The Texas Lawman's Last Stand

by Delores Fossen

  Chapter Ten

  Bo felt sick to his stomach. Since Nadine’s death, he’d worked so hard to give his children a normal, happy life. Hell, he’d worked to give himself that, as well.

  Now everything was unraveling.

  Mattie had DNA on her side. Ironic that a test he’d used to get convictions for killers and rapists was now a test that could cause him to lose his little girl.

  He checked the rearview mirror again, something he’d done a lot on this half-hour drive. He had to make sure no one was following them, and that’s the reason he’d driven all over the city. The safe house was only about ten minutes from police headquarters, but for safety reasons, he hadn’t taken a direct route.

  “It’s going to rain,” Mattie mumbled, looking out the car window and up at the sky.

  Yeah, the clouds were heavy and gray, which suited his mood to a T.

  “You think it’ll storm?” she asked. Mattie had a firm grip on the remote control for the safe-house garage, and she’d had that grip on the small device since they’d picked it up earlier from police headquarters.

  “I don’t know.” And he was more than a little surprised they were discussing the weather when they were just minutes from arriving at the safe house. Minutes away from Mattie taking the next step to claiming Holly. “Why?”

  “I’m scared of storms,” she answered.

  He gave her a flat look. “You have a killer after you, Mattie. I think a storm is the least of your worries.”

  She nodded. Nodded again. And didn’t say anything for several moments. “How are you handling this?”

  Bo nearly laughed. “How do you think?”

  Her gaze slid over him. “You look calm.”

  “Well, yeah. Looks can be deceiving. I’ve spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to stop this from happening.” He paused. “I can’t stop it, can I?” he added in a hoarse grumble.

  “No.” Now, she paused. “I wish Nadine had been able to tell you the truth that day. Something more than ‘Protect her.’ There’s no way you could have known what she meant by that.”

  Bo wasn’t sure he wanted to open this can of worms, but he couldn’t just let it go, either. “Did you know Nadine was dying when you left?”

  “No. We were both weak from our deliveries, and we both kept nodding off. But when I left her, she was very much alive.”

  But already dying from the internal bleeding. Mattie couldn’t have known about that. Nadine probably didn’t, either. If she had, Nadine would have found a way to leave him a note or something.

  “Nadine loved you very much,” Mattie added.

  Yes. He never doubted that. But that didn’t make her death hurt any less. And now losing Holly was another cut, another wound that would never heal.

  Bo pulled into the driveway of the safe house and took the remote from Mattie so he could open the garage door. There was another unmarked car with two officers parked just up the street, but now that he had arrived, they would probably leave. There wasn’t enough manpower to devote three officers to protecting Mattie, but with the security measures in the house itself and his own abilities, Bo prayed he could keep everyone safe.

  “It looks like a typical suburban house,” Mattie remarked. She tapped her fingers on the armrest, apparently impatient that it was taking so long for the garage door to fully open. “You’re sure it’s okay to be here right in the heart of the city?”

  “Hiding in plain sight is the best way.” He hoped. This particular place had a For Rent sign out front, and SAPD had used it before as a safe house for holding witnesses.

  “Don’t the neighbors suspect anything?” Mattie wanted to know.

  “No. We had a cop posing as a property manager go around and tell everyone that this place would be for short-term rentals.” Still, that didn’t mean Bo wouldn’t be on guard. After all, the children were inside.

  “Wait until the garage door closes before you get out,” Bo warned her. He pulled inside the garage, turned off the engine and hit the remote control again to shut the door.

  Mattie looked as if she were preparing for a sprint, and the moment the door closed, she was out of the car. She raced to the entry, but as Bo knew it would be, the door was locked.

  “Hurry,” she insisted.

  He unlocked the door and stepped back. Mattie ran inside. He followed her and hoped this wouldn’t be traumatic for Holly. Bo already knew it would be traumatic for him.

