Cowboy Behind the Badge

by Delores Fossen

  “Disconnect the red wire from the cylinder,” Tucker continued. “And strip off the plastic ends.” His voice was calm enough, but she saw the concern in his eyes. If she didn’t get the cruiser started soon so they could escape, they’d be killed.

  That gave her another shot of adrenaline that she desperately needed. Laine used the knife again to start scraping off the plastic. She’d barely gotten started when Tucker’s phone rang.

  “It’s Reed,” she told Tucker. She put the call on speaker and kept working on stripping the wires. Obviously she wouldn’t make a good car thief because she was working at a snail’s pace.

  “There’s a second shooter,” Reed said the moment he came on the line. “And he’s covering the rear roof. The guards can’t get close enough to take out either of the men.”

  Tucker cursed. Laine groaned. She kept working.

  “Tell the guards to stay in place and wait for a shot,” Tucker told the deputy. In the same breath, he tipped his head to the wires again. “Twist the ends together, but don’t let it touch anything else. Then strip the brown wire.”

  Even though the instructions were simple, the shots were more than enough of a distraction to make the task next to impossible. Laine grabbed the brown wire just as a shot slammed through the engine and made it all the way into the interior. It nicked the sleeve of her shirt.

  Maybe her arm, too, since she felt the stinging pain.

  That didn’t stop her. In fact, it caused her to speed up, and the moment she had the brown wire stripped and the ends tied together, she glanced over at Tucker.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I’ll finish it.” That was the only warning she got before he finally climbed into the cruiser and threw himself across the seat.

  Laine hadn’t ended the call, so she could still hear Reed yelling something. And she could also hear another voice.

  Hague’s.

  That put her heart in her throat, and she hoped the man wasn’t launching some kind of attack inside the sheriff’s office. But she also heard something else.

  A scream.

  Not from Hague. This was from a woman, and Laine couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Rhonda. Mercy, had all their suspects managed to converge on this spot?

  And if so, why?

  It was a sickening thought that they could all be in this together. But if that were true, why would they have shown up right in the middle of this attack?

  Ignoring the scream, Tucker touched the ends of the wires together. There was a spark, and the engine roared to life. Laine said a quick prayer of thanks that the bullets hadn’t damaged it. He didn’t waste even a moment maneuvering himself behind the wheel.

  “Hold on,” Tucker warned her.

  There was no clear spot left on the windshield for him to see, but he hit the accelerator, and the cruiser practically flew out of the parking lot. There were no oncoming vehicles, thank goodness—probably because the sound of those gunshots had kept everyone at bay.

  The bullets kept coming at them, even as the cruiser screeched away from the diner. The shooters adjusted their positions and continued to fire, but the bullets didn’t go into the interior of the car.

  They went into the tires.

  Laine couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if at least two tires had been shot out. Tucker had no choice but to bring the cruiser to a stop, and he got out.

  “Stay on the floor,” he warned her, and he started back toward the diner.

  “It’s too dangerous for you to do this,” Laine called out to him.

  “I won’t go far. Can’t risk those shooters coming out here to kidnap you.”

  That caused the skin on the back of her neck to crawl. The killer had come too close to taking her last time, and if they were bold enough to attempt another attack in broad daylight, then they’d have no problem gunning down Tucker and anyone else who got in their way.

  Tucker kept a firm grip on his gun and shooting wrist as he inched away from the car. There were no more sounds of shots. Just eerie silence punctuated by an occasional shout.

  Laine tried to keep watch. Tried to keep the panic in check, too. Still no shots. She figured it was too much to hope that the guards had managed to capture them. It was more likely that the shooters were on the move.

  “You’d better be down,” Tucker said to her over his shoulder, and he pivoted in the direction of one of the buildings just up the street from the diner.

  He fired.

  Tucker immediately jumped to the side behind a concrete park bench. Laine couldn’t see who or what he was aiming at, but she certainly heard what followed.

  Shots.

  Not just a couple of them, but enough to make an all-out gunfight. And they were close. Maybe just yards away.

  She put her hands over her ears to muffle the noise, but she kept watch of Tucker. “Stay put!” she yelled, though she doubted he even heard her.

  He certainly didn’t listen if he did, because he took aim again and fired off another shot.

  This time she saw something. A man staggering out from the alley between two buildings. He was dressed all in black and was carrying some kind of rifle. Definitely not someone from the diner. No, this was almost certainly one of their attackers.

  “He’s headed right for you!” someone shouted, and it took her a second to realize it was Reed’s voice coming from the phone.

  “The gunman’s coming your way,” she warned Tucker.

  Again, he took aim, but before Tucker could even pull the trigger, someone else fired.

  The shot blasted through the air.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tucker heard the shot, and for a split second, he thought he was a dead man.

  No pain, no feeling of having a bullet blasting through him. It took him another split second to figure out what the heck was going on.

  Ahead of him, he spotted Darren, his gun still drawn, and he had his attention nailed to the man on the ground to the right of him.

  The second shooter.

  And someone that Tucker might not have spotted in time before he got off a shot. But Darren had obviously seen and shot him.

