everything she insisted that I do.” Her voice was frantic now, and she sounded like she was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. “And the words she said to me keep repeating in my head.”

Everything inside Tucker went still. “What words?”

“‘Hide them. Protect them.’” She turned, maybe to bolt out the door, so he took her by the shoulders.

“Who’s them?” He groaned. Were there more women still being held at the baby farm? That wouldn’t be good, because if everything Laine had told him was true, their captors were cold-blooded killers.

She pried off his grip and went back to the door of the pantry.

Tucker braced himself to see his pantry crammed with women who were on the run from the men who’d gunned down one of their fellow captives.

But there were no women.

In fact, because the lights were off, Tucker couldn’t see anything other than the food on the shelves.

“I have to protect them,” Laine repeated, her voice breaking.

Tucker went closer to the pantry and looked around. On the floor was a rumpled blanket.

Except it wasn’t just a blanket.

Wrapped in the center of it was something he’d never expected to find in his pantry.

Two sleeping newborn babies.

Chapter Two

Laine tried to brace herself for Tucker’s reaction. By all accounts, he was a good lawman, so she doubted that he would just toss the babies and her out the door. It was one of the reasons she’d come to him. That, and there being literally no one else she could trust.

She wasn’t sure she could trust him, either.

But she was certain that he’d do what was right for the babies.

“They need to be protected,” Laine said when Tucker just stood there volleying glances between her and the babies. “The killers will be looking for them. And for me.”

Tucker shook his head, obviously trying to process this. She wished him luck with that. She’d had more than an hour to process it, and it still didn’t make sense.

“Why are you so sure the killers will be looking for you?” he snapped.

“Because if they don’t know already, they’ll find out I’m the person renting that office space, that it was my car the woman was hiding behind. And that I had a connection to the illegal adoption investigation.”

He made a sound of agreement with frustration mixed in. He tore his gaze from the babies. “How’d this woman know to come to you?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t get a chance to tell me.” In fact, the only thing Laine was certain of was the woman’s warning that kept repeating through her head.

Hide them. Protect them.

“I don’t know anything about these particular babies,” Laine said. The panic started to crawl through her again. “But I’m sure they’ll be hungry soon. I figured since you have a nephew, you might be able to get some baby supplies.”

What Tucker did do was curse and reach for the phone again. Once again, she tried to stop him, but before he could make a call she didn’t want him to make, the phone rang. The sound shot through the room and sent her heart slamming against her chest. It also caused the babies to stir.

“Colt,” Tucker said when he answered. Someone that she knew well. Colt was his kid brother and the deputy sheriff of Sweetwater Springs. He was also someone else she wasn’t sure she could trust. “I was just about to call you.”

Tucker still had his gun gripped in his hand, and he turned his steely-gray lawman’s eyes to the window when he put the call on speaker.

“I tried your cell phone first and when I didn’t get an answer, I called the landline. Good thing you’re there. Just had an interesting visit from two San Antonio cops looking for Laine Braddock,” Colt continued. “They said they had a warrant for her arrest.”

Oh, mercy. It was a lie, of course. There was no warrant out on her, but this had to be the two men who’d killed the woman.

“Are they still there?” Laine blurted out. “If so, arrest them.”

“Laine?” Colt mumbled. He said her name like profanity. “Tucker, what the hell’s she doing at your place?”

“I’m trying to figure that out now. Why’d the men want to arrest her?”

“Aiding and abetting an escaped felon.” Colt paused. “Did she?”

“No!” Laine insisted.

At the same moment, Tucker said, “I’m trying to figure that out, too. Was there anything suspicious about these men?”

“Nothing that I noticed. Why?”

“Just check and make sure they’re really cops. I have an old friend in SAPD, Lieutenant Nate Ryland. Call him and make sure these two guys are from his department. Another thing I need you to do is get someone out to Laine’s office ASAP and check the back parking lot for any signs of an attack.”

“An attack? What the devil’s going on?” Colt pressed.

“Just send someone over there and let me know if there’s anything to find.”

“And don’t use your police radio,” Laine insisted. “The men are probably monitoring the airwaves, and they might try to go back and clean up before you can investigate the scene.”

Colt, no doubt, wanted to ask plenty more questions, but Tucker cut him off. “I’ll be in touch after I’ve made some more calls.” With that, Tucker hung up and headed out of the room and into the hall.

“What calls?” Laine asked, following him. She couldn’t go far in case the babies started to cry, but thankfully the hall wasn’t that long.

Tucker ducked into a room—his bedroom, she soon realized. He grabbed a black T-shirt that’d been draped over a chair. He slipped it on.

No more bare chest.

And she hated that she’d even noticed something like that at a time like this. Of course, it was hard not to notice a man who looked like Tucker McKinnon. That rumpled sandy-brown hair. Those eyes.

That amazing body.

Laine was counting heavily on him using that lawman’s body if it came down to protecting the babies.

He looked up at her as he tugged on his boots, and his left eyebrow slid up. Only then did Laine realize that she was gawking at him.

“What calls?” she repeated. Obviously, the murder she’d witnessed had caused her brain to turn cloudy.

“Social services, for one. We have to turn these babies over to the proper authorities.”

“What if these killers have connections there, too?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s too risky to call anyone now. We need to find someone we can trust before we let anyone know we have the babies.”

Tucker gave her a flat look, as if she’d lost her mind. Heck, maybe she had.

“Look, you’ve been through a bad experience,” he said, his tone not exactly placating, but close enough. “And because someone else broke the law, that doesn’t mean we have the right to do the same. The babies need to be turned over to social services so they can find out who they are. It’s possible the woman who was hiding behind the car isn’t even their mother.”

That hit her like an avalanche. Because it might be true. God, why hadn’t she thought of that? Except she remembered the look of desperation on the woman’s face. Her plea for help.

Hide them. Protect them.

And Laine had to shake her head. “She sacrificed her life for them. Only their mother would have done that. A kidnapper would have just handed them over to the killers to save herself.”

Tucker stared at her. And stared. Before he mumbled some profanity and snatched up his phone from the nightstand. “A friend of a friend is married to a social worker. I’ll arrange a meeting with her.”

A meeting like that still wasn’t without risks, but it was better than involving the cops. Of course, if Colt found blood or something else in the parking lot, Laine seriously doubted that he would keep the information to himself.

At some point, all of this had to become official.

Laine heard a soft, kittenlike sound and hurried back to the pantry. One of the babies was stirring. The other was still sound asleep. Laine went closer, knelt beside them and tried to gently rock the baby with her hand.

