hay baler that had been left to rust away. These days, the place was a glorified prison for the babies being processed for black market adoptions.
Since it made her sick to her stomach to think of that, Rosalie pushed the thought aside and tested the doorknob on the cottage.
Unlocked.
A big mistake on his part.
Rosalie opened the door and stepped inside. All dark and toasty warm. It smelled of too-strong coffee and the fast-food burgers that’d been brought in for their dinner.
The only light in the room of the cottage came from the kitchen in the main house, where she’d just been. It cut like slivers down the tiny front windows that were streaked with rain.
It took a couple of moments for Rosalie’s eyes to adjust, and in the shadowy silhouettes, she saw a desk, a sofa and the small bed against the wall. There were two interior doors, both closed, and from what she’d learned from the guard’s idle chatter, one was a bathroom. The other, a bedroom that was being used as a storage closet.
But it was the man on the bed who grabbed her full attention.
He was on his side, facing away from her. No cover on him, and he appeared to be wearing the same jeans and shirt he’d had on when she had spotted him earlier in the yard.
The guard had called him boss.
She’d yet to see him up close, but Rosalie had gotten another glimpse of him from the upstairs window of the main house. His dark brown Stetson had covered most of his face, but she’d watched to see where he would go. And he hadn’t gone far—just to the cottage. All in all, it wasn’t the worst place to confront a monster because he was alone here, away from the guards who would protect him.
Keeping the Beretta by her side, she walked closer, her heart thudding with each soft step. She had to remind herself to breathe. And to keep a clear head. Her instincts were to shoot, or run, but neither of those things would get her what she needed.
Too bad she wasn’t a cop like her siblings. They would have no doubt handled this much better.
But then they would have never gotten into this place.
Not with their cops’ eyes and attitudes. Plus, they’d all been tied up with other leads and other investigations. Important ones. Her mother was about to stand trial for first-degree murder, and while finding the baby was critical, so was the trial since her mother was facing the death penalty.
That’s why she’d come up with her own plan several months ago while she was staying at her family’s ranch. A plan that’d started with finding any info to get her inside this place or any other place that would possibly lead her to her daughter.
Rosalie leaned over and jammed the gun to the back of the man’s head. “I want answers,” she managed to say even though her throat clamped shut. Her voice had hardly any sound.
He moved, just a fraction. “Darlin’,” he drawled.
Her shoulders snapped back, and it was that split second of shock that caused her breath and body to freeze.
The man reached out, lightning-fast, snagged her by the right hand and stripped her of the Beretta. In the same motion, he pulled her down onto the bed with him and rolled on top of her, pinning her beneath him.
That unfroze her.
Her heart jolted, throbbing in her ears, and Rosalie started to fight back. She couldn’t just let this man kill her.
“Play along,” he growled, his voice no longer a drawl but rather a whisper. “There’s a camera.”
She’d already brought up her knee to ram any part of him that she could reach, but she stopped. Stared at him. Well, she stared at what she could see of him, anyway.
“Rosalie,” he muttered.
Mercy. How did he know her real name? She was using a fake ID with the name Mary Williams. If he was onto her, why hadn’t he already told the guards?
“Who are you?” she tried to ask, but he put his hand over her mouth.
“I figured you’d drop by,” he said. No longer a whisper, and the cocky drawl had returned. “I saw you eyeing me earlier from the window.”
She had. She’d eyed him and committed everything she could see about him to memory from his sandy-brown hair to lanky build. He normally wore a shoulder holster, and judging from the bulge in the back of his coat, he had another gun tucked in the back waistband of his jeans.
And the keys.
Three of them.
They jangled from a metal ring hooked to his belt loop.
Rosalie believed one was for the truck she’d seen him driving, but one of the others was for the room inside the main house where she’d gotten a glimpse of computers and files. The room was always locked, and there was a camera mounted on the doorjamb, but she needed his keys to get a look at those files.
She glanced around, to try to see if there was indeed a camera here, but the room was too dark.
“Who are you?” she asked, shoving his hand from her mouth.
He pulled back, stared down at her, though she still couldn’t clearly see his face. “You don’t know?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He mumbled some really bad profanity, and his grip tightened on her wrists. “Why the hell are you here, anyway?”
He didn’t shout it, but she had no trouble hearing the anger in his voice. Or maybe not anger, but something.
What was going on? She couldn’t see enough of his face to recognize him, and that raspy whispered voice wasn’t enough of a clue. He could be friend or foe, but clearly he fell into the latter category since he was the boss here.
So, what was her next move?
She hadn’t thought beyond getting answers and then trying to escape, but clearly she hadn’t expected this. Whatever this was.
“Did you come here to kill me?” he demanded, still whispering.
“If necessary.”
Except a dead man couldn’t tell her what she needed to know. But she would have pulled the trigger if it’d come down to it. Unfortunately, she no longer had a gun as a bargaining tool. She had only shaky hands. Shaky body, too, and her heart just kept pounding.
The moments crawled by. Him, still staring at her and obviously waiting for an explanation. The only sounds were the rain pinging against the window and their rough breaths.
“Pretend,” he finally snapped.
Rosalie didn’t get a chance to ask what the heck that meant before his mouth went to her neck. He nuzzled it, as if kissing her, but he was still mumbling profanity, and his jaw muscles were way too tight for this to be a real kissing session.
So, what was this? Some kind of act for the person on the other end of the camera? If so, why was he trying to cover for her?
“I’m
