Chapter Four

Gracelyn’s heartbeat was still pounding in her ears, but she had no trouble hearing what Charla had just said.

Dead body.

Gracelyn had to choke back a sob because her mind instantly jumped to whose body that might be. Her sister’s.

Sweet heaven, had Allie been murdered?

That was her first thought. Because if someone had come after Allie’s baby and her, then they might have gone after Allie as well. Gracelyn needed to know the answer, but she wasn’t sure she could handle it right now. Not coming on the heels of this attack that could have killed Ruston, Abigail and her.

“Who’s dead?” Ruston asked.

Since Gracelyn didn’t want Charla to know she was in the vehicle with Ruston, she stayed quiet. Waiting and praying.

“Marty Bennett,” Charla provided. “He was found dead at his house in San Antonio. A single gunshot wound to the head.”

Gracelyn felt the relief wash over her, but it didn’t last. Yes, she was so thankful it hadn’t been Allie, but Marty Bennett was the man who’d hired Ruston to kidnap Abigail and her.

Why was he dead?

Since he was a criminal, there could be plenty of reasons for his murder, but Gracelyn figured the man’s death wasn’t a coincidence. It had to be connected to this attack by those two thugs in the truck.

“Are you there, Ruston?” Charla asked.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, and Gracelyn saw that, like her, he was still keeping watch around them while he drove. “I didn’t kill him. Why do you think someone’s trying to make it look as if I did?”

“Because whoever did kill him left your badge at the scene,” Charla was quick to reply.

Ruston cursed under his breath. “My actual badge or a fake?”

“Looks like the real deal to me. Where did you last see it?”

He muttered yet more profanity. “In my apartment in San Antonio. Not the one I rent under my current cover, but my actual apartment under my real name. It’s nowhere near the one I use for cover, and there are only a handful of people who know about it.”

Gracelyn wondered if one of those people was Charla. Or any other cops. If not, it still meant the person behind this knew way too much about Ruston.

“I have a decent security system at the apartment,” Ruston went on, “and I didn’t get an alert that it’d been triggered.”

“Do you have security cams?” Charla asked.

“No, but there are some on the street in front and back of the building.”

“They’ll be checked,” Charla assured him. “I’ll send someone over there now.”

“No,” Ruston said firmly. “Hold off on that. Uh, I’m not sure who to trust on this. With my cover blown, there could be some kind of leak.”

Gracelyn hoped that his distrust extended to Charla. And maybe it did. Her distrust for Charla was certainly there. But it was possible Ruston was simply being cautious. There were plenty of reasons for that.

Maybe Ruston wanted to send up someone he’d be sure wouldn’t plant anything or take something else. Then again, since the break-in had already happened, Gracelyn was betting any planting or taking had already happened.

“Where are you, Ruston?” Charla pressed a moment later.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said and ended the call.

Charla must not have cared for that abrupt dismissal, because she immediately tried to call him back, but Ruston declined it.

He looked in the rearview mirror to meet Gracelyn’s gaze. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Ruston said before he turned his attention back to their surroundings. “Do you?”

“No.” And she wished her head would clear enough so she could think straight. Everything was still racing inside her, and it was hard to sort through the details when she wasn’t even sure they were safe.

“Marty hired you to come after Abigail and me,” Gracelyn spelled out, hoping that just going through the obvious would help them piece this together. “Then someone murdered him and tried to set you up. That someone killed Marty about the same time two gunmen were trying to kill us.”

Saying it aloud worked. Something flashed in her mind. It must have come through in Ruston’s, too, because he voiced what she was thinking.

“If the gunmen had killed me, then there’s no way Marty’s murder could have been pinned on me,” he reasoned. “I spoke to Marty on the phone just minutes before the attack, which means it was probably minutes before he was murdered. I was at least fifty miles from Marty. So, the badge wasn’t to set me up.”

Gracelyn made a sound of agreement. “Maybe it was left to taunt you? To blow any future cover you might have?” If so, it would take Ruston off the market, so to speak. Since his face would be recognizable, he wouldn’t be able to go back undercover.

Why would someone want that?

Again, Ruston supplied the answer. “This could have been done to discredit me with both the cops and the criminals.” He stopped, shook his head. “And it just might work.”

