Under the Cowboy's Protection Read online

  Madison Travers was waiting for them in the interview room, and she immediately got to her feet. She was petite, right at five-feet tall, and she immediately made nervous glances at both Thea and him.

  She didn’t have a lawyer with her, but there was a uniformed cop at the table. He’d obviously escorted Madison there from SAPD headquarters, and he introduced himself as Dewayne Rodriquez.

  “I’ve read Ms. Travers her rights,” Officer Rodriquez said. “And she waived her right to an attorney.”

  “Because I don’t need a lawyer to tell the truth,” Madison blurted out. Judging from her red eyes and puffy face, she’d been crying.

  Raleigh could have argued that she might indeed need an attorney because if she had done something illegal, then she could be arrested.

  “You’re Sheriff Lawton?” Madison asked.

  He nodded and tipped his head to Thea. “And this is Deputy Morris from the McCall Canyon Sheriff’s office. I understand you’re responsible for the botched in vitro procedure for Sonya Burney?” Raleigh started. Both Thea and he took a seat at the table, and Madison sat across from them. “I want to hear all about that, but I’m especially interested in who tried to kill us and how you came by that information.”

  Madison seemed to lose even more color in her already pale face, but then Raleigh had made sure he sounded like a tough lawman. He wasn’t going to let the woman skate just because she’d voluntarily gone to the cops. That’s because she hadn’t come clean for nearly nine months.

  “Yes, I’m the one who messed up Sonya’s in vitro. I misplaced Mrs. O’Hara’s eggs. At least I guess I did because I couldn’t find them when we got ready to do the procedure. I told Dr. Bryce Sheridan, and he said he’d take care of it.”

  “Dr. Sheridan?” Raleigh questioned. “So he knew about this?”

  “Of course,” Madison answered without hesitating. “He did an insemination instead. That means he just used Mr. O’Hara’s semen to inject into Sonya, not the fertilized eggs as originally planned.” She paused. “We didn’t think it would be successful. Usually it isn’t. So we thought we’d have time to find Mrs. O’Hara’s eggs before we did the real in vitro in a couple of months.”

  “Why didn’t you just come clean with Sonya and the O’Haras?” Thea asked, taking the question right out of Raleigh’s mouth.

  Now she hesitated. “I’d already gotten in trouble for improperly storing another sample, and I would have been fired. Bryce was covering for me.” Madison started crying again when she said the doctor’s name. Bryce. “Plus, the clinic is being sued by a former client who’s claiming we illegally released medical information about her to her ex-husband. We couldn’t have handled another lawsuit. It would have closed us down.”

  From everything Raleigh was hearing, closing them down wouldn’t be a bad thing. Two errors made by Madison and a lawsuit weren’t a stellar track record.

  “You and Dr. Sheridan were lovers?” Raleigh pressed.

  She nodded, wiped away her tears, but kept sobbing. “And now he’s dead. Murdered. That’s the reason I went to the cops. I thought somebody might try to kill me, too. Those men did this to him, didn’t they?”

  “Men?” Thea and Raleigh said in unison.

  Madison grabbed some tissues from a box on the table, nodding while she blew her nose. “Two of them. They were wearing suits and had badges. They came to the clinic and asked to speak to Bryce. I told them it was his day off, and then they said they wanted to know the names of all his current patients.”

  Well, that was interesting. “Were the men cops?”

  Madison shook her head. “They said they were FBI. But after they left, I got to thinking that there was something suspicious about them. I mean, they should have known I couldn’t just give them the names without a court order.”

  “The FBI didn’t send anyone to the clinic,” Officer Rodriquez verified.

  So the guys were posing as law enforcement. “When was this?” Raleigh asked Madison.

  “About a week ago.”

  Raleigh figured that was plenty of time for someone who’d planned on attacking Sonya. “Describe the men.”

