Cowboy Behind the Badge. Delores Fossen

kitchen window made the room pretty dark and filled it with shadows. None of the shadows, however, looked like an intruder.

      He saw the pantry door slightly ajar. A door Tucker was darn certain he’d shut because he was always stubbing his toe on it.

      Someone was in there.

      He glanced out the window. No vehicle other than his own truck. The sky looked like a crime scene, though. Bruise-colored storm clouds with a bloodred sunset stabbing through them. He hoped that wasn’t some kind of bad sign.

      “Not very bright,” Tucker tossed out there. “Breaking into the house of a Texas Ranger. We tend to frown on stuff like that.” He slapped on the lights.

      “No,” someone said. It was a woman, and even though her voice was only a whisper, there was as much emotion in it as if she’d shouted the word. “Turn off that light. I don’t want them to see us.”

      “Them?” Tucker questioned.

      “The killers.”

      Okay. That got his attention in more ways than one. Despite the whisper, he recognized the voice. “Laine?”

      As in Laine Braddock, a child psychologist who sometimes worked with the Rangers and the FBI. Since they weren’t on good terms—not on speaking terms, in fact—Tucker had worked with her as little as possible. After all, his mother, Jewell, had been charged with murdering Laine’s father. That didn’t create a warm, fuzzy bond between them.

      Not now, anyway.

      Once, when they were kids, Laine and he had played together almost every day. And she’d been on the receiving end of his very first kiss.

      That wasn’t exactly something he wanted to remember at this moment, though.

      Tucker went closer to the door, and despite the fact he knew her, he didn’t lower his gun. Everything inside his severely banged up body was yelling for him to stay alert so he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of another butt-whipping. Especially since Laine might not be alone.

      “What killers?” he asked.

      “The ones who could have followed us here.”

      Tucker didn’t miss the us.

      There was no us when it came to Laine and him. Except they had run into each other about a week before, when he was called to assist the FBI with investigating a black-market adoption ring. Laine had been there on standby in case any of the children were recovered, but Tucker and she hadn’t exchanged anything other than some frosty glares.

      And that told him loads.

      Even if so-called killers were involved, he was the absolute last person on God’s green earth that Laine would have come to, and yet here she was.

      “How’d you get in?” he demanded.

      “Through the back door. It wasn’t locked.”

      Not locking up was a bad habit that Tucker would remedy the moment he got her out of there. “So you let yourself in. Not a smart thing to do, since you knew I’d be armed.”

      “It was a risk I had to take,” she mumbled.

      That only added to the whole puzzling situation. Why come here? What risk was worth a visit with the enemy?

      Maybe she hadn’t come here by choice.

      “Come out so I can see you,” Tucker ordered, because he wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t holding a gun on her. Maybe it was those killers she’d warned him about.

      “Turn out the lights first, please. I don’t want them to see us.”

      Her presence, combined with the fear in her voice, was enough to make Tucker do as she said. He turned off the light, let his eyes adjust to the darkness and moved closer in case he had to fight off someone holding her hostage.

      The hinges on the pantry door creaked a little when she fully opened it, and she stepped into the doorway. Yeah, it was Laine all right, and even in the dim light, Tucker could see that something was wrong. Everything about her was disheveled, from her brown hair to her clothes. There was mud or something on her jeans, shoes and white top.

      She made a slight gasping sound and reached out to touch him, but then she jerked back her hand. “You’ve been hurt. Did they come here already?”

      “No one’s been here. I got this while making an arrest.” He must have looked downright awful for her to notice something like that at a time like this. “How’d you get out here? Where’s your car? And why would someone have come here already?”

      Laine pressed her hand to her head as if he’d just doled out too many questions. Heck, he was just getting started.

      “I parked in the woods by the road and walked through the pasture to get here,” she finally said. “I didn’t want them following me, but they could come here looking for me.”

      Her voice was shaking. So was she. And she latched her hands onto the doorjamb as if that were the only way she could keep on her feet.

      That unsteadiness sent a new round of concern through him. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

      “I wasn’t hurt.”

      She swallowed hard, pushed herself from the doorway and came toward him. Despite the fact he still had a gun pointed at her. She landed in his arms before Tucker could stop her, and she started to cry. Not just any old crying, either. Sobs punctuated with hard breaths that made a hiccupping sound.

      Oh, man.

      Whatever this was, it was really bad.

      Tucker would’ve needed a heart of ice not to react. And he reacted, all right. He slid his left arm around her. He kept his grip loose. Very loose. But it didn’t matter. Basically, Laine was plastered against him, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He could feel pretty much every inch of her trembling body.

      “They killed her right in front of me,” Laine said through the sobs.

      That pushed aside anything he was feeling from the unexpected hugging session. “Who was killed?”

      “A woman. I don’t know her name.”

      Tucker eased back, met her gaze. “Start from the beginning. What happened?”

      And then he’d want to know why she hadn’t taken this to the local cops. After all, his brother was the sheriff, and his brother, Colt, the deputy. Yet, Laine had come all the way there to his family’s ranch, which wasn’t exactly on the beaten path.

      “Remember that undercover assignment I was on last week?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “We were working on it together, but you got me fired.”

      Yeah, he remembered. “Not fired. I just asked for you to be reassigned somewhere not near me.”

      “You got me fired,” she repeated, sounding not too happy about it. “Anyway, about an hour and a half ago, I got a call from a woman who wouldn’t tell me who she was. She said she’d been held captive by guards at the place we were investigating. But she escaped today.”

      Laine stopped, shuddering, and pressed her fingers to her mouth.

      Good grief. He hoped this wasn’t going where he thought it was. “Please tell me you didn’t go out to meet this woman alone?”

      “I didn’t have to go anywhere to meet her. She was in the parking lot outside my office in town. Hiding behind my car. She said she was making the call from a prepaid cell phone that she had stolen from her captors.”

      Tucker groaned and hoped the rest of this conversation would go a whole lot better than what he’d heard so far. “And at that point, you should have called my brother. Colt’s been on duty all day, and he would have responded immediately.”

      Laine didn’t argue with that, even though Tucker was dead certain she didn’t trust Colt