Yes, it possibly would, because even if Ruston had an alibi for Marty’s murder, there’d still have to be an investigation. Gracelyn was betting that Ruston would be doing his own investigation, too. She certainly would be as well, since she didn’t want another of these attacks.

“Either Charla or Tony could be dirty,” she told him. “Of course, that’s true about some other cops, but those two were in on every detail of our last assignment. And they were almost certainly in on every detail of your dealings with Marty. I’ve been digging into their backgrounds, and I believe there are some possible red flags for both Charla and Tony.”

Thanks to the rearview mirror, she saw the concern flash in Ruston’s eyes. Gracelyn didn’t get to say any more, though, since there was the howl of sirens, and just ahead lights slashed across the dark road. Not solo ones either. There were at least three cruisers. In the same instant Gracelyn spotted them, Ruston’s phone rang again, and this time it was Slater’s name on the screen.

“Is that you coming my way in the black SUV?” Slater asked the moment Ruston answered.

“It is,” Ruston verified. “We’re not injured, but the SUV is shot up courtesy of two gunmen in a silver truck. They went off the road about four miles back. It’s possible one of them is injured, but they’re dangerous, Slater. And they need to be caught so we can find out why they did this.”

“Understood,” Slater said. “Woodrow’s right behind me, and the two of us will go after the gunmen. Carmen’s in the third cruiser, and I’ll alert her to turn around and shadow you.”

Gracelyn didn’t know who Woodrow and Carmen were, but she was guessing they were deputies. She was also guessing they’d come in separate cruisers to create that “lights flashing and sirens blaring” effect that Ruston had wanted. He’d gotten it, and it might be enough to put off any attackers who were nearby and ready to strike. Hopefully, though, those attackers didn’t have a way to escape since they’d crashed their truck.

“Are you going to your place or the ranch?” Slater asked a second later.

“The ranch,” Ruston verified, and he ended the call just as Slater and one of the other cruisers went past them.

Slater slowed just a little, probably so he could make brief eye contact with his brother and see for himself that Ruston wasn’t hurt. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Slater went off in pursuit of those gunmen with the second cruiser right behind him. The deputy in the third cruiser waited until Ruston had passed before she executed a U-turn so she could follow them.

“To the ranch?” Gracelyn questioned.

Ruston did another glance in the rearview, and he no doubt saw the concern on her face. And she didn’t have to spell out why that concern was there. His father had been gunned down on the family ranch seven months ago, and Gracelyn didn’t want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“We’ve upgraded security since my father was killed,” Ruston said.

Good, because she didn’t want a killer to come waltzing in and try to finish what those two gunmen had started. Then again, she’d done plenty of security upgrades and look what’d happened. Still, there had to be a way to keep out a killer, and for Abigail’s safety, she had to find it.

Had to.

Abigail wasn’t her biological child, but Gracelyn couldn’t have possibly loved her more. Of course, when and if Allie returned, her sister might take the baby. Or rather she would try, but Gracelyn couldn’t let her do that unless she was certain the little girl was safe. At the moment, she wasn’t.

Then again, maybe Allie wasn’t either.

Gracelyn quickly had to shove that thought aside. No way could she let that fear take over her thoughts. She needed a clear head to keep watch. Because even though Ruston and she now had backup, they weren’t out of the woods just yet.

“Red flags?” Ruston asked.

It took Gracelyn a moment to realize why he’d said that. Before Slater and the other deputies had arrived, she’d been telling him, or rather warning him, about her concerns about both Charla and Tony.

“Possible red flags,” she emphasized. “It could be nothing, but I don’t want to dismiss them and then have them turn out to be something.” She paused a moment to gather her breath. “After our covers were blown, I did some research and found out that Charla’s mother was a junkie and had a record for prostitution. When Charla was eight, her mother sold Charla’s infant half brother to what was essentially a baby broker. Her mom did it again two years later with a baby girl but was caught and arrested. That’s when Charla ended up in foster care.”

She paused again to give Ruston a moment to digest that. It definitely fell into the “possible” red flag category, since it wasn’t a strong connection to the baby farm that had come into existence some thirty years later.

