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“You could have been killed.”
Her voice was strained, barely a whisper, but he heard the emotions loud and clear.
That wasn’t ordinary concern for a fellow human being. That was concern for her baby’s daddy. Maybe even for him.
It only added another layer of complications to their already complicated situation.
Kendall was pregnant with his baby. They were a Texas version of Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers. And since that story hadn’t had a happy ending, this extra layer only made him worry more.
He’d clearly developed a fondness for complicated layers. Apparently, a fondness for having Kendall in his arms, too.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Kendall stared at him, those eyes so green that they looked like spring itself. Spring with heat, of course. Even now the heat was there.
Surrendering to the Sheriff
Delores Fossen
DELORES FOSSEN, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.dfossen.net.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
Title Page
About the Author
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
Copyright
Chapter One
Sheriff Aiden Braddock shut the door behind him, tossed his truck keys on the kitchen counter.
And stopped cold.
He didn’t hear anything unusual. The whir of the A/C and fridge. The April breeze rattling the oaks outside the window over the sink. All the sounds he should be hearing, but he still got the gut feeling that something wasn’t right.
Since that gut feeling had saved his butt a time or two during his time as county sheriff, Aiden listened to it.
He drew his Glock from his holster.
Aiden didn’t move yet. He just stood there a few more moments. Listening. And then he heard the thing that didn’t belong. A whisper, maybe. Or somebody breathing. Because he lived alone, there darn sure shouldn’t be anyone else whispering or breathing in his house.
“Mom?” Aiden called out just to make sure. Though it’d been longer than a blue moon since she came out to his place. Too far in the sticks, she had always complained.
“Laine? Shelby?” Aiden added in case it was one of his sisters. Again, a serious long shot, since they rarely visited, either.
No answer. But he hadn’t expected one.
Whatever was going on, this likely wasn’t a social visit and could even involve some attempted bodily harm. After all, he was the county sheriff and had riled more than a person or two over the past decade. One of those riled people had perhaps come to settle an old score.
Aiden huffed. He was so not in the mood to bash some heads, but he might have to do just that.
“Let’s make this easy for you,” Aiden called out. “I’m a damn good shot. Plus, I’m hungry, tired and not feeling up to any idiot who’s stupid enough to break into a lawman’s house.”
“Aiden,” someone said in a hoarse whisper.
Even though the person hardly made any sound when she spoke, Aiden thought he recognized the voice.
Kendall.
But that didn’t make any sense. This was the last place on earth she’d come.
Especially after...well, just after.
Aiden didn’t lower his gun, but he inched his way toward the sound of her whisper—in his living room. It was just a few yards away past a half wall, but he kept watch all around him. Kept listening, too. Until he could move into the arched opening that divided the rooms, and he snapped his gun in the direction where he’d pinpointed Kendall’s voice.
His heart slammed against his chest.
Because it was Kendall O’Neal all right, but this definitely wasn’t a social visit. She was on her knees in the center of the floor, and there was a hulking man on each side of her. The men were wearing black ski masks, and both had automatics pointed right at her head.
“Drop the gun, Sheriff Braddock,” the bigger one on the right growled.
Aiden held on to his Glock, trying to figure out what the devil was going on here. He didn’t get many clues from Kendall. She only shook her head. Like an apology or something.
But that was pure fear in her wide eyes.
He didn’t see any signs of injury, but then most of her body that he could see was covered with a pale blue shirt, skirt and business jacket—her lawyering clothes. However, her hair was a mess, her blond locks tangled on her shoulders.
So maybe she’d been in a scuffle with these guys after all.
Kendall wasn’t the messy-hair type. Nope. All priss and polish for her and never a hair out of place. People didn’t call her the ice princess for nothing.
However, that wasn’t an ice-princess look she was giving him now.
“What do you want?” Aiden asked the men.
“Your gun on the floor.” Again, it was the one on the right who answered. No unusual accent. He was a Texan. And the nondescript dark pants and T-shirt didn’t give Aiden any clues, either.
