by Lisa Childs
She waited for him to sing again, but he wouldn’t want to wake Connor. He only wanted to protect him.
Like he only wanted to protect her.
She was the one who wanted more—despite knowing better, despite knowing that she was just like her mother. Just like beautiful Georgia, Rae had a habit of picking men who couldn’t do permanence.
Only temporary.
Like Forrest was only temporarily working with the Whisperwood Police Department. Once the killer was caught, he would leave. Either return to Austin or continue volunteering with the Cowboy Heroes, going wherever they were sent.
But he was here now.
With her son.
Rae crawled out of bed and pulled on her T-shirt and her robe. She needed to protect herself from Forrest, from her feelings for him. But despite the couple of layers of fabric, she still felt naked, like he could see straight through everything, right to her heart.
She loved him.
And if she found him holding Connor as gently as he had in the past, she knew he would see that love on her face. Maybe she should just stay in bed, pretending to sleep, so that he wouldn’t know how much he meant to her.
But now a cry emanated from the speaker. Connor had awakened, but the voice that murmured something to him wasn’t Forrest’s.
She froze with fear for just a second before she rushed from her room. Would she get to the nursery in time to save her son?
And what had happened to Forrest?
Chapter 21
Pain throbbed at his temple, pounding at Forrest to wake up. But it wasn’t just the pain hammering at him; his heart pounded with fear. He’d left Rae and Connor unprotected. After dragging his eyes open, he blinked away the blackness. Then he pushed his way up from the ground. The gun was in his hand yet. The intruder hadn’t wrested it away from him. But his pocket had been turned inside out, and the key was gone.
Cursing, Forrest ran toward the house. His leg throbbed like his head, but he ignored the pain as he pushed himself. The back door stood open, like the intruder had been in a hurry to get inside. So was Forrest.
He didn’t even take time to call out to the unit at the road. They would be checking in soon enough, since he hadn’t called them. But he didn’t want to waste a moment in getting to Rae and Connor.
Then her scream rang out. And he knew he was already too late. She stood in the doorway to the nursery, with a hand clasped over her mouth as if she wanted to take back her scream.
Connor echoed it as he cried out.
He was alive.
They were both alive.
But they were clearly in danger. Forrest rushed up behind Rae and then pulled her away from the door. Shielding her with his body, he burst into the nursery.
A man held the screaming baby even more awkwardly than Forrest had held him. But maybe that was because he didn’t just hold the baby; he also held a pipe that was smeared with blood. Forrest’s blood probably. Some trailed from his temple, down the side of his face.
And Officer Baker’s...
Forrest cursed and tightened his grasp on his gun. “Put the baby back in the crib,” he said. “Right now.” He stared down the barrel at the man’s face, which looked vaguely familiar. Where the hell had he seen him before?
It didn’t matter now, though. Nothing mattered but saving Connor. Would he be hurt if Forrest shot the man?
Rae must have thought so, because she grabbed Forrest’s arm and pleaded, “Don’t shoot.”
Forrest wanted to protect the baby, too, desperately—almost as if he was Connor’s father. “Put him down,” he ordered the man. “Put him down or I will shoot you.”
“Don’t,” Rae pleaded again. “He’s my dad.”
That was why he’d looked vaguely familiar. Years had passed—hard years—since the photographs Forrest had seen in the old album had been taken, but he had the same bone structure beneath the wrinkles and dark circles. He was even leaner than he’d been then, and a hell of a lot more desperate-looking.
So desperate that Forrest still didn’t trust him with the baby. Even knowing now that he was Connor’s grandfather, Forrest believed he still might hurt the baby. To hurt Rae?
Hadn’t he already hurt her enough?
“Put down the baby,” Forrest said again as he kept the gun barrel trained on the man.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Beau Lemmon said, as if he’d read Forrest’s mind or maybe the fear on his face.
“Just like you didn’t hurt me or Officer Baker with that damn pipe you’re holding?” he asked.
Rae gasped, and her fingers slipped from Forrest’s arm. She must have just realized what her father was, the one who’d been threatening her all this time.
The one who’d already tried once to kill Forrest before trying again tonight.
* * *
Rae hadn’t been able to look away from her father since first finding him in the nursery, holding his grandson. But now she looked at Forrest, at the blood running down the side of his face. Her father had done that?
And he’d hurt the young officer, as well?
And had driven Forrest off the road, with Connor in the back seat?
She’d been angry with her father for years for leaving her mother and her. But what rushed through her now was so much more than anger. It was hot and vicious and a rage that nearly blinded her with its intensity. She edged around Forrest and rushed across the nursery.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” she yelled at her father as she reached for her son.
He released him into her arms. Not that she would have given him a choice. She didn’t want him touching her baby. Ever. But especially not now, with that pipe in his hand.
