Chapter Two

Every nerve in Gracelyn’s body was already on high alert, but that little beep of her security system gave her a fresh surge of adrenaline. She cursed herself for not having already moved. If she had, then the nightmare wouldn’t have found her.

Maybe Ruston wouldn’t have found her either.

She’d have to deal with him. But first, she had to handle this threat that could put the baby, Abigail, in danger.

While she hurried through a mental checklist of her security, Gracelyn went closer to the laptop monitor. She already knew all the windows and the doors were locked, and that every possible point of entry was equipped with sensors.

It hadn’t been any of those that’d gone off, though.

That would have been a much louder beep. This softer sound had been because someone or something had moved past one of the sensors set up around the entire perimeter of the house.

She glanced through the various camera feeds and soon spotted the culprit, and she relaxed just a little. “A deer,” she muttered. “There are dozens of them around, and they often set off the sensors.”

Ruston moved closer to her, looking at the laptop screen as well. So close that she caught his scent. It stirred through her in a totally different way than the adrenaline and nerves.

A bad way.

Because it reminded her of the heat between them.

Reminded her of why they’d landed in bed. That couldn’t happen again. Still, it was hard not to notice that face, that body that had drawn her to him in the first place. Ruston was very much the cowboy cop, though his dark brown hair was longer than most cops’. The length was no doubt to go along with his undercover persona. Ditto for the scruff that made him look like an Old West outlaw.

She kept her attention on the screen, looking for anyone or anything else that the deer’s movements could have masked. When she’d set up the security, it had occurred to her that an intruder could sneak in behind a deer or some other animal, so she always looked for that. Always.

The seconds crawled by, turning into minutes, and she still didn’t see any signs of an intruder. Gracelyn couldn’t breathe easier, though. Not with Ruston standing next to her. She had to get rid of him fast so she could get out of there with the baby.

“I read about what happened to your father,” she said to jump-start the conversation. Jump-start and then finish it as soon as she got any and all info from him.

He nodded, and she saw the pain flood his cool gray eyes. Pain because his father, Cliff, had been murdered seven months earlier. Gunned down by an unknown assailant. Since his dad had also been the sheriff of Saddle Ridge, Texas, the speculation around his murder centered on his investigations.

And his wife.

Sandra McCullough had left Saddle Ridge just hours before her husband’s murder, and she hadn’t returned. Of course, Ruston and his siblings, who were all lawmen, wanted to find her. To question her, too. But there was also the fear that she couldn’t be found because she was dead. Or because she’d had some part in her husband’s death and was now on the run.

“Among other things, your father was investigating the kidnapping of two pregnant women,” Gracelyn continued. “According to what I’ve read, he thought that maybe the kidnappings were possibly connected to the baby farm where we were nearly killed.” She stopped and waited for him to confirm or deny that.

Ruston was clearly still working through the horrible memories of losing his father and his missing mother, but he finally nodded. “He was investigating that. What no one has been able to do is link his murder to that case.”

“Do you believe there’s a link?” she came out and asked.

He didn’t get a chance to answer though because his phone vibrated in his pocket. Ruston frowned when he looked at the caller. “It’s Marty.”

She didn’t have to encourage Ruston to take the call. He wanted answers just as much as she did, and this Marty just might be able to give them some. It sickened her though to have to deal with the devil, but Gracelyn was willing to do whatever it took to keep the baby safe.

“Yeah,” Ruston said when he answered, and he put the call on speaker. A sign that he had likely been up-front as to why he was here and had nothing to hide.

Unlike her.

Gracelyn wanted those answers. Desperately wanted them. But she also had to get Ruston out of there.

“Steve,” the caller said, obviously calling Ruston by his cover name, “I need you to move things up. Get out to the woman’s place right now and take her and the kid.”

That tightened every muscle in her body. Judging from the way Ruston pulled back his shoulders, he was having a similar reaction.

“Why?” Ruston asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I just need her sooner than expected. I’ve had to work around some transportation issues.”

Marty had said that so calmly, all business. There was no hint that he even thought of her and Abigail as anything more than objects.

“Transportation issues,” Ruston repeated. “Am I still supposed to take her and the baby to the warehouse in San Antonio?”

“You are, but the people picking her up want her there earlier than planned. Make it happen,” Marty insisted.

People. So, maybe Marty was just the middleman on this. Still, middlemen often knew who’d hired them.

“You didn’t say, but why do you want this particular woman?” Ruston pressed.

“That’s none of your business,” Marty snapped, punctuating that with some profanity. “I didn’t pay you to ask questions. If you can’t take the woman and the kid, then I’ll send someone else to do the job, and you’ll pay me back every penny of the advance I gave you.”

