Badlands Beware

by Nicole Helm

  The truth might hurt them both.

  When Detective Tucker Wyatt is sent to protect Rachel Knight from her father’s enemies, neither of them realizes exactly how much danger she’s in. As she starts making connections between her father’s past and a current disappearance, she’s suddenly under attack from all sides. But Rachel and Tucker will not back down. They’ll do whatever it takes to solve the open case, even if it means putting their lives at risk.

  “Let’s make one thing very, very clear. There is not a damn thing I will do without you right now.”

  She stood very still. The sun had disappeared behind the hills, though there was enough light to still make her out. She wouldn’t be able to see anything, even shapes in this light. Still, she moved unerringly into him, wrapping her arms around him.

  A hug. A comfort.

  He couldn’t return it. He couldn’t push her away. He could only stand there still as a statue, her arms around him and her cheek pressed to his chest.

  “Hell, Rach. Be mad at me. Hate me. I can’t stand you being nice to me right now.”

  “I guess it’s too bad for you, because I can’t stand to be mad at you right now.” She pulled back, tilting her head up toward his. “If you told me right now, promised me right now, that you won’t lie again, I’ll believe you.”

  Even knowing he shouldn’t, he placed his palm on her cheek. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  BADLANDS BEWARE

  Nicole Helm

  Nicole Helm grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.

  Books by Nicole Helm

  Harlequin Intrigue

  A Badlands Cops Novel

  South Dakota Showdown

  Covert Complication

  Backcountry Escape

  Isolated Threat

  Badlands Beware

  Carsons & Delaneys: Battle Tested

  Wyoming Cowboy Marine

  Wyoming Cowboy Sniper

  Wyoming Cowboy Ranger

  Wyoming Cowboy Bodyguard

  Carsons & Delaneys

  Wyoming Cowboy Justice

  Wyoming Cowboy Protection

  Wyoming Christmas Ransom

  Stone Cold Texas Ranger

  Stone Cold Undercover Agent

  Stone Cold Christmas Ranger

  Harlequin Superromance

  A Farmers’ Market Story

  All I Have

  All I Am

  All I Want

  Falling for the New Guy

  Too Friendly to Date

  Too Close to Resist

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Tucker Wyatt—A detective with the local county sheriff’s department, Tucker is also working for the secretive North Star group trying to take down the Sons of the Badlands.

  Rachel Knight—Duke Knight’s only biological daughter, Rachel is an art teacher at the local reservation but handles most of the domestic work at the Knight Ranch. She was blinded and scarred at the age of three in a presumed animal attack.

  Duke Knight—Rachel’s father, who disappears in an effort to keep his daughters safe from his secret past.

  Sarah Knight—Rachel’s adopted sister, who works at the Knight Ranch.

  Grandma Pauline Reaves—Tucker’s grandmother who runs the neighboring ranch to the Knights.

  Ace Wyatt—Tucker’s father, former leader of the Sons of the Badlands, who is currently in jail.

  Granger McMillan—Head of the North Star group.

  Shay—North Star operative.

  Jamison, Cody, Gage, Brady and Dev Wyatt—Tucker’s brothers.

  For the family secrets that never get told.

  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

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from A Desperate Search by Amanda Stevens

  Chapter One

  Rachel Knight had endured nightmares about the moment she’d lost the majority of her sight since she’d been that scared, injured three-year-old. The dream was always the same. The mountain lion. The surprising shock and pain of its attack.

  Things she knew had happened, because what else could have attacked her? Because that was the truth that everyone believed. She’d somehow toddled out of the house and into the South Dakota ranchland only to have a run-in with a wild animal.

  But in the dreams, there was always a voice. Not her father, or her late mother, or anyone who should have been there that night.

  The voice of a stranger.

  Rachel sucked in a breath as her eyes flew open. Her heart pounded, and her sheets were a sweaty tangle around her.

  It was a dream. Nothing more and nothing less, but she couldn’t figure out why twenty years after the attack she would still be so plagued by it.

  Likely it was just all the danger that her family had been facing lately. As much as she loved the Wyatts, both sturdy Grandma Pauline and her six law enforcement grandsons who owned the ranch next door, their connection to a vicious biker gang meant trouble seemed to follow wherever they went.

  And somehow, this year it had also brought her foster sisters into the fold time and again. Putting them in jeopardy along with those Wyatt brothers—and then culminating in true love, against all odds.

  All of their tormenters were in jail now, and Rachel wanted that to be the end of it.

  But something about the dreams left her feeling edgy, like the next dangerous situation was just around the corner.

  And that you’ll get thrust into the path of one of the Wyatt boys and end up...