“My friend didn’t answer,” Tucker said, coming back into the kitchen. “So I left a message.” He tipped his head to the babies. “Are they boys or girls?”

“I don’t know.” She’d been so focused on getting them to safety that she hadn’t considered anything else. But Laine considered it now.

Both babies wore full-length body gowns with drawstrings at the bottoms. She loosened the one on the squirming baby and peeked inside the diaper.

“This one’s a boy,” she relayed to Tucker. She had a look at the other one. “And this one’s a girl.”

The different sexes could mean they weren’t twins after all, though they looked alike and appeared to be the same age. But what if the dead woman had rescued her own child and then someone else’s? It could mean there was another woman being held captive.

Or another woman who was already dead.

That sickened Laine even more.

“If my friend doesn’t call back in the next few minutes, we’ll need to get someone else out here to take them,” Tucker explained. “I mean, we don’t even have any way to feed them. My nephew’s two, and he doesn’t drink from a bottle. I doubt we’d even have anything like that around the ranch.”

Laine couldn’t dispute what he was saying. Nor could she push aside the feeling that these babies felt like her responsibility now.

Tucker mumbled something she didn’t catch and went to the kitchen window to look out again. When the baby kept squirming and started to fuss, Laine eased him into her arms.

She had little experience holding a baby, and even though she’d run through the pasture with them, the babies had been wrapped in that bulky blanket. With nothing but the gown and his diaper between them, the baby felt as fragile as paper-thin crystal.

Tucker glanced at her and frowned. “You know what you’re doing?”

“No.” But the baby did seem to settle down when she rocked him, so Laine kept doing it. “I’m sorry for bringing them to your doorstep, but I drove out of town as fast as I could and didn’t know where else to go.”

She glanced around the kitchen. “We used to play here when we were kids.”

“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s house.”

The explanation was clipped, as if it were the last thing he wanted to discuss with her. Maybe because they’d done more than just play in this house. They’d shared a childhood kiss there. She had been ten. Tucker, eleven. Twenty-three years ago.

Just days before her father’s murder.

After that, there’d been no kissing.

No more playing together. No more friendship.

Even though she’d just been a kid, it hadn’t taken long before Laine had realized what gossip everyone was spreading—that Tucker’s mother, Jewell, and her father, Whitt, had done something bad. Later, she would come to understand that something bad meant they’d been lovers. And that Jewell had murdered her father when he’d tried to break things off and work on saving his marriage. A murder that Jewell had yet to be punished for. At least now the woman was in jail, awaiting trial.

“Don’t,” Tucker warned, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I don’t want to take any trips down memory lane right now.”

Fair enough. His mother was a touchy subject for both of them. From everything Laine had heard, Tucker and his brothers weren’t disputing Jewell’s guilt. They only wanted the woman who’d cheated on their father and abandoned them to get out of their lives and leave Sweetwater Springs.

Tucker’s cell phone rang, causing the baby to fuss again, and Laine leaned in so she could see the caller’s name on the screen.

Colt.

The fear returned with a vengeance, and she prayed that Tucker’s brother had found something—anything—that would help her keep the babies safe.

Laine leaned in so she’d be able to hear what he said. Obviously she leaned too close, because her arm brushed against Tucker’s chest. He shot her a “back off” scowl and hit the speaker function so she’d be able to hear.

“Just got off the phone with Lieutenant Ryland,” Colt immediately said. “He doesn’t know a thing about two SAPD cops coming to Sweetwater Springs.”

“So they’re fake,” Laine concluded.

“Looks that way. And there’s also no warrant for your arrest.”

She hadn’t expected to feel as much relief as she did. Laine knew she’d done nothing to have an arrest warrant issued against her, and the last thing she needed right now was real cops trying to arrest her for a fake warrant.

“What about the parking lot?” Tucker asked. “You find anything?”

“I sent Reed to check it out. Still waiting to hear from him.”

He was talking about Reed Caldwell, one of the deputies. Laine hoped the two men who’d fired those shots had managed to leave some kind of evidence behind. And then she thought of something else.

“Maybe the dead woman’s fingerprints are somewhere on my car? She had her hand on the door when I first spotted her.”

“Dead woman?” Colt questioned.

Tucker groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Laine thinks she witnessed a murder.”

“I don’t think it. I know I did.”

“She witnessed a shooting,” Tucker said, “by two men dressed as cops. Her car’s parked in the woods near my place. When Reed’s done with the parking lot, can you send him out to check for prints?”

“Sure. But you know as well as I do, if there was really a murder, I need Laine down here now to make an official report.”

Tucker glanced at her and then at the baby she was holding. “There’s a complication. The woman left two babies, and they’re newborns by the looks of it. Any reports of missing babies?”

“None,” Colt said without hesitation. “If something like that had come in, I would have known.”

Yes, he probably would. Amber Alerts got top priority, even in a small-town sheriff’s office.

“But I’ll make some calls,” Colt continued. “Maybe this is a case of parental abduction and the local authorities haven’t reported it yet.”

Tucker mumbled his thanks. “Hold on a second, Colt.” He motioned toward Laine’s phone. “Give it to me.”

It took some doing, balancing the baby while working her way into her jeans pocket to retrieve the phone. She handed it to Tucker.

Normally, Laine wouldn’t have been wearing jeans on a workday, but she hadn’t had any appointments. She’d simply gone in to catch up on paperwork and rearrange some things in her office.

As bad as her situation was, she shuddered to think of how much worse it could have been if she hadn’t been there to rescue the babies. Either the killers would have found them, or else it would have been heaven knows how long before someone spotted them in the parking lot.

Tucker scrolled through the list of calls she’d received and read Colt the number of the last one on the list. It was the one from the woman.

“It’s possible that phone was stolen from those two fake cops,” Tucker explained to his brother. “It’s also possible that it’s a prepaid cell.”

It was clear with his possible comments that Tucker was withholding judgment about the veracity of her story. But every word of it was true.

Colt didn’t respond to that right away, but she heard some movement on the other end of the line. “Yeah, it’s a burner all right, and it’s no longer in service.”

Laine tried not to groan because it might disturb the baby, but it was hard to hold back her disappointment. That phone number could have given them clues about the men’s identities.

The dead woman’s, too.

“Call me if Reed finds anything in the parking lot,” Tucker added. He ended the call and turned to her. “I can’t sit on this any longer. If that woman was murdered, then every minute we delay could increase the odds of her killers getting away.”

It was the voice of experience. Maybe not just as a Texas Ranger, either. After all, it’d taken twenty-three years for his mother to be brought to justice.

Still...

