Lone Wolf Lawman

“That can’t happen! I can’t be in that kind of danger.”

Weston tried to keep his voice as calm as possible. Hard to do, though, with the emotions swirling like a tornado inside him. “I’m sorry. If there was another way to stop him, then I wouldn’t have come here. I know I don’t have a right to ask, but I need your help.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t? You must want this killer off the street. It’s the only way you’ll ever be truly safe.”

Addie opened her mouth. Closed it. And she stared at him. “I’d planned on telling you. Not like this.”

There was a new emotion in her voice and on her face. One that Weston couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Tell me what?” he asked.

She dragged in a long breath and straightened her shoulders. “I can’t be bait for the Moonlight Strangler because I can’t risk being hurt.” Addie took another deep breath. “I’m three months pregnant. And the baby is yours.”

Lone Wolf

Lawman

Delores Fossen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DELORES FOSSEN, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She was also a finalist for a prestigious RITA^® Award. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.dfossen.net.

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Addie Crockett heard the footsteps behind her a split second too late.

Before she could even turn around and see who was in the hall outside her home office, someone grabbed her.

She managed a strangled sound, barely. But the person slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the scream that bubbled up in her throat.

Oh, mercy.

What was going on?

This was obviously some kind of attack, but Addie wouldn’t just let this person hurt her. Or worse. She rammed her elbow into her attacker’s stomach, but it did nothing to break the grip he had on her.

“Stop,” he snapped. “I won’t hurt you.”

Addie wasn’t taking his word for it. She turned, using his own grip to shove him against the wall and into an angel Christmas wreath. The painted wooden angels went flying. But not the man.

Addie tried to get his hand off her mouth so she could call out for help. Then she remembered her brothers weren’t at the ranch. Two were still at work, and the other was Christmas shopping in San Antonio. Only her mother was inside the house, and she had a sprained ankle. Addie didn’t want her mother to come hobbling into the middle of this.

Whatever this was.

“Stop,” he repeated when she kept struggling. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and he dragged her from the hall into her office.

Addie gave him another jab of her elbow and would have delivered a third one if the man hadn’t cursed. She hadn’t recognized his order for her to stop, but she certainly recognized his voice now.

Wes Martin.

The relief collided with the slam of adrenaline, and it took Addie a moment to force herself to stop fighting so she could turn around and face him. Even though the sun was already close to setting and the lights weren’t on in her office, there was enough illumination from the hall to see his black hair. His face. His eyes.

Yes, it was Wes all right.

The relief she’d felt didn’t last long at all.

“What are you doing here?” Addie demanded. “And how’d you get in the house?” Those were only the first of many questions, and how much else she told him depended on what he had to say in the next couple of seconds.

He didn’t jump to start those answers. Wes stood there staring at her as if she were a stranger. Well, she wasn’t. And he knew that better than anyone. He’d seen every last inch of her.

Ditto for her seeing every last inch of him.

And despite the fact that it was the last thing Addie wanted in her head at this moment, the memories came of Wes naked and of her in his arms. Thankfully, he wasn’t naked now. He was wearing jeans, a button-up shirt and a tan cowboy hat.

But there was something different about this cowboy outfit.

Beneath his jacket, he was wearing a waist holster and a gun.

“I came in through the side door.” He tipped his head toward the hall. “It wasn’t locked.”

That wasn’t unusual. Because the ranch hands—and the family—were often coming and going. They rarely locked up the house until bedtime. Even then, that was hit-or-miss since security wasn’t usually an issue.

Until now, that was.

“I didn’t see your car,” she said, and since she’d just come in from the main barn, Addie would have seen any unfamiliar vehicles in the circular driveway in front of the house.

“I parked just off the main road and walked up. I’m sorry,” he added, following her gaze to his gun. “But I had to come.”

That didn’t answer her other question as to why he was there, and Addie wasn’t sure if she just wanted to send him packing or try to figure out what the heck was going on.

