He was the last thing she expected—and everything she needed

From the moment he finds himself staring down the barrel of her gun, Rancher Cade McClain knows Piper Lowry isn’t just another stranded tourist. Armed and desperate, she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to carry out her mission. A mission she claims only he can help her with. Knowing it would be impossible to walk away from this tempting, determined woman, Cade offers her a place to hide from the gunmen on her trail. Despite his broad shoulders and intimidating gaze, it isn’t long before the straight-shooting cowboy realizes he can’t guarantee Piper’s safety. Even if his heart is beginning to tell him he has no choice but to try....

He knew he had no choice but to help her.

“Come on,” Cade said roughly. “Let’s get out of here.”

Piper frowned. “Where are we going? Back to my car?”

“No. My ranch isn’t far from here. It’ll be safer there. We can figure out what to do next.”

“‘We?’” she echoed faintly. “Why would you want to help me?”

It was a good question, one he would have asked if he was in her shoes, one he was still asking himself.

A smart man would get away from this woman and her mess as fast as humanly possible. But it seemed he wasn’t that smart.

So, he gave the only answer he could. “Because somebody needs to.”

Her Cowboy Defender
Kerry Connor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A lifelong mystery reader, Kerry Connor first discovered romance suspense by reading Harlequin Intrigue books and is thrilled to be writing for the line. Kerry lives and writes in New York.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Piper Lowry—On a desperate mission to save her sister, she finds an unexpected defender in the form of a long, tall cowboy.

Cade McClain—The rancher’s honor demands that he offer his help, even if it means risking everything for a stranger.

Esteban Castillo—A man who wants information…and vengeance.

Matt Alvarez—Cade’s right-hand man warns him not to get involved—for more than one reason.

Pamela Lowry—Piper’s twin sister is in a coma.

Tara Lowry—Piper’s younger sister is a pawn in a dangerous game.

Jay Larson—He’s on Piper’s trail, but what are his true motives?

To Jodi, who introduced me to New Mexico,

for being the kind of friend who’s there when I need her, even when she’s on the other side of the world.

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

This can’t be happening.

Piper stared in disbelief at the black smoke billowing from the engine of the rental car. She’d barely managed to pull over to the side of the road before the giant plume erupted from beneath the hood, along with a crackling she suspected might be outright fire. Any hope the car would keep running long enough to make it to her destination evaporated into the air much faster than the smoke.

She shot a glance at the clock on the dashboard. The digits glared back, relentless, unforgiving.

Thirty-four minutes. She had thirty-four minutes to be at the rendezvous point. If she wasn’t—

No.

She cut off the thought before it could form. She couldn’t afford to think about that, couldn’t think about anything but what she was going to do now, how she was going to make the deadline.

But when she tried to come up with a solution to this latest hurdle, her mind remained stubbornly blank except for the words that had been running through her head nonstop for the past two days.

This can’t be happening.

The words raced together in a constant loop, picking up speed along with her pulse, her heart pounding so fast and so hard in her chest she found it tougher and tougher to breathe.

It couldn’t end like this. She couldn’t come this close only to fail.

This can’t be happening.

Beneath the shock clouding her brain, some preservation instinct forced her limbs into motion, recognizing the fact that it wasn’t safe to remain in the car. For all she knew, the engine could explode at any moment. She had to get out of there.

Numbly, she switched off the key, then grabbed her bag and the map. Lurching from the vehicle, she slammed the door shut behind her. It was all she could do not to give the door an angry kick. She’d known as soon as she heard the knocking sound that something was wrong, but couldn’t stop. Even if time wasn’t an issue, she knew nothing about cars. She had no choice but to keep pushing on and hope she made it to her destination.

So much for that.

Which just left what she was going to do now.

The sun beat down from directly overhead, her fair skin already beginning to tingle under the unrelenting beams. Raising a hand to shade her eyes, she glanced around. The desert road stretched endlessly in either direction, disappearing into the horizon on both sides with no indication where it stopped. She had no idea where she was, other than that it was somewhere in New Mexico. She’d been following the map that had been provided to her, having no other choice. She hadn’t passed a single vehicle or building on the road in at least a half hour, had no reason to believe she would find any the same distance up ahead if she started walking. She’d known that she was being sent to the middle of nowhere, but she was more aware of that fact now than ever before.

She checked her watch, already knowing what it would show, painfully aware of how quickly time was slipping away.

Thirty-two minutes.

