Tucker motioned for them to get moving, but then Laine stopped when her phone buzzed. She tried to balance the babies so she could retrieve her phone from her jeans pocket. She’d managed it earlier with one baby in her arms, but it wasn’t possible with two.
Since the call could be important, she handed the infants to Tucker. He didn’t scowl, but he did get the look of a man who was way out of his element. He shook his head and tried to hand them back, but Laine ignored him and checked the caller ID on the screen.
It was her mother, Carla.
It wasn’t a call that Laine wanted to take. Their relationship was shaky at best, but by now news of the shooting was likely all over town, and her mom had heard about it.
“I’m all right,” Laine answered right off the bat.
“Glad to hear that, but why in the world were you out at Tucker McKinnon’s place?”
“Who told you I was at Tucker’s?” she asked.
“Your sister. One of her reporter friends gave her the details of what happened. She’s not happy about you being there, either, so why’d you go running to the McKinnons?”
“It’s a long story.” And one that she didn’t want to discuss with anyone. Well, with anyone but Tucker. Strange that they were finally on the same side about something. “I’ll call you later and tell you all about it—”
“A McKinnon killed your father,” Carla snapped. “Don’t you forget that.”
Laine would have a harder time forgetting how to breathe. “I won’t be here much longer.” And when her mother’s tirade continued, Laine worked in a hasty goodbye and pressed the end call button.
She glanced up at Tucker, expecting him to be in a hurry to hand off the babies, but he was no longer looking at the babies as if they were some alien creatures. The corner of his mouth had lifted, and both babies were quietly staring at him. He’d told his sister that he wasn’t the fatherly type, but those babies suddenly looked very comfortable in his arms.
“Your mother’s not happy about you being here,” Tucker commented. He obviously hadn’t needed to hear the conversation to know what’d taken place.
Laine made a sound of agreement. “You’ve no doubt heard the story of Jewell and my father from a different perspective than I have.”
“But with the same results. Whitt’s dead, and everything points to my mother having killed him. If she did it, then she’ll pay.”
“If?” Laine repeated. “You’re not certain she killed him? Because this is the first I’m hearing about any doubts from you.”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. I just want her and the kids that she raised to be out of our lives.” No longer smiling, he handed the babies back to her. “But I’m glad Rayanne was there to help.”
Yes, without her, Tucker and she might be dead and the babies stolen.
“Let’s go,” Tucker said, and he led her into the kitchen. “Move fast and stay low,” he added before he darted out into the rain to get into his truck.
He backed it up and then pulled it close until the passenger’s side was almost right against the steps. He threw open the door and motioned for her to hurry.
She did.
Laine didn’t want to be out in the open any longer than necessary, for fear the gunman was watching them. The moment she was inside, Tucker took off. Not speeding, as Hague had done. But driving at a slow, cautious pace, probably because they didn’t have infant seats for the babies.
Tucker kept watch, his gaze firing all around, and Laine slipped low down in the seat. Despite what was waiting for her inside, she was glad when the massive white house came into view.
The place looked different. Bigger. And there were more barns and other outbuildings than she remembered. About thirty yards from the main house, another structure was going up.
“Cooper’s new place,” Tucker explained, following her gaze.
It made sense that his brother would want his own house. After all, Cooper didn’t just have a wife now. He was also the father of a toddler boy. Yet another McKinnon male who would no doubt grow up to hate her and her family.
Nope, she didn’t feel one bit welcome.
“I’ll run background checks on all the construction crew working on Cooper’s house,” Tucker added.
Good. Because it seemed an easy way for whoever was after them to get onto the grounds. They already had enough security issues without adding that to the mix.
As Tucker had done at his place, he parked right next to the porch. Mary immediately threw open the door and helped them into the foyer. It’d been a while since Laine had seen the woman, but she hadn’t changed much, except she now had some threads of gray in her auburn hair.
“The diapers and formula will be here soon,” Mary said. The look she gave Laine was frosty, but that frost didn’t extend to the babies. Mary smiled and eased the newborn girl into her arms.
Laine hadn’t realized just how much her arms were aching until Mary did that, but Laine still wanted to snatch the baby back. To protect both of them. Too bad she was shaking too much to do that. If Tucker hadn’t been holding on to her arm, her legs might have buckled.
“This way.” He took her into the adjoining living room and forced her to sit on a sofa. In the same motion, he pulled out his phone. “Colt,” he said, putting the call on speaker. “Please tell me the fake cops have made a full confession so I can arrest someone.”
“No confessions. In fact, they’ve both lawyered up, and the one in the hospital isn’t saying a word. But I did get something from the one we’re holding at the jail. His name isn’t Hacker. It’s Gene Buford. The guy had a record, so I got a match when I fingerprinted him. Anyway, he had three photos in his pocket. One was of Laine, and it looks like it was taken with a long-range camera at some kind of ranch.”
“The baby farm,” she said. She hadn’t seen anyone snap her photo, but there had no doubt been security cameras. “Is one of the other pictures of a blonde woman?”
