Branded by the Sheriff

Staying here tonight, alone, had obviously not been a good idea.

Worse, Faith didn’t know why she’d decided at the last minute to stay. Her plan had been to check in to the hotel, to wait for the renovations to be complete and for the new furniture to arrive. But after stepping inside, she thought it was best to exorcise a few demons before trying to make the place “normal.” So she’d sent the cab driver on his way, made a fire to warm up the place and got ready for bed.

Now someone had hurled a rock through her window.

There was another crashing sound. Another spray of glass. Another thud. Her stomach tightened into an acidy knot.

Beck got off the bed as well. Dropping onto the floor and staying low, he scurried to what was left of the window and peeked out.

“Can you see who’s out there?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her, but he did take a sliver-thin cell phone from his jeans pocket and called for backup. For some reason that made Faith’s heart pound even harder. If this was a situation that Beck Tanner believed he couldn’t handle alone, then it was bad.

She thought of Aubrey and was glad her little girl wasn’t here to witness this act of vandalism, or whatever it was. Faith also thought of their future, how this would affect it. If it would affect it, she corrected. And then she thought of her brother. Was he the one out there in the darkness tossing those rocks? It was a possibility—a remote one—but Beck wouldn’t believe it to be so remote.

Her brother, Darin, was Beck’s number one murder suspect. She’d read every report she could get her hands on and every newspaper article written about the murders.

She didn’t suspect Darin, though. She figured her sister’s ex, Nolan Wheeler, was behind those killings. Nolan had a multipage arrest record, and her sister had even taken out a temporary restraining order against him.

For all the good it’d done.

Even with that restraining order, her sister, Sherry, had been murdered near her apartment on the outskirts of Austin. Their mother’s death had happened twenty-four hours later in the back parking lot of the seedy liquor store where she worked in a nearby town. The murder had occurred after business hours, within minutes of her mother locking up the shop and going to her car. And even though Faith wasn’t close to either of them and hadn’t been for years, she’d mourned their loss and the brutal way their lives had ended.

Still staying low, Beck leaned over and studied one of the rocks. It was smooth, about the size and color of a baked potato, and Faith could see that it had something written on it.

“What does it say?” she asked when Beck didn’t read it aloud.

His hesitation seemed to last for hours. “It says, ‘Leave or I’ll have to kill you, too.’”

Mercy. So it was a threat. Someone didn’t want her moving back to town. She watched Beck pick up the second rock.

Beck cursed under his breath. “It’s from your brother.”

Faith shook her head. “How do you know?”

“Because it says, ‘I love you, but I can’t stop myself from killing you. Get out,’” Beck grumbled. “I don’t know how many people you know who both love you and want you dead. Darin certainly fits the bill. Of course, maybe he just wrote the message and had Wheeler toss it in here for him.”

She swallowed hard, and the lump in her throat caused her to ache. God. This couldn’t be happening.

Faith forced herself to think this through. Instead of Nolan being Darin’s accomplice, Nolan himself could be doing this to set up her brother. Still, that didn’t make it less of a threat.

“Listen for anyone coming in through the back door,” Beck instructed.

There went her breath again. If Beck had been able to break in, then a determined killer or vandal would have no trouble doing the same.

Because she had to do something other than cower and wait for the worst, Faith crawled to the end of the bed where she’d placed her suitcase. After a few run-ins with Nolan Wheeler, she’d bought a handgun. But she didn’t have it with her. However, she did have pepper spray.

She retrieved the slender can from her suitcase and inched out a little so she could see what was going on. Beck was still crouched at the window, and he had his weapon ready and aimed into the darkness.

With that part of the house covered, she shifted her attention to the bedroom door. From her angle, she could see the kitchen, and if the rock thrower took advantage of that broken lock, he’d have to come through the kitchen to get to them. Thankfully, the moonlight piercing through the back windows allowed her to see that the room was empty.

“You don’t listen very well,” Beck snarled. “I told you to stay put.”

She ignored his bark. Faith wouldn’t make herself an open target, but she wanted to be in a position to defend herself.

“Do you see anyone out there?” she barked back.

She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip to stop the trembling. Not from fear. She was more angry than afraid. But with the gaping holes in the window, the winter wind was pushing its way through the room, and she was cold.

“No. But if I were a betting man, I’d say your brother’s come back to eliminate his one and only remaining sibling—you.”

“Maybe the person outside is after you?”

He glanced back at her. So brief. A split-second look. Yet, he conveyed a lot of hard skepticism with that glimpse.

“You’re the sheriff,” she reminded him. “You must have made enemies. Besides, my mother and sister have been dead for over two months. If that’s Darin or their real killer out there, why would he wait this long to come after me? It’s common knowledge that I was living in Oklahoma City and practicing law there for the past few years. Why not just come after me there?”

“A killer doesn’t always make sense.”

True. But there were usually patterns. Her mother and sister’s killer had attacked them when they were alone. He hadn’t been bold or stupid enough to try to shoot them with a police officer nearby. Of course, maybe the killer didn’t realize that the car out front belonged to Beck, since it was his personal vehicle and not a cruiser. Therefore he wouldn’t have known that Beck was there. She certainly hadn’t been aware of it when she had been in that shower. Talk about the ultimate shock when she’d seen him standing there.

Her, stark naked.

Him, combing those smoky blue eyes all over her body.

“Dreamy eyes,” the girls in school had called him. Dreamy eyes to go with a dreamy body, that toast-brown hair and quarterback’s build.

Faith hadn’t been immune to Beck’s sizzling hot looks, either. She’d looked. But the looking stopped after the night he’d given her a Breathalyzer test at the motel.

A lot of things had stopped that night.

And there was no going back to that place. Even if those dreamy looks still made her feel all warm and willing.

“I hope you’re having second and third thoughts about bringing your daughter here,” Beck commented. He still had his attention fastened to the front of the house.

She was. But what was the alternative? If this was Darin or her sister’s slimy ex, then where could she take Aubrey so she’d be safe?

Nowhere.

That was a sobering and frightening thought.

But Beck was right about one thing. She needed to rethink this. Not the job. She wasn’t going to run away from the job. However, she could do something about making this a safe place for Aubrey. And the first thing she’d do was to catch the person who’d thrown those rocks through her window.

She could start by having the handwriting analyzed. Footprints, too. Heck, she wanted to question the taxi driver to see if he’d told anyone that he’d dropped her off at the house. Someone had certainly learned quickly enough that she was there.

“I think the guy’s gotten away by now,” Faith let Beck know.

He didn’t answer because his phone rang. Beck glanced at the screen and answered with a terse, “Where are you right now?” He paused, no doubt waiting for the answer. “Someone in front of the house threw rocks through the window. Check the area and let me know what you find.”