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“Any sign of the men or the hostages?”
“None.” Josh put down his hands but didn’t move off the bed. He stayed right there looming over her.
And he was naked.
Jaycee did a double take.
Okay, not naked. Just shirtless.
She had a good view of not just those toned abs and pecs but also the scar. It was several inches long and gashed across his otherwise perfect body. Even though it was well healed, she figured the ashy white line would never go away.
The memory of it certainly wouldn’t.
Josh
Delores Fossen
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why USA TODAY bestselling author and former air force captain DELORES FOSSEN feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
MILLS & BOON
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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
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
EXTRACT
Chapter One
This was exactly the kind of homecoming that Deputy Josh Ryland had wanted to avoid.
Just the sight of the guy with the gun caused his head to start pounding, and his heartbeat crashed in his ears. The flashbacks came.
Man, did they.
Flashbacks of another surveillance, another gunman. And the three .38 jacketed slugs that the gunman had fired into Josh’s chest. The wounds had healed, for the most part anyway, but still the flashbacks came.
“You okay?” his cousin whispered.
His cousin was Grayson Ryland, sheriff of Silver Creek, Josh’s hometown where he’d been born and had spent his childhood. Not a town where Josh had expected to see a man carrying an assault rifle. It wasn’t exactly a standard weapon for a Texas cattle rancher.
“I’m fine,” Josh lied. And he tried to level his breathing. Tried also to ignore the healing gunshot wounds on his chest that had started to throb like a bad toothache.
“I can call one of the other deputies to come out here,” Grayson offered.
There was no shortage of them. Like Grayson, four of the deputies were Josh’s cousins, too. And if Grayson had thought for one second that he would encounter a rifle-toting man on what should have been a routine call, then he would have almost certainly brought one of the others and not Josh.
“You made me a deputy,” Josh reminded him. “This is part of the job.”
That sounded good. Like something a small-town deputy should say to his boss.
It was pretty much a lie, though.
The truth was, Josh had come back home after taking a leave of absence from the FBI so he could avoid gunmen. Assault rifles. Bullets to the chest. And the tangle of bloody memories that he fought hard to keep out of his head.
So much for that plan.
Using the binoculars, Josh watched the rifleman pace across the front porch of the two-story ranch house. He was clearly standing guard.
But why?
Too bad Josh could think of several reasons why a rancher would need a guard with an assault rifle, and none of those reasons involved anything legal.
Josh handed Grayson the binoculars so he, too, could have a look. “You think they’re hiding drugs in the house?” Grayson asked.
“Drugs or guns, maybe.”
Whichever it was, it had created a lot of traffic, because there were plenty of tire tracks on the gravel driveway in front of the ranch house.
It was that unusual traffic that had prompted someone to make an anonymous call to the sheriff’s office to report possible suspicious activity at the ranch. It didn’t help that no one knew the tenants. The place had recently been rented by a couple from nearby San Antonio who’d yet to turn up in town.
Josh could see the source of some of that traffic. There were four vehicles—two trucks, an SUV and a car, all parked around the grounds. No tractors, no livestock or any signs of any ranching equipment.
That didn’t help the knot in Josh’s stomach.
“The gunman’s not the new tenant of the place,” Grayson explained.
No. Josh had glanced at the couple’s driver’s license photos in the background info that he’d pulled up on them before Grayson and he had even started the half-hour drive from Silver Creek out to the Bluebonnet Ranch. A peaceful-sounding name for a place that was probably hiding some very unpeaceful secrets.
And speaking of hiding, the front door of the ranch house flew open, and Josh didn’t need the binoculars to see another armed man step into the doorway.
Yeah, this was definitely a bad homecoming.
Grayson and he stayed belly down on the side of the hill dotted with spring wildflowers that overlooked the ranch, and Grayson returned the binoculars to Josh so he could take out his phone and call for backup. Unfortunately, they were going to need it.