“Do it now,” the man added, and he jammed his gun against Kendall’s head. “Or else she’ll pay the price.”
The last thing any lawman wanted to do was surrender his weapon, but Aiden was wearing his usual backup gun in a boot holster. Maybe he’d be able to get to it in time if things turned uglier than they already were.
Of course, things were already plenty ugly enough.
Aiden didn’t make any fast moves. He eased his gun onto the floor. “Now, what’s this about?” he demanded. Thankfully, he still sounded like a sheriff even though it was hard to sound badass and in charge with guns pointed at Kendall.
“You’re going to do us a favor,” the gunman said. Even though the ski mask covered most of the gunman’s face, Aiden could have sworn the guy was smirking. “And if you don’t, then we’ll hurt Kendall here. Won’t kill her at first. But we’ll use her to make sure you cooperate.”
The threat was real enough—the real guns were proof of that—but Aiden had to shake his head. “You do know that Kendall O’Neal and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, right? Everybody in town knows it. So why use her to get me to do anything for you?”
But his question ground to a halt, and Aiden’s gaze snapped back to her.
“This is some kind of sick game, isn’t it?” Though he couldn’t imagine why Kendall would be playing it with these two armed thugs. “Is this connected to your sister?”
Aiden didn’t wait for an answer. His attention went back to her captors. If they were indeed linked to her sister and not paid help trying to trick him into doing something crazier than what they were already doing.
“Just in case you don’t know,” Aiden told the men, “Kendall’s half sister, Jewell, is about to stand trial for murdering my father twenty-three years ago. If this was a real hostage situation, you’d have taken someone that I actually care a rat’s you know what about.”
Kendall flinched at his stinging remark, but she quickly recovered. The fear, or fake fear, was still in her green cat eyes, and she hiked up her chin in that way that always riled him to the core. She looked darn haughty when she did that.
“There are things you don’t know.” Her voice cracked on the last word. A nice, theatrical touch.
“Clearly,” Aiden said with a boatload of sarcasm. “But let me guess. You’re a thousand steps past the desperate stage, and you’d do anything to save your precious, murdering sister. So you want me to try to fix the trial or something.”
Aiden rammed his thumb against his chest and had to finish through clenched teeth. “You picked the wrong mark, Kendall. I don’t break the law for anybody, especially the likes of you.”
And he got another lightbulb moment.
A very bad one. One brought on by the likes of you comment. It hadn’t been that long ago that he said those very words to her.
Not in the heat of the moment like now.
More like after the heat.
Yeah, Kendall and he had had the hots for each other since middle school. Forbidden fruit and all that crap. Aiden had always resisted her because he’d known it would tear his family apart.
Until three months ago.
He’d had to kill a man that day. A domestic disturbance gone wrong. Then he’d had a run-in with his mother. Then another run-in with one of Jewell’s smart-mouthed daughters. To make matters worse, he’d dropped by the Bluebonnet for a drink or two. Which had turned into four. All right, five.
And he’d run into Kendall.
Aiden hadn’t asked her what kind of bad day she’d been trying to erase with those shots of high-end whiskey she was downing like water. But the drinks had dumbed him down just enough that he’d gone over to talk to her. A mistake.
A big one.
Because the next thing Aiden knew, they were doing more than talking. They’d landed in bed for some drunken sex, and he’d committed one of the worst mistakes he could ever have made.
Did that night play a part in this, too?
Aiden hadn’t been very nice to her the next morning what with his hangover and regret. That was where the likes of you comment had come into play. Because he’d wanted to leave immediately, find a big rock and hit himself in the head with it. But maybe Kendall thought she was a woman scorned, and paired with her obsession to clear her sister’s name, perhaps the desperation had spilled over to this.
“Get out,” Aiden ordered them, and he reached down to pick up his gun.
Aiden didn’t get far before the shot blasted through the room and sent his ears ringing. The bullet hadn’t been aimed at him.
But rather at Kendall.
