Safeguarding the Surrogate

by Delores Fossen

  Kara had to fumble through her purse, but she came up with her phone and called nine-one-one. “We need an ambulance,” she said, rattling off their location.

  Her throat froze, though, when she saw the vehicle in the rearview mirror. For a few terrifying moments, she thought the gunman was returning to try to finish them off.

  But it was Tanner Parnell, Daniel’s ranch hand.

  He was definitely a welcome sight, and she was thankful they’d been so close to Daniel’s ranch so that Tanner could get here this fast. And he was obviously ready to help. He barreled out of his truck, a rifle in hand.

  “The shooter was over there,” Kara said, pointing to the woods. “But I think he’s gone now. Please be gone,” she added in a whisper. She didn’t want them all gunned down.

  Tanner nodded, shifted his attention to Daniel, who was leaning over the injured woman. He headed toward them. So did Kara, and she saw Daniel strip off his shirt and use it to try to staunch the wound. By the time Kara made it to them, though, his shirt was already soaked with blood.

  The woman was bleeding out.

  Kara got a better look at her face now. She still didn’t recognize her, but she appeared to be in her early twenties and had a slim build. There wasn’t an ounce of color left in her. A stark contrast to the bright red of the blood on her clothes and Daniel’s shirt.

  Kara dropped down to her knees and helped Daniel apply some pressure to the wound. Tanner stood over them, keeping watch of the woods and the rest of the pasture.

  “Who are you?” Daniel demanded. “Who did this to you?”

  “Daisy,” she answered, her voice barely audible. “Daisy Burkhart.”

  Daniel glanced up at Kara to see if she recognized the name, but she had to shake her head. “You were a surrogate?” Kara asked, and she braced herself for the gut punch she knew she was going to get.

  Daisy gave a weak nod. “He killed me, didn’t he?” she murmured. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

  “He?” Daniel repeated. “Who did this to you, Daisy?”

  The woman’s eyelids fluttered down, and with the last breath she’d ever take, she whispered something.

  The name of her killer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sean Maynard.

  Daniel wasn’t sure who’d been more surprised—Kara or him—when Daisy had muttered that name. Of course, Sean had been a suspect since he’d shown up at the inn that morning, but Daniel had put Rizzo and Eldon way ahead of him. Judging from her shock, so had Kara.

  He was sure the shock was still there as he sat in the bathroom of the inn and listened to the water in her shower. Daniel hadn’t wanted to leave her alone once they’d made it back, but he’d understood when she’d said she had to wash off the blood.

  Daisy Burkhart’s blood.

  Seeing it was a reminder that there was yet another dead surrogate. A murder that he hadn’t been able to stop. And it sickened him to the core.

  At least Sadie was safe, and that was a huge weight off him. Leo had done as Daniel asked, and he’d gotten Sadie and the others to the safe house. He’d done that, though, with backup from the Rangers since Daniel had stayed with Daisy’s body until the CSIs and another team of Rangers had arrived.

  While Daniel had still been at the scene, he’d also started the ball rolling on some new security measures. He’d had one of his hands make a quick trip to San Antonio to buy a dozen motion-activated cameras that were now placed on the tops of the buildings around the inn. If anyone tried to get on the roofs, the cameras would trigger an alert that would be sent to his phone.

  Once Daniel had finally been able to get Kara back to Mercy Ridge, he’d brought her to the inn and locked down the place. That didn’t mean a gunman couldn’t still fire shots into the inn, but at least now Sadie wouldn’t here.

  And there was something else. Something that could work in their favor.

  Maybe it’d been a fluke, but the person who’d killed Daisy hadn’t been that good of a shot. He’d missed far more often than he’d hit, and he hadn’t even tried to shoot Kara and him. This was despite Kara firing at him and Daniel being out in the open where he’d been an easy target.

  So, the question was—had Sean been the person pulling the trigger?

  Was Kara’s ex the killer responsible for all those deaths?

