Under the Cowboy's Protection

by Delores Fossen

  Raleigh checked the time and motioned for Yvette to make the call. The woman hesitated, but she finally went to the other end of the porch to do that. Too bad Yvette didn’t put it on speaker, because Thea would have loved to hear Nick’s response to Raleigh’s order.

  While Yvette was still on the phone, Raleigh turned back to Thea. “I’ll need you to give me a statement, of course.” He hesitated, too. “And you should be in protective custody.”

  He was right, but it riled her a little that he thought she couldn’t take care of herself. After all, she was a cop, and she could point out to him that the thug hadn’t murdered her when he or she had the chance. Still, she needed to take some precautions.

  Once Yvette had finished her call, Thea stood, ready to go to the cruiser, but she stopped when she heard the approaching vehicle. Raleigh and Dalton must have heard it, too, because they automatically stepped in front of her and Yvette. Thea slid her hand over the gun that she’d borrowed from Raleigh. But it wasn’t the threat they were all obviously bracing themselves for.

  It was Warren.

  He pulled his familiar black truck to a stop behind the trio of cruisers and the other vehicles, and he got out and started for the house.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” Raleigh asked, turning his glare back on Thea.

  “I didn’t call him,” Thea said, but it would have been easy enough for Warren to hear about it. After all, most law enforcement agencies in the state had been alerted to the missing baby.

  “Raleigh,” Warren greeted. He obviously ignored the glare his son now had aimed at him, and he walked right past Raleigh to pull Thea into his arms.

  It certainly wasn’t the first time that Warren had hugged her. He’d always treated her like family and had practically raised her and her brother, Griff. But it felt awkward now in front of Raleigh—who hadn’t gotten that same family treatment from the man.

  “Are you okay?” Warren asked her when he pulled back from the hug.

  His attention went to the stun gun marks on her neck, and it looked as if he had to bite back some profanity. When she’d been his deputy, he had always hated whenever she’d gotten hurt or been put in danger, and he still apparently felt that way. Thea appreciated the concern, especially since she’d never gotten any from her own parents, but it made the situation with Raleigh seem even more awkward.

  “I’m fine,” Thea assured him. She didn’t especially want to bring this up, but Warren would soon learn it anyway. “Whoever did this also took the newborn, and he left a message on the wall—”

  “Two messages,” Raleigh corrected. “There was a second in Sonya’s bedroom. They were both written in red paint and used identical wording to what was left at Hannah’s place. ‘This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.’”

  “This man is Sheriff McCall?” Yvette asked. Warren nodded, and she went to him, catching on to his arms. “Who did this? Why would someone take my baby because of you?”

  Warren’s face tightened. “I don’t know.”

  “But you must have some—” Yvette started, but Raleigh moved her away when her grip tightened on Warren.

  “This is the missing baby’s mother,” Raleigh explained. “Yvette O’Hara.”

  Warren tipped the brim of his Stetson as a greeting. “I’m really sorry for what happened, but I honestly don’t know who took your child.” He turned to Raleigh. “Are you sure this is connected to Hannah, or is it a copycat?”

  A muscle flickered in Raleigh’s jaw. “Too early to tell. Do you have a reason for being here?” There definitely was nothing friendly about his tone.

  Warren sighed. “Yes. I was worried about Thea and thought she might need a ride home because she’s so shaken up.”

  “She will, but only after she’s given her statement about the attack.” Again, there was no friendliness from Raleigh. “I was about to take her to my office now. No reason that I know of for you to be there for that, but you can wait for her at the café across the street.”

  Warren would do that if he couldn’t get Raleigh to relent and let him stay with her in the sheriff’s office. And Raleigh wouldn’t back down on this.

  They started down the steps, and Thea didn’t miss it when she saw Warren wince and slide his fingers over his chest. He quickly moved his hand away, but she knew he’d been touching the scar beneath his shirt. The scar he’d gotten from a gunshot wound six months ago.

  The wound itself had healed, but the muscles there had been damaged enough that Warren would always have pain. Something he obviously didn’t want to discuss because he shook his head when Thea opened her mouth to ask if he was okay. Maybe it was a guy thing not to want to admit that he was in pain, or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it in front of Raleigh.

  “Ride in the cruiser with Raleigh,” Warren whispered to her, and he made a lawman’s glance around them. “There are a lot of places for a killer to lie in wait on the road that leads into Durango Ridge.”

  She nodded, but his reminder only gave her another jolt of adrenaline. So did the sound of her phone ringing. Not a reaction she wanted to have as a deputy. Nor was the reaction she had next.

  Her stomach went to her knees when she looked at her phone screen.

  “Unknown caller,” she said.

  That stopped Raleigh and Warren, and Yvette eventually stopped, too, when she realized they were no longer moving toward the cruiser.

  It could be nothing, maybe even a telemarketer, but Raleigh must have realized it could be something important because he took out his own phone to record the call, and he motioned for her to answer it. She did, and unlike what Yvette had done earlier, Thea put it on speaker.

  “I’m guessing you’re looking for the kid,” a man immediately said. Thea didn’t recognize his voice, but it was possible that it was the same man who’d taken Sonya.

