Beneath the Badge

by Rita Herron

  The lieutenant gestured toward Hayes. “Ranger Keller said that someone also tried to kill you last night.”

  She shivered, then murmured that he was correct.

  “And you don’t have any idea why?”

  “No.”

  One of the crime scene investigators approached, saving her from a lengthier interrogation. “Please don’t leave town, Miss Landis,” Riley said. “We may need to talk to you again.”

  She nodded, her hands tightening together as the investigator showed Hayes and the lieutenant a bullet casing he’d found by the doorway. “Looks like a .38.”

  “We’ll bag it and send it to forensics,” the investigator said.

  Hayes squatted down, then removed a handkerchief and used it to pick up a small brass button with black etching on it that had rolled beneath the desk chair. “This might have come from our guy. Maybe from some kind of uniform?”

  Riley bent to study it, as well. “The killer and Morris could have struggled first, and the button fell off, then the killer shot Morris.”

  “We’ll send it to trace.” The investigator bagged it.

  Hayes pressed his hand to her shoulder. “Taylor, they need to take your prints for elimination purposes.”

  A numbness crept over her as she agreed.

  Had this man died because of another case or because he’d dug into the past for her? If Hayes and the police searched Morris’s files, would they find papers proving that Hayes was Margaret’s son?

  Dear heavens, she had to talk to Margaret and convince her to tell Hayes that she’d given birth to him. It would be difficult enough for both of them to handle the realization, but it would be far worse if Hayes learned his mother’s identity from Morris’s files instead of from Margaret.

  “WHEN CSI IS FINISHED, I WANT Morris’s files and computer sent to me at Miss Landis’s house in Cantara Hills,” Hayes told the lieutenant. “Maybe one of his cases got him murdered.”

  Taylor gave him a wary look, but Riley nodded. “Just keep me abreast of anything you discover.”

  Hayes assured the lieutenant he would keep in touch. The button might prove instrumental in solving their case, especially if they identified the type of uniform it had come from. Hopefully, they’d find prints or DNA that would lead to the killer.

  Although he’d vouched for Taylor in front of the lieutenant, anger still fueled his demeanor as he followed her back to her estate. He had to push her, find out what that P.I. had wanted with her.

  Because he strongly sensed that she was lying. That the private investigator had revealed his discovery to her on the phone.

  Had that information brought a murderer to his door?

  If so, why? The foundation business? The bids for the city council? Dirt on her brother? On her?

  She pulled the sleek little convertible into the garage, hitting the automatic button to lower the door. He parked in the drive, a reminder that he didn’t fit into her world and never would.

  Was that the reason she wouldn’t trust him with the truth?

  She let him inside the front door, and he itched to pounce on her with questions, but the sight of the dark circles beneath her eyes made his gut clench.

  “You look wiped out, Taylor.”

  “I am. I’m going to bed now.”

  He caught her arm before she could disappear up the stairs. “And this time stay there. No more sneaking out.”

  Fear flickered in her eyes, and she shook her head, her chin quivering. “Don’t worry, Hayes. I won’t. I…I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t know if she was apologizing for sneaking out or lying about the P.I., and he didn’t ask. But if she tried to sneak out again, he’d handcuff her to the bed and park himself in the room with her.

  That thought triggered unbidden images he couldn’t pursue, but they fed his libido anyway, making him even more frustrated.

  Dammit. He needed to find the person after Taylor so he could get the hell out of Cantara Hills. He didn’t want this simmering attraction to her.

  Knowing he couldn’t do any more tonight, he booted up his computer and ran a search on the button. Image after image of various uniforms spilled onto the screen, and he scanned the pictures.

  Police uniforms, paramedics, firemen, postal and UPS workers, military uniforms, power company employees…the pictures continued. Finally an hour into the search he discovered a similar-looking button.

  He clicked on the icon to enlarge the image, frowning as he recognized the crisp navy color, the hat, the row of shiny round brass buttons with black etching along the lapel—a chauffeur uniform.

