A Lawman's Justice (Sweetwater Ranch Book 8)

by Delores Fossen

  Beneath the mask the woman had a piece of white paper clutched in her lifeless hands. And Shelby had no trouble seeing what was typed there.

  “You’re a traitor, Shelby Braddock. And soon you’ll be a dead one.”

  Chapter Five

  Traitor.

  That one word kept repeating through Seth’s mind. Not that the other words in the threatening note hadn’t been powerful enough. After all, the person who’d written it likely had committed two murders and had planned to do the same to Shelby.

  The note wasn’t especially different from other death threats he’d read. Death threats that he’d gotten as an FBI agent.

  Except for traitor.

  He’d been called plenty of things, but traitor wasn’t one of them. So what had Shelby done to get that label slapped on her? And who’d done the labeling by writing that note?

  So far Shelby hadn’t volunteered anything, even when Seth had asked her point-blank. She’d just sat quietly in the truck that he’d borrowed from Cooper and kept watch as Seth had driven them to her house.

  Something that he’d been doing, too.

  He didn’t want those two men coming out of the woodwork to follow them. So far, though, they’d had the road leading out of town to themselves. If Seth had been alone, he would have welcomed coming face-to-face with those idiots. This time, though, he had a gun and could do something about getting answers as to who had hired them.

  And why.

  But as long as Shelby was with him, he preferred to postpone the confrontation. Maybe he wouldn’t have to wait too long to dole out some justice. Ditto for not waiting too long for other arrangements for Shelby’s safety. For now, though, he was her best bet at staying alive, though he figured she wouldn’t want to admit that.

  He’d never been to Shelby’s place so he followed her nonchatty directions of “turn here” and “about a mile up on the right” coupled with some gestures and pointing. It wasn’t that far from town, only about ten minutes from the sheriff’s office, but it definitely qualified as rural. And it certainly wasn’t the palace he’d been expecting—considering Shelby’s family was filthy rich.

  Seth pulled the truck to a stop in front of the modest one-story wood-frame house. White with dark green shutters and door. It sat in the middle of pastureland that even included a rundown barn and corral. No animals, though, except for a pair of cats sleeping on the porch. When Seth got out they skittered toward the barn.

  “It was my aunt’s house,” Shelby explained, probably because Seth was looking a little gob smacked. “She left it to me when she died.”

  “You didn’t want to live in the big house with your mother?” he asked. Seth had never been inside that place, either, but he’d seen it from a distance, and it probably had twenty or more rooms.

  “I can only take my mother in small doses,” she said almost in a whisper.

  She retrieved a key from a nearby terra-cotta pot with a dead plant and used it to open the door. He was surprised again when he heard the warning beeps of a security system, and Shelby entered a code into what appeared to be a brand-new keypad next to the door and disarmed it.

  “Marvin Hance,” she explained. “After he started threatening me, I had a security system installed.”

  Good. That was a start. Seth drew his gun and stepped in ahead of her. Until that moment she probably hadn’t considered that someone could get past a security system and be hiding.

  Such as kidnappers.

  “Wait here,” he warned Shelby.

  She stayed put while Seth went from room to room. Only five of them. A living room, kitchen and two bedrooms and a bath off the hall.

  Shelby wasn’t the neatest housekeeper. The desk in the corner of the living room was piled high with files and photos. Dishes were in the kitchen sink. And on the bathroom floor lay a bra and panties.

  Devil red.

  Seth wasn’t sure why that hooked his attention, but it did. Probably because he could imagine how those devilish-colored underthings would look on Shelby’s body.

  Something that he wished hadn’t crossed his mind.

  It kept crossing his mind after he finished his search and went back to the front door to shut and lock it.

  “Is something wrong?” Shelby asked, studying his expression.

  Yeah. But he’d take it to the grave. No way Seth would admit that her underwear had reminded him of this blasted unwanted attraction he felt for her.

  Seth holstered his gun and used the borrowed phone to fire off a text to a fellow agent, Austin Duran, giving him the address of Shelby’s house and requesting a new gun, vehicle, a change of clothes and a phone. It’d take Austin a while to get all that together, but at least Austin was in the area. In fact, he lived on the grounds of the McKinnon ranch with his wife, Rosalie.

  Jewell’s daughter and Seth’s stepsister.

  Since Seth had been raised with Rosalie and her twin, Rayanne, they were as close as siblings could be. He loved them both, but it would put a strain on their relationship once his sisters learned he was protecting Shelby.

  Ditto for this whole lust thing going on.

  As if she knew what he was thinking, Shelby looked at him. Shook her head. “This is as uncomfortable for me as it is for you.”

  She rubbed her forehead, glanced around before her gaze landed on his chest. That was when Seth realized his shirt was halfway open, the buttons likely lost during the kidnapping or that chase through the woods. She reached out as if to fix it, but Shelby quickly snatched back her hand.

  “Sorry,” she said. “That kind of stuff could get me labeled as a traitor by certain members of my family and yours.”

  “Traitor,” Seth repeated. “Interesting choice of words.” Now he shook his head. “I don’t want to go another round with you blaming someone in my family for what happened to us.”