  Yvette gasped, and Warren motioned for her to stay quiet. Good move because it wouldn’t do any good to have Yvette start yelling at this thug.

  “Where’s the baby?” Thea demanded. Of course, she wanted to ask the snake why he’d murdered Sonya, but right now, the baby had to come first. It was too late to save Sonya, but maybe they could still help the child.

  “I’ll give her to you. All you have to do is come and get her.”

  Thea looked at Raleigh to get his take on this. Like her, he was clearly skeptical, but at the moment, this was all they had. Maybe it was a matter of paying a ransom. If so, she figured they could scrape together whatever amount they needed to get the child safely away from a killer.

  The conversation must have alerted Dalton because he came down the steps and into the yard with them.

  “Where’s the baby?” Thea repeated to the man.

  “I’ll text you the time and the place where you can get her. Oh, and I’ll text you the rules, too. Don’t forget those or you won’t get the kid.” He sounded arrogant, and Thea wished she could reach through the phone and make him pay for what he’d done.

  She tamped down the anger so she could speak. “How do I know you actually have her? This could be a trap.”

  “Sweetcakes, if I’d wanted you dead, you already would be. You wouldn’t have made it off that back porch of Sonya’s house.”

  Since Thea had already realized that, she knew it was true. But there were plenty of other things that didn’t make sense. “How do I know for certain that you have the newborn?” she pressed.

  The man didn’t answer. Not with words anyway. But Thea heard the sound in the background.

  A baby crying.

  Chapter Three

  Raleigh cursed and snatched the phone from Thea. “Tell me the location of the baby now!” he demanded. But he was talking to the air, because the kidnapper had already ended the call.

  “Oh, God.” Yvette grabbed the phone, too, and she hit Redial.

  No answer.
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  A hoarse sob tore from Yvette’s mouth, and she would have likely fallen to the ground if Warren hadn’t caught her. Raleigh didn’t thank him for doing that because he didn’t want the man anywhere around here. Raleigh had enough distractions with Thea and Yvette, and he didn’t need to add his so-called father to the mix.

  Raleigh turned to Dalton. “Take Yvette to the station. Call a doctor for her, too. She might need some meds to calm her down.”

  “The only thing I need is my baby!” Yvette shouted.

  The woman tried Redial again, and she was gripping Thea’s phone so hard that Raleigh thought she might break it. That wouldn’t be good since it was obviously the way the kidnapper had chosen to communicate with them.

  “She’s a newborn,” Yvette went on. “She has to be fed. Someone has to take care of her.”

  “And the men who have her will do that,” Thea said. “They’ll want to keep the baby safe and well. Remember, they took formula so she won’t be hungry.”

  True, but that didn’t mean a newborn was going to get expert care from the thugs who’d snatched her. That’s why they had to find her ASAP.

  Dalton gently took Yvette by the arm. “Once we get to the station,” he told the woman, “I’ll examine the call. I might be able to get a match on his voice, because Raleigh will send me the recording of the conversation.”

  Raleigh would do that, but he wasn’t holding out any hope for a match. Or that the call would be traced for that matter. The kidnapper had almost certainly used a burner cell, a disposable one that couldn’t be traced. Still, they’d try.

  “What can I do?” Warren asked him.

  “You can go home to your wife and family in McCall Canyon until I’ve got time to interrogate you. After all, it was your name on that wall, and there had to be a reason for it.”

  That was a knee-jerk reaction. One that Raleigh instantly regretted. Not because he hadn’t meant it—he had. But it was the wrong time to vent.

  Raleigh took a deep breath to steady himself. “My people have the scene secured,” he added to Warren. There was much less emotion in his voice now, which was a good thing. “Give me a couple of hours so I can deal with this kidnapper, and then I can question you.”

  Warren didn’t balk at any part of that, but judging from his tight expression, something was on his mind. “What about Thea?” Warren asked.

  Of course. Thea. Warren was worried about the woman he’d practically raised.

  “I’ll take Thea to the station so we can wait on this thug to call us back,” Raleigh answered.

  Warren stood there, his hands on his hips while he volleyed glances between them as if he was trying to figure out if that was the wise thing to do. The man didn’t budge until Thea nodded.

  “I’ll be okay,” she assured Warren.

  “Call me if you need anything,” Warren finally said, and he hugged her again. After he pulled away from her, he looked at Raleigh, maybe trying to figure out what to say to him, but he settled for another tip of his hat. This one was a farewell, and he headed to his truck.

  Raleigh and Thea were right behind him, and the moment Raleigh had her in the cruiser, he started toward town. It wouldn’t be a long drive, only about twenty minutes, but he could use that time to get some things straight.

  “The kidnapper said there’d be rules,” he reminded her. “That probably means a ransom demand with instructions for the payout so we can get the baby. You won’t be involved in that. If I haven’t worked out a protective custody arrangement by then, you can wait in my office.”

  She shook her head. “The kidnapper said I was to come and get her.”

  “That won’t be happening.” At least he hoped not anyway. Raleigh didn’t want to involve Thea in this any more than she already was.