  His mind spun with jumbled thoughts of where he’d seen one like it before. The company that made it was based in Austin.

  His throat thickened as recognition dawned. Egan’s father, Walt, was Link Hathaway’s chauffeur and wore an identical uniform.

  But why would Walt be at a private investigator’s office?

  He wouldn’t….

  Perhaps he was covering for Link Hathaway. He was loyal to the man to a fault.

  No. It had to be someone else. Another chauffeur who wore the same type of uniform.

  But what if it wasn’t? Would forensics be able to lift a print? And if they found out it belonged to Walt, what motive would he have to kill Morris, or Taylor?

  He reached for the phone to call Egan, but decided to wait until he had some answers first. He couldn’t accuse Egan’s father without more proof. If he did, Egan would never forgive him.

  When the case was solved, he had to make amends with his friends. Taylor wouldn’t be a part of his life, but Egan and Brody had to be.

  They were his only family.

  TAYLOR CLIMBED IN THE SHOWER, desperately wishing she could wash away the images of the dead man’s face as she scrubbed the scent of death from her body. Barring an occasional funeral, she’d never seen a dead person before, not in the first few moments when life had been snatched from them. Especially a life lost to violence.

  Morris’s wide gray eyes had stared up at her, and as she crawled along the floor, she’d brushed his skin. It had felt warm yet oddly like ice. And the smell…

  Nausea gripped her, and she swallowed hard, willing it to pass as she leaned against the shower door and heaved for a breath. Hayes must see death all the time in his job. How did he handle it?

  The water grew cold, and she flipped it off, dried off and bundled in her bathrobe. The air conditioner whirred, sending a chill through her. She hurried to the closet, pulled out a satin gown and slid it on, then climbed into bed, dragging the covers over her.

  Exhausted, she closed her eyes but didn’t think she’d sleep. Yet she was so drained and spent physically and emotionally that she slowly drifted off. But her sleep was fitful, and she jerked awake sometime later with a scream.

  She’d felt a man’s hands sliding around her throat, his fingers tightening, strangling her. Then the image of Morris’s bloody body had floated in front of her, only his face faded to a dull black.

  Then hers replaced it.

  Chapter Nine

  At the sound of Taylor’s cry, fear bolted through Hayes, and he raced up the steps to her bedroom. His gun drawn, he pushed open the door and searched the darkness. Moonlight shimmered through the window, casting a golden glow on the room. Taylor bolted upright to a sitting position, gasping for a breath as she pressed her hands to her chest.

  “Taylor?”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely. “Bad dream.”

  Her voice caught, and his gut clenched. As angry as he’d been with her earlier, he’d recognized the shock in her eyes at the sight of Morris’s dead body.

  She was terrified but trying desperately not to show it.

  Forgetting all rational sense, he strode toward her, placed his gun on her nightstand, lowered himself onto the mattress and pulled her into his arms. She fell against him, a soft, satiny female puddle of sexuality and vulnerability, and his body hardened as he admitted to himself how much he’d
been wanting to hold her.

  And taste her and touch her.

  “I saw that man in my dreams, and all that blood,” she whispered, “and then it was me, my face, my blood…”

  “It’s not you,” he murmured.

  She touched her neck. “I could feel hands around my throat choking me.”

  “Shh, it’s over,” he murmured. Her hair tickled his cheek and he stroked her back, cradling her in his arms. “You’re safe now, Taylor. I’ve got you.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said on a sob. “First Kimberly dying, then someone attacking Victoria and Caroline.”

  And now her.

  Someone definitely had targeted the women in Cantara Hills. Victoria Kirkland had been targeted because she’d freed her client from charges of trying to kill Kimberly, and she’d helped Ranger McQuade investigate. Then Carlson Woodward had tried to kill Caroline. Did it all lead back to Kimberly’s murder, or was he right to suspect Miles or Kenneth Sutton? Although why would one of them murder the private investigator?

