Rustling Up Trouble

by Delores Fossen

“Speaking of clearing things up,” Blue said to Hale, “I’m not guilty of trying to kill Rayanne McKinnon. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on—”

  “I know,” Hale interrupted. “I just got off the phone with Sheriff Cooper McKinnon, and he filled me in. Don’t worry. He’s working on it and so are the FBI and the ATF. Me included. The pictures and flash drive that Gandy gave him have already been sent to the lab for analysis—”

  “That’s a start,” Blue interrupted right back, “but I got a visit earlier from a man in one of those photos, Wendell Braddock. He implied that Caleb’s dirty and wants me dead because of something I might remember once I recover from this concussion. Is any part of that true?”

  Rayanne didn’t like the long silence that followed.

  No. Not this. There were already too many people they couldn’t trust without adding lawmen to the mix.

  “Like I said, I’m working on it. If Caleb contacts you, have him call me immediately. And if he doesn’t, I want his badge. Tell him.” With that barked order, Hale ended the call, leaving Blue and her staring at each other.

  It sickened her to think of Caleb as a suspect, especially after the way he’d acted in the hospital. All concerned about Blue’s well-being. But just minutes after that concern, the gunmen had shown up to attack them.

  Was it possible that Caleb had orchestrated that?

  “Well, I guess this means I won’t be arrested,” Blue mumbled, sliding his phone into his pocket.

  That was something at least, but they needed a lot more things to go right. Like getting information that actually made sense.

  “How would Wendell have found out about all of this?” she asked.

  Blue shook his head. “Maybe from Gandy? I doubt they’re friends, but Gandy could have just called him. Unless there’s a leak in the sheriff’s office?”

  “Not likely. Cooper might be pigheaded and blind when it comes to our mother’s innocence, but he runs a tight department. He wouldn’t have anyone working for him that he didn’t trust.” She paused, thought about it. “But Gandy would have almost certainly called Wendell if he thought Wendell could make our lives more difficult.”

  Or put them in more danger.

  “If Gandy’s behind the failed attacks, then maybe he thought he’d be able to spur Wendell into killing us,” Blue suggested.

  Her pulse was already thick and throbbing, and Blue’s words didn’t help steady it any. As a deputy, she was accustomed to people wanting to harm her, but that was only while they were in the commission of a crime. This was, well, more personal, and because of the baby, the stakes were higher than they’d ever been.

  “Your visitor’s here,” Arlene called out from the back of the house.

  When Blue and Rayanne made it to the door, they found the woman standing guard there. Rayanne also spotted the tall, lanky man making his way along the side of the house. Not alone. There were two armed ranch hands trailing along behind him.

  Blue gave her one last reminder to stay put, and he walked out onto the porch, which stretched across the back of the house. Rayanne stayed at the glass-front door and watched the man come up the steps. She’d never seen Woody before, but she didn’t have to know the man to see the fear in his eyes and the vigilance in his body language.

  Woody wasn’t any more comfortable with this visit than they were.

  “How’d you get here?” Blue came right out and asked.

  Woody hitched his thumb in the direction of the road. “I hid my car behind some trees and walked. I don’t think anyone followed me, but if someone gets close to my car, I’ll get an alert on my phone.”

  A phone that he had clutched in his hand like a weapon. One of the ranch hands was holding a Glock, no doubt Woody’s, probably taken when he searched him.

  Woody looked at the bruise on Blue’s head and cursed. “How close did you come to getting killed?”

  “Close,” Blue readily answered. “And because of this lump on my head, I’ve got some gaps in my memory. You said you knew everything, so start from the beginning. Tell me what happened that put Rayanne and me into this mess.”

  Woody pulled in a long breath, cast an uneasy glance around him. A cop’s glance. “Five months ago I was deep undercover in a militia group, and I overheard a conversation between two thugs who said that they’d been hired to stop you.”

  “Stop me why?” Blue immediately asked.