The backs of her eyes began to burn, and she immediately squeezed her eyelids together to keep the tears that threatened from falling. She wasn’t going to cry. She refused to. She hadn’t one bit since this ordeal had begun. She hadn’t cried when she’d learned of Pam’s accident. She hadn’t cried when she’d received the horrible call two days ago. She hadn’t cried during the long journey, even knowing what awaited her at the end.

But never had she been as close to giving in to the tears as she was right now.

A sob rose in her throat.

This can’t be happening.

With her eyes shut, it was the sound of an engine that reached her first, the sound so faint she didn’t immediately recognize it. When she did, she froze in disbelief, afraid to open her eyes, afraid she was hallucinating. It seemed too much to hope for, too much to believe possible, that a vehicle could pass by at this particular moment when she needed it most.

Her heart pounding anew, she slowly opened her eyes and turned toward the sound.

The vehicle was still far enough away that she could barely make it out, its shape shimmering in the sun, almost like a mirage. She held her breath as it approached, gradually gaining enough substance to confirm that it was very real. It was a pickup truck. Red, she guessed, though it hardly mattered. All that did was that it was here.

The black cloud rising from the hood made her car pretty hard to ignore, but she still stepped out into the road, waving her arms above her head to grab the driver’s attention. She couldn’t risk that the driver was the kind of person to ignore someone in trouble. A breath of relief worked its way from her lungs when the truck began to slow long before it reached her, easing onto the shoulder behind the rental car.

Now she just had to figure out what to do.

Thinking quickly, she watched as the driver’s door slowly opened. Moments later, two boots hit the dirt beneath the bottom edge of the door, one after the other. Then a hat appeared as the driver ducked his head out of the truck. It was a Stetson, the shape unmistakable and instantly recognizable.

It was a cowboy. A genuine cowboy. A near-hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. She didn’t exactly come across too many of them back in Boston, though they were probably fairly common around these parts. And here he was, coming to her rescue like something out of the Old West, except that instead of on horseback, he was arriving in a truck.

A truck.

Her eyes slid past him, narrowing on his vehicle, the burst of humor instantly forgotten.

Cold, hard resolve settled over her, and she slowly lowered her hand into her bag, closing her fingers around the object there.

And suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do.

CADE MCCLAIN SWALLOWED AN impatient sigh as he climbed out of the cab of the truck. He really didn’t have time for this. The trip to Albuquerque had taken longer than he’d expected, and he’d wanted to get back to the ranch as early as possible. There was too much he had to do. There always was.

But as soon as he’d spotted the smoke on the road up ahead and seen the car, he’d known he would have to pull over. Even if the woman hadn’t flagged him down, he couldn’t have simply driven past a smoking car without stopping. Not only would it have been a lousy thing to do, but there was no telling when someone else might have come along to help. This desert road didn’t see much traffic. He wondered how long she’d been here, or what she was even doing here for that matter.

She’d moved out of the road to stand behind her car. He gave her a quick once-over. She was a slim woman with black hair that brushed her shoulders, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. She carried a bag of some kind, the strap slung crosswise over her body from one shoulder to the opposite hip so the bag itself was almost entirely out of view. She didn’t look familiar. Probably just a lost tourist who’d made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up far down a road she had no business being on.

He did his best to keep his annoyance from showing. It wasn’t her fault she was having car trouble. It had to be a lot tougher on her than it was on him.

“You okay?” he called, stepping around the door without closing it.

After a moment, she gave her head a shaky nod. “Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. The engine started making this noise, and then all this smoke started coming out of it....”

Her voice quivered, almost like she was about to start crying or something, and he nearly groaned.

Oh, God. Please don’t let her burst into tears. The car he might be able to handle, but the last thing he knew how to deal with was a crying female.

He took a deep breath, hoping if he remained calm his coolness would have an effect on her. “Do you have a phone? Did you call anybody?”

“N-no,” she said slowly, taking a step toward him. “My battery’s dead.” She chuckled, the sound ringing false. “Just my luck.”

“Well, you can borrow mine. Let me get it out of the cab.” He turned away to do just that.

“I have a better idea.”

Her tone immediately put him on edge, the hardness in her voice completely different from how she’d sounded just moments before. He froze, knowing before he looked at her that something was wrong.

He slowly turned back to face her.

She was standing in exactly the same place.

Except now she held a pistol in her hands.

Aimed square at his chest.

Chapter Two

“Throw your keys on the ground in front of my feet,” she ordered. “Don’t try anything tricky.”

