by Angi Morgan
She shook her head.
“Andrea Allen.”
“She has around-the-clock protection. Do you have a plan to abduct her?”
“I do. And I’ll need the university student. How soon can we have her available?”
“I can get her back by tomorrow. I’ll need a drop-off point.”
“Certainly.” Ah, yes. If he moved his king’s rook... “Hand me my phone.”
She complied, and he texted the new position of his rook. If his opponent’s moves were as predictable as he projected, in two moves he would run the board.
“Based on Miss Allen’s personality and the inexperience of the new sheriff, I think our problem will be resolved soon. Let’s drop her roommate near the abandoned southwest camp.”
“And what then?”
“I’ll provide you instructions. Do you need more wine?” She shook her head, and he locked the door. “After a very long week, I’m in the mood for a bit of fun.”
There was a moment—just a slight raise of her delicate eyebrow—where Patrice had a look of calculated control. He didn’t care to think about it twice. She unzipped her leather skirt and let it fall over her slim hips. She could make the arrangements for the girl’s transportation soon.
The thought of Andrea Allen sitting in Patrice’s place excited him to his core. Extracting his pleasure shouldn’t take long at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Father and son had both picked her up from the observatory this morning. They held a conversation in the front seat while Andrea stared out the window at the same rocks as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Boring terrain? She wouldn’t admit to anyone that she secretly loved it. Watching the sun rise here was different from anyplace she’d ever lived, and the stars... The stars were amazing. She could look at them every night for a lifetime.
“Not a word since I told her no yesterday,” Pete answered Joe.
Joe had offered the front passenger seat to her, but she’d moved past him and climbed into the back. Alone, free from distractions. Without staring at Pete, she could search the sunrise for answers to all the confusing questions she’d been left with yesterday.
Search, but not find. She was still as confused as ever. Needing to be involved in finding Sharon. Scared that she might be allowed to participate. Frightened that she wouldn’t. Ultimate confusion.
She forced herself to count the different varieties of trees instead of sneaking a peek at Pete. The conversation with his dad was obviously meant to pique her curiosity. Both men were blatantly attempting to get her to jump in and talk to them. She’d easily ignored them both yesterday afternoon, closed off in her bedroom sanctuary. Today would definitely be harder.
Especially when she wanted to ask if the task force had discovered anything from the tablet Sharon had used. Nope, she wasn’t going to talk to him. She might ask Joe later, but he was helping Pete annoy her at the moment.
“I’m just doing my job. You’d think she’d understand how a protection detail works,” Joe said. “Someone protects the gal needing protecting. The rest of the task force runs down the information about secretive emails implicating a missing student.”
“Secret?” she began, then stopped herself. No talking. Pete had insulted her and hadn’t bothered to apologize. Point in fact, when she’d taken her dinner to her room he’d shouted after she was around the corner that he wouldn’t apologize for thinking of her safety first.
It was killing her not to ask a gazillion questions. Where was Sharon? Why hadn’t Joe just legally adopted Pete? What made him lie all these years? But more important, how did Pete feel about his father’s explanation?
It appeared that whatever the explanation, Pete had accepted it and moved on. His relationship with his dad seemed as strong as ever. Another reason she wanted to talk was that she had her own news to share. Each morning, she’d enjoyed filling Joe in on her project, even if he rarely understood what she said. It felt good to talk about the progress and the setbacks. Darn it. And last night had been one setback after another.
Pete made the final turn onto the last road to their house when the county radio squeaked. “Pete, you there?”
“Yeah, Honey. What do you need?”
“We’ve got a call here for Miss Allen. She still with you? Want us to patch it through?”
“Who’s calling?”
“A woman just keeps saying it’s an emergency and asks for a number to reach her. I’d assume it’s no one from her work, since she was there all night. Her parents have your number, right?”
“Patch it through and run a trace.” Pete passed the microphone to her. “This doesn’t seem right, Andrea. You will not give them a number to call you directly. Not until we establish who it really is. Got it?”
“Yes.”
He pulled next to the barn when the radio crackled again. “Andrea?”
“Sharon? Thank God, you’re alive. Where are you? What happened?”
Pete covered her hand and lifted her thumb from the microphone. “Let her talk, Andrea. We need some details.”
“They won’t let me go unless you bring...” Sharon whimpered. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Andrea was frozen with fear. She couldn’t press the button to ask if Sharon was still connected. She could hardly breathe, wondering what demands these vultures were going to make. And she was scared to death she wouldn’t be able to help.
All the questions from earlier dissipated into the ozone. They seemed petty in comparison to someone’s life.
“Sharon? Are you there?” Andrea jumped when she heard a short scream, then crying. “Sharon!”
“Three thousand dollars. They want money...you and only you...” Sharon continued to cry. “Bring it at sunset tonight. The...coordinates... Oh, God, are you ready to write this down?”
Joe wrote the numbers on Pete’s notepad he’d removed from the glove box.
“Do you know where you are?” Andrea asked, her eyes locking with Pete’s.
