Rayanne blinked and stared up at him. “Excuse me?”
Blue was surprised that she was surprised.
“You think all that time we worked on those cases together that my mind was solely on the job? I’ve been attracted to you since day one.”
For just a heartbeat, she looked a little pleased about that. Then she shook her head. “You don’t remember all that, remember?”
“Oh, I remember some things.”
Things that caused him to stray into the stupid realm again, because he brushed a kiss on her cheek. Thank goodness it was only her cheek, because he could have sworn he saw little lightning bolts zing through her eyes.
She let go of him so fast that he had no choice but to sit back on the bed or he would have fallen. “Blue, this can’t happen again.”
He nodded. “I know.”
And he did.
Didn’t he?
Rustling Up
Trouble
Delores Fossen
USA TODAY bestselling author DELORES FOSSEN 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 Award, and was a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. 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
Deputy Rayanne McKinnon’s breath stalled in her throat, and she did a double take. No, her eyes hadn’t deceived her.
She was looking at a dead man.
At least, he was supposed to be dead.
But dead men didn’t move, and this one was definitely doing that.
He was crouched behind a big pile of rocks. And he had his attention trained on the back fence that coiled around the pasture of her family’s ranch. It was that particular fence and a tripped security sensor that’d caused Rayanne to ride out and have a look. She’d figured a cow had gotten out.
She darn sure hadn’t expected to find him.
Even though he was a good twenty yards away and had his face partially concealed with a low-slung white Stetson, Rayanne had no trouble recognizing him.
Blue McCurdy.
Just the sight of his ink-black hair, rangy body and chiseled face sent her stomach churning. An invisible meaty fist clamped around her heart, squeezing and choking until her chest was throbbing like a toothache.
The memories came. All bad.
Well, mostly bad, anyway.
Rayanne pushed aside the ones that were good, including the little tug of relief at seeing Blue alive.
She cursed both her reaction and the man himself. Blue was the last person on God’s green earth she expected or wanted to see, and yet here he was on McKinnon land.
The question was, why?
This couldn’t be about the baby.
Could it?
Rayanne opened her mouth to shout out that why as to the alive part and remind him that he was trespassing. But a sound stopped her cold. The soft rumble of some kind of engine, and it was moving along the fence line.
Blue reached beneath his leather vest and pulled a gun from the back waist of his jeans.
That got her heart thumping, and not in a “relieved you’re alive” sort of way. Rayanne drew her Colt, too, and stepped behind a live oak. As a deputy sheriff, she’d had more than her share of experience in dealing with bad guys.
Blue McCurdy included.
If he was up to something shady, and it was pretty clear that he was, then Blue had brought trouble practically to her doorstep. That was another why, and Rayanne hoped she got answers soon.
The engine sounds stopped, and Blue adjusted his gun. Whoever was out there had put him on edge. He certainly wasn’t jumping out from those rocks to greet anyone.
Mercy.
If this was trouble worse than Blue himself, then things were going to be bad.
She wanted to watch for a few more seconds to try to figure out what was going on here, but just in case things went from bad to worse, she’d have to fire off a text to someone who could respond from the ranch house. There wasn’t good enough phone reception in this part of the property for a call, but a text would usually go through. She’d learned that during the three months she’d been back here at Sweetwater Ranch while awaiting her mother’s murder trial.
That put the clamp on her heart again, and she cursed it, too.
Blasted feelings!
Why the heck did they have to keep messing with her head and every other part of her? It had to be the pregnancy hormones, because she’d never felt this moody and whiny before.
Rayanne thankfully didn’t have time to dwell on that, because she saw the movement in the trees behind the fence. Blue must have seen it, too, because he ducked lower.
Waiting.
Not hiding.
It was a subtle enough difference for Rayanne to ready her Colt. She didn’t want Blue dead before he could explain to her all those whys that kept racking up.
Including why he’d left her naked in bed nearly five months ago.
Rayanne cursed him again and cursed herself for allowing any man to get that close to her. It wouldn’t happen again, and as soon as she found out what Blue wanted, she’d send him on his way.
