Proof of Guilt

by Lisa Jackson

  Neva raced into his small arms and lifted him off the portable bed. “Oh, Nicholas,” she cried, her tears streaming down her face. “My baby. Are you all right?”

  “I’m not a baby,” the boy insisted.

  Neva laughed at Nicholas’s pout. “You’ll always be my baby, whether you like it or not.”

  It was then that Tory noticed Trask. He was seated on a gurney, his legs dangling over the side. His hair was messed and there was a slight bruise on his chin, but other than that he appeared healthy.

  Tory’s heart leaped at the sight of him and tears of relief pooled in her eyes. Without hesitation, Tory walked up to him and stared into the intense blue of his eyes. She placed a hand lovingly against his face. “Thank God you’re alive,” she whispered, her voice husky with emotion.

  “You thought my constituents might miss me?” he asked, trying to sound self-assured. The sight of her in the noisy emergency room had made his stomach knot with the need of her.

  “It wasn’t your constituents I was concerned about, senator. It was me. I’d miss you…more than you could ever imagine,” she admitted.

  He cracked a small smile. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I came looking for you.” She wrapped both of her arms around his neck.

  His eyebrows shot up, encouraging her to continue. “Because you were going to beg me to marry you?”

  “Not quite. I was going to give you hell about cosigning on my loan.”

  “Oh.” He let out a long groan. “I thought maybe you’d finally come to your senses and realized what a catch I am.”

  Her smile broadened and the love she had tried to deny for many weeks lighted her eyes. “Now that you mention it, senator,” she said, pressing her nose to his and gently touching the bruise on his jaw, “I think you’re right. You need me around—just to make sure that you stay in one piece. Consider this a proposal of marriage.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Dead serious,” she conceded. “I love you, Trask, and though I hate to admit it, I suppose I always have. If you can see your way clear to forgive me for being bull-headed, I’d like to start over.”

  His arms wrapped around her slender waist and he held her as if he was afraid she would leave him again. “What about Keith?” he asked softly.

  “That’s difficult,” she admitted. “But he made his own mistakes and he’s willing to pay for them. I only hope that he doesn’t get a long sentence. I can’t say that I feel the same about Linn Benton.”

  “I’ve already taken care of that. There are enough charges filed against him including blackmail and kidnapping to keep him in the penitentiary for the rest of his life.

  “As for Keith, I talked to the judge. He’s a fair man and I think he realizes that Keith was manipulated. After all, he was only sixteen when the Quarter Horse swindle was in full swing. That he finally turned himself in and confessed speaks well for him and he was absolved in the murder. My guess is that he’ll get an extremely light sentence, or, if he’s lucky, probation.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Tory said with a sigh.

  Trask slid off the bed and looked longingly into her eyes.

  “Are you supposed to do that? Don’t you have to be examined or something?”

  “Already done. Now, what do you say if I find a way to get released from the hospital and you and I drive to Reno tonight and get married?”

  “Tonight?” She eyed him teasingly. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “A few cracked ribs won’t slow me down.” He nuzzled her neck. “Besides I’m not taking a chance that you might change your mind.”

  “Never,” she vowed, placing her lips on his. “You’re stuck with me for the rest of your life, senator.”

  “What about the Lazy W?”

  “I guess I can bear to be away from it for a little while,” she said. “Just as long as I know that we’ll come back home after you’ve finished terrorizing Capitol Hill.”

  “That might be sooner than you know. I’m up for reelection pretty soon.”

  “And if I get lucky, you’ll lose, right?”

  Trask laughed and held her close. “If you get lucky, we’ll be in Reno by morning,” he whispered against her ear.

  “Trask!” Neva, holding a tired Nicholas in her arms, ran up to her brother-in-law. “Thank you,” she said, her joy and thanks in her eyes. Her smile trembled slightly. “Thank you for finding Nicholas.”

  Trask grinned at Nicholas and rumpled his hair. “Anytime,” he said. “We good guys have to stick together, don’t we?”

  “Right, Uncle Trask. Come on, Mom, you promised me an ice-cream cone.”

  “That I did,” Neva said, shaking her head. “Now all I have to do is find an all-night drive-in. Want to come along?”

  “Please, Uncle Trask?” Nicholas’s eyes were bright with anticipation.

  Trask shook his head. “Another time, Nick.” Trask looked meaningfully at Tory. “Tonight I’ve got other plans. Something that can’t be put off any longer.”

  Neva’s smile widened and she winked at Tory. “I’ll see you later,” she said. “Good luck.” With her final remark, she packed her son out of the hospital.

  “So now it’s just you and me,” Trask said. “The way it should have been five years ago.”

  “Senator McFadden?” A nurse called to him. “If you just sign here, you’re free to go.”

  Trask signed the necessary forms with a flourish. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Tory, gently pulling on her hand and leading her out of the building.

