Gunfire on the Ranch Read online

  Ten years ago, he was a suspect in her parents’ murder. Now he’s back to protect the family he never knew he had.

  DEA agent Theo Canton may have been the town bad boy but murder was never his MO. Too bad his girlfriend at the time didn’t see it that way. Now Ivy Beckett isn’t just the girl who broke his heart—she’s the target of a killer. Theo vows to keep the blue-eyed beauty safe, even as he meets the son she never told him about. But will it be enough to catch the perp and give their family a second chance?

  From the moment they’d come back to the ranch, Theo had known an attack was possible. Likely, even.

  But it still gave him an adrenaline spike to see that weapon now pointed at Gabriel’s house.

  Ivy’s breathing was already way too fast, and Theo considered trying to do something to help her level it. But if he pulled her into his arms now, it would definitely be a distraction, and he needed to keep his attention on the rifle.

  It was already dark, but there was enough of a moon to see the light glint off the barrel. Enough to see, too, when the barrel shifted just a little, and Theo spotted the scope on it.

  “A shot from there would be able to make it here,” she said.

  It wasn’t a question. She knew it could. But he hated to hear the slight tremble in her voice.

  Theo watched as the barrel shifted again, and he steeled himself for what he figured would come next. He didn’t have to wait long.

  The gunman fired.

  GUNFIRE ON

  THE RANCH

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Delores Fossen

  Delores Fossen, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over fifty novels, with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received a Booksellers’ Best Award and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She was also a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. You can contact the author through her website at www.deloresfossen.com.

  Books by Delores Fossen

  Harlequin Intrigue

  Blue River Ranch

  Always a Lawman

  Gunfire on the Ranch

  The Lawmen of

  Silver Creek Ranch

  Grayson

  Dade

  Nate

  Kade

  Gage

  Mason

  Josh

  Sawyer

  Landon

  Holden

  HQN Books

  The McCord Brothers

  What Happens on the Ranch (ebook novella)

  Texas on My Mind

  Cowboy Trouble (ebook novella)

  Lone Star Nights

  Cowboy Underneath It All (ebook novella)

  Blame It on the Cowboy

  A Wrangler’s Creek Novel

  Lone Star Cowboy (ebook novella)

  Those Texas Nights

  One Good Cowboy (ebook novella)

  No Getting Over a Cowboy

  Just Like a Cowboy (ebook novella)

  Branded as Trouble

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  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  DEA agent Theo Canton—Ten years ago he left his hometown, but after hearing a hit man has targeted his old flame, Ivy Beckett, Theo returns to the Blue River Ranch to protect her. He soon learns Ivy has been keeping a secret from him.

  Ivy Beckett—After her parents were brutally murdered and Theo and she parted ways, Ivy, too, left Blue River. Her return was supposed to be a short one, to attend her brother’s wedding, but it becomes a dangerous nightmare for Ivy and her son.

  Nathan Beckett—Ivy’s nine-year-old son, who could get caught in the crosshairs of a killer.

  Wesley Sanford—Theo’s fellow DEA agent who volunteers to help him find the person who’s trying to kill Ivy, but Wesley might have his own agenda.

  Lacey Vogel—Ivy’s adult stepdaughter. She’s furious that her late father left his estate to Ivy and not her. Just how far would she go to get back at Ivy?

  August Canton—Theo’s uncle. His brother, Travis, is in jail for murdering Ivy’s parents, and August would do anything to clear his brother’s name.

  Sheriff Gabriel Beckett—He’s not only the head of Blue River Ranch, he’s also the law in his hometown, and he has no intention of letting a killer get to his sister—or allowing Theo to break her heart again.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Excerpt from Into the Night by Cynthia Eden

  Chapter One

  Theo Canton wished there was a better way to stop a killer. Anything other than coming here to the Beckett Ranch to disrupt wedding plans. But if his intel was right, there could be another murder—tonight.

  Maybe Ivy Beckett’s murder.

  Hell, maybe her entire family and Theo’s sister, since they would possibly all be under the same roof for the ceremony. A ceremony that was to take place tomorrow.

  Theo definitely didn’t want a repeat of what had happened ten years ago when two people died at the hands of a killer. Just the thought of it put a knot in his stomach, along with bringing back old memories. He had to shove those memories aside, though, because they would only cause him to lose focus.

  He had enough Beckett blood on his hands without adding more.

  Theo took the final turn to the ranch and spotted the decorations already on the pasture fences. Blue satin ribbon flapping in the hot May breeze. There were no ranch hands out and about. No signs of a killer, either, but the snake could already be there, waiting to strike.

  His phone buzzed, and he saw the name flash on the screen. Wesley Sanford, a fellow DEA agent who’d alerted Theo that there could be a problem, that a killer could be headed to the ranch. Theo kept his attention on the road, on his surroundings, too, but he hit the answer button to put the call on speaker.