Or maybe arrest him.
Another flicker of movement, and this time she got a glimpse of a man dressed in dark clothes. Tall, marine-like build. Definitely not a friendly sort.
That got her tugging her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, and she sent a quick text to her stepbrother, FBI agent Seth Calder, to request some backup. Hopefully, he was still at the ranch and hadn’t left for work yet, so he could get there in a hurry.
“McCurdy?” someone shouted.
But Blue didn’t answer.
The shouter yelled Blue’s surname again, and this time Rayanne got more than a glimpse. She saw his face and picked through the features to see if she knew him.
She didn’t.
But apparently Blue knew the guy well enough to hide from him.
“We know you’re here,” the man added. “And we’re not leaving until someone dies.”
That felt like a punch to her chest. Yes, she was a cop, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed diving into gunfights, especially now that she had someone else to consider.
Her unborn baby.
Plus, she wasn’t exactly keen on taking a huge risk like this to save a man whom she hated.
“Damn you, Blue,” she mumbled, and debated if she should identify herself. It might get the gunman running.
Or not.
It was just as likely to get him to start shooting. Because it was clear this guy wasn’t a cop out to arrest Blue. Cops didn’t make threats like that.
Not good cops, anyway.
She glanced back at the paint gelding that she’d ridden in on. He was grazing on some pasture grass and would maybe stay put. Rayanne didn’t want him in the middle of, well, whatever the heck this was.
Keeping her gun ready, she crouched down and hurried behind another tree. Then another. Moving closer to a dry spring bed that was deep enough to give her some cover. It was also closer to Blue. When she slipped behind a third tree, Blue snapped his head in her direction.
Their eyes met.
Rayanne’s narrowed.
His eyes widened.
Blue didn’t seem any happier to see her than she was to see him, and using just his left hand, he made a sharp palm-down gesture that Rayanne had no trouble interpreting.
Stay put.
Something he darn sure didn’t do.
She could have sworn that her presence changed whatever plan Blue had had in mind, because he appeared to curse, and then he maneuvered toward the end of the line of boulders. Away from her. And closer to the big guy who’d warned him that someone was going to die.
At the rate he was going, that someone would be Blue.
She saw the man’s hand snake out. Gun clutched and aimed. He fired right into those boulders where he’d no doubt heard Blue moving around. The bullet smacked into the stone, making a sharp zinging sound, and it was quickly followed by another shot.
Another gunman, too.
No. Not this. If all Hades was going to break loose, why not wait until she had backup?
The shooter’s partner ducked out from cover just a few yards from Blue and pulled the trigger. That one clipped the boulder at just the right angle to send some rock chips flying right at Blue. Rayanne got just a glimpse of the blood from the nicks those rocks caused before more shots came.
Sweet heaven. She couldn’t just stand by and let this happen. Rayanne scrambled into the dry spring bed, keeping as low as she could, but she lifted her head just enough so she could take aim at the marine-sized guy.
She fired.
And missed, but it got his attention, all right.
Blue’s, too.
He cursed at her. “Get down!” Blue yelled.
Rayanne had no choice but to do just that when the gunman sent a shot her way. Too close. Ditto for the one he aimed at Blue.
She fired back but didn’t wait to see if she’d hit one of them. Then she scrambled down the spring bed, making her way to the boulders that Blue was using for cover.
“What part of get down didn’t you understand?” Blue snarled.
No greeting, no explanation as to why he was on her family’s ranch with gunmen after him.
Just that barked question.
Thankfully, his attention didn’t go in the direction of her stomach, because it wasn’t a good time to have to explain the small baby bump that she had hopefully hidden enough with her bulky jacket.
“I’m the one with a badge,” Rayanne snarled back. “So if anyone should be staying down, it’s you. Plus, you lost your right to give me any kind of advice when you disappeared without so much as a word.”
Yeah, the timing for those words sucked, but Rayanne couldn’t stop herself. Blue had crushed her, and it was hard to fight back all those emotions.
“You want to save your girl, McCurdy?” the man yelled. “Then both of you put down your guns and come with us so we can talk.”
