“Careful,” Grace called behind her just as Ryder slipped.

She had one second to wish he’d worn his combat boots instead of the cowboy boots that hadn’t been made for this terrain. He tried to catch himself, but the rocks gave way and he barreled toward her.

“Out of the way!” He threw his weight to the side to avoid her, but she stood her ground and leaned into his path to catch him.

“Grace!”

He tumbled with her, then caught her somehow, his arms tight around her and holding her in place just as they would have gone over the edge of the precipice.

They were on the last large rock, she on the bottom and he on top of her. A long, hard drop below.

As he looked at her, his eyes were a soft, tawny brown, a contrast to his hard-muscled body. “Are you hurt?”

Dazed. A long time had passed since she’d last felt the weight of a man on top of her. And Ryder McKay was definitely no ordinary man.

About the Author

DANA MARTON is the author of more than a dozen fast-paced, action-adventure, Intrigue novels and a winner of a Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence. She loves writing books of international intrigue, filled with dangerous plots that try her tough-as-nails heroes and the special women they fall in love with. Her books have been published in seven languages in eleven countries around the world. When not writing or reading, she loves to browse antiques shops and enjoys working in her sizable flower garden, where she searches for “bad” bugs with the skills of a superspy and vanquishes them with the agility of a commando soldier. Every day in her garden is a thriller. To find more information on her books, please visit www.danamarton.com. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached via e-mail at DanaMarton@DanaMarton.com.

The Spy Wore Spurs
Dana Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgement

A big thank-you goes to Pat Neff, who kindly shared her vast knowledge of South Texas, and my fabulous editor, Allison Lyons.

My most sincere gratitude to Gayle Cochrane for giving Twinky her name, and to Margaret Sholders who told me about her donut-eating cat. Many thanks to Lana Manley Parks for giving Cookie a name, and to Maureen for naming Maureen J. And my warmest appreciation to Lisa Boggs, Amanda Scott and Cheryl Bartholomew who lent their names to Ryder’s sisters. This book is dedicated to my readers, who are the best people on earth, especially Deb Posey Chudzinski, Sarah Conerty Jordan, Lena Gerber and all the ladies already mentioned above!

Chapter One

Ryder McKay leaned his back against the rough bark of a tree in the middle of a sparse South Texas mesquite grove, surrounded by darkness and silence. He’d been shot before. But this time it didn’t look as if he would be walking away. He figured he had about another ten minutes to live.

He pressed his blood-crusted hands onto the gaping bullet wound in his thigh. If he let go to push himself to standing, he would bleed out on the spot. No point in standing, anyway. He wasn’t going to make the long mile to where his pickup waited.

He grabbed for his belt and unbuckled it as blood gushed from the wound. Black specs swam in front of his eyes within seconds. He had to slap his hands back on the injury long before he could have tugged off the holster, the Taser, phone clip and all the other stuff he carried.

The amount of blood he’d lost already… If he let go again, he’d pass out before he could make a tourniquet.

He needed another plan. He ignored the light-headedness, the sweat trickling down his neck and the ants crawling over his legs. Think. He didn’t believe in failed missions. He believed in never conceding defeat until you were six feet under.

He had to come up with a solution, and he had to do it on his own. Nobody at the new SDDU Texas satellite office knew where he was. When he’d driven off, he’d simply told Mo that he would be checking the border. He hadn’t meant to come this far.

Normally, a dozen or so people worked at the Special Designation Defense Unit’s Texas satellite office. Half of the top secret commando team was currently off on various missions in South America. Ryder and five others were on location here to address credible intelligence that a South-American drug lord had sold both weapons and smuggling services to a terrorist organization that planned on infiltrating the U.S.

The smugglers would cross at this section of the border—within a fifty-mile stretch—sometime next month. The recon team’s job was to know the border area inside out by then—know the trails, know the players, and find assets who would be able to pass on useful information.

The rest of the team would be returning as their missions ended. Together, they would take out those terrorist the second the bastards set foot on U.S. soil.

He wanted to live long enough to be there for the takedown. Except, when his teammates realized he’d gone missing, hours from now, they would have a thousand acres to search. And a search like that could take days.