  Rachel got out of bed without finishing the thought. Just because four of her five foster sisters had ended up in love with a Wyatt didn’t mean she was doomed. Because if she was doomed, so was Sarah. Rachel laughed outright at the thought.

  Sarah was too much like Pauline. Independent and prickly. The thought of her falling for anyone, let alone a bossy Wyatt, was unfathomable. Which meant it was inconceivable for Rachel, too. She might not be prickly, but she had no designs on ending up tied to a man with a dangerous past and likely even more dangerous secrets.

  So, that was that.

  Rachel went through her normal routine of showering and getting ready for the day before heading downstairs. She didn’t have to tap her clock to hear the time to know it was earlier than she usually woke up.

  She was—shudder—becoming a morning person. Maybe she could shed that with the coming winter.

  It was full-on autumn now. Twenty-three was creeping closer and while she knew that wasn’t old, she was exactly where
she’d always been. Would she be stuck here forever? In the same house, on the same ranch, nothing ever changing except the people around her?

  Teaching at the reservation offered some respite, but she was so dependent on others. If she moved somewhere with more public transportation, she could be independent.

  And yet the thought of leaving South Dakota and her family always just made her sad. This was home. She wanted to be happy here, but there was a feeling of suffocation dogging her.

  Maybe that was why she kept having those dreams.

  Weirdly, that offered some comfort. There was a reason, and it was just feeling a little quarter-life crisis-y. Nothing...ominous.

  She held on to that truth as she headed downstairs. Inside the house she never used her cane, even after the fire this summer. They’d fixed the affected sections to be exactly as they had been, which meant she knew it as well as she knew Pauline Reaves’s ranch next door, or her classroom, or Cecilia’s house on the rez where Rachel stayed when she was teaching.

  She wasn’t trapped. She had plenty of places to go. As long as she didn’t mind overprotective family everywhere she went.

  Rachel stopped at the bottom of the stairs, surprised to hear someone in the kitchen. Duke’s irritable mutterings alerted her to the fact it was her father before she could make out the shape of him.

  Big, dark and the one constant presence in her life, aside from Sarah—who was the opposite of Duke. Small, petite and pale. She couldn’t make out the details of a person’s appearance, but she could recognize those she loved by the blurry shapes she could see out of her one eye that hadn’t been completely blinded.

  “Daddy, what are you doing?”

  “What are you doing up?” he returned gruffly.

  Rachel hesitated. While she often told her father everything that was going on with her, she tended to keep things that might worry him low-key. “I think my body finally got used to waking up early,” she said, forcing a cheerfulness over it she didn’t feel.

  “Speaking of that...” He trailed off, approached her. His hand squeezed her shoulder. “Baby, I know you’ve got a class session coming up in a few weeks, but I think you should bow out. Too much has been going on.”

  Rachel opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Not teach at the rez? The art classes she held for a variety of age groups were short sessions and taught through the community rather than the school itself. She only instructed about twenty weeks out of the year, and he wanted her to miss a four-week session? When teaching was the only thing that made her feel like she had a life outside of cooking and cleaning for Dad and Sarah.

  “Just this session,” Dad added. “Until we know for sure those Wyatt boys are done bringing their trouble around.”

  It felt like a slap in the face, but she didn’t know how to articulate that. Except an unfair rage toward the Wyatts.

  Rachel took a deep breath to calm herself. She never let her temper get the better of her. Mom had impressed upon her temper tantrums would never get her what she wanted. “I don’t have anything to do with their trouble.”

  “I might have said the same about Felicity and Cecilia, but look what they endured this summer. It won’t do.”

  “Dad, teaching those classes—”

  “I know they mean a lot to you. And I am sorry. Maybe you could do some tutoring out here?”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “You’re twenty-two. I know this is a disappointment, but I’m not going to argue about it.” His hand slid off her shoulder and she heard the jangle of keys.

  Rachel frowned at how strange this all was. Maybe she was still dreaming. “Are you going somewhere?”

  There was a pregnant pause. “Just into town on some errands.”

  Her frown deepened. Sarah took care of almost all the errands now that it was just the two of them left living with Duke. Her father almost never ventured into town. And he never gave her unreasonable ultimatums.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?” she asked gravely.

  “I want my girls safe,” he said, and she heard his retreating footsteps as though that was that.

  She fisted her hands on her hips. Oh, no, it was not. And she was going to get some answers. If they wouldn’t come from her father, they’d just have to come from the source of the trouble.

  * * *

  TUCKER WYATT HAD always loved spending nights at his grandmother’s house. Though he kept an apartment in town, he’d much rather spend time with his family at the Reaves ranch.

  Until now.