Cade did his best to ignore the gun, meeting the eyes behind it. Only now did he recognize the desperation in her voice. Earlier he’d mistaken it for the understandable distress of a woman whose car had caught fire in the middle of nowhere. But this went way beyond that. The woman was seriously on edge.

That still didn’t make her actions any more comprehensible.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“Taking your truck.”

“It’s not much. Certainly not worth stealing.”

“It runs, which is more than I can say for that car. That’s all that matters.”

“And you’re just going to leave me out here in the middle of nowhere? No water? No shelter? Nothing to do but hope somebody else comes along?”

“I’m sorry about this. I really am. But I have to be somewhere in less than thirty minutes, and it really is a matter of life and death. I know how clichéd that sounds, but in this case, it couldn’t be more true. Now toss your keys over toward me.”

He didn’t move, the weight of his keys suddenly heavy in his fingers. He quickly considered his few options. Maybe if he pretended to throw them, distracted her long enough to dive back into the truck—

She cocked the weapon, her expression hard as stone.

“I told you, don’t even think of trying anything. If you don’t think it’s worth stealing, then it’s certainly not worth getting shot over.”

“But it is worth shooting somebody for?”

“If I have to.”

He stared at her, gauging her seriousness.

The way she handled the gun, her grip tight and unwavering, told him she knew exactly how to use it.

The way she looked at him, her eyes cold and unflinching, told him she wouldn’t hesitate to.

Damn. It didn’t look like he had a choice.

Biting back a curse, he slowly swung his arm and tossed the keys toward her. He didn’t bother to see where they landed.

She flicked her gaze down for only a second, not nearly long enough for him to make a move if he was crazy enough to try. When her attention was back on his face, she bent slowly at the knees, never losing her aim on him. As soon as she was close enough to the ground, she lowered one hand from the gun just long enough to scoop up the keys which had landed practically at her feet. As soon as she had them, she immediately started to rise again, gesturing toward him with a jerk of her chin. “Step away.”

He did as ordered, slowly moving backward, one frustrating step following another. After his first few steps, she was again on her feet and began to match his motions, stepping forward to the truck. Finally he was standing well behind the tailgate and she came to a stop next to the still-open door.

She glanced inside, then began to climb into the truck. Her movements were awkward, since she was still keeping the gun on him with one hand, but her aim remained true enough. “I really am sorry about this,” she said. “I’ll toss your phone out the window on the other side. You can call someone to come and get you.”

“You aren’t worried we’ll catch up with you?”

“By the time you do, it won’t matter anymore,” she said flatly.

Before he could wonder what she meant by that, she started to straighten in the seat, only to stop. A second later, she glanced back at him. “This is a manual.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I can’t drive a stick shift.”

He snorted. “Well, that’s too bad for you.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, staring at him long and hard. “You’re going to have to drive.”

“Excuse me?”

She jerked her head toward the cab. “Get in.”

An incredulous laugh burst from his mouth. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. It’s not enough you want to steal my truck. Now you want to hijack me into being your driver?”

“I don’t have a choice. The way I see it, neither do you.”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me? Then who’s going to drive you?”

“If you refuse to drive me, then I’m not going to be where I need to be in time and somebody very important to me is going to die. So I might as well shoot you, because you will have just killed someone I love.”

The seriousness in her voice killed the last traces of dark humor inside him. He hadn’t considered her earlier words too deeply, but the intensity in this statement left no doubt she meant everything she said. Something was going on here. Someone she cared about was in very real danger. She believed that much.

Still, Cade hesitated. If anything, her words gave him more of a reason to want out of this. Whatever this mess was, it wasn’t something any sane person would want any part of.

She motioned with the gun. “If you think I won’t do it, I sincerely suggest you think again.”

And he saw the truth in her eyes. She would shoot him without a second thought. If he wanted to keep breathing, his only chance was to go along with her demand. And as much as he didn’t want to be killed, he didn’t really want to be responsible for it happening to someone else, either.

Matching her glare, he started forward slowly. After a few moments, she disappeared inside the cab. When he reached the open door, he found she’d slid across the seat and was backed up against the passenger door. The gun in her hands instantly adjusted so the barrel was centered right on his head.

Climbing in, he glanced down to find the keys already in the ignition. No point delaying the obvious, he supposed. With a grimace, he tugged the door shut, then reached forward and started the engine.

“All right,” he said, shifting the truck into gear. “Where are we going?”

HOLDING THE GUN STEADY with her right hand, Piper pulled the map from her bag and held it out to him. “Here.”

He took it from her with some reluctance, giving it a perfunctory glance. “What is this?”

“Where I need to go.”