Josh zoomed in on the second guard who’d stepped onto the porch. Both men were dressed in dark clothes, and both carried the same type of assault rifle. Maybe they were part of a militia group, though Josh hadn’t heard of any reports of that kind of activity in Silver Creek.
The second man glanced around. The kind of glance that a cop or criminal would make to ensure he wasn’t being watched. Josh was pretty certain that Grayson and he were well hidden, but he ducked down lower just in case, and he watched the man motion toward someone else in the doorway.
A woman stepped out.
And Josh’s pulse kicked up a significant notch.
He adjusted the zoom on the binoculars. Hoping he was wrong. But he wasn’t.
Josh instantly recognized that pale blond hair. That face. Even the body that was hidden beneath a bulky pair of green scrubs and a gray windbreaker.
Jaycee.
Last time he’d seen Jaycee Finney was the morning of his shooting when she’d been half-naked and skulking out of his bedroom. He hadn’t stopped her, that was for sure, because he’d already figured out that a weekend affair with a fellow agent was a bad idea. After the shooting and after he’d realized what she’d done, Josh knew it hadn’t been just bad. It had been one of the worst mistakes of his life.
“You know her?” Grayson whispered when he finished his call for backup.
Obviously, something in Josh’s body language had clued Grayson in to that possibility. Probably the narrowed eyes or the veins that Josh could feel pulsing on his forehead.
“Yeah. She’s Special Agent Jaycee Finney.” And if Jaycee was here, that meant the FBI was already aware of something illegal taking place on the ranch.
Josh took out his phone and called his brother, Sawyer, who was an FBI agent in the San Antonio office. “You ready to come back to work, little brother?” Sawyer said the moment he answered.
“Not exactly. Fill me in on SA Jaycee Finney.”
Unlike his cheerful greeting, Sawyer didn’t jump to answer that, cheerful or otherwise, but Josh heard what sounded like keystrokes on a computer.
“Please tell me you’re not involved with her again,” Sawyer implored.
“Not like that.”
“Good. Because she’s bad news.”
Oh, yeah. No arguments from him on that.
Josh had learned his lesson when it came to Jaycee. She would do any-and everything for the badge, and while Josh had once put himself in that same super-troop category, he never would have risked another lawman’s life.
As Jaycee had done.
Josh kept his attention fastened to her and watched as the second gunman grabbed her by the arm. She didn’t fight back, though he knew she was capable of it. She didn’t appear to be armed, either. Jaycee just let the goon practically drag her off the porch and into the yard.
Even though Jaycee and he didn’t have a good history together, it still took everything inside him to stay put and not bolt out there to help a fellow law enforcement agent. This was obviously some deep-cover assignment, and playing knight in shining armor could get her killed. Grayson, too.
“Seems like you’re not the only one who wanted some downtime,” Sawyer finally said. “I just checked the computer, and it says Jaycee’s been on a leave of absence for nearly four months now.”
That didn’t mesh with what was playing out in front of him. Either Jaycee was doing her own rogue private investigation or else she’d been taken captive.
Josh watched as the guard shoved her in the direction of a barn that was almost the same size as the house. “Any ransom demands for her?” he asked Sawyer.
“Ransom? None. Why? What in the Sam Hill is this all about?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll get back to you.” Josh pushed the end-call button and slipped his phone back in his jeans pocket.
The guard gave Jaycee another shove just as she reached the barn door. It was impossible to get a decent look at the interior even though there were overhead lights, but it appeared to be some kind of living quarters. The guard shut her inside the barn, slammed the door, engaged the slide lock and walked back to the house.
“Want to let me in on what’s happening?” Grayson asked.
“I’m not sure. That agent down there is supposed to be on a leave of absence like me. How long before backup arrives?”
“Twenty minutes at least.”
That was an eternity if those men were torturing Jaycee. And that was a strong possibility. The man hadn’t exactly handled her with kid gloves when he’d maneuvered her into that barn. It was highly likely that her identity had been blown and that she was being held and forced to give information.
Which she wouldn’t give easily.
Not Jaycee.
