by Barb Han
“Tell me what you want, Cheyenne.”
“I’d rather you be close to me if that’s okay,” she said to Riggs. “When I think about being down here alone, with you upstairs...” She flashed eyes at him. “I can hardly breathe.”
Riggs brought his hand to cover hers and the instant he made contact, more of that warmth spread through her.
“I know. Relationships change. They take different forms. But I hope you know that I will always be here for you. If you ever need anything, just ask.”
She nodded. His kindness washed over her and had her thinking she wanted to be back in Riggs’s arms if only for a few moments.
“I have a favor.” She couldn’t meet his gaze because suddenly she felt vulnerable. With him, she didn’t feel alone.
Maybe it was the losses. Maybe it was facing death. Maybe it was the fact she hadn’t been able to get him out of her thoughts.
There were plenty of reasons she shouldn’t continue...
“Kiss me.”
TEXAS ABDUCTION
USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Barb Han
USA TODAY bestselling author Barb Han lives in north Texas with her very own hero-worthy husband, three beautiful children, a spunky golden retriever/standard poodle mix and too many books in her to-read pile. In her downtime, she plays video games and spends much of her time on or around a basketball court. She loves interacting with readers and is grateful for their support. You can reach her at barbhan.com.
Books by Barb Han
Harlequin Intrigue
An O’Connor Family Mystery
Texas Kidnapping
Texas Target
Texas Law
Texas Baby Conspiracy
Texas Stalker
Texas Abduction
Rushing Creek Crime Spree
Cornered at Christmas
Ransom at Christmas
Ambushed at Christmas
What She Did
What She Knew
What She Saw
Decoding a Criminal
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Cheyenne (Russell) O’Connor—Losing her child is devastating, but finding out her child might be alive is mind-blowing.
Riggs O’Connor—This rancher has lost everything, a wife and a child, but will a text message give him the second chance he wants?
Ally Clark—This best friend who goes missing might just hold the key to finding out what really happened in the delivery room.
Dr. Fortner—This visiting doctor leaves a trail of question marks in his wake.
Kyle Douglas—He works temp in the ER. Does he know more than he’s saying about what happens on the labor and delivery floor?
Becca—This nurse knows more than she’s letting on... Does she turn a blind eye or is she involved?
Missy—Why does this nurse seem too scared to speak to anyone?
All my love to Brandon, Jacob and Tori, the three great loves of my life.
To Babe, my hero, for being my best friend, greatest love and my place to call home.
I love you all with everything that I am.
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 Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Excerpt from Mountainside Murder by Nicole Helm
Chapter One
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Cheyenne O’Connor couldn’t count the number of times her mother had repeated the line from a past president, but the one that had stuck in her memory happened moments before her mother closed her eyes for the last time. This morning, as Cheyenne pulled the covers over her head, not yet ready to face another day, guilt racked her for letting her mother down. She needed to figure out a way to get out of bed despite the feeling of heavy weights on her ankles that made moving her legs seem impossible. Not even the promise of caffeine or the shining beams of sunlight streaming through the mini blind slats could break those shackles. Or the fact that her friend was probably home from working the nightshift at the hospital with a ready smile and the promise of a fresh brew. Ally Clark had been a lifeline.
Cheyenne glanced down at her stomach and the bump that was no longer there. Big mistake as emotions brimmed and a devastating sense of loss filled her. Crying wouldn’t change a thing and yet she prayed for the sweet release it could give.
It was strange someone she’d never actually met could cause this much pain when she was gone. Except that Cheyenne had known her baby. She’d felt movement right up until the day of her delivery—a delivery that she’d been told had gone horribly wrong.
All she had left now was a drug-induced blur where there should be memories, and empty arms where there should be a bundle of joy.
Shouldn’t she feel something if the life force that had been growing inside her was suddenly snuffed out? Shouldn’t she know her little girl was gone? Shouldn’t she somehow sense it? She’d never put too much stock in a mother’s intuition until now, when she’d become one. Almost, a little voice in the back of her mind reminded.
“Take care of my little girl,” she said under her breath as she fingered the ladybug bracelet on her left wrist, a final gift from her mother.
Cheyenne reached for a pillow and hugged it to her chest, trying to find a way to fill the void. Her body ached to hold the little girl she’d imagined meeting so many times over the past eight months. What would she look like? What color would her eyes be? Would she inherit Cheyenne’s blue eyes or Riggs’s mocha brown? Bar none, Riggs O’Connor had the best eyes. She could stare into them all day. She’d wanted her daughter to get those from him. Mocha brown eyes with Cheyenne’s blond locks. Now, that would be a combination.
Keep lying here thinking about it and you’ll run out of rope.