Rayanne clamped her hand over Blue’s arm in case he intended to fall for that. Clearly these fools didn’t have talking in mind. But Blue didn’t move. He only glanced down at where she had hold of him. His long-sleeve black shirt was between her hand and his skin, but she could have sworn she felt every inch of him.
Every inch.
And she cursed her body’s reaction again, along with jerking back her hand. Definitely not the time for those memories to rear their ugly, hot little heads.
“Time’s up, McCurdy,” the man added. “Come out now or you die.”
The last word of that threat had barely left his mouth when the shots started again. This time it was Blue who did the clamping. He took her by the shoulder and pushed her to the ground. Her mouth landed right in the dirt and blades of grass that hadn’t already been stomped down.
Rayanne didn’t stay down, though. She wasn’t sure why Blue was suddenly playing cowboy-in-shining-armor, but she wasn’t having any part of it.
“Please tell me these bad guys are really bad,” she said, levering herself up just enough to get off a shot. “Bad as in worse than you and that this isn’t some botched attempt to arrest you.”
His gaze cut to her, and those gunmetal-blue eyes narrowed. “No one’s as bad as I am.”
He paused as if waiting for her to agree or disagree. She didn’t do either, but a comment like that definitely fell into the agreement category. Of course, she’d known Blue was a bad boy before she landed in bed with him, so it shouldn’t have surprised her that he’d continued his bad-boy ways.
“If you’re asking if they’re the law,” he added, “they aren’t.”
Rayanne almost pressed him for more about why they were after him, but it’d have to wait. The directions of the shots changed, and it wasn’t a good change, either. The two gunmen appeared to be moving away from each other and closing in on Blue and her.
Blue glanced at her again. “You take the one on the right. I’ll get the one on the left.”
Just on principle, she hated taking orders from Blue, but it was a decent plan considering their position. Rayanne waited, listened, and when she thought she had a good pinpoint on the shooter, she leaned out and fired. Beside her, Blue did the same.
Rayanne heard the two sounds almost simultaneously. The thud of the bullet and a groan of pain. But it wasn’t her shot that’d caused those sounds.
It was Blue’s.
He’d hit his target, but judging from the way the bullets kept coming, she’d missed hers.
The man who’d done all the shouting started to curse, and she tried to follow the sound of his ripe profanity. It was hard to tell where he was as he darted through the woods toward his partner, who was either injured or dead. Rayanne was hoping it was the latter because she didn’t want to battle a riled, injured would-be killer.
She leaned out from the rocks again, aiming her gun at the sound of the movement and the footsteps. But another shot came their way.
Mercy.
Not from one of the two gunmen but from another direction. To their far left.
Rayanne pivoted toward the newcomer and fired. This time she didn’t miss, but again she couldn’t tell if the man was just injured or dead, because the shots from the other gunmen drowned out any telltale sounds.
But there was no mistaking one sound.
Even over the blasts and her own heartbeat crashing in her ears, she heard—and felt—one of those bullets. It didn’t slam into her.
It hit Blue.
And it didn’t just hit him. It tore off a chunk of rock that smacked against his left temple. She knew the exact second of impact from both the bullet and the rock. Blue groaned in pain.
And Rayanne could only watch as he collapsed against her.
She didn’t look at him. Was too afraid of what she might see. Besides, she had to deal with the person who’d fired that shot.
The anger slammed into her, along with the fear she had for the baby. She tried to shut out all thoughts when she took aim. However, she didn’t get a chance to fire. That was because the moron stopped shooting and started running.
Escaping.
Rayanne nearly bolted after him, but then she looked down at Blue. Unconscious. He was breathing, sucking in shallow breaths, and there wasn’t a drop of color in Blue’s face.
But there was color everywhere else. Lots of it.
From his blood spilling onto her.
Chapter Two
Blue heard the voices and opened his eyes.
Big mistake. The light stabbed through his head like razors, and a very unmanly sounding groan clawed its way through his parched throat.
That stopped the voices.