He only had minutes.

He gritted his teeth, casting a dark look at his cell phone that lay in pieces on the rocks a few hundred feet away where he’d first fallen.

He could have used his flashlight to signal for help, but, for that, too, he’d have to let the pressure off the wound. And nobody was around, anyway, in the middle of the abandoned South Texas borderlands. The light might even bring back the drug traffickers who’d shot him.

He hadn’t squeezed off any shots into the air for the same reason.

He knew of only one ranch close enough so if someone was there, they might hear—but the one time he’d checked, the old house had looked abandoned. Nothing else for miles around but dust and heat.

He looked up to the sky, wondering if he had enough time to confess all his sins. Not a single star showed, nor the moon. A dark storm was gathering.

GRACE CORDERO SAT BACK in her grandfather’s old recliner and rubbed her fingers over a spot of dirt on her jeans. She’d spent most of the day walking around the ranch, then cleaning the house to make her stay a little nicer.

“I don’t like the idea of you out here alone.” Dylan put his feet on the coffee table, work boots and all. The pose seemed relaxed, but the muscles around his eyes were drawn tight, and tension stiffened his shoulders. He had a number of businesses, at least two dozen employees, the kind of stuff that came with a lot of headaches.

She frowned at the boots on the table, but didn’t tell him to mind his manners. He rented the ranch from her so technically he had a right to do whatever he pleased, even if he never used the house, just the land.

He watched her with those pale blue eyes she’d written poems about back in high school. She’d been pitifully smitten. Now she could barely remember that carefree, always-grinning-like-an-idiot teenage girl she’d once been, let alone relate to her.

“Why don’t you go over to Molly’s? She loves you to pieces.”

Warmth spread through her. “I’ll stop by.” She loved Molly, too. Dylan’s sister had been her best friend back in the day. But social visits would have to wait. She looked through the window for a second, into the blind night. “I came here for a reason.”

He gave a slow nod, casting a sideways glance toward the brass urn on the fieldstone mantel above the ornate fireplace her great-great grandfather had built. “I want to go with you when… You know.”

He wanted to be with her when she finally spread her brother’s ashes on the ranch, as Tommy had requested during his long, losing battle to live.

“I appreciate that, Dylan. I do.” She tried to think of a way to say the rest without offending him. “But I’d rather do it alone. I’m just still not at peace with this.” She wasn’t at peace with a lot of things. Unease and anxiety were her ruling emotions these days, along with a good dose of anger and resentment.

“Of course.” Dylan reached for her hand. “You take whatever time you need.”

A faint clap sounded in the distance, almost like a gunshot. She pulled her hand away. “What was that?”

“Probably thunder. A storm is moving in.” He looked around the living room. “You cleaned.”

“I hope to stay a couple of days.”

A frown creased his forehead, then disappeared the next second. “You know you can stay with us. Molly would love to have you.”

She gave a tired smile as she shook her head. She needed time alone.

“Then stay at my place in Hullett.” He kept an apartment in town, a two-bedroom bachelor pad where he took his dates. Molly was a single mom with an impressionable eight-year-old. And Dylan liked to keep his private business private, anyway.

She thought she saw a glint in his eyes, some emotion she couldn’t identify. Was he remembering how it had been between them more than a decade ago? They did have good times.

Seemed as if a lifetime had passed since. The hotshot young football player had grown into an attractive man. A successful man. His pale blue eyes watched her with interest.

“How is business?” she asked to change the subject and the train of her thoughts. “I hope the ranch is good to you.”

She and her brother had inherited the place after their grandfather’s death. Tommy’s illness had been bad enough by then that he’d had to leave the army. But he’d still had enough left in him to work the land for a couple of years before he had to move into Edinburg, closer to medical care, and then around the clock help toward the end.

Dylan renting the place was a tremendous relief. She needed the income to pay the taxes on the property, plus Tommy’s medical bills. She’d even wondered, at times, if Dylan only rented because he knew she needed the money. Maybe it was his way of helping. For old time’s sake.