“No.” More crying. “Andrea, please come. I’ll pay you back, I swear.” Sharon’s sobbing was followed by another short scream as if she’d been struck.
“Whoever you are, the money’s not a problem. Don’t hurt her!”
“I’m scared.” The static from the call stopped.
“We’ll find you.” She’d moved closer to the front seat and didn’t realize that she was clinging to Pete’s hand. “Do you think she heard me?”
“Yes,” Joe said, patting her shoulder.
She kept her eyes on Pete. His lips flattened, and he nodded ever so slightly. He didn’t like it. “Those coordinates sound like the box canyon on Nick Burke’s place where they had the shoot-out with the McCreas.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Joe said. “That means we need horses, and they don’t actually expect her to be alone. I’ll get in touch with Burke. I assume you’re heading to talk to Cord. You taking Andrea?”
“Of course he is,” she said to both men, who continued to ignore her.
“She’s got to go somewhere. She won’t be safe here alone.”
“You know it’s an ambush.” Joe nodded, reaffirming his statement.
“I think they’ve had a reason for everything they’ve done.” Pete kept hold of her hand. “This fits in with Cord’s informant hearing something would be going down during the UFO Border Zone conference.” He looked at her. “I meant to tell you about the potential threat yesterday, but we sort of changed the subject.”
She liked the feel of his strong fingers wrapped around hers. She could get used to that feeling, the sense of having someone there for you. Even if he was carefully controlling his emotions and hiding behind circumstances.
“Son of a—” Joe mumbled. “That’s a couple of thousand extra faces to sort through. Half of ’em will be in alien costumes.”
“Does anyone care what I think?” Andrea asked. Father and son stared at each other instead of laughing outright. They were th
e ones with experience. She knew that.
Fortunately, their silent laughter was interrupted by another squawk of the radio. “We couldn’t get a trace, Pete. You want me to bring the deputies in to help? What kind of support do you need?”
“Keep them in Presidio with the want-to-be aliens until McCrea orders otherwise.” He set the microphone down and rubbed his chin.
“Why ransom the girl back today?” Joe asked.
Pete snapped his fingers. “Another distraction. The UFO Border Zone starts this afternoon. It’s the perfect time to smuggle guns with all those aliens running around all night.”
“Night of aliens?” The phrase popped into her mind and she knew exactly where she’d first heard it. “The undercover man in the desert said ‘night of aliens’ before he passed out. The camera was in the back with him.”
“Maybe he tried to warn you or give you the group’s location. Maybe he knew more and left the info on the camera after the accident. There was no way to know when he actually died, especially when they stole his body.”
“If he did say something else, I don’t remember. The recording would be on that missing camera. Didn’t anyone look for it after the meeting?” She sat on the edge of the seat, then fell backward as realization dawned. “Oh, my gosh, whoever has Sharon must not have the camera or they’d know what was recorded, right? That’s why they need me. To see if I know the plans. Do you think the agent could have hidden the camera and it’s still in the car?”
“It’s possible,” Joe said. “We weren’t looking for a camera at the crime scene.”
“I’ll have Hardy go over and take another look. Maybe he’ll get lucky and we can get you out of this mess.”
“You know it doesn’t matter if he finds it.” Andrea knew this was the reason she’d agreed to stay. “We don’t have any choice. We still have to go or they’ll know we’ve figured out their plans. Sharon will be at those coordinates and we need to save her. That’s all that matters. Three men have died already. Sharon has her whole life in front of her.”
“So do you,” Pete stated simply. “You aren’t going.”
“I know, I know. Your job is to babysit me.” She dropped the warmth of his hand, scooted across the seat and opened her door before looking his direction. “Look for the camera. I hope the information we need is on it. But I’m still going. You can’t stop me.”
“Is that a challenge?”
She wouldn’t argue now. She knew how to defend a position and had even taken classes on the subject. Her dad’s instructions were clear. She just needed to prepare her plan of attack.
* * *
“JUST WANTED TO say again how much I appreciate you coming here to the ranch, Cord.” Pete was relieved he hadn’t needed to demand the task force come to them. “I don’t want to move Andrea yet.”
“It made sense. Half of us were already here,” Agent Conrad said, then shrugged.
Andrea smiled at him, suggesting her position on the task force had been confirmed.
“Miss Allen is not a member of this team,” he corrected, and no one challenged him. “Did you discover anything about the emails?”
He moved behind Andrea, keeping his hands on the back of her chair instead of reaching out to touch the back of her neck. If he looked at her, someone might overanalyze how long he stared or why he felt such a strong urge to shout that she needed to be flown out of the area immediately.
“Mind you, I’m only working with this one account, but I don’t think she meant Andrea any harm. At least it doesn’t seem so. If I took a guess, I think the person making the suggestions to her is a female.”
“How can you get that?” Cord asked.
“The sentence structure and choice of words. I’ve had a little profiling. In an earlier email, the sender states they’re friends with you, Andrea.”
Everyone looked first at Andrea and then toward him, standing directly behind her. Everyone, with the exception of his dad, who just shook his head and sighed.
