Landon

by Delores Fossen

  “Thanks, but I’m already working on it.” Landon paused. “Are you...okay?”

  It wasn’t something he’d normally ask his cousin. Holden wasn’t exactly the type to want anyone to ask that, either, but Landon wanted to make sure he wasn’t pushing Holden too hard this soon after his brother’s death.

  “I just want to find the bastard who killed Emmett,” Holden answered. “I won’t be okay until then.”

  Landon knew exactly how Holden felt. He finished the call and turned to face Tessa.

  “I’m going to a safe house?” she asked. Clearly, she’d heard the conversation.

  Landon nodded. “The baby will, too. As long as the gunman’s out there, you’ll need protection.”

  She didn’t disagree with that, but she made a weary sigh and sank down onto the chair. “Joel,” was all she said. “It has to be him. He must have been the one who hired that guy who killed Emmett and attacked me. I’ve been hiding from him all these months, but he must have found me and sent a thug after me.”

  If Landon followed this line of reasoning, then it was also a thug who’d killed Emmett. “Do you remember why Joel would want you dead?”

  She nodded, and since Samantha was finished with the bottle, Tessa put the baby against her shoulder to burp her. “I found out...something.” She swallowed hard, and when her gaze met his, Landon saw the tears shimmering in her eyes. “I told you I believed Joel had murdered someone. It was a man named Harry Schuler.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to Landon, but like Courtney, he’d soon find out everything he could about him. “How long have you known about this murder?” he asked.

  “Several months.”

  Landon cursed. Then he bit back more profanity since it seemed wrong to curse in front of a baby. “Months? Why didn’t you come to me with this? Or to anybody in law enforcement?”

  “No proof. Not just about that but any of the other illegal things that I’m certain Joel was doing.”

  Landon was certain of those illegal things, too, and he motioned for her to continue.

  “By the time Harry Schuler was killed, I’d stopped working for Joel,” she went on after taking in a long breath. “But I pretended to stay friendly with Joel so I could keep digging into his business dealings.”

  “Define friendly,” Landon snapped.

  She flinched a little. “Nothing like that. But I didn’t want Joel to know I was on to him.”

  “Good thing. Or he would have killed you, too. What kind of dirt did you have on Joel?”

  Tessa shook her head. “Everything I found was circumstantial at best. Vaguely worded emails and part of a phone conversation I overheard. That’s really why I jumped at the chance when Joel wanted me to become a PI, so I’d have the resources and contacts to look for something concrete that could be used for an arrest. I wanted to get some proof because I knew if I accused him and he didn’t go to jail, that he would kill me.”

  Landon tried to process that while he fired off yet another text to his cousin. This time he asked Holden to get him more info on Harry Schuler.

  “You said Joel wanted you to be a PI,” he reminded her. “You think that’s because he could use you in some way? Maybe so he could get access to those data bases you mentioned?”

  “Could be, but he never asked me for any specific info from them. He only wanted me to vet potential clients to make sure they had the finances to cover whatever deal he was making with them.”

  But Joel was smart, and he might have been giving Tessa just enough rope to hang herself. “When specifically did this possible murder happen?”

  Silence.

  Oh, man. He didn’t like this at all.

  “That same week we slept together,” she finally said. “Before we slept together,” Tessa clarified.

  That made the cut even deeper. She’d had sex with him while withholding something as huge as an alleged murder.

  “If you believed Joel was capable of murder, then why leave with him that morning after you were with me?” Landon asked.

  Oh.

  He saw it in her eyes then. “You thought Joel would try to kill me,” Landon concluded.

  She nodded. “Maybe even kill both of us.”

  Landon had to bite back more profanity, and it took him a moment to get his jaw unclenched so he could speak. “Protecting me wasn’t necessary, and it was stupid for you to go off with him like that.”

  “I thought if I went with him, then I’d be able to find the proof that he’d murdered Harry Schuler.”

  Landon jabbed his finger in her direction. “There’s no argument, none, that you can make that’ll have me agreeing with what you did.” He tapped his new badge. “I’m a cop, and I could have handled this the right way.”

  And there was no chance she could refute that this had been anything but the right way. Now Emmett was dead, Courtney was heaven knew where, and Tessa had a killer after her.

  “I was planning to come to you,” she said after several quiet moments. “I got your address in Houston and had put it in my GPS, but then the baby kept fussing, so I decided to make a detour to my house here in Silver Creek.”

  Landon didn’t have to tell her that the second part of that wasn’t such a good idea. Even though her house was in town and near the sheriff’s office, someone could have been watching it.

  “Is that how the gunman found you?” he asked. “Were you going to your house?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t see him following me until it was too late. I tried to outrun him, and that’s how I ended up near the barn. The memories are sketchy after that, though. I don’t have any idea how I got from my car to the barn.”

  Because she’d been drugged a second time, that was why. While Landon hoped she would recover all her memories, including those, recalling an attack that’d nearly left her dead wouldn’t help her sleep at night. Still, the devil was in the details of those memories.

  Emmett’s killer was.

  And anything she could tell him might help him figure out who’d sent that ski-masked thug after Emmett and her. Or if it was indeed the same thug who’d committed this crime spree.

