Ransom for His Secret Son (Texas Lawmen: Stolen Heirs #1)

Chapter One

Sheriff Brody Walker stepped from his cruiser, his boots crunching on the loose gravel of the parking lot, and he caught another flash of movement.

A man he’d spotted earlier peering around the side of a mausoleum.

The man was flat-out running now, and he darted around the milky white headstones in the Lost Canyon Cemetery.

Brody soon saw something else.

The guy was armed.

And there was someone chasing after him. A blonde woman wearing dark pants and top. She, too, had a gun clutched in her right hand.

What the heck was going on here?

When Brody had been driving home from work and had seen the man in the cemetery, he assumed the guy had been visiting the grave of a loved one and that something had spooked him, causing him to hide.

Maybe a coyote or a bobcat. Clearly, it wasn’t that, though, since the guy was glancing over his shoulder at the woman chasing him.

So this could be some kind of robbery attempt.

Or worse.

But where had they come from? There were no other vehicles in the parking lot, and the cemetery wasn’t exactly on the beaten path. Soon, he’d want an answer about that—once he’d neutralized the threat.

Brody drew his Glock from his shoulder holster before he ran to the nearest headstone and ducked behind it for cover. Best not to be out in the open if one of them turned their gun on him.

“I’m Sheriff Walker,” he shouted. “Stop where you are and put down your weapons.”

The man kept running, but the woman obeyed, practically skidding to a stop and snapping toward Brody. The light from the setting sun was all wrong for him to see her face, but he had no trouble seeing her whole body go stiff. For a heartbeat, anyway.

“I can’t let him get away,” she shouted, and she took off running again after the man.

Hell. Brody knew that voice. And this cemetery was the last place he’d expect to see her. The woman he hadn’t forgiven for his wife’s death. The woman who still haunted him.

Remi Cross.

It’d been six years since he’d seen Remi, right here at this very cemetery on the day of his wife’s funeral. After that, Remi had thankfully slipped out of his life, ensuring that he didn’t get a reminder of his wife’s death anytime they ran into each other. So why had she come back?

And moreover, why was she chasing some guy in the cemetery?

“Stop,” Brody shouted again, the anger rolling through him in a hot wave.

Neither listened this time, fueling his anger even more, and the man disappeared behind a mausoleum at the far back of the cemetery. Remi sprinted toward him.

Just as the gunshot blasted through the air.

Remi hadn’t been the one to fire it either. No. The shot had come from the man, and Brody could still see his hand and the gun he had aimed at her.

She dropped to the ground, but Brody couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or not. Using the voice command on his phone, he called for backup and an ambulance, and he hurried out from cover, threading his way from gravestone to gravestone. Making his way toward her.

“Remi?” Brody yelled, his heart thundering as he closed the distance between them. There might not be much love lost between him and Remi, but he didn’t want her bleeding out.

When he reached her, he stooped lower. Just in the nick of time since the man fired another shot. This one smacked into an angel statue’s wing and sent shards of marble flying.

Muttering some profanity, Remi ducked her head and rolled to her side. She pressed herself against the back of a weathered tombstone, and she shot Brody a glare that said Stay back.

Brody had no intention whatsoever of doing that. Now that he could see she hadn’t been shot and didn’t need medical attention, he intended to catch the gunman and put an end to this.

Whatever the heck this was.

The last he’d heard, Remi had turned in her San Antonio PD detective’s badge and had become a private investigator.

And supposedly a good one, at that. So maybe this was the job for her.

Well, it was his job as the sheriff of Lost Canyon, Texas, to put a stop to any threats, and this guy shooting at them definitely qualified as a threat.

The cemetery was a good half mile outside of town, and Brody hadn’t spotted any other visitors, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t drive past and get hit by a stray bullet intended for Remi or him.

“Put down your gun,” Brody shouted to the man, and he levered himself up enough to take aim.

“Don’t kill him,” Remi blurted. “We need him. We need answers.”

Brody didn’t miss the we and wondered if she was talking about him and herself. But she couldn’t be. They sure as heck weren’t a we.

Brody didn’t have time to give that any thought because the man’s shadow shifted near the mausoleum, and another shot cracked through the air, slamming into the ground dangerously close to them.