She screamed out in pain. Not a whimper, but a full-fledged, blood-chilling scream. For a good reason, too. The bullet had gone into her arm, tearing through her jacket sleeve and into her flesh.
Almost immediately, a bright red patch of blood started to spread over the fabric. She struggled, trying to clamp her hand over it, but he realized then that her wrists had been bound behind her back with plastic cuffs.
Aiden’s instincts were to rush to her, to make sure she was okay. He would have done that for anyone. But when he started toward her, the guy on the left shifted his gun to Aiden.
“Move and she gets another bullet in the other arm,” the man warned him.
Okay. So maybe this wasn’t fake after all.
“You’ve got my attention,” Aiden said. “But let’s hurry along this little chat so I can get an ambulance out here for Kendall.”
The talking guy shook his head. “Her injury isn’t serious. Just a flesh wound. That doesn’t mean the next one will be, though. We need her alive but not necessarily in one piece.”
Aiden’s heartbeat hadn’t settled down since he first saw Kendall kneeling on the floor, and that didn’t do much to slow it to normal.
“What do you want?” Aiden repeated.
“For you to destroy evidence lot BR6847-23.” The guy didn’t hesitate.
Normally, Aiden wouldn’t have known what evidence that was. But he did in this case. It was recently found bone fragments.
His father’s bone fragments.
And it was key evidence in the murder case against Jewell.
“So this is about your sister,” he said to Kendall. Even though he no longer believed Kendall had orchestrated it. Not after taking that bullet.
She moaned, the sound of raw pain, and clamped her teeth over her bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t know who hired these men,” Kendall said, her voice shaking. “I was leaving work late, and they grabbed me in the parking lot. They brought me here.”
Even though there weren’t a lot of details in that, Aiden could almost see it, and it turned his stomach a little. Kendall wasn’t a large woman, and these two goons towered over her. She had to have been terrified.
Still was.
No one was that good an actor.
“Jewell’s daughters could be behind this,” Aiden said just to see what kind of reaction he’d get from them. No one argued. But then, he didn’t see anything in their body language that he’d hit a home run, either.
Of course, who else would it be?
Jewell had abandoned her husband and three sons all those years ago when she left town under the cloud of suspicion of murdering Aiden’s father. The suspicion had finally been confirmed when the case was reopened, and those bone fragments had been discovered. Jewell was finally where she belonged.
In jail.
And she hadn’t exactly mended fences with her own sons and ex-husband.
Still, she had two daughters, a stepson and a now-shot half sister on her side. Once Kendall was safe, Aiden would go to Jewell’s spawn and step-spawn and demand answers.
First, though, he had to get Kendall out of this.
“I guess you’ll hold her until I destroy the evidence?” Aiden asked.
The talker nodded. “The sooner you do it, the sooner you can have her back.”
Not likely.
Except that didn’t make sense, either. Jewell’s kids knew she loved her much younger half sister. In fact, word was that Jewell thought of Kendall more like a daughter than a half sister.
So why would Jewell’s kids have put Kendall at risk like this?
“Why?” Aiden repeated out loud and shook his head. “And that why covers a lot of territory. There’s plenty about this that doesn’t make sense.”
Kendall opened her mouth. Closed it. Then swallowed hard. “I thought Laine might have said something.”
Aiden shook his head. “My sister? What does she have to do with this?”
“Laine saw me coming out of the doctor’s office. I swear, Aiden, I was going to leave town next week. I wasn’t going to put any of this on you. I know how you and your family feel about me.”
There was a gun trained on him, but Aiden went some steps closer so he could look Kendall straight in the eye. “What the heck are you talking about?”
She made a sound. Sort of a helpless moan that came from deep within her chest. “They took me because I’m pregnant. Because they knew they could use that for leverage.”
Kendall’s breath shuddered. “Aiden, the baby I’m carrying is yours.”
Chapter Two
It was hard to think through the pain, but Kendall braced herself for Aiden’s reaction. She expected him to curse or yell. To ask what she’d already asked herself—how could this have happened? But other than a few moments of silence, that was it.
