Branded by the Sheriff

by Delores Fossen

  He slowly opened his eyes and pegged her gaze. “I’m listening.” Though he was almost positive he wouldn’t like what he heard.

  Faith sat first. She eased into the chair as if it were fragile and might break. “Sixteen months ago, Sherry showed up at my apartment in Oklahoma. I hadn’t seen her in months, but she was pregnant and needed money. I gave her what cash I had, and when she left, I realized she’d stolen my wallet. It had my ID and driver’s license in it.”

  Beck didn’t say a word because he’d already guessed how this had played out.

  “The following day when Sherry went into labor, she used my name when she admitted herself to the hospital. She even put my name on Aubrey’s birth certificate. I didn’t know,” Faith quickly added. “Not until after she checked out of the hospital two days later. She broke into my apartment and left Aubrey and a letter on my bed.”

  “Hell,” he mumbled. He had guessed the part about Sherry being the birth mom. But not this. “She left a newborn alone?”

  Faith nodded and swallowed hard. “Aubrey was okay. Hungry, but okay. Needless to say, I was a little shaken when I realized what Sherry had done.”

  Beck leaned closer, staring at her from across the desk. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Because of the letter Sherry left. I have it locked away in a safety deposit box in Oklahoma if you want to read it for yourself. But Sherry told me in the letter that Aubrey would be in danger if her birth father found out she existed. ‘He’ll kill her,’ Sherry wrote. ‘You have to protect her. You can’t tell anyone or she’ll die.’” Faith shuddered. “I believed Sherry.”

  Yeah. Beck bet she had. He would have, too.

  “You covered for your sister, again, just like you did ten years ago outside the motel with Pete.”

  Faith nodded. “I had to protect Aubrey. I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her.”

  He understood that, too.

  Beck wanted to be angry with Faith. He hated being lied to. He hated that she hadn’t trusted him with something this important. But if their situations had been reversed, he might have done the same thing. All he had to do was look at the things he’d done to protect his own family.

  “I’m sorry I let you believe she was mine.” Faith swiped away a tear that slid down her cheek. “But she is mine, in every way that counts.”

  He didn’t want to deal with Aubrey’s paternity just yet. But he had to find out if this was connected to the case.

  “Nolan could be the father,” Beck said more to himself than to Faith. “But if he knew, he would have already tried to use her to get money.”

  Faith mumbled an agreement. “Sherry told me she’d kept her pregnancy a secret. That no one knew, except our mother and Darin. She left Austin when she starting showing and stayed in Dallas until the day before she came to see me.”

  Beck wasn’t sure he could take Sherry’s account at face value, but something must have happened to make her want to hide the pregnancy and her child. Or maybe the woman simply didn’t want to play mother and conned Faith with that sob story. It felt real.

  “If Aubrey’s father is someone other than Nolan, he hasn’t made any contact with me,” Faith continued. “And if he’d talked to Sherry, she probably would have let me know. She was so worried about him finding out about Aubrey.”

  Beck thought that through. If Aubrey’s birth father was the person responsible for the attempt to kill Faith, then why had he shot at her? If he wanted something—money, for instance—then why hadn’t he gotten in touch with her so he could blackmail her?

  “I don’t think this is connected to the case,” she added, her voice practically a whisper now.

  “Maybe not, but we need to know for sure.”

  She shook her head and looked more than a little alarmed. “How can we do that without endangering Aubrey?”

  “Do you have something of hers that would have her DNA on it?”

  She stood, and he could see the pulse pounding on her throat. “I have her hairbrush in my purse, but I don’t want her DNA tested. I believed Sherry when she said Aubrey could be in danger.”

  “I’m taking that threat seriously, too. But we have to know who Aubrey’s father is. He could have killed Sherry and your mother. We have to rule him out as a suspect. Or else find him and arrest him.”

  “I know.” A moment later she repeated it, and the fear and frustration made her voice ragged. “Sherry often had affairs with married men.”

