One Tough Texan

Selfish as it might have been, Joshua hadn’t wanted to see disappointment in his father’s eyes. Now it was too late and he felt trapped.

“I thought I was alone with Perez and his men in that location. Never saw you coming,” Alice admitted.

“How’d you know he’d be there?” he asked, redirecting his thoughts to something he could fix.

“I’d tracked him to the area based on a meeting he’d set up to talk to someone about a new transportation route and so I used an informant to plant a tip. I knew that if he could get me on Perez’s radar that I’d have a good chance of becoming his target. My informant had already told me that Perez had a buyer for a sixteen-year-old blonde, so he set me up.”

She’d fit the clean-cut American teenager to a T. Even now with her blue-striped pajama pants and white tank, she looked years younger. Her hair was drying and the rubber band looked barely able to contain her waves.

“And then you came along and...” She didn’t say that he’d ruined it but he could tell based on her expression that’s exactly what she was thinking.

“If I interrupted your plan to be kidnapped by one of the most dangerous men in the country, then I’m glad I came along when I did,” Joshua said. He pointed to her right side below her armpit where blood flowered. “How bad is that?”

She glanced down and panic flitted across her face as she hopped up. “Oh.”

“Don’t move. You’ll only make it worse.” He glanced around the small room looking for some kind of emergency kit. “You have first aid supplies?”

“Not much. I meant to pick some up.”

“Hold on.” He ran out to the Jeep and retrieved his, shivering in the cold. The temperature must’ve dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour alone. On the ranch, he never knew when he’d need first aid so he’d gotten in the habit of keeping supplies on hand wherever he went.

The thunder had eased and the rain was coming down in a steady beat. He planned to head out at first light as soon as he knew she’d be okay.

Joshua returned to the room a few minutes later and found Alice as he’d left her. Head against the headboard with her eyes shut. Since her hand was closed around her Glock, he didn’t want to startle her.

He moved closer so that he could disarm her if need be. He didn’t take her skills lightly. She was good with a weapon but he was better. Couple that with the fact that exhaustion was slowing her reaction time and he had the edge he needed.

Her eyes snapped open the second the bed dipped under his weight.

“It’s me,” he said, his hand covering hers on the weapon as she brought it up. Physical contact sent a different kind of heat through him. A sexual attraction wasn’t appropriate or wanted, especially under the circumstances.

She apologized and then shook her head.

“How long has it been since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?” he asked. There were other more pressing questions he needed to ask, but he reminded himself not to get too personal with someone he would never see again after tonight. Because he had every intention of helping her and then getting back to the ranch to deal with his own problems.

“A while, I guess.”

“What else do you know about Perez?” he asked to distract her as he lifted her shirt enough to see where the blood came from. He was worried about Alice. He peeled back the bloody bandage to reveal a two-inch gash three inches below her armpit.

“Most of these criminal rings take girls from places where huge crowds are gathered, like the Super Bowl. Not Perez. He searches for just the right one, looks for a certain kind and mostly prefers all-American types. He seems to have a particular affinity for blondes although Isabel—” she flashed her eyes at him as he cleaned the blood off the cut and then she continued “—that’s her name, is a brunette. I can see why he’d take her, though, because she’s a beautiful girl.”

There was probably no way he could convince Alice to follow him to the ranch until he could dig deeper into the situation and things settled down. Her eyes were pure blue steel and determination and she’d left behind a job she loved to track down this girl. This was the closest she’d been to getting answers and he highly doubted he could convince her to slow down.

“Innocent girls and blondes fetch a higher price. His target age range is twelve to sixteen years old.” She winced.

He apologized as he finished cleaning her wound, warning her that the next part might hurt more. “I’d be happy to take you to the ER.”

Her head was already shaking before he could finish his sentence.

“Those are practically babies,” Joshua ground out, thinking about what she said about the girls. Anger bit through his normally easygoing nature.

She nodded. “He likes to target places where there won’t be a lot of extra security or cameras. Remote spots in small towns like this.”

Joshua blotted her wound with fresh antibiotic ointment on a clean piece of gauze.

“Then, he sells them to various jerks or uses them to farm babies for high-profit adoptions,” she said.

Didn’t this conversation just spike Joshua’s blood pressure in two seconds flat? No matter how many years he spent on the job he’d never get used to people who hurt children. He shook his head as he placed a new bandage over her cut.

“I learned that several of his girls have been used for the sole purpose of being impregnated and then held captive through multiple pregnancies,” she continued.

Joshua knew all about those sickening operations. He’d get more information out of Alice if she believed he was a civilian. He pretended to be hearing this for the first time even though he didn’t feel right deceiving her. “Do I want to know what Perez does once he...uses the girls?”

“Dumps the bodies once he’s made enough from the babies and the girls start to become liabilities,” she said with an involuntary shudder. “And that’s just one of the things they could be doing with her. Perez has been known to sell them to a high bidder, which is why he likes a specific look. He knows the market and what his customers like. He gets a sense for their taste and then snatches a few girls to give a ‘client’ options.”