“Yes. Thin face, short choppy hair.”
Laine pulled in her breath. “That sounds like the woman who was killed behind my office.”
“That’s what I figured. It’s the third one that’s confusing me. It’s a picture of you, Tucker.”
“Tucker?” Laine repeated.
She shook her head. Why did the men have a photo of him? There was no way they could have guessed she would have fled to his house. Heck, she hadn’t even known that was where she’d been headed until she was actually on the road.
“Send me the photo of the woman,” Tucker insisted.
It took several moments for the photo to load on the screen, and Laine got up to have a better look. It was the woman, all right, and just like that, the sickening memories of the shooting returned. The sound of the shots. The blood. The sheer violence of it all.
But she wasn’t the only one who had a reaction.
Tucker groaned softly.
“You know her?” Laine asked.
Tucker nodded. “Yeah. Her name’s Dawn Cowen.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “And I’m the reason she’s dead.”
Chapter Seven
Tucker stood in the shower of one of the ranch’s guest bathrooms and let the scalding water slam against him. It didn’t help. Nothing would. It was his fault that a woman was dead, and no amount of hot water was going to fix that.
The images of Dawn Cowen slammed against him, too. Yeah, she’d been mixed up at times, but all in all she was a good criminal informant, and she’d trusted him.
A big mistake on her part.
Because Tucker had been the one to ask her to assist with the baby farms investigation. And she had. Dawn had managed to get some information that had helped the FBI and Rangers find one of the farms. She had probably saved a life or two.
But not her own.
Cursing himself and this god-awful situation, he stepped from the shower, dried off and pulled on his jeans. He was in midzip when he went back into his bedroom...and quickly realized he wasn’t alone.
Laine was sitting on his bed. “Before you say anything, consider just how uncomfortable I must have been to choose coming up here to your bedroom over being downstairs with the others.”
Tucker smiled, not out of amusement, but because he was relieved that she wasn’t there to dump more bad news on him. “Where are the babies?”
She hitched her thumb toward the hallway outside his open door. “Sleeping in their bassinet in the kitchen. Rosalie offered to help watch them again. She’s, uh, nice.”
“Yeah.” It’d been hard to find fault with that particular sister. Unlike Rayanne, she didn’t have a constant surly attitude. “Rosalie’s own baby was kidnapped a while back. From what she’s said, she loves kids.”
Good thing, too, because it’d required a lot of help to take care of the babies. Neither Laine nor he had slept more than an hour’s stretch at a time, and it’d taken all of them—Mary, Rosalie, Laine and him—just to get through the night.
Tucker wasn’t sure how parents managed it. The babies might be cute and little, but they sure cried a lot. When they weren’t doing that, they drank formula, soiled their diapers and slept, but not for any length of time.
He’d become an overnight expert in diapering a baby boy. It required a lot more quickness and dexterity than he’d ever figured.
Laine stood, her gaze starting at his face and going to his zipper. Forgetting that he was still partially dressed, he zipped up and located a shirt he’d had brought over from his house.
Best not to stand around half-naked with Laine.
His nerves were raw. He was bone-tired. And for just a moment he allowed himself to think of how good and distracting it would feel to put his mouth on hers.
Good, yes. Distracting? That, too. But he’d end up paying a high price for that kind of kiss. Heck, he’d end up paying just for thinking about kissing her.
And for the way she snagged his attention.
No jeans for Laine today. She was wearing a pale green dress that skimmed her body and showed plenty of leg. No doubt an outfit that Reed had picked up from her house and brought out to the ranch. The deputy had obviously brought her some makeup, too, but the dark circles beneath her eyes let him know that she was just as sleep-deprived as he was.
“Want to talk about Dawn Cowen?” she asked, rubbing her hands down the sides of her dress.
He lifted his shoulder and sat on the other side of the bed so he could pull on his boots. “Not much to tell that you don’t already know. She worked for me as a criminal informant, and she’d be alive if it weren’t for the baby farm investigation.”
“Maybe.” She paused, fidgeting with her dress some more. “I read the report on her that was sitting on the desk of the office you’re using downstairs—”
That brought him to his feet. “You did what?”
“I read it,” she admitted, not backing down or even issuing a mild apology for snooping around. “A year ago she was helping you on a case, but then she stopped because she got pregnant.”
“Obviously she didn’t stop. She was probably kidnapped and held all these months at the baby farm. Months when I didn’t bother checking on her.”
“You couldn’t have known what’d happened to her,” Laine said.
“When I didn’t hear from her, I should have guessed.”
“Yes, because of the ESP that all you Texas Rangers have. I’ve heard it’s standard issue, along with the white Stetson, boots, badge and jeans.”
They exchanged flat looks, and Laine was the first to glance away.
“Besides,” she continued, “if we’re playing the blame game, then Dawn wouldn’t have come literally running to my office if it weren’t for the unauthorized visit the CI and I made to the baby farm.”
