Under the Cowboy's Protection
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Delores Fossen
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16,5K
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15
Chapter One
Sheriff Raleigh Lawton didn’t like the looks of this.
The glass on the front door of the house had been shattered, and the chairs on the porch were toppled over. Both could be signs that maybe there’d been some kind of struggle here.
That kicked up his heart rate a huge notch, and he drew his gun, hoping he didn’t need to use it. While he was hoping, he added that maybe there was some explanation for the glass and chairs. Maybe the woman who lived in this small one-story house was okay. Raleigh had a double reason for wishing that.
Because the woman, Sonya Burney, was nine months pregnant.
He’d known her all his life, and that’s why Raleigh hadn’t hesitated to go check on her when the doctor from the OB clinic had called him to say that Sonya had missed her appointment. In a big city, something like that would have gone practically unnoticed, but in a small ranching town like Durango Ridge, it got noticed all right.
The rain spat at him when he stepped from his truck. It was coming down hard now, with an even heavier downpour in the forecast. He had a raincoat, but he didn’t want to take the time to put it on. However, he did keep watch around him as he hurried up the steps and onto the porch.
“Sonya?” he called out and immediately listened for anyone or anything.
Nothing.
He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. And he cursed when he stepped inside. The furniture had been tossed here, too. There was a broken lamp on the floor, and the coffee table was on its side. Raleigh reached for his phone, ready to call one of his deputies for backup, but something caught his eye.
Drops of what appeared to be blood on the floor.
Raleigh had a closer look. Not blood. Judging from the smell, it was paint. And he soon got more proof of that. There was a still-open can in the hall just off the living room, and a discarded brush was next to it. However, it wasn’t the can or brush that grabbed his attention. It was what someone had scrawled on the wall.
This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.
Hell.
That felt like a punch to the gut. Because he’d seen a message identical to that one almost a year ago. A message that’d been written in the apartment of a woman who had been murdered. Unlike Sonya, that particular woman had been a stranger to him.
The memories came. Images Raleigh wished that time would have blurred. But they were still crystal clear. The woman. Her limp, lifeless body, and the baby she’d been carrying was missing—it still was.
He prayed that Sonya and the baby wouldn’t have similar fates.
Raleigh didn’t have any proof of who’d killed that other woman, stolen the child or written that message. But he had always thought the message had been left for him. And Warren, of course.
Warren was his father.
Biologically anyway. Raleigh had never considered the man to be his actual dad. Never would.
He made the call for backup and used his phone to take a quick picture of the message. Actually, it was a threat. Raleigh just hoped that Sonya hadn’t gotten caught up in this tangled mess between Warren and him.
“Sonya?” he called out again.
Still nothing, but Raleigh continued to look for her. The house wasn’t huge, a combined living and kitchen area, two bedrooms and a bath. He went through each one and didn’t see her. But there was another message, and it’d been slopped in red paint on one of the bedroom walls. A repeat of the other one.
The repeat hadn’t been necessary. Raleigh had gotten it the first time.
This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.
Warren was retired now, but he’d once indeed been the sheriff of McCall Canyon, a town one county over. He’d also carried on an affair with Raleigh’s mom for nearly three and a half decades. Or rather, Warren had carried on with her until his secret had come out into the open after someone had tried to kill him. Raleigh’s mother had been a suspect in that attack. And Warren’s “real” family—his wife, two sons and his daughter—hated Raleigh and her.
Was one of them responsible for this?
Maybe. That was something he would definitely investigate, but first he had to find Sonya.
Since it would take a good twenty minutes for his deputy to get all the way out to Sonya’s house, Raleigh kept looking, and he made his way out through the kitchen and to the back porch. The moment he stepped outside, he heard something. At first he thought it was the cool October rain hitting the tin roof.
It wasn’t.
There was a woman dressed in jeans and a raincoat. She was facedown, on the end of the porch, and she was moaning. Raleigh ran to her and turned her over, but it wasn’t Sonya. However, it was someone he knew.