“Those fake cops were just at the sheriff’s office,” she reminded him. “What if they come back?”

“Then Colt and I will deal with it.” He looked out the window at the sky again just as some lightning zipped across the sky. “We should get the babies in my truck before the rain starts.”

Laine glanced out at the clouds, too, trying to gauge how much time they had, but Tucker cursed again and took hold of her arm to push her behind him. The movement was so sudden that she couldn’t figure out why he’d done it.

Then Laine looked over his shoulder and out the window.

Her heart dropped to her knees.

There were two men, dressed in blue cop uniforms, walking across the pasture directly toward the house.

Chapter Three

Tucker didn’t consider that he might be going out on a limb by assuming the two men stalking toward his house were also the men who’d killed a woman in cold blood.

Well, if she had indeed been murdered.

But believing that wasn’t much of a stretch, either. Laine had arrived at his place, scared out of her mind. She must have thought a murder had taken place and that the danger still existed.

These men could be proof of it.

They were both wearing sidearms, both shifting their gazes from one side of the pasture to the other. Keeping watch. Something lawmen would do.

Criminals, too.

The one on the right pointed toward the ground. Probably because he’d spotted Laine’s footprints. Too bad the rain hadn’t hit to wash them away, because her tracks led right to his back door.

“Oh, God,” Laine mumbled, and she just kept repeating it until he was certain she was losing it.

“Get back in the pantry,” Tucker ordered her.

He took out his phone to call Colt, but it would take his brother at least twenty-five minutes to get from town to this part of the ranch.

Hell.

That was too long, so he tried to figure out a faster solution.

His other brother, Cooper, wasn’t at the main house because he was away on his honeymoon. That would have been his best bet, since Cooper could have gotten to Tucker’s house in just a couple of minutes. Without that option, he had to call someone he didn’t want to see.

His sister Rayanne.

She was a deputy sheriff on a leave of absence, and by all accounts, she was solid at her job. But since his twin sisters, Rayanne and Rosalie, had been raised by his mother, the girls were on their mom’s side when it came to this trial.

Tucker wasn’t anywhere near that side.

And that had made for plenty of tense moments in the past couple of weeks since Jewell, his sisters and his stepbrother, Seth, had arrived at the ranch. Because Jewell owned Sweetwater Ranch, he and his brothers hadn’t been able to turn them away, but there hadn’t been any warm welcomes, either.

However, for now Tucker had to put that bad blood and ill will aside and find a backup. Even if it meant turning to a sibling or a stepsibling who disliked him as much as he disliked them.

Tucker quickly scrolled through the numbers. He tried Rayanne first. He didn’t have her cell number, but unlike Rosalie and Seth, she was staying in the main house.

His home.

Because Rayanne had reminded everyone that it was her home, too.

Yeah, calling her wouldn’t be much fun.

Mary, the housekeeper, answered, and Tucker asked her to buzz Rayanne’s room. He said a quick prayer that she’d be there and not out visiting Jewell all the way over at the county jail.

“What?” Rayanne answered, sounding about as friendly as Tucker felt.

“I have a situation. Two armed men posing as cops are approaching my house. They’re possibly killers....” And here was the hard part. He glanced back at Laine’s bleached complexion and the baby she was holding.

No, not that hard. Two babies’ lives could be at stake.

“I need your help,” he told Rayanne.

Tucker expected her to ask him for more details, tell him a flat-out no, or at least hesitate.

She didn’t.

“I’ll be right there. Don’t shoot me by mistake,” Rayanne snarled.

He figured that last part was an insult to his skills as a Texas Ranger, but he didn’t care how many barbs Rayanne slung at him. He only needed a warm body who knew how to shoot just in case this came down to a gunfight.

“If you have another gun, I can help,” Laine offered.

“No.” He didn’t want the babies left alone, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to give an already shaky woman a gun that she might not even know how to use. “Stay where you are, and if I tell you to get down, do it.”

That didn’t put any color back in her face, but she nodded and stayed put.

“Where are the men now?” Laine asked. “What are they doing?”

“They’re still following your tracks.” They were taking slow, easy steps, and only one of them had his attention on the house.

The other was doing the tracking.

Tucker mumbled some profanity when the men drew their guns, and he debated what he could do to try and diffuse the situation. He should probably identify himself as a lawman, but if they were indeed killers, they’d just try to eliminate him so they could get to Laine and the babies.

Then they’d eliminate her.

After all, they’d followed her here, which meant they knew she’d either witnessed the murder or had some knowledge about it or the dead woman.

And that made Laine a loose end.

The seconds ticked with each step the men took, and every inch of him became alert. Tucker had been in situations like this. Facing down suspected killers and waiting for an attack that might or might not happen. But the stakes had never been this high. He had two newborns to protect.

One of the men suddenly stopped, his gaze zooming to the back part of the property. No doubt the route that Rayanne would be taking.

Had they seen her?

If so, he hoped his sister had taken some basic precautions so she wouldn’t get herself shot. He suspected she hadn’t when the other man pivoted in that direction. Tucker knew he couldn’t wait. He had to do something to make sure they didn’t gun Rayanne down.

He reached over and opened the door just a fraction so he could see out. “I’m Tucker McKinnon, Texas Ranger,” he shouted to them.

Like his earlier call to Rayanne, Tucker wasn’t sure what response he’d get from them. But the men stopped and lowered their guns.

That was a good start.

“I’m Sergeant Floyd Hines,” the one on the left answered. In his late twenties or early thirties, he was heavily muscled and had nondescript brown hair. “And this is my partner, Detective Norman Hacker.” He was on the lean side, with a mean-looking scar running down his cheek.

“We traced a fugitive here,” Hines added.

Tucker had to hand it to them—they sure sounded like cops. And maybe they were. Dirty ones. Because he already knew they weren’t SAPD.

The rain started. Tucker stayed to the side of the door so they could still hear him, without him needing to put himself in the direct line of fire.

“What fugitive?” he asked the men.

“Laine Braddock. She assisted in helping a federal prisoner escape.”

Laine made a sound of outrage, but Tucker motioned for her to stay quiet. Maybe the babies would do the same.

“She’s not here,” Tucker lied. “You need to be on your way.”

The men exchanged glances, obviously not pleased with his lack of cooperation.

“Where is she?” Hines asked, in the way a cop would ask. A demand rather than a question.

“Wouldn’t know. I’m not exactly on friendly terms with her.”

Hines mumbled something to his partner that Tucker couldn’t hear. “We have reason to believe she’s inside your house,” Hines continued. “We’re coming in to check.”

Well, they weren’t short of gall. But then neither was Tucker. “You got a search warrant?”