She went with the first option.

Wes had crushed her heart six ways to Sunday, and there was no need for her to give him another chance to hurt her again.

“You’re leaving,” Addie insisted, and she turned around to head to the hall so she could usher him right back out the side door.

She didn’t get far because he took hold of her arm again. Not the tight grip he’d had before, but it was enough to keep her in place. And enough to rile her even more. “Let go of me.”

“I can’t.” Wes opened his mouth, but any explanation he was about to give her ground to a halt. “We have to talk,” he added after a very long pause.

“And you had to sneak in here and grab me to do that? You could have called.”

“I had to see you in person, and I grabbed you because I didn’t want you shouting out for someone. I didn’t want to get shot before you listen to what I have to tell you. And you have to listen.”

It was partly her bruised ego reacting, but Addie huffed, folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “You slept with me three months ago and then disappeared without so much as an email. Why should I listen to anything you have to say, huh?”

Still no quick answer. Probably because there wasn’t one. Not one she’d want to hear anyway. But what she did want to hear was why he had on that gun holster that looked as if he’d been born to wear it. Also, why hadn’t she been able to find out anything about him online?

Everything inside her went still.

“Who are you, really?” she asked.

Another long pause. “I’m not the man you think I am.”

A burst of air left her mouth. Definitely not laughter. “Clearly. Now tell me something I don’t know.”

The hurt came hard and fast. Addie felt as if someone had put a vise around her heart. The tears quickly followed, too, and she tried hard to blink them away. No way did she want this man to see her cry.

“I’m sorry.” He added more of that profanity and reached out as if he might pull her into his arms.

Addie put a stop to that. She batted his hands away. “You knew how vulnerable I was when you slept with me.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “You’d recently found out your birth father was a serial killer.”

There it was, all wrapped up into one neat little summary. Stripped down to bare bones with no details. But the devil was in those details.

Well, one devil anyway.

Her biological father.

“Is everything you told me about your childhood the truth?” he asked.

She hadn’t thought Wes could say anything that would surprise her, or stop her from forcing him to leave, but that did it. Addie just stared at him.

“When you were three, some ranch hands found you in the woods near here,” Wes went on, obviously recapping details she already knew all too well. “You said you didn’t remember your name, how you got there or anything about your past. You don’t remember how you got that.”

Before she could stop him, he brushed his fingers over her cheek. Over the small crescent-shaped scar that was there. It was faint now, just a thin whitish line next to her left eye, but Wes had obviously noticed it.

Addie flinched, backing away from him. What the heck was going on?

“Is all of that true?” he repeated.

Addie mustered up another huff and tried not to react to his touch. Wes didn’t deserve a reaction. Too bad her body didn’t understand that. Of course, her body was betraying her a lot lately.

“It’s all true,” she insisted.

For thirty years, Addie had tried not to think of herself as that wounded little girl in the woods with a cut on her face. Because she hadn’t stayed there.

Thanks to Sheriff Sherman Crockett and his wife, Iris.

When no one had come forward to claim her after she’d been found, Sherman and Iris had adopted her, raised her along with their four sons on their Appaloosa Pass Ranch. They’d given her a name. A family. A wonderful life.

Until three months ago. Then, there’d been the DNA match that no one wanted. That’s when her world was turned upside down.

“Why did your adoptive father put your DNA in the database when he found you?” Wes asked.

Again, it was another question she hadn’t seen coming. Her adoptive father had been killed in the line of duty when she was just twelve, so she couldn’t ask him directly, but Addie could guess why.

“Because he could have simply been looking to see if I matched anyone in the system. But I believe he wanted to find the birth parents who’d abandoned me and make them pay.” That required a deep breath. “I’m positive he had no idea it’d lead to a killer.”

And not just any old killer, either, but the Moonlight Strangler. He’d killed at least sixteen women, and fifteen of those crime scenes hadn’t had a trace of his DNA. But three months ago number sixteen had. And while the DNA wasn’t a match to any criminal already in the system, it had been a match to the killer’s blood kin.