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t know anyone around here and even if I did, does it really make sense to want to meet me in the middle of nowhere? I would never have agreed to that.” Andrea tried to stand up.
Pete placed his hand on her shoulder, keeping her in the chair. They hadn’t really spoken since the day before, but it didn’t seem to matter. She immediately responded with a deep breath and seemed a little less tense. By Cord’s compressed lips, he hadn’t missed the gesture.
Agent Conrad sat on her hands. Her gaze dropped to her lap. She was busting buttons to keep herself from responding.
“I think Beth is implying that someone told Sharon they were trying to surprise you and not to ask you about it. And no one here thinks she did,” his dad said to Andrea with complete calm.
Absolutely the calmest man he knew, Joe stretched back in his favorite chair, hands behind his neck, ankles crossed under the coffee table. He didn’t seem worried that a woman’s life was in danger. The others in the room might misinterpret his calmness for not caring, but Pete knew different.
In that moment, the clarity of how his father had been over twenty-five years ago smacked into Pete. Calm and rational. Two things his father had always been. He would have been no different confronting a murderer and promising that man his son wouldn’t face the same fate.
He would have meant every word. And then kept his word. And he had. The price just might be the expense of his entire career.
There was nothing Pete could do at the moment to help his dad. He caught his hands slipping toward Andrea’s shoulders and pulled them away, tucking them into his pockets before taking a step back. He glanced around the room. Only Cord had a disapproving frown on his face.
Andrea popped up and went to the window. “I just need to get to a bank to withdraw the three thousand dollars.”
“Why that amount?” Agent Conrad asked. “Does it strike anyone else as an odd amount for a ransom? I mean, it’s not an overly large sum. Many would have that in their bank account.”
“It’s not a problem for me to pay.”
“Why do you think it’s a low amount?” Cord rose and guided Andrea away from the windows.
Her long sigh assured everyone in the room just how tired she was of being kept safe. Pete knew she was ready for the forced protective custody to be over. “Shouldn’t we get started? It takes forever to get from place to place around here.”
Cord swiped a hand over the bottom half of his face. “Nick’s bringing extra horses and will help with the tracking—if necessary. We’re leaving from here, Andrea.”
“When? I need to change and then get to the bank.”
“Cord brought the ransom. You’re not going,” Pete stated, again waiting for someone to tell him different. He knew the bomb would be dropped. Just not by whom.
“What do you mean?” Andrea marched toward him, sticking her hands on her hips, ready to do battle. “Of course I’m going. I have to go. They won’t release Sharon if I don’t.”
“No. Agent Conrad’s going in your place.” He could try. They all knew why she’d stayed in Marfa even if no one said it out loud. She was the bait. But he could try to keep her out of the frying pan.
“Um, Pete,” Cord interrupted.
At the same time, Beth Conrad shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
Pete had made a decision. He no longer cared about being politically correct or following orders or whose orders needed to be considered. “My job is to make sure this woman stays safe. That’s not going to happen taking her into a trap. We all know it’s a trap. The responsible thing is to have her stay with my dad.”
He wanted to be the one to stay with her, protect her, make love to her again. But safe with his dad and a couple of trusted ranch hands would have to do.
“The responsibility isn’t yours,” Andrea stated firmly. “You know what my father already decided.”
“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” Beth Conrad mumbled behind him.
He shrugged out from under the hand of the official leader of the task force. “This is a joke. Plain and simple. What you really mean to say is that Andrea’s father has already decided she should go. Does he have a death wish for his daughter?”
A red haze seemed to tint the entire front room. Pete’s blood pumped loudly through his veins while he concentrated on relaxing the tightness in his chest. Nick’s truck and trailer turned onto the driveway. They’d be leaving soon. All of them.
Overruled again. At least he’d made his objections well-known.
“Nothing good’s gonna come from this. Nothing.” He slammed out the screen door, taking a deep breath, surprised at how betrayed he felt. “Acting sheriff or actual sheriff. Makes no difference when no one listens to a word you say.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were on their way to rescue Sharon and had officially crossed over onto the Burke family ranch. Andrea had won and was with the rescue party. It was obvious to her that every person around her disagreed with the decision. No argument needed. Her father had left instructions that if the opportunity presented itself, she’d take an active role and try to lead them to the murderers.
So here she sat, sure to be saddle sore tomorrow even though the riding wasn’t that difficult. Pete, Cord and the DEA agent—maybe even Joe—all considered her the weakest link. She knew that. The new guy who’d brought the extra horses, Nick, had raised a ruckus about bringing either woman.
None of them would allow her to carry a weapon. Ironically, her father had probably had a gun in her hands earlier than any of them. Well, maybe with the exception of Pete since Joe didn’t have a wife telling him not to teach his son anything and everything.
The DEA agent tugged at the reins again, upsetting the beautiful sorrel she rode. Beth would be lucky if the mare didn’t buck her off just to escape the woman’s obvious inexperience. Then where would Sharon’s rescue be?
“Loosen your grip and she’ll follow the trail just fine,” Nick Burke said to Agent Conrad.
