The Marshal's Justice (Appaloosa Pass Ranch 4) (2 page)

Chase beat him to it.

He didn’t fire into the Kevlar vest, but instead he double-tapped two shots to the gunman’s head. And Chase didn’t miss. The man dropped like a sack of rocks just as Chase had intended.

With that taken care of, Chase turned to April. “Now, what the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

But she didn’t answer. Probably because of the hoarse sob that tore from her mouth. “Oh, God.” And she kept repeating it.

She dropped to her knees and she grabbed the dead man by the shoulders, lifting his torso off the ground. “Tell me where she is!” April yelled. “Tell me.” The sobbing got worse when she put her fingers to his neck. “He’s dead. He can’t be dead.”

It wasn’t exactly the reaction Chase had expected since she knew this snake was a killer and had been prepared to kill again.

She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her eyes. “The baby.”

All right. That got his attention. “
Our
baby?” Chase asked.

April nodded, and her breath shattered. “Someone took her. And that dead man was my best hope at finding our daughter.”

Chapter Two

April felt the fresh wave of panic slam into her like a Mack truck.

First the baby. Then Deanne’s death. Now this.

The emotions were too raw and strong, overpowering her so much that they were hard to fight. But April knew she had no choice except to keep fighting.

If she gave in to it, her baby might be lost forever.

Despite possibly destroying evidence, April rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Looking for anything that would tell her where he was holding the baby.

No wallet. No ID. No photos. No scraps of paper with details of any kind.

Nothing.

Tamping down the panic, she forced herself to get to her feet. Chase helped by taking hold of her arm. April didn’t have to look at his expression to know that he wanted answers. And he wanted them
now
.

However, April didn’t have some of those answers, especially the ones Chase would want most.

Even though Chase still had hold of her, April started toward Deanne. Yes, she knew the woman was dead. April had seen her fall after taking the bullet. Had also seen her talking with Chase moments before it looked as if she took her last breath. April didn’t know what, or how much, Deanne had told him, but she figured she’d soon find out.

“Who has the baby?” he snapped. “And when was she taken?”

April had to shake her head again, and she motioned toward the dead man. “Whoever he was working for took her. Around midnight two masked gunmen broke into my house, held me at gunpoint and demanded to know where Quentin was. When I said I didn’t know, they kidnapped the baby.”

A sound came deep from within his chest. Not a good sound, either. Pure anger. “And you didn’t call me?”

She’d braced herself for the question, and the anger. Or so she’d thought. Hard to brace herself, though, for that kind of emotion.

“The kidnapper said if I contacted you, anyone in your family or anyone in law enforcement, I’d never see the baby again.” She hadn’t wanted to believe that, but April hadn’t been able to dismiss it, either. “They said they’d be in touch soon and left.”

“So, you called Deanne instead.” Chase didn’t sound happy about that at all. Of course, nothing about this situation was going to make him happy.

“Yes, I thought it would be safe for her to come. I figured no one would be trailing Deanne to get to me. Especially after things ended so badly between us.”

Well, it’d ended badly between Deanne and April’s brother anyway. Deanne had been the one to turn Quentin in. Of course, in doing so Deanne had turned in April, as well.

“As a CI, Deanne dealt with dangerous thugs like the ones who took the baby,” April explained. “And she did come right away when I called her.”

“Because she felt guilty for what happened,” Chase supplied. “She shouldn’t have. Both Quentin and you made your own beds.”

Since it was true and there was no way to make Chase see the legal shades of gray that had gotten her to that point, April just continued with her explanation. “I waited for a ransom demand, or any kind of communication from the kidnappers. And about an hour and a half ago, someone finally called and said for me to come to the Appaloosa Creek Bridge, that there’d be instructions for getting the baby back.”

Chase didn’t come out and tell her she’d been stupid, but what he felt was written all over his face.

A face that shared a lot of features with their daughter.

Same light brown hair. Same deep blue eyes. It both broke April’s heart and warmed it to see those features on her precious baby.

“I guess Deanne got spooked and called me?” Chase asked.

Chase was not going to like this, either. “Not quite. When I got to the bridge, the kidnapper was waiting for me. The same one you just killed. But he said he wouldn’t give me the baby unless you came to the bridge, too. I tried to talk him out of that, but he insisted it was the only way.”