  Woody shook his head. “They were vague about it, but I gathered that you’d gotten too close in an investigation.”

  “Gandy,” Rayanne mumbled.

  Woody looked over Blue’s shoulder at her and nodded. “That was my guess, too. But these men hadn’t been hired to kill Blue. They were going to kidnap both of you and then torture Rayanne until Blue agreed to fix the investigation.”

  Rayanne eased her hand to the doorjamb to steady herself. She hated such a wimpy reaction, but it wasn’t every day that she heard of plans to torture her.

  “Why go after me to get to Blue?” she asked.

  “They’d been watching him and knew that you two had spent the night together. I guess they figured you meant a lot to Blue.” Woody’s attention shifted back to Blue. “I sneaked away from the group as soon as I could and called you.”

  “A conversation that I only vaguely remember,” Blue said. “What’d you tell me?”

  “That you were both in danger and that if you hurried, you might have time to catch these guys before they got close enough to carry out their plan. I gave you their location, and you said you would arrange for someone to guard Rayanne before you left and went after them.”

  Blue looked back at her, probably to see how she was handling all of this. She tried to look strong, but Rayanne was certain she failed miserably. He’d left to try to save her.

  And it had worked.

  Well, until now, that is.

  “While I was on the phone with you,” Woody continued, “I realized someone was listening in on our conversation. It was one of the members of the militia group that I’d infiltrated. I hung up, and he took a shot at me. I barely managed to get out of there, and I went on the run.”

  Well, that explained Woody’s disappearance. In part, anyway.

  “Why not run to the ATF?” Blue asked him.

  “Because those two thugs had personal info about you. The kind of info they could only get from classified files at the Justice Department. I figured there was a mole in the ATF, and I wanted to do some investigating before I went waltzing into a trap that could get me killed.”

  Judging from the way Woody kept looking around, he still thought being killed was a possibility. It was. He was in danger just by being around them.

  “I haven’t found proof of a mole,” Woody continued a moment later, “but I’ve heard bad buzz about Caleb.”

  Blue nodded. “So have I. Is he dirty, or is someone setting him up like they did me?”

  Woody lifted his shoulder. “Some guns recently surfaced that you had confiscated in a raid earlier this year. Well, according to your report, you had. Caleb claims he didn’t know anything about it, and he has no idea how the guns got back in the hands of some drug runners. Since you were presumed dead, you weren’t around to answer questions about it.”

  “I did confiscate weapons,” Blue verified. He touched his fingers to his head as if trying to draw out the details. “I told you about them, and my report would have gone directly to Caleb. It’s possible he didn’t read it. Or remember it. But it was a big cache.”

  “Is that why Caleb’s under investigation?” Rayanne asked Woody. “Because of those weapons?”

  “That’s part of it, but the buzz also points to something else.” Again, Woody’s attention landed on her. “There’s a criminal informant, Lennie Sunderland, who’s clamoring that Caleb wants you both dead because now that Blue’s back, he could have told you about those missing weapons.”

  Well, they finally had a name to the rather chatty CI who was slinging accusations right an
d left. “Blue didn’t tell me anything about weapons.”

  “You’re positive?” Woody pressed.

  While nothing about this visit had exactly made her comfortable, that put her on full alert. Because Woody could be the person behind the attacks, and hiding the chain-of-custody trail on those weapons could be his motive. Of course, the others—Wendell, Gandy and maybe even Caleb—apparently had motives, too.

  Caleb could be trying to cover up his own crime.

  “I’m positive Blue didn’t tell me,” Rayanne assured the man, and she remembered every detail of the night that’d changed her life in both good and bad ways.

  “Why’d I fake my death?” Blue asked Woody.

  “I don’t know for sure. In fact, I thought you really were dead. But in light of everything that’s happened, I can guess that when you didn’t catch the men hired to kidnap and kill you and Rayanne, you thought dying was the best way to keep her safe. And it worked until someone found out you were alive.”