“She obviously thought she could trust you. She sure as heck didn’t come to me.”
And that would haunt him for eternity. Most women held captive at the baby farms were murdered shortly after they delivered. Dawn must have been terrified, not just for her own life but for her newborn children.
Well, maybe they were both hers.
Dawn had indeed been pregnant, but Tucker couldn’t rule out that maybe only one of them was hers and the other was one she’d managed to rescue.
“There wasn’t anything in your report about Dawn being married or involved with anyone,” Laine tossed out.
“The babies aren’t mine, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t think that. If there’d been any possibility they were yours, you would have said something last night. And you would’ve given them better nicknames,” she added.
It was no doubt her attempt to lighten things up some. It didn’t work. Nothing would. But she was right—if they’d been his, he might have called them something better than Jack and Jill.
Okay, now he smiled. “Don’t try to make this easier on me,” he snarled.
She nodded as if taking that warning as gospel. Hesitated. Then huffed. “I need to figure out some other place to go. Someplace safe, of course.”
“With the babies?”
She blinked. “Well, yes. I thought I’d keep them until we figure out where they belong.”
“That could be as early as today. It shouldn’t be hard to find out about Dawn’s romantic interest or the babies’ next of kin.”
Of course, once the father was indeed found, it didn’t mean the babies would be safe. It was possible the people behind the baby farm would want the newborns returned.
They could also want to take their revenge on Laine.
Once they had the babies, they could use them to draw her out. And it would probably work. Any woman who would risk going to a baby farm with a CI likely wouldn’t think twice about surrendering herself to save two babies.
“If you take the babies away from the ranch, you could just be putting them in more danger,” Tucker reminded her. “If these goons think you can reveal anything about their operation, they won’t stop coming after you.”
Obviously that was something Laine already knew, but she still flinched. Maybe because hearing the threat aloud really drilled it home. Her mouth trembled a little, and Tucker saw the thin veneer covering her fear.
Ah, heck.
Tears sprang to her eyes, too. She quickly blinked them back, lifted her defiant chin, but Tucker saw something he didn’t want to see.
A vulnerable woman.
Usually a woman’s tears would send him running in the opposite direction, but in this case, they sent him walking. Directly toward her. To pull her into his arms.
Not the brightest idea he’d ever had.
He blamed that on this stuff going on between them. Not just the stuff with the babies and the danger, but the old baggage, too. If they’d been enemies all their lives, it would have helped, but he kept going back to that time when they’d been friends.
And more.
When he was a kid, stupider than now, he’d spent some time thinking about the two of them being together for life. Not that at age eleven he’d known what life with a girl entailed. Truth was, he’d been more focused on kissing her than on anything else.
Heck, he was still focused on it.
Laine didn’t push him away. Big surprise. She looked up at him. “Ironic, huh? When you woke up yesterday morning, I’ll bet you never thought we’d be voluntarily touching each other.”
Tucker sh
ook his head, hoping that would clear it. It didn’t work. Maybe he should try hitting it against the wall. “Who says this is voluntary?”
A short burst of air left her mouth. Almost a laugh. Then that troubled look returned to her eyes. “It’s not a good idea for us to be here alone.”
“No. It’s not.”
There. They were in complete agreement. Still, neither of them moved a muscle. Well, he moved some. His grip tightened on her a little, and those kissing dreams returned with a vengeance.
“Besides, I’m no longer your type,” she added, as if that would help.
It didn’t.
However, it did cause him to temporarily scowl. “How would you know my type?”
Another huff. Soft and silky, though, not rough like his. Her breath brushed against his mouth, almost like a kiss. Almost. “Everyone in town knows. Blonde, busty and not looking for commitment.”
He was sure his scowl wasn’t so brief that time, but the problem was he couldn’t argue with what she’d said. Besides, the reminder accomplished what Laine had likely intended.
Tucker stepped back.
He figured that she’d say something smart-mouthed to keep things light, but she didn’t. For a moment Laine actually looked a little disappointed that their hugging session had ended, and that was all the more reason for him not to pick it up again.
Ever.
Even if parts of him were suggesting he do just that.
No, she wasn’t blonde or overly busty, and he had no idea if she was looking for commitment or not. His guess was no, especially when it came to the likes of him.
“I should check on the babies,” Laine said, and she lit out of there as if he’d set her dress on fire.
Tucker followed her because he wanted to check on them, too, and then head to the ranch office that he’d been using. While he was there, he’d see what Laine had managed to get a look at while she was snooping. He really couldn’t blame her for wanting to know what was going on. Nearly getting killed was a huge motivator to finding their escaped attacker.
Laine made it to the kitchen just ahead of him, and Tucker got a glimpse of Rayanne making a hasty exit. Before doing that, however, she scowled at them. Unlike his other sister, Rosalie. She greeted them and then smiled at the babies, who were in a Moses basket on the table.
Cowboy Behind the Badge Page 6
