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Hell.
He brought up his gun. Took aim. Just as the person shoved up the ski mask to reveal her face.
April.
Yes, it was her, all right. There was no mistaking her now. The black hair, the wide blue eyes. But she didn’t have her attention fixed on him. It was on the other shooter.
“Is Deanne okay?” she asked on a rise of breath.
“No. She’s dead.”
April had no reaction to that. Well, none that he could pick out in the dusky light anyway. A surprise. Deanne and she weren’t friends. Far from it after everything that’d happened, but still April had to be shocked by a woman’s murder.
However, reactions and that ski mask weren’t his only concern about this situation. Chase couldn’t stop himself from looking in the direction of her stomach again. Definitely flat.
“The baby?” he managed to say.
His baby. The one April should have been giving birth to any day now. But she certainly didn’t have a newborn with her, and she didn’t look as if she’d just delivered, either.
“Play along,” she whispered, a split second before she hooked her left arm around his neck, dragged him in front of her and put her gun to his head.
“I have Marshal Crockett,” April called out to someone.
“What the devil’s going on here?” Chase snarled, and he shoved her away from him.
“You have to play along,” April repeated. Definitely not the tone of a terrified woman on the run. Nor was that a weak grip she put on him when she yanked him back against her.
Damn. Was April up to her old tricks again?
“Put down your gun,” she added in a whisper. “And whatever you do, don’t shoot him.”
Chase didn’t get a chance to ask her anything else because he heard the footsteps. Heavy, hurried ones. And he soon spotted the guy who’d been firing shots at him.
The very snake who’d killed Deanne.
Chase didn’t put down his gun as April had demanded, but she shoved his hand by his side. Maybe so that his weapon would be out of sight. Or perhaps because this was some kind of sick game she was playing.
The killer came right toward them, and the moment he spotted April—and the gun she had to Chase’s head—he lifted his ski mask.
And he smiled.
Chase didn’t recognize him. The guy was a stranger, but judging from his sheer size and the hardened look on his scarred face, this was a hired thug. He certainly didn’t look like a man ready to negotiate surrender, not with that Kevlar vest and multiple guns holstered on his bulky body.
“Good job,” the guy told April. “Well, sorta good. That wasn’t you shooting at me, now, was it?”
“I aimed over your head. I wanted Marshal Crockett to think I was trying to kill you so he’d come to me. It worked.”
Oh, man. Was this really a trap? Possibly. But Chase kept going back to April’s play along comment.
What kind of sick plan was this?
The man stared at her. A long time. As if he might challenge what she’d just told him. Then, he shrugged. “Guess it did work. Now take a hike so I can finish this. Unless you’d rather watch while I have a word with your ex-lover. It might involve a bullet or two.”
Shaking her head, April stood. Slowly. “No, I’d rather skip that part. Just give me what you promised, and I’ll leave.”
Chase stood, too, hoping it wasn’t a mistake that he hadn’t already put an end to this hulking clown. Or that he’d semi-trusted April when she’d rattled off those whispered instructions about not shooting the guy.
“Give me what you promised,” April demanded to the man.
Now Chase heard some emotion in her voice. She was scared. Which meant whatever the heck was going on here was possibly about to take an even worse turn than it already had.
“You’ll have to wait a little longer,” the man said. He motioned for her to leave. “I’ll meet you at your car, and you’ll get it then.”
Chase still didn’t have a clue what this conversation was about, but he had no doubts that this bozo was about to try to kill him.
“You promised.” April’s voice was trembling now.
The man smiled again. There was no friendliness or humor in it. “And it’s a promise I’ll keep, okay? Just not right now at this second. I need to have that little chat with this cowboy cop first while you hurry along.”
April stayed put, and even though Chase kept his attention on the man and couldn’t see her, he thought she might be glaring at Deanne’s killer. Chase was certainly doing his own share of glaring at both of them.
“I need you to find somebody in WITSEC,” the killer told Chase. “April claimed she wasn’t able to help, but since you’re a marshal, I’m betting you got access to stuff that she doesn’t. I need to find Quentin Landis.”
Chase groaned. He shouldn’t have been surprised this was about Quentin. It usually was when April was involved.
Because Quentin was her brother.
Along with being a criminal. And the only reason Chase had met April to begin with was because he’d been investigating Quentin. At the time he had thought April was innocent and had no knowledge of her brother’s criminal activity. He’d been dead wrong about that.
“You expect me just to tell you where he is?” Chase asked, making sure he let this jerk know that wasn’t going to happen.
Quentin might be scum, but he was in WITSEC after turning state’s evidence in an upcoming murder trial, and it was part of Chase’s job to make sure that even scum stayed protected. Whether they deserved it or not.
The gunman stared at him. “Yeah. I didn’t figure you’d cooperate, but we had to try, didn’t we? Maybe if I put a few bullets in your kneecaps, you’ll recall something.”
“We?” Chase spared April a glance, but she only shook her head. He had no idea what that head shake meant.
Nor did he have time to figure it out.
“No!” April shouted. Not at Chase but at the gunman.
The gunman lifted his Glock and aimed it at Chase. Chase was doing the same to the killer with his own Smith & Wesson.
Chase beat him to it.
He didn’t fire into the Kevlar vest, but instead he double-tapped two shots to the gunman’s head. And Chase didn’t miss. The man dropped like a sack of rocks just as Chase had intended.
With that taken care of, Chase turned to April. “Now, what the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
But she didn’t answer. Probably because of the hoarse sob that tore from her mouth. “Oh, God.” And she kept repeating it.