  She stayed quiet a moment, her own jaw muscles stirring. “Tell me about that picture of the man you showed me. Quincy Nagel.”

  Since Landon was still trying to rein in his temper, it took him a moment to switch gears. “He’s someone I arrested. And yes, it’s possible he’s the one who had Emmett murdered, but right now Joel is looking like my top suspect.”

  What he needed now was proof. And more answers. Landon thought he might get at least one of those answers on the bedroom phone that Tessa had used to call her friend.

  He excused himself without telling Tessa what he was going to do, and he went into the bedroom. Landon went through the cache of recent calls, but Tessa had obviously cleared the one she’d made. There wasn’t a good reason for her to do that, and he went back into the living room, ready to demand a full explanation as to what was going on. However, before he could do that, Landon’s phone buzzed, and it wasn’t his cousin this time.

  It was Dr. Michelson.

  Since it was barely 6:00 a.m. and nowhere near normal office hours, Landon figured it had to be important, so he answered it right away.

  “I just got back the results of Tessa’s tests,” the doc said, skipping any greeting. “You need to bring her back to the hospital immediately.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tessa couldn’t stop herself from thinking the worst. Easy to think the worst after everything she’d been through. But it wasn’t the memories of the attacks that troubled her most right now.

  It was what she couldn’t remember.

  Those hours right after she’d been given the drugs were still a blur, and she needed to recall every second of what’d h
appened to her. Maybe then she would know who had done this to her.

  “Any idea what it is?” Dr. Michelson asked Landon. They were looking at what the doctor had just extracted from her neck. It was only about a quarter of an inch long and looked like a tiny bullet.

  “I think it’s a tracking device,” Landon answered.

  Tessa’s stomach dropped. To think she’d been walking around with that in for heaven knew how long, and she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten it. Of course, it wasn’t very big, but she still should have known that something wasn’t right, and it sickened her to think of what else this unknown monster could have done to her.

  “I’ll need it bagged as evidence,” Landon instructed the doctor, and he glanced back at her. “You okay?”

  Tessa lied with a nod, and even though Landon likely knew it was a lie, he also understood something else. It could have been much worse.

  Now that she’d had a thorough exam, Tessa knew she hadn’t been sexually assaulted and that her captor had given her a powerful barbiturate cocktail. She also knew that she hadn’t given birth, but then, she hadn’t needed an exam to confirm that. Her memories of Courtney calling her and asking her to come and get the baby were clear.

  She also had clear memories of how afraid Courtney had been.

  Tessa had hurried next door to Courtney’s rental house when she’d heard that fear in the woman’s voice, and when Courtney had begged her to take the baby for safekeeping, Tessa had done it. After she’d tried to talk Courtney into going to the authorities, that is. Courtney had flat-out refused that, though.

  “Why would someone have injected Tessa with a tracking device?” the doctor asked Landon.

  “Probably in case she escaped. That way her captor could find her.”

  Oh, God. “The baby.” Tessa tried to get off the table, despite the fact the nurse was still bandaging her neck. “Someone could have used the tracking device to follow us to the ranch.”

  Landon motioned for her to stay down, and he made a call to the ranch, where they’d left Samantha with a nanny and several of his lawman cousins. The ranch had security, but it wasn’t a fortress, and a gunman might be able to get onto the grounds and hurt the baby.

  “Everything’s fine,” Landon relayed after he finished his short call. “The ranch hands are all on alert, and they’ll let one of my cousins know if they see anyone suspicious.” Landon walked closer to her. “Besides, this tracking device was on you, not the baby.”

  Yes, he was right. Maybe that meant the gunman wasn’t after Samantha at all but just her. That didn’t help with the tangle of nerves she was feeling. The newborn could be in danger all because of her.

  “Will you be able to tell who was getting information from the tracking device?” she asked once the nurse was out of the room. It wasn’t that Tessa didn’t trust the woman, but she wasn’t sure she fully trusted anyone right now.

  Landon lifted his shoulder. “We’ll try, but it’s probably a microchip that can be tracked with a computer. It does make me wonder, though, why someone would go to the trouble of injecting you with it.”

  Tessa gave that some thought but had to shake her head. She didn’t know why, either, but it was obvious whoever had attacked her had wanted to be able to find her if she escaped.

  Unless...

  “Maybe this person wanted me to come to you,” she said on a rise of breath.

  “I’m not a hard man to find,” Landon pointed out. “But this could mean the person didn’t want you dead. Not when he or she put that tracker device on you, anyway.”

  True. If someone had gotten close enough to do that to her, they could have easily just killed her. Not exactly a comforting thought.

  Dr. Michelson put the tracking device in a plastic bag and looked at Landon. “You want me to have Grayson or one of the other deputies pick this up?”

  “No. I’ll take it. When will she be free to go?”

  The doctor looked at her. “She can leave now but keep an eye on her. The barbiturates have worn off, but she still could experience some dizziness.”

  Yes, the dizziness was there, and her head still felt a little foggy. Still, it was better than not knowing who she was. At least now she could start to look for the person behind this.