  “You’re sure about this, aren’t you?” he asked, once they had crossed the parking lot and were seated in his Blazer.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” she vowed. “I’ve had a lot of time alone to think. And even though I tried to tell myself otherwise, even as late as this afternoon, I discovered that I loved you. There was a minute when I thought you were dead…and…I can’t tell you how devastated I was. Thank God you’re alive and we can be together.”

  He lifted his hands and held her face in both palms. “This is for life, you know. I won’t ever let you go.”

  “And I won’t be running, senator.”

  When his lips closed over hers. Tory gave herself up to the warmth of his caress, secure in the knowledge that she would never again be without the one man she loved with all her heart.

  * * * * *

  Ten years ago, he was a suspect in her parents’ murder. Now he’s back to protect the family he never knew he had.

  DEA agent Theo Canton may have been the town bad boy but murder was never his MO. Too bad his girlfriend at the time didn’t see it that way. Now Ivy Beckett isn’t just the girl who broke his heart—she’s the target of a killer. Theo vows to keep the blue-eyed beauty safe, even as he meets the son she never told him about. But will it be enough to catch the perp and give their family a second chance?

  Gunfire on the Ranch

  Delores Fossen

  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 ONE

  Theo Canton wished there was a better way to stop a killer. Anything other than coming here to the Beckett Ranch to disrupt wedding plans. But if his intel was right, there could be another murder—tonight.

  Maybe Ivy Beckett’s murder.

  Hell, maybe her entire family and Theo’s sister, since they would possibly all be under the same roof for the cerem
ony. A ceremony that was to take place tomorrow.

  Theo definitely didn’t want a repeat of what had happened ten years ago when two people died at the hands of a killer. Just the thought of it put a knot in his stomach, along with bringing back old memories. He had to shove those memories aside, though, because they would only cause him to lose focus.

  He had enough Beckett blood on his hands without adding more.

  Theo took the final turn to the ranch and spotted the decorations already on the pasture fences. Blue satin ribbon flapping in the hot May breeze. There were no ranch hands out and about. No signs of a killer, either, but the snake could already be there, waiting to strike.

  His phone buzzed, and he saw the name flash on the screen. Wesley Sanford, a fellow DEA agent who’d alerted Theo that there could be a problem, that a killer could be headed to the ranch. Theo kept his attention on the road, on his surroundings, too, but he hit the answer button to put the call on speaker.

  “Anything?” Wesley asked right away.

  “No, not yet. How about you?”

  “I’ll be at the Blue River sheriff’s office in just a couple of minutes. I’ll tell the deputies what’s going on. I might even get the chance to speak to Gabriel himself.”

  Gabriel, the sheriff of the ranching town of Blue River as well as Ivy’s brother. Well, one of them, anyway. Her other brother, Jameson, was a Texas Ranger.

  “But I’m guessing that the sheriff won’t be working this late the night before his wedding?” Wesley added.

  Theo had no idea. He hadn’t kept up with news on the Becketts. They were more of those old memories, and wounds, that he hadn’t wanted in his life. Besides, the Becketts wouldn’t want him keeping up with them. Or even want him around, for that matter. They’d made that crystal clear ten years ago. Theo had had no choice but to come tonight, though. Once the danger was over, however, he’d get out of there as fast as he had a decade ago.

  “If Gabriel is at his office,” Theo told Wesley, “remember not to say anything in the police station. Take him outside to talk.” If their criminal informant had been right, the killer could have managed to plant a bug in the building. And in the sheriff’s house. “I don’t want this clown to know we’re onto him. I want to catch him.”

  Wesley hadn’t especially needed that reminder, but the stakes were too high for either of them to make a mistake. The last time Theo had made a mistake with the Becketts, Ivy’s parents had been murdered. Maybe by this same killer who was after them now.

  Or maybe by Theo’s own father.

  But if his father had actually been the murderer ten years ago, then tonight Theo was dealing with a copycat. Because his father was miles away behind bars in a maximum-security prison. Still, a copycat could be just as lethal as the original one had been.

  Too bad Theo couldn’t just sound the alarm and alert Ivy’s brothers and the ranch hands, but that possible bug in Gabriel’s house meant the only secure way for Theo to contact the Becketts was outside, face-to-face.

  “Whether the sheriff is here or not, I’ll let someone know there might be a bug,” Wesley assured him. “Call me when you can.”

  Theo hit the end-call button on his phone just as he reached the top of the hill, and the ranch house came into view. Well, one of the houses, anyway. From what he’d learned, there were now four on the grounds. One for Gabriel. Another belonging to Jameson. The third was one Gabriel’s deputy and longtime friend, Cameron Doran, had built.

  It was the fourth house, though, that contained the bad memories.

  Because that was where Ivy’s parents had been murdered. No one lived there and hadn’t since, well, since that night.

  According to the quick check Theo had done before he’d left for Blue River, Ivy’s house was hours away in a rural area near Houston. Apparently, Theo wasn’t the only one who’d left Blue River after the murders.