“Are you hit?” Brody blurted.

His throat tightened with a mix of adrenaline, fury and a whole lot of confusion as to why this fight had been brought here to his turf. Lost Canyon was a small ranching town. A dot on the map. It wasn’t a haven for those evading a private investigator on their trail.

“No, not hit,” she growled, levering herself and wincing in pain. Pain from what, Brody didn’t know. “But he’s getting away. We have to stop him.”

Brody gritted his teeth, his instincts torn between covering a possibly wounded civilian, even if the particular civilian was Remi, and going after the shooter.

He caught a glimpse of the man vaulting over a crumbling stone wall at the back of the cemetery, his silhouette vanishing into the thick woods that backed up against the cemetery.

And Brody decided to go for the shooter.

Apparently, so did Remi. Muttering something that Brody didn’t catch, she got to her feet. Wincing again, she took off running.

“You need to stay down,” Brody ordered her.

Of course she ignored him and darted after the fleeing man, her determination as reckless as ever. Brody cursed under his breath, sprinting to cut her off before she got herself killed.

A footrace through a cemetery wasn’t easy, and there wasn’t a direct route to the stone wall.

Over the past century or so that the cemetery had been in existence, the graves had been haphazardly placed.

Some were huge and some were flat slabs on the ground with mausoleums of all sizes and shapes mixed in.

Brody had to dodge all of that. Remi did, too, as they raced after the man.

They reached the wall together, and she didn’t even glance back, vaulting over the stones with an agility that irritated him almost as much as it impressed him. Brody followed, his legs burning as he cleared the wall and landed in the underbrush on the other side.

The landscape beyond the cemetery was a mix of twisted mesquite trees, a dry creek bed, and ankle-grabbing roots that seemed designed to slow them down.

It didn’t seem to be doing the same to the man they were pursuing, though.

Next to Brody, Remi stumbled but stopped herself from falling.

Her breath came out in hard gusts as she kept on moving.

Brody caught up and grabbed her arm, jerking her to a halt. “You’re going to get yourself shot,” he snapped.

She yanked her arm free and glared at him. “Then, stop slowing me down.”

“Look around, Remi.” He gestured at the thicket of shadows and dense trees and shrubs. “You can’t even see him anymore.”

Remi hesitated, her chest heaving from the sprint. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes scanning the area, but it must have been obvious that the man was gone. The underbrush had swallowed any sound of his escape, leaving only the faint rustle of wind through the trees.

“No, no, no,” Remi groaned, shoving her hair back from her face.

Brody kept his gun ready just in case the man decided to double back. “What’s going on here? Does this have to do with your job?”

If Remi heard him, she didn’t bother to acknowledge his questions. Groaning again, she sank down to the ground, pulling up her knees to her chest and pressing her hands against the sides of her head.

In the distance, there were the wails of sirens. Both his backup and the ambulance, judging from the sounds of them. And that was his cue to get them moving back toward his cruiser.

Even though Remi seemed to be in the middle of some sort of meltdown, he latched on to her and hauled her to her feet. “Once I talk to my deputies, I can start a search for this guy,” Brody explained as he managed to get her walking. He also kept watch over his shoulder. “Who is he?”

She glanced back, too, and Brody saw something else puzzling. Remi had looked back not with a sense of dread but with what he thought might be hope that the man might appear out of thin air. A strange reaction to someone who’d just tried to kill her.

“I don’t know his real name, but he called himself John Smith,” she finally said. “He was supposed to bring me info about the baby.”

That got Brody’s attention. “What baby?” he couldn’t ask fast enough. He hadn’t gotten that good a look at the man, but for darn certain he hadn’t noticed him carrying an infant.

She shook her head. Another strange reaction.

“I’m not sure whose baby it is. But this John Smith called me about a half hour ago and said he had a missing child, and I could hear a baby crying in the background,” she added.

“He said he’d tell me where the baby was if I came straight here and gave him all the files and notes from a case I worked about a year ago. ”

Files and notes? That seemed like an odd demand to make of a PI. “You told the cops about this?” he said.

