Cowboy Behind the Badge

It was the voice of experience. Maybe not just as a Texas Ranger, either. After all, it’d taken twenty-three years for his mother to be brought to justice.

Still...

“Those fake cops were just at the sheriff’s office,” she reminded him. “What if they come back?”

“Then Colt and I will deal with it.” He looked out the window at the sky again just as some lightning zipped across the sky. “We should get the babies in my truck before the rain starts.”

Laine glanced out at the clouds, too, trying to gauge how much time they had, but Tucker cursed again and took hold of her arm to push her behind him. The movement was so sudden that she couldn’t figure out why he’d done it.

Then Laine looked over his shoulder and out the window.

Her heart dropped to her knees.

There were two men, dressed in blue cop uniforms, walking across the pasture directly toward the house.

Chapter Three (#ulink_ec814db3-eb43-5807-a74b-62ac552d524a)

Tucker didn’t consider that he might be going out on a limb by assuming the two men stalking toward his house were also the men who’d killed a woman in cold blood.

Well, if she had indeed been murdered.

But believing that wasn’t much of a stretch, either. Laine had arrived at his place, scared out of her mind. She must have thought a murder had taken place and that the danger still existed.

These men could be proof of it.

They were both wearing sidearms, both shifting their gazes from one side of the pasture to the other. Keeping watch. Something lawmen would do.

Criminals, too.

The one on the right pointed toward the ground. Probably because he’d spotted Laine’s footprints. Too bad the rain hadn’t hit to wash them away, because her tracks led right to his back door.

“Oh, God,” Laine mumbled, and she just kept repeating it until he was certain she was losing it.

“Get back in the pantry,” Tucker ordered her.

He took out his phone to call Colt, but it would take his brother at least twenty-five minutes to get from town to this part of the ranch.

Hell.

That was too long, so he tried to figure out a faster solution.

His other brother, Cooper, wasn’t at the main house because he was away on his honeymoon. That would have been his best bet, since Cooper could have gotten to Tucker’s house in just a couple of minutes. Without that option, he had to call someone he didn’t want to see.

His sister Rayanne.

She was a deputy sheriff on a leave of absence, and by all accounts, she was solid at her job. But since his twin sisters, Rayanne and Rosalie, had been raised by his mother, the girls were on their mom’s side when it came to this trial.

Tucker wasn’t anywhere near that side.

And that had made for plenty of tense moments in the past couple of weeks since Jewell, his sisters and his stepbrother, Seth, had arrived at the ranch. Because Jewell owned Sweetwater Ranch, he and his brothers hadn’t been able to turn them away, but there hadn’t been any warm welcomes, either.

However, for now Tucker had to put that bad blood and ill will aside and find a backup. Even if it meant turning to a sibling or a stepsibling who disliked him as much as he disliked them.

Tucker quickly scrolled through the numbers. He tried Rayanne first. He didn’t have her cell number, but unlike Rosalie and Seth, she was staying in the main house.

His home.

Because Rayanne had reminded everyone that it was her home, too.

Yeah, calling her wouldn’t be much fun.

Mary, the housekeeper, answered, and Tucker asked her to buzz Rayanne’s room. He said a quick prayer that she’d be there and not out visiting Jewell all the way over at the county jail.

“What?” Rayanne answered, sounding about as friendly as Tucker felt.

“I have a situation. Two armed men posing as cops are approaching my house. They’re possibly killers....” And here was the hard part. He glanced back at Laine’s bleached complexion and the baby she was holding.

No, not that hard. Two babies’ lives could be at stake.

“I need your help,” he told Rayanne.

Tucker expected her to ask him for more details, tell him a flat-out no, or at least hesitate.

She didn’t.

“I’ll be right there. Don’t shoot me by mistake,” Rayanne snarled.

He figured that last part was an insult to his skills as a Texas Ranger, but he didn’t care how many barbs Rayanne slung at him. He only needed a warm body who knew how to shoot just in case this came down to a gunfight.

“If you have another gun, I can help,” Laine offered.

“No.” He didn’t want the babies left alone, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to give an already shaky woman a gun that she might not even know how to use. “Stay where you are, and if I tell you to get down, do it.”

That didn’t put any color back in her face, but she nodded and stayed put.

“Where are the men now?” Laine asked. “What are they doing?”

“They’re still following your tracks.” They were taking slow, easy steps, and only one of them had his attention on the house.

The other was doing the tracking.

Tucker mumbled some profanity when the men drew their guns, and he debated what he could do to try and diffuse the situation. He should probably identify himself as a lawman, but if they were indeed killers, they’d just try to eliminate him so they could get to Laine and the babies.

Then they’d eliminate her.

After all, they’d followed her here, which meant they knew she’d either witnessed the murder or had some knowledge about it or the dead woman.

And that made Laine a loose end.