Cheyenne forced herself to sit up. She glanced over at the two-carat princess-cut diamond ring next to her cell phone. Habit had her reaching for it first thing. She stopped herself midgrab, diverting to her cell instead. She’d shut down her phone before bed last night, too lazy to get the charger from the next room.
Staring at the screen while her eyes tried to focus, she hit the power button. A few seconds later, the screen came to life. The first thing she noticed was a text from Ally.
On my way. b ready. I have news. There was a firework icon beside the last word. Ally always did that when she thought something would blow Cheyenne’s mind. Using it in this context left Cheyenne with an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach.
When did Ally send the message?
An hour ago.
Strange. Cheyenne hadn’t heard her best friend come in and Ozzy would have barked until the cows came home. The little yapper went off at just about anything that moved, and she herself woke at every noise. Two weeks had already passed. She still wasn’t used to living here.
Cheyenne figured it best to get up, splash some water on her face a
nd track her friend down to find out what Ally was talking about.
After freshening up—and avoiding the mirror as best she could—Cheyenne walked into the hallway. She stood in front of a closed bedroom door. Ally had a habit of closing her door when she left for work but normally left it open when she was home, even when she was sleeping.
Cheyenne knocked and leaned in so she could hear as Ozzy came gunning down the hall full force, his tiny legs working double time. He barked his greeting and maybe disapproval that Cheyenne was standing at the door of his fur mom’s room.
There was no response on the other side of the door. Since the message indicated urgency, she cracked the door open and called out. Again, there was no response.
Ozzy was at her ankles, losing his mind from barking.
“Okay, little guy. Calm down.” She was a dog lover, but he didn’t exactly fit the bill. He was more purse accessory than anything else. And yes, he was adorable with the little blue bow on his head, but he was also the most annoying creature she’d ever come across.
Her head raged at the spot right between her eyes—eyes that were so dry they were the equivalent of west Texas dirt.
“Shhhh.” She bent down to pick him up. The hospital was less than half an hour’s drive from here. Twenty minutes at this time of day. Shouldn’t Ally be home by now?
A quick tour of the two-bedroom bungalow revealed Ally was nowhere to be found in the house. Her car wasn’t outside on the parking pad, either. Had she taken a detour on the way home? Gotten distracted? How important could her message be if she didn’t race home?
Cheyenne’s mind snapped to a darker possibility. She gasped.
What if Ally was speeding home and got in a wreck? Terrible things kept happening to the people she loved. Why should this time be any different?
She retrieved her cell phone and responded to the text. Ally always had her phone tucked inside her pocket. She would either answer in a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on whether or not she was delayed by a patient. But she always answered and a glance at the clock said her nursing shift was already over.
When five minutes ticked by with nada, Cheyenne’s heart raced and her concern level shot through the roof.
* * *
COULD THIS YEAR get any worse?
Riggs O’Connor gripped the steering wheel of his pickup a little tighter as he navigated through traffic, thinking of everything that had befallen. He’d lost his wife a couple of weeks ago after losing their daughter during childbirth. Since the events happened within hours of each other and were 100 percent related, he lumped them in the same category—utter devastation.
Before that, his father had been murdered on the very cattle ranch he’d built as a family legacy. His father received a medical diagnosis that meant his days were numbered. Because of this eventual death sentence, he’d decided to reopen an investigation into his daughter’s kidnapping, and was killed in the process. Digging into the case, Riggs and his brothers realized their father had opened a deadly can of worms by renewing a thirty-year-old search to find out what happened to his daughter. Caroline had been the only O’Connor girl born into a family of seven kids.
Although four of Riggs’s brothers worked in law enforcement, leads on finding their father’s killer had been drying up until his brother Garrett uncovered a link to an alpaca farm that was a front for an illegal adoption ring that had since been raided. Progress on the investigation was still slow.
Life didn’t discriminate when it delivered a bad hand. Even good folks were thrown unfortunate circumstances and sometimes the biggest jerks got off scot-free. Riggs wasn’t much for self-pity. Anger—now, there was an emotion he could relate to. But this general lack of enthusiasm for doing something as routine as getting out of bed in the morning was foreign.
“Long on questions, short on answers” pretty much described his entire existence. A few nagging questions wouldn’t quit, though. Why had an otherwise healthy baby been born “sleeping” as they’d called it? Why had Cheyenne pushed him away after suffering the devastating loss? He couldn’t think of a time when they’d needed each other more. Cheyenne’s best friend, Ally Clark, had been working in the hospital that night in the ER. He’d assumed Cheyenne moved in with Ally after telling him he would be better off without her in the long run. Did Cheyenne really believe that? He’d been informed of her plans to divorce him via a text message. A text message.