  Blue cursed. “I shouldn’t have come here. I brought the killers to her.”

  That wasn’t easy to hear, either, and Rayanne reminded herself that there had to be more to it than that.

  “I don’t think you had a choice but to come here,” Woody insisted. “Someone found out you were alive, and I’m sure it didn’t take long for word to spread to the wrong people.” Woody paused. “God, I’m so sorry, Blue, but I might be the reason word got out.”

  Even though she couldn’t see Blue’s face, she saw the change in his body language. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Woody wearily shook his head. “I was looking for a way to eliminate the militia so that I wouldn’t have to stay in hiding. I needed access to some information through some of our old contacts, and I used one of your aliases.”

  Rayanne’s stomach knotted. She’d worked with the ATF enough to know that while in deep cover, agents sometimes used not only identities but code words set up by the criminals. Code words that told the thugs and gunrunners they could trust this person. When Woody used Blue’s alias and code words, then those thugs would have believed it was Blue himself using them.

  “I honestly thought you were dead,” Woody repeated.

  Blue groaned and looked back at her, and in his eyes, she could see the apology. An unnecessary one and one he didn’t get a chance to voice aloud, because Woody’s phone beeped.

  The man hadn’t exactly been at ease during any part of this visit, but the small sound put him on alert.

  “Someone’s near my car,” Woody mumbled, his attention zooming to his phone screen. “I have it rigged with security cameras.” He pressed some buttons, and Blue moved closer to have a look, as well.

  Both Woody and Blue cursed.

  “You recognize him?” Woody asked.

  “Yeah.” Blue took the phone and held it up for her to see the man prowling around the car. He was armed with a rifle with a long-range scope, and there was another gun tucked in a shoulder holster.

  “That’s the hired gun who came to the ranch yesterday to kill us. He’s the one who escaped.” Rayanne tried not to shudder. “Where exactly are you parked?”

  “Too close. By your brother’s house.”

  Oh, mercy. He was right. That was too close. Especially since the gunman had that rifle. He was already in range of the ranch house.

  “Get Rayanne away from the doors and windows,” Woody told Blue. “And no one’s to follow me. Too dangerous.” He snatched his Glock from the ranch hand and bolted off the porch.

  Woody hit the ground running.

  Chapter Eleven

  Blue was thankful for everything Woody had just told him, but he hoped they hadn’t gotten that information at a sky-high price—another attack.

  “Set the security alarm,” he told Rayanne.

  His gun was already drawn, and Blue locked up. He did the same to the front door, and then Rayanne and he raced upstairs to the guest room where he’d been staying.

  There were still plenty of windows in the room, but he didn’t want her downstairs in case the thug tried to break in and started shooting. This way, the guy would have to make it up the stairs to have a chance of getting to her.

  Blue would stop him before that happened.

  “Stay down,” he warned her. “And call one of your brothers for backup.”

  While Rayanne made the call, Blue hurried to the window that would give him the best vantage point to see if the assassin was coming after them. Well, it would if the guy came to the house and took a direct route to get there. It was possible that he’d try to sneak closer to the ranch house some other way.

  “Colt’s already on the way. Arlene called him.” Rayanne sank down onto the floor, her back against the door. “Do you see Woody and the other man?”

  “No. I don’t even see his car.” Of course, Woody had mentioned that he’d parked near some trees, so the vehicle could possibly be hidden.

  “You believe everything Woody said?” Rayanne asked a moment later.

  Blue had already given that some thought during their conversation. “I can’t think of a reason he’d lie...unless he’s the one trying to kill us.”

  She made a sound of agreement. “He could have said those things about Caleb to make him look guilty. Of course, Caleb’s own behavior doesn’t help matters, since he’s not around to defend himself.”

  No, it didn’t help, and that was even more reason for Blue to find Caleb and talk to him. However, he didn’t want to do that by putting Rayanne at further risk.