  If so, that would make him a serial killer, but it left Daniel with a lot of questions. If Sean was behind this, then his motive had to be getting back at Kara for ditching him. Then why hadn’t he simply tried to kill her in the pasture today? Why had he allowed Daisy to find out who he was?

  Of course, it was possible all this was a ruse, that the real killer had told Daisy that he was Sean. It was also possible that the shooter was just a hired gun and not the same person responsible for murdering the other surrogates. But if the surrogate killer had been the one pulling the trigger today, then he didn’t seem to have any decent sniper skills. That was a good thing for Kara and him. Still, they couldn’t take any risks since the shooter didn’t necessarily have to be good, just lucky.

  Using his phone, he read through an email from Barrett and was trying to force his mind off the dead woman’s face and her plea for help when Kara stepped from the shower. He automatically glanced up but just as quickly looked away. Kara wasn’t naked but it was close. She had only a towel wrapped around her so he got a glimpse of plenty of bare arms and legs before she put on a robe.

  “Your turn,” she said. Her voice was strained. With reason. She’d just witnessed a woman being murdered, but Daniel thought some of her nerves were because they were sharing the very small bathroom.

  She stepped around him, which was no easy feat, and of course, she ended up brushing against him. Daniel caught a whiff of the shampoo and soap, but her own scent was mixed in there, as well. He tried his best to ignore that. Tried his best to ignore the tug in his body that made him want to reach out and touch her.

  “Has Barrett brought Sean in for questioning yet?” she asked.

  “A Texas Ranger picked him up and is on the way to the sheriff’s office now. Barrett will text me right before the interview starts.”

  Kara took up the position he’d just left. On the floor with her back against the door. She looked at everything but him, which was a good thing because he started to strip, starting with the loaner T-shirt that he’d gotten from one of the EMTs. His own shirt had been soaked with blood, and the Rangers had bagged it in case it’d picked up any fibers or trace from Daisy’s body.

  “I got some updates while you were in the shower,” he started, shucking off the rest of his clothes. “Sadie’s doing great. Leo said she’s having a ball since she’s got so many people willing to read to her and play with her.”

  “Good.” She sounded relieved. But still tense. He figured that if there were any kind of unusual sound right now, she’d probably jump out of her skin. Or out of that bathrobe.

  He didn’t want to think about that.

  However, imagining Kara’s naked body was a whole lot better than some of the other images going through his head.

  “The security cameras are all in place on the buildings,” he went on.

  “You’ll be able to see if anyone goes up on one of the roofs?” she asked.

  “Yeah. And two of the cameras are angled to pick up anyone coming to the front or back doors here at the inn. If anyone gets on a roof or comes to the doors, my phone will beep with an alert. That should give us time to take cover.”

  Well, take cover in her case. If he got an alert and pinpointed the killer, then Daniel would try to put an end to this.

  “Barrett’s phone will beep, too, if any of the cameras are triggered. And he’s shifted the times of the interviews,” Daniel continued a moment later. “So we’ll be able to watch them on my computer. He wants to talk to Sean first, before interviewing the others.�
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  That made sense because if Sean confessed, then there’d be no need to interrogate Eldon and Rizzo. But Daniel didn’t see Sean just owning up to murdering at least four women along with attempted murder and attacks on a cop and on his ex-girlfriend.

  “If Sean’s guilty, why wouldn’t he have just run?” he heard Kara ask.

  It was the million-dollar question. Daniel had an answer, but he wasn’t sure it was the right one. “He would have looked guilty had he run. This way, he can claim his innocence and say that someone’s trying to frame him.”

  And someone could be trying to do just that.

  Daniel kept going through those why questions that were plaguing him. Why would Sean have let Daisy know who he was? Maybe it’d been for sport, to up the stakes of this cat-and-mouse game. Or maybe it’d just been a mistake. Daisy could have recognized him when he kidnapped her and then managed to get away from him. But that just led him to another why.