Gracelyn figured that wouldn’t be all, that Marty would try to silence Ruston so he wouldn’t blow the whistle on him.

“I said I’ll get her and the baby and I will.” Ruston’s voice was a snap, too. “It just makes me uneasy when plans change. I don’t want to grab them, show up at the warehouse and then have nobody there waiting to take them off my hands.”

“Somebody will be waiting there for you,” Marty growled. “Now, get them and finish this.” With that barked order, Marty ended the call.

Ruston stared at the phone a few seconds and shook his head. “I’d planned on dropping you and your baby at a safe house and then driving out to the warehouse with decoys.”

Gracelyn had been so shocked at Ruston’s arrival that she hadn’t had a chance to ask him how he’d planned for all of this to play out. “Decoys?” she questioned.

He nodded. “Charla Burke,” he said, referring to an SAPD detective they’d both worked with. “And a dummy baby. Obviously, Charla and I would both be armed, and we’d planned on arresting whoever was waiting in that warehouse. Other cops would be moving to take Marty at the same time.” He paused a heartbeat. “I need to let Franklin know about this.”

Lieutenant Tony Franklin, the senior officer in charge of undercover assignments in the SAPD Special Victims Unit. Gracelyn didn’t have any reason to distrust Franklin or Charla, but she didn’t care for them knowing her current location. Then again, Marty obviously knew, too, which meant heaven knew how many others did as well.

Yes, it was definitely well past time for her to leave.

“I have my own safe house already in place,” Gracelyn said, and it got the reaction from Ruston that she expected.

His forehead bunched up, and he huffed. Obviously, he knew she could handle herself—most of the time, anyway—but he was probably still concerned. Heck, so was she.

“I don’t want police protection,” Gracelyn spelled out to him and left it at that.

No need for her to remind him that being a cop hadn’t helped either of them on their last assignment. Yes, they’d both gotten out of there alive, barely, but that’d been more luck than training. At least two dozen bullets had been fired at them during their escape, and they’d received only minor injuries.

Well, minor physical injuries, anyway.

Gracelyn was still living with the nightmare of nearly being gunned down, and she figured it was the same for Ruston. Except Ruston had been able to go back to the job. She hadn’t been.

A soft sound shot through the room. Not the security system this time, but a kitten-like cry that had come from the baby monitor. Gracelyn immediately looked and saw Abigail was squirming in her crib. That was her cue to get Ruston moving.

“You can leave now,” she insisted, going to the bottom drawer beneath the stove and pulling out a go bag that had cash, fake IDs and a gun. She already had other supplies stashed in her SUV in the garage.

Ruston didn’t budge. “I hate to see you on your own like this. I know you don’t trust me, but I can help you.”

She was ready to assure him that she didn’t need his help, but the baby’s fussing turned into a full cry. Gracelyn checked her watch, even though she knew it wasn’t time for a bottle. She’d fed Abigail less than a half hour before Ruston had arrived.

“I’ll be fine,” Gracelyn said, and she hoped that was true.

She’d been so careful, and here at least four other people knew her current location. Ruston, Marty, Lieutenant Franklin and Charla. Soon, Gracelyn would want to dig into how Marty and his cohorts had found her. And why he wanted her and Abigail. For now, though, she had to move.

When the crying went up a significant notch, Gracelyn hooked the go bag over her shoulder and headed to the nursery. “I’ll get Abigail and leave. Goodbye, Ruston.”

“Abigail,” he repeated. “You named her after your late mother.”

She nodded. Then scowled when he followed her. “No need for you to lock up when you go,” she insisted, stopping outside the nursery door to stare at him. “I’ll be out of here within minutes.”

Ruston stared back. And stared. Then he muttered some profanity under his breath, reached around her and opened the nursery door. He maneuvered around her before she could stop him, and he made a beeline to the crib.

Gracelyn’s heart went to her knees.

Somehow, she managed to get her legs working, and she hurried to scoop up the baby. But not before Ruston got a good look at her.

Ruston didn’t say anything for several long moments, and even though the only illumination in the room was from a night-light, Gracelyn saw his jaw muscles turn to iron.

“Abigail isn’t two weeks old,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous snarl.

“No. She’s eight weeks old.” And Gracelyn quickly tacked on a huge detail that Ruston needed to hear. “She’s not our baby.”

Ruston had already opened his mouth, no doubt to accuse her of not telling him that he’d gotten her pregnant, but her comment stopped him. Temporarily, anyway. He stared at her, and stared, clearly trying to figure out if she was telling him the truth.

She was.

“Abigail’s not my baby either,” she added.

Again, Ruston had clearly been gearing up to accuse her of all sorts of things that she wouldn’t have done. Yes, she was desperate. Still was. But if she’d had Ruston’s baby, she would have figured out a way to tell him about it.