  But obviously Thea wasn’t giving up. “I’m the person best suited to make an exchange like that. The kidnapper said if he wanted me dead, he would have killed me on the porch. And he could have done just that.”

  Raleigh wasn’t giving up, either. “Maybe because the person standing next to you was holding a baby, and he didn’t want to risk hurting her. That could have been the sole reason he didn’t kill you.”

  She opened her mouth as if she might disagree with that, but she must have realized it could be the truth because Thea huffed and leaned back against the seat.

  “I’ll get Yvette’s husband in for questioning,” Raleigh added a moment later. “Right now, he’s a person of interest. He could have orchestrated all of this because he doesn’t want to be a father.”

  Though it did seem extreme—unless he hadn’t intended for Sonya to die. Maybe the thugs hadn’t had orders to kill Sonya or anyone else who showed up. That would explain why they’d had a stun gun with them. It would also explain why the one that Thea had seen was wearing a ski mask. He didn’t want his identity known because he hadn’t intended to kill any witnesses.

  That was the best-case scenario though. It was still possible that the goons wanted Thea dead.

  “Warren is a person of interest, too?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Raleigh would love nothing more than to charge the man with something. Anything.

  “And what about your mother?” Thea pressed. “Will you also question her?”

  Raleigh’s gaze slashed to her, and he nearly had another of those knee-jerk reactions. But he forced himself to see this through her cop’s perspective. His mother, Alma, no longer loved Warren. In fact, she might actually hate him.

  “Alma thought Warren was going to leave his wife to be with her,” Thea continued when he didn’t say anything. “That didn’t happen, and when he broke off things with her six months ago—”

  “Don’t finish that,” Raleigh warned her. “I know how upset my mother was, and I don’t have to hear a recap from you.”

  Hell, she was still upset. Alma had carried on an affair with a married man, gotten pregnant and had basically lived her life waiting for the emotional scraps that Warren might toss her. Now that the secret was out, she was just seething in anger.

  Raleigh hated to admit it, but he was seething, too. Because his mother had lied to him about his father. She’d lied all because she didn’t want Warren’s secret life exposed. Well, it was sure as hell exposed now.

  “Did your mother know Sonya well?” Thea asked. It was a cop’s kind of question, because Thea was again trying to link his mom to what was going on.

  “Everyone in town knew Sonya,” Raleigh snarled. But his mom had known Sonya better than most because Sonya had done some office work at his mother’s ranch. “Don’t worry. I’ll question my mom,” Raleigh added. “But there are plenty of other ways for her to get back at Warren. Ways that don’t involve kidnapping a newborn baby and killing a surrogate.”

  It surprised him a little when Thea made a sound of agreement. After all, Warren’s wife, Helen, had raised Thea, too, and that meant Thea and the McCalls likely thought of his mother as the villain in all of this.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a connection between Warren and Sonya,” Thea added. “If your mother was going to try to get back at him in some way, she would go after him or someone he cared about.”

  True. But his mother would only do that if she’d finally gone off the deep end. There were times when Raleigh thought she might be headed there, and he was doing his damnedest to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “I also want to talk to the doctor who did the in vitro procedures for both Hannah and Sonya,” Raleigh continued, and he was about to ask Thea what she knew about the man, but her phone rang.

  Unknown Caller.

  Raleigh immediately pulled onto the shoulder of the road so he could again use his phone to record the conversation. Once he had it ready, Thea took the call. The first thing Raleigh heard was the baby crying again. It was like taking hard punches to the gut. It sickened him to
think of these monsters having that little girl.

  “All right, you ready to do this?” the kidnapper asked.

  “We are,” Raleigh answered, and he waited a moment to see if the guy would ask who he was. He didn’t. Which meant the thug likely knew all the players in this. That wasn’t much of a surprise since whoever was behind this had probably done their homework.

  “Good. Because I’m gonna make this real easy. Transfer fifty thousand into the account number that I’m about to text to you.”

  In the grand scheme of things, fifty thousand wasn’t much for a ransom demand, which made Raleigh instantly suspicious. Then again, maybe these guys just wanted some quick cash so they could make a getaway. After all, they were killers now, and if arrested, they’d be looking at the death penalty. Fifty would be more than enough to escape.

  “If you do it right,” the kidnapper went on, “it’ll only take a couple of minutes at most for the money to show up. Then you can have the kid.”

  Raleigh huffed. “How do we know you even have the child? The crying we heard could be any baby. Or a recording. And if you do have her, what stops you from taking the money and running?”

  “I figured you’d ask that. Well, I’m sending you a picture of the kid, and since Thea’s using her cell for this call, I’ll text it to your phone.”

  The guy didn’t ask for Raleigh’s number, and several moments later Raleigh’s phone did indeed ding with a text message. Two of them, in fact. The first was the routing number for a bank account. Probably an offshore one that would be out of reach of law enforcement.

  Raleigh went to the second text. A photo. It was indeed a baby wrapped in a blanket, and seeing her was like another punch. He reminded himself though that the picture could be fake. But this didn’t feel like a ruse. Raleigh was certain these snakes had that little girl.

  He showed the photo to Thea, and he saw the raw emotions go through her eyes. “Oh, God,” she whispered, her voice mostly breath.