Security Blanket (6 page)

Hell. But Lucky would take what he could get. These disks were a start.

“We’ll scan the disks using the face recognition program,” Cal continued. “And also check for anyone carrying a suitcase that matches the leather fragments we were able to find at the point of origin of the explosion. We might get something useful.”

Lucky didn’t like the possibility that they might not succeed. He had to find that bomber. Better yet, he had to prove the bomber was either Dexter or someone connected to him. And then, he had to stop this SOB before Marin and Noah were put in harm’s way again.

From the other side of the glass, Noah grinned at him, a reminder of just what was at stake here.

“I want a copy of those surveillance disks,” Lucky requested.

“I figured you would. And I thought about how many different ways to tell you no. You’re no longer a cop, Lucky. I can’t give you official authorization to see them.”

Lucky cursed. “Then I hope you’ve worked out a way to do it unofficially because I need those disks. Someone tried to kill me, and I want to know who.”

Cal groaned heavily enough for Lucky to hear it. “And that’s how I’m going to get around the official part. A set of the disks are already on the way to the local sheriff there in Willow Ridge. He’ll bring them out to you so you can view them as a witness looking for anything that you would consider suspicious.”

Lucky released the breath that he didn’t even know he’d been holding. “Thanks, Cal. I owe you.”

“Yeah. You do. You can repay me by finding our unknown suspect on those disks.” And with that assignment, Cal hung up.

Lucky didn’t waste any time. He went back into the sunroom so he could question Helen about Dexter. So far, she was the only person who seemed to want to talk about Marin’s brother. But when Lucky saw Marin’s face, he immediately knew his questions about Dexter would have to wait.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He hadn’t thought it possible, but she was even paler than she had been when they first arrived.

Marin exchanged an uneasy glance with her grandmother, who still had Noah in her arms. “There was a message left for me.” She pointed to the phone on a wicker coffee table.

“It’s a private line,” Helen supplied, taking up the explanation. “Lois didn’t have the line taken out when Marin moved. And since no one other than the cleaning lady ever goes out here, we didn’t notice the message until just now.”

Since this “message” had obviously upset both women, Lucky went to the phone and pressed the play button. It took a couple of seconds to work through Marin’s old recorded greeting and the date and time of the call. Two days earlier at nine fifty-three in the morning. About the same time Marin had been on the train en route to Willow Ridge.

The answering machine continued, and a man’s rusty voice poured through the sunroom. “Marin Sheppard, this is Grady Duran.”

The very person who’d hounded Marin when she first moved to Dallas–Fort Worth.

“I’m tired of waiting for you to get chatty about Dexter,” Duran continued. “And I’m tired of warning you of what could happen if you don’t tell me where your brother is. My number will be on your caller ID. Get in touch with me. That’s not a suggestion. Keep ignoring me, and you’ll regret it.”

Lucky felt the inevitable slam of anger. How dare this SOB threaten Marin, especially after everything she’d been through. But then, something else occurred to him.

Had Grady Duran been the one to set that explosive?

Lucky couldn’t immediately see a motive for that, since Duran would want Marin alive. Well, alive until he got the info about Dexter’s whereabouts. But maybe the explosion had been meant to scare her.

If so, it’d worked.

“Has Grady Duran ever been here at the ranch?” he asked Helen and Marin.

Marin shook her head. “I don’t think so.” Helen echoed the same.

Lucky took out his wallet, fished out the dog-eared photo and handed it to Helen. “Does he look familiar?”

Helen brought it closer to her face and studied the picture. Marin leaned in and looked at it, as well. Lucky had already studied it so long that he’d memorized every little detail. Kinley had sent it to him just a month before she was murdered.

The last picture taken of her.

Kinley was smiling, as usual. It was a victory photo of sorts, she’d said in her brief e-mail to Lucky. An office party to celebrate her boss getting a new research contract, which meant she’d be employed at least another year.

In the posed shot, her boss, Dexter, was on her right. Tall, blond and toned, he looked as if he’d be more at home on a California beach than a research lab. He was sporting a thousand-watt smile—smiles like that had probably gone a long way to helping him with the ladies.

