spent one precious second considering the slim chance that the baby-stealing minivan driver still lived. It seemed like a tough ending for the man who’d obviously panicked back in Del Rio and had appeared to be headed straight for his boss. Mother Nature hadn’t read him his rights.
In all the years Manny had been undercover chasing these baby smugglers for Operation Rock-a-Bye, he’d never followed any of them so far from the border. Usually the actual kidnapping happened in Mexico or in Europe and then was funneled through Mexico. And it was in the big, Texas cities where most of the baby selling took place. The thought of murderers and scum living in a safe, small town troubled him.
It would be impossible to find the body tonight, so he buried his uneasiness. Right now the living needed tending.
With no hesitation he gathered the woman up next to him and forced his bad shoulder to cradle her, while he tightened his grip on the baby with his good arm. “We need to get out of the rain. Now.”
“My…my truck.”
He dragged her toward the roadway. They hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the raging water finally tore the minivan loose and pummeled it farther down the river.
The sickening sounds of scraping metal against rock forced Manny into action. He picked up their pace and moved the little band of survivors up the incline at the riverbank.
Farther up the hill, parked in the middle of the pavement, Manny saw what had to be the woman’s truck. A fifteen-year-old, four-wheel-drive Suburban sat idling with its lights on.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.
She nodded and swung into the front seat. Scooting over to open the passenger door for Manny and the baby, she took the boy while Manny climbed into the truck and, closing the door behind him, gathered the child back into his arms.
Manny unzipped his jacket, put the baby on his chest and zipped the jacket back up over both of them, keeping the baby secure and a little warmer. If this truck wrecked on the icy roads, the baby’s position against him might be dangerous, but without Manny’s body heat the little boy was sure to go into shock.
He looked over to the woman and noticed she’d belted herself in, but her hands shook so badly he was afraid she’d never keep hold of the wheel. Manny reached across the baby and jacked up the heater’s fan.
“You sure you can drive?”
“Ye-e-e-s-s,” she stuttered. “The way the water’s rising, we’re about to be cut off by two flooding rivers. Happens every time things get this bad. My ranch is just a ways up the road. It’s the only possible chance we’ve got.”
Jamming the truck into Reverse, she eased it around on the asphalt and slowly drove away from the river.
He suddenly realized he didn’t know her name, or why she’d been there to help them. “I need to thank you for coming to our rescue. It was a very brave but foolhardy thing to do.” She kept her attention on the slick road, continuing to stare out the windshield.
“I’m Manny Sanchez. And you are…”
“Randi.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s my name. I’m Randi Cullen. And I live on the Running C ranch.”
The Running C? Son of a gun, if that wasn’t the name he’d overheard the smugglers discussing at the café in Del Rio. Was this woman involved with them? All of a sudden it occurred to him that their savior might really be the suspect he’d been seeking. But the only way to find out would be to keep a sharp eye on her.
Manny quickly decided he’d better keep her close—whatever that took and any way he could.
Randi tightened her grip on the steering wheel and slanted a glance at the dark and intimidating man who was scrutinizing her from the passenger seat. The energy emanating from him hummed with tension. Dear Lord, he terrified—and excited—her.
She couldn’t figure out what had possessed her to climb up on that minivan the way she had. There hadn’t been time to consider the ramifications, just like now, when there was no choice but to take this menacing man and his child into her home.
After she’d stopped at the bridge and heard the baby’s cry, all sense of personal danger had deserted her. She could still feel the rush of bravado, sitting here in the front seat with a total stranger. She’d never done anything like this in her entire life. Just thinking about it made her tremble.
Nevertheless, Randi felt more alive in the past half hour than she had in years. Bringing this man home might be a very dangerous thing to do, but she didn’t care. Somehow she felt sure he would be trustworthy. He had an aura about him that reminded her of her old friend, the deputy sheriff.
The stranger had been traveling with his own child. How bad could he be? And what’s more, he and his baby needed help, and she’d been able to do something about it. That frustrating feeling of being unable to do anything to help, the one emotion she’d been so familiar with over the past few years, was slowly washing away as the minutes went by.
“That’s a kind of unusual name for a woman, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Randi? It was my grandmother’s nickname.” At his seemingly confused look, she explained, “Short for Miranda…?”
“I wasn’t questioning it. I think Randi is a beautiful name.”
She could feel the flush stealing over her face. Glancing over at him, she found a smirk of amusement. The smile lit up his entire face, making him the most magnetic man she’d ever laid eyes on.
Oh, not handsome in the standard movie star way, his jaw was too sharp and his nose too long and broad for that. But he was intense, dark and a little rough around the edges, as if a thin veneer of civilized behavior covered a raging beast inside. And he was big—broad. Her breathing faltered when she realized how much of the front seat he really occupied.
“My mother named me,” she managed shakily.
“Well, Randi.” He repeated her name with emphasis. “Far be it from me to question good fortune, but what the heck were you doing out here in this deluge?”
“I…” She had to swallow down the lump in her throat and put aside her jitters. “I was on my way home from town. When I heard about the storm, I stopped at the grocery store after work. That’s why I’m late.” She was babbling and tried to slow down.
She took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of wet leather, sweat and musky man. An odd sensation, one she couldn’t name and had never felt before, coiled inside her.
Randi found herself sneaking a peek at his ring finger.
“I saw a car’s headlights turn at the creek road,” she began. “Everyone who lives around here knows not to take a low-water bridge road in a storm, so I figured it must be strangers. I knew there’d be trouble.”
Empty. No rings on his hands at all. But that didn’t mean much in these modern times. And there was the matter of his baby.
Randi suddenly remembered the child. When she turned her head to check on him,