Addie.

Wes took her by the shoulders, forcing eye contact. “The Moonlight Strangler’s really your father?”

It took Addie a moment to realize that it was actually a question. “Yes, according to the DNA match, he is. But Sherman Crockett was my father in the only way that will ever matter.”

If only that were true.

Addie wanted it to be true. Desperately wanted it. But it was hard to push aside that she shared the blood and DNA of a serial killer.

“I need to hear it from you,” Wes said. Not an order exactly. But it was close. “Is everything you said true? Do you have any memory whatsoever of why you were in those woods or who put you there?”

Addie threw up her hands. “Of course not. The FBI has questioned me over and over again. They even had me hypnotized, and I remembered exactly what I’d already told everyone. Nothing.”

She had no idea why Wes was asking these things, but it was time for Addie to turn the tables on him.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “And why are you here?”

His grip melted off her shoulders, and now it was Wes who moved away from her. “My real name is Weston Cade, and I’m a Texas Ranger.”

Addie had to replay that several times before it sank in. After learning she was the daughter of a serial killer and having Wes leave without so much as a goodbye, she hadn’t exactly had a rosy outlook on life. She’d braced herself in case Wes was about to confess that he, too, was some kind of criminal. But this revelation wasn’t nearly as bad as the ones she had imagined.

“A Texas Ranger,” she repeated. Addie shook her head. “You told me your name was Wes Martin and that you were a rodeo rider.”

“Martin is my middle name, and I was a rodeo rider. Before I became a Ranger.”

Her mouth tightened. “And I was a child before I became an adult. That doesn’t make me a child now. You lied to me.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I didn’t want you to know who I was and that I was investigating the Moonlight Strangler.”

She stared at him, waiting for more. More that he didn’t volunteer. “You were investigating him when you met me three months ago?”

No gaze-dodging this time. Wes, or rather Weston, looked her straight in the eyes. “I met you because I was looking for him. I followed you while you were in San Antonio, and after your interview with the FBI I followed you to the hotel where you were staying. I knew exactly who you were when I introduced myself at the bar.”

That hit her like a heavyweight’s punch, and Addie staggered back.

The memories of that first meeting were still so fresh in her mind. She’d been shaken to the core after the interview with the FBI, and even though her mother and one of her brothers had made the trip to San Antonio with her, she had asked for some alone time. And had ended up at the hotel bar.

Where she’d met Wes, a rodeo rider.

Or so she’d thought.

The attraction had been instant. Intense. Something Addie had never quite felt before. Of course, that intensity had dulled her instincts because she had believed with all her heart that this was a man who understood her. A man she could trust.

That was laughable now.

“Were you trying to get information from me?” she asked, recalling all the words—the lies, no doubt—he’d told her that night.

A muscle flickered in his jaw.

Then Weston nodded.

She groaned, and now Addie was the one who cursed. “And you came back to the bar again the next night, after I’d been through the hypnosis. You knew I was an emotional wreck. You knew I was hanging by a thread, and yet you took me to your room and had sex with me. Not just that night, either, but the following night, too.”

“That was never part of the plan,” he said.

“The plan?” she snapped. “Well, your plan had consequences.” Addie had another battle with tears, but thankfully she still managed to speak. “Leave now!”

Of course he didn’t budge. Weston stayed put and took hold of her arm when she tried to bolt from the office.

The phone on her desk rang, the sound shooting through the room. Addie gasped before she realized that it wasn’t the threat that her body was preparing itself for. The threat was in her office and had hold of her.

“Ignore that call. There are things you need to know,” he insisted. “Things that might save your life.”

That stopped Addie in her tracks, and she did indeed ignore the call. “What are you talking about?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer because she heard another sound. Her mother’s voice.

“Addie?” her mother called out. It sounded as if she was in the kitchen at the back of the house. “I picked up the phone when you didn’t answer. It’s about those mares you wanted to buy.”