Deputy Thea Morris.
Seeing her gave his heart rate another jolt. Of course, Thea usually had that effect on him. Not in a good way, either, and it certainly wasn’t good now. What the hell was she doing here, and what was wrong with her?
Raleigh didn’t see any obvious injuries. Not at first. Then he pushed aside her dark blond hair and saw the two small circular burn marks on her neck. Someone had used a stun gun on her.
“Where’s Sonya?” he asked.
Thea opened her eyes, but she was clearly having trouble focusing because she blinked several times. Then she groaned again. She didn’t answer him, but he saw the alarm on her face, and she started struggling to sit up. He helped her with that. Too bad it meant putting his arms around her to do that.
And Raleigh immediately got another dose of too-clear memories that he didn’t want.
Of Thea being not just in his arms but in his bed. But that was an old water, old bridge situation.
“Where’s Sonya?” Raleigh repeated. “And what happened to you?” He had other questions, but those were enough of a start, since finding Sonya was his priority right now.
“Sonya,” Thea repeated in a mutter. She lifted her hand—not easily because it was practically limp—and she touched her fingers to her head. “Sonya.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sonya. She’s pregnant, and I’m worried about her.” Worried was an understatement. “What happened to her? What happened to you?”
Thea blinked some more, looked up at him, and the concern was obvious in her deep green eyes. “A man. I think he took her.”
That got Raleigh’s attention, and he fired glances around them, trying to see if he could spot her. But there was still no sign of Sonya.
“The man had a gun,” Thea added, and she groaned, trying to get to her feet. She failed and dropped right back down on the porch. She also reached for her own gun, but her shoulder holster was empty. Since she was wearing her badge, Raleigh doubted she’d come here without her gun.
“What man?” Raleigh demanded. “And where did he take her?”
Thea groaned again and shook her head. “I don’t know, but he said he was doing this because of Warren.”
Raleigh hadn’t actually needed that last bit of info to raise the alarm inside him. With the signs of struggle and those stun gun marks on Thea’s neck, he decided it wasn’t a good idea for them to be out in the open like this. Sonya’s place was an old farmhouse with a barn and a storage shed, but the woods were only a short walk away. It would give an attacker plenty of places to hide.
If the man was indeed hiding, that is. If someone had actually taken Sonya, he could be long gone by now.
“We need to get inside.” Raleigh hooked his arm around Thea’s waist, pulling her to her feet. She wobbled, landing against him. Specifically against his chest. He shoved aside the next dose of memories that came with that close contact.
“You have to go after the man,” Thea said. Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. “You have to get Sonya.”
“I will.”
His deputy would be here in ten minutes or so, and Raleigh would start searching as soon as he had someone to watch Thea. She wasn’t in any shape to defend herself if her attacker returned. At the moment though, he was much more concerned about Sonya. After all, Thea was alive and okay, for the most part anyway, but Sonya could be in the hands of a kidnapper.
Or a killer.
But that didn’t make sense. Who would want to hurt her, and what did any of this have to do with Warren? Unless...
A very unsettling thought came to mind.
“Did this happen because Sonya’s a surrogate?” Raleigh asked. He helped Thea into a chair at the kitchen table and then went back to the window to see if he could spot any sign of the woman or the person who’d taken her.
“I don’t know. Maybe...” Thea’s voice trailed off, and that’s when Raleigh noticed that Thea’s attention had landed on the painted message on the wall. She shuddered, but she didn’t turn away. “I don’t suppose you put that there?” But she shook her head, waving off her question. “No. You and Sonya were friends.”
Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea knew that, but then he wasn’t sure of a lot of things right now. “Start talking. I want to know everything that happened.” Though it was hard to stand there and listen to anything Thea had to say when his instincts were screaming for him to go after Sonya.