  “Don’t get out of the car yet,” Tucker said to Laine. “And call the ranch to make sure everything’s okay there.”

  Tucker spared her a glance from over his shoulder to make sure she’d heard him. She had. But she was ghostly pale and shaking. Laine had come way too close to dying—again—and while Tucker needed to make sure she was all right, he first had to be certain that the threat had been neutralized.

  And that the threat wasn’t still standing directly in front of him.

  Darren moved toward the man on the ground. Tucker made his way to the gunman he’d shot, keeping his eye on Darren.

  When Tucker reached the gunman, he knew he was dead.

  Tucker didn’t even have to check for a pulse to know that, or to notice that it was the same man who’d tried to kidnap Laine back at his place. After what the moron had done to her, it was hard to wish this had turned out differently, but a dead man couldn’t tell them why he’d done it.

  Or who’d hired him.

  Even though on the surface, it appeared that Darren had helped him, had maybe even saved his life, Tucker wasn’t about to dismiss him as a suspect just yet. Once the two jail guards had made it to the diner, it was highly likely that the gunmen would either be killed or taken captive.

  Their boss definitely wouldn’t have wanted the latter. Better dead than talking and naming names.

  “How bad is Laine hurt?” Darren asked.

  The question threw Tucker for a moment. Her ex’s concern could have been real or faked—that wasn’t what threw Tucker. It was the tone that Darren used, like that of a man who was certain she’d been injured. Or
worse.

  Tucker reeled around and looked past the lack of color in her face to the blood on the sleeve of her pale blue blouse.

  “Call an ambulance,” he shouted to Reed.

  Hopefully, the deputy could hear Tucker’s order. And hopefully, an ambulance was already on the way. Surely someone in that diner had called 911.

  Despite the fact he had an armed suspect nearby, Tucker ran back to Laine and crawled into the shot-out cruiser with her.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, probably because he looked ready to lose it. “So is everyone at the ranch. I just talked to Colt, and he said there’s been no sign of attackers.”

  That was good, but it was the only good thing about this mess.

  “You’re not fine. You’re bleeding.” It turned his stomach to see that blood, and he ripped open her sleeve so he could see just how bad it was.

  “It’s a scratch. The bullet just grazed me.”

  “And you didn’t say anything.” Yeah, he definitely sounded like a man on the verge of losing it.

  Tucker forced himself to take a deep breath. Forced himself to look at this like a lawman and not like some guy who’d, well, kissed her. The wound didn’t appear to be serious. It was a graze, as she’d said. But she still needed to see a doctor.

  “I’m sorry,” Tucker managed to say.

  “Sorry for saving my life?” Laine huffed, and in an instant her color got a whole lot better. “Right. Don’t you dare apologize for what just happened. There’s no way you could have stopped this.”

  Not true. If he could just get to the bottom of this investigation and arrest the idiot who’d put her life in danger yet again. It would happen. He would find this piece of dirt and make him, or her, pay hard.

  Tucker heard the wail of the ambulance. Not just one from the sound of it, but several. Good. He had no idea if anyone else was hurt, but there was plenty of potential for civilian injuries with all those shots that’d been fired.

  “Just wait until the ambulance gets here,” Tucker told Laine when she started to get out. “I need to make sure this is finished.”

  And finishing it started with Darren.

  “What the heck were you doing out here?” Tucker demanded, his narrowed gaze zooming right in on the man.

  “I got a text saying there was trouble going down, and that you were going to use that trouble to set me up.”

  Tucker wasn’t sure whether to curse or laugh. “Who sent that?”

  Darren shook his head. “The name and number were blocked.”

  Now Tucker did curse. “And you believed anything an anonymous source had to say after your girlfriend was murdered and her body was dumped on your ranch?”

  Tucker let his question hang in the air and thought about just how stupid—or calculating—Darren had been. For now, he motioned for Darren to hand over his gun.

  “Really, we’re gonna do this?” Darren challenged.

  “Yeah,” Tucker said with attitude, tapping the badge on his shirt.

  One way or another, Darren was handing over that gun. No way did Tucker want an armed suspect wandering around to pick off him and Laine.

  “I’ll want it back when you’re finished playing lawman.” Scowling and cursing, Darren handed him the gun, and Tucker put it in the back waist of his jeans.

  The two ambulances pulled to a stop, and the medics darted out. So did Laine, and despite Tucker warning her to stay put, she walked toward them.

  “I’m okay,” she insisted again. She held up his phone. “But Reed’s not. There’s a problem in the sheriff’s office.”

  Of course there was. Nothing about this day was going to be easy.

  “Don’t go far,” Tucker ordered Darren, and he gently looped his arm around Laine’s waist so he could get her moving toward the ambulance.

  “This can wait,” Laine said, leading him toward the sheriff’s office instead. “Reed needs you now.”

  “Is someone hurt or dead?” he snarled. The moment he asked the question, Tucker knew exactly what’d happened. “Buford escaped.”

  She nodded. “And Hague ran out, too, supposedly to chase after him.”

