Czytaj książkę: «Roughshod Justice»

Chapter One

Texas Ranger Jameson Beckett felt his stomach twist into a hard knot. There was too much blood on the ground. Of course, a single drop was too much, but there was enough for there to be multiple dead bodies.

What the devil had happened here?

He stepped around the first pool of blood, around the CSI who was photographing it. There were cops. Medics. The medical examiner. Chaos. A flurry of adrenaline-laced movement, something that came with the territory of a crime scene like this.

The sun was already setting, but Jameson picked through the dusky light and the chaos, looking for his brother, Gabriel, who was the sheriff. Gabriel wasn’t the biggest guy in the mix, but he had an air of authority that made him easy to spot. Jameson made his way to him.

“How bad is it?” Jameson asked.

Of course, he partly knew the answer to that. It had to be bad for his brother to call in the Rangers to assist. Gabriel only did that when it was too much for him and his deputies to handle. Those were situations that didn’t happen very often in Blue River, the small ranching community they called home.

“We’ve got two dead bodies.” Gabriel tipped his head to the pair just a few yards away.

They were both men, both sprawled out in the pasture as if they’d collapsed in those spots. There was a black SUV not far from them on the road, the doors open, the engine still running.

Since the blood was between the SUV and the men, they’d likely been shot in or near the vehicle and then had gone into the pasture. Maybe to escape their attacker or maybe in pursuit of the person who’d shot them. Then the men had either succumbed to their injuries or been shot again.

Jameson turned back to his brother. “Any idea what we’re dealing with? A drug deal gone bad, maybe?”

“No drugs that we can find. But both men were heavily armed. So was she.” Gabriel motioned toward the ambulance that was parked just behind his cruiser.

“She?” Jameson asked.

Since it was a simple question, Jameson was more than a little surprised that his brother didn’t jump to answer. Instead, Gabriel started leading him in that direction. “I don’t know who she is, she won’t say, but she keeps asking for you. That’s why I called you.”

Hell. This could be connected to one of his investigations. He had a couple of female criminal informants helping him with a homicide, and Jameson hoped one of them hadn’t been involved in this.

Gabriel stopped to talk to one of the CSIs, and Jameson went ahead to the back of the ambulance, where he immediately saw someone else he knew. Cameron Doran, a deputy in the Blue River sheriff’s office. Cameron was also about to be Jameson’s brother-in-law since he was engaged to Jameson’s kid sister Lauren. Cameron had his hand on his holstered weapon, and he was clearly standing guard.

“Has the woman told you who she is or what happened?” Jameson wanted to know.

“No. She hasn’t given us much of anything. She just keeps repeating your name.”

Jameson braced himself for the worst, because if his CI was in an ambulance, then she’d clearly been hurt.

And she had been.

The first thing he saw was more blood. It was on her clothes, in her pale blond hair and all over her face, making it hard for him to tell who the heck she was.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” one of the medics volunteered. According to his name tag, he was Chip Reynolds. “Head wounds just bleed a lot. It appears she got clubbed, so she needs stitches. She also probably has a concussion, but the doc will need to confirm that. Can we go ahead and take her to the hospital?”

“Not just yet.” Jameson wanted to know who and what he was dealing with, and he figured Gabriel would want to know that, as well.

Jameson moved closer, leaning down so he could make eye contact with the woman. Her head whipped up, their gazes connecting. He still didn’t recognize her, but he wasn’t seeing much of her, either, because of the blood.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

She opened her mouth, closed it and looked up at the EMT as if expecting him to know. He just lifted his shoulder. “She didn’t have any ID on her,” the medic explained.

“Are you Jameson Beckett?” she said to him.

“I asked first.” But then he paused and replayed what he’d just heard.

Hell.

He didn’t recognize her hair, her eyes or her face with all that blood, but Jameson sure as heck recognized the voice.

“Kelly?”

Jameson went even closer, and the medic helped by wiping off some of the blood. Yeah, it was Kelly Stockwell all right.

“I thought you were dead,” Jameson grumbled.

She blew out a breath, and it sounded like one of relief. Though Jameson couldn’t figure out what she was relieved about. She was injured, and there were two dead bodies just yards away from her.

“You know me,” Kelly whispered after another of those breaths.

Clearly, this was some kind of sick joke. “Of course I know you.”

He had the memories to prove it, too. Memories of Kelly being in his bed. Also memories of her disappearing without so much as a text. Jameson truly hadn’t thought she was dead, though, only that she’d run out after she’d gotten what she wanted from him.

And it hadn’t been sex that she’d wanted.

“Your sister thinks you’re dead, too,” he added, just to get his mind back on the right track.

“I have a sister?”

Jameson didn’t roll his eyes, but it was close. “Mandy. Ring any bells?”

“No.” But she seemed to latch right onto that. “Is she okay?”

“I have no idea. Mandy and I haven’t talked in months.”