  “Anything?” Wesley asked right away.

  “No, not yet. How about you?”

  “I’ll be at the Blue River sheriff’s office in just a couple of minutes. I’ll tell the deputies what’s going on. I might even get the chance to speak to Gabriel himself.”

  Gabriel, the sheriff of the ranching town of Blue River as well as Ivy’s brother. Well, one of them, anyway. Her other brother, Jameson, was a Texas Ranger.

  “But I’m guessing that the sheriff won’t be working this late the night before his wedding?” Wesley added.

  Theo had no idea. He hadn’t kept up with news on the Becketts. They were more of those old memories, and wounds, that he hadn’t wanted in his life. Besides, the Becketts wouldn’t want him keeping up with them. Or even want him around, for that matter. They’d made that crystal clear ten years ago. Theo had had no choice but to come tonight, though. Once the danger was over, however, he’d get out of there as fast as he had a decade ago.

  “If Gabriel is at his office,” Theo told Wesley, “remember not to say anything in the police station. Take h
im outside to talk.” If their criminal informant had been right, the killer could have managed to plant a bug in the building. And in the sheriff’s house. “I don’t want this clown to know we’re onto him. I want to catch him.”

  Wesley hadn’t especially needed that reminder, but the stakes were too high for either of them to make a mistake. The last time Theo had made a mistake with the Becketts, Ivy’s parents had been murdered. Maybe by this same killer who was after them now.

  Or maybe by Theo’s own father.

  But if his father had actually been the murderer ten years ago, then tonight Theo was dealing with a copycat. Because his father was miles away behind bars in a maximum-security prison. Still, a copycat could be just as lethal as the original one had been.

  Too bad Theo couldn’t just sound the alarm and alert Ivy’s brothers and the ranch hands, but that possible bug in Gabriel’s house meant the only secure way for Theo to contact the Becketts was outside, face-to-face.

  “Whether the sheriff is here or not, I’ll let someone know there might be a bug,” Wesley assured him. “Call me when you can.”

  Theo hit the end-call button on his phone just as he reached the top of the hill, and the ranch house came into view. Well, one of the houses, anyway. From what he’d learned, there were now four on the grounds. One for Gabriel. Another belonging to Jameson. The third was one Gabriel’s deputy and longtime friend, Cameron Doran, had built.

  It was the fourth house, though, that contained the bad memories.

  Because that was where Ivy’s parents had been murdered. No one lived there and hadn’t since, well, since that night.

  According to the quick check Theo had done before he’d left for Blue River, Ivy’s house was hours away in a rural area near Houston. Apparently, Theo wasn’t the only one who’d left Blue River after the murders.

  Other than her address, there hadn’t been a lot of info to find on Ivy, though she had listed herself as widowed on the tax documents for her small ranch. So she’d not only moved on physically but also emotionally with another man she’d married and lost. Theo felt a hit of the jealousy before he quickly reined it in. Ivy wasn’t his, hadn’t been for a long time, so of course she had moved on. That’s what normal people did.

  Theo hadn’t considered himself normal in a while now.

  He stopped his truck beneath a cluster of trees only about twenty yards from Gabriel’s house. Theo drew his gun and made his way to the side of the wraparound porch. There were plenty of shrubs where he could hide and have a line of sight to all four houses. However, he’d barely gotten into position when he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

  “Drop your gun,” someone snapped.

  Hell. How had a person managed to get so close without him noticing? And it wasn’t just any ordinary someone, either. Theo recognized that voice even after all these years.

  Ivy.

  He turned, slowly, and he spotted her at the back corner of the house. Thanks to the light coming from one of the windows, he had no trouble seeing her face.

  And the rifle she was pointing at him.

  Apparently, she had no trouble seeing him, either, because she whispered his name on a rise of breath. What she didn’t do was lower her weapon.

  Theo said her name, and it had far more emotion in it than he wanted. Of course, any drop of emotion was too much right now, since he didn’t want their past playing into this. She was his ex-lover, emphasis on the ex. All he wanted now was to do his job and get the heck out of there.

  Ivy didn’t say anything else, but she started walking toward him. Her attention volleyed between his face and his gun, which he lowered to his side.

  “I was getting something from Gabriel’s office when I glanced out the window and saw you,” she finally said. “We didn’t expect you. Judging from the way you were sneaking around, you didn’t want us to see you.”

  No, he hadn’t wanted the killer to see him.

  “I had to come,” he told her. “I found out...something.”

  Ivy flinched a little and came even closer until she was only about a foot away from him. She hadn’t changed much in the past ten years. She was almost thirty now and still had that thick, dark brown hair that fell just past her shoulders. Still had the same intense eyes. He couldn’t see the color of them in the darkness, but he knew they were sapphire blue.

