Under the Cowboy's Protection Read online

  Nick cursed some more and threw off her grip with more force than necessary. “A child you’ve always wanted,” he corrected in a snarl. He groaned, squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands on the sides of his head.

  The man was clearly shaken by this and was probably seeing the irony. He hadn’t especially wanted a child but had apparently fathered one. And Yvette wasn’t the biological mother.

  It took several more moments for the shock to wear off enough for Nick to whirl back around and face his wife. “What did you do? Did you hire those kidnappers?”

  “No!” Yvette certainly didn’t hesitate, and she repeated the denial to Thea and Raleigh. “I was upset when I said that to Sonya, but I would have never done anything to hurt the baby or her.”

  Maybe. But Raleigh still wasn’t convinced. “Are there two babies?”

  “I don’t know. I swear, I don’t.”

  Raleigh had to add another unspoken maybe to that. “Who told Sonya about what had gone on at the clinic?”

  “I told you already that it was an anonymous tip. Whoever it was sent her results of an amniocentesis to prove it. That’s a test of the amniotic fluid around the baby. It can tell if there’s something wrong.” Yvette swallowed hard again. “And it can also tell the baby’s DNA.”

  Interesting. Raleigh looked at Thea to get her take on this, and she was staring at Yvette. “Why was a test like that done? Was Sonya having medical problems?”

  “She’d got an infection early on in the pregnancy, and the fertility clinic had her do the test just to make sure. We never heard back from them, so we assumed all was well.”

  That didn’t mesh with what Dr. Sheridan had told them, that he hadn’t had any involvement with Hannah or Sonya after the in vitro procedures. That was almost certainly a lie, one that Raleigh would definitely question him about. But it was possible that someone else in the clinic was responsible for the test and the botched procedure.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this,” Nick said, the anger etched all over his face. “And now Sonya’s dead, and we don’t know where the hell her baby is. My baby,” he emphasized.

  Yeah, and they didn’t know if Yvette was responsible. It was time to move this past the chatting stage and make it a full-fledged interview. Before Raleigh did that though, he wanted to talk to Dr. Sheridan, and as late as it already was, that wasn’t going to happen until morning.

  “We’re holding you for questioning,” Raleigh told Yvette. “You aren’t leaving the sheriff’s office until I have some answers.”

  “Uh, you want me to put her in a holding cell?” Dalton asked.

  If Nick was the least bit concerned about that happening, he didn’t show it. In fact, he was looking at his wife with disgust. However, Yvette was definitely concerned.

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong,” she practically shouted.

  “You obstructed justice by not telling me the truth in a murder investigation,” Raleigh explained. “The murder of a woman you hired as a surrogate. And now I have a recording of you arguing with that very woman just hours before she was killed.”

  “I didn’t kill her.” Now it was a shout, and she repeated it to her husband.

  Nick huffed again. “You lied to me, too,” he said after getting his teeth unclenched. “Hell, you even gave the cops a DNA sample to compare to the baby they found. You did that even though you knew you weren’t going to be a match.”

  She tried to take hold of him again, but he pushed her away. “I thought once you learned the child was yours, that you’d love her. And that we would still be able to raise her. It doesn’t matter that she’s not a child of my own blood. She would have been our child. She still can be.”

  The anger tightened Nick’s face so much that it was obvious he was having trouble reining in his temper. He cursed, groaned and went to stand in the doorway. “I don’t even know if there’s another baby. Or any real kidnappers.” He kept going despite Yvette’s continued denials. “Is there somewhere else I can wait for a kidnapper’s call? Someplace where my wife won’t be?”

  Well, at least the man was willing to hang around in case there truly was a kidnapper. At this point, Raleigh had no idea if there was one, or if this was part of Yvette’s scheme to cover up her crime.

  But that didn’t make sense.

  If Yvette had hired thugs to murder Sonya, then why would there be a second baby? Maybe the thugs had gone rogue and were now trying to milk as much money out of this situation as possible.

  “Do you and your wife have joint bank accounts?” Raleigh asked Nick.

  Nick nodded. For a moment it seemed as if he was going to ask why, but then his mouth tightened. “You want to examine them to see if she withdrew funds for this nightmare that’s going on. Well, you’re welcome to do that. I’ll get you the account numbers and the passwords. In the morning, I’ll call the bank and tell them you can have access to our safe-deposit box. There should be some family jewelry and cash in there.”

  He figured it was Nick’s anger at his wife that was making him so cooperative, but Raleigh was thankful for it. This would save him from getting a court order and a search warrant.

  “Take Mr. O’Hara to an interview room,” Raleigh instructed Dalton. “Set up the recorder in there in case a kidnapper does call. The night deputies will be in soon so you can turn things over to them.”

  Dalton nodded, immediately picked up his equipment and started leading Nick out of the break room. Yvette didn’t follow, but she did start sobbing again.

  “Keep her here and instruct the night deputies to lock her up if she tries to leave,” Raleigh added to Alice, and then he turned to Yvette. “Remember that part about you having a right to an attorney. You might need it.”