She’d been right. Chase didn’t like that. Because it meant she had lured him there.

“So, you had Deanne make the call,” Chase said.

April nodded. “I knew if I called, you’d have too many questions, and I wouldn’t have had time to get into it. Like now.” She paused. “Are your brothers on the way?”

Chase didn’t jump to respond, but he did follow her as she approached Deanne’s body. “Yeah. They should be here any minute. How safe are we out here?” He took out his phone and fired off a text. To one of his brothers, no doubt, so they could find them in these woods.

“I’m not sure if it’s safe at all,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t wanted to get you involved in this, but I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had choices. Everybody does.”

They weren’t just talking about the baby now but her past. A past that Chase was probably sorry had included him.

“Now tell me what the hell happened here,” he insisted.

She would. But where to start? The past sixteen hours had been one nightmare after another. Though Chase would want to know the details prior to that. Especially one detail.

The baby.

The one they’d conceived nine months ago when they’d had to face yet another nightmare. Landing in bed with him had been a lapse in judgment. Or Chase would consider it a lapse, anyway. Yes, they’d been attracted to each other since they first met, but Chase considered her a common criminal. And in many ways, he was right.

“I gave birth two months early,” she said.

April tried to rein in her emotions. The fear. The hatred for the person who’d put all of this in motion. Hard to rein in anything, though, when she knelt beside Deanne and touched her.

Dead.

Of course, she already knew that, but it sickened her to confirm it for herself. The tears came. No way to stop them, but she tried to brush them away. Later, she’d grieve for the woman who’d lost her life way too soon and had died trying to help April.

Later, April would do a lot of things.

After she figured out how to untangle this mess that could cost her the baby.

Chase knelt, too. So they were face-to-face. And even though he tossed some glares at her, he continued to keep watch around them.

Always the lawman.

A good lawman, too. For all the good it’d done. It hadn’t been good enough to help Deanne or their daughter today.

“Why didn’t you have someone call me and tell me you’d had the baby?” he snapped.

Yet another long story, and she was already dealing with too much to bring those memories this close to the surface. “Bailey...that’s what I named her...was a preemie, and at first she had trouble breathing on her own. She had to spend most of the time since her birth in a neonatal unit. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but she’s fine now.”

At least April prayed she was.

And the possibility that she wasn’t fine brought on the tears again. Sweet heaven, she was so tired of crying. So tired of being terrified. So tired of not having her precious baby in her arms.

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me.” Chase’s tone didn’t soften despite the tears, but he finally cursed and slid his hand over her back. For a very brief moment. Probably in an attempt to comfort her.

Too bad it didn’t work.

April figured she could use some serious comforting right now, but comfort wasn’t going to help her find the baby.

“I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t want to risk anyone following you to the hospital,” she said. “Because I delivered so early, we didn’t have nearly enough security in place for you to come running to me.”

It was the truth. But it wouldn’t be a truth that Chase wanted to hear. Soon, he’d press her for a better explanation.

But that had to wait.

“The gunman and I left our cars by the Appaloosa Creek Bridge,” April told him. So that’s the direction she headed. “Maybe there’s something inside his car that’ll help me find Bailey.”

“Not me.
Us.
You’re not looking for Bailey alone.”

He hesitated when saying their daughter’s name, the way someone would hesitate when pronouncing a foreign word. Maybe because he was just getting accustomed to the idea of fatherhood.

An idea that he’d struggled with for months.

Now, here it was, slugging him in the face. Crushing him, too. Because it was certainly crushing her.

“Maybe the baby is in the kidnapper’s car?” Chase suggested.

“No. Believe me, I checked. I even looked in the trunk when he opened it to take out an extra gun and some ammo.” There’d been absolutely no sign of the baby.

Chase walked in step beside her. “What about Deanne—was she faking being afraid so she could lure me here? Or was the gunman actually threatening to kill her then?

“Deanne’s fear was real. And warranted. The thug said the only way I could get Bailey back was for you to come, and that if I didn’t agree, he’d kill Deanne. I thought we’d be able to overpower him or something. I also didn’t think he’d want you dead. Not right off the bat like that anyway.”

She’d been wrong about a lot of things. Definitely a stupid plan.

“The thug made me put on these clothes,” she said, motioning at the all-black garb. “Deanne, too. I’m not sure why exactly, but I think he wanted to make you believe you were surrounded by hired guns.”