He looked at it again, frowning slightly. “This is Cartwright.”

“What’s that?”

“An old ghost town in the middle of the desert. There’s not much there now.”

“Well, there will be in twenty-five minutes.” At the very least someone. Several someones most likely, but there was only one she truly cared about being there. “If you know where it is, then you must know how to get there.”

“Yeah.”

“Then drive.”

Clenching the map in his hand, he pulled back onto the road and started forward.

“Can we get there in twenty-five minutes?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“That isn’t good enough. Drive fast—but not fast enough that anything bad should happen. Neither of us wants this gun to go off accidentally.”

The muscles on his neck bulged from his clear tension, but he didn’t respond. The truck accelerated smoothly, picking up speed without jostling her.

She kept her eyes on him, not about to let her guard down when so much depended on him cooperating and getting her where she needed to be. He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched. It was a strong jaw, perfectly fitting his plainly masculine profile. He had to be in his late thirties, his skin tanned from the sun, faint laugh lines worn into the corners around his eyes. It was a nice face. She suspected he was a nice guy. She remembered the clear thread of concern in his deep voice when he’d first pulled over. All he’d wanted to do was help her. And she’d pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him.

Guilt, sharp and painful, stabbed at her. She ruthlessly pushed the feeling aside. The people she was dealing with weren’t letting anything stop them from getting what they wanted. She couldn’t afford to, either. And given a choice between Tara and this stranger, there was no question what she would do. The only thing that mattered was getting to the rendezvous on time, whatever it took.

Then it hit her. No, that wasn’t all that mattered. What happened at the meeting also mattered a great deal. She’d had a plan, a risky, dangerous, improbable plan, but the only one—the only chance—she had. The rental car had been a key part of that plan. Without it, this wasn’t going to work.

Unless…

She sharpened her gaze on the man behind the wheel, studying that hardened face. He’d wanted to help her once. He must be a good person, or at least good enough for what she needed him to do.

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said.

“Lady, you’re holding a gun on me. You’re not asking, you’re ordering.”

“Not with this. This is for when I’m gone and don’t have the gun on you anymore. I need you to do something for me then.”

“Why the hell would I do anything else for you, lady?”

“Because I’m hoping that the kind of guy who couldn’t drive by and leave a woman standing on the side of the road won’t leave an innocent woman in danger, either.”

He snorted. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re innocent.”

“I’m not talking about me. My sister’s been kidnapped. We’re making the exchange at this location. I’m not going to give them what they want until my sister is safely out of there. My original plan was for her to drive away, but obviously that’s not an option anymore. So I need to ask you to please stay long enough to get her out of there.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. She’s all that matters.”

His frown deepened. “Who are these people? Why did they kidnap your sister?”

“That’s not important.”

“The hell it’s not. If you want me to stick around these people, I need to know what I’m up against.”

“They kidnapped her to force…me to provide them…with some information they want.”

“Even if they let your sister go before you give it to them, what do you think they’re going to do to you after you give it to them?”

“I told you, don’t worry about me.”

“It sounds like somebody needs to. What’s going to happen to you after you give them what they want?”

“Her name is Tara,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s only twenty years old. She has her whole life ahead of her.”

“And you don’t? You can’t be much older than thirty, if that. What about your life?”

“Please. I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I’m doing it anyway. Please save my sister. If you want me to beg, if that’s what it will take to get you to agree, then I will do it. It should be clear by now that I am willing to do anything to save her. So I’m asking you, begging you, please save my sister.”

Something in his face softened slightly, and hope burst in her chest at the indication that she might have swayed him.

He never had a chance to answer.

The rear window suddenly shattered. Glass sprayed into the interior of the truck. Piper cringed, instinctively turning away from the blast. Almost immediately, she whipped her head back to see what had happened.

A car had pulled up behind them without her noticing. She hadn’t been paying close enough attention while she’d been speaking to him, hadn’t even considered that she would need to.

Then she saw the arm reaching out of the driver’s side window, the glint of a gun clutched in a hand, just before a dull thud struck the metal of the truck.

Realization struck as hard as the impact of a bullet. Someone was shooting at them, trying to force them off the road before she could even get to the rendezvous point.

Oh, God.

She should have known they wouldn’t play fair.

Chapter Three

The sound of another bullet hitting metal knocked Piper out of the shock holding her in place.

The driver of the other car wasn’t the only one with a gun.

Gritting her teeth, she turned all the way around in her seat, just as the cowboy shouted, “Friends of yours?”

