Tracking Down the Lawman's Son
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Delores Fossen
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Chapter One
Deputy Luca Vanetti ran through the ER doors the moment they slid open, and he made a beeline to the reception desk. The nurse on duty saw him coming and got to her feet. Luca figured the concern on her face was a drop in the bucket compared to his.
He tried to tamp down the worry and fear that were firing through him. Tried not to jump to any bad conclusions, but Bree and his baby boy could be hurt.
Or worse.
No, Luca couldn’t deal with worse right now.
He just needed to see Bree McCullough and his two-month-old son, Gabriel, and then try to get to the bottom of what’d happened. Bree and he might barely be on speaking terms, but they both loved Gabriel, and Bree would know what a gut punch it was for Luca to get a report that she’d been in a serious car accident.
“Where are they?” Luca demanded before he even reached the reception desk.
The nurse, Alisha Cameron, was someone he’d known his whole life. Something that could be said about most people in their small hometown of Saddle Ridge, Texas, where there weren’t many degrees of separation.
Alisha motioned toward the hall. “The exam room on the right. Slater’s already here.”
Slater McCullough was not only a fellow deputy at the Saddle Ridge Sheriff’s Office, but he was also Bree’s older brother. Luca had expected him to be here since Slater was the responding officer who’d arrived on the scene of the single car accident, only to learn his sister was the driver.
“Gabriel wasn’t in the vehicle with Bree,” Slater said the moment he spotted Luca. “I just got off the phone with the nanny, and Gabriel’s with her.”
Some of the tightness eased up in Luca’s chest. Some. His baby boy wasn’t hurt. “And Bree?” Luca managed to ask.
“She’s in with the doctor now,” Slater said after he swallowed hard. “She has a head injury, and they’re examining her.”
“How bad?” Luca wanted to know.
Slater shook his head. “I’m not sure. When I arrived on scene, she was trying to get out of the car, but her seat belt was jammed, and she couldn’t reach her phone. There was blood,” he added. “Some scrapes and cuts, too, on her face, but I think most of those came from the airbag when it deployed.”
“What happened?” Luca wanted to know. “Why did she crash?”
“I’m not sure what caused the accident.” He paused, his gaze meeting Luca’s. “Her car went off the road right before the Saddle Ridge Creek bridge, and she slammed into a tree. If she hadn’t hit the tree, her car would have plunged into the creek.”
Hell. That was where his parents had been killed, so Luca knew firsthand that a collision like that could have been fatal because the creek was more than twenty feet deep in spots. But crashing into a tree could have killed her, too.
Luca studied Slater’s eyes that were a genetic copy of not only Bree’s but of Gabriel’s. “Why did she go off the road?” he pressed.
Slater shook his head again. “I don’t know. Like I said, she was woozy, and I arrived on scene only a minute or two before the ambulance got there. The EMTs loaded her right away and brought her here.”
Because Luca knew Slater well, he could see that Slater was worried. And troubled. “You said Bree has a head injury. How bad?” Luca asked.
“I don’t know,” Slater repeated. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Other than what I’ve told you, the only other thing I know is a delivery driver traveling on that road spotted Bree’s car and called it in. There were tread marks nearby, but I have no idea if they were from her vehicle or not. The delivery driver didn’t see any other vehicles around.”
So, maybe she’d gotten distracted or something and had lost control of the car. That wasn’t like Bree, though. She was usually ultra-focused. A skill set she needed for her job as legal consultant for the Texas Rangers. But she was also the mother of a two-month-old baby, and it was possible lack of sleep had played into this.
That possibility gave Luca another gut punch. Because he could see how this would have played out. Even if Bree had been exhausted, she wouldn’t have asked him for help. In fact, he was probably the last person in Saddle Ridge she would have turned to. Ironic, since they had once been lovers.
Had.
That was definitely in the past, and as far as Bree was concerned, it wouldn’t be repeated. Luca was learning to live with that even though they’d had an on-again, off-again thing since high school. The off had become permanent eleven months ago when they’d landed in bed after Bree’s father had been murdered.
That brought on gut punch number three of the day.
Because Bree’s late father, Sheriff Cliff McCullough, hadn’t only been Luca’s boss, he’d been his surrogate father after Luca’s parents had died in a car crash when Luca had been just sixteen. Luca had been grieving and on shaky emotional ground following Cliff’s murder. Bree had been, too, and they’d spent the night together.
The night when she’d gotten pregnant with Gabriel.
Bree hadn’t told him that though until four months ago when she’d moved back home. Only then had Luca learned he was going to be a father. Luca hadn’t quite managed to forgive Bree for shutting him out like that, but she apparently didn’t want his forgiveness.
The door to the exam room opened, and Dr. Nathan Bagley stepped out. Another familiar face but not an especially friendly one. Well, not friendly toward Luca anyway. Luca knew Nathan had always seen him as a romantic rival. During Bree and Luca’s off-again phases, Nathan and she had dated.
“How is she?” Luca immediately asked.
The doctor didn’t get a chance to answer though. “I’m fine,” Luca heard Bree say.