  “No,” she agreed. She headed toward that cluttered desk. “But I think I might have some idea about the traitor comment.”

  As she pushed aside some papers and turned on her computer, something else caught Seth’s eye. The printed-out charts and papers that she’d taped to the wall above her desk. It was a timeline with notes that dated back twenty-three years to the day her father had gone missing.

  Even though the details were all etched in his mind, Seth went through them. Step by painful step. The blood found in Whitt Braddock’s cabin. The cabin where he’d supposedly met Jewell for their affair. An affair that’d ended when Whitt had broken off things and told her he was reconciling with his wife.

  That was the motive the prosecution would use to try to convict Jewell.

  The DA would try to paint her as a woman scorned, and the theory would be bolstered by the fact that just two days after Whitt’s disappearance, Jewell had gathered up her young twin daughters and left Sweetwater Ranch to move several counties away.

  Jewell’s leaving had worked out well for Seth since Jewell and her husband, Roy, had divorced, and a few years later, Jewell had married Seth’s father. Seth had been twelve. She’d been the mother Seth had never had since his had died when he was just a toddler.

  His attention went back to the charts, to the years Shelby had tried to get the cops and DA to reopen her father’s missing person’s case. She’d finally accomplished that almost a year ago. Items taken from the cabin had been tested, and Jewell’s DNA had been found on the bloody sheets. Whitt’s blood mixed with her DNA wasn’t a good sign.

  Nine months ago, Jewell had been arrested.

  That was on the chart, too.

  Then the bone fragments had been found three months ago, and once they’d been positively identified as Whitt’s, Shelby had dug in even harder to get Jewell convicted. Seth had done the same thing to get his mother’s name cleared. Especially since he hadn’t liked the timing o
f those recovered fragments.

  “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that it took twenty-three years to find those bone pieces?” Seth asked.

  She looked up at him. Frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “I thought I was pretty clear. It’s suspicious. Cops, PIs and CSIs combed over every inch of the cabin and the grounds, and those fragments didn’t surface until just a few months before my mother’s trial.”

  “They’re fragments,” she pointed out. “Easy to miss.”

  But she didn’t sound so certain of that. Probably because Shelby herself had thoroughly searched the grounds. Seth certainly had.

  “You’re thinking my father’s real killer could have hidden his body all this time and then planted the fragments?” she suggested. “There’s not an ounce of proof for that.”

  No, there wasn’t, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

  “Now, back to the whole traitor thing,” she continued a moment later after she huffed.

  Shelby scrolled through some internet links and opened one. It was a blog on a site called Justice Hunters. Seth hadn’t read this specific one, but he was familiar with sites such as this dedicated to solving cold cases.

  “The person who runs the blog is a friend of mine, and I occasionally do posts for her,” Shelby explained.

  That in itself wasn’t surprising because of Shelby’s job, but what was a surprise was the title of the blog, “A New Look at My Father’s Murder.”

  “Don’t read a lot into this,” she went on. “My friend had asked if I’d explored all angles of this case, and this tells everyone that I did.”

  Seth leaned in for a closer look. Yes, this was definitely a new look at the investigation, since it mentioned some of Seth’s big concerns.

  Concern number one: just because Jewell’s DNA was on the sheets, it didn’t mean she’d killed Whitt.

  “Your dad was a big man,” Seth agreed. “And it would have taken two people to move the body. Jewell’s husband, Roy, has an alibi, so we know it wasn’t him. But Jewell wasn’t Whitt’s only alleged lover.”

  She huffed again and pointed to their names in the blog. “Annette Prior and Meredith Bellows. I’ve interviewed them multiple times over the years, and both said they’re innocent.”

  “Lots of guilty people say that. Both were married at the time of the affairs, so they had motive to try to conceal the fact that they’d been in that cabin with Whitt. Also, if Whitt had broken things off with them as well, either of them could be the killer. Or maybe both.”

  Shelby didn’t exactly jump to argue with him about that.

  And that was concern number two. Meredith had a thin alibi for the time of the murder, claiming she’d been recovering from a root canal and was home in bed and heavily sedated. Her dentist had verified that, but people still could kill under the right kind of sedation.

  However, Annette’s alibi was worse than thin. She, too, claimed to be at home all day, alone. And her car had never left the driveway. But she could have used another vehicle to get out to the cabin. One that she’d taken from her garage, and she could have driven the back roads to get from her house to the cabin.

  Which brought him to concern number three.

  “These are just the two women that we know about,” he said. “Your father wasn’t exactly a saint when it came to keeping his jeans zipped.”

  “I acknowledge all of that in the blog,” Shelby admitted, her tone frostier than usual. “But neither Meredith nor Annette’s DNA was found in the cabin.”

  Seth lifted his shoulder. “Then, why do the blog?”

  “Because I wanted everyone to know that I was still after the truth. If there was any truth left to be discovered, that is.”

  Hell. And that was what traitor was all about. “You rattled somebody’s cage. The killer’s cage,” Seth corrected.

  Shelby practically leaped to her feet. “Don’t go there. It was just a what if kind of post.” She stopped, squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “But someone could have taken it the wrong way. Someone who cared for my father and wants Jewell convicted.”