Those moments of silence were his only physical response to the baby.
Unlike her.
She was sweating now. Not because it was hot but because her arm was throbbing. Yes, it was just a flesh wound, but she was bleeding, and she needed the wound cleaned and tended. Later, if there was a later, she’d deal with Aiden’s reaction.
Heaven knew what that would be.
“How do you think this is going to work?” Aiden’s attention shifted from her to the gunman who’d been doing all the talking.
“You’ll leave now. Go to the evidence storage room. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting in there, since you’re the county sheriff. Tell them you need to look at something else that involves another case. And once you’re inside, destroy the evidence.”
Aiden shook his head. “It won’t be that simple. There are surveillance cameras.”
“Then figure out a way around them,” the gunman snapped. “After all, your kid’s life depends on it.”
Now Aiden cursed, but it was under his breath. “And what about Kendall? You shot her. It can’t be good for my kid to have his or her mother injured like that.”
“Don’t worry about her. We’ll get her to a doctor. The only thing you have to worry about is doing what you’ve been told.” The man took something from his shirt pocket and tossed it to Aiden.
A cell phone.
“It’ll take videos,” he explained. “Film yourself destroying the evidence and send it to the number already programmed into the phone.”
“And then you’ll let Kendall go?” Aiden asked with plenty of skepticism in his tone.
“Eventually. In a day or two. We got no reason to keep her, and truth is, she’s a pain in the butt. I, for one, will be glad to give her back to you. She bit me,” he growled, glancing down at his wrist.
She had indeed resorted to biting and clawing. She’d done everything to try to escape. But when he threatened to hurt the baby, Kendall knew she had no choice but to stop fighting and look for a better way out of this.
So far, she hadn’t come up with one.
This definitely didn’t qualify as better.
“Hate to burst your bubble,” Aiden said, “but if you hold Kendall for a day or two, someone will report her missing. And people will look for her. You really want to raise those kinds of red flags, since half of her kin are lawmen?”
Kendall groaned softly. “I’ve already told my friends, Jewell and the rest of my family that I’d be leaving town tomorrow morning. I said I needed some downtime and for them not to be surprised if they didn’t hear from me for a while.”
The gunman laughed. “She tied it up in a pretty little bow for us, didn’t she?”
Yes, she did, but Kendall intended to shove that proverbial bow down his throat the first chance she got. She wasn’t in any position to win a physical fight with him, but sooner or later, he’d let down his guard.
She hoped.
Aiden’s gaze came back to her. “I’m figuring you didn’t ask to be here, but I know you won’t shed any tears over this evidence being destroyed.”
“You’re wrong,” she let him know after she choked back another wave of pain. “I don’t want my sister convicted of murder, but I don’t want her free like this, either. And neither would Jewell.”
The corner of Aiden’s mouth lifted in an expression she knew all too well. The Braddock smirk. As an O’Neal and Jewell’s sister, she’d been on the receiving end of it a lot since their families were at odds for twenty-three years.
“Time for you to leave,” the gunman said to Aiden. “Oh, and don’t bother to pull some kind of stunt like pretending to leave so you can double back and rescue her. Kendall will be tucked away someplace safe, where you can’t find her.”
There was no telling what they’d consider someplace safe, but she seriously doubted these snakes had her safety in mind beyond using her to try to prod Aiden into committing a felony.
Aiden stood there, his glare shifting among them, and he cursed again. “Give me at least two hours, and you’ll have your video of me destroying the bone fragments.”
Oh, mercy. He was going to do it.
Kendall had thought he’d be able to negotiate his way out of this. Or else fight his way out of it. She figured the last thing on earth Aiden would do was destroy evidence to protect her.
Except it was not just her.
Even though they were enemies, she knew that Aiden was an honorable man. He wouldn’t risk an unborn child’s life.
Any unborn child.
Still, honor aside, he’d have a heck of a time dealing with the consequences. And worse. Kendall was terrified that destroying the evidence wouldn’t even help the baby and her. She hadn’t seen either of the men’s faces. Had no idea who they were. But they might not let her live anyway.