She wasn’t just married to the badge, it was her soul mate. The only thing she actually cared about. She’d die—and get others killed—before giving up anything that would compromise an investigation. Even an unauthorized one.
He knew a lot about that, too, when it came to her.
Josh cursed under his breath. “Cover me. I’ll move in for a closer look.” And then he remembered that he wasn’t talking to a fellow agent but rather his new boss. “I’ll stay low and out of sight.”
Grayson stared at him, his lips pressed together a moment, but then he nodded. “Call me if you spot trouble.”
His phone was already on vibrate, and Josh drew his gun. That simple gesture gave him another jolt of flashbacks, but he wrestled the images aside and made his way back down the hill. It wasn’t much of an elevation, but thankfully just enough to keep him hidden.
Grayson had left his truck parked on a ranch trail about a quarter of a mile away. That was no doubt where his brothers would park when they responded to the scene. They were all experienced cops and would know to do a quiet approach, but Josh wanted to finish his surveillance and be back in place with Grayson before they arrived. That way, they could discuss the best way to handle this.
Whatever this was.
He didn’t see any guards on the side of the barn that wasn’t facing the house, but he stayed low and used the vehicles for cover to make his way from the road and to the barn. No windows, of course. So he went to the back and spotted the door. It wasn’t the type that’d normally be on a barn. More like a house door with a padlock on the outside.
But it wasn’t locked now and was open just a fraction.
Still no sign of any guards, so Josh went closer and peered inside. It was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from an exposed bulb dangling in the center of the barn and a TV that’d been mounted high on a stall post. An old black-and-white movie flickered on the screen, but the sound was barely audible.
It took Josh a moment to pick through the darkness and shadows and spot Jaycee. She was sitting on an army-style cot, her elbows on her knees, her face buried in her hands.
She wasn’t alone.
Josh saw two other women, both also on cots. One was reading a paperback and the other was staring up at the ceiling. What he couldn’t tell was if there were any guards inside.
He didn’t make a sound or move, but Jaycee’s head snapped up, and as if she’d sensed he was there, her gaze zoomed straight toward him. Josh didn’t need a lot of light to notice the relief in her eyes.
Quickly followed by something else.
Fear, maybe.
She shook her head, barely moving it, and she looked down, her loose shoulder-length hair sliding forward to conceal the sides of her face. She put her finger to her mouth in a stay-quiet gesture.
At least that was what Josh thought she was trying to do.
“What the hell’s going on in there?” a voice boomed through the barn.
Josh glanced around and soon spotted the source. A large speaker mounted on one of the crossbeams. Next to it was a camera.
Hell.
Had they seen him?
Still no sign of either of the guards, but he got ready just in case he had to grab Jaycee and the others and run for cover.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Jaycee shouted. She stood, her back to Josh, and she put her hands on her hips. The sleeves of the bulky windbreaker billowed out like wings as she stared up at the camera. “What, I can’t scratch my nose now without getting interrogated?”
The tone was the same old Jaycee. Smart mouth. In charge. But Josh could see that her hands were trembling.
“It looked like more than scratching your nose to me,” the man on the intercom fired back. “You girls aren’t trying to plan something, are you? Like another escape attempt? Because the last one didn’t go so good, did it?”
So they were being held against their will. But why? And who was doing this?
“We learned our lesson about that already,” Jaycee said, and the two others bobbed their heads in agreement.
The women were at the wrong angle to see Josh, and Jaycee made it even harder for them to spot him by stepping to the side. Positioning herself and that bat-wing windbreaker between the camera and him.
“So do I have permission to scratch my nose?” Jaycee yelled.
“Yeah. For now anyway. But if you try to break any more cameras, this time your roommates are gonna pay for it.”
The moments crawled by, and there was a slight crackling sound. Jaycee’s shoulders slumped, and she blew out a barely audible breath.
“I’m getting some air,” she said to no one in particular, and she turned and headed toward the back door.
And Josh.
He saw it then. When she turned to the side and the windbreaker shifted. Her belly. Not flat as it’d been the last time they’d crossed paths.