  While he kept watch, he tried to force the memories to come. And some did. Fragments of his conversations with Woody. Some images of him leaving Rayanne asleep in bed after they’d made love. Even a few bits and pieces of him going after those men who’d planned to kidnap and kill Rayanne and him.

  Nothing in those fragments led him to believe the man was lying.

  “You faked your death to save me,” Rayanne said almost in a whisper. “I need to thank you for that.”

  She still didn’t sound pleased that he’d taken such measures to protect her, but Blue wasn’t about to apologize for it. It’d kept her alive.

  The baby, too.

  And because he’d done such a good job of faking his death, it had prompted Woody to use an identity that had ultimately gotten the wrong person’s attention.

  But who was the wrong person?

  “I’m remembering some stuff,” he told her.

  Rayanne stayed quiet a moment. “Stuff about us?”

  “Some.”

  “Some?” she repeated in a mumble, and then added a little hmmp sound. “You’ve been on the run for nearly five months, and it’s possible you’ve gotten involved with someone else.”

  Ah, so that was the reason for her mumble of disapproval. “No memories of that, and I suspect getting involved with another woman was the last thing on my mind.”

  Especially after he’d been with Rayanne.

  That thought didn’t exactly please him. He didn’t need his full memory to know that he wasn’t the sort for a permanent relationship, but that had to change now. The baby made this permanent, and while that wouldn’t please Rayanne, Blue didn’t want an out when it came to his child.

  His phone rang, and without taking his attention from the window, he hit the button to put the call on speaker. Blue had hoped it was an update from Woody, saying he’d caught the assassin, but it wasn’t Woody’s voice that poured through the room.

  “This is Wendell Braddock,” the caller said. “Did I call at a bad time?”

  Blue couldn’t tell if the man’s dripping sarcasm was directed at their current situation or just at this whole mess in general.

  “I’m busy,” Blue snapped. “What’d you want?”

  “Just heard about that photo of me that you got from Gandy. It was altered. I didn’t meet with any hit man, but someone obviously wanted to make it look as if I did.”

  Blue wouldn’t believe that until he heard it from the lab o
r Rayanne’s brother, but it did make him wonder. “How’d you find out so fast?”

  “I have connections here and there,” Wendell readily admitted.

  That definitely didn’t ease Blue’s doubts about the man. Plus, the timing of the call was suspicious, and Wendell could have made it just to distract him.

  “Somebody doctored that picture so we’d be at each other’s throats,” Wendell went on. “That way, he’ll have a better shot at killing you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Blue had already figured out that potential angle, and he hit the end-call button, hanging up on him. It’d likely rile a man who was already riled, but it was better than Blue losing focus with a call that could wait.

  Even if there was nothing to see.

  Not Woody and not that hired killer.

  But in the distance he heard a siren. Colt. Maybe if Woody needed help, Colt would get to him in time. Blue hated that he couldn’t be out there himself, but he wasn’t about to leave Rayanne unprotected.

  Blue held his breath and tried to listen over the sound of his own pulse.

  Had he heard some kind of popping sound?

  Maybe.

  But if so, it definitely wasn’t a gunshot. Not a regular one, anyway, but it was possible a shot had been fired from a gun fitted with a silencer. Or maybe it was just his imagination galloping out of control.

  He was so focused on trying to figure out what it was that the next sound nearly caused him to jump out of his skin. Hardly a manly reaction.

  The ringing echoed through the room. Not Blue’s phone but Rayanne’s, and he figured it was Wendell calling to whine about Blue having hung up on him.

  But it wasn’t.

  “It’s my mother,” she said, and she let the call keep ringing until it went to voice mail. “If I talk to her now, she’ll hear the concern in my voice, and it’ll cause her to worry.”

  That must have been a big no-no for Rayanne since her mother had to be calling from the county jail, where she was being held without bond. Prisoners didn’t get to make personal calls whenever it suited them, and this was probably the only call of the day or maybe even the week that Jewell would be granted.