He heard movement. People shuffling around, and despite the pain, he reached for his gun.
Not there.
Even though it was hard to think, he figured this couldn’t be good. Unarmed and in god-awful pain. He hoped he didn’t have to fight his way out of there, because judging from the way he felt, he’d already had his butt kicked bad.
Blue had another go at opening his eyes. This time he took things slower and cracked just one eyelid so he could have a look. There was an elderly man with salt-and-pepper hair looming over him. No gun, either, but he was sporting a very concerned expression.
“I’m Dr. Wilbert Howland,” the man said. “I did your surgery.”
It took Blue a moment to process that. Surgery likely meant a hospital, so he glanced around.
Yep.
He was in bed, flat on his back, surrounded by sterile white walls and an antiseptic smell.
“Surgery?” Blue repeated. He tried to pick through the images and sounds that spun like an F5 tornado through his head.
“You were shot,” the doctor provided. “And you have a concussion.”
With the help of the ache in his left shoulder nudging him, Blue remembered getting shot and being smacked in the head with a piece of flying rock. Hard to forget the blistering pain from those two things. He also remembered the gunmen.
Three of them.
That gave him a jolt of concern. “Where are the guys who shot me?”
“Two are dead. The other one’s missing.”
Blue groaned again. “The missing one will come for me.” At least Blue thought he would.
“You’re safe here. And you’re going to be fine,” the doc assured him. “The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, but you did lose a lot of blood because it took a while to get an ambulance out there to you.”
No memory of an ambulance. Zero. No memory of how much time had passed, either. Definitely something he should be able to recall.
“Where are my clothes?” he asked, glancing down at the hospital gown.
“Bagged. I’ll have someone bring them to you if the sheriff doesn’t need them for processing.”
Right. Because the clothes might be needed for an investigation. “I want the Stetson and the vest. They’re my good-luck charms,” he added.
The doc gave him a funny look. No doubt because he was in the hospital. But he was also alive.
That meant the good-luck charms had worked again.
The doctor leaned closer and waved a little penlight in front of Blue’s eyes. More pain. Heck, breathing made it worse, too.
“If it hadn’t been for Rayanne,” the doctor said, “you might have bled out. She added pressure to your wound to slow down the blood flow.”
“Rayanne,” Blue managed to say, and he got a glimpse of her peering over the doctor’s shoulder.
The relief was instant, and Blue released the breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding.
Yeah, it was her, all right.
She had her ginger-brown hair pulled into her usual ponytail, though strands had slipped out and were dangling around her face and shoulders. When she stepped to the doctor’s side, he saw the blood on the front of her buckskin-colored jacket.
“You’re hurt.” Blue tried to sit up, but the doctor stopped that.
Rayanne shook her head. “That’s not my blood. It’s yours.”
More relief. It was bad enough that he’d been shot, but it would have been much worse if the bullet had gone into Rayanne instead.
But why did she look so, well, riled at him?
This wasn’t the first time they’d gotten shot at together. As an ATF agent, he had worked on a few cases with her when the investigations had landed in her jurisdiction. So why was she eyeing him now as if she wanted to rip off his aching head?
And the questions just kept coming.
Why had he been shot, and where the heck was he? He knew the hospital part, but he’d been in several hospitals in San Antonio, his hometown, and this wasn’t one of them.
“Why’d those men want you dead?” Rayanne asked. “Why aren’t you dead?” she tacked onto that.
Clearly she had some questions of her own.
Blue opened his mouth to get busy answering them and realized he didn’t have a clue. “Start from the beginning,” he insisted. “I want to know what’s going on. Why can’t I remember how I got here?”
Rayanne huffed. More eye narrowing, and those gray eyes that at times could take on a warm, sensual glow certainly weren’t warm or sensual at the moment. They were like little slabs of ice jabbing at him.
“A sensor alarm went off at the ranch,” she finally said, “and when I rode out to check, I found you trying not to draw the attention of three gunmen who drove up on the back side of the fence.”
On one level that gave him a serious shot of adrenaline, but on another it was just plain confusing.
Think, Blue.