  Only Taylor could tell him.

  Or the man’s files. Tomorrow…

  The sweet scent of her bodywash and shampoo, something utterly feminine and sexy as hell, wafted to him, as she burrowed herself in his arms. “I don’t want to go back to sleep,” she said softly. “I’m afraid I’ll see that man’s eyes staring up at me. And his body was so cold….”

  She shivered against him, so fragile that every primal male bone in his body screamed to protect her, to erase her fears and pain and replace that terror with other sensations. Pleasurable ones. Like his hands stroking her. His mouth tasting hers.

  Just a taste.

  Not a relationship, but just one sweet taste of her delicious lips.

  “Don’t think about it,” he said in a husky whisper.

  “How do you do it, Hayes? How do you deal with death all the time?”

  “It’s a job,” he said. “I don’t get close or let it get personal.”

  Except it felt personal right now.

  Her breasts rose and fell, her soft mounds teasing his hard chest, eliciting wicked fantasies. His sex hardened, straining against his fly as he felt her curves beneath the softness of her gown. A gown that was so paper-thin that her nipples budding to life stirred his desires and made his breath catch.

  He had to leave. Remove himself from her presence before he did something foolish like kiss her.

  He started to pull away, but she clutched his shirt, then lifted her hands to cup his face. The rasp of his beard stubble sounded like sandpaper as her delicate fingers touched him, but he didn’t have the power to move.

  “Don’t go, Hayes. Stay with me.”

  He closed his eyes, hating himself and the fact that he wanted her. That he was too weak to deny her or himself a moment of passion.

  Still, somewhere he dredged up enough stamina to lift his hands and press them over hers. He meant to pry them loose, but instead she flicked out her tongue and traced it along the seam of his lips.

  “Taylor—”

  She shushed him this time by pressing her mouth to his jaw, then she nibbled her way to his mouth, and he opened for her, taking everything she offered as he claimed her mouth with his.

  TAYLOR KNEW SHE WAS PLAYING with fire, but she wanted to forget the horrible reality that had become her life. That her brother and friends were suspects and might be trying to hurt her. That tonight she had been touched by death again, and had escaped it herself by mere seconds. That an inch closer and that bullet would have pierced her heart and her blood would have been spilled across the floor, her life over.

  That tomorrow she had to tell Margaret she’d found her son, and that Hayes might find out and it would give him another reason to detest her and Margaret.

  For now, all she wanted to do was taste the sinfully sexy curve of his lips and feel his hard, tough body against her.

  His kiss consumed her, demanding and urgent with need, and her stomach fluttered with desire. He raked one hand through her hair, while the other one slid along her spine, pressing her more tightly against the manly planes of his sculpted body. He probed her lips apart with his tongue, slid it inside and teased her, showing no mercy as he thrust deeper inside her mouth.

  Heat speared her, making her nipples hard buds, tight, heavy, achy. She wanted his hands and mouth on her.

  Like a cat, she purred into his mouth and rubbed herself against him, stoking the fire burning between them. As if he sensed the depth of her need, his hand encased her, kneading her weight, and an intense hunger sizzled from her breasts to her womb, igniting hidden desires and enflaming her senses with heat.

  Desperate to strip him and feel his naked body gliding against hers, she lifted her hand to his chest and slowly unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He groaned, then trailed kisses along the column of her neck. She threw her head back in abandon, whispering that she wanted him, and he licked his way down her throat, then untied the ribbon at the top of her gown, parting the satin so he could close his mouth over her tight nipple. Searing fire raced along her bare flesh, his sucking spiking the flames of desire to an inferno.

  She dug her hands into his hair, holding him closer as he teased the bud with his tongue, sweeping his lips across her skin with nibbling bites that made her grow wet and warm and needy all over.

  She craved more.

  “Hayes…” She clawed at him, anxious, achy, throbbing for his full length to thrust inside her, stretching her, filling her, sating her.