Nathan’s sigh indicated he didn’t quite agree with his patient, but he stepped back out of the doorway, and Luca saw another nurse who was in the process of washing her hands.
And Bree.
Her short dark brown hair was tangled and flecked with powder from the airbag. And she was pale. So pale. She was also getting up from the exam table. Not easily. She was wobbling a little, and Luca immediately went to her, took hold of her arm and steadied her.
There was blood on her cream-colored shirt. A few flecks of dried blood, too, on her right cheek by her ear. That had no doubt come from the cut on her head that was now stitched up.
Bree dodged his gaze, but that was the norm for them these days. “Thanks,” she muttered, and stepped out of his grip. “I’m fine,” she repeated, her gaze pinned to Slater.
“You’re sure about that?” Slater questioned. He went to her, gently cupped her chin, lifting it while he examined her.
“Sure,” she insisted at the same moment that Nathan added his own comment.
“She doesn’t appear to have a concussion, but I’d like to run some tests,” the doctor said. “I’d also like to admit her for observation for the head injury.”
All of that sounded reasonable to Luca, but Bree clearly wasn’t on board with it. “I’m fine. I want to go home and check on Gabriel.”
“Gabriel’s okay,” Slater assured her. “I called the nanny just a couple of minutes ago.”
Now it was Bree’s turn to study her brother’s face, and it seemed to Luca that she was making sure he was telling her the truth.
What the heck was going on?
Slater and Bree were close, and Slater wouldn’t have lied to her. Well, not under these circumstances anyway. And not about Gabriel. Slater might have downplayed the truth though if Bree had been in serious condition, but that wasn’t the case.
“I need to go home,” Bree repeated. “Can you give me a ride?” she asked, and then moved away from Slater. She went to the small counter where the nurse was now standing and picked up her purse.
“Hold on a second.” Slater stepped in front of her to stop her from heading for the door. “What happened? Why did you wreck?”
Her pause only lasted a couple of seconds, but it was enough to make Luca even more concerned about her. “A deer ran out on the road in front of me,” Bree said. “I swerved to miss it and lost control.”
There were indeed plenty of deer and other wildlife in the woods around the creek, and drivers did hit them from time to time. But something about this still felt, well, off.
“Why were you on that road?” Luca asked. It wasn’t anywhere near Bree’s place. Her house was one she’d inherited from her grandparents when she’d turned twenty-one, and it was on the outskirts of the other side of town.
“I was going to Austin for a business meeting,” she said.
That didn’t seem off. Bree was a lawyer who did legal consultations for the Texas Rangers and some state agencies. Most days, she worked from home, but she sometimes had meetings in nearby San Antonio or Austin.
“I thought I was going to end up in the creek,” she added in a mutter.
Now she looked at Luca. Or rather glanced at him, and he saw the apology in her eyes. She no doubt knew it always hit him hard to be reminded of his parents’ deaths.
“A deer,” Slater muttered, a question in his tone.
“Yes,” she verified, and Bree suddenly sounded a whole lot stronger. She didn’t look it though. She still seemed plenty unsteady to Luca. “And now I need to go home and see my baby.”
This time, it was Nathan who maneuvered in front of her. “You hit your head. You really should stay here for observation. You need to have medical supervision.”
“I can get someone in my family to stay with me,” Bree insisted right back. “I need to check on Gabriel.”
Nathan huffed and turned to Slater to plead his case. “Head injuries can be dangerous. She shouldn’t be alone.”
A muscle flickered in Slater’s jaw, and he volleyed glances at both his sister and the doctor. Slater must have seen the determination on Bree’s face because he sighed.
“She won’t be alone,” Slater told Nathan. “I’ll make sure someone is with her for the next twenty-four hours.”
Nathan repeated his huff, but his obvious objection didn’t stop Bree. “I’ll phone in a script for pain meds,” he called out as Bree headed for the door. Slater and Luca were right behind her.
“Where are you parked?” she asked without looking back at them.
“By the ambulances,” Slater provided. It wasn’t far, but Luca’s cruiser was closer.
“I’m right by the ER door,” Luca said. He’d left his cruiser there when he’d been in a near panic to check on Bree and their son.
“Your cruiser then,” Bree said, and her glance was just long enough for Luca to confirm she was talking to him.
She was obviously shaken to the core so Luca understood her urgent need to see Gabriel. The baby would likely steady her nerves. Again though, it seemed like more than that.
“Slater, why don’t you ride with us, and I can give you a statement about the accident?” Bree asked when they stepped outside. She fired glances around as if looking for something.
Or someone.
“Sure,” Slater said, sounding as concerned and skeptical as Luca was. He opened the passenger’s side door to help Bree in, and he slid into the back seat.
“Drive,” Bree insisted the moment Luca got behind the wheel.
Luca didn’t press her to explain what the heck was going on. He pulled out of the hospital parking lot while he, too, glanced around.
“All right, what’s wrong?” Slater demanded once they were on the way.
Bree dragged in a quick breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Someone ran me off the road.” Her voice cracked. “I think someone tried to kill me.”