“Is her mother still alive?” Ruston wanted to know.

“No. She died two years ago.”

Which would have maybe been about the time of the start of the baby farm that Ruston and she had ended up investigating. Her mother’s death could have been a trigger to start her on a very bad path.

Gracelyn went ahead and added the rest. “And, no, I don’t have any proof that Charla stayed in touch with her mother and that the woman passed along her contacts for baby brokers to Charla. Even if she had, I know that doesn’t mean Charla used those contacts to become the Green Eagle and start her own business.”

Ruston muttered an agreement. What he didn’t do was dismiss the possibility that it was exactly what’d happened. “And Tony? What do you have on him?”

“He was in serious debt. Not enough to draw the attention of Internal Affairs, but he’d gotten burned in a divorce settlement and was barely keeping his head above water. Until two and a half years ago, when his debts disappeared. The money appears to have come from an old army buddy of his who passed away, but I think the inheritance paperwork could be bogus.”

Ruston met her gaze again. “You hacked into Tony’s financials?”

Gracelyn knew she was about to admit to a crime. A crime that Ruston could use to have her arrested. But she wanted him to have the full picture here. And that picture was anything she’d learned about Tony’s funds couldn’t be used to launch an investigation.

“I didn’t personally do the hacking,” she admitted. “I don’t have that particular skill set, but I hired someone to do it. An old friend of Allie’s, Simon Milbrath, did it. I didn’t use my real name when I contacted him. I set up an identity that I used just for my contact with him, and I never met with Simon in person.”

Ruston muttered more profanity and took the turnoff to the main road. A road she knew would lead to his family’s ranch.

“Simon Milbrath,” he repeated as if committing that name to memory. “And Charla?” he pressed. “How did you find the info on her?”

“Not with any hacking,” Gracelyn said right off the bat. “I dug through her background and found old newspaper articles about her mother’s arrest. Then, using a cover that I was a reporter doing a story, I emailed the now-retired officer who arrested her mother. He was able to tell me that he had suspicions that Charla’s mom had helped some of her junkie friends sell their babies through this broker. He also recalled Charla being furious when her mom was taken away.”

“Did this retired cop have any computer expertise?” he asked after a short pause. “I’m just trying to get an idea of who could have found your location and then passed it along to Marty, who in turn gave it to me.”

Gracelyn wanted to know the same thing, but she didn’t have to consider his question for long. “I did a thorough check on the retired cop, Archie Ingram, before I ever contacted him. He’s in his late seventies, and there’s nothing in his background to indicate he’s a computer whiz or that he was dirty. Just the opposite. He had a stellar record...”

Her words trailed off when the ranch came into view. She’d been here two other times when Ruston and she had still been partners, and it’d had a picture-postcard feel to it then, with its acres of pastures and the pretty pale yellow Victorian house. In the milky moonlight, it was still pretty, but she immediately spotted sensors on the fences, and the driveway along with the front and sides of the house had perimeter lighting. She was betting the back did, too.

“Who lives here now?” she asked. As he drove, even more lights flared on, obviously triggered by motion.

“My sister Joelle and her husband, Sheriff Duncan Holder.”

She knew that Joelle was a deputy, so there’d be three cops. Maybe four if Carmen stayed. In some ways, even that didn’t feel like enough protection. In other ways, it felt like too much, since Gracelyn figured she would be plenty uncomfortable around, well, anyone. That included Ruston’s family.

“Do Joelle and the sheriff know we could be bringing danger right to their doorstep?” Gracelyn asked.

“They know. Slater would have told them.”

She saw the tall man in the front window. Saw that he was armed, too. Duncan, no doubt, and Gracelyn recalled meeting him as well on one of her trips to Saddle Ridge. He’d been a deputy then and had obviously become the sheriff after Ruston’s father had been murdered.

“A couple of months ago, there was trouble here,” Ruston went on, stopping in front of the house. “Trouble at Duncan’s and Joelle’s houses, too. After it was over, they decided to move here and beef up security. Joelle’s seven months pregnant, and they wanted to take precautions.” He turned in the seat and looked at her. “They’ll help us take precautions for Abigail, too.”

She nodded and hoped any and all precautions would be enough. “Thank you. And thank you for helping Abigail and me to get away from those gunmen.”