  Either Landon had noticed she was wobbly or else he was just being cautious, because he took hold of her arm and helped her from the examining table. “Come on. I can drop off this tracking device at the sheriff’s office, and we can give our statements about the attack.”

  That wasn’t exactly a surprise for Tessa. She knew they needed to do the paperwork, but that meant facing yet more Ryland lawmen who wanted answers she didn’t have. Even after regaining most of her memories, she didn’t know who’d murdered one of their own.

  With Landon’s grip still firm on her arm, they made their way to the exit. Since Dade had driven with him, she expected to see him waiting in the cruiser just outside. But Tessa stopped in her tracks when she saw the scowling man. Not Dade.

  But Deputy Mason Ryland.

  None of the Rylands had been especially friendly to her, but Mason had a dark and dangerous edge to him, and right now he was aiming some of that intensity at her.

  “Dade had to leave for a parent-teacher thing at the school,” Mason growled. “I drew the short straw.”

  Clearly, he wasn’t happy about that, but then, she’d never actually seen Mason happy. “Thank you,” Tessa told him, but that only intensified the scowl.

  “As soon as you drop us off at the sheriff’s office, you can head back to the ranch,” Landon told him Landon’s eyes met hers as they got into the backseat of the cruiser. “Mason’s retiring as a Silver Creek deputy. That’s why Grayson offered me the job.”

  Tessa knew Mason pretty much ran the sprawling ranch and had done so for years, so that was probably why he was giving up his deputy duties. But she also suspected that Landon had pressed for the job. So he could catch his cousin’s killer.

  “Who did you call this morning?” Landon asked out of the blue. Except it probably wasn’t out of the blue for him. He was like a dog with a bone when he latched on to anything to do with the investigation. And sadly, this might have something to do with it. Of course, it wouldn’t be a simple explanation.

  Or one that Landon would like.

  “His name is Ward Strickland,” she said and tried to figure out the best way to spill all of this.

  “A boyfriend?” Landon didn’t hesitate. He also continued to glance around, no doubt to make sure that they weren’t being followed or that the gunman wasn’t nearby, ready to launch another attack.

  “Hardly. I haven’t had a boyfriend since you.” She hadn’t meant to blurt that out, and it made her sound even more pathetic than she already was. Telling him about Ward wouldn’t help that, either. “He’s a Justice Department agent.” Tessa paused. “But I’m not sure I can trust him.”

  She hadn’t thought anyone’s scowl could be worse than Mason’s, but she’d been wrong. Landon beat him. “Explain that now,” he demanded.

  Tessa took a deep breath first. “You already know I was looking for dirt on Joel. Well, Ward said he was, too, and he contacted me to see if I had anything he could use to make an arrest. I didn’t, but Ward kept hounding me to dig deeper. He wanted me to tell him anything I found out about Joel.”

  Landon fired off a text, no doubt to have one of his cousins run a background check on the agent. “Why aren’t you sure you can trust him?” Landon asked.

  “Gut feeling.” She braced herself for Landon to groan. He didn’t. “Once I found an email that Joel had sent. It possibly connected him to some illegal arms. Possibly,” she emphasized. “Anyway, the day before Emmett was killed, I gave Ward a copy of the email, but a few hours later, I noticed the email had been deleted off Joel’s server. I�
�d been checking for things like that, hoping to find something to use to have Joel arrested.”

  Landon stayed quiet a moment. “You think this agent could be working for Joel and just wanted to figure out if you were on to anything? Or maybe he wanted to make sure you didn’t find something?”

  There it was in a nutshell. “If Ward is on Joel’s payroll, maybe he’s the one behind the attacks.”

  No quiet moment this time. Landon cursed. “So why did you call him this morning? And I’m guessing it wasn’t because you thought he could help you find Courtney.”

  “No. He doesn’t know Courtney. I told you that because I didn’t want to explain who he was. Not until I’d found out more about what was going on.”

  Landon made a circling motion with his finger to indicate he wanted this explanation to continue. He also hoped she understood that he wasn’t happy with the lie she’d told him.

  “I called Ward to feel him out, to try and see if he had anything to do with this. But he didn’t answer. The call went straight to voice mail, so I left a message just to tell him I’d been attacked. And before you tell me that it was risky, that I could have led Ward straight to the ranch, I remember Dade saying it was a prepaid cell, so I knew Ward wouldn’t be able to trace it.”

  More profanity from Landon, and Mason even grumbled some, as well. “If you’re that worried about this guy, you should have said something before now. I’m trying to find out who came after us, and I need the names of anyone who could have been involved. Anyone,” Landon emphasized.

  Tessa couldn’t argue with that. “I just didn’t think you’d want to rely on my gut feelings.”

  “A disappearing email is more than a gut feeling,” Landon verified as Mason pulled to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. “Anyone connected to Joel is a suspect.”

  No argument there, either. “But Joel doesn’t need to hire a federal agent to come after me. I’m sure he already has plenty of hired thugs.”

  Landon didn’t answer. In fact, he was no longer looking at her. Instead, his attention was on the two men who were entering the sheriff’s office. One of the men was in a wheelchair, and the other, much larger man was helping him through the door.