Jaycee was pregnant.
Oh, man.
Josh forced himself to stay quiet and calm. And he also forced himself to think about the timing of all of this. It wasn’t hard to remember the only time Jaycee and he had slept together. Because that was the same day he’d nearly died.
Five months ago.
Like the flashbacks, that hit him darn hard, like a heavyweight’s fist to the gut. But he bit back any sound of surprise because if the guards heard him, it would likely get them killed.
Jaycee didn’t look at him. In fact, she gave no indication whatsoever that she knew he was even there. She strolled to the back door, eased it open several inches farther than it already was and took a deep breath—like someone indeed getting a little fresh air.
“Don’t move,” she mouthed, her chin still lifted slightly in her fresh-air pose. “I broke the lens a couple of days ago with a rock, and they haven’t gotten a replacement yet.” She tipped her head to the tiny camera mounted on the eaves. “Right now, you’re out of camera range for the one inside, and you need to stay that way.”
He nodded, didn’t move, except to drop his gaze to her stomach. “Whose baby is that?” he asked in a whisper.
She opened her mouth but then closed it just as quickly. Her attention sliced to the front door of the barn, and she whirled around to step in front of him.
Not a second too soon.
The door flew open, and Josh got just a glimpse of the armed goon as he rushed in.
And he pointed his rifle right at Jaycee.
Chapter Two
Jaycee cursed the panic that shot through her.
After months of being held captive, she should be used to having a gun pointed at her, but maybe that was something that never got old. Especially since each time one of the guards pointed a gun at her, they aimed at her stomach.
The one place that they knew would get her to cooperate.
She’d risk her own neck, but not the baby.
However, there was a new reason to do whatever they wanted so she could get the guard out of there. Josh’s life depended on it, and sadly, so did hers and the other two women’s, Marita and Blanca.
Her cell mates spoke only Spanish, but they understood enough English to know what they had to do. When the guard came in, they got to their feet, cowering. Both pregnant, like Jaycee, and both willing to do anything to protect the babies they carried.
“You sure you ladies aren’t up to something?” the man growled.
Jaycee didn’t know his name, but he was bald, ugly and big, which described every guard who’d been at the ranch over the past month.
This one came in at least several times a day, and he always made a repeat visit after bringing one of them back from the house. Maybe because he thought they were going to discuss whatever they’d seen or heard in there. Or maybe he thought they’d break some more cameras.
On each of these visits, Jaycee wished she could punch the guy in the face, take that rifle and get herself and the others out. But so far, escape had been impossible.
Maybe it still was.
She couldn’t risk verbally warning Josh to stay put, but hopefully he would. He was a good agent. At least he had been before the shooting that’d nearly left him dead. If they survived the next few minutes, maybe she would be able to ask him how he’d found her and how he planned to get them all out.
And he’d better have a plan.
A darn good one.
Keeping herself directly in front of the door, Jaycee lifted the leg of her scrub pants to remind the jerk that since her attempted escape, she had been wearing an ankle monitor. One that would alert him if she did manage to get out of the barn. So far, she’d had no luck in getting the monitor off or disabling the Big Brother camera inside that watched them 24/7.
The jerk stared at them awhile longer. Jaycee didn’t prolong his stay by glaring at him as she sometimes did. Her glare would rile him, she knew that for a fact, but a riled man just stayed longer.
She wanted him out of there now.
Finally, he mumbled something and got moving. So did Jaycee. She knew the angles of the camera and the blind spots. Well, one blind spot anyway. Even the bathroom that’d been added in the corner had no door. But she had learned that any time she moved into the remains of the horse stall just to the left of the back barn door that one of the jerks came running to make sure she was still there.
Definitely a blind spot.
“Stay low,” she whispered to Josh, “and go in there.”
Jaycee tipped her head to the stall. She had to get him out of the yard because the guard would soon be making a sweep of that area. Maybe he wouldn’t come upon the backup that Josh had hopefully brought with him. If Josh had come alone, well, they were in trouble.