  Why had Sean and Daisy been so close to his ranch?

  He lathered up and quickly rinsed off. “Maybe Sean took Daisy to my place to kill her,” he muttered, not figuring Kara would hear him.

  But she did.

  “It would be a way to hit at both you and me,” Kara said. “Sean could have been planning on putting Daisy’s body in your house or on your land.”

  Yeah, but if so, it was stupid when he had ranch hands working today. Then again, maybe Sean hadn’t known that. Neither would Eldon. But Rizzo certainly would have.

  He turned off the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist before he got out. No robe for him. There’d only been one in the bathroom, and Kara had used it. Maybe being nearly naked wouldn’t give his body any bad ideas about Kara before he managed to get dressed.

  “Barrett confirmed that Daisy Burkhart was a surrogate at Willingham Fertility Clinic,” Daniel went on. No surprise there, but it was something that had to be checked off the list. “She lived alone but was engaged. SAPD is questioning her fiancé, but they don’t believe he was involved in this. He has a solid alibi since he was in a meeting with four other people at the time of Daisy’s death.”

  Still keeping her eyes off him, Kara stood so they could go back into the bedroom. They were sharing it, as well. For now. That’s because he didn’t want her to be too far away from him if there was an attack. But in a couple hours when it was time for them to sleep, he’d have to figure out how to handle that. Daniel was 100 percent sure that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands, and his mouth, off her if they ended up in the same bed.

  Kara took some fresh clothes from her suitcase and went into the walk-in closet to dress. Daniel stayed in the bedroom itself and did the same, using some clothes that Barrett had sent over for him. However, he hurried.

  The moment he’d finished dressing, he put back on his holster and weapon and then went to the window to look out. This room had a good vantage point where he could see the entire backyard and parking lot. No one was lurking around, but Daniel figured if there was an attack, it’d come from the side or the front. The shooter might get up on another nearby roof and start firing.

  His truck was no longer in the parking lot. Thanks to Barrett, there was now a cruiser, a safer option if Kara and he had to make a run for it. Maybe, though, it wouldn’t come down to that.

  He turned when Kara finally came out of the closet. She was wearing jeans and a loose cotton top, and her hair was still wet from her shower.

  And she was crying.

  Judging from the way she quickly wiped the tears away, she probably hadn’t wanted him to see that. He started toward her, but she waved him away.

  “I’ll stop,” she insisted. “You don’t need this.”

  “Neither do you. Sometimes, though, we can’t control things.” Which, of course, described him to a tee. He wasn’t controlling much of anything right now. Including these thoughts he kept having about Kara.

  It was stupid for him to pull her into his arms. Even more stupid to kiss her. But that’s exactly what he did. He caught her sound of surprise with his mouth and deepened the kiss. Her stiff shocked response didn’t last long.

  Nope.

  With his thoughts of her whirling and the air charged with sparks of lightning, Kara practically melted into him. Mouth to mouth. Body to body. And the sparks just kept on flying.

  It’d been years since he’d kissed a woman like this. With a need that was already so hungry that it felt as if he could take her where she stood. He ached for Kara. Needed her. But worse, he wanted her now.

  Daniel expected to feel a flood of guilt over kissing his late wife’s sister. In fact, he thought he would have welcomed it because it would have forced him to take a huge step back and rethink this. But no guilt came. Only the heat that kept building and building.

  Kara didn’t help with getting him to step back. Just the opposite. Her arms went around him, and she pulled him closer, fitting him against her in a way that let him know she’d lost the willpower battle, too.

  He could blame that lost battle on the spent adrenaline, the danger. The overwhelming fear that neither of them might live to see another day, but it kept going back to that want. His body had been simmering for her for days now. Maybe longer. And she was right here for the taking.

  She slid her hand down his back, her fingers digging into his skin, and she made a silky moan of pleasure. A sound that went straight to his groin. Hell, he was already harder than stone, and Kara had obviously noticed that, too, because she pressed her center against his.

