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  “Shit,” Judd growled, and he repeated it a few more times as he jabbed the end-call button on his phone and stood. “I’ve got to run an errand,” he said to exactly no one. “I’ll do the paperwork on Gopher when I get back.”

  Judd didn’t wait around for questions—especially any from Kace. He went out and started for his truck, but then remembered he was low on gas. He didn’t want to take the time to fill up so he took one of the cruisers and started the drive back to San Antonio. He also used his Bluetooth connection to call Cleo.

  No answer.

  He left her a message and tried Buck next. Judd struck out there, too, and was forced to leave another message. Judd didn’t have the number for the Angry Angus but used his Bluetooth to find it, and he cursed some more when he got the answering machine to tell him the hours of the place. He left a third message, cursed again and kept on driving.

  With his hands aching from the grip he had on the steering wheel, Judd was more than three-quarters of the way there when his phone finally rang. He hit the answer button and heard Buck.

  “Are the boys still missing?” Buck asked. His voice was just naturally unruffled, as was the man himself, but there was still a tinge of worry to it.

  “As far as I know. A cop friend of mine is out looking for them.” Judd paused only long enough to rein in his temper enough so he could try to have a conversation that didn’t lead to a shouting match. Of course, it wouldn’t actually be a match since Judd would be the only one shouting. “Why didn’t you tell me about Cleo’s plan?”

  “Wasn’t my place to tell. It was her idea.”

  “And it was a stupid one,” Judd snapped.

  Buck made a sound that could have meant anything, and even though Judd couldn’t see him, he highly suspected the man had shrugged. “I told her you wouldn’t go for it, but you could probably tell she was desperate.”

  That took some of the fire out of Judd’s temper. Cleo had indeed been desperate, but he wasn’t going to let Buck off the hook just yet. “You should have talked her out of it.”

  “I’ll bet you weren’t able to talk her out of it,” Buck said. There was some “touché” in his tone now.

  “I told her no. That’s how I handled it.”

  “Of course you did.” Buck’s voice was back to calm now. “I didn’t expect you to agree to it because like you said, it was stupid.”

  It was. But it still made Judd feel like shit.

  “You need me to go to San Antonio to help you look for the boys?” Buck asked.

  Judd thought of the man’s too-pale face. “No. I’m almost there. Thanks, though. I’ll let you know when they’re found.”

  He ended the call and focused on the turns to get him to the neighborhood. Judd didn’t have an address, but he had a general idea of the place, and he wove his way through the streets, trying to settle the knots in his stomach. Hard to do, though, because this wasn’t a safe place for kids.

  Since he’d done the whole teenage runaway thing many times in his life, Judd tapped into the mind-set. If Beckham had half a brain, he’d stay off the sidewalks, so Judd focused on the alleys and greenbelts, and he tried to calculate just how far three kids could get in the hour or more that’d passed.

  Not far.

  Unless they’d managed to get a ride. But since that definitely wasn’t helping the knots, Judd pushed the possibility aside.

  He stopped to read a text from Darrell, who said he was searching the south area of the neighborhood, so Judd focused on the north. After driving around for a good fifteen minutes with no sign of them, he headed back to Lavinia’s. Not because he hoped the woman would be able to tell him anything, but he wanted to start the search from the beginning point.

  And that’s when he felt the tingle go down his spine.

  He pulled to a stop behind the graffiti-covered car, got out and started walking. Instead of checking alleys, though, Judd looked in the vehicles. Some were missing tires and almost all had some broken windows. He checked each one, not just on Lavinia’s street, but the next one, too.

  Judd found them four blocks over.

  The two older boys were hunkered down in the back seat with Little Leo sacked out between them. He was dressed but still sported the Popsicle stains on his mouth, and the gray kitten was snuggled against him. The middle one, Isaac, didn’t even glance up at Judd. He just kept his attention on his phone even though the screen was blank. Beckham gave him a glare sharper than broken glass.

