RENEGADE GUARDIAN Read online

  “Where would someone put a device like that?” Maya frantically ran her hands around the seat, lifted it a fraction and felt there, too.

  Nothing.

  Evan was awake, his eyes trained on Slade again, but she lifted the baby as much as the straps would allow and felt around the padding beneath him.

  “Some are as small as a box of matches.” Slade glanced over at her search just as Maya looked at him to say she hadn’t found anything.

  She saw the worry that was no doubt mirrored in her own eyes. But she saw something else. For just a second or two, Slade’s expression changed when his gaze landed on Evan. Of course, Maya had already known that he looked at her son with affection, but this was different.

  He was looking at Evan as if the baby were his.

  That didn’t help with the adrenaline that was spiking through her. Didn’t help with the memories of that kiss that she was trying to forget. That look only made things much, much worse. Because she might be saving Evan only to lose him to the very man who could keep him safe.

  “What’s wrong?” Slade asked. “Did you find something?”

  Maya realized she was staring at him, and she shook her head to answer his question. No, she hadn’t found a tracking device, but that look had drilled home something she was terrified to accept.

  Slade huffed. Maybe because he was frustrated from the attack. Or from everything else about their situation.

  “Don’t borrow more trouble,” he mumbled.

  He didn’t add more, because he took the turn off the rural road and onto the one that led to the interstate. At the same time, his phone rang, and he pulled it out and put it on speaker.

  “Are you out of the house?” Declan asked the moment Slade answered.

  “Yeah. Any idea who just fired shots at us?”

  “Not yet, but someone should be out there in the next twenty minutes. If there’s anything left to find, we’ll find it.”

  Good. Maya held on to the hope that something would link this to the person behind the attacks and kidnappings.

  “What’s your situation now?” Declan asked. “Anyone in pursuit?”

  Slade checked the mirrors again. “Not that I can tell. But there might be a tracker on one of the items we brought with us. Unless you have some other idea as to how this SOB found us.”

  “None, but we’ll search for the tracker. Where are you now?”

  Slade pushed some buttons on the GPS and turned on the ramp to the interstate. Instant traffic. Maya wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Obviously, the shooter knew which vehicle they were in, so even if he wasn’t personally in pursuit, that didn’t mean he hadn’t phoned for help.

  “We’re about twenty minutes from Maverick Springs,” Slade told his brother. “I’m heading to the marshals’ office, but I’ll need to have someone pick up some supplies for the baby.”

  Maya blinked. “Aren’t the suspects there?”

  “They are,” Declan confirmed. “Well, Andrea, Nadine and Chase are anyway. Still no sign of Morgan Gambill, the guy who escaped during the bomb scare.”

  Too bad he was still missing, because Maya figured he had important info. Judging from Slade’s scowl, he believed it, too.

  “But I do have some news on Randall Martin’s missing green SUV,” Declan added. “The San Antonio police found it in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse.”

  Maya held her breath, hoping this would be the break in the case they needed. But obviously Slade wasn’t so hopeful. He looked on the verge of mumbling some profanity. “What’s wrong?” he asked his brother.

  “Pretty much everything. The person behind the wheel was a thug, Clifford Atwood.”

  Not Randall, the owner. Maybe he’d been telling the truth about his vehicle being stolen.

  “Atwood has a long history of drug-related crimes,” Declan added.

  Slade repeated the man’s name. So did Maya, but it wasn’t a name she recognized. “Why would a druggie want to kidnap my son?”

  “I think Atwood was just a lackey,” Declan explained. “Now he’s a dead one. Someone shot him at point-blank range on the left side of his head.”

  Maya couldn’t stop the images from coming. Not images of a man she didn’t know but those from her own attack.

  It wasn’t logical, but violence always brought back memories. Of course, in this case Atwood deserved to die because he’d tried to kidnap Evan. Or worse. The way he’d bashed into her car with the SUV, he could have killed Slade, Evan and her.

  Slade’s jaw muscles tightened and stirred. “Please tell me there’s some evidence in the SUV that points to the missing babies or whoever hired Atwood.”

  “Nothing,” Declan answered right away. “SAPD will keep looking, though. We might get lucky.”

  Might. But it sounded like a dead end—literally.

  “You want me to get started on another safe house?” Declan asked.

  Maya groaned softly. They definitely needed a safe place to go, but the thought of being discovered again made her feel sick. She brushed a kiss on Evan’s forehead. Then his cheek. And wished she could do more to keep her baby out of this dangerous mess.

  “Hold off on the safe house,” Slade answered. “I’m thinking about taking them to the ranch.”

  Even though she couldn’t see Declan’s face, Maya could feel his surprise. He paused a long time. “Let me know what you decide. I’ll see you in a few.” And Declan ended the call.

  “The ranch?” she challenged. “As in the one you and your brothers run?”

  Slade nodded. “Yeah, and I know what you’re thinking. The kidnapper will know to look for us there, but it won’t be his first choice of places to launch another attack.”

  Maybe. After all, from what she’d gathered in her internet search, all five of his brothers were marshals and lived at the ranch. It no doubt had some kind of security along with ranch hands who could keep watch for a kidnapper. But there was another side to going there. A bad one.