  Mattie hurried through the kitchen and into the living room. No kids. But he heard laughter coming from one of the bedrooms, and they headed in that direction. Rosalie was sitting on the floor playing building blocks with the kids. Thankfully, Mattie didn’t go barging in. She held back, waiting, watching and crying.

  Yeah, there were tears in her eyes.

  Rosalie looked up, a smile on her face, but that smile faded when she spotted Mattie. “What’s wrong?” she immediately wanted to know.

  Even though Holly and Jacob were way too young to know what any of this meant, Bo didn’t want to tell Rosalie in front of them. He motioned for the nanny to join him in the hall.

  “Da Da!” Holly and Jacob called out in unison. Bo went into the room, scooped them up in his arms and gave them each a kiss. He kissed them like this every day, but today felt bittersweet.

  Rosalie stood, hesitantly, and Bo put the babies back on the floor so he could step outside the room with Rosalie. Mattie stayed in the room and eased down on the floor, as well. She didn’t get too close, but Jacob noticed his new playmate. He grabbed one of the plastic building blocks and brought it to her.

  “Ta Ta,” he said, meaning “thank you.”

  When Mattie smiled and repeated it, Jacob brought her even more of the blocks. Soon, Holly joined in on the game, but she wasn’t nearly as adept at walking as Jacob. She wobbled and would have fallen if Mattie hadn’t caught her in her arms.

  The moment seemed to freeze.

  Holly giggled and looked at Mattie. Bo could feel the love and emotion radiating from Mattie. This was the moment she’d no doubt dreamed about, a moment that had probably kept her alive and fighting.

  The moment was a nightmare for Bo.

  Holly had no idea that this woman was her biological mother, but she would soon grow to love Mattie. And that meant he would lose his baby girl.

  “It’s true?” Rosalie said softly. “She’s really Holly’s mother?”

  “It’s true,” he managed to say.

  “Tiss,” Jacob announced when Mattie stacked some of the blocks. But he kissed Holly’s cheek first and then he kissed Mattie’s. A moment later, Holly did the same.

  When Holly’s lips touched Mattie’s cheek, Bo heard Mattie make a sound deep in her throat. It matched the love that was in her expression. And that’s when he knew. Mattie wouldn’t put up with this arrangement for long. She would no doubt demand custody as soon as she could.

  Rosalie looked up at him. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll fight to keep Holly.” But he didn’t think it was a fight he’d win.

  Still, he would fight. There was no other alternative. He couldn’t just let Mattie rip Holly from his life, and even though she’d spoken of visiting rights and such, he didn’t want that, either.

  He wanted his daughter.

  Bo wanted the life he’d had before Mattie had walked in and turned it upside down.

  Mattie glanced back at him, as if to say she was sorry, but how could she be? She literally had everything she wanted in her arms.

  “How long will we be here?” Rosalie asked.

  Bo didn’t take his eyes off Mattie and the children.

  “I’m not sure. Probably at least a day or two.” He was being optimistic. The investigation was complex, with a lot of possibilities for things to go wrong.

  Rosalie patted his arm in motherly fashion. “Find the person after Mattie,” she reminded him. “And then you can get on to this business of the heart.”

  “Like I said, I
’m not giving up Holly.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Rosalie didn’t continue until he looked at her. She touched her fingers to his chest. “I mean the matter of your heart.”

  Bo shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  Rosalie huffed. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face that you’re attracted to Mattie. She’s attracted to you, too. It’s also plain to see that you’re both fighting it. My advice? Don’t fight it anymore. Things might be easier to work out if you’re loving and not snarling at each other.”

  Bo was sure he scowled. “Are you saying I should get involved with Mattie so I can keep Holly?”

  “No. I’m saying you should get involved with Mattie because you want her. The custody issue would just be an added benefit.”

  He didn’t curse because he wasn’t sure he could keep the kids from hearing.

  “Just think about it,” Rosalie added and headed for the kitchen.

  She left Bo there to stew. Yes, he was attracted to Mattie. Hell, he got aroused just thinking about her, and he kept getting a very vivid image of her naked and in his bed. Her legs wrapped around him while he buried himself deep inside her.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Was it?