Lucky also knew something else about that photo: Dexter had his arm slung a little too intimately over Kinley’s shoulder.

On Kinley’s left was a woman with light brown hair. Brenna Martel, Dexter’s former lover and other lab assistant. And then there was Grady Duran, standing just off from the others. Wide shoulders, imposing dark stare, he wasn’t looking like a man in a festive mood.

Odd, since of the four he was the only one who wasn’t missing or dead.

“I remember her,” Helen tapped Brenna’s image. “Dexter brought her here a time or two. She’s dead.”

“Looks that way. Either that or she disappeared from the face of the earth. No one’s touched her bank accounts or her other personal assets since the night of the explosion at the research facility. What about the other guy, Grady Duran? Ever seen him?”

“He wasn’t at the ranch,” Helen concluded. “But I’m pretty sure I saw him in town. He was in the parking lot of Doc Sullivan’s office when I came out from having my blood pressure checked. That was Monday. I noticed because we don’t get many strangers in Willow Ridge, especially this time of year.”

Helen turned back to Lucky. “Is it a bad thing that this man’s in town?”

“A suspicious thing,” Lucky supplied. He didn’t like the timing of Duran’s reappearance. Monday was the day before the train explosion. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Not a word. In fact, he looked away and turned his head when I spotted him.”

Lucky didn’t care for that, either. Except that it could mean that Duran was here because he knew Dexter was nearby. That was both good and bad.

He looked at Noah, who had hardly been out of his arms for two days. Two days wasn’t that long. But it was more than long enough. Lucky loved Noah. He couldn’t have loved him more if he were his own son. With Dexter’s possible return, that meant Lucky would have the additional challenge of protecting Noah in case something went wrong.

“You need to tell the sheriff that you saw this man,” Lucky instructed Helen. “And while you’re doing that, I’ll ask him to keep a watch out for Duran in case he makes a return visit. I don’t want him anywhere near here.”

Helen’s forehead bunched up. “You think there could be trouble?”

“Maybe.”

But the truth was trouble was already on the way.

Frustrated, Marin shut the dresser drawer with far more force than necessary. “Where is it?” she mumbled.

She’d looked at every inch of the furniture and still hadn’t found an eavesdropping device. She glanced at Lucky, who was still examining her closet, but he didn’t seem to be having any better luck than she was.

With Noah now asleep in his crib in the sitting room, Marin walked toward the closet. “Maybe Grandma was wrong about the bug,” she whispered.

Lucky, too, was obviously frustrated, and he stopped his search to stare at her. “We could be going about this the wrong way,” he said under his breath. “Maybe we should just blow off this bug and concentrate on making sure this place is as secure as it can be.”

“You’ve already done that,” she pointed out.

The sheriff, Jack Whitley, had already been alerted about Grady Duran possibly being in town, and he’d agreed to send out a deputy to patrol the ranch. The ranch hands had been instructed to keep an eye out for Grady, as well. And her parents had agreed to turn on the security system that they’d had installed but almost never used.

“I could arrange to have surveillance cameras brought in,” Lucky explained, his voice not so soft now. “Then, I could monitor the perimeter of the ranch.”

“The ranch is huge. Well over a thousand acres and with more than a dozen outbuildings.” She glanced back at Noah to make sure he was okay. He was. Her son was on his side and still asleep. “Besides, we only have two days here. After that, I can make other arrangements for security.”

Marin was still undecided about her future living arrangements. But returning to Fort Worth probably wasn’t a wise move. She’d need a new place, a new home, far away from danger and from her parents. First though, she had to fight this custody challenge.

And she had to keep Noah safe.

Of course, Lucky had taken over that task as if he’d been ordained to protect her son. She couldn’t exactly fault him for that. Yes, he’d lied to her about Dexter. Probably lied about hitting on her, as well. But she couldn’t doubt that he had her son’s best interest at heart.

“So, what do we do about this bug?” Marin mouthed.