  “Your family could be hurt in an attack.”

  Slade didn’t jump to deny that. “We’ll have to take precautions.”

  He didn’t have time to say what those might be, because his phone rang again, and Evan started to fuss. It wasn’t time for his bottle, but it was possible he needed a diaper change. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any way of doing that. She didn’t even have a pacifier, but Maya tried to gently rock the car seat. It didn’t help. Evan’s whimpers turned to cries.

  “We’re almost there,” Slade let her know. And he took the turn off the highway and toward Maverick Springs.

  Probably because her nerves were already at the breaking point, Evan’s cries only made it worse. Maya wanted nothing more than to pull him into her arms and try to comfort him, but she couldn’t risk taking him from the seat.

  It seemed to take an eternity for Slade to turn into the parking lot of the Marshals Service, and the moment they came to a stop, she picked up her baby. He just kept crying.

  “I know how you feel, little man,” Slade mumbled, and he hooked his arm around both of them to help them from the truck.

  And just like that, Evan hushed.

  It seemed like such a petty thing, for her to be upset that Evan was responding better to Slade than to her. But it was worse than pettiness. Was Slade’s ability to soothe the baby some kind of proof of a genetic connection?

  She silently groaned.

  You’re losing it.

  Slade got them inside the building and up the stairs, past the reception-security and to the sprawling office that was jammed with desks and cubicles.

  And people.

  All those people were chatting, and the room was a beehive of activity. But then everything stopped when Slade and she stepped inside.

  “Are yo
u okay?” a woman immediately asked. The jeans-wearing blonde rushed toward them, and even though she didn’t pull Slade into her arms for a hug, she looked as if that’s what she wanted to do.

  “We’re fine.” Slade’s tone was slightly warmer than usual, and the woman seemed surprised when Slade brushed his hand over her arm.

  The blonde’s attention went to Maya, then Evan. “I’m Caitlyn Barnes.”

  “Maya Ellison.”

  Caitlyn hitched her thumb in the direction of a wide-shouldered man at one of the desks. “That’s Slade’s brother Marshal Harlan McKinney, my fiancé.”

  Maya recalled the name from her internet search and Slade’s earlier conversation. Harlan clicked a button on his phone and came closer. His dark eyebrow lifted when his attention landed on Slade’s unbuttoned shirt. Only then did Maya realize just how disheveled she probably looked. And maybe he thought that dishevelment wasn’t all from the quick escape they’d made from the safe house.

  “I’ve arranged to have formula and diapers delivered,” another man said.

  “My brother Clayton,” Slade clarified. “You remember Declan and that’s Wyatt.”

  Marshal Wyatt McCabe.

  If she were putting labels on them, Harlan looked like a pro-football linebacker. Declan, a rodeo rider. Clayton, a jeans-wearing lawyer. Slade, a vampire and not one with friendly intentions, either. But Wyatt, well, his looks seemed more like the kind a lead singer in a rock band would have. Except his clothes were pure cowboy. He even wore his gun in an old-fashioned hip holster.

  Wyatt’s mouth bent as if he might smile, but when he looked at Evan, the smile went south. He mumbled something about it being nice to meet her and strolled out.

  “Does he have a problem with me?” Maya whispered to Slade.

  He glanced at Wyatt, who was disappearing down the hall. “No. It’s the baby. Wyatt’s always wanted to be a father, and he hired a surrogate but something went wrong with the deal, I think. Nothing that he’s ready to talk about, though.”

  She gathered that wasn’t usual. Probably because they were family and discussed their lives with each other, but judging from Wyatt’s sullen reaction, something more than just wrong had happened.

  “It doesn’t help that the ranch is going through a mini baby boom,” Clayton said, taking up the explanation. “My son is due any day now. And our other brother, Dallas, and his wife, Joelle, are expecting.”

  Maya glanced at their faces and then around the room. “They all believe Evan’s your son?”

  Slade did some glancing, too. “Probably.”

  There it was. That unruffled response she was starting to know so well. But his answer didn’t need the heavy emotion for it to hit her hard. If Evan was indeed his child, Slade would have plenty of moral support. He had a family already in place to help him win a custody battle.

  Something she didn’t.

  Slade hesitated a moment. Looked down at Evan. “Come on.”

  He led her down the hall where Wyatt had disappeared minutes earlier. They passed several rooms, all with the doors closed, and she figured their suspects were in those rooms. Nadine and Chase Collier. Andrea, too. The two people who weren’t there were Randall Martin and Morgan Gambill, but Maya hoped that with Slade’s entire family seemingly working on this, it wouldn’t be long before they could bring them in.

  And get answers.

  Of course, those answers were just the beginning. Stopping the danger was a must. Finding the missing babies, too. Then she’d have to deal with the results of the DNA test Slade had ordered.

  Slade took her into what appeared to be a break room and had her sit in one of the chairs. “It won’t be long before the diapers and formula arrive.” His stare stayed fixed on Evan for several long moments.

  Maya also looked at her son, to try to see what Slade was seeing. “Does he look like Deidre?” But she didn’t want to hear any answer other than no.