They had in the beginning, though, after Kelly disappeared about two years ago. Jameson had spent several months looking for her without so much as a clue to her whereabouts. Mandy had helped with that. Some. Not nearly enough, considering her sister was missing, but Jameson figured not all siblings were as close as he was to his brother and sisters. After that initial search for Kelly had turned up empty, he’d put both the woman and his hunt for her on the back burner.

“Can you call Mandy and make sure she’s all right?” Kelly asked. Except it was more than a plea for help. It was a demand.

Jameson huffed. “I thought you said you didn’t remember her.”

“I don’t, but...please, just call or text her.”

Jameson considered refusing, but since Mandy could indeed be connected to this, and even if she wasn’t, she would want to know that Kelly was alive. He scrolled through his contacts, located Mandy’s number and called her. No answer, but when it went to voice mail, Jameson asked her to get in touch with him ASAP.

Kelly thanked him under her breath. Paused. “You’re...angry with me,” she muttered. “Why?”

A burst of air left his mouth. Definitely not a laugh from humor. “You stole a file about an investigation from my office in my house,” he snapped.

Yes, it seemed a bad time to bring that up, especially considering that Kelly obviously had much more serious problems on her hands, but hell in a handbasket, it stung that he’d been so wrong about her. Jameson had trusted her, and she’d pretended to like him so she could get her hands on the file.

The file itself wasn’t one of Jameson’s cases. Not officially anyway. But it had been a compilation of everything that had to do with his parents’ murders. It had statements of witnesses’ accounts, court records and even notes from the investigations his father was working on when he’d been murdered.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything.”

“That’s convenient.” Jameson didn’t bother taking out the sarcasm. “We’ll get to that stolen file later. Right now, tell me about those dead men.”

Kelly closed her eyes for a moment. Gave a heavy sigh. “Several people have already asked me that. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know who I am.”

He didn’t repeat the “convenient” comment, but that’s exactly what Jameson was thinking.

Of course, it was possible she did have some memory loss. That was a nasty gash near her hairline, and the medic had said she might have a concussion. But pretending to have amnesia would be a quick way for Kelly not to have to answer any of his questions.

Jameson didn’t get a chance to say anything else to her. That’s because Gabriel finished his chat with the CSI and joined them.

“So who is she?” Gabriel immediately asked Jameson.

“Kelly Stockwell.”

She repeated that as if trying to figure out if it was right or if she recognized it. Either she didn’t or else was faking it, and tears sprang to her eyes.

A first.

Kelly wasn’t the crying sort.

“She’s not linked to the...other stuff going on, is she?” Gabriel asked.

Jameson didn’t need him to clarify “the other stuff.” They were just two days away from the tenth anniversary of their parents’ brutal murders. Murders that had been splattered over every newspaper in the state, and because of all that news coverage, it had brought out a couple of crazies. People who’d wanted to see the old crime scene. Others who’d talked of copycat killings.

At least his parents’ killer, Travis Canton, was behind bars and was no longer a threat. Of course, there were some, and Kelly was one of them, who thought the wrong man had been convicted.

Jameson didn’t see it that way. Travis and his father had had plenty of run-ins over the land boundaries they shared. Added to that, Travis was a drunk. A mean one. And Jameson believed it was in one of those mean rages that Travis had slipped into the Beckett home and knifed Jameson’s dad. When his mother saw what was going on, Travis killed her, too.

And that was the theory the prosecution had used to give Travis a life sentence.

“She’s connected in a way,” Jameson verified. “She’s a PI, and she and her sister, Mandy, owned an agency in San Antonio. A few years back, August hired them to find any evidence to clear Travis’s name.”

No need to clarify to Gabriel who August was. He was Travis’s half brother and a pain because he was always pushing hard to come up with someone else who could have murdered the Becketts. That way, he could spring his brother from jail.

That wasn’t going to happen.

At least not with anything August might have gotten from Kelly and Mandy. Even though there hadn’t been any new evidence to find, that hadn’t stopped Kelly from digging. And she’d done her digging by getting close to Jameson so she could steal that file.

“I didn’t know what Kelly was up to when I met her about two years ago,” Jameson went on. “I didn’t know she was working for August. But when I found out, she disappeared, and her sister eventually closed the business.”

Jameson didn’t mention anything about his sleeping with Kelly. Didn’t have to do that. Gabriel slid him a glance to let him know that he knew. It was that sixth sense that his big brother had.

“I take it there’s some bad history...and more...between you two,” Gabriel added, and he aimed a look at Kelly.

“You could say that. At best she’s a liar and a thief. She stole everything I had about our parents’ murder investigation, including files with info that hadn’t been released to the public.” Obviously, though, that was the least of her worries right now. “Who found her?” Jameson asked. “Who called this in?”

“A guy driving by saw the two men in the pasture, and Kelly was running away. Or rather trying to do that. She collapsed near the ditch. Since she was armed, the guy didn’t get out of his truck, but he called it in. I had him go to the station to wait for me, and I’ll question him later.”

Good. Jameson wanted to hear what the man had to say. But more than that, he wanted to finish this conversation with Kelly.

“I can ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital,” Jameson offered.

