Under The Cowboy's Protection. Delores Fossen

edge of Durango Ridge. That meant it was Raleigh’s case, but then, despite his retirement, Sheriff Warren McCall had gotten involved because Hannah had lived in their hometown of McCall Canyon. Plus, Hannah had been murdered in McCall Canyon, too. Murdered, and her killer had left the same obscene message on her wall that he had on Sonya’s.

      At the time of that investigation, Warren hadn’t mentioned a word about Raleigh being his illegitimate son. Neither had Thea, though she had known. She had found out Warren’s secret a few months before that, but she hadn’t told anyone. And that was the reason she no longer saw the attraction in Raleigh’s eyes. He hated her now because she’d kept that from him.

      But not nearly as much as she hated herself for doing it.

      Thea shook her head to clear it, forcing her mind off Hannah and back onto Sonya. Hannah’s case was cold, but what they uncovered here today could maybe help them solve both murders.

      “Why exactly did you become friends with Sonya?” Raleigh asked.

      It wasn’t an easy question. “It didn’t start out as friendship. I’d been keeping tabs on the doctor who did the in vitro on Hannah.” Actually, she’d kept tabs on anything related to her late friend. “So, when I found out this same doctor, Bryce Sheridan, had done this procedure on another surrogate, I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see if there were any...irregularities.”

      Raleigh’s eyebrow came up. “You think Dr. Sheridan had something to do with Hannah’s murder?”

      “No. I mean, I didn’t know. I was just trying to find any kind of lead.” Thea had to take a deep breath before she could continue. “But after I met and talked to Sonya, I didn’t see any obvious red flags. Especially not any red flags about Dr. Sheridan.”

      That ate away at Thea even more. Because she should have seen something. She should have been able to stop this from happening.

      “Both Hannah and Sonya were surrogates,” Raleigh said, “and both were connected to you. According to the messages left at the crime scenes, the women were linked to Warren, too.”

      She couldn’t deny that. Thea knew both women and had worked for Warren for three years before he’d retired and turned the reins of the sheriff’s office over to his son Egan. It was ironic that all three of Warren’s sons had become lawmen, but Thea seriously doubted that Raleigh would ever say that he had followed in his father’s footsteps.

      “You think I’m the reason these women were killed?” Thea came out and asked him.

      Just saying the question aloud robbed her of her breath, and Raleigh didn’t even get a chance to answer, because his deputy Dalton came out of the house and onto the porch. He wasn’t alone, either. Yvette was with him. The woman was no longer crying, but her eyes were red and swollen, and she had her phone gripped in her hand so hard that her knuckles were white.

      “We have to find my daughter, so I hired some private investigators,” Yvette immediately said.

      “I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea,” Dalton mumbled.

      It wasn’t. PIs, even well-meaning ones, could interfere with an investigation to the point of slowing it down, but Thea couldn’t fault Yvette for doing this. The woman had to be desperate because her baby could be in the hands of a killer.

      “You saw Sonya,” Yvette said to Thea. “How was she? Was she weak? Did she say anything about the baby?”

      Yvette had already asked these questions several times and in a couple of different ways. So had Raleigh. But Thea didn’t mind answering them again. Maybe if she kept going over what she’d seen, she would remember something else. It was a tactic that cops used to try to get more info from witnesses.

      “Yes, she looked weak,” Thea admitted. “And scared. The man who took her had his arm around her waist as if holding her up.”

      Even though that wasn’t new information, it caused fresh tears to spring to Yvette’s eyes. “What about the second man, the one who had the stun gun. Is it possible he had the baby with him?”

      Thea had already considered that and had mentally walked through every moment of the attack. “It’s possible. I didn’t even see him. In fact, as I said earlier, it could have been a woman.”

      Yes, she had indeed said that earlier, but this time it caused Raleigh to shift his attention to Yvette. And Yvette noticed the abrupt shift, too.

      “Well, it wasn’t me,” Yvette snapped. “I’d have no reason to take my own child and murder the woman who carried her for nine months.”

      No obvious reason anyway, but it was odd that the woman had assumed they were thinking the worst about her.

      “Do you have anyone with a grudge against you?” Raleigh asked Yvette. “Someone who might want to try to kidnap the baby and hold her for ransom?”

      Yvette was shaking her head before he even finished the question. “Of course not. My husband and I manage my late father’s successful real estate company. We’ve never even had a serious complaint from a customer.”

      No, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t kidnapped the baby for ransom. That’s the reason Raleigh had told the woman to keep her phone close to her. Yvette had. In fact, she was doing everything a frantic mother would do to find her child. But something was missing here.

      Or rather someone.

      “Where’s your husband?” Thea asked. “You called him right after we discovered the body, so shouldn’t he have been here by now?”

      Since Yvette was still looking a little defensive, Thea expected the woman to blast her for even hinting that Mr. O’Hara wasn’t doing all he could to be there to comfort his wife or look for their child. But Yvette’s reaction was a little surprising. She glanced away, dodging Thea’s gaze.

      Now, this was a red flag.

      “Nick had some things to tie up at work,” Yvette answered after several long moments.

      Raleigh made one of those vague sounds of agreement. “Yeah, Sonya mentioned to me that your husband wasn’t completely on board with having this baby.”

      Thea tried not to look too surprised, but she suspected that was a lie. She’d had a lot of conversations with Sonya, and never once had the surrogate brought up anything like that. If Sonya had, it would have been one of those red flags that Thea had been searching so hard to find.

      What was equally surprising though was that Yvette didn’t even deny it.

      “Nick had a troubled childhood,” Yvette said, still not looking at either Thea or Raleigh. She stared past them and into the yard. “He was hesitant about us having a baby because of all the money it would cost for a surrogate. And because of all the time I’d have to take off from the business to be a stay-at-home mom. But he finally agreed to it.”

      Maybe. And maybe Nick hadn’t actually agreed the way that Yvette thought. It seemed extreme though to kill a surrogate so that he wouldn’t have to be a father, especially since the baby had already been conceived. And born. Still, Thea would look into it, and she was certain Raleigh would, as well.

      “Call your husband again,” Raleigh told the woman. “I want him to come to the sheriff’s office on Main Street in Durango Ridge in thirty minutes. I’ll take Thea and you there now in the cruiser, and he can meet us.”

      Yvette started shaking her head again, and alarm went through her eyes. “He had nothing to do with this, and it’ll only upset him if you start interrogating him the way you did me.”

      Thea had watched that so-called interrogation, and Raleigh had handled the woman with kid gloves. He’d treated her like a distraught mother whose child had been stolen. She doubted Raleigh would show that same consideration to Nick. Because Nick apparently had a motive for this nightmare that’d just happened.

      Raleigh checked the time and motioned for Yvette