She’d returned none of his calls. And then, out of the blue, Ally had reached out to him an hour ago. She’d asked him to stop by, saying something about important news that she needed him to hear directly from her. She also asked him not to tell anyone she’d contacted him. He was still scratching his head over that part. Then again, much of his life was one big question mark lately.
He parked on the pad in front of the two-bedroom bungalow, debating whether or not this was still a good idea. The sedan that belonged to his wife—soon to be ex-wife, once she filed the papers in court—was parked around the side of the home, confirming his suspicion that Cheyenne was with Ally. It was only a matter of time before he heard from her lawyer. If she wasn’t grieving so hard, and he didn’t doubt for one second that she was, he probably would have already. It frustrated him to no end that he couldn’t speak to her one-on-one. Not that there was anything he could do to help her, especially while he was burning up with anger for being shut out in the first place.
The soft spot he had—the one that had him wishing there was something he could do to ease her pain—was another question mark. He shouldn’t care what happened to her now that she’d turned her back on their marriage. He didn’t even know if he could help her other than to accept the fact she didn’t want to be married to him anymore.
And yet, part of him believed there was a solid reason she never returned his texts. To his thinking, she knew that if she faced him, she couldn’t hold the line, which gave him hope she didn’t want to dissolve the marriage in her heart of hearts. Was it ego talking? An ego that couldn’t accept a hardline rejection from someone he loved? Maybe.
There wasn’t much he could do if she wouldn’t speak to him. It took two people to make a marriage. His parents had been successful at it, and he’d hoped for the same in his union to Cheyenne, despite the rushed circumstances. Rushed to marriage and now he’d be rushed to divorce, he thought wryly.
Ally’s car wasn’t outside, so he sat in his truck with the engine running. Curiosity was getting the best of him and he wanted to know why she’d asked him to come. Cheyenne wouldn’t be happy to see him. He issued a sharp sigh as he glanced over at the door. His gaze skimmed the car seat in his truck he didn’t have the heart to remove and the baby blanket draped over that his mother had knitted.
He owed it to his little girl to find out what happened at the hospital two weeks ago. Administration was still conducting an internal investigation into the ordeal and why there was no body to bury. Mistakes happened, they’d said, promising to get to the bottom of it.
Biting back a string of curses, he cut off the engine and then exited the pickup. A moment of hesitation made him pause as he stood on the porch. And then the anger that had been burning him up inside raged. He flexed and released his fingers a couple of times to work off some of the tension.
He took a step forward and fired off three rapid knocks. Ozzy went nuts, barking up a storm on the other side of the door. For a little dog, he had big lungs. He also disappeared a little too fast, which meant someone was home. His guess was Cheyenne.
Did Ally set them up to try to get them in the same room together so they could talk? Nah. She wouldn’t surprise her best friend like that. The two were close enough for Ally to know Cheyenne wouldn’t want to be ambushed.
No matter how much he wanted to speak to her, there was no amount of talking that could change a mind that was already made up. Frustration caused his hands to fist. Frustration from being s
o angry at her that he wanted to shout from the top of his lungs. Frustration from feeling sorry for her because he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, she’d been looking forward to the baby as much as he was, if not more. Frustration from the overwhelming feeling that he was letting her down in some way by not figuring out how to get her to talk to him.
No one came to the door.
Wasn’t she a little bit curious as to who was outside? At least one of his questions was answered quickly when the curtain moved. His chest squeezed. His heart turned out to be a traitor because it beat a little faster at the thought of her being so close.
The door, however, didn’t budge.
Riggs knocked again to no avail. He didn’t drive all the way out here only to turn around without knowing what was so important Ally had him cut out of work in the middle of the workday and make the drive over. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he’d already been up and at it since four.
He reached up to knock again, figuring he’d give it one more shot before giving her a call, when the door cracked opened.
“Riggs,” she said. Her eyebrows drew together and stress lines formed on her forehead. She was clearly caught off guard by his presence. “What are you doing here?”
All the anger that had been building inside him for the past two weeks took a back seat the minute he saw the depth of pain in her pale blue eyes. All the arguments died on his tongue as to why she should tell him exactly what happened that night. All his frustration over the way she’d told him about her plans to divorce him fizzled out feebly.
Standing in the doorway was a beautiful woman who was doing her level best to keep it together and be strong.
“I got a text from Ally,” he said by way of defense. His tone was stiffer than he’d intended.
She stood there, mouth open, shock stamped on her features.
Chapter Two
“Ally hasn’t come home from work yet. And now I’m seriously worried about her.” Cheyenne frowned despite how fast her pulse raced at seeing Riggs standing not five feet in front of her. It wasn’t like her best friend to pull a stunt like this. Ally would never ask Riggs to come over without running the idea past Cheyenne first.