That earned him scowls from both of them. “We figured you’d cooperate with your brothers in blue.”

“Not this time. Come back when you’ve got that warrant.” Tucker shut the door and kept watch out the window.

The pair definitely didn’t turn and leave. They stood there mumbling and looking around for what seemed an eternity. That eternity screeched to a halt when one of the babies started crying.

Not a whimper, either.

A full-fledged cry. Worse, the other one started to cry, too. No way could those men miss that.

Hines raised his gun again and started toward the house. He was no longer moving at a cautious pace. He began to run as if he planned to ram right through the back door.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” someone shouted.

Rayanne.

Hacker pivoted in her direction. Fired. The shot blasted through the air, and he dropped to the ground behind a tree. Hopefully Rayanne had gotten down, as well.

“Stay on the floor, as low as you can get,” Tucker warned Laine again, and he threw open the door so he could return fire.

Hines bolted behind Tucker’s truck. That didn’t stop the man from shooting, though. This time, the bullet smacked into the door less than an inch from where Tucker was standing.

Hell’s bells.

So, he had his confirmation.

These guys were killers, and they were firing shots into a house where they knew Laine and the babies were hiding.

“Don’t go out there,” Laine whispered as Tucker stooped down and opened the door a little farther.

“I can’t let them keep shooting into the house.” And anyway, Rayanne was out there. Responding to his call for backup. He didn’t intend to let her face down these guys alone.

Laine continued to protest, but the sounds of the babies’ cries and the shots drowned her out. Tucker created some sounds of his own by sending a shot at Hines. The bullet smacked into Tucker’s truck, very close to his intended target, but the miss got him the results he wanted.

Hines leaned over to fire again.

And this time, Tucker made sure he didn’t miss.

He didn’t go for a kill shot. He wanted this dirtbag alive so he could explain what the heck was happening here, so Tucker shot Hines in the right shoulder. When the idiot still kept hold of his gun, Tucker put another bullet in his arm.

Even over the noise of the gunfight, Tucker heard Hines groan in pain, and he finally let go of his gun.

Hacker cursed. No doubt because he realized his partner had been shot and was now unable to return fire. Rayanne gave him another reason to spew some profanity. Tucker saw her dart out from behind one of the trees and take aim at Hacker.

“Drop your gun now!” she ordered.

Tucker hurried onto the small porch and took aim at Hacker, as well. A single word of profanity left the man’s mouth before he tossed his gun to the side and lifted his hands in surrender.

“Get on the ground,” Tucker demanded. “Both of you.”

Hines’s arm and shoulder were bleeding, and he was clearly in pain, but he eased himself to the ground. About fifteen yards away, Hacker did the same.

Tucker slid his phone across the floor toward Laine. “Call Colt and tell him to get out here now. We’ll need an ambulance, too.”

Laine gave a shaky nod, and even though she now had both babies in her arms, she managed to grab the phone.

Since Tucker figured the two gunmen could be carrying backup weapons anywhere on their bodies, he kept his own gun aimed and ready when he made his way out the door and down the porch steps. Rayanne kept her gun ready, too, and went to Hacker. Tucker went to Hines.

“Colt should be here soon,” Tucker relayed to Rayanne. But maybe he could use the time to figure out who these guys really were.

Tucker took aim at Hines’s head. “Start talking. Tell me about the woman you killed.”

“Didn’t kill nobody,” the man snarled. He had his hand clamped to his arm, the pain etched all over his face, but he still managed to look cocky and defiant.

“Wrong answer. Try again.” Tucker made sure he sounded cocky, too. “Who sent you here?”

His tobacco-stained teeth came together in a sneer. “Even if I knew that, I wouldn’t tell you. Wouldn’t be good for my health.”

“Neither is bleeding out.” Though the man didn’t seem to be in danger of doing that, Tucker took his threat a little further. “I can get an ambulance out here real fast. Or real slow. Your choice.”

His mouth tightened even more. “You’re not gonna let me die.”

No. But Tucker figured he could bluff him into thinking otherwise. “You just took shots at me, my sister and a friend of mine.”

“She ain’t no friend of yours. I know who she is. And who you are. I know that your mama killed her daddy, and there’s bad blood between you two. No reason to protect her.”

“I’m a real lawman,” Tucker snapped.

That only deepened the man’s sneer.

The rain started to come down harder. The thunder rumbled, too. Maybe that ambulance would get there before one of them got hit by lightning.

“You don’t need this guy alive, do you?” Rayanne called out. She was standing over Hacker, her gun aimed right at him, while he wriggled belly-down on the ground.

“Why’d you ask that?” Tucker wanted to know.

“Because he’s got that look, that’s why. The one that morons get right before they do something really stupid, like try and go for my gun. If he does, I want to make sure it’s okay for me to put some bullets in his head.”

The moron quit moving.

“We don’t need him alive,” Tucker assured her.

And that wasn’t exactly a bluff. Of course, he would prefer both men breathing so he could try to pit them against each other during the interrogations, but since Hacker’s shots could have hurt those newborns, Tucker wasn’t feeling very charitable toward the man.

Or toward Hines.

Hines was on his back on the ground. Tucker put his boot against the man’s throat. “Talk. Tell me why you came here for Laine.”

“Laine,” he repeated. “Sounds as if you two have mended some fences.”

Not exactly. But being caught in a gunfight together had a way of pushing those old issues to the side.

For a little while anyway.

“Mending fences won’t save her,” Hines said. His top lip lifted. It was more sneer than smile, but the warning put a knot in Tucker’s gut.

So did the sound.

Behind them, in the house, Tucker heard something he sure didn’t want to hear.

Laine’s shout.

“Tucker! There’s another gunman.”

Chapter Four

Laine saw the third man. But it was seconds too late to try to get the babies out of the house. Too late to do anything other than call out to Tucker and hope that would be enough to save them.

The hulking goon must have come in from the front of the house, away from the fight that’d been going on in the side yard with Tucker, his sister and the other two killers.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” the man warned her. He stepped into the doorway of the pantry, blocking her exit, and pointed a gun right at her.

Just the sight of him caused the skin to crawl on the back of her neck, but Laine forced herself not to panic. She had the babies gripped in her arms, but she put them back on the floor so she could position herself in front of them. Trying to protect them while she prayed that Tucker would get there fast enough to put a stop to this.

If Tucker was able to do it, that is.

She’d heard those shots outside, and one of them could have hit Tucker before he even made it out to stop the gunmen. It sickened her to think of that. She hadn’t wanted to involve him or his sister in this, but she’d had no choice.