“What were you going to do to him?” she asked, her heart cracking with fear. “Were you going to kill my child? Your grandchild? What kind of monster are you?”
“A dangerous one,” Forrest answered for him as he stepped between them again, using his body—his already battered body—to shield her and her baby.
Her father could have killed him. He’d nearly killed the cop.
Her father...
Her stomach churned with the realization. And she’d been upset when he’d deserted her and her mother.
Obviously they’d been better off—and safer—without him in their lives.
“Get out!” she told him. “Get out of here. Now!”
“He can’t leave,” Forrest corrected her. “Not on his own. He needs to go to jail.” And he began reading him his rights.
But her father didn’t take his advice; he didn’t remain silent. “No. You don’t understand. You’re in danger. You’re all in danger.”
Forrest snorted. “Yeah, from you.” And with his free hand, he reached for the bloody pipe. “Your fingerprints are going to be all over this. And if you hadn’t burned the van you stole to run me and Connor off the road, your fingerprints would have been all over that, too. You’re going to jail.”
“Then you won’t catch the killer,” Beau said. “And nobody will be safe until he’s caught.”
Forrest, standing between them, tensed.
“You have to get Rae and the baby out of here,” Beau continued. “They’re not safe here. Once I’m in jail, he’ll just send someone else after them. After you...” He glanced around as if he could hear them coming. “Or he’ll take care of you himself—just like he did those women.”
“Who is it?” Forrest asked, but he sounded skeptical, as if he was just humoring her father.
Beau shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Forrest snorted and then continued reading him the Miranda rights.
Beau held up his hands. “I’m telling the truth. He bought out my gambling debts. He owns me. That’s why I was—”
“Terrifying your own daughter?” Forrest finished for him.
<
br /> “I was trying to save her,” Beau said. “Trying to warn her.”
“With threats?” Forrest asked.
“Those weren’t for her,” Beau said. “They were for me. Whoever this killer is—he sent me the notes, threatening my kid. Threatening Rae.”
Anger coursed through her again. “You’re the one who threatened me. Who broke in here—”
“Into my own house?” he asked. “That’s not breaking and entering.”
“It’s not your house,” she corrected him. “Mom left it to me. Do you even know she’s gone? That the cancer came back? Do you even care?” She didn’t know why she asked; it was clear that he didn’t, or he never would have left. Her mother had deserved better. She deserved better. “Get him out of here,” she told Forrest.
But the detective hesitated. “How did the person get these notes to you? How do you not know who the killer is?”
Beau pushed a hand through his thin gray hair. “I found the notes under my motel-room door, and the calls came from an unknown number.”
“Did you recognize the voice?” Forrest asked.
He shook his head.
“Why are you talking to him?” Rae asked. She just wanted the man gone, like he’d been for all of these years, when she’d actually needed him.
She didn’t need him now.
And she would make sure she never needed anyone else. But Connor...
She rocked the crying baby in her arms. He was all she needed.
“He could have killed me,” Forrest said. “After he knocked me out, he could have finished me off. He could have finished off Officer Baker, too.”
He didn’t think her father was a killer. The pressure on her heart eased slightly. She didn’t want to believe he was a killer either. She didn’t want to believe that she and Connor had that in their DNA.
But...
“The body that was buried in the backyard...” she murmured. “Who was she?”
Her father shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“But you dug it up,” Forrest guessed.
“I knew it was there,” he admitted.
Rae shuddered. She’d grown up in this house, played in that yard, and her father had allowed it all, knowing that a corpse had been buried there.
“We’ll talk more once I get you down to lockup,” Forrest said. Maybe he wanted to spare her the gory details.
But she didn’t need his protection from the truth. Just from danger.
“If you lock me up, I won’t be able to help you,” Beau said. “And she won’t be safe until the killer is caught.”
“You don’t know who it is,” Forrest reminded him. “So you can’t help me.”
“I can find out,” Beau offered. “I can bring him to you.”
Forrest shook his head. “You think I’m going to trust you?”
“You want to keep them safe, too,” Beau said. “You know that’s not possible until the killer is caught.”
“Stop using me!” Rae said. “You’ve never given a damn about me or about my mother. Why are you pretending to care now?”
“I always cared,” Beau said. “That’s why I left. I was more a hindrance than a help to both of you. Georgia deserved better, and so do you.” He looked at Forrest now, as if he was wondering if Forrest was worthy of her. “If you care about her at all, you’d get her the hell out of here. You’d do whatever was necessary to keep her and the baby safe—even trust me.”
She reached out and touched Forrest’s arm again, but not to pull down the gun he was pointing at her father. “Don’t,” she advised. “Don’t trust him.”
And just as she said it, her father pounced. He pulled the pipe from Forrest’s hand and swung it at his head. A gun went off, the blast deafening.
Connor, who had been crying, suddenly stopped. Was he just in shock? Or had he been hit?