Without making a sound, Josh slipped through the bottom part of the door and into the stall.
“Keep your voice at a whisper,” she warned him, angling her head away from the camera. She couldn’t do that for long, either, or it would prompt another look-see from the guard. “There’s a listening device on the post by the camera, but I’ve crammed bits of hay in it to muffle the sound.”
She was sure he heard what she said, but his smoky blue eyes were planted firmly on her stomach.
Oh, that.
She owed him an answer to his question.
Since she’d first eyed that little plus sign on the home pregnancy test over four months ago, she’d wondered how she would spill this news. Josh wasn’t exactly a family man. Thirty-four and had never even lived with a woman or been engaged. Jaycee didn’t consider herself a relationship expert, but she figured that meant he hadn’t planned on becoming a father this year.
And she didn’t care.
This was her baby. She’d spent the last three and a half months protecting it, and she didn’t intend to stop now. The only thing she needed from Josh was his help in getting them all the heck out of there.
Jaycee moved back to the door, propped her shoulder against the frame and pretended to examine the split ends on her hair. She spent a lot of time pretending to do mundane things that concealed her eyes and mouth just so the guards wouldn’t be alerted that she was looking for a way out of this Hades of a prison.
“Well?” Josh prompted.
Since an answer to that question would only waste time and distract him, Jaycee went in a different direction. One that would fully occupy his lawman’s attention.
She hoped.
“There are four guards total,” she explained. “At least two are on watch at all times. And right now, there’s a doctor inside. He’s already given me and the two women here checkups, but he’ll examine the other four women who are also being held captive in the house.”
She risked a glance at Josh, and judging from the way he looked at her—as if she’d lost her bloomin’ mind—he hadn’t known those details.
“You did know about the captives, right?” she asked. “And that this is a baby farm, and they’re holding us against our will?”
He shook his head.
That sucked the breath right out of her.
He didn’t know. So why the devil was he here?
Josh shucked off his black Stetson and generally looked as if he wanted to throw up in it. That only lasted a split second, and he became the tough FBI agent again.
Or rather the hot cowboy cop.
That wasn’t an FBI shield on his rawhide belt. It was some kind of local badge. And he was wearing jeans and a denim shirt that looked as if he’d been born to wear them. Ditto for the rumpled chocolate-brown hair. Definitely not FBI regulation length. Later, if she got the chance, she’d tell him that it suited him.
Later, she’d tell him a lot of things.
And maybe he would listen.
Josh eased his phone from his pocket and fired off a text. “Will these men kill you if you try to escape?” he mouthed.
“Oh, yeah.” She didn’t have to think about that.
Jaycee had had enough experience with killers to know one when she saw one, and the guards were killers. She figured their boss was, too, though she’d yet to lay eyes on him. What she wanted to do was put a gun to his head and pull the trigger a couple of times. Harsh, yes, but he’d put a lot of women and babies through way too much misery.
“They’ve had me for three and a half months.” She glanced at the other two women, who were pretending to do anything but look at her. “My Spanish sucks, but from what I’ve gathered, they were here about a month before I arrived.”
“How’d this happen? How did they take you? Why did they take you?”
All good questions. Too bad her answers were somewhat lacking.
She moved to another section of her hair for the fake split-ends check. “I was coming out of a clinic after an OB visit. Another woman was walking out with me. Someone I didn’t know. But she was close to her delivery date, and we were talking. Two men grabbed her. When I tried to help her, they hit us with Tasers.”
Those memories were almost too painful to recall, but Jaycee had tried to brand every detail into her brain so she could catch the monsters once she was able to get free.
And she would catch them.
“I don’t know what happened to the other woman,” Jaycee continued. Again, a painful memory that clawed at her. She hadn’t been able to save her, and now heaven knew what had happened to her and her baby.
“Why did they take you?” he repeated, his attention on her belly again.
“From what I’ve been able to find out, they kidnap women or force them into surrogacy and then sell the babies on the black market.”
