Stone Cold Christmas Ranger. Nicole Helm

square jaw burned into her brain than the image of her dead mother.

      “If I’d had any idea, Alyssa...” he said, his voice gravel and his tone overly familiar.

      She pulled herself out of his grasp, pulled into herself, like she’d learned how to do time and time again as the inconsequential daughter of a criminal, as a useless kidnapping victim.

      She’d spent the last two years trying to build a life for herself where she might matter, where she might do some good.

      This moment forced her back into all the ways she’d never mattered. What other lies she’d accepted as truth might be waiting for her?

      She closed her eyes against the onslaught of pain. And fear.

      “My brothers didn’t murder my mother, Ranger Stevens,” Alyssa managed, though her voice was rusty. “I know they’re not exactly heroes, but they never would have killed my mother.”

      “Okay.” He was quiet for a few humming seconds. “Maybe you’d like to help me find out who did.”

      She didn’t move, didn’t emote. She’d worked with law enforcement before, but she was careful about it. They usually didn’t know her name or her friends. They definitely didn’t know her connection to the Jimenez family.

      This man knew all of that and had to look like Superman in a cowboy hat on top of it. The last thing she should consider was working with him.

      Except her mother was dead. Murdered. A Jane Doe for well over a decade, and as much as she couldn’t believe her brothers had anything to do with her mother’s murder—murder—she couldn’t believe they didn’t know. There was no way Miranda Jimenez had stayed a Jane Doe without her family purposefully making sure she did.

      Alyssa swallowed. Making sure her mother had stayed a Jane Doe, all the while making sure Alyssa didn’t know about it. Her brothers had always claimed they were protecting her by keeping things from her, and it was hard to doubt. They had meant well. If they hadn’t, she’d have been dead or auctioned off to some faithful servant of her father’s before she’d ever been kidnapped.

      Ranger Stevens released her, and she felt cold without that warm, sturdy grip. Cold and alone. Well, that’s what you are. What you’ll always have to be.

      “Take some time. Come to grips with this new information, and when you’re ready to work with me, give me a call.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her a card from it.

      She took the card. That big star emblem of the Rangers seemed to stare at her. It looked so official, so heroic, that symbol. Right next to it, his name, Bennet E. Stevens. Ranger.

      She glanced back up at him, and was more than a little irritated she saw kindness in his expression. She didn’t want kindness or compassion. She didn’t know what to do with those things, and she already got them in spades from Gabby and Natalie and even to an extent from their law enforcement significant others.

      Everyone felt sorry for Alyssa Jimenez, but no one knew who she really was. Except this man.

      “Do you have a phone number I can reach you at?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything.

      She didn’t want to give him her number. She didn’t want to give him anything. She wanted to rewind the last half hour and go with Gabby to the hospital. She would have avoided this whole thing.

      Not forever, though. She was too practical to think it would have lasted forever.

      “Fine,” she muttered, because, as much as she knew she’d end up working with this guy, the promise of solving her mother’s murder was too great, too important, and she didn’t want to give him too much leverage. She’d make him think she was reticent, doing him a favor when she finally agreed.

      She grabbed a pen and scrap of paper from her desk and scrawled her number on it. He took it, sliding it into his pocket along with the pictures he’d retrieved. She’d wanted to keep them, but she had to keep it cool. She’d get them eventually.

      “I’ll be in touch, Alyssa,” he said with a tip of his hat. He paused for a second, hesitating. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said gravely, before turning and exiting her office.

      She let out a shaky sigh. The worst thing was believing that kind of crap. Why would he be sorry? He didn’t know her or her mother. It was a lame, placating statement.

      It soothed somehow, idiot that she was. She shook her head and collected her belongings. She’d stop by the hospital to check on Natalie and Gabby, and then she’d go home and try to sleep. She’d give it a day, maybe two, then she’d call Ranger Too-Hot-For-Her-Own-Good.

      She locked up and exited out the back, pulling her helmet on before starting her motorcycle. It was her most expensive possession, and she treated it like a baby. Nothing in the world gave her the freedom that motorcycle did.

      She rode out of the alley and onto the street that would lead her to the highway and the hospital. Within two minutes, she knew she was being followed.

      Her first inclination was that it was Ranger Stevens keeping tabs on her, but the jacked-up piece-of-crap car following her was no Texas Ranger vehicle.

      She scowled and narrowed her eyes. Of course, anyone could be following her, but after the Ranger’s visit and information, Alyssa had the sneaking suspicion it was all related.

      Maybe her brothers had ignored her existence since she’d been kidnapped and then released, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t find her if they wanted to.

      If they were after her now, they wouldn’t give up until they got her. But that didn’t mean she had to go down easy. Certainly not after they’d abandoned her.

      She took a sharp turn onto a side street, then weaved in and out of traffic the way the car couldn’t. She took a few more sharp turns, earning honks and angry middle fingers from other drivers, but eventually she found herself in a dark, small alley. She killed her engine and stood there straddling her bike, breathing heavily.

      Did her brothers know Ranger Stevens was investigating their mother’s death? Did they have something to hide?

      She squeezed her eyes shut, finding her even breathing. They couldn’t have killed their mother. They couldn’t have. Alyssa couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

      Her phone rang and she swore, expecting it to be news about Natalie’s baby. Instead, it was a number she didn’t recognize. Her brothers?

      She hit Accept cautiously, and adopted her best take-no-crap tone. “What?”

      “You’re being tailed.”

      She scowled at Ranger Steven’s voice. “I’m well aware. I lost them.”

      “Yeah, well, I’m tailing them now.”

      “Idiot,” she muttered. How had this man stepped into her life for fifteen minutes and scrambled everything up?

      “What?” Ranger Stevens spluttered.

      Alyssa had to think fast. To move. Oh, damn the man for getting in the way of things. “Listen, I’m coming back out. I want you to let them follow me. And when they take me, I need you to not get in the way.” Her brothers had never come for her, and she’d stopped expecting them, but if they were coming for her now...she was ready.

      As long as she could get rid of the Texas Ranger trying to protect her.

       Chapter Three

      Bennet wanted to argue, but he had to keep too much of his attention on following the men who’d been following Alyssa to try to outtalk this girl.

      Let them take her? “Are you crazy?”

      “We both know it’s someone from my family, or sent by them anyway. If I let them take me, I get information.”