  Judd gave him a mean look, too. One that softened considerably when he saw the red mark on Beckham’s cheek. Judd knew the markings of a hard slap when he saw it. And that’s when he noticed the fingerprint bruises not only on Beckham’s wrist and neck, but also on Little Leo’s arm and on his cheek.

  “We’re not going back there,” Beckham snarled. He slid his hand protectively over his sleeping brother.

  It took Judd a moment, several of them, to rein in his rage—and the memories. He didn’t want that rage to work its way into his voice. “No. You’re not going back there. Because you’re coming with me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JUDD FORCED HIMSELF to keep a cool head. He needed to think like a cop now and not let anything from his own past play into this. But needing to do something didn’t necessarily mean making it happen.

  The anger rolled through him.

  Sonofabitch. He was thirty-three years old, but seeing those boys had made him feel like a kid again. A kid who had been beat to hell and pushed around. Just as they had been.

  “Are you arresting Popsicle, too?” Little Leo asked from the back seat of the cruiser.

  Judd had to fight through the haze from the anger and try to figure out what the heck the kid meant. Little Leo helped with that when he lifted up the kitten and announced, “His name’s Popsicle.”

  Most people probably would have smiled at the cutesy name, but Judd wasn’t most people. However, he could do something to ease the troubled look on the kid’s face.

  “I’m not arresting any of you,” Judd assured him.

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, Judd got skeptical stares from all of them, including the cat. It was reasonable for them to think an arrest was imminent, he supposed, since they were in a cruiser while he sped toward Coldwater.

  “I’d rather go to jail than back to that house,” Beckham snarled.

  Judd got that, and he would do whatever it took to make sure the kids didn’t go back with their bitch of a grandmother.

  He glanced at his phone, which was on the passenger seat. Still nothing from Cleo, even though he had left her several messages to let her know what was going on. However, there was a voice mail from Darrell. One that Judd didn’t intend to listen to right now.

  Shortly after Judd had found the boys, he’d texted Darrell to let him know that he was taking them into temporary custody for their own safety. He didn’t want Darrell challenging that, not until Judd could figure out how to handle this, and handling it meant having a chat with Cleo since she was the one who’d gotten him into this mess.

  Judd was regretting the second text he’d sent—the one to Buck. Buck definitely hadn’t been high on his list of people to contact, but Judd had messaged him after striking out with Cleo; Rosy; Buck’s daughter, Shelby; and Judd’s brother Callen. When none had answered, Judd had gone with Buck, to let him know what was going on.

  “Where are you taking us?” Beckham, again, and his voice still sounded suspicious.

  Judd pointed to the sign for the Coldwater Hospital as he pulled into the spot reserved for emergency vehicles by the side entrance. He saw the immediate argument on Beckham’s face and knew what he was about to tell him wasn’t going to improve that look.

  “I need to document proof of what Lavinia did to you.” Judd turned in the seat so he could make eye contact. “Pictures of the bruises,” he clarified. “
Legally, it’s how I’ll stop her from trying to get custody of you.”

  Best not to mention the nonlegal ways, but if Judd had to hide the kids, he would. He respected the badge, but there were times when the law wasn’t justice. Giving the kids back to that bitch damn sure wouldn’t be justice.

  “We gotta see a doctor?” Isaac asked. For the first time since this ordeal had started, Judd saw emotion in the boy’s eyes, and it wasn’t a good emotion. Fear, maybe even terror. Perhaps because of what his mom had gone through.

  Judd wanted to assure him that it would be a nice doctor, but that probably wouldn’t put a dent in the boy’s fear. Best just to get this over with as fast as he could, and then... Judd was still working out what would happen afterward.

  He sent a quick text to Dr. Audrey Holcomb to let her know they had arrived. Audrey was an old friend, and while she didn’t exactly owe him any favors, she hadn’t questioned him when he’d called her as he’d been driving out of San Antonio. She would examine the boys, get the pictures and they’d take things from there.

  Judd waited until Audrey came out of the hospital before he stepped from the cruiser. “Thanks. I appreciate this,” he told her.

