Surrendering to the Sheriff

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 (#ulink_7d5d5402-381a-566b-9366-b136030e4f07)

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.”