  “Truth is, I don’t know. I never saw a picture of Deidre as a baby. Nor one of me, either. And I have no idea who my birth parents were. My mother was supposedly an addict and a prostitute who sneaked out of the hospital right after I was born.”

  Maya pulled in her breath. That sort of thing probably happened all the time, but it tugged at her heart to know that Slade’s start in life had begun at what was essentially rock bottom.

  “Your adopted parents didn’t take pictures of you?” Because she’d already taken dozens of Evan and couldn’t imagine an adoptive parent who wouldn’t do the same.

  “My adoption was...complicated.” He sank down in the chair beside her and rubbed his index finger over the back of Evan’s hand. Her son’s eyes were already drifting down, but he opened them and stared at Slade. “I was given to a family when I was a couple of months old, but before the adoption was final, the woman got cancer and died. I ended up with another family. Then another.”

  She’d been a victims’ rights advocate long enough to know that probably meant Slade had been removed from an abusive environment.

  “I don’t remember a lot of it,” he said as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “And by the time I was old enough to remember, I was strong enough to fight back.”

  That created more of a tug in her heart. No child should have to fight back anyone or anything.

  “And then you landed in Rocky Creek Children’s Facility,” she mumbled.

  He nodded, but other than a flex of his jaw muscles, he had no reaction. She was betting inside, though, he had enough bad memories to last a lifetime or two. Thankfully, Kirby Granger had rescued him, and if Kirby had had to kill Jonah Webb to do that, then maybe it was justified.

  Maya winced at that thought.

  Until now, until this whole ordeal, she’d never thought of violence as justified. Still, maybe it had been in that case. And it was certainly warranted if it would keep Evan safe.

  “At least Kirby gave you a home,” Maya said.

  But he didn’t jump to agree with her. “He gave me the attention a father gives a son. And he made me a part of the ranch.”

  No mention of family. “He gave you your brothers,” Maya reminded him.

  “Yeah.” And he hesitated again. “For the record, I didn’t kill Deidre’s lover,” Slade volunteered. “The guy committed suicide before he could tell the cops what he’d done with Deidre’s baby.”

  That ate away at her, too. Maya prayed the man hadn’t done anything to hurt the newborn. Of course, maybe the only reason she had Evan was because this now-dead man had taken his estranged lover’s child that she’d conceived with Slade.

  “Good thing he killed himself,” Slade said under his breath. “Because after seeing what he’d done to Deidre, there’s no way I could have held myself back.”

  Maya swallowed hard, and though she knew this would complicate the heck out of things, she leaned over and brushed a kiss on Slade’s cheek. It seemed far more intimate than the scalding-hot kiss they’d shared in the bedroom at the safe house. More dangerous, too.

  Because she was falling for him.

  And that couldn’t happen.

  “Flashbacks?” he asked. Maya must have looked as confused as she felt, because he added, “You made a face after you kissed me. I figured maybe it was causing flashbacks.”

  Of her attack.

  She understood then. Slade probably thought any intimacy would trigger flashbacks. Probably should have, too. It had the couple of times she’d tried to go on dates. But with Slade it hadn’t been flashbacks and nightmarish memories going through her head.

  That didn’t make her feel better.

  Just the opposite.

  “Oh,” he mumbled, and he had a split-second smile. He probably didn’t know he had a killer smile to go along with those killer good looks.

  “I don’t want t
o want you,” she let him know.

  Slade nodded. “Ditto.” His gaze met hers. “You’re the worst kind of complication. The kind that could cause me to lose focus. And I never lose focus.”

  It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. Or maybe it was just a reminder. Either way, she didn’t feel herself pulling away from him. Maya leaned against him, her arm pressed to his, knowing it was a mistake but not doing anything to correct it.

  And that’s how Declan found them when he appeared in the doorway.

  Slade and she eased away from each other, but coupled with the fact that Slade had shown up with an unbuttoned shirt, Declan probably thought Slade and she were well on their way to becoming lovers. Or already had.

  Declan came into the room and set down a bag near her chair. The diapers and formula, no doubt.

  “The Colliers’ lawyer is here,” Declan told his brother. He handed Slade some papers. “That’s the background check on them.”

  Slade glanced over the pages, scowled.

  “Yeah,” his brother verified. Obviously, Declan had read it, too. “We’re not looking at parents of the year here.”

  Maya wasn’t sure what had caused Declan to say that, but she hoped she got a chance to read the background check that had created Slade’s scowl.

  “Andrea’s lawyer is here, too,” Declan added, “so we can start the interviews.”

  Good. Maybe one of them would confess and this would be over soon.

  Slade and Declan’s gazes stayed locked. “What’s wrong?” Slade asked.

  Maya’s head whipped up, and even though she hardly knew Declan, she saw it then. The troubled look in his eyes.

  “I had someone go through the safe house,” Declan explained, “and they found a GPS tracking device. That’s how the kidnapper knew where to find you.”

  Maya adjusted Evan in her arms and slowly rose to her feet. “So the house wasn’t safe after all.”

  Declan shook his head. “The house was fine, but the GPS device was in the plastic grocery bag you’d brought with you. Where did you get the bag?”