  “And one of those men might not want the world to know he has a child.” Beck stood, too, and walked closer to her. “So here’s what we do. I’ll package the hairbrush myself so that no one, including my deputies, will see it. Then I’ll seal it and send it to the lab in Austin. I’ll ask them to compare the DNA to Nolan’s. And to mine.”

  Her eyes widened. “Yours?”

  He obviously needed to explain this. “I’ll ask Sgt. Caldwell to give the results only to me. But I want him to leak information that he did some DNA testing and that I’m Aubrey’s father.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened even more.

  From the moment the idea had popped into his head, he figured she’d be shocked. Still, this was a solution. Time would tell if the solution was a successful one. “If everyone believes I’m Aubrey’s father, that’ll stop Nolan or anyone else from being concerned that they’ve produced an unwanted heir.”

  With her eyes still wide, she shook her head. “Beck, this could backfire. What happens when your family finds out?”

  Oh, they would find out. No way to get around that. “They won’t be happy about it, but it doesn’t matter. This will keep Aubrey safe.”

  He hoped.

  But there was another reason he wanted his DNA compared to Aubrey’s. Beck was positive he wasn’t the little girl’s biological father, but he couldn’t say the same for his brother. Or even his own father.

  If Aubrey was his niece or his half-sister, then the test would prove it.

  And if Aubrey was the primary motive for murder, that might mean there was a killer in his family.

  * * *

  FROM WHERE IT LAY on the coffee table, Beck’s cell phone softly beeped again. An indication that he had voice mail. He didn’t get up from the sofa and check it. Didn’t need to. He’d already looked at the caller ID and knew the voice mails were from his father and brother.

  He did check his watch though. It’d been six hours since he told Sgt. McKinney to get out the word that Beck was Aubrey’s father. To make the info flow a little faster, Beck had told his deputy, Corey, the same necessary lie. The Rangers knew the truth. Corey didn’t. He hoped Corey had leaked the little bombshell all over town, especially since Beck hadn’t said anything about keeping it a secret.

  Those two calls wouldn’t be the only attention he’d get from his family. If he didn’t answer their calls, they’d drop by for a visit—maybe even tonight. This time though, Beck had put the slide lock on. His father wouldn’t be able to just walk inside as he’d done that morning. He’d also set the security system so if anyone tried to get in through any of the doors, the alarm would sound. Hopefully no one in his family would be desperate enough to try to crawl through a window.

  He glanced at the numbers he’d written down when the bank manager had called him just minutes earlier. It was one of two other calls that brought bad news. Beck wasn’t sure what to do about the second, but as for the first, he needed to investigate the bank figures from his father’s account. Those numbers added up to trouble. They were yet another piece of a puzzle that was starting to feel very disturbing.

  “Mommy misses you so much,” he heard Faith say.

  She was sitting on one of the chairs in the family room, just a few feet from him, with her phone pressed to her ear. She had her fingers wound in her hair and was doing some frequent chewing on her bottom lip. She was obviously talking to Aubrey, and it was the third call she’d made since the Ranger, Marita, Tracy and Aubrey had arrived at the safe house.
>
  It wouldn’t be the last.

  This separation was causing her a lot of grief. Grief that Beck felt as well. But this arrangement was necessary. And hopefully only temporary. Once he’d caught the killer, then Faith could bring Aubrey home.

  Wherever home was.

  He doubted she could go back to her house, not with the attic death calendar and the shooting incident.

  Faith got up from the chair and made her way to him. She held out the phone. “I thought you’d want to tell Aubrey ‘Good night.’”

  He did, but Beck knew all of this was drawing him closer and closer to a child that he should be backing away from. He needed to stay distanced and objective.

  But he took the phone anyway. “Hi, Aubrey,” he told her.