  She was a tall, attractive blonde, and she nodded before giving him a long look. And, yes, it was somewhat heated since Audrey was interested in him. That was the big reason Judd normally steered clear of her. Even if he had been attracted to her, too, which he wasn’t, she would end up hurt by getting involved with him. He’d already been the cause of enough people getting hurt and didn’t want to add her to his weighed-down conscience.

  However, it was her doctor’s eyes that combed over Judd now. Silently asking him if he was okay. Since Audrey was one of the few people who knew he was an alcoholic, he gave her a nod to let her know he was fine. It was bullshit. He wasn’t okay. But what was happening now wasn’t going to send him running for a bottle.

  He hoped.

  Audrey smiled when she turned her attention to the boys. The smile was BS, too, because it had to punch her in the gut to see those bruises. Still, she stayed calm and friendly. It wasn’t enough, though, to get the boys to voluntarily get out of the cruiser. Judd had to help with that.

  “This is Little Leo,” Judd told Audrey as he helped the boy from the vehicle.

  “And Popsicle,” Little Leo announced. “He’s gotta come with me, okay, or he’ll get scared.”

  “Of course he can come.” Audrey ran a soothing hand over the kitten’s head. “I’m Dr. Holcomb, and I can make sure Popsicle’s okay, too.”

  “Isaac,” Judd continued, bringing him out next. The boy had gone back to looking at his blank phone screen. “And this is Beckham.” Who was sticking with his badass attitude and “mad at the world” glare.

  “This way,” Audrey instructed, leading them into the hospital and straight into her office. Thankfully, the waiting area was empty. Probably Audrey’s doing, and that meant Judd had something else to thank her for.

  The moment they stepped in, Judd felt some relief when he spotted Buck and Rosy. Relief, quickly followed by concern. Buck still looked weak. Correction—he was weak, and now he was here in the middle of this.

  Rosy and Buck stood, and Judd noticed they were holding hands and still looking very much like newlyweds. Which they were since they’d only been married four months now.

  “I didn’t get your message until I checked my phone after doing errands, and I didn’t want to call you back while you were driving,” Rosy said. “So we just came here to wait for you.”

  Even though she was in her late seventies, she was a sturdy woman who always managed a smile. Even now. And unlike Audrey’s, it wasn’t BS despite the bruises she no doubt saw on the kids. Rosy, who was true to her name, just had a way of filtering out the bad even when it was staring her right in the face.

  Buck didn’t filter. His green eyes watered a little as he looked at the boys—he would have taken them in a heartbeat if it hadn’t been for his own health and age.

  “Are you Santa?” Little Leo asked.

  Maybe the boy had wondered that because Rosy and Buck were both wearing red and had white hair. The question caused Rosy to laugh, and she gave Little Leo a hug that didn’t make the boy move away from her. But Isaac and Beckham did. They didn’t give Rosy a chance to get her hugging hands on them. They didn’t know how gentle she could be.

  “This is Miss Rosy and Mr. Buck,” Judd said, continuing the introductions.

  Judd opened his mouth to add that Mr. Buck had been his foster father, but that label had always fallen short. Buck had been his father, period. The only one who’d ever lived up to that title. Too bad that for all of Buck’s good heart, he hadn’t been able to erase the fifteen crap years that Judd had had before the system had finally given him and his brothers a break and placed them with Buck.

  “Why don’t you wait out here while I take the boys into the exam room?” Audrey asked Judd, and she added in a whisper, “They might tell me things they wouldn’t say in front of you.”

  Good point, especially since it was obvious that Beckham didn’t trust him one bit. Of course, he likely didn’t trust Audrey, either, but she’d do her job and get the pictures and medical reports that Judd needed.

  He considered warning Audrey that the boys might try to escape, but Judd went to the source for that. He aimed a hard look at Beckham. “Don’t run, and I mean it. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to piss me off.”

  Judd had no idea if that would be effective enough, but just in case his message hadn’t gotten through he wouldn’t move far from the examining room where Audrey took the boys.