  Since that only caused Yvette’s sobbing to get worse, Raleigh led Thea back to his office. “You really believe she had Sonya killed?” Thea asked.

  “Maybe. And maybe not intentionally.” He glanced at Alice’s laptop. “I want to go through all the recordings Sonya left. I need to know who gave her that anonymous tip. I’d also like to see if there’s something to prove why she started the recordings in the first place.”

  While he was at it, Raleigh was also hoping he could find a connection between Yvette and Marco. The bank records could possibly help with that. If not, at least he would know if there’d been any recent cash withdrawals that Nick couldn’t account for. If there was something like that, then it would be another circumstantial piece of evidence against Yvette.

  “How much did Sonya know about Hannah’s murder?” Raleigh asked Thea. “Did she know about the message that’d been left at the crime scene?”

  There was no need for him to clarify which message because it was no doubt etched in their memories. This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.

  Thea’s forehead bunched up a moment while she gave that some thought. “Probably. When I told Sonya about Hannah and her using the same doctor, Sonya did an internet check to see if there were any other similarities between them.”

  Then yes, Sonya would have known about the message and could have mentioned it to Yvette. Yvette, in turn, could have had her hired henchmen write that on Sonya’s wall to throw suspicion off herself. But there was plenty of suspicion on the woman right now.

  Thea tipped her head to the laptop. “If you get me a copy of Sonya’s audio recordings, I can go through them, too. I might hear something that I can connect to a conversation I had with her.”

  Good idea. They could work on that until they found out if Yvette’s lawyer was going to show tonight. If he did, then he could start the interview. He still had the kidnapper-ransom issue to deal with, too, if the guy ever called back.

  “I’ll get you a laptop and the recordings,” Raleigh said, heading out of his office.

  With a deputy still at Sonya’s house and with Dalton and Alice tied up, that only l
eft him with two deputies in the squad room, Miguel Sanchez and Zeb Hooper. Miguel had his phone in his hand, and he was already making his way to Raleigh.

  “Sheriff Egan McCall just found an abandoned vehicle on the outskirts of McCall Canyon,” Miguel said. “It’s a blue SUV matching the description of the one used in your attack.”

  Good. Because now they could process it for any evidence. Though he doubted it was a coincidence that the vehicle had been found in Warren’s town. No. This could be another attempt to connect the murders to him.

  Or maybe there really was a connection.

  If so, Raleigh needed to find it before Thea and he landed again in the path of a would-be killer.

  “There’s more,” Miguel added a moment later. “There was a dead body in the SUV, and according to his ID, it’s someone you know.”

  Miguel handed him a note with the name, and the moment Raleigh saw it, he cursed.

  Hell.

  * * *

  THEA WISHED SHE could turn her mind off for just a couple of seconds. She was exhausted from the spent adrenaline, the late hour and the events of the day, but she couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming.

  Another body.

  And this time, it was Dr. Bryce Sheridan. He’d died from a single gunshot wound to the head that appeared to be self-inflicted.

  Appeared.

  Egan wasn’t convinced it was a suicide though, and therefore neither was Thea. Egan was a good cop, and he had probably seen something with the positioning of the body or the gun that had made him believe this could be a setup.

  Until Egan had found the body in the SUV, the doctor had been a person of interest in Sonya’s murder. He was also someone that Raleigh and she had counted on to give them answers about Sonya’s botched in vitro. But now that he was dead, they would have to wait until morning to get into the fertility clinic so they could access anything they could find.

  Maybe before then, Raleigh and she could even manage to get some sleep. But Thea immediately dismissed that notion when she stepped into Raleigh’s house. A different set of thoughts hit her then.

  Scalding-hot memories of the nights she’d spent here with Raleigh.

  Great. Just what she didn’t need when she already felt so beaten down from the fatigue. So she had no choice but to stand there and let the memories run their course. Even when the most vivid images and sensations faded though, the thoughts still lingered.

  Raleigh had kissed her right in the foyer. That’d been the start of some frantic foreplay that had led them straight to his bed. In those days, their whole relationship had seemed frantic. As if they were starved for each other and couldn’t get enough. But that had all come crashing down when Raleigh had found out she’d kept Warren’s secret about the affair.

  And the secret that he was Warren’s son.

  When Thea’s hand started to hurt, she glanced down and realized she had a too-tight grip on the overnight bag that Griff had packed for her and then sent to Raleigh’s office. A bag that hopefully contained the things on the list she’d given him since she’d need a change of clothes and toiletries.

  Too bad the bag wouldn’t contain something to make her immune to Raleigh.

  And speaking of Raleigh, he came in behind her, closing the door and setting the security system. He looked at her, and maybe because he saw something in her eyes, there was suddenly some alarm in his expression. Then he got it.

  “Oh,” he grumbled. “Yeah.”

  Thea could practically see the wall he’d just put up between them. A wall that hadn’t been there as they’d worked together on the recordings and while waiting for the kidnapper to call back.

  A call that hadn’t come.

  But now that they were back here, at the scene of their affair, then he probably knew it wasn’t a good idea for them to be so chummy. With the attraction still simmering between them, even chumminess could lead to sex. Heck, maybe breathing could.