Lucky glanced around. Scowled. “Howard and Lois?” he called out. “If you’re listening, and you probably are, maybe the judge and the shrink would like to know how perverted you are. Eavesdropping on your daughter having sex with her fiancé. How sick is that, huh?”

Lucky stepped closer to her, placed his palm on the wall just behind her head, and made a throaty grunting sound. It was the exaggerated sound of a man in the throes of sex. He grunted some more, and Marin couldn’t help it, she smiled.

Since she figured this was an impromptu outlet for all that pent-up frustration about her parents’ antics, she added some moans of her own.

Lucky laughed. It was husky, low and totally male. And she didn’t know why—maybe it was the sheer absurdity of their situation—but their charade did indeed help ease some of the frustration.

Well, for a moment or two.

Then, the frustration returned and went in a totally different direction. Or rather, a too familiar, dangerous direction.

Their eyes met and their gazes held. There it was again, that jolt of attraction that’d hit her when she first met him. Lucky was hot. But Marin remembered he was hands-off. He wanted her brother, and he’d been willing to use her to find him.

That reminder was still flashing through her head when Lucky lowered his head. She saw it coming. He was making a move on her. Slick. Effortless. Still, even though she saw it coming, she didn’t do anything to stop it. She leaned closer into him, and his mouth found hers, letting the dreamy feel of his kiss wash over her.

He was gentle. A surprise. She’d thought he would be rough and demanding. A bad boy’s kiss. But his mouth was as easy as his smooth Texas drawl.

Marin slipped her arms around his neck. First one, then the other. Everything inside her slowed to practically a crawl. Except her heart. It was racing, and she could feel it in her throat.

The slow crawling feeling didn’t last long. It couldn’t. Not with his clever kiss. When she’d first seen Lucky’s face, she’d thought of him being in a bar brawl, of his rough exterior. Of those snug jeans that hugged all the interesting parts of his body. Now, all of that came into play. All of those had drawn her in.

Her body went from mindless resistance to being flooded with raging heat. His chest brushed her breasts. It was enough to urge her closer, to feel more of him. He was solid, all sinew and muscle, and she felt so soft in his arms.

He hooked his arm around her waist and snapped her to him. The gentleness vanished. Thank goodness! Because what good was it to lust after a rough and tumble bad boy if he held back one of the very things that made him bad?

Their bodies met head-on, a collision of sensations. The thoroughness of his touch. The firmness of his grip. His taste. The undeniable need of his mouth as he took the kiss and made it French.

Yes!
she thought. Yes. This was her fantasy. Him, taking her like this. Not treating her with kid gloves.

And Lucky didn’t disappoint.

His left hand went into her hair. Avoiding her injured forehead, he caught the strands of hair between his fingers and pulled back her head gently, but firmly so that he controlled the angle of the kiss. So that he controlled her.

Marin moved into the kiss, against him. Lucky moved, too, sliding his hand down her back, over her butt. He caught on to the back of her thigh, lifting it, just a little, to create the right angle so that his sex would touch hers.

Her breath vanished, and her vision blurred. She mumbled a word of profanity that she’d never used.

Every part of her responded. A slow, melting heat that urged her to take this farther. She wanted Lucky. Not just his French kiss. Not just the clever pressure created by his erection now nestled against her. She wanted it all.

Right here. Right now.

Senseless and thinking with her body, Marin fought to regain control. It wasn’t easy. She had to fight her way though the mindlessness of pure, raw desire and a fantasy she’d been weaving for hours. She remembered that having sex just wasn’t a good idea. Thankfully, she got a jolt of help when she heard the bedroom door open.

“Noah,” she said on a rise of breath.

Just like that, the heat was gone, and even though she turned to race back into the bedroom, Lucky launched himself ahead of her and beat her to it. However, the threat Marin had been prepared to face wasn’t there.

Well, not exactly.

With a large thick envelope tucked beneath her arm, her mother, Lois, waltzed inside. Marin made a mental note to keep the door locked from now on—and to keep some distance between Lucky and her.