The corner of his mouth lifted just a little. “I suspect you could have gotten away from them yourself.” The almost smile vanished. “Now, I need to figure out if I led those men to you or if they were already lying in wait to take both of us.”

Yes, that was the million-dollar question, all right, but either way, the danger was still there. It could return. And despite what Ruston had just said, she wasn’t so sure at all that she could have gotten away by herself.

The only reason she’d been able to return fire and cause the gunmen’s truck to crash was because Ruston had been driving. If she’d been alone with Abigail and behind the wheel, it was entirely possible those thugs would have managed to overtake her and force her off the road.

When Ruston stepped out of the SUV, Duncan came out of the house, providing cover. Ruston moved fast, throwing open the back door so he could help her get Abigail unstrapped from the infant seat. The moment they’d done that, Ruston scooped up the baby. Gracelyn grabbed her go bag, and scrambling out right behind him, she hurriedly followed him into the house.

Once they were all inside, Duncan closed and locked the door. He used his phone to rearm the security system and then to make a quick call to Carmen to tell her to assist Slater. As much as Gracelyn wanted the extra backup here, it was best for Slater to have more help. That way, there was a better chance that the two gunmen would be caught.

Joelle was there in the foyer, and she was also armed. Despite being mega-pregnant, Ruston’s sister still looked more than capable of defending her family home.

“Gracelyn,” Joelle said and didn’t add the customary it’s good to see you . Still, the woman didn’t look upset or angry at the intrusion. Just the opposite. Joelle’s face turned a little dreamy when her attention landed on the baby.

Dreamy and then suspicious. She aimed her suspicion at her brother.

“She’s not our child,” Ruston was quick to explain. “This is Abigail, and she’s Gracelyn’s niece.”

Joelle seemed a little disappointed about that, and then her expression morphed again. She became all cop. “Slater said someone fired shots at you?”

Since the question seemed to be directed at Gracelyn, she nodded and hooked her go bag over her shoulder. “Two armed men. Slater and Woodrow and now Carmen are looking for them.”

“I’ll fill you in on the attack,” Ruston added, aiming glances at both his sister and Duncan. “Any reports from Slater yet?”

Duncan shook his head. “But I’ve sent them out some more backup, and I’ve got a half dozen ranch hands patrolling the grounds.”

Gracelyn was once again thankful for all these measures, but she wouldn’t breathe easier until the two men were caught. Caught and questioned. Hopefully, they’d make some confessions, too.

“Any chance the baby’s parents are responsible for the attack?” Duncan asked, aiming the question at Gracelyn.

She wanted to be able to say no, to deny that Allie could have had any part in this. But she couldn’t. “I don’t know where my sister is,” Gracelyn admitted. “And Allie has a bad history with Abigail’s father, Devin Blackburn.”

Duncan jumped right on that. “Bad? How?”

“An arrest for assault and another for computer hacking. He also has several restraining orders from previous relationships. No jail time, though. When Allie disappeared a few weeks ago, she left me a note saying she was going back to Devin.”

“Did she?” Duncan pressed.

“I’m not sure. I’ve been monitoring Devin’s social media accounts, and there’s no mention of Allie.” That didn’t mean, though, that Allie wasn’t with him.

“Devin was also interviewed during the baby-farm investigation,” Ruston supplied. “Interviewed after Gracelyn and I were attacked there,” he clarified. “There was no evidence to charge him with anything.”

“But you think he could be guilty,” Duncan stated.

“I want to go back through the report of the interview, but Devin has the right skill set to have been involved. Computer hacker, money to set up an operation like that and a connection to a known baby broker.”

Duncan nodded. “I’d like to read that report, too.”

“I’ve gone through it many times,” Gracelyn admitted. “Especially after my sister got involved with Devin.”

“Was that involvement before or after the baby-farm investigation began?” Ruston asked.

“During,” Gracelyn answered. “I pressed Allie about the timing, and she said she’d known Devin for years before they became lovers, and that their involvement had nothing to do with the farm. Or what happened to Ruston and me.” She paused. “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not.”

But she needed to find that out fast.

