Chapter Eleven
Franny was sitting with Audra in the detectives’ office when Rosalie stormed in. Duncan wasn’t far behind her.
“You shouldn’t have called her,” Franny muttered. She wasn’t sure how she felt about any of this, but Audra and Rosalie feeling the need to mother her grated. It was very near infantilizing.
She could handle this. She could handle being the target of a kidnapper and his creepy threats. Hadn’t Audra and Rosalie handled their own dangerous escapades over the past year? Neither one of them was too keen on leaning on help. Why should she be?
“She would have found out in the morning and been furious at both of us for waiting,” Audra said, giving Franny’s hand a squeeze while Rosalie approached.
“All right. Let’s go. I’m taking you back to our place. We’ve got state-of-the-art security and—”
“No extra beds?” Franny supplied. Because Duncan and Rosalie lived in a cute little cabin on the Kirk Ranch, but it wasn’t complete with guest room.
“We’ll buy one. Rush order. Come on, Franny.”
But before she could respond to that in any way, Copeland came in. Followed by the sheriff and Royal.
Everyone, even Audra and Rosalie, looked at the sheriff, waiting for him to explain.
“Ms. Perkins, we’ve got a request for you. And I know you’re surrounded by people who care about you and have concern for your safety, but ultimately the decision is up to you.”
“Decision?”
“Mr. Simmons has requested you continue to stay in Hope Town until we have a better lead on the case.”
Audra whirled on Copeland. “What is this?” she demanded. And the same time Rosalie said, “Have you taken a blow to the head?” to the sheriff.
But it was Royal who answered. “We’ll be adding a lot of security options to keep her safe, but we think this is our best chance of stopping this.”
“By using her as bait?” Audra demanded, still glaring at her fiancé.
Before Copeland could say anything, Rosalie interjected, “I’ll stay with her. Personal security. Twenty-four-seven. That’s the only way she stays put.”
“Sweetheart,” Duncan said quietly. “We couldn’t even make the drive here without having to pull over so you could throw up.”
“Oh, no, Rosalie. Are you sick?” Audra’s ire turning to concern as she looked over at her sister. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Rosalie glared at her husband. “No, I’m not sick.”
“Then why would you be… Oh. Oh. Oh my God!”
“Oh my God,” Franny echoed as it dawned on her too.
“Oh my God what?” Copeland demanded irritably.
“She’s pregnant,” Audra said. Then her eyes filled, and she went and hugged her sister. Franny followed, wrapping her arms around the both of them.
“Oh my God, Rosalie. A baby.” She rocked with her cousins, overjoyed. Teary herself. But that might be the exhaustion. But a baby. It was so sweet. So great. So exciting. So happy in the face of all this decidedly unhappy.
“And I would have preferred not to announce that in a damn police station in the middle of the night, so thanks, Ace,” Rosalie said glaring at Duncan over Audra and Franny’s heads.
“Hey, it’s a story. You love those.”
“Uh-huh.” But she pulled away from the hug, her mouth twisting and the color draining out of her face. “Hell, give me a second.” She dashed out from their grasp and then out of the room.
Duncan looked after her a little helplessly.
He turned back to them, shrugged. “She’s going to want to help, but she’s not up to it.
The doctor wants her on some anti-nausea medication and she’s refusing.
She’s okay, but she needs to take some extra care of herself, and unfortunately involving herself in this isn’t the way to do it. ”
“She doesn’t need to. I’ll handle it,” Audra said. “I can—”
“You have a ranch to run,” Franny told Audra firmly, sad that they had to swing from the happy news of a baby to…
whatever this was. “Copeland’s got work to do.
You’re busy people with real lives, and this isn’t…
I’m not saying it’s not a concern, but if the sheriff’s department is looking out for me, how much safer could I be?
” She turned her gaze to Royal. He stood stiff and stoic.
Even though he wasn’t dressed in his uniform, didn’t have that gun belt slung on his waist, he looked like he was holding himself as though he was wearing a uniform.
