Under The Cowboy's Protection. Delores Fossen

Chapter Fifteen

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      Sheriff Raleigh Lawton didn’t like the looks of this.

      The glass on the front door of the house had been shattered, and the chairs on the porch were toppled over. Both could be signs that maybe there’d been some kind of struggle here.

      That kicked up his heart rate a huge notch, and he drew his gun, hoping he didn’t need to use it. While he was hoping, he added that maybe there was some explanation for the glass and chairs. Maybe the woman who lived in this small one-story house was okay. Raleigh had a double reason for wishing that.

      Because the woman, Sonya Burney, was nine months pregnant.

      He’d known her all his life, and that’s why Raleigh hadn’t hesitated to go check on her when the doctor from the OB clinic had called him to say that Sonya had missed her appointment. In a big city, something like that would have gone practically unnoticed, but in a small ranching town like Durango Ridge, it got noticed all right.

      The rain spat at him when he stepped from his truck. It was coming down hard now, with an even heavier downpour in the forecast. He had a raincoat, but he didn’t want to take the time to put it on. However, he did keep watch around him as he hurried up the steps and onto the porch.

      “Sonya?” he called out and immediately listened for anyone or anything.

      Nothing.

      He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. And he cursed when he stepped inside. The furniture had been tossed here, too. There was a broken lamp on the floor, and the coffee table was on its side. Raleigh reached for his phone, ready to call one of his deputies for backup, but something caught his eye.

      Drops of what appeared to be blood on the floor.

      Raleigh had a closer look. Not blood. Judging from the smell, it was paint. And he soon got more proof of that. There was a still-open can in the hall just off the living room, and a discarded brush was next to it. However, it wasn’t the can or brush that grabbed his attention. It was what someone had scrawled on the wall.

      This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.

      Hell.

      That felt like a punch to the gut. Because he’d seen a message identical to that one almost a year ago. A message that’d been written in the apartment of a woman who had been murdered. Unlike Sonya, that particular woman had been a stranger to him.

      The memories came. Images Raleigh wished that time would have blurred. But they were still crystal clear. The woman. Her limp, lifeless body, and the baby she’d been carrying was missing—it still was.

      He prayed that Sonya and the baby wouldn’t have similar fates.

      Raleigh didn’t have any proof of who’d killed that other woman, stolen the child or written that message. But he had always thought the message had been left for him. And Warren, of course.

      Warren was his father.

      Biologically anyway. Raleigh had never considered the man to be his actual dad. Never would.

      He made the call for backup and used his phone to take a quick picture of the message. Actually, it was a threat. Raleigh just hoped that Sonya hadn’t gotten caught up in this tangled mess between Warren and him.

      “Sonya?” he called out again.

      Still nothing, but Raleigh continued to look for her. The house wasn’t huge, a combined living and kitchen area, two bedrooms and a bath. He went through each one and didn’t see her. But there was another message, and it’d been slopped in red paint on one of the bedroom walls. A repeat of the other one.

      The repeat hadn’t been necessary. Raleigh had gotten it the first time.

      This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.

      Warren was retired now, but he’d once indeed been the sheriff of McCall Canyon, a town one county over. He’d also carried on an affair with Raleigh’s mom for nearly three and a half decades. Or rather, Warren had carried on with her until his secret had come out into the open after someone had tried to kill him. Raleigh’s mother had been a suspect in that attack. And Warren’s “real” family—his wife, two sons and his daughter—hated Raleigh and her.

      Was one of them responsible for this?

      Maybe. That was something he would definitely investigate, but first he had to find Sonya.

      Since it would take a good twenty minutes for his deputy to get all the way out to Sonya’s house, Raleigh kept looking, and he made his way out through the kitchen and to the back porch. The moment he stepped outside, he heard something. At first he thought it was the cool October rain hitting the tin roof.

      It wasn’t.

      There was a woman dressed in jeans and a raincoat. She was facedown, on the end of the porch, and she was moaning. Raleigh ran to her and turned her over, but it wasn’t Sonya. However, it was someone he knew.

      Deputy Thea Morris.

      Seeing her gave his heart rate another jolt. Of course, Thea usually had that effect on him. Not in a good way, either, and it certainly wasn’t good now. What the hell was she doing here, and what was wrong with her?

      Raleigh didn’t see any obvious injuries. Not at first. Then he pushed aside her dark blond hair and saw the two small circular burn marks on her neck. Someone had used a stun gun on her.

      “Where’s Sonya?” he asked.

      Thea opened her eyes, but she was clearly having trouble focusing because she blinked several times. Then she groaned again. She didn’t answer him, but he saw the alarm on her face, and she started struggling to sit up. He helped her with that. Too bad it meant putting his arms around her to do that.

      And Raleigh immediately got another dose of too-clear memories that he didn’t want.

      Of Thea being not just in his arms but in his bed. But that was an old water, old bridge situation.

      “Where’s Sonya?” Raleigh repeated. “And what happened to you?” He had other questions, but those were enough of a start, since finding Sonya was his priority right now.

      “Sonya,” Thea repeated in a mutter. She lifted her hand—not easily because it was practically limp—and she touched her fingers to her head. “Sonya.”

      “Yeah, that’s right. Sonya. She’s pregnant, and I’m worried about her.” Worried was an understatement. “What happened to her? What happened to you?”

      Thea blinked some more, looked up at him, and the concern was obvious in her deep green eyes. “A man. I think he took her.”

      That got Raleigh’s attention, and he fired glances around them, trying to see if he could spot her. But there was still no sign of Sonya.

      “The man had a gun,” Thea added, and she groaned, trying to get to her feet. She failed and dropped right back down on the porch. She also reached for her own gun, but her shoulder holster was empty. Since she was wearing her badge, Raleigh doubted she’d come here without her gun.

      “What man?” Raleigh demanded. “And where did he take her?”

      Thea groaned again and shook her head. “I don’t know, but he said he was doing this because of Warren.”

      Raleigh hadn’t actually needed that last bit of info to raise the alarm inside him. With the signs of struggle and those stun gun marks on Thea’s neck, he decided it wasn’t a good idea for them to be out in the open like this. Sonya’s place was an old farmhouse with a barn and a storage shed, but the woods were