It was a call that Addie had been waiting on. An important one. Since she helped manage the ranch and the livestock, it was her job. But she was afraid her job would have to wait.

“Tell her to take a message,” Weston instructed.

Addie wanted to tell him a flat-out no. She didn’t want to obey orders from this lying Texas Ranger who’d taken her to his bed with the notion of getting information she didn’t even have.

“Why should I?” she snarled.

“Because you’re in danger. Your mother could be, too.”

Addie had been certain that there was nothing Weston could say that would make her agree to his order.

Nothing except that.

“Mom,” Addie said after a serious debate with herself. “Take a message. I’ll return the call soon.”

She hoped.

“Start talking,” Addie told Weston. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he started to unbutton his shirt.

Either he’d lost his mind, or...

It was or.

Addie saw the scar on his chest. The long jagged cut that wasn’t nearly as faded and healed as the one on her face. It was one that she’d already noticed the night they’d landed in bed together. Weston had told her he’d been hooked by a bull’s horn at a rodeo.

“The Moonlight Strangler did this to me,” Weston said. “Your father nearly killed me.”

Oh, God.

“You know who my birth father is?” She couldn’t ask that fast enough.

“No. I didn’t see his face. And I didn’t have any leads to his identity until I found out the results of your DNA test.”

Addie’s heart was pounding now. Her breath thin. “You thought he’d come to me?”

Weston nodded. “I counted on it. I know your DNA match was supposed to be kept quiet, but I figured if I could find out about it, then so could the killer.”

It took her a moment to gather her voice. “You leaked my DNA results?” She shoved Weston away from her and would have bolted, but, like before, he held on.

“No,” he insisted. “But someone might have. Maybe a dirty cop or someone in the crime lab who was paid off.”

“Or it could have been you. And to think, I slept with you, not just that one night, either, but the following night, too. I...” Addie stopped because there was no way she would give him another emotional piece of herself. “You used me as bait.”

Her voice hardly had sound now, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t feeling every inch of the proverbial knife he’d stuck in her back.

“No,” Weston repeated. “But someone did. And it worked.”

There went the rest of her breath. “Who? How?”

Weston shook his head. “I don’t know the who or the how, but I know the results.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “Addie, you’re the Moonlight Strangler’s next target.”

Chapter Two

Weston waited for Addie’s reaction, and he didn’t have to wait long.

She shook her head, her bottom lip trembling just a little before she clamped her teeth over it. It only took a few seconds for Addie to process what Weston had just told her.

And to dismiss it.

“Why should I believe anything you say?” she asked.

Weston had no trouble hearing the hurt in her voice. No trouble hearing the anger, too. Yes, he was responsible for both, and while he’d never intended to hurt Addie, he also hadn’t wanted a serial killer to have free rein to keep on killing. Too bad he’d failed.

Addie was indeed hurt.

And the killer was still out there.

Of course, Addie knew that better than anyone else: her own sister-in-law had been one of the Moonlight Strangler’s victims.

“I’m sorry,” Weston said, knowing his words wouldn’t be worth much. “But it’s true. I have proof the Midnight Strangler’s coming after you, and we need to talk about that.”

Judging from the way her eyes narrowed, he’d been right about that apology not meaning much.

Addie didn’t jump to ask about his proof.

Her blond hair was gathered into a ponytail, but she swiped away the strands that’d fallen onto her face during their scuffle, and she whirled around so that she was no longer facing him. At least she didn’t try to make a run out of her office again, but she might do just that before this conversation was over.

Even though it had only been three months since Weston had seen her, she’d changed plenty. He had watched her for about a half hour before he’d gotten the chance to pull her into the office for a private chat. When she was in the barn earlier, Addie had been working with one of the horses, and she had actually smiled a time or two. She looked content. Happy, even.

Definitely something he hadn’t seen when she was in San Antonio.