  Great. Just what he didn’t need. A suspect trying to help round up a fugitive.

  Tucker hoped Laine was right about being able to wait to get to the hospital, because he didn’t take her directly to the ambulance. However, he did motion for one of the medics to follow them into the sheriff’s office.

  Yeah, it was chaos inside, all right. Reed was on the phone, yelling for someone to send out a search crew. Rhonda was sitting in the chair next to his desk, sobbing. Twin steaks of mascara tears streaked down her cheeks. The gun cabinet was open, and papers were scattered on the floor.

  Another dark-haired man dressed in a suit paced the floor. Hague’s lawyer, no doubt. His cold, gray eyes landed on them as if he blamed them for the shooting and his client’s hasty departure. Tucker glared back. He wasn’t in the mood to take anyone else’s mess off their hands. Especially someone who had Hague for a client.

  “What happened?” Tucker asked Reed the moment he finished his call. He holstered his gun, eased Laine into one of the other chairs and again motioned to the medic to tend to her. The guy hurried right over.

  “I was at the window, trying to get a clean shot at the gunman on the roof when she came running in.” Reed tipped his head to Rhonda. “Then she started screaming.”

  “That prisoner came out of the room,” Rhonda said through a sob, “and he worked his hands around his lawyer’s neck so that his chains and cuffs were choking her. He dragged her out the back door like she was a rag doll.”

  Hell. He should have seen this coming. In fact, this entire attack could have been designed just to free Buford. Now Buford had a hostage.

  Maybe.

  And maybe the lawyer had been in on this, too, and had just been pretending to be his captive so she could get him out of there.

  “Did Buford manage to get a gun?” Tucker asked.

  Reed shook his head. “But Hague grabbed one. He said he wasn’t going to let that innocent woman get hurt.”

  That was admirable, if it was the truth. With all the other insanity going on, it was possible that Hague took the gun so he could give it to Buford.

  “I tried to talk my client out of this,” the pacing suit said.

  “And you are?” Tucker snapped.

  “Steve Wilkey,” he spat out, as if it wasn’t any of Tucker’s business.

  “Well, Mr. Wilkey, your client has earned you a little stay here until we can get all of this sorted out.”

  As expected, that didn’t put a pleasant expression on the man’s sour face. His expression got significantly worse when Tucker led him down the hall and locked him in one of the interview rooms. He couldn’t hold him for long, and the guy was already making a call before Tucker stepped away. Still, it would get Hague’s eyes and ears away from Rhonda in case the woman had anything else to tell them.

  “Right after the attack started, I called the sheriff from Appaloosa Pass,” Reed continued. “He’s sending over all his available deputies. The Rangers are sending someone, too. They should be here soon.”

  Good. That was a start, and Tucker hoped that soon would be soon enough. “Buford shouldn’t be hard to find. He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit and is cuffed at the hands and feet. He can’t get far like that.”

  Well, unless someone had a vehicle waiting nearby to whisk him away. Which was entirely possible.

  Tucker took out his phone and called the Ranger crime lab to make sure they were on their way. They were. And with that taken care of, he turned his attention back to Laine.

  She was making a face, and it took him a moment to realize it was because the medic was dabbing her arm with antiseptic. She softened her expression
when she caught him looking at her.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “She is,” the medic agreed. He took out a bandage strip and pressed it to the wound on her arm. “It’s just a deep scratch, but as a precaution, she should drop by her doctor’s office and get a tetanus shot.”

  “I will,” Laine mumbled. She pointed to the diner. “Now, go take care of the people who really might be hurt.”

  The medic waited for Tucker to give him the nod before he rushed out. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any injuries, but at the very least, some folks would be in shock.

  Maybe Laine was, too.

  She suddenly looked very calm for a woman who’d come close to dying. It wouldn’t last. Tucker figured she was holding herself together for his sake, so he wouldn’t feel like kicking himself for allowing something like this to happen again.

  “You want me to go out there and check on things?” Reed asked, volleying glances between Rhonda and Laine.

  Tucker nodded. “Just make sure the back door and windows are locked.” Buford likely wouldn’t come back, but Tucker didn’t want to risk him, or anyone else for that matter, having another go at trying to kill Laine. “And get Darren’s phone. I need to check something on it.”

  Once Reed was outside, Laine stood and pushed her hair from her face. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible,” he promised.

  “And I’ll leave, too,” Rhonda insisted. “As soon as it’s safe.”

  Heaven knew when that would be.

  “Why’d you come back to the sheriff’s office?” Tucker asked her.

  “My car wouldn’t start.” Rhonda’s breath broke and she wiped away more tears. “I’d parked up the street in the grocery store lot, and I got worried that maybe someone had tampered with the engine. I came back so I could ask you to check it for me.”

  Either it was another bad coincidence, or Rhonda had come back to watch her hired guns in action. Of course, that would pretty much make her a psycho.

  Something he couldn’t completely rule out.

  “I didn’t know my cousin would be here,” Rhonda went on, “or I wouldn’t have come. I don’t like the things Martin’s been saying about me.”