Not easy to do, but he sorted through some of the fog and remembered going to the ranch that Rayanne’s family owned.
Estranged family, he mentally corrected.
Rayanne had told him that she might have to go back to Sweetwater Springs because her mother was possibly going to be arrested for the decades-old murder of an alleged lover, Whitt Braddock.
And that was where Blue’s memories came to a grinding halt.
“Why were the gunmen there?” he asked. “And why are you so mad?”
Her next huff was considerably louder. “Could you give us a minute?” Rayanne asked the doc.
Dr. Howland didn’t seem exactly comfortable with that, but he eventually nodded. “Only for a minute or two. And go easy on him.”
“You want to know why I’m mad?” Rayanne repeated once the doctor had stepped out. “Well, for starters you slept with me almost five months ago and then disappeared without so much as a Post-it note.”
Oh, man.
He’d slept with her?
Blue remembered the attraction between them. Felt it blood-deep even now. But he’d always fought falling into bed with her because he had a strict rule about not having sex with coworkers.
Blue shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
And that was saying something. Rayanne wasn’t exactly forgettable, and sex with her should have stuck in his mind like permanent glue.
“I have amnesia?” he asked. That was sadly the best-case scenario here. The worst would be some kind of permanent brain damage.
She lifted her shoulder. “You’d have to ask the doctor about that.”
And he would, the second the man came back. For now, though, he needed as much info as possible. “What happened after I disappeared?”
Rayanne studied him, the way a cop would study a suspect she thought was lying through his teeth. “I got word that you were dead. I can’t think of any good reason you’d let me believe that other than you really did want me out of your life.”
Oh, mercy.
It felt as if twin heavyweights had slugged each side of his jaw at the same time. Blue couldn’t speak. Heck, he couldn’t even catch his breath. Yeah, he was pretty much the love-’em-and-leave-’em sort, but there was no way he’d do something like that to Rayanne.
Would he?
“I looked for you when you left,” she continued, “but I got a message from your foster brother saying you were dead. That you’d been killed in Mexico.”
There was a massive amount of fog in his head, but he could sort through enough to remember some things.
“I don’t have a brother, either a real one or a foster,” he insisted. “And I sure as hell didn’t die in Mexico. I’m right here.” Blue reached for her, but she stepped back as if he’d tried to tase her.
Before Blue could get out of bed and do something to convince her that he wasn’t the bad guy here, the door flew open. Blue reached for his gun again. Cursed when it wasn’t where it belonged.
However, Rayanne pulled her Colt from her shoulder holster.
False alarm. It was Dr. Howland, but he wasn’t alone.
The sandy-haired, linebacker-sized guy who came through the door spared her and then her gun a glance as he flashed his badge and made a beeline for Blue. Thankfully, this man wasn’t a blurry memory.
It was Blue’s boss, Agent Caleb Wiggs, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—ATF.
At least, Caleb had been his boss five months ago. With everything else going on, Blue figured he could be wrong about that, too.
Rayanne seemed to know him, as well, and judging from her scowl, Caleb wasn’t on her list of friends, either. She reholstered the Colt as if she’d declared war on it, but she watched him with those cop’s eyes.
“You all right, Blue?” Caleb asked. He set a bag on the foot of the bed.
No way could Blue answer yes to that question. It might garner him a lightning bolt for such a big lie. “What’s going on?”
Caleb didn’t answer, but he looked at Rayanne and the doctor. “I need to talk to Agent McCurdy in private.”
“Agent McCurdy?” Rayanne questioned. She huffed. “Don’t you mean former agent?”
That got Blue’s complete attention. Great day in the morning. Along with his mind and gun, had he managed to lose his badge, too?
“I mean agent.” And Caleb didn’t sound any friendlier than Rayanne. “Blue still works for me.”
“Wait a minute,” Blue said, trying to figure this out. It didn’t help that his shoulder started clamoring for more pain meds. “What’s the date?”
“October 6,” the doctor provided. “And I hope everyone remembers that I just dug a bullet out of my patient here. He needs some peace and quiet so he can recover.”