Lois glanced over at her grandson in the sitting room and gave the sleeping baby a thin smile. Her scrutiny of Lucky and her though lasted a bit longer, and Marin didn’t think it was her imagination that her mother was displeased about something. Probably because both Lucky and she looked as if, well, they’d gotten lucky. For the sake of the facade, Marin tried to hang on to the well-satisfied look. It wasn’t hard to do. That kiss had been darn memorable.

Which was exactly why she had to forget it.

Her mother snapped her fingers and in stepped a young dark-haired woman carrying a large tray of plates covered with domed silver lids. She set the tray on the desk in the corner and made a hasty exit.

“Your dinner,” Lois announced. “Since you made it clear that you wouldn’t be dining with us. There’s some rice cereal and formula there for Noah, as well.”

“Thank you,” Lucky responded. “But Noah’s already had his dinner—Grandmother brought it in. Oh, and next time, knock first.”

Her mother looked as if she wanted to argue with that, but she didn’t. Instead, she extracted the envelope and thrust it at Lucky. “Sheriff Whitley had his deputy bring this over for you. I suppose it’s connected to the explosion?”

Neither Lucky nor Marin confirmed that. Nor would they. But it was no doubt the surveillance disks from the train that Lucky had told her about. Lucky examined the red tape that sealed the envelope, and Marin could see that someone had written their initials in permanent marker on that tape.

The sound her mother made was of obvious disapproval. “The sheriff apparently packaged it like that. He said if the seal was tampered with that he’d arrest my husband and me for obstruction of justice.”

“Good for Sheriff Whitley,” Lucky mumbled.

“The man isn’t fit to wear that badge,” Lois declared. But her expression softened when she looked at Marin. “You should at least eat dinner with your family.”

“I would if my family were really a family.” Marin paused a moment to put a chokehold on her temper. She didn’t want to shout with Noah in the room. “Drop this interview. Apologize. Back off. And then I might have dinner with you.”

“The interview has to happen, for your son’s sake,” her mother said without hesitation. “And it’s for his sake that I can’t back off.”

“Neither can I,” someone echoed. It was her father who stepped inside to join forces with her mother.

“Oh, goody,” Marin mumbled.

Lucky placed the envelope on the foot of the bed and positioned himself closer to her, so that they were literally facing down her parents.

“By the way, did either of you know about the threatening phone message that Grady Duran left Marin on her private line?” Lucky asked.

It was a good question. One that Marin should have already thought to ask.

“That message,”
her father grumbled. “Marin’s grandmother told us about it after her visit with you. No. We didn’t know. But the sheriff does now. For all the good that’ll do.”

Apparently, her father wasn’t any happier with the sealed envelope than her mother. Marin didn’t care. She wanted the authorities to know about Grady Duran because it was her guess that he was the one responsible for that explosion, and she wanted him off the streets and behind bars.

Her father propped his hands on his hips. “I thought you should know, I just heard from your brother.”

Marin could have sworn her heart stopped.

Lucky must have had a similar reaction because he didn’t utter a word. Neither did her mother. And the three all stood there, staring at the man who’d just made the announcement she’d never thought she would hear.

“Dexter’s not dead?” Marin finally managed to say.

“Obviously not. He just e-mailed me,” Howard explained.

Lois pressed her hand to her chest and pulled in several quick breaths. “What did he say?”

“That he’s alive and he wants to come home to see his family.”

“Where is he?” Lucky demanded.

“Even if he had said, I wouldn’t tell you. Dexter’s worried about his safety, as he should be. He knows someone killed two of his employees and an agent who was posing as a security guard at the research facility. Whoever did that is trying to set him up to take the blame.”

Marin figured Lucky wasn’t buying that or this entire conversation.

Her father’s eyes narrowed when he looked at Lucky. “But Dexter says he won’t come while you’re here, Randall. And he wants you to leave immediately.”

It was another shock. Not that Dexter wanted to come home. But that he’d even mentioned Randall, Marin’s dead ex-boyfriend.

“I want to see that e-mail,” Lucky insisted.

“I’m sure you do,” her father snarled. “But first I want you to answer one question. Since you’ve supposedly never met anyone in Marin’s family, mind explaining how the hell my son knows you?”