The thought of it broke her heart.
Not for her own life but for the baby’s. This child hadn’t been planned. Heck, it hadn’t even been on her personal radar. But she’d loved the baby from the moment that she’d known she was carrying it. However, she never expected Aiden would feel the same.
Ever.
“Get her to the doctor,” Aiden growled. “Now.” And he reached for his gun.
“Nope,” the man said while Aiden was in mid-reach. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble coming up with another one. We’ll keep this one for now.”
Kendall’s imagination started to run wild. Once Aiden had destroyed the evidence, they wouldn’t have a reason to keep her alive. They could use Aiden’s gun to kill her and then somehow set him up to take the blame for the crime.
The baby would be motive.
Because an autopsy would reveal the pregnancy, and a DNA test would prove he was the child’s father. These men could make it look as if Aiden had completely lost it when he learned of the baby and killed her in cold blood.
“Oh, and, Braddock?” the man said to Aiden. “We’ll know if you call your buddies at the county sheriff’s office. Or any other law enforcement agency in the area for that matter. Because we’ve got ears in all those places.”
That was probably a bluff. Unless, of course, these guys had managed to plant some listening devices.
“Aiden,” she said before she could stop herself. Kendall hated to beg for his help, but she would. To save the baby, she’d do anything.
A flash of something went through his eyes, but Kendall had no idea what it meant. Aiden gave the men, and her, one last look before he strolled out.
Kendall tried to tamp down the panic. They wouldn’t kill her until they were sure Aiden had destroyed the evidence, and he’d said that would take about two hours. Not much time. But during those two hours, she had to find a way to escape.
One of the men stayed next to her, the gun still pointed at her head, and the other went to the window and peered out. Watching Aiden, no doubt.
Another sound only spiked the panic building inside her.
Aiden’s truck engine.
She heard it start, and then he pulled away from the house.
His place wasn’t that large by Texas standards, just a couple of acres of pasture for his horses, a barn and the house. From the man’s vantage point at the window, he would be able not only to see Aiden leave, but also to see him drive out onto the road.
“He’s out of sight,” the man said a moment later.
Still, they didn’t move. The time seemed to crawl by, and her throbbing arm and building panic didn’t help. Finally, the one who’d been silent latched on to her shoulder and hauled her to her feet.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” the other one snarled, “or you’ll get another bullet.”
Kendall was positive that wasn’t a bluff, but before this ordeal was over, she would almost certainly have to do something stupid. Or at least risky.
As soon as they started moving, she tried to work the plastic cuffs that bound her wrists behind her back. They were loose, but strong for mere plastic, and they seemed to tighten with each tug.
Those tugs also didn’t help the jolts of pain going through her arm. And the pain didn’t help the dizziness. She’d been light-headed since this whole ordeal started, but it was more than just a light head now.
The gunshot and the fear were no doubt to blame.
Kendall drew in several hard breaths and forced herself to look down at the wound. At the gaping hole in her jacket. It turned her stomach, but she tried to make sure she wasn’t bleeding out.
She wasn’t.
There was blood all right, but there didn’t seem to be much more than when he’d initially shot her. That was something at least. A serious blood loss could cause her to miscarry.
The men finally led her out the front door, the same way they’d brought her in after one of them had jimmied the lock. Aiden had a security system, but it hadn’t been on. He probably hadn’t felt the need because he was the sheriff.
Too bad.
If the system had been armed, Aiden might have been alerted and could have nipped this in the bud.
They went onto the porch, down the steps and through the yard toward a thick cluster of trees to the right where the men had left the SUV they’d used to kidnap her from the parking lot of her law office. After they’d grabbed her, they’d stopped several miles outside town to change the license plates and to make a call. Kendall hadn’t learned a thing from that call, because they’d said only one thing to the person on the other end of the line.
“We have her.”
No names used. No hint of the identity of the person they’d called.
So, who had put all this insanity into motion?