Laine didn’t recognize the guy in front of her, but he was huge. At least six foot four and with a hulking body and wide shoulders. Even if he hadn’t had the gun, he would have been formidable.

“The three of you are coming with me,” the man snarled, and he used the barrel of his gun to motion for her to get moving. “Now!” he added when she didn’t budge.

Laine couldn’t risk him firing, because even if he didn’t intend to hurt the babies, it could easily happen in such a confined space.

“Please don’t hurt them.” Not that she thought pleading would help, but it might be able to buy her some time.

Or not.

“I said move!” he shouted.

The man came right at her, caught onto her arm and flung her against the pantry shelves. Her shoulder hit the shelves hard, and the pain jolted through that entire side of her body. In the back of her mind, Laine realized she’d have bruises. Too bad worse things could happen in the next couple of minutes.

Boxes of pasta and canned soup tumbled off the shelves, pelting the floor. Despite the hard grip the man still had on her, Laine dropped back down so she could prevent the babies from being hit.

She didn’t stay there long. Once the pantry items had stopped falling, she did the only thing she could do. She came up fighting.

Laine grabbed the first thing she could reach—a large can of mixed nuts—and threw it at him. It hit him on the chin, the can flying open, flinging nuts at him, but the can and nuts bounced off him as if he hadn’t even felt it.

She didn’t stop. She hurled a can of soup at him next, and received the same reaction as before. Well, almost. She hadn’t thought it possible, but the fury in his expression actually went up a notch.

Making a feral growling sound, he came after her again.

But he froze. Then cursed. Without warning, he caught onto her hair and hauled her out of the pantry and into the kitchen.

She heard them then.

The footsteps.

With his gun gripped in his hand, Tucker came in from the living room and took cover by the partial wall that divided the kitchen from the rest of the house. Maybe he’d tried to sneak up on the guy, but if so, it hadn’t worked. The man dragged her in front of him and put the gun to her head.

She was now a human shield.

“Put down your gun,” Tucker ordered him. Rainwater dripped from his hair and clothes. “Your friends are cuffed in the yard, and my sister’s guarding them. Or maybe she’s killing them,” he added. “More backup will be here in a few minutes.”

Despite having a gun to her head, relief flooded through Laine. Well, temporarily anyway. The other killers had been caught, and now this guy was the only one left standing. Hopefully not for long, though. Tucker needed to arrest them all so she could find out about the woman these monsters had murdered.

“You won’t make it out of here alive,” Tucker told the man. He stayed behind cover, using his left hand to bracket his shooting wrist.

“Oh, yeah? With those kids and her, I believe I will,” he growled.

Laine could no longer see her captor’s expression, but she could certainly see Tucker’s. Every muscle in his body was hard and tight. He was a lawman ready for the fight, but this was a fight they could all lose if she somehow didn’t manage to protect the babies.

“Escaping with newborns will be tricky at best,” Laine reminded the man. “You can take just me and move faster.” Not that she especially wanted to play the martyr here, but she didn’t have many options.

Obviously, her option didn’t please Tucker because he shot her a glare. Laine ignored it. If she could do anything to change her captor’s mind, she would.

“Taking me and me alone is your best option for staying alive and escaping,” she added. “The babies would just slow you down.”

She got exactly the reaction she’d expected. Another glare from Tucker when he glanced over at her.

“Laine, if you want to get out of this big hole, you need to stop digging,” Tucker warned her. “He doesn’t want to take an innocent woman.”

“Innocent?” the guy growled. “Yeah, right. You might wanta check your facts there, bud. She’s a lot of things, but innocent ain’t one of them.”

Tucker’s glare faded, and for a split second he got a confused look on his face. “What the heck does that mean?”

She couldn’t be sure, but Laine thought the guy might be smiling. “It means you need to ask her.”

“I’d rather stop you,” Tucker fired back. “The questions and answers can come later.”

If she made it out of this, and it was a big if, then she obviously had some explaining to do. But for now, Laine had to get the gunman away from the babies.

“Okay,” the gunman finally said, “it’s just you and me, darlin’. And if you try anything funny, your cowboy here is gonna be the one who pays. Got that?”

That was the only warning Laine got before the man hooked his arm around her neck. He kept the gun pressed to her head.

“Just so you know, cowboy,” the man drawled. “I got no problem putting a bullet in her, or you for that matter, so my advice is for you to back off.”

Tucker stayed put. But the man maneuvered her forward, each step taking him farther away from the babies. She couldn’t see them, but they definitely weren’t asleep. Laine could hear them making some whimpering sounds, and she prayed everything was okay.

“This way.” Her captor didn’t lead her toward the kitchen door, where Tucker’s sister was likely holding his comrades. Instead, he dragged her forward, which meant they’d have to go right past Tucker.

Tucker adjusted, moving just out of the guy’s reach, but his gun stayed trained on him.

“You’re not going to get far on foot,” Tucker said. “Especially not with the storm moving in.”

The man shook his head. “Won’t need to go far.”

Maybe because he had a vehicle stashed nearby. But more likely it was because he intended to kill her once he’d used her to escape.

No way would he want to keep her alive, since she’d witnessed the murder.

Even if he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he would still be charged as an accessory, which carried the same sentence. He was looking at the death penalty if she stayed alive and could testify against him.

Behind her, the babies began to cry. She desperately wanted to go to them and try to comfort them, but each step she took kept the killer away from them. That’s why Laine didn’t resist when the goon practically dragged her past Tucker and toward the front of the house.

Tucker followed, of course. Using the furniture for cover along the way, he kept his attention pinned to the man. They went through the small dining area and into the living room. Without taking the gun from her head, he reached behind him and opened the front door.

Laine immediately felt the dampness of the rain, and even over the sound of it on the tin roof and the babies’ cries, she heard something else. Sirens in the distance.

Backup was on the way.

The man’s arm stiffened, and he mumbled some profanity. Still, that didn’t stop him maneuvering her onto the porch with him.

There were six limestone steps leading down into the yard. A fence and gate, too, and some woods on the other side of the narrow road.

Those woods were no doubt where he intended to take her. And kill her. That meant she had to do something in the next few seconds.

But what?

She looked at Tucker to see if he could give her a suggestion, but he only shook his head. “Sooner or later, this clown will make a mistake, and I’ll take the kill shot,” Tucker said.

“You wish,” the guy growled.

His choke hold on her neck got even tighter, and he began to back down the steps with her. Escaping would take precious time, and with sirens moving closer with each passing moment, Laine could feel the gunman’s muscles getting tenser.

He was trapped.

