One Tough Texan

As a cop she’d have to follow procedure to a T when all she really wanted to do was find the girl and bring her home. She wasn’t interested in prosecution and laws would get in the way.

“Did you quit the force?”

“Took an extended leave,” she said. “But I have no idea if I’ll have a job when I return. The chief threatened me and told me not to interfere with an ongoing investigation.”

“Bet you’ve covered a lot more distance than they have,” Joshua said. A flicker crossed her features. Regret? Anxiety?

What was she holding back?

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. She bit back a yawn. “This guy I’ve been tracking is the real deal. He is going to come looking for you. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”

“He won’t find me tonight,” Joshua said. “He’s probably still looking for the cute blond teenage girl who got away.”

She laughed but her amusement disappeared too quickly. She zeroed in on him. “I’m serious. This guy is nothing to joke about. He’s ruthless and no one has lived after catching him in action.”

Joshua balked. “And you were trying to get him to take you so you could investigate this girl’s disappearance?”

“Yes.”

“That makes you either stupid or brave. I can’t decide which.” He admired her dedication. He also noted that it would take a whole lot of guilt to make a cop walk away from her job. “How many other organizations have you done this with?”

“Several.”

“And that led you to Perez’s group?”

She fixed her gaze on the ceiling. “He’s my last hope of finding her and I tracked down a lead that says he’s the one who took her.”

“I’m guessing you saved him for last on purpose based on how dangerous he is.” Joshua wasn’t worried about being exposed to Perez. He wouldn’t be sticking around in Bluff for long anyway. He’d been searching for the right time to tell his family that he had no plans to live out his life on the cattle ranch. Granted, he loved the land but he’d applied for a job in the FBI and had every intention of picking up his life where he’d left off once things were settled. A cranky little voice in the back of his mind asked, Then why haven’t you told anyone yet?

The truth? He resented everyone’s assumption that he’d drop everything and change his life. His older brothers might be fine with doing that, hell, they’d all spread out and made their own millions with successful businesses. They’d proven their worth as men. But Joshua was just getting going on his future. To have that stripped away just as it was getting good wasn’t in the plans. As much as he loved his brothers, they wouldn’t understand. His only regret—and it kept him awake at night—had been that he hadn’t stepped up and told his father before he was gone.

Joshua had known on some level that his father wouldn’t have liked his plan so he kept on living a lie, thinking that the right time to bring up the subject would magically present itself. The worst part was that the old man would never have expressed his disapproval. He was a good father. There was no way he’d make Joshua feel obligated. But Joshua had seen the look of excitement in his father’s eyes last year when he’d told the boys about the plan to have them work the land he loved so much. He’d built a small empire for his sons from nothing. Rejecting his father’s offer would make Joshua feel a lot like he was rejecting the man, his legacy.

Selfish as it might have been, Joshua hadn’t wanted to see disappointment in his father’s eyes. Now it was too late and he felt trapped.

“I thought I was alone with Perez and his men in that location. Never saw you coming,” Alice admitted.

“How’d you know he’d be there?” he asked, redirecting his thoughts to something he could fix.

“I’d tracked him to the area based on a meeting he’d set up to talk to someone about a new transportation route and so I used an informant to plant a tip. I knew that if he could get me on Perez’s radar that I’d have a good chance of becoming his target. My informant had already told me that Perez had a buyer for a sixteen-year-old blonde, so he set me up.”

She’d fit the clean-cut American teenager to a T. Even now with her blue-striped pajama pants and white tank, she looked years younger. Her hair was drying and the rubber band looked barely able to contain her waves.

“And then you came along and...” She didn’t say that he’d ruined it but he could tell based on her expression that’s exactly what she was thinking.

“If I interrupted your plan to be kidnapped by one of the most dangerous men in the country, then I’m glad I came along when I did,” Joshua said. He pointed to her right side below her armpit where blood flowered. “How bad is that?”