Gabriel didn’t exactly jump to agree to that. Probably because he knew Jameson wasn’t in the best of moods. Still, Gabriel also knew that Jameson wouldn’t do anything to disrespect the badge. It didn’t mean, however, that he wouldn’t grill Kelly. As much as he could grill an injured woman anyway.

“Watch your step with her,” Gabriel warned him as Jameson got into the ambulance. “When I frisked her, she had two guns and a knife, and she would have hit me with a karate chop if I hadn’t gotten out of the way in time.”

“I thought you were going to try to kill me,” Kelly said.

Jameson hadn’t even been sure she was listening, but she obviously was. He also hadn’t remembered Kelly having any martial arts skills. Of course, probably everything she’d told him about herself was a lie. As far as Jameson was concerned, he didn’t really know the woman in front of him.

“Are you going to try to kill me?” she came out and asked, glancing first at Gabriel and Cameron. Then at Jameson.

Jameson tapped his badge. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

Her gaze darted away from his, and she took another of those uneasy breaths. “Sometimes bad guys wear badges.”

That didn’t sound like a guess or a general observation. “Is your amnesia cured and you’re remembering something specific?” Jameson pressed.

But he instantly regretted the snark. More tears came, and even though Kelly quickly brushed them away—cursed them, too—Jameson still saw the pain on her face. Not just physical pain, either. Whether or not the amnesia was real, she’d still been through some kind of ordeal.

“The CSI swabbed her hands for gunshot residue,” Gabriel explained, “but she put up a real fight about being fingerprinted.”

Jameson pulled back his shoulders. People who did that usually didn’t want their identities known. Coupled with the dyed hair—Kelly had been a brunette when he’d met her—she was obviously trying to disguise her appearance. Even her eyes were different. She’d hidden her green eyes with brown contacts.

“Call me if she says anything we can use to figure this out,” Gabriel added, shutting the ambulance door.

Jameson nodded and got seated just as the ambulance driver took off. The EMT continued to hold a compress to Kelly’s head and probably would have to do that the entire time since it was still bleeding.

It wouldn’t be a long ride to the hospital, only about ten minutes, and Jameson wanted to make the most of that time. He started by reading Kelly her rights. Gabriel had likely already done that, but Jameson didn’t want there to be any unticked boxes if she did confess to everything.

Whatever “everything” was.

“Did you shoot those two men?” he asked. “And before you lie, just remember we’ll know if you’ve fired a gun because there’ll be gunshot residue on your hands. Your weapons will be tested, too.”

She touched her fingers to her mouth, which was trembling a little. “I honestly don’t know if I shot them or not. They’re dead?”

He nodded, though the confirmation might not have even been necessary. Because she might already know the answer. “Who were they?”

An immediate head shake that time. So fast that the medic told her to keep still. “I don’t know that, either,” Kelly answered. Her gaze came to Jameson’s again. “Did you send them after me?”

There it was again—her distrust of him. Well, the feeling was mutual. “Let’s get something straight. I didn’t send thugs after you. I’m not here to kill you. Everything I’ve told you has been the truth, but you can’t say the same, can you?”

She stared at him. “You’re talking about that file you mentioned to the sheriff. I don’t remember it. I need to remember,” she added as she choked back a hoarse sob. “Because I have to know who you really are and why this is happening.”

He huffed again. “I’m really Jameson Beckett, Texas Ranger,” he supplied. “Now, start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know, everything you remember.”

“I remember them,” she said, glancing at Chip and the other EMTs. “And the sheriff. Someone swabbed my hands.”

That was a good start, but nowhere near what he wanted. “What do you recall before that?” Jameson pressed. “Before the sheriff and the EMTs arrived.”

Kelly stayed quiet for several moments. “I remember the pain in my head. Being on the ground. It was damp. And I saw the blood.” She stopped, her gaze going to his again. “What did the sheriff mean when he said there’s a bad history and more between us?”

Well, there was nothing wrong with her short-term memory, that was for certain. Jameson didn’t answer her, but he thought she understood what he wasn’t saying because she muttered a simple response.

“Oh.” Then she groaned. “Oh, God.” The tears filled her eyes again. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“I agree. Not much about this makes sense, but you mean something specific. What exactly?” When she didn’t answer, Jameson added another question, one that was at the top of his list of things he wanted to know. “If you don’t remember anything, why did you keep asking for me?”

“Because of this.” She moved her hand to the front of her shirt. Then stopped. “I need to show you something, and I don’t want you to shoot me.”

“Is it another gun or knife?” he growled. Because he was pretty sure his brother would have found something like that when he frisked her.

“No. It’s a message.”

Everything inside Jameson went still. “What kind of message?”

Her hands were shaking when she unbuttoned her top. Some of the blood had soaked through to her chest, too, and that’s why it took Jameson a moment to see the small piece of paper that she took from her bra. She unfolded it, the trembling in her hands getting even worse, and she showed it to him.

What the heck?

Jameson drew his gun. “Explain that,” he demanded, tipping his head to the note.

Or rather the threat.

Kill Jameson Beckett or you’ll never see her again.