  Another couple that definitely wouldn’t be getting chummy tonight was Nick and Yvette. Nick had refused to leave the sheriff’s office because he wanted to be there in case the kidnapper did call. Since her lawyer wasn’t arriving until morning, Yvette was still in the break room, where she’d stay until Raleigh either released her or charged her with obstruction of justice. Maybe even murder for hire, along with other assorted felonies.

  Without the evidence that Dr. Sheridan could have possibly given them, Raleigh was in a wait-and-see mode. There was a lot riding on those banking records because even if Yvette was guilty, Thea doubted the woman would just confess to the growing list of crimes.

  It was also possible they’d get something from the crime lab. But they, too, had a mountain of stuff to process. Not just any possible evidence they’d gathered from Sonya and the woods where her body had been found, but also the baby’s clothes and carrier. And now the SUV might turn up something, too.

  Unless...

  “What if Dr. Sheridan was the gunman who shot at us from the SUV?” she asked. It was a question that had been going through her head, along with all those other thoughts, and she was certain that Raleigh had considered it, too.

  “I’m sure your boss will have the body tested for gunshot residue,” he said, and he didn’t add as much venom to the word boss as he probably could have, considering that her boss, Egan, was also his half brother. “If Sheridan has GSR on him, then we’ll know he fired a gun.”

  True, but it wouldn’t necessarily prove he was the one who’d tried to kill them. Someone could have set up the doctor.

  “I can call Egan if you like,” she offered.

  Raleigh paused as if considering that, but he certainly didn’t decline. That’s because finding the killer was far more important than their family troubles. “Yeah, if I haven’t heard from him by morning.”

  “If Egan has anything, he’ll call,” she assured him. “He’s a cop through and through like you.”

  Raleigh opened his mouth, maybe to say he was nothing like Egan, but then he stopped and dragged in a long breath. “I talked to him earlier when you were in the bathroom at the sheriff’s office.” He paused and gave her a flat look. “He told me to make sure that you were okay.”

  Thea groaned. Good grief. That was almost identical to what her brother had told Raleigh. “They forget that I’m a cop with just as much training as they have.” Well, almost as much.

  “No, they remember that. They care about you and are worried because I haven’t been able to ID the killer.”

  She hated that Raleigh was putting all of this on his shoulders. “If I’m the target, then I’m the one responsible for this. I’m the one who dragged you and all of your deputies into the path of a killer.”

  A possibility that ate away at her as much as Sonya’s death. Thea prayed she wasn’t the reason for that, too.

  The one saving grace in all of this was that the baby was safe. Griff had let them know that when they’d arrived at the safe house, and there’d been no incidents along the way. Now they needed to make sure there wasn’t a second baby out there who needed to be rescued from the monsters who’d taken her.

  “You should try to get some rest,” Raleigh said, pulling her out of her thoughts. “You remember where the guest room is?”

  Thea nodded. She remembered though she’d never actually been in it. Whenever she’d stayed over, she’d always been in Raleigh’s bed. With both of them naked.

  Probably best not to remember that now though.

  “I’ll need to get back to the office by seven,” Raleigh added, already heading in the direction of his bedroom. But he stopped when his phone rang.

  Thea didn’t groan, but considering the late hour, she figured this was probably bad news. Still, she hoped it was merely an update on the investigation.

  “It’s Miguel,” Raleigh mumbled when he looked at the screen. He hit the answer
button and put the call on speaker. It didn’t take long for Thea to hear his deputy’s voice.

  “A detective from San Antonio PD just called,” Miguel said. “A woman, Madison Travers, just walked in and confessed to botching the in vitro procedure done on Sonya. And this woman says she believes she knows who tried to kill you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Raleigh wished he’d managed to get a little more sleep. Two hours didn’t seem nearly enough, considering the hellish day he was about to face. Still, he was glad he’d managed to get any sleep at all since he’d spent a good deal of the night on the phone with SAPD and his deputies.

  Unfortunately, he’d spent some of the night thinking about Thea, too.

  He cursed himself for that. He didn’t have the time or mental energy to rehash the past, but that’s exactly what he’d done anyway.

  Having Thea under the same roof with him was a bad reminder of when they’d been lovers. Worse, Raleigh was certain it was the same for her. He hadn’t missed the heated looks she’d given him. Also hadn’t missed her expression that told him she was just as frustrated as he was about this.

  He forced his attention back where it belonged—on the drive to the sheriff’s office. No one was following Thea and him, but he needed to make sure it stayed that way. He needed to get to work in one piece so he could question Madison Travers. At least that was one of the things he had to do.

  But at the moment the woman was his top priority.

  She had not only confessed to the in vitro snafu but also claimed to know who wanted to kill them. Unfortunately, she hadn’t wanted to share that info with the San Antonio cops but had insisted instead on talking to Raleigh. He very much wanted to talk to Madison, too, but Raleigh hoped this wasn’t some kind of ruse to get at Thea and him again. That’s why he hadn’t taken Thea to San Antonio to question the woman. Instead, SAPD had waited until morning to bring Madison to Durango Ridge, and she was now waiting for them in an interview room.