  Other than her address, there hadn’t been a lot of info to find on Ivy, though she had listed herself as widowed on the tax documents for her small ranch. So she’d not only moved on physically but also emotionally with another man she’d married and lost. Theo felt a hit of the jealousy before he quickly reined it in. Ivy wasn’t his, hadn’t been for a long time, so of course she had moved on. That’s what normal people did.

  Theo hadn’t considered himself normal in a while now.

  He stopped his truck beneath a cluster of trees only about twenty yards from Gabriel’s house. Theo drew his gun and made his way to the side of the wraparound porch. There were plenty of shrubs where he could hide and have a line of sight to all four houses. However, he’d barely gotten into position when he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

  “Drop your gun,” someone snapped.

  Hell. How had a person managed to get so close without him noticing? And it wasn’t just any ordinary someone, either. Theo recognized that voice even after all these years.

  Ivy.

  He turned, slowly, and he spotted her at the back corner of the house. Thanks to the light coming from one of the windows, he had no trouble seeing her face.

  And the rifle she was pointing at him.

  Apparently, she had no trouble seeing him, either, because she whispered his name on a rise of breath. What she didn’t do was lower her weapon.

  Theo said her name, and it had far more emotion in it than he wanted. Of course, any drop of emotion was too much right now, since he didn’t want their past playing into this. She was his ex-lover, emphasis on the ex. All he wanted now was to do his job and get the heck out of there.

  Ivy didn’t say anything else, but she started walking toward him. Her attention volleyed between his face and his gun, which he lowered to his side.

  “I was getting something from Gabriel’s office when I glanced out the window and saw you,” she finally said. “We didn’t expect you. Judging from the way you were sneaking around, you didn’t want us to see you.”

  No, he hadn’t wanted the killer to see him.

  “I had to come,” he told her. “I found out…something.”

  Ivy flinched a little and came even closer until she was only about a foot away from him. She hadn’t changed much in the past ten years. She was almost thirty now and still had that thick, dark brown hair that fell just past her shoulders. Still had the same intense eyes. He couldn’t see the color of them in the darkness, but he knew they were sapphire blue.

  Despite Theo’s not wanting to feel anything, he did. The old attraction that for some stupid reason felt just as strong as it always had. But he was also feeling something else. The anger. That’s why he kept watch around them.

  “I guess you heard about the wedding. Are you here to see your sister?” she asked.

  “No.” Best not to get into the fact that he hadn’t seen his kid sister, Jodi, in a long time. Because that was a different set of bad memories. Not because he didn’t love her. He did. But Jodi was a reminder that he’d failed her, too. She’d nearly gotten killed the same night as Ivy’s folks, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Now, all these years later, she was marrying Gabriel Beckett.

  So obviously Gabriel and Jodi had managed to work through their shared painful pasts. He guessed they’d found their “normal.”

  “It’s not safe for us to be out here,” Theo explained. “We need to get in my truck so we can talk.”

  She didn’t budge, but she did follow his gaze when he looked around again. “You heard about the threatening letter,” Ivy said.

  No, he hadn’t, but it got his attention, and Theo shook his head. “What letter?”

  Ivy huffed, and she finally lowered her gun. “The latest one had a warning that my brothers, my sister and I would all be murdered on the anniversary of our parents’ deaths.”

  Which was only two months away.

  Ivy’s tone practically dismissed the threat her family had gotten. Bu
t Theo wasn’t dismissing anything. “You get a lot of letters like that?”

  “Enough. Emails, too, and the occasional phone call from blocked numbers. If you didn’t know about that, then why are you here?” she asked without hesitating. “And why did you say it wasn’t safe for us to be out here?”

  “Because it’s not.” He took a deep breath. “You know I’m a special agent in the DEA?”

  Her mouth tightened, and she nodded. “Gabriel says you’re what law enforcement calls a joe.”

  That was the slang term for it all right. An agent who went into deep cover, sometimes years at a time. Just as Theo had done. In fact, he was less than a month out of a three-year assignment where he’d infiltrated a militia group to track the sale of drugs.

  “Yes,” he verified, “and I have access to criminal informants who give me intel from time to time. According to one of those informants, there’s a killer coming here to the ranch tonight.”

  Her eyes widened. Then narrowed just as fast. She looked ready to bolt, of course, but he saw her quickly rein that in. “How reliable is this so-called intel?”

  Good question. “Reliable enough for me to come to a place where I know I’m not welcome.”

  She stayed quiet a moment. “You could have just called,” Ivy pointed out, confirming his notion about his not being welcome.

  He shook his head. “According to the informant, the killer managed to bug both the sheriff’s office and Gabriel’s house.”

  Theo saw another punch of concern on her face, maybe some skepticism, too, and she had another look around as Theo did. “This killer is connected to my parents’ murders?”

  “The informant says the killer is.” Theo paused. “But the informant also said this is the same guy who murdered your folks.”

  Ivy groaned. Mumbled some profanity under her breath. “We know who killed them. Your father, Travis Canton. And he’s sitting in jail right now because there was more than enough evidence to prove he’d done it.”