“Maybe you could get a plea bargain,” she suggested.

“Maybe you could shut up!”

The moment he cleared the steps, the rain began to swipe at them. Either the rain was cold for September, or it was just her nerves, but Laine immediately started shivering. Unlike Tucker. He was using the doorjamb for cover, but there were no signs that this was anything but routine for him.

Again, the man reached behind them and opened the gate, pulling her through the opening and onto the road. Because of the way he was holding her, she couldn’t turn her head, but from the corner of her eye, she saw flashes of blue lights approaching.

It wouldn’t be long before backup was in place and ready to help, but Laine didn’t know if that would make the situation better or worse. She could feel her captor’s anxiety soaring even higher.

The man continued to move, dragging her across the road and directly toward the woods. He didn’t stop even when a Sweetwater Springs cruiser braked a few yards away. Colt got out, using the car door for cover, and took aim at her captor. Too bad Colt didn’t have any better chance than Tucker did.

Just up the road from the cruiser, there was another set of lights and a siren. An ambulance. However, unlike Colt, the driver stayed back, no doubt waiting until it was safe enough to approach.

“If you get a shot, take it,” Tucker told his brother.

“Yeah, do that,” the man snarled. “It’s a good way to get the shrink here killed. I’m thinking if you shoot me, my trigger finger will automatically tense up. And boom, there she goes.”

Laine’s shoes sank into the ground when he dragged her off the road and onto the soft shoulder. Just a few steps from the woods. It was now or never. If she didn’t try to do something, he’d escape with her.

It was a huge risk, but Laine drew back her elbow and rammed it into his stomach. He cursed at her, calling her a name, and she jabbed him again. All the while, she braced herself in case he chose to retaliate.

He did.

The man pulled the trigger, and the pain immediately crashed through her head.

Laine nearly went to her knees. It took a moment—one terrifying moment—to realize he hadn’t shot her. The pain was from the excruciating noise of the bullet being fired so close to her ear. But Laine felt no relief at being spared, because she had no idea where that bullet had landed.

Tucker jumped to the side, still ready to return fire. He didn’t appear to be hurt. Neither was Colt. But the shot could have gone into the house. That gave her a much-needed jolt of adrenaline, and she started fighting. At least if he shot her, Tucker would be able to kill the guy.

“This isn’t over,” he growled.

He shoved her, hard. So hard that Laine stumbled forward and fell at the edge of the road.

“Stay down, Laine!” Tucker warned her, a split second before he pulled the trigger.

Tucker scrambled to the ground near her, but he lifted his hand to fire again. Laine tried to see if he’d managed to shoot the guy, but Tucker pushed her right back down.

Then he cursed.

“He’s getting away,” Tucker mumbled.

Laine’s first reaction to that was, No! But at least if he was running, it meant he wouldn’t be firing shots into the house. Of course, the downside to that was that if he escaped, he could come after her and the babies again.

“Be careful,” Tucker said, and it took her a moment to realize why he’d issued that warning. It was meant for his brother.

With his gun ready, Colt bolted from the side of the cruiser and went after the man.

“The babies,” Laine reminded him. “They’re in the house alone.” And while Tucker had said that his sister had contained the other two men, they could always try to escape and go inside to take the newborns.

Tucker pulled her right back down when she tried to get up, and he kept his attention pinned to the woods where Colt had disappeared. The seconds crawled by. No sounds. No shots. The gunshot had dulled her hearing, but she could feel the steady throb of her heartbeat crashing in her ears.

“Move fast,” Tucker finally said, and he stood, pulling her to her feet.

Laine didn’t even have time to regain her balance before he started running with her toward the house. Tucker got her up the steps and inside, and then he shut the door.

The babies were still crying, and Laine tried to go to them. Again Tucker moved in front to stop her. He was still the vigilant lawman, his gaze still firing all around.

Mercy, was there another gunman in the house?

They moved slowly, with Tucker checking every corner until they worked their way to the kitchen.

“Stay here,” he insisted.

With his gun ready, he first looked out the kitchen window where his sister and the other two men still were. Everything must have been okay there because he started to check out the rest of the house.

Laine hurried to the babies to make sure they were okay. They appeared to be. Since she was soaked to the bone, she put the blanket between the babies and her wet clothes before she scooped them into her arms.

Even though they were too young to understand, they were perhaps sensing the horrible nightmare that’d just happened. She tried rocking them so they would stop crying and she could hear what was going on in the house.

It seemed to take an eternity for Tucker to return, and when she saw him, Laine released the breath she’d been holding. He no longer had his gun raised, and there was some relief in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” Laine lied. Her scrapes and bruises would all be minor, but it might take a lifetime or two to feel fine.

His phone rang, and he yanked it from his pocket. “It’s Colt,” he relayed to her, and he answered it.

Laine couldn’t hear what his brother was saying, but she knew from his expression that it wasn’t good news. “The rain washed away the tracks,” Tucker explained, a muscle flickering in his jaw.

So they’d lost him.

Laine couldn’t stop the sound from making its way through her throat. This wasn’t over. The babies still weren’t safe.

“We’ll get a CSI team out to look for anything to indicate where he’s heading,” Tucker added, though he didn’t sound convinced that it would do any good.

The man probably had a vehicle stashed nearby and was already long gone.

Tucker didn’t stay in the pantry. Instead, he went to the back door, opened it and kept watch over the two gunmen they had managed to capture. He also motioned toward the ambulance, obviously giving them the go-ahead to come closer to the house. After he’d done that, he glanced back at her, and this time, there was no relief anywhere on his face.

Just questions.

Well, one question anyway.

“What the heck was that clown talking about back there?” Tucker asked.

Laine knew exactly what Tucker was referring to, and she remembered every word of what the man had said.

You might wanta check your facts there, bud. She’s a lot of things, but innocent ain’t one of them.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. Obviously that reaction didn’t please Tucker, because he mumbled some profanity and snapped back around to face her.

“What did he mean?” Tucker demanded. “And what the heck are you really doing here?”

Chapter Five

Tucker had a dozen other things that he should be doing. For one thing, he should be helping Rayanne guard the two dirtbags she had facedown and cuffed on the ground in the drenching rain. For another, he needed to watch for Colt to make his way back to the house so they could transport the prisoners—one to the jail and the other to the hospital.

Instead, here he was questioning Laine.

And it was obvious from her reaction that she had something to tell him that he didn’t want to hear.

“Did you lie to me when you said a woman had been killed?” he demanded.

“No!” She struggled to get to her feet. It wasn’t easy with two crying, squirming babies in her arms. “I saw her, and they murdered her.”