  Or someone who didn’t want to face murder charges.

  Seth took out his phone. “I want Annette and Meredith brought back in for questioning.”

  However, Seth didn’t even get a chance to text Austin again because he heard the sound of an approaching car. He shoved his phone back into his pocket and drew his gun while he hurried to the window. Maybe this was Austin arriving with the things Seth needed.

  But no such luck.

  It definitely wasn’t Austin who stepped from the black two-door car that came to a stop in front of the house. But it was someone Seth instantly recognized.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  * * *

  ONE LOOK AT their visitor and Shelby could have sworn her heart dropped to her knees.

  It was Marvin Hance.

  She wanted to be brave and not feel that punch of fear at just seeing his face. But she failed.

  Shelby felt the fear, all right. She remembered every one of his threats. All the run-ins with him. Each of the times he’d made her feel as if he could crush her skull for speaking the truth about him getting off scot-free for murdering his wife.

  “Did you know he was coming?” Seth asked her.

  “No.” Shelby couldn’t say that fast enough. “I still have a restraining order on him.”

  Cursing, Seth handed her his borrowed phone. “Call Cooper and tell him we have a situation. I want him out here to arrest Hance. I’d do it myself, but this could be a trap to lure us out so the kidnappers can get to us.”

  Good grief. She hadn’t even thought of that, which caused Shelby to silently curse. She couldn’t let the fear cloud her thoughts when dealing with a dangerous man such as Hance, because he could indeed be the one who’d hired those kidnappers. That gave her the burst of anger and focus she needed.

  “Shelby?” Hance called out. “We have to talk.”

  “Disarm the security system,” Seth ordered her.

  She did, but she caught on to Seth’s arm when he went for the door. “Remember, this could be a trap to get us outside.”

  “I’m not going outside. I’m just having a word with this idiot. Now call Cooper and tell him what I said.”

  Shelby did, and she kept the conversation with the sheriff short since she wanted to hear what Hance was going to say about this visit.

  “Special Agent Calder,” Hance greeted when Seth opened the door. He said Seth’s name as if it was some kind of disease. “I heard about the kidnapping and figured you’d be here.”

  “Why are you here?” Seth demanded. “Shelby has a restraining order against you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll only be a second. I know Shelby’s scared spitless of me, but I just want to talk to her.”

  That riled her to the core. She hated that this piece of slime could push her buttons, and even though she knew Seth wouldn’t like it, Shelby stepped into the doorway beside him. She wanted to let Hance see that the fear card wasn’t going to work. She aimed her hardest glare at him.

  Hance didn’t glare back. The corner of his mouth hitched into a smile that many people would have believed was genuine. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hance looked like a TV evangelist with his styled-to-a-T bronze hair, angelic expression and pricey gray suit.

  Shelby knew he was in his early forties, but he looked much younger. And he was strong. Beneath that suit was a muscled, violent man with a fierce grip. A former FBI agent who’d been trained to fight. Shelby had firsthand knowledge of just how strong that grip could be and just how vicious his words and threats were.

  “We have nothing to talk about,” she assured Hance. “But I know Sheriff McKinnon wants to talk to you.”

  “Yes, about
the attack on you and Agent Calder.” He glanced at the road behind him. “I figure he’ll be here soon.”

  Neither Shelby nor Seth verified that, but as a former agent, Hance would know it was standard procedure to call for backup. And that he would be arrested for violating that restraining order.

  “What do you want?” Seth repeated.

  “Well, I’m not here about those scathing articles that Shelby wrote about me, even though my lawyers will soon have responses to those.”

  More threats. Hance was always claiming he was going to file a lawsuit against her for libel, but so far he hadn’t. Probably because he didn’t want to go another round with the legal system. He’d gotten lucky last time, but his luck might not continue to hold.

  Hance stared at her, no doubt watching to see if the threat bothered her. It did. But only because he was delivering it personally. However, Shelby made sure he didn’t see any discomfort in her expression or body language.

  Unlike Seth’s body language.

  No discomfort, but he kept shooting her narrowed-eyed looks, probably silent warnings for her to go back inside.

  She stayed put.

  “Earlier today I got a call,” Hance finally continued. “The person said I should go to the abandoned warehouse on Miller Road, that there’d be evidence I could use in the lawsuits I plan to file against Shelby.”

  An anonymous call like the ones Seth and she had gotten. Of course, Hance could be lying about getting such a call because he had arranged the ones to Seth and her.

  “You have proof of this call?” Seth asked.

  Hance nodded. “The number’s on my phone. I’ll turn it over to the sheriff once he gets here.”

  “That’s not proof,” Shelby fired back. “You could have hired someone to call you.”

  “True,” Hance readily admitted, adding another of those damnable smiles. “But the only reason I’d do something like that would be to cover up that I was the one who orchestrated the attack against you. I didn’t,” he added calmly.

  “You got proof of that?” Seth asked again.

  No smile this time. Obviously, this was a conversation Hance would have preferred to have without the armed FBI agent who was giving him another cold, hard stare.