“Then whose child is she?” he demanded. “Because she looks like you.” He stopped again. “Is she Allie’s? Is she your niece?”

Gracelyn nodded. Of course, that confirmation was going to lead to a whole bunch of other questions. Questions that she couldn’t answer. Still, she was going to have to give Ruston something or he’d never leave. Best to start at the beginning, which ironically had been at the end of her career as a cop.

“We didn’t catch those people who were running the baby farm,” she went on. “They were after us, and I couldn’t dissolve into the background by taking on another undercover persona. Because I couldn’t be a cop. So, I planned on...running. Hiding. Staying safe.”

“You could have come to me,” he insisted.

“No, I couldn’t have.” It was a truth that was going to cut him to the bone, but he had to hear it. “You still trusted the cops. I didn’t. I knew you weren’t dirty, but someone blew our cover at that baby farm, and that someone could have been another cop.”

That was a reminder for her to get out of there with Abigail, since two cops she wasn’t 100 percent certain she could trust—Charla and Lieutenant Franklin—knew her location. Well, they knew the location of Lizzy Martin, anyway. But it was possible that they knew it was an alias she’d been using.

“How’d you end up with Allie’s baby?” Ruston asked.

Gracelyn gathered the long breath that she’d need. “Allie showed up shortly after I turned in my badge, just as I was about to go on the run. She was scared.” And sporting a black eye and bruises on her arms. “She told me her boyfriend was abusive. And that she’d just taken a pregnancy test and was about two or three weeks pregnant. So, I took Allie with me.”

She’d had no choice about that. Allie could be flighty and restless, but there was no way Gracelyn could have abandoned the child and her.

“Using an alias I’d set up for her, Allie gave birth to Abigail eight weeks ago in Houston,” Gracelyn went on. “Then, a week later, Allie disappeared. She left me a note, asking me to take care of Abigail, but that she wanted to try to make amends with Abigail’s bio-dad, Devin Blackburn. He’s bad news, Ruston.”

She didn’t get into the details of that, but Devin Blackburn had money and connections—and three restraining orders from previous relationships. He’d been arrested twice for assault and computer hacking, but the money and connections had kept him from doing any time in a cage.

However, there was one connection Ruston needed to know about. Except she could tell from his expression that he’d already figured it out.

“Devin Blackburn,” he repeated. “He was one of the names that came up during the baby-farm investigation.”

She nodded. There’d been dozens involved in that case, maybe hundreds, but Devin’s name had popped up because he had known associations with a baby broker who’d worked for the farm. Since that particular broker had turned up dead, the cops hadn’t been able to learn if Devin’s association had led to anything criminal.

“I obviously couldn’t risk Allie bringing Devin to the house in Houston, because I didn’t know who else he’d let know I was there, so I brought Abigail here,” Gracelyn added. “I keep a burner phone and a private Facebook account that Allie could have used to get in touch with me so I could let her know where I was.” She paused. Had to. “But she hasn’t contacted me, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.”

He shook his head. “If you’d come to me, I could have helped keep Allie, you and the baby safe,” he insisted.

“You would have tried, but it would have meant giving up your badge,” she insisted right back. “All four of us would have been in hiding until the people responsible for the danger are caught.” She paused again, then drew in a long breath. “I think I’m close to finding those people.”

That got his attention, and his glare morphed into a puzzled look. “Who? Is it Marty?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have names. I have computer identities that I found on a website that’s basically an auction site for babies. One of the identities is Green Eagle.”

Gracelyn didn’t have to explain why that was important. Ruston would recall it was what the person running the baby farm had called himself or herself.

“That can’t be a coincidence,” she added.

He made a sound that could have meant anything. Ruston certainly didn’t jump to agree to that. “I looked for leaks in SAPD. For any signs that someone had ratted us out. I found nothing.”

Gracelyn had known he would look, and if he had indeed found the culprit—if there was a dirty cop to find, that was—Ruston would have already told her.

“I did what I believed was necessary to keep Abigail safe,” Gracelyn went on. “And if I had learned the identity of Green Eagle, I’d planned to contact you and give you the name so you could arrest him or her.”

He went quiet again, but his gaze stayed intense. “We’re going to talk more about Abigail and Allie,” he said like a demand. “But for now, I want to know everything you have on Green Eagle and the baby auction.”

She nodded. “Not here, though,” she said and would have reminded him that it was too dangerous to stay here.

A sound stopped her.

It was that punch-to-the-gut beep from her security system, and even though it was possibly another deer, she whipped out her phone from her pocket and looked at the screen.

The slam of adrenaline knocked the breath out of her.

Because it wasn’t a deer. In the milky haze of moonlight, Gracelyn saw the shadowy figure coming straight toward the house.