“Just keep driving!” she yelled, pushing her arms out the shattered back window and taking aim. As soon as she had her target, she pulled the trigger.

She didn’t hear anything, but the shot must have hit, because the car wavered slightly, sliding across the road. Satisfaction surged inside her, but she never let the vehicle out of her sights, matching her movements to it.

Confident she had another shot, she took it.

The windshield cracked.

She shot twice more in quick succession.

The glass cracked farther, the webbing spreading across the windshield. If she wasn’t mistaken, there was no way the driver should be able to see through it.

As if to confirm it, the car suddenly skidded across the road. Seconds later, it went right over the edge of the shoulder, disappearing from view.

A triumphant grin briefly flashed across her lips, the feeling unfamiliar, before she sobered, pulling her arms back into the truck and turning to the cowboy.

“I guess you really do know how to use that,” he said drily.

“And don’t forget it.”

He didn’t reply, frowning slightly. She watched his eyes lower to the panel in front of him. It was only then she realized they were gradually losing speed.

“Why are you slowing down?”

“Something’s wrong.”

She cocked the gun. “Knock it off. We don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” he snapped. “I think he got one of the tires.”

“He couldn’t have. The tire would have blown.”

“Then something must have ricocheted into it or we hit something.”

Dread shot through her. “Ignore it. Keep going.”

“I can’t ignore it. The truck isn’t going to let me.”

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“Too far. We’ll never make it.”

Before she could argue further, he was already easing off the accelerator and pulling over onto the shoulder.

She opened her mouth to tell him once more to keep going, but even as she did, she could feel the truck was starting to list on its left rear tire.

The cowboy shifted the truck into Park and shut off the engine, then opened his door and stepped out without even acknowledging her. Piper quickly scrambled across the seat and followed.

To her horror, the tire was already half-deflated. It must have been a graze or a nick or something, since the tire hadn’t exploded, though it might as well have for what the damage meant.

They didn’t have time for this. “Change the tire,” she ordered.

“I’m going to,” he grumbled. “It’s the only way I can get out of here.”

“How long is it going to take?”

“Long enough.”

“I only have fifteen minutes!”

He finally glanced back at her. This time there was a trace of sympathy in his eyes that shook her more than anything he could say. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

She raised the gun at him. “Not good enough.”

He simply shook his head and turned away. “You can shoot me, but it won’t change anything.”

She didn’t want to believe him. She wanted to scream, call him a liar.

But as she watched him work, she realized with a sinking heart that he was right. Changing a tire on a pickup truck was a bigger task than on a passenger car. He didn’t seem to be taking his time, but it was still taking far too long. And even if he managed to get the tire changed quickly, they still had to travel to their destination.

She peered down the road, raising a hand to her face to shade her eyes. There was nothing but the strip of highway and endless stretches of desert as far as the eye could see. No indication that they were anywhere near where she needed to be.

Finding it suddenly hard to breathe, she pulled the cell phone out of her bag with one hand, even though there wasn’t much of a point. She couldn’t even call the kidnapper to beg for more time. The two times she’d spoken with him, he’d called her from an unlisted number. All the contact came from his end. She had no way of reaching him.

All she could do was stand there, feeling time—and Tara’s life—slipping away from her with each passing moment.

She watched in horror as her watch counted down to the appointed meeting time all too quickly, then reached it.

No.

She stood frozen, waiting for something to happen. Something should happen. The end of her world, the end of her sister’s life, couldn’t just pass like this, uneventful, in silence.

At exactly two minutes past, the cell phone suddenly rang. She glanced at the screen even though there was no one else it could possibly be. As expected, the caller was identified only as “Unlisted Number.”

She quickly took the call. “Hello?”

A long silence echoed across the line before the silky, superior voice she expected finally spoke.

“It would seem I overestimated how much your sister means to you, Ms. Lowry.”

“I would have been there if your people hadn’t tried to force me off the road! What were you trying to do, get the drive without having to release my sister? We had a deal!”

She’d responded without thinking, the panic and anger inside her too fierce to hold back in the face of the man’s condescension and everything that had just happened. She fell silent just as quickly, a fresh wave of panic washing over her. She couldn’t afford to make him angry, not if there was any chance left of getting Tara back, not when he held all the cards.

His silence lasted for a torturous eternity.

“I assure you, Ms. Lowry, no one who works for me tried to force you off the road. It’s like you said. We have a deal. I wouldn’t jeopardize that with foolish tactics that could prevent me from getting what I want.”