  That question hit him damn hard.

  If they kissed again, it just might happen whether he intended it to or not. Wanting Mattie overrode his common sense, and that meant he needed to solve this case so he could concentrate, as Rosalie had put it, on matters of the heart.

  He stepped farther back into the hall and took out his phone so he could call Sergeant O’Malley for an update. Mattie glanced back again, probably when she realized he was calling someone. Her left eyebrow lifted to ask if everything was okay. Bo just nodded. She nodded back and gave him a brief smile.

  And Bo wondered when the hell things had gotten so easy between them that they could communicate without words.

  “O’Malley,” Bo greeted when the sergeant answered.

  “Tell me you have some good news. Any good news will do.”

  “Well, it’s news all right. I’ll let you decide whether it’s good or not. We have our techs digging through the financials for Cicely Carr’s family. If they were involved in the illegal arms deal with Kendall Collier, then it’s not there in the records. Carr, however, is a different matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Bo was definitely interested in the information, but he also didn’t take his attention off Mattie, whom Jacob had coaxed into stacking blocks with Holly and him.

  “She withdrew a good portion of her trust fund about the same time the illegal arms deal took place, and we can’t find where that money went.”

  “Why didn’t this come up during the FBI investigation?” Bo asked.

  “Because she hid the deal through several layers of corporate red tape. Besides, the FBI was focusing on her parents, not her.”

  So, Cicely Carr could have given or loaned money to Kendall Collier. Was that now the reason Collier was marrying her? To keep her quiet?

  “There’s more,” O’Malley continued. “This is the part that might be good or bad. I’m looking at the whole arms deal with a fresh eye, and Collier might have been telling the truth about his involvement. He honestly might not have known he was investing in illegal weapons. Before this incident, he’d done business with the dealer, Armand Brier, and it appears that Brier bundled the arms deal along with other investments.”

  “Then why did the FBI pursue Collier?” Bo asked.

  “Because he did try to cover it up after he learned about it. That’s about the time Mattie came into the picture. She found the documents, heard some of Collier’s phone conversations and maybe thought he’d honchoed the deal.”

  Hell. So maybe Mattie had gotten herself in scalding hot water by testifying against a man who wasn’t the primary player. “But someone killed Mattie’s fiancé and tried to kill her,” Bo pointed out.

  Bo checked to make sure Mattie hadn’t heard that, but her attention stayed firmly on the kids.

  “Yeah,” O’Malley agreed. “My theory is that the initial attacks were orchestrated by this Armand Brier. He probably wanted to do away with Mattie or anyone else who could have sent him to prison for the arms deal.”

  “Then, why didn’t Brier go after Collier?” Bo wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe they came up with some sort of compromise. After all, Collier would have gone to prison, too, because he did cover up the deal after the fact.”

  Yes, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as what Brier had done. Of course, Bo wasn’t about to cut Collier any slack. “So you think Brier sent that explosive to my house?”

  “No,” O’Malley quickly answered. “Brier was found dead about four months ago. He was shot and killed near his office in London. An apparent robbery gone bad.”

  Or else Collier had eliminated the one man who could send him to jail. Now he might be out to eliminate Mattie just so he would have the assurance and maybe a little revenge.

  “Thanks for all of this,” Bo told O’Malley. “I’ll talk to Mattie about Cicely Carr and see if she knows anything that can help with the investigation. And I’ll tell her about Brier’s death, of course.”

  “There’s more,” O’Malley said before Bo could hang up. “We followed Tolivar as the captain requested, and we saw something odd. He’s meeting with Ian Kaplan right now, as we speak.”

  “Kaplan?” Bo said that loud enough that it caused Mattie to look at him. He held up his finger in a “wait a second” gesture to let her know he’d fill her in. “Let me guess. Tolivar is ready to beat Kaplan to a pulp because Kaplan told us that Tolivar is the one who’s after Mattie.”