With the adrenaline coursing through Rae, she might have been hit, too, and just didn’t realize it yet. She had no idea what was going on—as wood cracked and glass broke—and the room exploded with people and chaos.
She just held her son closely, using her body to shield his as Forrest had the two of them. If anyone had been hit, it would have been Forrest.
He had already been hurt, bleeding, wounded...
Because of her father.
All of the years she’d spent wishing he would come back haunted her now. She would have been happier and safer had she never seen him again.
And what about Forrest?
Was he all right?
Chapter 22
How the hell had he gotten away?
Forrest’s arm ached from where the pipe had struck him, but ignoring the pain, he tightened his grasp on the steering wheel.
If only he hadn’t let Rae distract him.
But it hadn’t been just Rae. An engine roaring down the driveway had drawn his attention away from Beau Lemmon, as well. All that talk of her still being in danger. Of another killer.
Forrest thought that whoever was coming was a threat, not his backup. But it had been the other officers who’d broken down the front door and burst into the house.
By the time they’d arrived, it had already been too late. Beau Lemmon had gotten away. After striking him with the pipe and making the gun go off, the older man had hurled himself out the nursery window.
Forrest cursed himself for not slapping cuffs immediately on the guy’s wrists and taking him off to jail. But what he’d been saying...
It had made sense.
“You really think there’s someone else?” Rae asked. “That he’s not the killer?”
He glanced across the console to where she sat in the passenger’s seat, with her arms wrapped around herself as if that was all that held her together. She looked at him with a faint flicker of hope in her dark eyes.
She needed to believe this.
Needed to believe in something.
“If he was a killer, I would be dead,” Forrest said. His head and arm hurt damn badly, though, but she didn’t need to know that.
She needed to know her father wasn’t the monster she’d accused him of being.
“But he drove you off the road and hit you over the head,” she reminded him. Needlessly.
Forrest wasn’t about to forget or forgive what Beau Lemmon had done to him and the young officer. “But I think he was acting on someone else’s orders,” Forrest admitted. “Just like he said.”
“That someone bought out his debt and was using it to control him?” she asked, with skepticism in her soft voice.
She deserved to know the truth. “I checked into your father,” Forrest said. “And he’s done some desperate things in the past to pay back his debts.”
She gasped. “Murder?”
“No,” he said. “Petty stuff. Breaking and entering. Stealing.”
“That might be petty to you,” she said. “But not to me. And his hurting people...” She reached across the console then and brushed her fingertips over the lump on his forearm. “Are you okay?”
He glanced at her again, at her face as she peered up at him, at the wound on his temple. She was so damn beautiful—even with as upset as she was.
“I’m fine,” he said, not wanting her to worry about him. He was worried, though. And he kept glancing into the rearview mirror. He had a police escort in front of him and another behind, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. He might have been better able to spot and lose a tailing vehicle on his own.
Not that he’d lost Beau Lemmon that day he’d dropped Rae at work. Beau was damn good at following. Was he behind them now? Or was he doing what he’d promised? Was he trying to find out the identity of the killer?
Maybe that was why Forrest hadn’t gone out the window after him. Of course he’d had to make sure that the people breaking into the house wer
en’t a threat to Rae and Connor. But once they’d identified themselves, he hadn’t chased after Beau as fast as he could have.
Despite all of the years the man had been gone, he knew the property well. So well that he must have had a place on it where he could hide from them.
That was why Forrest had insisted Rae pack up Connor and leave. And this time, staring at the broken window and the splintered doorjamb of her son’s room, she had just nodded in agreement. Connor slept in his carrier in the back seat, with a couple bags next to him.
“Are you okay?” he asked Rae.
She jerked her head in a sharp nod. “I told you I didn’t get hurt.”
After the gun had gone off, she and Connor had seemed to go into shock. The blast had been loud, though.
He flinched, regretting that he hadn’t put the safety back on, but he hadn’t trusted her father. And with good reason.
Over the course of his career, Forrest had met a lot of desperate people, but Beau Lemmon might have been the most desperate of them all. As desperate as he was, though, he hadn’t killed.
Yet.
It was hard to say if he could be driven to it, though. For Rae—to keep her safe—he might have actually done it.
“I’m not talking about physically,” Forrest said.
She uttered a ragged-sounding sigh. “It was a shock to see him again.”
Especially the way she’d seen him—in the nursery, holding her son and a bloody pipe. Maybe the image had played through her mind again, because she shuddered.
“He’s long gone now,” she murmured.
“I’ll find him,” Forrest assured her.
“To put him in jail,” she said.
He couldn’t tell if that upset her or not. “Don’t you want me to arrest him?”
“Jail might be the safest place for him,” she admitted. “It might save him from himself.”
“Gambling is an addiction,” he said.
She sucked in a breath, drawing his attention back to her. She stared at him, her brown eyes wide and warm with...
