Under the Cowboy's Protection

by Delores Fossen

  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.

  Chapter Two

  Thea fought the effects of the adrenaline crash. Or rather she tried. But while she was waiting on Sonya’s front porch, she was also fighting off the remnants of that stun gun, along with the sickening dread that another woman was dead.

  Oh, God. She was dead.

  For a few seconds after she’d seen the body, Thea had tried to hold out hope that it wasn’t Sonya. That it was some stranger, but that had been an unrealistic hope to have. After all, she’d seen the gunman taking Sonya. She’d known the woman was in extreme danger.

  “Why did the gunman even take Sonya from the house?” Thea mumbled. “If he was just going to kill her, why didn’t he do that when he first broke in?”

  She hadn’t intended for anyone to actually hear those questions. Not with all the chaos going on. But Raleigh obviously heard her, since he looked at her. What he didn’t do was attempt an answer, because he was standing in the front doorway while giving instructions to the CSIs, who were now processing Sonya’s yard and house.

  Because it was a crime scene.

  One that wasn’t in Thea’s jurisdiction.

  That’s why she just sat there on the front porch, waiting for Raleigh to give her some task to do. Any task. Anything that would help them find out who’d done this. That wouldn’t stop this crushing feeling in her heart though, and it couldn’t bring back Sonya. But maybe Thea could help get justice for the dead woman.

  “Please tell me you found the baby,” she said when Raleigh finished with the CSIs and started toward her.

  He shook his head. “But there’s some evidence that Sonya delivered the child here, at her house.” Raleigh added a weary sigh to that, and he stopped directly in front of her. “There were some bloody sheets in the washer, and a package of newborn diapers had been opened. So had a case of premade formula bottles. Three of the bottles and four of the diapers were missing.”

  Well, Sonya had obviously had the baby somewhere, so the delivery could have easily happened here in her home, but that just led Thea to yet another question. Why wouldn’t Sonya have gone to the hospital to deliver the child?

  However, Thea instantly thought of a bad answer to that.

  Maybe the gunman was here when the baby had been born. Those thugs could have stopp
ed her from getting the medical attention she needed.

  She looked up at Raleigh, and he was staring at her. His lawman’s stare. That meant his comment about the sheets and diapers hadn’t been just to catch her up on what they’d found. This was the start of his official interview, since she’d actually seen the man who was likely responsible for murdering Sonya.

  Of course, Thea had already told him some details when Raleigh had found her on the back porch, and she had added other bits of info while they’d waited for the CSIs and ME to arrive. Obviously though, he wanted a lot more now.

  But Thea didn’t have more.

  “You should be inside the house with Yvette,” Raleigh reminded her. It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned that. “Whoever killed Sonya is still at large, and you could be a target.”

  “So could you.” Best not to mention that the gunmen might want him dead because he was Warren’s son.

  No.

  That would only make matters worse. And as for going inside with Yvette, obviously neither of them wanted to do that, because they both stayed put.

  Thea’s heart was breaking for Yvette, since the missing baby was her biological child—a daughter, from what Sonya had told her a couple months ago—but Thea didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with Yvette just yet. Besides, she didn’t even know what to say to the woman. The only thing they could do was hope they found the baby soon, along with finding Sonya’s killer.

  “I had at least a dozen conversations with Sonya,” Thea explained to Raleigh. “I visited her here at her house three times, and not once did she ever hint that she was in any kind of danger.”

  He made a sound that could have meant anything and kept up the intense stare. He was good at it, too. Unfortunately, looking at him reminded her of other things that had nothing to do with the murder and missing baby.

  Once Raleigh had been attracted to her. Obviously not now though. There wasn’t a trace of attraction in his stormy blue eyes or on that handsome face. He was all cowboy cop now.

  “And you visited Sonya because of Hannah Neal,” he said.

  It wasn’t a question, but Thea nodded to confirm that. “Hannah was my friend, and it eats away at me that I haven’t been able to find her killer.”

  She caught something in his eyes. A glimmer that she recognized. It ate away at Raleigh, too.

  Raleigh hadn’t known Hannah, but Hannah’s body had been dumped just at the edge of Durango Ridge. That meant it was Raleigh’s case, but then, despite his retirement, Sheriff Warren McCall had gotten involved because Hannah had lived in their hometown of McCall Canyon. Plus, Hannah had been murdered in McCall Canyon, too. Murdered, and her killer had left the same obscene message on her wall that he had on Sonya’s.

  At the time of that investigation, Warren hadn’t mentioned a word about Raleigh being his illegitimate son. Neither had Thea, though she had known. She had found out Warren’s secret a few months before that, but she hadn’t told anyone. And that was the reason she no longer saw the attraction in Raleigh’s eyes. He hated her now because she’d kept that from him.

  But not nearly as much as she hated herself for doing it.

  Thea shook her head to clear it, forcing her mind off Hannah and back onto Sonya. Hannah’s case was cold, but what they uncovered here today could maybe help them solve both murders.

  “Why exactly did you become friends with Sonya?” Raleigh asked.

  It wasn’t an easy question. “It didn’t start out as friendship. I’d been keeping tabs on the doctor who did the in vitro on Hannah.” Actually, she’d kept tabs on anything related to her late friend. “So, when I found out this same doctor, Bryce Sheridan, had done this procedure on another surrogate, I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see if there were any...irregularities.”