Thea didn’t jump right into that explanation; instead, she got to her feet. “We can talk while we look for her. Do you have a backup gun you can lend me?”
Raleigh frowned. Thea didn’t look at all steady on her feet, which meant her aim would probably suck, too. Still, she was a cop.
Warren’s star deputy, in fact.
Warren had not only trained her and given Thea her start in law enforcement, his father had made it clear that he loved Thea like a daughter. That was convenient, since Thea loved him like a father.
Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea had managed to overlook the fact that Warren was a lying, cheating snake, and he really didn’t care. Heck, at the moment he didn’t care if Thea was having trouble standing. She had the right idea about looking for Sonya as they talked, so Raleigh gave her his backup gun from his boot holster.
“I got here about a half hour ago,” Thea said, glancing at the clock on the microwave. While she held on to the kitchen counter, she made her way to the back door. “Sonya didn’t answer my call this morning, so I came over to check on her.” She paused. “I’ve been checking on her a lot lately.”
“I didn’t know Sonya and you were that close,” Raleigh commented. Sonya had only moved to Durango Ridge about ten years ago, so it was possible she’d known Thea before then. Or maybe they’d recently become friends. But after one look in Thea’s eyes, he knew that wasn’t the case.
Raleigh groaned. “This has to do with Sonya being a surrogate.”
Thea nodded and managed to get the back door open. “I haven’t given up on finding Hannah Neal’s killer.”
Neither had Raleigh. And he especially wasn’t forgetting her now, because that message on Sonya’s wall was identical to the one found at Hannah’s apartment a year ago. Hannah had been murdered only a couple of hours after she’d given birth. That same person who’d killed Hannah had almost certainly been the one who had taken the newborn.
“Sonya didn’t know Hannah,” Thea continued, “but they were both surrogates, and they used the same doctor for the in vitro procedures that got them pregnant.”
Raleigh’s gut twisted. Because he’d known that. And he had dismissed it as being something unimportant. Of course, he sure wasn’t dismissing it now.
Still, it didn’t make sense. Why would someone go after two surrogates to get back at Warren? Especially since Sonya had no personal connection to Warren.
Or did she?
Raleigh didn’t have the answer to that, either, but he soon would.
Thea stepped out onto the back porch, and like Raleigh, she looked around. She also caught on to the porch railing to keep herself from falling. Raleigh nearly had her sit down on the step, but babysitting Thea wasn’t his job. His job was to find Sonya.
“Tell me about this man who took Sonya,” Raleigh demanded. “Was he here when you arrived?”
Thea nodded and followed him into the yard. Not easily, but she made it while still wobbling and using every last inch of the porch railing. “I saw him. He wore a ski mask and was holding her at gunpoint. He was about six-one and about two hundred pounds.”
That tightened his stomach even more. Sonya was barely five-three and had a petite build. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against a guy that size. Especially if he had a gun.
Thea stopped once she was in the yard, and with the rain pouring down on her, she looked back at him. “Sonya had the baby. Not with her,” she added when she must have seen the shock on his face. “But she was no longer pregnant.”
That didn’t make sense, either. Sonya’s doctor was in town. So was the hospital she’d intended to use to deliver. If she’d had the baby there, Raleigh would have certainly heard about it.
“Did she say anything about the baby? About the man?” Raleigh pressed.
“No. He had her gagged and already in the yard when I got here. I moved toward him, but there must have been a second man. Or a second person. He hit me with a stun gun when I came onto the porch. I think they took Sonya that way.” She tipped her head to the woods.
Thea was lucky the guy hadn’t killed her. Or maybe luck didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe keeping her alive had been part of the plan.
“I would tell you to wait here, but I doubt you will,” Raleigh grumbled to her, and he started for those woods.
He didn’t get far though, because he heard the sound of a car engine. At first he thought it might be the deputy, but it was a woman who came running out the back door, and Raleigh recognized the tall brunette.
Yvette O’Hara.