  Greedily, she ripped at his shirt, sending buttons flying then ran her hands across his bare chest. He moved his hand to her thigh, and she groaned his name.

  “Please, Hayes, I need you….”

  Suddenly his cell phone trilled, the sound shrill and vibrating between them like a whistle signaling the end of an exciting train ride before the train had reached its destination.

  She caught his hand when he started to pull away, anxious that he ignore it and let them finish the ride together. “No, don’t stop, please, Hayes—”

  The phone trilled again, though, and he tore his mouth from her breast with a guttural groan, and looked up at her, his ragged breathing slicing the air between them as he checked the number.

  “Dammit, it’s your father.” He growled and stood, putting distance between them.

  “Don’t answer it,” Taylor whispered. “Come back to bed with me, Hayes. We can be good together.”

  She knew she sounded pathetic, and had never begged a man to make love to her. But she’d never wanted a man like she did Hayes.

  She ached all over, felt empty and hungry inside. Her gown lay open, her nipples tight and wet from his tongue, her breasts heavy mounds that needed more, her skin a burning flame that needed stoking, her mouth watering to taste his salty skin, to close her lips around his throbbing member and lave him with her tongue.

  He couldn’t leave her like this.

  But he did. He grabbed his gun, strode from the room, his boots pounding on the staircase as he charged from her bedroom away from her.

  HAYES CURSED, HIS BODY throbbing like the devil as he rushed down the stairs. His phone jangled again, and he yanked it from his belt and answered. “Keller.”

  “Yes, this is Lionel Landis. I apologize for calling so late, but I tried to reach Taylor earlier and there was no answer. Is she all right?”

  Hayes ground his teeth at the man’s formal tone. Taylor’s father would dismiss him if he knew what he’d been doing with his daughter. “Taylor is fine,” he said instead. In fact, she was more than fine. She was erotic as hell, and he wanted to run back up to her room, crawl in bed with her and make love to her until neither of them had the energy to walk.

  Landis cleared his throat. “And the investigation?”

  “We’re still working on it.”

  “Do you have any suspects, Keller?”

  Yes, your son, and Kenneth Sutton, who the man was probably buddy-buddy with. “I can’t discuss t
he details of the case, but I’ll let you know when we make an arrest.”

  “All right,” Landis said curtly. “But, Keller, you’d better take good care of my little girl. If anything happens to her, you’ll answer to me.”

  And Landis would use his power and money to make trouble for him. “Yes, sir,” he said through gritted teeth. As if he needed a reminder of the different stations between him and Landis’s precious daughter. “Don’t worry.”

  Landis hung up, and Hayes cursed and walked out back to the swimming pool for fresh air, but the image of Taylor floating facedown, near death, haunted him.

  He was here as her bodyguard. Not as her lover.

  He needed to have his ass kicked for forgetting for one moment that he was the hired hand, that sleeping with Taylor would be a big fat mistake.

  He lifted his hand to his badge. His badge was all that mattered. It was his life. The only reason he was in Cantara Hills was because Kimberly had been murdered and someone was after Taylor.

  He wished to hell he had that P.I.’s files tonight. He needed something to do to keep his mind off of what had happened between him and Taylor.

  Because her scent still lingered on his skin, her taste on his tongue, and he wanted more of her.

  TAYLOR WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, agitated and irritable. She’d felt cold and vulnerable when Hayes had stormed from her bed without looking back, and more than a little confused by his withdrawal. Normally when stressed, she’d take her frustrations out in the swimming pool, but the memory of the attack sent a shiver through her.

  Only Hayes could assuage this ache.

  And he had wanted her. His body had been hard and pumped, his frenzied hands and mouth as anxious for her as she had been for him.

  So why had he stopped?

  And why had she begged him not to?

  Because she was a fool. Hayes was a Texas Ranger, a man who didn’t get involved, who hated her lifestyle and friends. How many times and ways did he have to tell her that?