Of course he was right. If she’d been thinking clearly she would have realized that. “Then who—”

“It would seem that someone doesn’t want you to give me the information.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask who that was, but that was exactly what she couldn’t do.

“So what happens now?” she made herself ask calmly instead.

Another silence. She almost wondered if the bastard was really considering his answers this carefully or if he simply enjoyed tormenting her by dragging them out.

“We will have to arrange another meeting,” he said finally. “I will be in touch—”

“But Tara—”

“Your sister is fine for the time being,” he interrupted with a trace of impatience. “And will remain so as long as you do as you are told.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? How do I know you didn’t try to get to me because my sister is already dead and you didn’t have anything to exchange?”

“I suppose you have no choice but to trust me.”

“Not good enough—”

“You will be allowed to speak with her when we set up the meeting.”

“No, I want to talk to her now—”

He’d already disconnected the call.

A sob rose in her throat, and she nearly gagged holding it back. She couldn’t give in to it. If she lost control, she might never get it back again.

The gun was suddenly snatched away from her, far too quickly for her to tighten the grip she’d unwittingly loosened.

She jerked her head up to find the cowboy standing over her, her gun now clenched in his hand. He didn’t point it at her. He simply held it as he stared down at her, his expression thunderous.

“From the sound of your half of that conversation, the immediate danger is over. Now I want to know what the hell is going on.”

Chapter Four

Cade knew he was capable of being intimidating. He was a big man, and his sheer size alone was enough to inspire a certain wariness in people at times. He didn’t get angry often, certainly not truly angry, but when he did he knew it came across loud and clear. He’d seen more than one ranch hand who’d pulled something over the years cowering in the face of his anger, and after everything this woman had put him through in the past thirty minutes, he was angrier than he’d ever been in his entire life.

The woman didn’t even blink. She simply stared up at him, her eyes so bleak and tired he almost felt an involuntary twinge of sympathy before he stifled the feeling.

She gave her head a little shake. “Trust me, you don’t want to be involved any more than you already are.”

He couldn’t argue with her on that. He didn’t want to be involved in this. But as long as he was, there was no turning back at this point. “So what now, you want me to just leave you here and be on my way?”

“I would appreciate a ride back to my car so I can call for a tow truck, but I’m sure that’s too much to ask.”

“Yeah, it is, especially since your friend who was shooting at us is back in that direction. You don’t think he won’t open fire again if he sees us passing by, or he won’t try to make his way to you while you’re waiting for your tow to show up?”

She frowned, her forehead furrowing, and he could tell she hadn’t thought about it at all. “You’re right. Then if you could take me to the next town, wherever that is—”

“I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on.”

Alarm flared in her eyes. “But we can’t stay here. What if that man passes by while we’re just standing around—”

“Then you’d better start talking fast.”

She scowled at him, her jaw tightening. He could tell she wanted to argue, but must have read in his expression that it wouldn’t do her any good.

Finally she cleared her throat. “My sister Pam is an FBI agent—”

“I thought you said your sister’s name is Tara,” he said sharply, wondering if she was lying to him already, if she hadn’t been all along.

“Tara’s my younger sister. Like I said, she’s only twenty years old. Pam is my twin sister. She’s an FBI agent. Late last year she was assigned to the field office in Dallas.”

He suddenly realized he didn’t know her name. “What about you? What’s your name?”

This time she did blink at him. “Oh. It’s Piper. Piper Lowry.”

He couldn’t have said why, but it suited her. “Okay. Go on.”

“Two days ago, I was notified that Pam was in a car accident that left her in a coma. I immediately flew to Dallas from Boston—that’s where I live. I went straight to the hospital from the airport. The accident was pretty bad. She’s in stable condition, but the doctors have no idea when she might wake up. I didn’t really get many details about what happened—her doctor made some reference that there was evidence she was driven off the road, but said I should talk to the police. I went there next. The detective I spoke to confirmed that it looked suspicious and said he’d been in contact with the FBI since Pam was a federal agent. He asked if I had any idea who might want to harm her. I told him I didn’t.

“After that I went to Pam’s house. When I got there, the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it, but when the answering machine picked up, this man—older-sounding, with a slight accent—began speaking. He said they knew I was home and that I’d better stop playing games and pick up the phone if I ever wanted to see my sister alive again.

“I picked up, of course. My first thought was that the man was talking about Pam. I had no idea Tara was missing or in any way involved. The man said he was aware of my accident, which is the only reason he allowed me to miss the original deadline, but he still wanted the information he asked of me.”

“He thought you were Pam,” Cade concluded.