  “Not exactly. I don’t know what’s going on, but this meeting isn’t what we expected.”

  Confused, Bo shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sending a picture to your cell,” the sergeant explained. “In this case, a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

  Bo pressed the button to open the image, and he watched as it loaded on to the tiny screen. Bit by bit, the image became clearer.

  “Hell,” Bo mumbled.

  What was going on?

  Chapter Eleven

  Mattie was not a happy camper.

  Here she should be spending the rest of the day with her daughter, but instead she was at police headquarters again. She could blame Larry Tolivar for that.

  And Ian.

  She studied the photo on Bo’s phone. A photo of Tolivar and Ian, two men who were supposedly ready to throw each other under a bus with one accusing the other of wanting her harmed. Yet that wasn’t the case in the photo. They were shaking hands and smiling as if a friendly meeting were normal for them.

  Maybe it was.

  “I’ve known Ian for years,” Mattie told Bo as they walked toward the interview room where Ian was waiting for them. She handed Bo his phone. “But until I went into Witness Protection, I’d never seen Tolivar. Never heard Ian mention him, either.”

  “Well, they’re pretty chummy in that picture,” Bo snarled.

  Yes, they were. And that’s the reason Bo had called Ian the moment he’d seen it and demanded that he come to headquarters to answer some questions. Bo had called Tolivar, as well, but the marshal hadn’t answered his phone. So that meant Ian would be providing any initial information about the encounter.

  In other words, this might be a total waste of time.

  Still, Bo had to investigate the meeting between the two suspects, and even though Bo had insisted that she could stay at the safe house, Mattie had decided to come anyway. The sooner she got to the bottom of what was happening to her, the sooner she could get on with her life.

  And her life was with Holly.

  Soon, very soon, she’d have to figure out how Bo fit into the picture. Or if he fit in at all. He was still reeling from the news of the DNA test, but he also might be gearing up to battle her in court. They might find themselves enemies if the
y weren’t already. Too bad this was one enemy that she wanted in an entirely different way.

  Mattie wanted more of those hot, out-of-control kisses. She wanted Bo to take her just as those kisses had suggested he might. Hard and fast, where she didn’t have to think about the consequences. She’d spent too many months planning and plotting. Running and hiding. And now what she wanted was to spend time with her daughter.

  And have sex with Bo.

  She felt her face flush. Felt her body go warm in anticipation of what parts of her were suggesting. Of course, her brain was telling her to back off, and she probably would. But she was secretly hoping Bo would take this to the max.

  “You okay?” Bo asked, stopping outside the interview room door. “You’re flushed, and you’re breathing funny.”

  “Oh.” She quickly tried to fix that. Talk about wearing her heart on her sleeve.

  “Oh?” Bo questioned.

  Since she didn’t want to verbalize anything right now, she didn’t answer. She just stared back.

  “Oh,” Bo finally said, and he huffed. “Yeah. We’ll deal with that later.”

  “How?” she blurted out. Great. Now, she’d just opened a box that should be left closed.

  The corner of his mouth lifted and he crushed his mouth against hers for just a split second. “How the hell do you think we’ll deal with it?”

  No smile this time. He glanced around as if to make sure no one was around to hear what he was about to say. “Just in case you overheard Rosalie and me talking earlier, I want you to know that how we deal with this heat has nothing to do with how we deal with Holly.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Exactly.” He made a grunt of agreement. “Rosalie thinks we’ll be more amicable to each other if I’m…well…having sex with you.” It sounded as if those weren’t the words he wanted to use. He likely had something much more crude on the tip of his tongue.

  “Amicable,” she repeated. Mattie blushed. That wasn’t the word she would use, either. “It would be very…” And here she tried to figure out the best way to put it. “Satisfying.”

  “Hell,” he mumbled and then added something much harsher. “When and if I get you in my bed, I won’t be aiming for something just satisfying and amicable. I figure if we’re going to screw up our lives, then it might as well be something to remember.”