She sounded convincing enough, but Tucker would wait for some evidence. Still, it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe it now that the attack had happened here. Those goons had been trying to cover up something, that was for sure.

“Then, what did the man mean about you not being innocent?” Tucker pressed.

She swallowed hard. “Remember when you had me fired from the undercover investigation?”

He nearly reminded her again that he’d merely asked that she be reassigned because of their old baggage. His supervisor had agreed with him. End of story.

Except it obviously wasn’t.

“What’d you do?” Tucker asked, once he got his teeth unclenched.

“The case was important to me,” she said, her chin coming up in a defiant pose. Just as quickly, it came down, and she dodged his gaze. “I didn’t want to just drop it because you and I couldn’t get along. I wanted to help find those women and babies.”

Yeah, so had he.

By all accounts, there were dozens of missing women and babies lost in the maze of a massive black-market baby ring. Not just illegal adoptions, but illegal surrogacies, as well. Even pregnant women who were kidnapped until their babies were born, at which point the new mothers were murdered.

Cooper had helped to uncover and shut down a baby farm. That was a start. But there was evidence of many other farms.

And just as many cold-blooded killers operating them.

“Please tell me you didn’t do anything dangerous or stupid,” Tucker said.

Laine sure didn’t jump to tell him that she hadn’t. Which meant she had.

Tucker groaned. “What’d you do?” he repeated.

“I used some of the criminal informant contacts from the investigation to try to find another baby farm.” She paused, her gaze coming back to his. “And I found one.”

“Where?” But unfortunately Tucker had to wave off her answer when he heard a soft whistle.

It was Colt.

And the whistle was a signal they’d used since they were kids playing cops and robbers. It was just to let Tucker know he was approaching so he wouldn’t mistake him for a bad guy. Or in this case, shoot him.

Tucker glanced back and spotted Colt making his way across the road. His brother wasn’t headed inside the house with them, but rather toward Rayanne and the prisoners.

“What’s wrong?” Laine asked, and despite having both arms filled with babies, she hurried to the door beside Tucker and looked out. The medics were lifting the wounded prisoner into the ambulance.

“Rayanne, can you ride in the ambulance and keep an eye on this guy?” Tucker asked. “Colt and I will get someone else there shortly, but first I need to settle some things with Laine.”

“Laine?” she repeated in an unfriendly tone. “As in Laine Braddock?”

Tucker nodded, knowing the confirmation wasn’t going to help the venom in Rayanne’s eyes. Unlike Rayanne, he didn’t care much about their mother’s upcoming trial, but he didn’t want his dad and brothers dragged into it. The Braddocks, especially Laine’s mother, had threatened to do just that. She’d tossed around plenty of accusations about obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence.

All unfounded and untrue.

So basically Tucker was caught in the middle. Not a comfortable place to be, especially with Laine right by his side and an estranged sister snarling at both of them.

“You mean you called me out here to save her sorry butt?” Rayanne spat out.

“Not just her,” Tucker explained. “She had two newborns with her. Even you wouldn’t refuse to help little babies.”

Despite the rain and storm winds lashing at her, Rayanne stood there, glaring at him. Glaring at Laine, too, since she was now peering over Tucker’s shoulder.

“Let me guess,” Rayanne snapped, shifting her glare back to Tucker. “They’re your kids?”

Now it was time for Tucker to give her an eye roll. “I’m not exactly the daddy type, now, am I? No, these are babies that Laine rescued.”

He hoped.

If he was to believe anything their attacker said, then it was a strong possibility that Laine hadn’t told him the truth about the babies. Or about anything else.

Still grumbling something under her breath, Rayanne followed the medics into the ambulance.

“Thank you for helping,” Laine called out to her. Not a good thing to say. Anything at this point would have been unwise, especially anything coming from Laine, because it earned her another nasty glare from Rayanne.

“I’ll call for more backup,” Colt said, getting the second man into his cruiser. “I’m guessing Laine and the babies need a doctor, too?”

“Yeah.” At least for a checkup. “I’ll drive them to the hospital.”

“But what about the missing gunman?” Laine asked the moment Tucker shut the door. “He could follow us into town and attack us again.”

“He could, but it’s my guess he’s in regroup mode. And that means you need to tell me everything you did to cause these goons to come after you. Start with that criminal informant who helped you find the baby farm.”

Tucker motioned for her to start talking while he went to the doors and locked them. He didn’t intend to be in the house for long, but he also wanted to take a few precautions in case he was wrong about his regroup theory.

Laine didn’t jump to answer, something that put a knot the size of Texas in his gut. Tucker motioned for her to get on with it.

“The criminal informant was Gerry Farrow, and he took me to the baby farm,” Laine finally said. “He made me wear a blindfold so I couldn’t see where we were going, and he drove around for a long time. In circles, I’m sure, so I wouldn’t be able to find the place later.”

His groan didn’t help hush the babies any. “And you thought it was a good idea for a civilian to go walking into something like that with a person you didn’t even know if you could trust?”

She glanced away again. “I wanted to find those pregnant captives and save them. I didn’t want their babies sold like cattle. And I thought I had a better chance of getting in there than the cops, Rangers or FBI.” Laine paused. “I saw two women, including the one who was killed in the parking lot.”

Oh, man. “Funny you didn’t mention that connection right off the bat. You’ve told the FBI all of this?”

“I told them about the baby farm, but by the time we were able to work out where it was, it was too late. When they got there, the guards and the pregnant women were all gone.”

No surprise there. “You were lucky those guards didn’t kill you at the farm.”

She made a soft sound of agreement. “I pretended to be a potential buyer for one of the babies.”

“And they believed you?” Tucker asked, not bothering to hold back on the skeptical tone in his voice. He motioned for her to follow him to the bedroom so he could do something about their wet clothes.

Laine nodded. Then she lifted her shoulder. “They didn’t try to kill me, anyway. They made some calls, did a quick background check and learned that I had indeed been trying to adopt.”

Tucker hadn’t thought there could be any more surprises today, but he’d been wrong. “You did a fake adoption request for the sake of the investigation?”

“No,” she snapped. That put some fire in her ice-blue eyes, but it quickly cooled down. “I can’t have children, so I’ve been trying to adopt for months now.”

In a town the size of Sweetwater Springs, it was hard to keep secrets, but Laine had obviously managed to keep that one.

And it caused him to curse again.

“You gave those guards your real name?” The babies didn’t like his near shout, and they fussed even louder.

“I figured that was the fastest way to get them to believe I was really there looking for a baby.”