“Exactly. Obviously I wasn’t the sister he was talking about, and we only have one other, so I knew he had to be talking about Tara. I immediately asked if Tara was okay, and he said she was for the time being, but wouldn’t be if I didn’t have the information he wanted.”

“What information?”

“I had no idea. I couldn’t tell him that, because then he’d know I wasn’t Pam. I was afraid that if he knew she was in a coma and incapable of providing any information, he might decide Tara was no use to him anymore and do something to her. So I said I had it. He told me to check the mailbox. There was an envelope in it with a cell phone they would use to contact me, and he would be in touch with further instructions. He hung up, and I immediately went to the mailbox. The phone was exactly where he said it would be.

“As soon as I got back in the house, I tried to reach Tara. I hadn’t spoken to her in a few days, which wasn’t unusual. She’s in college in Pennsylvania, and is busy with school and everything. I couldn’t reach her on her cell, but I did get in touch with her roommate. She said Tara left a few days earlier, leaving a note saying she was heading home for a while because her sister was sick. That would have been before Pam’s accident, and nothing had happened to me, so I figured the kidnappers must have left the note so Tara’s disappearance wouldn’t look suspicious and the police wouldn’t be contacted.”

“Obviously they contacted Pam once they had Tara,” he noted. “She really didn’t give you any idea Tara had been kidnapped? Did she try to reach you? What if you tried to call Tara earlier? You would have known the sick-sister story was a lie.”

Piper shrugged. “Pam tends to do her own thing and likes to handle matters on her own. She probably thought she could handle the situation herself and get Tara back before I even knew anything had happened. Or else she was so busy dealing with the situation she didn’t have time to think about me.”

“So did you call the police?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t want to do anything to endanger Tara, and I couldn’t trust them not to contact the FBI again, which is the protocol in kidnapping cases, especially one involving multiple states, since she was taken in Pennsylvania, not Texas.”

“Why didn’t you want to contact the FBI? Your sister works for them.”

“Exactly. And the information the kidnappers want must be something related to the Dallas field office. Why else would they kidnap the sister of an agent in that office?”

“So wouldn’t the FBI be the best people to contact? They would know who would want the information so badly and probably be able to figure out who’s behind this and how to stop them.”

“Except that’s exactly what Pam would have done, and look what happened to her.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. Who would possibly want to run Pam off the road? The kidnappers wouldn’t. They had no reason to. They wouldn’t have wanted to endanger her and possibly ruin their chances of getting what they wanted. No, it must have been someone else. The most likely possibility I can come up with is that Pam went to one of her colleagues for help, someone she trusted, and instead of providing it, they tried to stop her from giving the information to the kidnappers.”

He gaped at her in disbelief. “You think the FBI would run one of their agents off the road to keep her from releasing classified materials? Wouldn’t arresting her be a lot easier?”

“Not the FBI,” she said patiently, as though he were the one speaking nonsense. “Someone within the FBI who’s acting on their own and willing to do whatever it takes to stop this information, whatever it is, from being shared.” She sent a nervous glance in the direction they’d come from. “I think what just happened to us proves how desperate this person is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I should have realized it wasn’t the kidnappers trying to drive us off the road. I was just so focused on them and trying to get to Tara that, in the heat of the moment, I wasn’t thinking straight. But of course it wasn’t. It’s like the kidnapper said, he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize getting what he wants. It was someone who didn’t want me getting to my destination and making delivery to the kidnappers, the same someone who tried to stop Pam from doing the same thing.”

Cade tried to think of an explanation for who else might have been shooting at them, but came up empty. She seemed to have thought this all out, not surprising, given that she’d had a lot more time to consider all the possibilities than he had.

Not willing to concede she was right just yet, he decided to set the issue aside for the moment. There was a lot more to this story he needed to hear. “Okay, so you decided not to go to the police or the FBI. What did you do?”

“I tried to figure out what I could do to save Tara and waited for the man to call me back. He finally did last night. He instructed me to drive to Albuquerque and arrive by noon. I left immediately. At noon, he called me with the address of a copy shop where he said a fax would be waiting for me. It was that map that I showed you. I was to be at that location exactly at two.”

“What was your plan?”

“I was going to refuse to give them the information until they let Tara go first.”

He frowned again. “Did you really think they would agree to that?”

“I wasn’t going to give them a choice. I brought a flash drive with me and was going to tell them I would only give them the password to unlock the file on it once they let Tara go.”

“Why would they agree to that? They could have just threatened to shoot Tara if you didn’t give it to them.”