  Madison wiped her eyes again while she continued. “I only got a good look at one of them. The other stayed in the waiting room, and he had on a hat and dark glasses. But the other one, the one who talked to me, was bald. Oh, and he had a tattoo on his neck, but he’d tried to cover it up with makeup. I could see the makeup on the collar of his shirt.”

  Raleigh texted Dalton to bring him a picture of Marco, but he continued with the questions while he waited. “Does the clinic have security cameras?”

  “Not inside the building, but we have one in the parking lot.”

  Raleigh looked at Officer Rodriquez again. “We asked the security company who monitors the camera to provide us with footage,” the cop answered. “But they’re stalling because they say it could violate patients’ rights to release it. We’re working on a court order, but it could take a while if they keep fighting it—especially since the murder didn’t take place on the grounds or inside the clinic.”

  Well, hell. That complicated things. “Would it do any good if I talked to them?” Raleigh asked.

  Officer Rodriquez lifted his shoulder. “It wouldn’t hurt. Their office is in San Antonio. Maybe you could show them a picture of the murdered patient so they can see that the footage is part of an active murder investigation.”

  Raleigh looked at Thea, and she nodded. “We need that footage.”

  He couldn’t argue with her about that, but he was worried about the risks of being out in the open with Thea. Still, this was the best shot they had right now. Well, unless he could convince SAPD to put more pressure on the security company.

  There was a knock at the door, and a moment later Dalton came in with Marco’s mug shot. When Raleigh turned the screen in Madison’s direction, the woman shook her head.

  “Who is he?” Madison demanded, the fear in her voice. “Is he the one who killed Bryce?”

  No, he’d been dead by then, but Marco had certainly been willing to murder Thea.

  “Is this one of the men who visited you at the clinic?” Raleigh asked.

  “No. I’ve never seen that guy. Why would you think he was there?”

  Raleigh was hoping Marco had been there so it would tie everything up, linking Marco to both Sonya’s attack and the clinic. He needed to find out if Dr. Sheridan had been murdered because the killers/ kidnappers thought he was onto them. If so, they might consider Madison a loose end, too.

  And of course, Thea also fell into that same loose-end category.

  But Madison had admitted she hadn’t gotten a good look at the man with the hat who’d stayed in the waiting room, so maybe that one had been Marco.

  “Sonya knew the child she was carrying was hers,” Thea said to Madison. “Did you tell her?”

  Again, Madison took her time answering. “Yes. I called her yesterday and then sent her results of the amnio to prove it. I just couldn’t stay quiet after I got that visit from Nick O’Hara.”

  Even Officer Rodriquez seemed surprised by that. “When did Nick visit you?” Raleigh pressed.

  “Two days ago.” Madison’s voice cracked. “He had a meeting with Bryce, and I didn’t mean to overhear what they said, but Mr. O’Hara was talking pretty loud. He told Bryce that he was leaving his wife, Yvette.”

  Raleigh had thought that might happen. He certainly hadn’t seen a lot of affection between Yvette and Nick. But something about this didn’t make sense.

  “Why would Nick go to Dr. Sheridan with this?” Raleigh asked.

  “He wanted to see the surrogacy agreement. He said he couldn’t find his copy but that he thought he remembered there being a way out of the arrangement. Mr. O’Hara didn’t want to share custody with his wife. He wanted full custody for himself.”
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br />   That didn’t mesh with what Yvette had told them. She’d claimed that Nick was having second thoughts about the baby, but maybe he was just having second thoughts about having a baby with her.

  “After I heard Mr. O’Hara say that,” Madison went on, “I knew I had to tell Sonya the truth, so I called her.”

  “What phone did you use to do that?” Thea immediately asked.

  “The one in my office.”

  Raleigh jumped right on that. “The office where those two men visited you?” He waited for Madison to confirm that with a nod. “Were you with the two men the whole time they were there?”

  “No. I went up the hall to see if I could find our other doctor to talk to them, but he was with a patient.” Madison’s eyes widened. “Do you think they planted a bug or something?”

  Yes, he did. Apparently so did Officer Rodriquez because he called someone to ask them to search the clinic for an eavesdropping device.