Despite Aiden’s accusations and suspicions, it wasn’t Jewell or her daughters. Not Jewell’s stepson, Seth, either. Yes, the three of them loved Jewell, but they wouldn’t resort to this. Unfortunately, other than those three children, Kendall and Jewell’s lawyer, Robert Joplin, there weren’t many people who wanted Jewell to beat this murder charge.
But clearly someone wanted just that.
When they were about ten yards from the SUV, Kendall stumbled just to see how fast the men would react, and she got her answer.
Fast.
Both of them grabbed her, and within a second, she had a gun jammed against her left temple again.
“Keep it up, and you’ll be sorry,” one of the men growled.
No matter what she did, she could be sorry, but Kendall cooperated.
For now.
She continued toward the SUV and didn’t resist when the men practically shoved her inside. As they’d done on the drive there, they buckled her into a seat belt in the middle, and the man who’d spoken only a few words dropped down behind her. The one who’d been doing all the talking walked around the front of the SUV toward the driver’s side.
But then he stopped.
That certainly got her attention, but it got his partner’s, too. “What’s wrong?” the man asked. Unlike the other one, he had some kind of thick accent.
The man still outside raised his finger in a wait-a-second gesture and lifted his head. Listening for something.
Or maybe someone.
Kendall hoped and prayed that it was someone who could get her away from these goons.
“Don’t move,” the guy with the accent said to her, and he stepped out of the SUV. Not far. Just a few inches outside the open door, and he, too, listened. His gaze also darted all around the heavily treed area.
Kendall looked, as well. She tried to pick through the trees and underbrush, but it was spring with everything in full bloom, so she couldn’t see anything.
However, she thought that she might have heard something, like a twig snap. The men didn’t miss it. With their guns raised, they pivoted in the direction of the sound.
Again, nothing.
For several seconds anyway.
Then the shot zinged through the air. It hadn’t been fired by one of her captors but had instead come from the area of that dense underbrush.
It had to be Aiden.
He would have known to cut through the woods and come back after them.
Her captors immediately lifted their guns to return fire, and Kendall sank down into the seat as far as she could. She also looked for something, anything, she could use to cut through the plastic cuffs.
Outside, both men fired, their bullets blasting through the air. She quickly added another prayer that Aiden hadn’t been shot.
Both men continued to fire. Kendall continued to struggle, and even though it made the pain in her arm much worse, she managed to move her hand so she could pop the button on the seat belt. It slid off her, and she got to the floor. Not just for protection but so she could look under the seat.
There was a first aid kit.
She fumbled through it as best she could and found a pair of scissors. They were small, the kind used for cutting bandages and not restraints. Still, they would have to do.
It was hard enough just to pick them up with her hands behind her back. Harder still to try to make any cut. But she had to try.
Kendall glanced out. Both men were now at the front of the SUV and they were tearing up the woods with their bullets. Even though Aiden’s nearest neighbor was a half mile away, maybe he would hear the noise and report it if Aiden hadn’t already called for backup.
The man with the accent looked into the SUV. His gaze connected with hers through the gap between the front seats, and he said something to his partner that she couldn’t hear. But the man must have realized she was trying to escape, because he hurried toward the driver’s door.
Coming for her.
Her heart was pumping now. The adrenaline, too. Kendall worked even harder at trying to cut through the plastic. She could feel them giving way. Little by little. But the man was practically right on her.
The plastic cuffs gave way, finally.
Just as the man crawled across the seat and grabbed for her.
But Kendall brought up the scissors and stabbed him in the face. Because of the ski mask, she wasn’t sure what part of him she hit, but he howled in pain and came at her.
Kendall hit him again with the scissors. This time in his neck.
He made some kind of strangled sound, and she saw the blood. Nothing like her gunshot wound. There was lots of it, and the agonizing sound that he made sent his partner running to him.
Kendall knew she had mere seconds at best. The side door was already open, and she barreled through it. She hadn’t realized just how dizzy and weak she was until her feet touched the ground.
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