  He sighed. Why had he ever thought his current predicament was a good idea? He was terrible at keeping secrets.

  Case in point, he was about 75 percent sure his brother Brady had figured out that Tucker accidentally stumbling into a situation where he could help save Brady’s life from one of their father’s protégés wasn’t so accidental. That it was part of his working beyond his normal job as detective with the Valiant County Sheriff’s Department.

  And, since their youngest brother had been kicked out of North Star Group just a few months ago, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what group Tucker might also be working for.

  He was going to have to quit. The North Star Group had approached him because of his ties to Ace Wyatt, former head of the dangerous Sons of the Badlands, and a few of Tucker’s cases that involved other high-ranking officials in the Sons.

  Cases Tuck had been sure were private and confidential. But those words didn’t mean much to North Star.

  They’d wanted him on the Elijah Jones investigation, but then Brady and Cecilia Mills, one of the Knight girls, had gotten in the way.

  The only reason Tucker hadn’t been kicked out of North Star, as far as he could see, was because the North Star higher-ups didn’t know his brother and Cecilia were suspicious of Tucker’s involvement.

  Which didn’t sit right. Surely they didn’t think his brother, a police officer, didn’t have questions about a mysterious explosion that took Elijah Jones down enough to be restrained, hospitalized and, as of today, transferred to prison.

  It had been a mess of a summer all in all, but things would assuredly calm down now. Ace was in maximum-security prison and Elijah was going to jail, along with a variety of his helpers.

  But as long as Tucker was part of North Star and their continued efforts to completely and utterly destroy the Sons of the Badlands, he wouldn’t feel totally settled or calm.

  The back door that came into the kitchen swung open—not all that unusual. Grandma Pauline always had people coming and going through this entrance, but Tuck was surprised by the appearance of a very angry looking Rachel Knight.

  She pointed directly at him, as if he’d done something wrong. “What’s going on with my dad?”

  Tuck stared at Rachel in confusion. She looked...pissed, which was not her norm. She was probably the most even-keeled of the whole Knight bunch.

  While her sisters had all been fostered or adopted by Duke and Eva Knight, Rachel was their lone biological daughter. She didn’t look much like her father—more favored her late mother, which always gave Tuck a bit of a pang.

  His memories of his own mother weren’t pleasant. He’d had Grandma Pauline, who he loved with his whole heart. Her influence on him and his brothers when they’d come to live with her meant the world to him.

  But Eva Knight had been a soft, motherly presence in the Reaves-Knight world. Even if she’d been next door and not their mother, she’d treated them like sons. He’d never seen anything that matched it.

  Except in her daughter. Tall and slender, Rachel had Eva’s sharp nose and high cheekbones and long black hair. The biggest difference were the scars around Rachel’s eyes, lines of lighter brown against the darker skin color on the rest of her face.

  She could see, but not clearly. It always seemed to Tuck that her dark brown eyes were a little
too knowing.

  At least on this he wasn’t keeping a secret—and failing at it. He had no idea why she’d demand of him anything about Duke Knight.

  “Well?” she demanded as he only sat there like a deer caught in headlights.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on with your father. Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. I only know it has something do with you.”

  By the way she flung her arms in the air, he could only assume she didn’t mean him personally but the whole of the Wyatts.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” He took her elbow gently to lead her to the table. “Back up. Talk about this, you know, calmly.”

  She tugged her elbow out of his grasp, clearly not wanting to sit. “He doesn’t want me teaching this fall. He’s worried about our safety. I know it doesn’t have to do with my family. So, it has to do with yours.”

  Tucker held himself very still—an old trick he had down to an art these days. Letting his temper get the best of him as a kid had gotten the crap beaten out of him. Routinely.

  Ace had told him his emotions would be the death of him if he didn’t learn to control them. Hone them.

  Tucker refused to hone them or be anything like his father. Which meant also never letting his temper boil over. He pictured a blue sky, puffy white clouds and a hawk arcing through both.

  When he trusted his voice, he spoke and offered a smile. “I guess that’s possible.” He didn’t allow himself to say what he wanted to. Your sisters seem to be getting my brothers in trouble plenty on their own. “I’m not sure specifically what it could be that would have Duke worried about you teaching at the rez. Did something happen? Maybe Cecilia would know.”

  “What would I know?” Cecilia asked, walking into the kitchen. She was in her tribal police uniform, likely on her way to work. Though she was still nursing some wounds from her run in with Ace’s protege and hadn’t been cleared for active duty, she’d started in-house hours this week.

  Though Duke and Eva Knight had fostered Cecilia, like Rachel she was a blood relation—Eva’s niece. But she had been raised as “one of the Knight girls” as much Rachel’s sister as her cousin.