  She answered back with her usual “’i” and babbled something he didn’t understand, but Beck didn’t need to understand the baby words to know that Aubrey was confused. She was probably wondering why her mother wasn’t there to tuck her into bed.

  “Your mommy will be there soon,” he added.

  The next syllables he understood. She strung some Da-da-da’s together. Such simple sounds. Sounds Aubrey didn’t even comprehend, but they were powerful.

  “Good night,” he said and handed the phone back to Faith.

  “Good night,” she repeated to Aubrey. “I love you.”

  Faith hung up, stood there and blew out a long breath. “It’s hard to be away from her.”

  Beck settled for a “yeah.”

  She put her phone on the coffee table next to his and then looked around as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. “I cringe when I think of the prenatal care Sherry would have gotten when she was pregnant. She wouldn’t have taken care of herself. But thankfully, Aubrey turned out just fine.”

  “You’ve done a good job with her. You’re a good mother, Faith.”

  Her eyes came to his. “I’m sorry about lying to you. For what it’s worth, I’d planned to tell you today.”

  He believed her. It riled him initially, but ultimately brought them closer.

  Like now.

  She stood there, just a few feet away, wearing dark jeans and a sapphire-blue stretch top, something she’d put on after showering when they’d returned from his office. Her hair was loose, falling in slight curls past her shoulder.

  She looked like the answer to a few of his hot fantasies.

  His body wanted him to act on the fantasies, to haul her onto his lap so he could kiss her hard and long. Of course, because this was his fantasy, the kiss would be just the beginning.

  And all that energy would be misplaced because he needed to do everything to make sure there wasn’t another attempt on her life.

  Forcing his mind off her body, he picked up copies of the three blackmail letters and spread them out over the coffee table so that Faith could see them. “With everything else that’s happened today, I haven’t had a chance to go over these. They could be important.”

  She made a sound of agreement, sat down on the floor near his feet and picked up the first one. “I find it interesting that Sherry sent the letters to both your father and brother. By doing so, she implicates both, which means she could have had a recent affair with either of them.”

  “Or neither.”

  Faith didn’t look offended by that. She stayed quiet a moment, apparently giving that some thought. “True, but then why would she think she could get money from them unless there’d been some kind of inappropriate relationship? Because Nicole hated Sherry so much and blamed her for her emotional problems, an affair with either would have upset her. Both Roy and Pete would have wanted to prevent Nicole from finding out.”

  She paused, and her gaze snapped to his. Her eyes widened. “The DNA tests,” she said. “You wanted to compare Aubrey’s DNA to yours so you’d know if Roy or Pete is Aubrey’s father.”

  He nodded.

  “Beck, this could be a nasty mess if one of them is.”

  He nodded again.

  “Oh, mercy.” She dropped the letter on the table and tunneled her hands through the sides of her hair again. “What happens if it’s true, if one of them is a DNA match?”

  “Then I’ll deal with it.” Which was his way of saying that he didn’t know what he’d do. Still, he and Faith had to know the truth, and this was one way of getting it. DNA could also exclude his relatives and hone right in on Nolan.

  Shaking her head, she leaped up from the floor. “I’m not giving up custody. I’ve raised Aubrey since birth. I love her—”

  “You’re not going to lose her,” Beck promised, though he had no idea how he’d keep that promise. If necessary, he’d just continue the lie that he was Aubrey’s father.

  He felt as if he were anyway.

  Because he was losing focus again, Beck forced himself to look at the letters. “The third letter is different from the other two,” he continued.

  It took her a moment to regain her composure, but then she glanced at all three letters. “Yes. Sherry asks for more money in the third one. Maybe because Nolan pressed her for more. Ironic, since his car was probably worth less than a thousand bucks. He would have tried to get everything he could from her, all the while threatening to go to the police to report her for car theft. With her priors, she would have gone to jail.”

  That made sense, but he wasn’t sure that the rest of it did. “Why would Sherry have typed the letters, especially since she put her name on them, visited my father and told him what she wanted? These letters are physical evidence and prove attempted extortion.”

