Cowboy Behind the Badge

She wasn’t sure she could trust him, either.

But she was certain that he’d do what was right for the babies.

“They need to be protected,” Laine said when Tucker just stood there volleying glances between her and the babies. “The killers will be looking for them. And for me.”

Tucker shook his head, obviously trying to process this. She wished him luck with that. She’d had more than an hour to process it, and it still didn’t make sense.

“Why are you so sure the killers will be looking for you?” he snapped.

“Because if they don’t know already, they’ll find out I’m the person renting that office space, that it was my car the woman was hiding behind. And that I had a connection to the illegal adoption investigation.”

He made a sound of agreement with frustration mixed in. He tore his gaze from the babies. “How’d this woman know to come to you?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t get a chance to tell me.” In fact, the only thing Laine was certain of was the woman’s warning that kept repeating through her head.

Hide them. Protect them.

“I don’t know anything about these particular babies,” Laine said. The panic started to crawl through her again. “But I’m sure they’ll be hungry soon. I figured since you have a nephew, you might be able to get some baby supplies.”

What Tucker did do was curse and reach for the phone again. Once again, she tried to stop him, but before he could make a call she didn’t want him to make, the phone rang. The sound shot through the room and sent her heart slamming against her chest. It also caused the babies to stir.

“Colt,” Tucker said when he answered. Someone that she knew well. Colt was his kid brother and the deputy sheriff of Sweetwater Springs. He was also someone else she wasn’t sure she could trust. “I was just about to call you.”

Tucker still had his gun gripped in his hand, and he turned his steely-gray lawman’s eyes to the window when he put the call on speaker.

“I tried your cell phone first and when I didn’t get an answer, I called the landline. Good thing you’re there. Just had an interesting visit from two San Antonio cops looking for Laine Braddock,” Colt continued. “They said they had a warrant for her arrest.”

Oh, mercy. It was a lie, of course. There was no warrant out on her, but this had to be the two men who’d killed the woman.

“Are they still there?” Laine blurted out. “If so, arrest them.”

“Laine?” Colt mumbled. He said her name like profanity. “Tucker, what the hell’s she doing at your place?”

“I’m trying to figure that out now. Why’d the men want to arrest her?”

“Aiding and abetting an escaped felon.” Colt paused. “Did she?”

“No!” Laine insisted.

At the same moment, Tucker said, “I’m trying to figure that out, too. Was there anything suspicious about these men?”

“Nothing that I noticed. Why?”

“Just check and make sure they’re really cops. I have an old friend in SAPD, Lieutenant Nate Ryland. Call him and make sure these two guys are from his department. Another thing I need you to do is get someone out to Laine’s office ASAP and check the back parking lot for any signs of an attack.”

“An attack? What the devil’s going on?” Colt pressed.

“Just send someone over there and let me know if there’s anything to find.”

“And don’t use your police radio,” Laine insisted. “The men are probably monitoring the airwaves, and they might try to go back and clean up before you can investigate the scene.”

Colt, no doubt, wanted to ask plenty more questions, but Tucker cut him off. “I’ll be in touch after I’ve made some more calls.” With that, Tucker hung up and headed out of the room and into the hall.

“What calls?” Laine asked, following him. She couldn’t go far in case the babies started to cry, but thankfully the hall wasn’t that long.

Tucker ducked into a room—his bedroom, she soon realized. He grabbed a black T-shirt that’d been draped over a chair. He slipped it on.

No more bare chest.

And she hated that she’d even noticed something like that at a time like this. Of course, it was hard not to notice a man who looked like Tucker McKinnon. That rumpled sandy-brown hair. Those eyes.

That amazing body.

Laine was counting heavily on him using that lawman’s body if it came down to protecting the babies.

He looked up at her as he tugged on his boots, and his left eyebrow slid up. Only then did Laine realize that she was gawking at him.

“What calls?” she repeated. Obviously, the murder she’d witnessed had caused her brain to turn cloudy.

“Social services, for one. We have to turn these babies over to the proper authorities.”

“What if these killers have connections there, too?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s too risky to call anyone now. We need to find someone we can trust before we let anyone know we have the babies.”

Tucker gave her a flat look, as if she’d lost her mind. Heck, maybe she had.

“Look, you’ve been through a bad experience,” he said, his tone not exactly placating, but close enough. “And because someone else broke the law, that doesn’t mean we have the right to do the same. The babies need to be turned over to social services so they can find out who they are. It’s possible the woman who was hiding behind the car isn’t even their mother.”

That hit her like an avalanche. Because it might be true. God, why hadn’t she thought of that? Except she remembered the look of desperation on the woman’s face. Her plea for help.

Hide them. Protect them.

And Laine had to shake her head. “She sacrificed her life for them. Only their mother would have done that. A kidnapper would have just handed them over to the killers to save herself.”

Tucker stared at her. And stared. Before he mumbled some profanity and snatched up his phone from the nightstand. “A friend of a friend is married to a social worker. I’ll arrange a meeting with her.”

A meeting like that still wasn’t without risks, but it was better than involving the cops. Of course, if Colt found blood or something else in the parking lot, Laine seriously doubted that he would keep the information to himself.

At some point, all of this had to become official.

Laine heard a soft, kittenlike sound and hurried back to the pantry. One of the babies was stirring. The other was still sound asleep. Laine went closer, knelt beside them and tried to gently rock the baby with her hand.

“My friend didn’t answer,” Tucker said, coming back into the kitchen. “So I left a message.” He tipped his head to the babies. “Are they boys or girls?”

“I don’t know.” She’d been so focused on getting them to safety that she hadn’t considered anything else. But Laine considered it now.

Both babies wore full-length body gowns with drawstrings at the bottoms. She loosened the one on the squirming baby and peeked inside the diaper.

“This one’s a boy,” she relayed to Tucker. She had a look at the other one. “And this one’s a girl.”