“No.” Her mouth tightened in what could have been regret. “He said if I did, I wouldn’t get the info on how to find the baby. Besides, there wasn’t time. He insisted that if I wasn’t here at the cemetery in a half hour, the deal was off, that the baby would just disappear.”

“And you believed him?” Brody asked on a huff. “Because considering what just happened, I think he lured you here to kill you.”

She stayed quiet a moment. “Possibly. I honestly hadn’t expected that. But I had taken the precaution of parking just up the road on a trail and sneaking into the cemetery. I’d hoped to see if I recognized him—”

“Did you?” he interrupted.

“No. He was wearing a ski mask, and he obviously didn’t want me to know who he was, because he ran. But here’s what I do know. That case file he wanted involved a missing newborn,” she said, her words trailing off as if she’d just thought of something else.

Something she didn’t immediately spill to Brody.

“A missing newborn you found?” he asked as they climbed back over the stone wall. Remi wasn’t hurdling and hurrying this time, though. She had slowed to a crawl, and something other than the shooting seemed to be gnawing at her.

“Yes, I found the baby,” she eventually said. “But it wasn’t a…traditional missing-child case. And at the time, I didn’t think there might be others.”

Everything inside him went still. “Others?” Brody asked. “You mean other missing babies like the one Smith claims he had?”

She nodded, and he heard her quick intake of breath. “I didn’t think it through. When I heard the baby crying in the background of the phone call and John Smith told me to get here fast, I came.”

“Why this cemetery?” Brody had to know.

“I don’t know. At first, he told me to go to the Cedar Creek Bridge for the exchange, but when I got there, a note told me to come here to the cemetery.

He said I was to leave the flash drive with my files and notes at the Hernandez mausoleum.

I was on my way to do that, but then I saw the guy running away, so I went after him. ”

“And he started shooting at you,” Brody prompted when she fell silent.

“Not right away. When I caught up with him, he punched me in the ribs and started running again.” She rubbed her side and winced again.

“Anything broken?” he asked. Maybe she’d need that ambulance after all.

“No.” She was quick to answer, but he wondered if that was wishful thinking on her part. “The punch just knocked the breath out of me, so that’s why he was able to get so far ahead of me.”

Remi stopped in her tracks. So did Brody.

For a moment, they stood in tense silence, and he was sure the weight of their past was pressing hard between them.

It was certainly pressing on him. Finally, Brody let out a slow breath to try to push that past away.

He had a hell of a lot more questions, but he started with the obvious one.

“Why did this man want you to leave the flash drive here in Lost Canyon?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.” She opened her mouth. Closed it. And a look of sheer horror went through her eyes. “No, it couldn’t be,” she muttered. “Could it? Oh, God,” she blurted before she took off running again.

“Remi, wait,” Brody shouted, but she was already sprinting through the headstones, her movements frantic and uncoordinated.

Swearing under his breath, he followed her, his hand still gripping his Glock. His gut told him something was way off here. Something bigger than the missing gunman or even the mysterious baby.

Remi skidded to a stop in front of a headstone, her breath hitching as she dropped to her knees. Brody slowed as he approached, his gaze locking onto the stone marker. Miranda Walker. His wife.

His chest tightened. “What the hell—”

And then he saw it. A baby. Swaddled in a soft blue blanket, nestled against the base of Miranda’s headstone.

Brody froze, his mind trying to process what he was seeing. The baby squirmed slightly, a faint, sleepy cry escaping its mouth.

Remi was already reaching for the child, her hands trembling. “Oh, God,” she repeated, cradling the infant against her chest. “He left the baby here.”

Brody’s heart pounded, a mix of confusion, anger and protectiveness flooding him. He dropped to one knee beside her, his gaze fixed on the infant. “This is the baby he mentioned?”

She nodded, her face pale. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not sure what’s happening.”

Brody leaned closer, his eyes scanning the area for any signs of danger. “We need to get out of here. Now.” Because any possible danger wasn’t just to him and Remi but to this child.

Remi hesitated, clutching the baby tighter. “Brody, I think…” She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.

“You think what?” he snapped, his tone sharp and urgent. Everything inside him was yelling for him to get this child to safety.

When she finally spoke, Remi’s voice was barely audible. “Brody, I think this might be your baby.”