  “Oh, God,” Madison blurted out. “If they heard that, then they heard me say I was suspicious of them. They heard everything I said to Sonya.”

  Raleigh leaned in closer. “What exactly did you say to Sonya?”

  The tears started up again. “I told her what I did about the botched procedure, and she was upset. She said that she was going to call you and that you would probably help her go someplace else to have the baby. A place where she could think about what she was going to do. I liked Sonya, and she said she trusted you. That’s why I insisted on talking to you.”

  So, if Sonya was thinking about leaving town, that might have prompted her killer to spring into action. But it still didn’t tell Raleigh who’d murdered her.

  Sonya had told Yvette. They had the recording to prove that. But Raleigh wasn’t sure if Sonya had had time to phone Nick or not. If she had, the man certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

  There was another knock at the door. His other deputy Alice this time. She was holding a tablet, and Raleigh could tell from her expression that she had something important to tell him.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Raleigh said to Officer Rodriquez and Madison, and both Thea and he went out into the hall with his deputy.

  “The lab called,” Alice explained, “and they found a fingerprint on the bottom of the carrier seat that the baby was in when you found her.” She glanced at the notes on her tablet. “They got a match on the print. A guy name Buck Tanner. He’s a career criminal, and that’s why his prints were in the system.”

  Raleigh felt some of the pressure leave his chest. They finally had a name, which meant they could locate this snake and bring him in.

  “Is Buck a bald guy with a neck tattoo?” Thea asked.

  Alice nodded and pulled up a picture of him. He matched Madison’s description of one of her visitors, and Raleigh was about to take the photo in to have her confirm it when Alice stopped him.

  “There’s more,” Alice went on. “I found the name of Buck’s lawyer for his last two arrests. It was Simon.”

  Chapter Eight

  Thea knew Raleigh was on edge about this decision to go to Shaw’s Security Company in San Antonio to try to get the camera footage from the fertility clinic. She was on edge about it, too, but this was the fastest way they had of finding out who’d visited the clinic with Buck Tanner.

  If it was his lawyer, Simon, then Raleigh would be able to make an arrest.

  Of course, that alone wouldn’t be enough to convict Simon of Sonya’s murder. Simon could always claim that he went to the clinic with his client, maybe to discuss something totally unrelated to Sonya. Simon could even dispute what Madison had said. After all, Madison had botched the in vitro procedure and then lied about it. She wasn’t exactly a credible witness.

  It would have helped if Sonya had recorded her chat with Madison, but if she had done that, it wasn’t with the other recordings. In fact, the only conversations that Sonya had taped were with Yvette, and that hadn’t started until six weeks into Sonya’s pregnancy.

  Why?

  Maybe Sonya hadn’t trusted the woman. But that only brought Thea back to another why.

  Even though the questions were important, Thea made sure she kept watch around them while Alice drove Raleigh and her to San Antonio. It wasn’t a long trip—less than an hour—but they’d taken precautions. They were in the bullet-resistant cruiser, and Alice could give them backup. Raleigh had even considered sending just Alice and Dalton, but he had decided he, as the sheriff, stood a better chance of talking the security company owner into letting him view the footage. Thea agreed.

  The visit was a risk, and it also ate up a good chunk of the morning, but Raleigh and she weren’t being idle. Thea was reading through the report that the lab had sent them on the evidence that had been processed, and Raleigh was on the phone with his deputy Miguel.

  “No, don’t ask Simon anything about the visit to the fertility clinic,” Raleigh said to Miguel. The call wasn’t on speaker, but since Raleigh and she were side by side, Thea could still hear bits and pieces of the conversation. “Just keep looking for Buck Tanner and any financial links between him and Simon. Links that can’t be explained as payment for Simon’s legal services.”

  Raleigh and she had already started looking for Buck before they left Durango Ridge, but the man wasn’t answering his phone, nor had he been at his house when SAPD had sent an officer out to bring him in for questioning. If Buck was responsible for the murders and the attack, then he had probably gone into hiding.

