Читать книгу One Tough Texan - Barb Han - Страница 11

Chapter Three

The motel room was basic but comfortable. There were two full-size beds with a nightstand in between, a small table with two chairs near a picture window, and a dresser with an old-fashioned TV. Joshua would bet money there was a bible in the top drawer. The floral pattern in this room was bluebonnets, a nod to the state flower, and they were on the curtain and both bedspreads. The floor was tiled in a neutral shade.

One of the bedspreads was rumpled and the other bed was being used as a makeshift office. Papers were spread out across the comforter and there was a laptop along with a couple of cell phones and a small technological device that Joshua figured was for surveillance.

“Let’s talk about your options,” Alice said after she’d finished the last bite of her burger and drained her Coke. She wadded up the wrapper and tossed it in the trash. They’d toweled off and she’d changed into dry clothes.

Joshua couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone wolf down food so fast, and that was saying a lot given that he had five brothers.

“Or you could tell me what’s really going on. Why you’re on the run from the police,” he countered, motioning toward the second bed, not ready to tip his own hand.

“I’m not—”

He put a hand up to stop her. “If you don’t want to tell me why you’re in this mess we’ll bunk down for the night and I’ll leave you alone in the morning. I have no interest in playing games.”

The woman needed rest and the only reason he stuck around was because he figured she’d be crazy enough to follow him if he left her alone. Or so he lied to himself. There was more to it than that. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge whatever “it” was because she mostly frustrated him.

She slipped off her shoes, settled against the headboard on the second bed and pinched her nose like she was trying to stem a headache. “I’m trying to find a young girl. It’s my fault she’s missing and, therefore, my responsibility to get her back.”

Joshua turned his chair around to face her and clasped his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.

“She disappeared six weeks ago and I’ve been searching for her ever since. With each passing day, her odds crash...” There was so much anguish in her voice that Joshua had to fight the urge to cross the room and pull her into his arms to comfort her. She’d probably poke him in the eyes if he did, he thought dryly, remembering how unwelcomed his attempts to make her feel better had been so far. She’d been clear on where she stood when it came to accepting help or being pitied. She’d taken a zero-tolerance stance.

“How old is she?”

Alice’s eyes were closed now and distress was written all over her features. “Almost sixteen.”

He couldn’t even go there mentally...a place where one of his family members had disappeared. Two of his grown brothers had had brushes with death in recent months and that was enough to keep Joshua on full alert. They were adults capable of handling themselves. But a sixteen-year-old?

He flexed his fingers to keep his hands from fisting.

“I’m sorry,” he said and meant it. Her admission explained a lot about why she’d be staying in an out-of-town motel, alone. “What happened?”

“She was around one day and then not the next.” She opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on the wall directly in front of her. “You asked about me being on the job before. I used to be until this happened.”

“You left to investigate this girl’s disappearance?” he asked, thinking there were at least a half dozen scenarios where he would’ve done exactly the same thing.

She nodded.

“Why not do both?”

“We weren’t getting anywhere on the investigation and my boss wanted my full attention on the job. I agreed, but on my own time I had to do everything I could to find her. The longer she was gone...well, let’s just stay statistics weren’t—aren’t on her side. After three weeks of red tape and netting zero following procedure, I figured I could get a lot further my own way.”

As a cop she’d have to follow procedure to a T when all she really wanted to do was find the girl and bring her home. She wasn’t interested in prosecution and laws would get in the way.

“Did you quit the force?”

“Took an extended leave,” she said. “But I have no idea if I’ll have a job when I return. The chief threatened me and told me not to interfere with an ongoing investigation.”

“Bet you’ve covered a lot more distance than they have,” Joshua said. A flicker crossed her features. Regret? Anxiety?

What was she holding back?

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. She bit back a yawn. “This guy I’ve been tracking is the real deal. He is going to come looking for you. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”

“He won’t find me tonight,” Joshua said. “He’s probably still looking for the cute blond teenage girl who got away.”

She laughed but her amusement disappeared too quickly. She zeroed in on him. “I’m serious. This guy is nothing to joke about. He’s ruthless and no one has lived after catching him in action.”

Joshua balked. “And you were trying to get him to take you so you could investigate this girl’s disappearance?”

“Yes.”

“That makes you either stupid or brave. I can’t decide which.” He admired her dedication. He also noted that it would take a whole lot of guilt to make a cop walk away from her job. “How many other organizations have you done this with?”

“Several.”

“And that led you to Perez’s group?”

She fixed her gaze on the ceiling. “He’s my last hope of finding her and I tracked down a lead that says he’s the one who took her.”

“I’m guessing you saved him for last on purpose based on how dangerous he is.” Joshua wasn’t worried about being exposed to Perez. He wouldn’t be sticking around in Bluff for long anyway. He’d been searching for the right time to tell his family that he had no plans to live out his life on the cattle ranch. Granted, he loved the land but he’d applied for a job in the FBI and had every intention of picking up his life where he’d left off once things were settled. A cranky little voice in the back of his mind asked, Then why haven’t you told anyone yet?

The truth? He resented everyone’s assumption that he’d drop everything and change his life. His older brothers might be fine with doing that, hell, they’d all spread out and made their own millions with successful businesses. They’d proven their worth as men. But Joshua was just getting going on his future. To have that stripped away just as it was getting good wasn’t in the plans. As much as he loved his brothers, they wouldn’t understand. His only regret—and it kept him awake at night—had been that he hadn’t stepped up and told his father before he was gone.

Joshua had known on some level that his father wouldn’t have liked his plan so he kept on living a lie, thinking that the right time to bring up the subject would magically present itself. The worst part was that the old man would never have expressed his disapproval. He was a good father. There was no way he’d make Joshua feel obligated. But Joshua had seen the look of excitement in his father’s eyes last year when he’d told the boys about the plan to have them work the land he loved so much. He’d built a small empire for his sons from nothing. Rejecting his father’s offer would make Joshua feel a lot like he was rejecting the man, his legacy.

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.