And the thug knew that Deanne and April couldn’t just shoot him. Because he was the only one who knew the baby’s location.

Still glaring, Chase cursed. Not general profanity, either. Like the glare, it was aimed specifically at her. But this time, the glare didn’t last as long as the others. That’s because Chase stopped and, without warning, latched on to her and hauled her behind a tree.

Had he heard something? Because she certainly hadn’t. Of course, with her heartbeat thumping in her ears, it was hard to hear much of anything.

The moments crawled by, but Chase still didn’t budge. “Why did that goon want to find Quentin?” he whispered. Obviously, he intended to use this waiting time to fill in some of the blanks. But in this case, she had just as many blanks as Chase did.

April had to shake her head. “My guess is Tony Crossman wants to settle up things with Quentin and me.”

Which wasn’t much of a guess at all because Quentin and she were responsible for putting the king of thugs, Tony Crossman, behind bars. Their testimony, along with the testimony of Crossman’s CPA, had put the CPA, Quentin and April into WITSEC, too.

However, even behind bars Crossman still had plenty of money and resources, and he’d apparently used both to come after her and take the baby. There was only one thing that could have gotten her to cooperate with one of Crossman’s thugs.

And that was Bailey.

“I haven’t seen my brother the entire six months I’ve been in WITSEC,” she added when Chase got them moving again.

Something Chase probably already knew because that’d been the plan all along. It would make it hard for Crossman’s henchmen to find Quentin and her if they were in different places leading separate lives.

Chase mumbled more profanity. “Someone probably hacked into WITSEC files to find Bailey and you. We thought we had a breach not long ago, but it turned out to be a false alarm.”

April had heard about that possible breach, and it’d involved yet someone else connected to Crossman. A criminal named Marcos Culver, who’d been running one of Crossman’s side businesses of money laundering. But that man had never been a threat to her. And besides, Culver was dead now.

“I need to find out who could have hacked into WITSEC,” Chase continued, “and try to link that person back to Crossman. Or anyone else who might be involved.”

Even though he didn’t spell it out, April knew what he meant. Chase believed her brother could be involved in this.

And maybe Quentin was.

After all, April would have paid a huge ransom to get Bailey back. Chase would have as well once he’d learned what had happened, and the one thing her brother probably needed right now was cash since he’d blown through his trust fund that their grandparents had set up for both of them. Still, something like this seemed extreme even for Quentin.

“Stop,” Chase said, and without warning he yanked her behind another tree.

Again, April hadn’t heard anything, but clearly he had because Chase lifted his head, listening. Finally, she heard the footsteps. Someone was coming up on them fast.

“Your brothers?” she whispered.

Chase shook his head.

April leaned out just a little and spotted the man skulking his way toward them. Definitely not a Crockett lawman. This guy was dressed all in black and was wearing a ski mask.

Another hired gun.

She instantly felt fear, and hope. This man could try to kill them, but he also might know something about Bailey.

Chase handed her his phone. “Text Jericho and give him the guy’s position,” he whispered. “Also tell Jericho we need him alive.”

April couldn’t do that fast enough. She certainly didn’t want the sheriff eliminating this hired gun before they got a chance to talk to him.

Jericho didn’t respond to the text, but April soon realized why. She saw him, and he wasn’t that far behind the guy in the ski mask.

Her heart went to her knees.

April nearly shouted out for Jericho not to shoot the man, something that would have almost certainly put Jericho in danger because it would have alerted the gunman. But Chase glanced down at her, shook his head.

“If Jericho had wanted this guy dead, he already would be,” Chase mouthed.

It took her a moment to fight through the panic going on in her head, and April realized he was right. The man obviously didn’t know that Jericho was tracking him, and she was well aware that the sheriff had a deadly aim.

Chase eased her even farther behind the tree so that her face and body were pressed right against the rough bark. Chase pressed, too. His chest against her back. Touching her. Of course, he hadn’t meant for this to be an intimate situation, but it always seemed to be just that when she was within a hundred feet of Chase.

Her mind tried to shut out the memories. But her body remembered every second she’d spent in Chase’s arms.

In his bed, too.

She could no longer see the gunman or Jericho, but April could still hear the footsteps. The guy wasn’t moving that fast, but he was definitely headed right for them.