“Start from the beginning. What happened?”
And then he’d want to know why she hadn’t taken this to the local cops. After all, his brother was the sheriff, and his brother, Colt, the deputy. Yet, Laine had come all the way there to his family’s ranch, which wasn’t exactly on the beaten path.
“Remember that undercover assignment I was on last week?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “We were working on it together, but you got me fired.”
Yeah, he remembered. “Not fired. I just asked for you to be reassigned somewhere not near me.”
“You got me fired,” she repeated, sounding not too happy about it. “Anyway, about an hour and a half ago, I got a call from a woman who wouldn’t tell me who she was. She said she’d been held captive by guards at the place we were investigating. But she escaped today.”
Laine stopped, shuddering, and pressed her fingers to her mouth.
Good grief. He hoped this wasn’t going where he thought it was. “Please tell me you didn’t go out to meet this woman alone?”
“I didn’t have to go anywhere to meet her. She was in the parking lot outside my office in town. Hiding behind my car. She said she was making the call from a prepaid cell phone that she had stolen from her captors.”
Tucker groaned and hoped the rest of this conversation would go a whole lot better than what he’d heard so far. “And at that point, you should have called my brother. Colt’s been on duty all day, and he would have responded immediately.”
Laine didn’t argue with that, even though Tucker was dead certain she didn’t trust Colt any more than she trusted him or the rest of his family.
“The woman said not to contact the cops, that I had to see her alone. So I went out to the parking lot,” Laine continued.
But she stopped, and the tears returned. Worse, her hands twitched as if she might reach for him again. She didn’t, thank goodness. Instead, Laine held on to the counter by the sink.
“What happened?” Tucker pressed. He hated to sound impatient and insensitive, but if a murder had truly taken place, he needed to report it.
“The woman was scared. Terrified,” Laine corrected. “And she only had a chance to say a few words to me when a car came screeching into the parking lot. She told me to run and hide. So I did. She said I was to stay in hiding, no matter what happened. I ducked behind the Dumpster.”
Tucker knew that parking lot and the position of the Dumpster. Laine’s office was on the far edge of Sweetwater Springs, in a small cottage that shared a back parking lot with three other small buildings. Two were empty, and the third was a law office. Tucker hoped someone else was in that office to witness what’d gone on, in case this turned into an investigation.
“If I’d known what was going to happen,” Laine continued, “I wouldn’t have hidden. I would have tried to get help.” She pulled in a long breath, and the trembling got worse. “The car came to a stop, and two men jumped out. They were wearing police uniforms.”
That gave him a moment’s pause. “What kind?” The cops in Sweetwater Springs didn’t often wear uniforms, but when they did, they were khaki-colored.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. They were blue, and they had badges and guns.”
Maybe they had been from another town or jurisdiction and they’d tracked the woman to Laine’s office. “Did they try to arrest the woman?”
A sob tore from her throat. “No. She motioned for me to stay put and she ran. She bolted toward the street, and they shot her. Oh, God. Tucker, they shot her.”
It didn’t matter that he was a lawman. Hearing about a shooting hit him hard. Except something about this wasn’t adding up. “Why didn’t anyone report the shots? Why didn’t you report them?”
“They used guns with silencers.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth a moment. “They shot her in the back as she was running. She was dead. I could tell by how limp her arms and legs were when they picked up her body and threw her in the trunk of their car.”
Hell.
Since it hadn’t started raining yet, there’d be blood. Maybe even some other evidence.
Tucker’s cell phone was in the bedroom by his holster, and he didn’t want to leave the room to go get it. Instead, he reached for the landline on the kitchen wall. He had to call Colt and get him to the scene ASAP.
“Don’t.” Laine latched onto his wrist. “They had a police radio in their car. I heard it. And if you call the sheriff’s office, they’ll hear it, too. They’ll know I came here.”
Tucker blew out a long, frustrated breath. Not good about the police radio, but like uniforms, they could be faked or stolen. It didn’t mean cops had actually killed the woman.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
Laine let that question hum between them for several moments. “Because I knew the lawman in you would help me.”
Tucker let her answer hum between them a couple of moments, too, even though he couldn’t argue with it since it was the truth. “The murder has to be reported, but I’ll tell my brother not to put any of this on the police radio. Did you get the license plate on the car?”
“No. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Another sob. “I should have done something to stop them.”
“If you’d tried, they likely would have killed you, too.” It was the truth, and even though Laine and he were essentially enemies, he didn’t wish that on anybody. As it was, this nightmare would be with her for a long time.
He reached for the phone again, but once more Laine stopped him. “I stayed hidden like the woman told me to do. I did everything she insisted that I do.” Her voice was frantic now, and she sounded like she was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. “And the words she said to me keep repeating in my head.”
Everything inside Tucker went still. “What words?”
“‘Hide them. Protect them.’” She turned, maybe to bolt out the door, so he took her by the shoulders.
“Who’s them?” He groaned. Were there more women still being held at the baby farm? That wouldn’t be good, because if everything Laine had told him was true, their captors were cold-blooded killers.
She pried off his grip and went back to the door of the pantry.
Tucker braced himself to see his pantry crammed with women who were on the run from the men who’d gunned down one of their fellow captives.
But there were no women.
In fact, because the lights were off, Tucker couldn’t see anything other than the food on the shelves.
“I have to protect them,” Laine repeated, her voice breaking.
Tucker went closer to the pantry and looked around. On the floor was a rumpled blanket.
Except it wasn’t just a blanket.