  “Madison’s in protective custody,” Raleigh relayed to her as soon as he finished his call with Miguel. “She went willingly because she’s convinced she could be a target.”

  She could be. Ditto for Raleigh and her. And Warren. Since Warren seemed to be at the center of the two dead surrogates, he was perhaps in danger, but unlike Madison, he’d refused any kind of protection. Thea only hoped that Egan and his brother, Court, would keep an eye on him. At least Rachel and the baby were safe, and Thea wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

  “What about Nick?” she asked. “Was Miguel able to get in touch with him to ask about the meeting he had with Dr. Sheridan?”

  Raleigh shook his head and made a sound of frustration. “He’s not answering his phone, either. Someone’s on the way to check on him.”

  Good. Because of all the bad stuff that’d gone on, it was possible that Nick was in danger, too. Besides, it was odd that the man wasn’t answering his phone, because he’d seemed so anxious for a call from the kidnapper. Maybe though he’d given up hope about them calling back.

  “I don’t suppose there have been any reports of missing babies similar to the one in the picture that the kidnappers sent him?” Thea continued.

  Another headshake. “But we still don’t know how old the picture is. Or where it was taken. It could be a photo of a baby that was taken off the internet.”

  True. The baby in the photo might not even be missing, much less kidnapped and being held for ransom. They’d done an image search on the internet to find possible matches, but that hadn’t turned up anything, either.

  Raleigh tipped his head to the report Thea had been reading. “Anything new in that lab report?”

  “Not really new, but Buck’s print wasn’t from a single finger. It was actually a handprint, and it was in the right position for someone who was maybe holding the baby carrier to keep it steady. In other words, the print wasn’t planted.”

  Not that Thea thought it had been, but it would be nice to rule it out if that’s what Buck claimed had happened.

  “I also brought these,” she said, taking the hard copy photos from the file. They were pictures of Simon, Marco, Nick and even Yvette. “I wanted to see if anyone from the security company recognized them. That way, if they don’t let us view the footage, then maybe they’ll look at it and compare it to the photos.”

  Raleigh made another sou
nd of approval, though she was sure he preferred to review the footage himself.

  His phone dinged with a text, and he frowned when he read it and showed her the screen. It was from Dalton.

  SAPD found an eavesdropping device in Madison’s office.

  Thea groaned. “That means the visitors—and perhaps the killer, too—knew that Madison had told Sonya about the botched in vitro.” She paused, giving that some thought. “You think that was the trigger that caused the kidnapper/killer to go after Sonya?”

  He paused, too. “Maybe. And if so, then it points to Yvette as being the killer.”

  “Yes, it does. Once we’re back in Durango Ridge, we need to bring the woman back in for questioning.”

  Thea saw the sudden change in Raleigh’s eyes, and it didn’t take her long to figure out why. It was the “we” in that comment. It made it sound as if they were a team. Which they were. But that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it.

  “About that kiss,” he said a moment later. He kept his voice low, probably so that Alice wouldn’t hear. “It really shouldn’t have happened.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” But for some stupid reason, Thea found herself fighting back a smile. There was nothing to smile about, even though the kiss had been pretty amazing. Of course, every kiss she’d ever had with Raleigh fell into that category.

  “It’s not just because we’re working this case,” he went on. “It’s the baggage.”

  No need for him to remind her of that. “Because of Warren. Any kiss between us involves him, too.”

  Raleigh’s eyebrow came up. “Trust me. I wasn’t thinking about Warren during that.”

  She lost her fight with the smile, causing Raleigh to add some profanity under his breath. “Neither was I.”

  Thea would have liked to have promised that there wouldn’t be another kiss, but she wasn’t in the habit of lying to herself. If Raleigh and she were thrown together, they’d likely kiss again. And perhaps even do more. That was the reason she shouldn’t stay at his house another night. The fatigue and adrenaline were already sky-high and that could bring down their already low defenses even more.