There were so many things wrong with that comment that Tucker didn’t know where to start. “So, you let them believe you were a customer willing to break the law. Obviously that didn’t work out so well, did it?”

“Obviously,” she mumbled. “One of the guards told me they’d be in touch, and we left. But they did follow us.”

Of course they did.

Tucker rummaged through his closet, locating some dry clothes for himself and a white button-up shirt for Laine. He dropped it all on the dresser. He also maneuvered her away from the window and helped her put the babies on the bed so she could change.

“They followed you to your office?” he asked.

But he darn near forgot the question when Laine shucked off her wet top. She had on a lacy white bra, but the rain had practically made it see-through.

This wasn’t the kid he’d kissed in his granddaddy’s kitchen.

Nope. Laine was a fully grown woman now, with real curves he had no business gawking at. She obviously felt the same because she scowled when she noticed where his attention had landed.

“Sorry, I forgot we had this...connection between us,” she mumbled.

“There’s nothing between us,” Tucker jumped to say.

Too bad it was a big fat lie. One that he had zero intention of straightening out. He yanked off his shirt as if he’d waged war on it.

“To answer your question—no, the guards didn’t follow me,” she snapped.

Because his mind still wasn’t where it should be, it took him a moment to remember the question—had the guards followed the CI and her back to her office?

“How would you know if they’d followed you there or not?” he pressed.

Laine huffed, snatched up the shirt. The moment she had it on, she eased down on the bed beside the babies, trying to comfort them. “The CI made sure of that. He drove around with me until they stopped following us, and he said it was safe.”

“Well, he was clearly wrong about that, wasn’t he?” He huffed. “Remember, there are two things that make a CI. Being a paid informant and being a criminal.”

“What does that mean?”

Her gaze snapped back to his. Probably something she wished she could take back, because Tucker had already stripped down to his boxers. Proving that she was the most stubborn woman in the whole state of Texas, she didn’t look away.

“It means the CI could have been looking for a way to earn a few bucks. He could have gone back to the baby farm and told them that he was suspicious of you and that you needed to be taken care of.”

Laine opened her mouth, no doubt to deny that, but then she shook her head. Her eyes widened, and she touched her fingers to her mouth. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah, oh, God,” he mumbled. “You took a serious risk going out there, going anywhere, with that idiot. And even if he was truly trying to help, he put your neck right on the line by taking you into a hornet’s nest.”

He could have continued his tirade for several more minutes, but his phone rang, and Tucker saw Reed’s name on the screen. He hoped the deputy had some good news, because they sure as heck needed it. He hit the speaker button so he could take the call and finish dressing.

“I was just out at the parking lot behind Laine’s office,” Reed said. “I found some blood.”

Tucker cursed, not because he hadn’t expected the news. After everything Laine had told him, he had, but that blood was confirmation they were dealing with killers and not just some loons out to kidnap a pair of newborns.

“There’s not much blood left because it’s raining hard,” Reed went on. “Still, I found some spots on the corner of the building beneath the eaves. Found a pacifier, too. Hard to tell, but it might have a fingerprint on it. DNA, too, if the rain hasn’t gotten to it.”

“Send it and the blood sample to the Ranger lab for immediate processing,” Tucker instructed. He glanced at the babies. He needed to know who the dead woman was so he could locate the babies’ next of kin.

“Any security cameras nearby?” Tucker asked. “Maybe we can get footage of what happened. In case we don’t have a print, we might be able to get some photos of her.”

And photos of her killers, as well.

After all, Laine had said they’d gotten out of the car to retrieve the body, and that meant a camera could show the murder in progress.

“Maybe,” Reed answered. “That new jewelry store up the street has cameras. Don’t know if the angles are right, but I’ll call them while I’m driving out to check Laine’s car for prints.”

“Make the call, but skip the fingerprints on the car for now.” With the rain, it was probably a lost cause anyway. Besides, he had something more important for Reed to do. “Come out to my place. I’d like someone close by in case things get ugly again.”

That didn’t help soothe any of the tension from Laine’s face. It wouldn’t help soothe his, either, but it was a precaution Tucker needed to take.

Not just for Laine, but for those babies.

The moment he finished the call with Reed, Laine said, “The dead woman could have heard the guards or the CI mention me. She could have heard my name, and that’s why she called me.”

Yeah, Laine’s phone number wouldn’t have been hard to find. But why had the woman thought she could trust Laine? And how the heck had she gotten away from the baby farm and into town?

“She probably heard more than just your name,” Tucker explained. “She likely heard the guards say that they didn’t trust you, that you could be working for the cops.”

Of course that meant assuming the woman was totally innocent in all of this. And that she was indeed trying to protect her babies. But maybe the men killed her for a different reason, and finding that reason would only be possible if they first learned her identity. Hopefully the blood Reed had found would help with that.

“Come on.” Tucker grabbed some towels from the adjoining bathroom. “Reed will be here soon, and I need to get the babies and you to the hospital for checkups.”

Laine gave a shaky nod, probably because she wasn’t thrilled about going outside, where the missing gunman might spot her. “And then what?”

“Protective custody. A safe house.”

Another nod. She wrapped the babies each in the towels. Not ideal cover, but it was better than using the damp blanket Laine had used to hold them earlier.

“Can you manage to carry both of them?” he asked. It was a strange question, because she’d carried them across the pasture to get to his house, but she was more shaken up now. After all, she’d just come darn close to dying.

“Yes.” And her attention went to the belt holster he’d just put on. Then to the backup weapon he slid into the back of his jeans.

“I’ll pull the truck right up to the steps,” he assured her. “By the time we make it to the road, Reed should be here.”

Tucker had barely made it a step before he heard the sound of a car engine. He hurried to the front window, expecting to see Reed’s truck, but it was a black four-door sedan.

“What’s wrong?” Laine asked, obviously noticing the change in his body language.

“Maybe nothing.” Of course, it felt like something since it could be their attacker returning.

However, the man who stepped out from the car wasn’t the escaped gunman. This guy was in his late twenties and had pale blond hair. He was wearing a dark gray suit, with no sign of a weapon. He ducked his head against the storm and ran toward the porch.

The man wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the car, but Tucker could only make out a silhouette because of the rain-streaked windows.

“You know him?” Laine asked.

“No. Wait here and stay away from the windows.” Tucker didn’t move until she had the babies back by the bed before he drew his gun and started for the door. Their visitor knocked just as he got there. He swung open the door and asked the guy to identify himself.

“Martin Hague,” the man said, but his voice trailed off to nothing but breath when he spotted Tucker’s gun. “I heard on the drive over that you’d had some trouble out here.”

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