  Despite Theo’s not wanting to feel anything, he did. The old attraction that for some stupid reason felt just as strong as it always had. But he was also feeling something else. The anger. That’s why he kept watch around them.

  “I guess you heard about the wedding. Are you here to see your sister?” she asked.

  “No.” Best not to get into the fact that he hadn’t seen his kid sister, Jodi, in a long time. Because that was a different set of bad memories. Not because he didn’t love her. He did. But Jodi was a reminder that he’d failed her, too. She’d nearly gotten killed the same night as Ivy’s folks, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Now, all these years later, she was marrying Gabriel Beckett.

  So obviously Gabriel and Jodi had managed to work through their shared painful pasts. He guessed they’d found their “normal.”

  “It’s not safe for us to be out here,” Theo explained. “We need to get in my truck so we can talk.”

  She didn’t budge, but she did follow his gaze when he looked around again. “You heard about the threatening letter,” Ivy said.

  No, he hadn’t, but it got his attention, and Theo shook his head. “What letter?”

  Ivy huffed, and she finally lowered her gun. “The latest one had a warning that my brothers, my sister and I would all be murdered on the anniversary of our parents’ deaths.”

  Which was only two months away.

  Ivy’s tone practically dismissed the threat her family had gotten. But Theo wasn’t dismissing anything. “You get a lot of letters like that?”

  “Enough. Emails, too, and the occasional phone call from blocked numbers. If you didn’t know about that, then why are you here?” she asked without hesitating. “And why did you say it wasn’t safe for us to be out here?”

  “Because it’s not.” He took a deep breath. “You know I’m a special agent in the DEA?”

  Her mouth tightened, and she nodded. “Gabriel says you’re what law enforcement calls a joe.”

  That was the slang term for it all right. An agent who went into deep cover, sometimes years at a time. Just as Theo had done. In fact, he was less than a month out of a three-year assignment where he’d infiltrated a militia group to track the sale of drugs.

  “Yes,” he verified, “and I have access to criminal informants who give me intel from time to time. According to one of those informants, there’s a killer coming here to the ranch tonight.”

  Her eyes widened. Then narrowed just as fast. She looked ready to bolt, of course, but he saw her quickly rein that in. “How reliable is this so-called intel?”

  Good question. “Reliable enough for me to come to a place where I know I’m not welcome.”

  She stayed quiet a moment. “You could have just called,” Ivy pointed out, confirming his notion about his not being welcome.

  He shook his head. “According to the informant, the killer managed to bug both the sheriff’s office and Gabriel’s house.”

  Theo saw another punch of concern on her face, maybe some skepticism, too, and she had another look around as Theo did. “This killer is connected to my parents’ murders?”

  “The informant says the killer is.” Theo paused. “But the informant also said this is the same guy who murdered your folks.”

  Ivy groaned. Mumbled some profanity under her breath. “We know who killed them. Your father, Travis Canton. And he’s sitting in jail right now because there was more than enough evidence to prove he’d done it.”

  No, there was more than enough evidenc
e to convict him. That was splitting hairs, but since his father couldn’t remember if he’d murdered the Becketts, Theo still had his doubts.

  “Travis hated my parents,” Ivy reminded him as if he’d said those doubts aloud. “He threatened them just hours before the murders. And when the deputies found him by the creek, he had my father’s blood on his shirt.”

  All of that was true. What she could have added was that Travis was an alcoholic who’d experienced blackouts, both that night and others. He could have killed the Becketts in a drunken haze and not even remembered.

  Or someone could have set him up.

  Someone waiting to finish the job by killing the Becketts’ children.

  “Your father was the sheriff at the time of his murder,” he continued. What he was about to say would be old news to her, but he wanted to remind her that everything might not be black-and-white here. “Your mother was a former cop. They had plenty of enemies because of the arrests they made over the years. One of those enemies could be coming after you tonight, and that’s why you don’t need to be standing out here.”

  There was a bit more worry in her eyes this time when she glanced around. But she still didn’t budge.

  Now it was Theo’s turn to mumble some profanity. “Look, I know Gabriel, Jameson and your sister, Lauren, won’t want me inside—”

  “Lauren’s not here and won’t be coming. She left town around the same time you did and hasn’t been back.”

  Theo couldn’t fault her for that. Lauren was the youngest, had been barely eighteen when she’d been made an orphan. Like Theo, she had no doubt wanted a fresh start.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, because it sounded as if Ivy was hurt that Lauren wasn’t there. It was a hurt he understood. “Hell, maybe my own sister won’t want me here, either. But can we at least sit in my truck while I convince you that this threat could be real?”

  “And how will you do that?” she asked. Yeah, he’d been right about that skepticism.

  “I’ve got a recording from the criminal informant. He knew some things about the night of the murders. Things that weren’t revealed to the press. He says the killer told him those things.”