Abigail whimpered, her arms flinging up in the air as if startled. Maybe from a nightmare. If so, Gracelyn hoped it was a nightmare the baby would soon forget. Still, she went to her and eased her out of Ruston’s arms and into her own so she could try to soothe her.

“The nursery is already set up,” Joelle explained, “so you can use that, or there’s a playpen that I’ve already put in the guest room if you don’t want to be away from her.”

Gracelyn didn’t even have to think about this. “The playpen.” It was basically a portable enclosure that could also be used for sleeping. And it would keep Abigail with her.

Joelle nodded. “It’s there and already set up. I can also have whatever you need delivered.”

“Thank you, but I have some formula and diapers in my bag and there’s more in the SUV.” Well, unless that stash had been damaged in the gunfire. Even if it had, though, there was enough in the go bag to last for at least a couple of days.

Enough cash, too, along with a fake ID, a gun and a change of clothes for Gracelyn as well.

“Good,” Joelle muttered. “But if you think of anything else, just let me know. Do you want to take her to the guest room now?”

Guest room. Not plural. And it made Gracelyn wonder if Ruston and she would be sharing it. Part of her hoped they would be. It wouldn’t be especially comfortable to be in such close quarters with a man who’d once been her lover.

A onetime lover, anyway.

No, not very comfortable, but the discomfort would turn to something much worse—fear—if there wasn’t enough protection for Abigail.

“I’ll go ahead and take Gracelyn and the baby upstairs,” Ruston offered. “Once they’re settled, I’ll help in any way I can with the investigation.”

“I’ll help, too,” Gracelyn said. “I can get Abigail in the playpen and then make phone calls or anything else you need. I don’t want her out of my sight, but I need to do something to help. And please don’t say I should get some rest. That’s not happening tonight, not after what we’ve been through.”

No one disputed that. In fact, there were sounds of agreement all the way around, and one of those sounds was from Ruston as he led her up the stairs. The guest room was large and just off the right of the landing, and even though the playpen was indeed there, the lights were off. Gracelyn kept them that way. No reason to alert anyone outside that someone was in the room.

“I need to make a call,” Ruston said, stepping to the side of the room while she put Abigail in the playpen. “I have to talk to a cop friend.”

That gave her a shot of instant alarm, and it must have shown on her face.

“A cop I can trust,” he added, already taking out his phone and pressing a contact number. “Noah Ryland.”

She immediately relaxed. She’d worked with Detective Noah Ryland at SAPD and believed he was trustworthy. Since Noah was assigned to Homicide, Gracelyn figured that was why Ruston had chosen to call him.

“Noah,” Ruston greeted once the detective answered. “I need two favors, and both are huge. I want you to secure any and all files from Marty Bennett’s residence and office. He was murdered earlier tonight, and I don’t want anything to go missing before it’s had a chance to be examined.”

She couldn’t hear Noah’s response to that, but after a few moments, Ruston added, “Yeah, Marty was connected to my current undercover.” Another pause. “You heard right. Someone tried to kill me and also planted my badge at the scene of Marty’s murder.”

More silence, and since she couldn’t even hear any immediate murmurings from the other end of the line, she figured Noah was sorting through that info.

“Good,” Ruston said after Noah finally spoke. “The second favor involves Gracelyn Wallace...Yes, the former cop...No, she didn’t have a part in Marty’s murder either,” Ruston explained when Noah must have asked about it. “She has a solid alibi. In fact, she was with me at the time of the murder.”

He paused when Noah commented on that. “Yes, with me. And that leads me to my next favor. I want to try to stop anyone from going after her again, and I need answers. Gracelyn had contact with a computer hacker named Simon Milbrath and a retired cop, Archie Ingram. It’s possible one of them leaked information to Marty or someone who ended up killing Marty. So, I’d like to know if there are any known connections between Marty and them. It’s possible there’ll be something at Marty’s residence to verify those connections if they exist.”

Again, she heard Noah murmur something that had Ruston’s tight jaw relaxing a bit.

“I owe you,” Ruston told the detective. He thanked him, ended the call and turned to her as he put his phone away. “Noah will secure Marty’s things...if they haven’t already been compromised, that is.”