  “Have either of you heard from Cleo?” Judd asked the moment Audrey had closed the door.

  “Earlier today but not in the last couple of hours,” Buck answered.

  “We’ve been trying to reach her,” Rosy piped in, letting Judd know that Buck had filled her in on what was happening. “You don’t think something bad happened to her, do you?”

  Damn it. Judd hadn’t even considered that, but he wouldn’t have put it past Cleo to go storming into Lavinia’s house, demanding to know where the boys were. Lavinia was capable of violence. Judd had seen proof of that. But from all appearances, the woman had used her hands to leave those marks. No weapons. Maybe she’d tried to use her hands on Cleo, too.

  That had Judd taking out his phone again to call Cleo. The concern went all the way to his bones when it went straight to voice mail. He left her another message, ending it with a demand of “call me, damn it.”

  Even though Judd didn’t want to ask for another favor, he texted Darrell to have him check Lavinia’s house to make sure Cleo wasn’t there.

  “Are you okay?” Buck asked.

  Judd nearly laughed. Nearly. Leave it to Buck to be concerned about him when he’d just seen three kids with injuries or when Cleo’s safety was in doubt. Of course, Buck had a knack for seeing what was below the surface.

  “I’m fine,” Judd said, continuing the lie. It wasn’t getting easier, and he doubted he was fooling anyone. “I’m not so sure about the boys, though. Their grandmother did that to them,” he spat out.

  That caused Rosy to throw her arms around him, her attempt to hug it out. Judd let her try that while he kept his attention on Buck. His stomach dropped when he didn’t see a whole lot of hope on the man’s face.

  “Callen and Shelby are eloping,” Buck announced when Rosy finally let go of Judd. “That’s why they didn’t answer your call. They’re on a plane to Vegas right about now.”

  Judd cursed under his breath even though he figured the language would earn him an arm swat from Rosy. It did. Not a surprise since she’d been trying to clean up his foul mouth for the past eighteen years. Even before Rosy had married Buck, she’d been the housekeeper and cook at the ranch and had helped Buck raise the foster kids who came and went.

&nb
sp; Actually, the elopement wasn’t a surprise, either. His brother and Shelby were crazy in love and had dropped some hints about not wanting a big wedding to-do.

  But the timing sucked.

  Callen, along with being a stinking rich cattle broker, also had contacts in Child Protective Services. And, as Buck’s daughter, Shelby had plenty of experience dealing with foster kids. Judd could have used their help.

  “I could call them and ask them to postpone the wedding,” Buck offered.

  Judd nixed that with a head shake. Callen had been through as much shit as he had and deserved some happiness. Shelby, too, since she had been helping care for Buck and his ranch during his recovery.

  “Nico should be back from the rodeo in a day or two,” Rosy pointed out. “Maybe he’ll be able to help. Nico’s moving his office into the building that Callen bought on Main Street.”

  Judd wasn’t sure what kind of help Nico, his womanizing kid brother, could offer even if he did seem to be turning over a new leaf by building his livestock contractor business. But even if Nico had been good as gold, Judd didn’t have a day or two. He needed to work out something now.

  “Will you get in a lot of trouble because you took the boys?” Buck asked.

  “Not as much as their grandmother when CPS sees the bruises she left on them.” But, yeah, there was the possibility of trouble for Judd, too.

  Because he didn’t want Buck to stay on his feet, Judd eased the man into one of the chairs. Rosy sat on one side of him, and Judd the other. While they waited, the silence came, and Judd was finally able to clear his head enough to think.

  He’d need to call Kace. Not only because his brother might be able to help suss out what to do about the kids, but also because Kace was his boss. Judd had bolted out of the police station when he’d gotten Darrell’s call about the boys running away. Kace could get someone to fill in for him at work in case this dragged on longer than Judd wanted.

  Of course, it had already dragged on too long.

  “I’m going to get us some Cokes and snacks,” Rosy volunteered, giving Judd’s hand a pat. “The boys might like a treat when Audrey’s finished with them.”