She glanced down and panic flitted across her face as she hopped up. “Oh.”

“Don’t move. You’ll only make it worse.” He glanced around the small room looking for some kind of emergency kit. “You have first aid supplies?”

“Not much. I meant to pick some up.”

“Hold on.” He ran out to the Jeep and retrieved his, shivering in the cold. The temperature must’ve dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour alone. On the ranch, he never knew when he’d need first aid so he’d gotten in the habit of keeping supplies on hand wherever he went.

The thunder had eased and the rain was coming down in a steady beat. He planned to head out at first light as soon as he knew she’d be okay.

Joshua returned to the room a few minutes later and found Alice as he’d left her. Head against the headboard with her eyes shut. Since her hand was closed around her Glock, he didn’t want to startle her.

He moved closer so that he could disarm her if need be. He didn’t take her skills lightly. She was good with a weapon but he was better. Couple that with the fact that exhaustion was slowing her reaction time and he had the edge he needed.

Her eyes snapped open the second the bed dipped under his weight.

“It’s me,” he said, his hand covering hers on the weapon as she brought it up. Physical contact sent a different kind of heat through him. A sexual attraction wasn’t appropriate or wanted, especially under the circumstances.

She apologized and then shook her head.

“How long has it been since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?” he asked. There were other more pressing questions he needed to ask, but he reminded himself not to get too personal with someone he would never see again after tonight. Because he had every intention of helping her and then getting back to the ranch to deal with his own problems.

“A while, I guess.”

“What else do you know about Perez?” he asked to distract her as he lifted her shirt enough to see where the blood came from. He was worried about Alice. He peeled back the bloody bandage to reveal a two-inch gash three inches below her armpit.

“Most of these criminal rings take girls from places where huge crowds are gathered, like the Super Bowl. Not Perez. He searches for just the right one, looks for a certain kind and mostly prefers all-American types. He seems to have a particular affinity for blondes although Isabel—” she flashed her eyes at him as he cleaned the blood off the cut and then she continued “—that’s her name, is a brunette. I can see why he’d take her, though, because she’s a beautiful girl.”

There was probably no way he could convince Alice to follow him to the ranch until he could dig deeper into the situation and things settled down. Her eyes were pure blue steel and determination and she’d left behind a job she loved to track down this girl. This was the closest she’d been to getting answers and he highly doubted he could convince her to slow down.

“Innocent girls and blondes fetch a higher price. His target age range is twelve to sixteen years old.” She winced.

He apologized as he finished cleaning her wound, warning her that the next part might hurt more. “I’d be happy to take you to the ER.”

Her head was already shaking before he could finish his sentence.

“Those are practically babies,” Joshua ground out, thinking about what she said about the girls. Anger bit through his normally easygoing nature.

She nodded. “He likes to target places where there won’t be a lot of extra security or cameras. Remote spots in small towns like this.”

Joshua blotted her wound with fresh antibiotic ointment on a clean piece of gauze.

“Then, he sells them to various jerks or uses them to farm babies for high-profit adoptions,” she said.

Didn’t this conversation just spike Joshua’s blood pressure in two seconds flat? No matter how many years he spent on the job he’d never get used to people who hurt children. He shook his head as he placed a new bandage over her cut.

“I learned that several of his girls have been used for the sole purpose of being impregnated and then held captive through multiple pregnancies,” she continued.

Joshua knew all about those sickening operations. He’d get more information out of Alice if she believed he was a civilian. He pretended to be hearing this for the first time even though he didn’t feel right deceiving her. “Do I want to know what Perez does once he...uses the girls?”

“Dumps the bodies once he’s made enough from the babies and the girls start to become liabilities,” she said with an involuntary shudder. “And that’s just one of the things they could be doing with her. Perez has been known to sell them to a high bidder, which is why he likes a specific look. He knows the market and what his customers like. He gets a sense for their taste and then snatches a few girls to give a ‘client’ options.”