There, she’d been wearing dresses more suited for office work than the jeans and denim shirt she was wearing now. And she definitely hadn’t been happy or smiling during their chats at the bar and in his hotel room.

No.

Most of the time, she’d been on the verge of losing it, and had been trying to come to terms with learning exactly who she was. Weston certainly hadn’t helped with the situation by sleeping with her.

After several long moments, she turned back around to face him. In the same motion, she took out her phone from her jeans pocket. “I’m calling Jericho.”

Jericho, her oldest adopted brother. He was also the sheriff in the nearby town of Appaloosa Pass, the job once held by her late father. Weston definitely didn’t want to tangle with any of the Crockett lawmen, not just yet anyway, so that’s why he reached for her phone.

“I want to find out who you really are,” Addie snapped. “And you’re not going to stop me from doing that.”

It was a risk in case she tried to get her brother to arrest him or something, but Weston decided to see how this played out. Eventually, he’d have to deal with Jericho anyway. It was a meeting he wasn’t exactly looking forward to since Jericho had a reputation for being a badass, no-shades-of-gray kind of lawman.

“Jericho,” Addie said when her brother answered. She put the call on speaker. “I need a favor. Can you check and see if there’s a Texas Ranger by the name of Weston Cade?”

Weston heard Jericho’s brief silence. Was he suspicious? Definitely. But the question was—what would Jericho do about it? If he came storming back to the house, it might trigger something Weston didn’t want triggered.

“Why?” her brother asked her.

“Just do it,” Addie insisted, “please.” She sounded more like an annoyed sister than a woman whose lip had been trembling just moments earlier.

More silence from Jericho, followed by some mumblings, but Weston did hear the clicks of a computer keyboard.

“Yeah, he’s a Ranger in the San Antonio unit,” her brother verified. “Why?” Jericho repeated, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “And does he have anything to do with that SOB scumbag you met in San Antonio, the one who slept with you and—”

“I’ll call you back,” Addie interrupted, and she hung up. She dodged his gaze when she slid her phone back into her pocket.

Weston doubted she’d put a quick end to that call for his sake, but it did give him a glimpse of what she’d been going through for three months. She had obviously told Jericho about her brief affair with a man who’d seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth, and her brother clearly didn’t have a high opinion of him.

SOB scumbag.

Well, the label fit. Weston didn’t have a high opinion of himself, either, and he hadn’t in a very long time.

Addie wouldn’t believe that he had plenty of regrets when it came to her. After all his lies, she would never believe that he’d fallen in bed with her only because of the intense attraction he had felt for her.

An attraction he still felt.

Still, he shouldn’t have acted on it. He should have just kept his distance and tailed her until her father made his move, no matter how long that took.

“Start from the beginning,” Addie insisted, turning her attention back to Weston. “And so help me, every word coming out of your mouth had better be the truth, or I’ll let Jericho have a go at you. I don’t make a habit of letting my big brother fight my battles for me, but in your case I’ll make an exception.”

Weston figured that wasn’t a bluff.

The beginning required him to take a deep breath. “Two years ago I went to my fiancée’s office to see her. I’d just come off an undercover assignment and hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. Her name was Collette, and I walked in on someone murdering her.”

Hell, it hurt to say that aloud. It didn’t set well with Addie, either, because she made a slight gasping sound.

“It was my birth father,” she supplied. “I saw a list of his known victims. All sixteen of them, and Collette Metcalf was one of them.”

Weston nodded, and it took him a moment to trust his voice again. “I didn’t know it was him at the time, and I didn’t get a look at his face because he knifed me and ran out. I obviously survived, but Collette wasn’t so lucky. She died by the time the ambulance arrived.”

She touched her fingers to her mouth. It was trembling again, and Addie leaned against the edge of her desk, no doubt for support. “Your name wasn’t in the reports I read of the murders.”