The woman who’d hired Sonya to be a surrogate. Like Thea and him, Yvette was wet from the rain. The woman was breathing through her mouth, her eyes were wide and her forehead was bunched up.
“Where’s Sonya?” Yvette blurted out.
“We’re not sure.” Raleigh figured Yvette wasn’t going to like that answer. Judging from her huff, she didn’t. But it was the best he could do. “Stay here. Deputy Morris and I were about to look for her.”
Yvette glanced at Thea. “What’s going on? Did something happen to Sonya, to the baby?” She was right to be concerned—especially if she’d noticed the toppled furniture and messages on the walls.
“Stay put,” he warned her again.
But Yvette didn’t listen. She barreled down the steps, and also like Thea, she had some trouble staying steady. In her case though, it was because she was wearing high heels.
“Sonya’s doctor called me,” Yvette said, her words running together. “She missed her appointment. She wouldn’t have done that if everything was all right.”
Probably not. But Raleigh kept that to himself. Yvette already looked to be in alarm-overload mode, and it was best if he didn’t add to that. He didn’t want her getting hysterical.
“Just stay here,” he said. “That way, if Sonya comes back, she won’t be here alone.”
Yvette finally gave a shaky nod to that and sank down onto the porch steps. Good. It was bad enough that he had Thea to watch, and he didn’t want to have to keep an eye on Yvette, too. If those armed thugs were still in the area, it was too dangerous for Yvette to follow them.
Thea didn’t stay back though. Despite her unsteady gait, she kept on walking, straight toward the woods, and Raleigh had to run to catch up with her. He’d just managed that when he heard someone call out to him.
“Raleigh?” It was Deputy Dalton Kane. Since Raleigh hadn’t heard a siren, it meant Dalton had done a silent approach, and Raleigh was glad he was there. He needed some backup right now.
“Stay with Mrs. O’Hara,” Raleigh told him. “The woman on the porch,” he added in case Dalton didn’t know who Yvette was. “And get more backup and some CSIs out here. I want the house processed ASAP.”
Again, Thea got ahead of him, and Raleigh had to catch up with her. She didn’t even pause when she made it to the trees; she just walked right in. Since it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be cautious, Raleigh moved in front of her.
“I think the thugs were parked back here somewhere,” Thea said. “Shortly after the one hit me with the stun gun, I believe I heard a vehicle leaving.”
Raleigh silently groaned. If that was true, then there was no telling where Sonya could be. “Is it possible one of the men had the baby with him?” he asked.
“No.” But Thea paused and shook her head. “Maybe. I didn’t get even a glimpse of him. After the stun gun hit, I fell on the porch, and I think I passed out.”
Perhaps because she’d hit her head. Raleigh could see the bruise forming on her right cheekbone. Of course, if this was a kidnapping, the person could have even drugged Thea to make sure she didn’t come after them.
But who would want to kidnap Sonya?
Raleigh drew a blank. Sonya hadn’t been romantically involved with anyone. At least he didn’t think she had been, but it was possible she’d met someone. It was something Raleigh hoped he could ask her as soon as they found her.
They kept walking, and it didn’t take long for Raleigh to spot the clearing just ahead. He’d been born and raised in Durango Ridge, but he hadn’t been in this part of the woods. However, like the rest of the area, there were paths and old ranch trails like this one that led to the creek.
“The rain is washing away the tracks,” Thea mumbled, and she sped up.
She was right—if there were any tracks to be found, that is. And there were. Despite the rain, Raleigh could still see the grooves in the dirt and gravel surface. A vehicle had been here recently. He took out his phone to get photos of the tracks just in case they were gone before the CSI team could arrive. He’d managed to click a few shots when he heard Thea make a loud gasp.
Raleigh snapped in her direction, following her gaze to see what had captured her attention. There, in the bushes, he saw something that he definitely hadn’t wanted to see.
Sonya’s lifeless body.