“I was going to throw the flash drive on the ground and say that if they did anything to her I would put a bullet through it and destroy it right then and there. If they tried to shoot me, they would risk me pulling the trigger reflexively and destroying the drive anyway. After going to so much trouble to get the information, I was counting on them not being willing to risk losing it when it was so close at hand. We both had something the other wanted. It would be easier to just make the exchange. And if they threatened to kill her outright, I would have threatened to kill myself if they did, because if anything happened to her, I would have just watched my sister die and wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I’d gotten her killed.”

“Even if they agreed to let her go, they wouldn’t have let you go without the password.”

“I know. I was prepared to stay. That was the exchange. Me, the flash drive and the password for Tara.”

An uneasy feeling began to churn in his gut. “Do you have the information they want?”

“No. I still don’t even know what it is. That’s why I had to get them to let Tara go before I agreed to give them the flash drive supposedly containing the information.”

“You can’t believe they would have agreed to that without knowing you had what they wanted.”

“It was the only chance I had, the only chance Tara had.”

“But once they found out you’d cheated them, they would have killed you.”

She stared back at him, unblinking. “I know,” she said simply.

He had no response to that, could only stare at her, the magnitude of what she was telling him hitting him square in the chest.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, unable to hide his disbelief. “What good would that have done? Once they killed you, they would have gone after her to prevent her from talking.”

“I was going to try to give her as much time as I could to get away. I have a map in my bag that I was going to leave in the car with a note telling her to drive to Colorado to get to the police or FBI there and to avoid the main roads. I didn’t think they would expect her to go there and would have a harder time tracking her that way. I also didn’t think she could trust anyone around here in case the kidnappers had connections with the police or the locals. There had to have been a reason they chose this area for the meeting. Pam had two guns in her house. I had one on me and left the other in the car for Tara. I also had the suitcase I brought with me to Dallas so she would have clothes, though I didn’t have time to grab it before I got in your truck. My ATM and credit cards are in my bag, along with enough cash to see her through for a few days. I would have left it in the car for her, too. It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment, but I had to pray it would be enough to get her to safety.”

Cade studied her, too stunned to do anything else. She really had thought the whole thing through. There was no doubting it. This had been a suicide mission. She’d come here fully expecting to die, and had done so willingly, to save her sister. No, it hadn’t just been willing. She’d been desperate to do so, fighting tooth and nail and doing whatever it took to get to a rendezvous where she thought she would die.

She had to understand the enormity of the sacrifice she’d been willing to make. Yet there was no sign of it on her face—no pride, no regret, no misgivings. Just simple straightforwardness, as though it was clear what she’d had to do, as though it were nothing at all.

Maybe it was to her.

He tried to think of anyone he’d ever known who would have been willing to do that for him. Not his father, who’d never wanted a kid in the first place and only cared about what he could find at the bottom of the nearest bottle. Certainly not his mother, who’d walked out on them when he was a boy. Not Caitlin, the one person he thought he would have been willing to do anything for—yeah, probably even die—who’d walked out on him, too. There was Matt Alvarez, his right-hand man on the ranch and the closest thing he had to a friend in this world, but he didn’t know if Alvarez would be willing to make such a colossal sacrifice, and frankly, Cade wouldn’t expect him to.

He wondered what this sister of hers was like, wondered if she was worthy of the sacrifice this woman had been willing to make. Obviously Piper Lowry thought so.

It suddenly struck him that he was just standing there, staring at the woman in front of him. He cleared his throat, his anger gone, replaced by an emotion he couldn’t really name. Any doubts he’d had about her story were gone now. It was far too detailed and she’d related it so unwaveringly she certainly hadn’t been making it up on the spot. All that remained was the question of what to do now.

Only one answer came to mind, one he wasn’t happy with. But it seemed he didn’t have a choice any more than she thought she had.

“Come on,” he said roughly. “Let’s get out of here.”

She frowned. “Where are we going? Back to my car?”

“No. My ranch isn’t far from here. It’ll be safer there. We can figure out what to do next.”

“‘We’?” she echoed faintly. “Why would you want to help me?”

It was a good question, one he would have asked if he were in her shoes, one he was still asking himself.

He gave the only answer he could. “Because somebody needs to.”

He damn well wished it wasn’t him. If he had a brain in his head, it wouldn’t be. A smart man would get away from this woman and her mess as fast as humanly possible.

But it seemed he wasn’t that smart. And like it or not—and he sure as heck did not—it looked like he was all she had.

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