  Because his heartbeat was crashing in his ears, it took Daniel a moment to realize the next sound he heard was his phone ringing. He had to pull himself out of the lust trance he was in, and he cursed himself for the lapse. There were too many things going on for him to be kissing Kara.

  “It’s Barrett,” he relayed to Kara, and he put the call on speaker. Also to put some distance between them, he went to the window again and glanced outside.

  “Sean’s in the interview room,” Barrett said the moment he was on the line. “You can log into the feed to watch it. FYI, the Rangers have found nothing in Daisy’s phone records to indicate she knew Sean. Her fiancé says he never heard her mention the man’s name.”

  That didn’t mean Sean hadn’t been the one to kill her, but Daisy had certainly learned his name from somewhere. Or rather she’d learned the name the killer wanted her to.

  Daniel went to the small desk where he’d put his laptop, and he booted it up. “Have the CSIs gone into the woods where the shooter was?” he asked.

  “They’re there now, and we should have a preliminary report soon,” Barrett answered. “Remember to text me any questions you want me to ask Sean. I’m going into the interview now.”

  Daniel hit the end-call button and logged into the video feed. Sean was seated at the metal table. Brandon Mauer, one of the town’s two attorneys, was next to him, and he was making notes on a legal pad. Sean’s attention, however, was nailed to the camera. He didn’t appear angry—that was a surprise—but he was looking into the lens as if he wanted to send some kind of message.

  Maybe to Kara.

  Barrett came into the room, and he set up the interview by identifying everyone for the recording and reading Sean his rights. Sean spoke the moment Barrett had finished.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Sean insisted. “And I have an alibi.”

  His lawyer laid his hand on Sean’s arm, probably to tell his client to wait for the questions before he said anything, but Sean only continued.

  “I was on the phone with a rancher who’s selling me some cattle when the attack was taking place,” Sean added.

  “What time was that?” Barrett countered. “And how do you know what time the attack happened?”

  “It happened four hours ago,” Sean provided without hesitating. “Something like that gets around so that’s how I know.
I was on the phone with Mason Ryland over in Silver Creek.”

  Barrett slid a notepad toward Sean. “Write down his name and contact info. I’ll check with him.” He gave Sean a moment to do that. “But a phone call doesn’t prove your innocence. You could have had that conversation on your cell and still been in the area of the attack. Or you could have finished your business with Ryland and then gone to those woods where you gunned down a woman.”

  “No.” Sean didn’t shout his denial. He repeated it and buried his face in his hands for a couple of seconds. “I didn’t gun anyone down.”

  Barrett gave him a flat cop’s stare. “The dead woman said differently. In fact, her dying words were your name.”

  “My client didn’t know the deceased.” Brandon spoke up. “And there’s no physical evidence to link him to this crime.”

  “Not yet. The scene’s still being processed so something might turn up.” Barrett combed his gaze over Sean. “The Ranger who brought you in said you’d just gotten out of the shower when he arrived at your place.”

  Sean shrugged. “So?”

  “So, you might have done that to remove any gunshot residue,” Barrett reminded him.

  “No.” This time Sean’s voice was a little louder, and the huff he made sounded to be of pure frustration. “I told the Ranger that after my conversation with Ryland, I went for a ride on a new horse. I got sweaty and showered.”

  “I can’t tell if he’s lying,” Kara muttered. “I should be able to tell.”

  There was plenty of frustration in her voice, too, and Daniel wanted to assure her that she shouldn’t have been able to tell something like that. Some people were just good liars, and Sean might be one of them.

  “My client has agreed to submit to a GSR test,” Brandon stated. “He also agreed to come here and answer your questions, but as you well know, it’s not necessary for him to prove his innocence.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Barrett grumbled. “I know the burden of proving his guilt is on me, but I’ve got a good start. I’ve got a murdered woman who told a cop that your client had killed her.”