She let go of the hunk of her hair and moved on to nail-biting to cover the movement of her mouth. Except she was shaking enough that nail-biting didn’t exactly seem like a pretense.
“They don’t appear to know I’m an agent,” Jaycee added.
And that was probably the only reason she was still alive.
This operation might not be huge, more like a sicko cottage industry, but it carried with it all sorts of felony charges. If the brains behind this thought she was FBI, they might not let her draw another breath.
And that would mean her baby wouldn’t stand a chance.
Or maybe they knew she was an agent and were planning to use that in some way. Maybe to get information from her.
Josh’s phone vibrated, and he glanced at the screen before answering it. “We’re going to need a lot of backup,” he whispered to the caller. “This is a black-market baby ring. At least four armed guards in the house. Four captives, too, and another three captives here in the barn.”
Jaycee couldn’t hear a word of what the caller said, and Josh’s body-language clues shut down, too. No more emotion in his eyes.
Sometimes, like now, she got just a flash of the heat that’d once been between them.
Okay, more than a flash.
She got a full shot of the attraction that’d landed them in bed. Of course, with Josh’s alarmingly handsome looks and long and lanky body, the attraction was a given. Even after all the bad that’d gone on between them.
He dropped his phone back in his shirt pocket and got into a crouching position. His gun ready. She hoped he had some kind of backup weapon that he could let her use.
“When I tell you and the women to get down, do it.” Even though Josh whispered that order, it had some snarl to it. As if he’d considered that she might refuse. At this point, she wasn’t refusing anything that would get her and all the captives out.
Jaycee managed a nod under the guise of more nail-biting, and since she didn’t know what Josh’s plan was, she stayed put. Waiting.
Praying, too.
“Is that baby mine?” he whispered.
She’d been expecting the question, of course, but Jaycee wasn’t prepared for the suddenly clammy hands and her knees locking.
“Yes,” she said.
She purposely didn’t look at Josh because if he had another wave of nausea or some other unmanly response, he wouldn’t want her to witness it. And besides, she didn’t need the distraction of his response, either. Apparently, something was about to happen, something that would require her to shout to Marita and Blanca to get down before she did the same.
Something that would likely be dangerous.
Later, Josh and she could talk about the baby. Yelling would no doubt be part of that discussion, but for now, everything inside her screamed for her to do something—anything—to help with this escape.
And soon.
Jaycee felt useless standing there and waiting. Fortunately, she’d had a lot of practice with that during the past months, and she’d learned some other things that Josh needed to know.
“As far as I can tell,” she whispered, “there are no working exterior cameras, and the computer inside the house seems to be rigged just to monitor the camera here in the barn and our ankle bracelets.”
“How long will the doctor be here?” he asked. It was a logical question, no hint of the baby bombshell she’d just dropped on him.
“Maybe awhile. I think one of the women inside is in labor.”
That brought on some muttered profanity from Josh. With good reason. It would be hard to escape with a woman delivering a baby. As it was, it’d be difficult for some of the women to run for cover. At least Marita, Blanca and she weren’t megapregnant, and they all appeared to be in decent shape.
It seemed as if time practically came to a stop. Jaycee couldn’t say the same for her breathing. It was gusting now, and there were beads of sweat on her face. The camera wouldn’t pick up the sweat, but the breathing would no doubt alert one of the bald goons.
As would her continued stay near the door.
Soon, very soon, one of them would show up to make sure she wasn’t up to no good and to order her back to her cot.
Hoping to buy them some time from the guard check, Jaycee partially closed the back door, leaving just a one-inch gap—the way it usually stayed during the day. At night, the guards locked them in with deadbolts. She went back in the direction of the cot but didn’t sit.
Best to stay on her feet, ready to react.
Marita and Blanca obviously picked up on her nonverbal cues. Maybe the verbal ones, too, if they’d heard Josh and her whispering. Blanca studied her from over the top of her paperback, and Marita kept volleying glances between Jaycee and the movie that she obviously wasn’t watching.
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