“No. The FBI and Rangers thought it best if they didn’t make it public. They didn’t want him coming after me to tie up loose ends. The killer hadn’t gotten a good look at my face because I was still wearing my undercover disguise. But he must have found out who I was because letters from the Moonlight Strangler started arriving three months ago.”

“Three months?” she repeated under her breath.

Addie no doubt picked up on the timing. Weston doubted it was a coincidence that the letters started arriving shortly after he met her.

“The killer mentions me in these letters?” she asked, and Weston had to nod.

That meant the Moonlight Strangler had perhaps already been watching Addie and had seen Weston with her. Or maybe the killer had been watching him. Either way, Weston figured the killer had started sending those letters because he knew about Addie and him sleeping together.

“All the letters and envelopes were typed,” Weston continued, “so there’s no handwriting to be analyzed. No fibers or trace on any of them. They were mailed from various locations all over the state.”

Addie shook her head. “How can you be sure they’re from the killer?”

“Because there are details in them that were withheld from the press. Details that only the Moonlight Strangler would know.”

She stayed quiet a moment. “The letters threatened you?”

“Taunted me,” Weston corrected. With details of Collette’s murder...and other things. I tried to draw the killer out. I made sure my address was public. I put out the word through criminal informants that I wanted to meet with him, but he wouldn’t come after me.”

“You made yourself bait,” Addie corrected.

“Plenty of times.”

Weston had failed at that, too.

“The killer’s never contacted me,” she said. “Of course I’ve been worried...scared,” Addie corrected, “that he would. Or that he would do even more than just contact me.” She paused. “How did you find out I was his biological daughter?”

“I was keeping tabs on anything to do with the Moonlight Strangler. As a Texas Ranger, I have access to the DNA databases, and I’d hoped there’d be a DNA match to someone.”

Her next breath was mixed with a sigh. “And there was. Then, because you’d found out I was his biological daughter, you...what?” No more sighing. Her eyes narrowed. “You thought he’d want to connect with the child he abandoned in the woods nearly thirty years ago?”

Her anger was back. Good. It was actually easier for him to deal with than the fear and hurt. But unfortunately, he was going to have to tell her something that would bring the fear back with a vengeance.

“Yesterday, I got this.” Weston took the paper from his pocket and turned on the light so she could better see it. “It’s the eighth letter he’s sent me. It’s a copy, not the original, so it’s okay for you to handle it.”

She didn’t take it at first. Addie just volleyed glances between him and the paper before she finally eased it out of his hand, taking it only by the corner as if she didn’t want to touch too much of it.

Since Weston knew every word that was written there, he watched Addie’s reaction. The shock.

And yes, the fear.

“‘Tell Addie that it’s time for me to end what I started thirty years ago,’” she read aloud. She paused. “‘I can’t have a little girl’s memories coming back to haunt me.’”

Her gaze skirted over the words again. She cleared her throat before her gaze came back to his.

“This is why you asked if I remembered anything,” Addie said. “I don’t,” she quickly added.

“And you don’t remember that?” He tipped his head to the scar on her cheek.

“No.” She handed him back the letter. “Did he cut the other women he killed like this?”

Weston settled for a nod. “That was kept out of the reports to the press, too. Only a handful of people know that he cut them first. Then strangled them.”

“I see.” Her mouth tightened a moment. “I’d always hoped I got the scar from a tree branch or something.”

Yes, since that was far better than the alternative. Because that scar on her face meant the Moonlight Strangler had already gone after her once. When she was just three years old.

Now he was coming for her again.

“The killer could be worried that you remembered something in that hypnosis session,” Weston said. “Or that you might remember something in the future. The FBI wants to do more sessions with you, right?”

She nodded, confirming what he already knew. Nearly every law enforcement agency in the state as well as the FBI wanted to keep pressing her to remember.

“We don’t have much time,” Weston continued. “He usually strikes on the night of a full or half moon. Like tonight.”

Her attention drifted to the window where she could see that the sun was only minutes away from setting. Something else flashed through her eyes. Not fear this time. But major concern.