  Faith lifted her shoulder. “Who knows why Sherry did what she did. Maybe she thought she could bluff her way out of extortion charges if she was arrested. She could claim she didn’t type the letters.” Faith paused. “You think someone else did?”

  Now it was Beck’s turn to shrug. But he also stood so he could deliver this news when they were closer to eye level. “The bank manager called when you were on the phone with Aubrey. It took some doing, but he found that my father had taken money from his various investment accounts. A little here, a little there, but it all added up to ten grand.”

  She walked closer and stopped right in front of him. “That’s the exact amount Sherry was demanding in the first two letters.”

  “Yes. And she might have gotten it.” His father might have paid Sherry off. He’d deal with that later, after he’d put more of this together.

  “But if your father gave her the money, then why the third letter?” Faith asked.

  “My theory is that someone else might have continued the blackmailing scheme.”

  “You mean Nolan.” She didn’t hesitate.

  Neither did he. “Or your brother. Or even your mother. All it would have taken is knowledge of Sherry’s plan and a computer to type the letters.”

  She bobbed her head, took another deep breath. “Nolan could have done this, and when Sherry threatened to expose him, he could have killed her.”

  That’s what Beck thought, too. Nolan could have killed Sherry’s mother if the money had been left with her. She would have known Nolan had a part in the scheme.

  Because he was watching her, he saw Faith go still. “Is Nolan still being held at the sheriff’s office?”

  Hell. He hated to tell her this. “No. His lawyer showed up, and he was released about a half hour ago.”

  “I see.” The words were calm enough, but the emotion was there in her expression and in her body.

  “If I can get just one person at the Moonlight Bar to say they saw Nolan leave early on any of the three nights in question, then I should have enough to ask the DA to take this to a grand jury.”

  “In the meantime, Nolan is a free man. And he might stay that way. There’s enough reasonable doubt, especially with the security disk of Darin in that barn.”

  Her voice didn’t crack. Her eyes didn’t water. He didn’t touch her, but he did move closer.

  “Some homecoming,” she mumbled. She tried to smile at him, bu
t it turned into a stare that ran the gamut of emotions. “But at least we’re on the same side.”

  Oh, yeah. And more. They’d moved from being enemies to being comrades. To being…something else that Beck knew he should avoid.

  But he didn’t.

  When Faith stepped closer, he didn’t step back. He just watched her as she reached out and touched his arm lightly with the tip of her fingers.

  “How badly would this screw things up?” she asked.

  “Bad,” he assured her.

  She nodded. Didn’t step back. She didn’t take her caressing fingers from his arm.

  “I’m not good at this.” Her voice dropped to a silky whisper. “But I’ll bet you are.”

  Beck couldn’t help it. He smiled.

  And reached for her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Beck’s mouth came to hers, and just like that, Faith melted. The intimate touch, the gentle I’m-in-control-here pressure of his lips. The heat. They all combined to create a kiss that went straight through her.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. The kiss claimed her, just as Beck did when he bent his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. The sweet assault continued, and Faith could only hang on for the ride.

  Or so she thought.

  But then he stopped and eased back just a bit. That’s when Faith realized her heart was pumping as if she were starved for air. She blamed it on the intense heat Beck had created with his kiss.

  “You need a minute to rethink this?” he asked.

  Did she?

  Beck stood there, waiting. Breathing hard as well. Looking at her.

  Faith looked at him, too. At those sizzling blue eyes. At that strong, ruggedly hot face. And she looked at his body. Oh, his body. That was creating more firestorms inside her.

  Because her right hand was already on his chest, she slid it lower and along the way felt his muscles respond. They jerked and jolted beneath her touch. It was amazing that she could do that to him.

  Beck didn’t touch her. He stood there with his intense eyes focused on her and his body heat sending out that musky male scent that aroused her almost as much as his kiss had done.