Joshua had learned even more about illegal adoption rings when his oldest brother Dallas got involved with a woman whose baby was almost abducted before Halloween. Thankfully, Kate and baby Jackson were doing fine and Joshua figured a wedding announcement would be coming soon since Dallas and Kate had fallen in love during the process.

“I can’t imagine the kind of monster it would take to do something like this to children,” Joshua said, and then apologized as soon as he realized that Isabel was most likely in the hands of someone like that. By now, she could be pregnant, abused or dead. And that explained the worry lines etched in Alice’s forehead. Being on the job, she would know firsthand what a deviant like Perez would do. And Joshua hated seeing her go through something like this when she should be home with Isabel, doing normal stuff girls do this time of year like holiday shopping.

“No need to be sorry,” she said. “Believe me, it won’t help Isabel.”

“How do you know she didn’t run away? Maybe she needed a change of scenery and she’s somewhere safe in another city,” he offered.

“We’re close and I stay in touch with her foster parents and caseworker. She’s a good girl and she loves my twins.”

Joshua hadn’t thought about the fact that Alice could be married with kids. She’d mentioned her boys earlier but he thought that was part of the lie she was making up about a relationship with Perez. He glanced at her ring finger and stifled the relief that came when he didn’t see a band. But then she wouldn’t wear one while on a case like this. “You’re married?”

“No,” she said.

He didn’t want to admit the relief he felt with her answer. “You have twins?”

“Yeah. Why? You got something against twins?” Her eyebrow spiked.

“Nope. Not me.” Joshua couldn’t help but laugh given that he was a twin. His brother was the oldest by two minutes.

“It’s not funny. I love them with all my heart but those two can be holy terrors.”

“I’m sure they are.” He smiled wryly thinking of all the misadventures he and Ryder had had. He was pretty certain his mother would’ve used that same term to describe the two of them.

“You have kids?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Then you have no idea what twins are like,” she said so matter-of-factly that he laughed again. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s nothing.” He wondered if his mother would have had the same exacerbation in her voice when describing him and his brother. The fact that she’d had six boys, the last of which were twins, made him certain she would.

* * *

THE COWBOY PUSHED off the bed. He’d done a nice job of dressing her wound.

“Mind if I grab a shower?” he asked.

“Not at all. I’ll clean off the other bed for you,” she said but he waved her off.

“I can manage. I’d rather you get some sleep.” His jacket was already draped over the back of the second dining chair. He tugged his T-shirt up and over his head and then fanned it out to dry on the dresser.

Alice shouldn’t let herself notice the ripples of muscles cascading down his back. He obviously spent some serious time at the gym. Then again, he’d mentioned something about a ranch. Working outside would give a man a body like his.

Tiredness pervaded every one of Alice’s bones. There was no amount of caffeine that could keep her eyes open for much longer but she was so used to fighting sleep that she tossed and turned instead of giving in.

The fact that the cowboy was in the next room cleaning up shouldn’t edge into her thoughts. Or that his body looked made of steel. It had to be the fact that she was overwrought with hormones combined with severe lack of sleep that had her thinking about the water rolling down the ripples in his chest that gave way to a solid six-pack stomach. She’d felt just how strong and masculine he was when her body had been pressed against his at the gas station. A place deep inside stirred, a need she’d felt too many times recently. She wished he could wrap those steel arms around her and make her feel safe.

How tired was she that her mind could wander to such a place given the circumstances? She forced her thoughts to the case and a sense of despair washed over her. It had been weeks since she’d seen her boys and that was probably the reason tears threatened so heavily this time. Or maybe it was the fact that the last lead to find Isabel had disappeared in front of her eyes. Perez wouldn’t be looking for Alice, but if he ever saw her again her cover would be immediately blown. He’d been her last hope to find Isabel. She fingered the pendant on the necklace around her neck, half a heart. The other half belonged to Isabel. When put together they read Best Friends. Isabel had scrimped and saved to purchase the necklaces over the summer. Tears threatened as Alice thought about the gift she’d been planning to give Isabel.

Alice had planned to tell Isabel about her plans to file for adoption. She wanted to be more than a big sister to Isabel. She wanted to be family.

A dark sadness blanketed her like a thick fog rolling in. The clock was ticking, time was running out and Alice didn’t know how much longer she could abandon her boys to chase down clues. Christmas was in three weeks and they deserved to have their mother home with them, too.

Alice hadn’t been completely honest with the cowboy earlier. She’d kept to herself the fact that she’d been forced to step down from the case because she’d gotten too close to an existing investigation with the FBI. Tears spilled and a sob released as she thought about her options.

Alice hated her weakness, but she could no longer hold back the onslaught of emotions bearing down on her, suffocating her.

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