She dropped to her knees and she grabbed the dead man by the shoulders, lifting his torso off the ground. “Tell me where she is!” April yelled. “Tell me.” The sobbing got worse when she put her fingers to his neck. “He’s dead. He can’t be dead.”
It wasn’t exactly the reaction Chase had expected since she knew this snake was a killer and had been prepared to kill again.
She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her eyes. “The baby.”
All right. That got his attention. “Our baby?” Chase asked.
April nodded, and her breath shattered. “Someone took her. And that dead man was my best hope at finding our daughter.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_3fbfc5de-2562-5300-b473-c64df6e6b519)
April felt the fresh wave of panic slam into her like a Mack truck.
First the baby. Then Deanne’s death. Now this.
The emotions were too raw and strong, overpowering her so much that they were hard to fight. But April knew she had no choice except to keep fighting.
If she gave in to it, her baby might be lost forever.
Despite possibly destroying evidence, April rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Looking for anything that would tell her where he was holding the baby.
No wallet. No ID. No photos. No scraps of paper with details of any kind.
Nothing.
Tamping down the panic, she forced herself to get to her feet. Chase helped by taking hold of her arm. April didn’t have to look at his expression to know that he wanted answers. And he wanted them now.
However, April didn’t have some of those answers, especially the ones Chase would want most.
Even though Chase still had hold of her, April started toward Deanne. Yes, she knew the woman was dead. April had seen her fall after taking the bullet. Had also seen her talking with Chase moments before it looked as if she took her last breath. April didn’t know what, or how much, Deanne had told him, but she figured she’d soon find out.
“Who has the baby?” he snapped. “And when was she taken?”
April had to shake her head again, and she motioned toward the dead man. “Whoever he was working for took her. Around midnight two masked gunmen broke into my house, held me at gunpoint and demanded to know where Quentin was. When I said I didn’t know, they kidnapped the baby.”
A sound came deep from within his chest. Not a good sound, either. Pure anger. “And you didn’t call me?”
She’d braced herself for the question, and the anger. Or so she’d thought. Hard to brace herself, though, for that kind of emotion.
“The kidnapper said if I contacted you, anyone in your family or anyone in law enforcement, I’d never see the baby again.” She hadn’t wanted to believe that, but April hadn’t been able to dismiss it, either. “They said they’d be in touch soon and left.”
“So, you called Deanne instead.” Chase didn’t sound happy about that at all. Of course, nothing about this situation was going to make him happy.
“Yes, I thought it would be safe for her to come. I figured no one would be trailing Deanne to get to me. Especially after things ended so badly between us.”
Well, it’d ended badly between Deanne and April’s brother anyway. Deanne had been the one to turn Quentin in. Of course, in doing so Deanne had turned in April, as well.
“As a CI, Deanne dealt with dangerous thugs like the ones who took the baby,” April explained. “And she did come right away when I called her.”
“Because she felt guilty for what happened,” Chase supplied. “She shouldn’t have. Both Quentin and you made your own beds.”
Since it was true and there was no way to make Chase see the legal shades of gray that had gotten her to that point, April just continued with her explanation. “I waited for a ransom demand, or any kind of communication from the kidnappers. And about an hour and a half ago, someone finally called and said for me to come to the Appaloosa Creek Bridge, that there’d be instructions for getting the baby back.”
Chase didn’t come out and tell her she’d been stupid, but what he felt was written all over his face.
A face that shared a lot of features with their daughter.
Same light brown hair. Same deep blue eyes. It both broke April’s heart and warmed it to see those features on her precious baby.
“I guess Deanne got spooked and called me?” Chase asked.
Chase was not going to like this, either. “Not quite. When I got to the bridge, the kidnapper was waiting for me. The same one you just killed. But he said he wouldn’t give me the baby unless you came to the bridge, too. I tried to talk him out of that, but he insisted it was the only way.”
She’d been right. Chase didn’t like that. Because it meant she had lured him there.
“So, you had Deanne make the call,” Chase said.
April nodded. “I knew if I called, you’d have too many questions, and I wouldn’t have had time to get into it. Like now.” She paused. “Are your brothers on the way?”
Chase didn’t jump to respond, but he did follow her as she approached Deanne’s body. “Yeah. They should be here any minute. How safe are we out here?” He took out his phone and fired off a text. To one of his brothers, no doubt, so they could find them in these woods.
“I’m not sure if it’s safe at all,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t wanted to get you involved in this, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had choices. Everybody does.”
They weren’t just talking about the baby now but her past. A past that Chase was probably sorry had included him.
“Now tell me what the hell happened here,” he insisted.
She would. But where to start? The past sixteen hours had been one nightmare after another. Though Chase would want to know the details prior to that. Especially one detail.
The baby.
The one they’d conceived nine months ago when they’d had to face yet another nightmare. Landing in bed with him had been a lapse in judgment. Or Chase would consider it a lapse, anyway. Yes, they’d been attracted to each other since they first met, but Chase considered her a common criminal. And in many ways, he was right.
“I gave birth two months early,” she said.
April tried to rein in her emotions. The fear. The hatred for the person who’d put all of this in motion. Hard to rein in anything, though, when she knelt beside Deanne and touched her.
Dead.
Of course, she already knew that, but it sickened her to confirm it for herself. The tears came. No way to stop them, but she tried to brush them away. Later, she’d grieve for the woman who’d lost her life way too soon and had died trying to help April.
Later, April would do a lot of things.
After she figured out how to untangle this mess that could cost her the baby.