The odds were they probably had been, but maybe the killer had gotten sloppy. If the crime had been premeditated, though, she doubted it. Still, sometimes killers made mistakes.

“Along with looking for any connections between Marty and the hacker and retired cop, Noah’s also going to get the surveillance from any security cameras outside my apartment,” Ruston explained. “He won’t have to do it under the table, so to speak, since he’s gotten approval from his lieutenant for me to view the footage in case I see something on it that’ll help with the investigation.”

“Good.” She was glad the lieutenant hadn’t tried to stonewall this. Technically, Homicide could have kept this close to the vest, but that wouldn’t have benefited anyone.

Ruston scrubbed his hand over his face. “Maybe the surveillance footage hasn’t been tampered with.”

Again, that was a strong possibility, but unlike removing documents from Marty’s home, or planting incriminating ones, it’d be trickier to alter or erase footage from traffic and security cameras.

A cop could do it, of course.

“If I caused all of this to happen, I’m sorry,” Ruston muttered.

Even though she had no idea who was responsible, Gracelyn didn’t intend to let Ruston fall on his sword for this. “You asked Noah to look at Simon Milbrath and Archie Ingram, and that means you think the leak of my location could have come from one of them. And it could have,” she emphasized.

He made a sound of agreement, but the guilt stayed in his eyes. Ruston didn’t get a chance, though, to continue voicing that guilt, because his phone rang.

“Slater,” he relayed to her and immediately answered it.

Again, he didn’t put the call on speaker, maybe because he thought it would wake the baby. But after only a few seconds, Gracelyn knew that Ruston was hearing bad news from his brother.

That churned up the adrenaline again and caused the mother lode of flashbacks to come at her. Not just of this attack tonight but of the one from nearly a year ago. She had to fight hard to push all of that away just so she could try to steel herself up for whatever Ruston had just learned. It took some effort, lots of it, but she’d just managed to regather her breath when Ruston hung up and looked at her.

“Slater found the truck. The license plates are bogus, and the gunmen weren’t inside,” he relayed. “They were nowhere in sight. Slater and the others will keep looking for them,” Ruston added when she groaned. “A CSI team is heading out to examine the truck now and take a sample of the blood drops that Slater spotted. I guess I was right about one of them being injured.”

Good, because the blood could lead to a DNA match. She hoped the injury was so serious that it meant this snake couldn’t come after them again.

“Slater said it appears the gunmen ran from the truck on foot,” Slater went on. “They left a lot of stuff behind.”

There was something in the way he said the last part that put her back on full alert. She waited, fighting for her breath again, while Ruston spelled it out.

“Slater had a cursory look of the inside of the truck and found my wallet,” Ruston added to his account. “He figures it was taken the same time my badge was. The gunmen’s plan was probably to kill you and then set me up for your murder.”

Gracelyn tried to mentally work her way through that. Yes, that could have indeed been the thugs’ plan. They could have waited out of sight, out of range of her cameras, until Ruston had arrived and was inside. Then they could have broken in and tried to make it look as if some kind of gunfight had gone on between Ruston and her.

“But why would they want to set you up for my murder?” she asked.

Ruston shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said and then paused again. “But there was also an infant seat in the truck. And baby things.”

Gracelyn felt everything inside her tighten into a knot. “They were going to kidnap Abigail.” Her voice broke. “She was the target.”

Ruston came closer, met her gaze, and he took hold of her hand. Probably because spelling it out like that had shaken Gracelyn to the core, and he’d no doubt seen that. His gentle grip helped steady her. More than Gracelyn wanted.

And that was why she stepped back.

She couldn’t do this, not with the nightmares pressing so close to her that she could feel them. Memories of coming so close to them being killed ten and a half months ago.

Ruston didn’t move back toward her, but their gazes stayed locked. At least they did until his phone rang again. “It’s Noah,” he muttered when he glanced at the screen. This time, he turned down the volume and put the call on speaker.

“Is something wrong?” Ruston asked the moment he answered.

“Yeah,” Noah confirmed. “Something’s very wrong. On the drive to Marty’s, I made a call to a computer tech I trust so I could get a background check on Archie Ingram and Simon Milbrath.” He paused. “They’re both dead, Ruston. Someone murdered them.”