And he was the reason nothing bad had happened tonight, she was almost sure. If he could do that… “Royal was close enough to stop it before a break-in even happened before we knew I might be threatened. I’m even safer now that we know I have been, sort of. I can handle this, Audra.”
Audra raised an eyebrow. “Royal, is it?”
Franny shook her head at Audra, not going down that line of questioning. Not right now. She turned her attention to the sheriff.
“Sheriff, I’ll stay. I want to do whatever I can to help bring Albennie home.”
The sheriff nodded. “You follow instructions, Ms. Perkins, we’ll keep you safe. Deputy Campbell is in charge of this for the time being. You have any questions, he’s your man. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Which left her in a room with her family. And Royal.
“I can give you guys some time to talk this over,” Royal said, sounding very formal and professional.
“When you’re ready, Ms. Perkins, I’ll take you back to your apartment.
Mr. Simmons is already working on beefing up the security, but I can assure you all, we won’t be leaving her on her own until it’s all set up. ”
“Yes. She won’t be on her own because she’s going to be with us,” Audra said firmly.
“Audra. Please.” Franny didn’t know how to argue with Audra. It went against all her people-pleasing tendencies. But this was…important. The police wanted her to stay, and she wanted to…help. Like she hadn’t been able to help when she’d watched Albennie get dragged into that car.
“You cannot just…handle this on your own,” Audra said. “It’s insane the police are even asking you to. Don’t be stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.”
“Pot. Kettle.”
All eyes turned to Copeland, who’d assuredly taken his own life into his hands with those words. But he didn’t back down.
“It’s true. The both of you know it,” he said, pointing at Audra then Rosalie as she came back into the room.
“You’re two of the most hardheaded women I’ve ever known, and I deal with criminals for a living.
At least your cousin has the sense to accept help without putting up a fuss.
That’s more than I can say for the two of you when threats come knocking. ”
Audra and Rosalie scowled at him, but they didn’t mount arguments. Because there was no argument to be mounted.
“And Franny is right. Deputy Campbell is right across the street. With the security precautions Simmons is adding, there’s no reason to believe Franny won’t be safe.
Safer there, with surveillance and a cop always on duty in Hope Town—twenty-four-seven—than at the ranch with just you and me.
Or even at the Kirk Ranch. Isolated, far away from town. ”
The room was silent for a few humming minutes. Audra turned to Franny. “I don’t like it.”
Franny met her cousin’s gaze. “I didn’t ask you to.”
Audra closed her eyes and shook her head, but that was how Franny knew she’d won.
ROYAL WAS CHOKING down some dregs of coffee that had probably been made twelve hours before and had since kind of burned at the bottom of the pot. But it was the only thing keeping him awake at the moment.
Everything was taken care of on his end—Beckett would handle the evidence. Simmons was off getting the security arrangements ready. He couldn’t ask the businesses for their security footage until actual morning.
So he was just standing around waiting for Franny to be done with her family so he could take her back to her apartment.
He understood her cousins’ reservations. He understood their desire to save and protect.
Brooke had tried to protect him like that. He’d never appreciated it. He wondered why he couldn’t accept it back then when he’d needed it most. Why now, when he didn’t need anyone protecting him, he could look back and understand what she’d been doing and appreciate it.
Life was a hell of a ride.
He looked up from his coffee mug at the sound of footsteps. Franny stepped in, looking back over her shoulder with some concern.
He dumped the terrible coffee, rinsed out the mug. “Ready to go?”
She nodded. “I distracted Audra with baby talk and ran, so we might want to hurry.”
He chuckled, led her back outside. There was the hint of a sunrise on the horizon as they got into his car. At first, they drove in silence.
He didn’t really know what to say to her. He wanted to offer reassurances, but then wondered if that was too personal. And she wasn’t sitting there airing her worries, so maybe she wasn’t worried. Maybe she had it all under control.