“And he’ll get it,” Caleb insisted. “I’ve already made arrangements to have him moved.” He tipped his head to the bag. “Figured you could use a change of clothes for the drive to another hospital. One where I can make sure you have some security.”
“He’s not going anywhere, not until I get some answers first,” Rayanne insisted right back.
That started a staring match between his boss and the deputy he’d apparently crossed lines with. Big ones.
All four of them volleyed glances at each other. “I’ll give you a few more minutes,” the doctor finally said. “After that my patient will get some rest.”
Dr. Howland shot Caleb and Rayanne a warning glance that only an experienced doctor in charge could have managed, and he walked out.
Even with the doc’s latest exit, Caleb didn’t answer right away, and when he finally did open his mouth, he looked at Rayanne, not Blue.
“I can’t wrap all of this up in a neat little package for you,” Caleb started. “I honestly don’t know why Blue disappeared.”
“You said it was because he had ties to criminals,” Rayanne reminded him.
Oh, man. And Blue just kept mentally repeating that.
“He did have criminal ties.” Caleb’s gaze finally came to Blue’s. “If you’ve got an explanation about that, I’d like to hear it, because you didn’t just disappear five months ago. You walked away from your job at the Justice Department, and the only reason you’re still on payroll is because I’ve covered your butt and put you on a leave of absence.”
Hell. This just kept getting worse. Not the leave-of-absence part but the reason Caleb had been forced to do something like that for him.
Criminal ties?
No way. He didn’t need his memory to know that.
“The doc must have given me some meds that messed with my head.” A head that Blue now shook. “Because the last thing I remember was finishing up a case with Rayanne. After that, it’s just bits and pieces that don’t make sense. Why did I leave? And why did I come to the McKinnon ranch today with gunmen after me?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Rayanne mumbled, but then she waved off any answer he might give. “My brother Seth got IDs on the two dead guys. The bodies are being examined now, and there’s a CSI team searching the woods for evidence.”
Seth, an FBI agent. Blue had never met him, but he’d heard Rayanne mention him.
“The dead men’s names are Leland Chadwell and Brian Kipp,” Rayanne continued, and she watched his face. Maybe to see if there was any sign of recognition.
There wasn’t.
Blue had to shake his head again. “Who are they?”
“They’re hired thugs,” Caleb provided, “and, among other criminal sorts, they often work for Rex Gandy.”
Now, that was a name that rang bells the size of Texas.
Could this mess possibly get any crazier?
Gandy wasn’t just a thug—he was a rich one and had all kinds of nasty ties to gunrunners, money launderers and drug traffickers. As an ATF agent, Blue had dealt with Gandy on several occasions but always when he’d been undercover, and Blue had never been able to find evidence to arrest the piece of dirt.
“Gandy hired these men to come after me,” Blue said like gospel. “Why?”
Caleb gave him an odd look, as if the question had come out of left field. “You don’t know?”
Since it seemed the answer was clear to both Caleb and Rayanne, Blue went with the obvious answer. “Because Gandy’s riled that I keep investigating him.” But he investigated a lot of people, and that didn’t spur an attack to kill. “Why come after me now?”
Again, he got that look. Obviously, he was missing something here.
“I’ve arranged to have Gandy brought in for an interview,” Caleb added.
That was a good start, but Blue wanted a whole lot more. “You plan to answer my question about why Gandy would want me dead now?”
Caleb shrugged. “I figure it’s connected to whatever the heck you’ve been doing for the past five months, and I don’t have any details about that.” He mumbled something that Blue didn’t catch and scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I need to talk to Dr. Howland and see how long this memory problem of yours is going to last.”
Caleb added some really bad profanity and made a swift exit. Only then did Blue see the cop outside his door. Local, no uniform, but he had a badge clipped to his belt and was wearing a sidearm.
That didn’t do much to ease the already twisted knot in Blue’s gut.
Of course, a cop-bodyguard was only partially responsible for that. The main reason for the knot was the woman standing beside his bed and glaring at him.
“All of this is true?” he came out and asked.
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