  Raleigh’s eyebrow came up. “You think Dr. Sheridan had something to do with Hannah’s murder?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t know. I was just trying to find any kind of lead.” Thea had to take a deep breath before she could continue. “But after I met and talked to Sonya, I didn’t see any obvious red flags. Especially not any red flags about Dr. Sheridan.”

  That ate away at Thea even more. Because she should have seen something. She should have been able to stop this from happening.

  “Both Hannah and Sonya were surrogates,” Raleigh said, “and both were connected to you. According to the messages left at the crime scenes, the women were linked to Warren, too.”

  She couldn’t deny that. Thea knew both women and had worked for Warren for three years before he’d retired and turned the reins of the sheriff’s office over to his son Egan. It was ironic that all three of Warren’s sons had become lawmen, but Thea seriously doubted that Raleigh would ever say that he had followed in his father’s footsteps.

  “You think I’m the reason these women were killed?” Thea came out and asked him.

  Just saying the question aloud robbed her of her breath, and Raleigh didn’t even get a chance to answer, because his deputy Dalton came out of the house and onto the porch. He wasn’t alone, either. Yvette was with him. The woman was no longer crying, but her eyes were red and swollen, and she had her phone gripped in her hand so hard that her knuckles were white.

  “We have to find my daughter, so I hired some private investigators,” Yvette immediately said.

  “I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea,” Dalton mumbled.

  It wasn’t. PIs, even well-meaning ones, could interfere with an investigation to the point of slowing it down, but Thea couldn’t fault Yvette for doing this. The woman had to be desperate because her baby could be in the hands of a killer.

  “You saw Sonya,” Yvette said to Thea. “How was she? Was she weak? Did she say anything about the baby?”

  Yvette had already asked these questions several times and in a couple of different ways. So had Raleigh. But Thea didn’t mind answering them again. Maybe if she kept going over what she’d seen, she would remember something else. It was a tactic that cops used to try to get more info from witnesses.

  “Yes, she looked weak,” Thea admitted. “And scared. The man who took her had his arm around her waist as if holding her up.”

  Even though that wasn’t new information, it caused fresh tears to spring to Yvette’s eyes. “What about the second man, the one who had the stun gun. Is it possible he had the baby with him?”

  Thea had already considered that and had mentally walked through every moment of the attack. “It’s possible. I didn’t even see him. In fact, as I said earlier, it could have been a woman.”

  Yes, she had indeed said that earlier, but this time it caused Raleigh to shift his attention to Yvette. And Yvette noticed the abrupt shift, too.

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Yvette snapped. “I’d have no reason to take my own child and murder the woman who carried her for nine months.”

  No obvious reason anyway, but it was odd that the woman had assumed they were thinking the worst about her.

  “Do you have anyone with a grudge against you?” Raleigh asked Yvette. “Someone who might want to try to kidnap the baby and hold her for ransom?”

  Yvette was shaking her head before he even finished the question. “Of course not. My husband and I manage my late father’s successful real estate company. We’ve never even had a serious complaint from a customer.”

  No, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t kidnapped the baby for ransom. That’s the reason Raleigh had told the woman to keep her phone close to her. Yvette had. In fact, she was doing everything a frantic mother would do to find her child. But something was missing here.

  Or rather someone.

  “Where’s your husband?” Thea asked. “You called him right after we discovered the body, so shouldn’t he have been here by now?”

  Since Yvette was still looking a little defensive, Thea expected the woman to blast
her for even hinting that Mr. O’Hara wasn’t doing all he could to be there to comfort his wife or look for their child. But Yvette’s reaction was a little surprising. She glanced away, dodging Thea’s gaze.

  Now, this was a red flag.

  “Nick had some things to tie up at work,” Yvette answered after several long moments.

  Raleigh made one of those vague sounds of agreement. “Yeah, Sonya mentioned to me that your husband wasn’t completely on board with having this baby.”

  Thea tried not to look too surprised, but she suspected that was a lie. She’d had a lot of conversations with Sonya, and never once had the surrogate brought up anything like that. If Sonya had, it would have been one of those red flags that Thea had been searching so hard to find.

  What was equally surprising though was that Yvette didn’t even deny it.

  “Nick had a troubled childhood,” Yvette said, still not looking at either Thea or Raleigh. She stared past them and into the yard. “He was hesitant about us having a baby because of all the money it would cost for a surrogate. And because of all the time I’d have to take off from the business to be a stay-at-home mom. But he finally agreed to it.”

  Maybe. And maybe Nick hadn’t actually agreed the way that Yvette thought. It seemed extreme though to kill a surrogate so that he wouldn’t have to be a father, especially since the baby had already been conceived. And born. Still, Thea would look into it, and she was certain Raleigh would, as well.

  “Call your husband again,” Raleigh told the woman. “I want him to come to the sheriff’s office on Main Street in Durango Ridge in thirty minutes. I’ll take Thea and you there now in the cruiser, and he can meet us.”

  Yvette started shaking her head again, and alarm went through her eyes. “He had nothing to do with this, and it’ll only upset him if you start interrogating him the way you did me.”

  Thea had watched that so-called interrogation, and Raleigh had handled the woman with kid gloves. He’d treated her like a distraught mother whose child had been stolen. She doubted Raleigh would show that same consideration to Nick. Because Nick apparently had a motive for this nightmare that’d just happened.