He flicked a glance at the way her hands were gripped in her lap. Like all her stress was centered there.
Yeah, she didn’t have it under control. She probably needed a good night’s sleep and a decent meal. Then she’d have the reserves to deal. She had agreed to stay, and not everyone would be brave enough to do that.
Should he tell her she was brave? While he was trying to decide, she sighed.
“I love watching the sunrise here,” she said as they drove toward the one bleeding out in front of them. “I rarely do it, because I also love morning sleep, but… It’s different here, isn’t it?”
He looked at the little sliver of sun peeking its way over the horizon, the colors in bright pinks and oranges slashing out across the sky. He glanced at her, because the sunrise looked the same to him no matter where he was. But he didn’t want to argue. “Sure.”
She almost chuckled. “Maybe you’re just so used to it you don’t know. Did you grow up here?”
Uncomfortable, Royal didn’t allow himself to shift. He kept his gaze resolutely on the road. “No.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Why are you interrogating me all of a sudden?”
“I’m not trying to interrogate you. I’m trying to stay awake.” She blew out a breath. “And not think about how on edge I’m going to be in my apartment knowing someone tried to break in.”
“So why’d you agree to this?”
She turned that gaze on him, and he refused to meet it. Not because he was a coward, but because he was driving. Obviously.
But she repeated the question. “Where’d you grow up, Royal?” she demanded this time.
He sighed. He didn’t want to talk about growing up, but if she was going to be stubborn about it… “South Dakota.”
“Ooh, the Mount Rushmore state.”
“Never been.”
She leaned forward, staring at him. “You grew up in South Dakota and never went to Mount Rushmore?”
You don’t tend to go to tourist sights when you spend most of your childhood in a dangerous biker gang. It was on the tip of his tongue to say it. Not just to shock her, but because he was curious how she’d react.
But not that curious. “There weren’t a lot of family vacations when I was growing up.
” Unless moving from outskirt nomad campsite to outskirt nomad campsite counted.
Unless the one nice foster family he’d been with taking him to their biological kid’s baseball game in Brookings counted.
Which hadn’t been half bad, compared to all the other stuff in his life.
But it wasn’t Mount Rushmore.
“Well, next time you go home to visit you’ll have to rectify that,” Franny said, as if he had a home to go visit. “It’s great. We went when I was like…twelve, I think. I loved it. Of course, I was a little history nerd.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got no plans to return.” Maybe his father was in jail, for good this time. Maybe the Sons were dead and buried. But there was nothing for Royal back in South Dakota except bad memories.
He could feel her studying him. He could practically hear gears in her head turning, deciding what question to ask next. If she wasn’t such an odd little thing, she’d probably make a good detective.
But he didn’t want to be studied, asked or figured out. So he went on the offensive.
“Why’d you agree to this, Franny?”
She looked hard at the road in front of them, or maybe that sunrise she thought was so different in Wyoming.
“I watched Albennie get shoved into that car. I watched and I didn’t do anything.
” She didn’t say it with a hitch to her voice.
She was very firm, very matter-of-fact. “Now it’s been days, and nothing I did do has helped find her or bring her home.
So, if I can do something, even if it’s scary or a bit dangerous, I’m going to do it. ”
He understood, better than most people, what it felt like to witness terrible things, and to have no recourse.
He’d spent a lot of time blaming himself pretty hard for that, but Franny shouldn’t.
She was just…a good person. A normal person.
Not like him. “What could you have done?” he asked gently, because he wanted her to really think about that.
Sometimes bad things happened, and no matter what you wanted, there was no way to fix that.
“I don’t know,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “Maybe nothing. But now I can do something. So I’m going to do it.”
Despite her clasped hands, the exhaustion written plain on her face, she said that with conviction.
“And I’m going to keep you safe while you do,” he promised.
Because this was why he’d let Brooke talk him into the police academy. Protecting was why he was here.
He wasn’t about to fail at that.