“Business is fine,” he said, with a look that told her he wasn’t done with trying to talk her out of her solitude yet.

“I drove around when I got in. Doesn’t look like you have any crops planted.” It didn’t look as if he’d planted anything last year, either. The land hadn’t been worked in a while, scraggy weeds taking over the endless fields.

“Can’t make a living from farming anymore.” A hint of sadness settled on his face. “I have a deal with a company who does corporate retreats here. Survival training for business managers, a team building thing—they come from all over the country. They sleep in tents, learn how to get from point A to point B without GPS, deal with the elements, make their own food over an open fire. They even climb up and down the ravine.”

Unease flashed through her at the thought of the steep ravine on the remote south edge of the property. “Somebody could get hurt.”

“They’re fully insured. They rappel up and down in hundred-degree heat, lose a couple of pounds and pay me a load of money for setting it all up, clearing bush when needed and trucking in supplies.”

He grinned, and she could suddenly see the old Dylan in that smile. A wave of nostalgia hit her, for a time when everything was so much simpler, a time when she still had Gramps and Tommy.

The dull, ever-present ache in her chest intensified. Think of something else.

“I hope they’re not hunting.” She’d spent considerable time years ago posting signs to make sure everyone knew that absolutely no hunting was allowed on the property. She had a safe-haven agreement with Wildlife Protection. The ranch included over two hundred acres of dense brushland that gave home to some ocelots, a highly endangered species slowly disappearing from South Texas.

She liked the idea of saving them. Saving something. She sure hadn’t been able to save her grandfather or Tommy.

“They wouldn’t know what to do with a rifle. Bunch of city slickers. But the trainers like to keep that sense of isolation for them, to better develop interdependence or whatever. So if you wouldn’t mind…”

“I won’t go anywhere near the ravine.” She wouldn’t have, anyway. She had a nice meadow picked for Tommy’s ashes, not far from the house, a place where her brother had taught her horseback riding back in the day. Good memories. Focusing on those was the key.

Dylan settled deeper into the couch, apparently comfortable. “My offer to buy the ranch still stands.”

A fine offer. And she had no intention of moving back here. Yet something held her back from agreeing to the sale. “I’m thinking about it.”

“Good.” He gave a quick smile. “How is work?”

“Busy.”

She perched on the edge of her chair and felt guilty for wishing him gone. He’d always been a good friend to her, but she wanted to be alone tonight, her first night back.

“You got your own practice yet?”

“Almost.” She put a smile on her face. “I have my last batch of veterinary exams coming up soon.” For which she’d brought some books. Not that she had it in her to drag them out tonight.

“Could have gone to med school with the same effort and be a human doctor. Pays better. You were a medic in the army. You already know half the stuff.”

“Couldn’t afford med school if I sold both my kidneys.” And the truth was she couldn’t handle any more people dying in her arms.

A yawn stretched her face against her will. “Sorry. I spent most of the day driving and walking around. I guess I’m not used to all this good country air anymore.”

“A shame,” he said as he stood, taking the hint. “Come back to Hullett with me. At least I have a working air conditioner.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine here. Really.”

He opened his mouth but was distracted by a mangy old cat that padded forward cautiously from the laundry room.

“Came scratching at the door as soon as I arrived,” she said, maybe a little too defensively. “Might be one of the descendants of Gramps’s batch of barn cats. I’ll find her a good home before I go. You don’t have to worry about her.” The cat had had some badly infected thorns in her hind leg, which she’d taken care of already.

“You know why they call them barn cats, right? Because they’re supposed to stay in the barn.” He shook his head with a look that said he thought she was hopeless. “Whatever you do, don’t name her.”

She would leave that honor to whoever was going to take the cat. “I’ve managed to resist.”

He looked skeptical.

“Say hi to Molly for me. I’ll stop in to see her, I promise.”

She walked him to the door, where he hesitated for a second before giving her a quick hug. She hugged him back then watched him walk to his brand-new Chevy truck, glanced up at the clouds that were rushing in to block out the moon. She hoped he’d get home before the storm hit.

The cat meowed behind her, but didn’t step a foot outside. She didn’t seem to want to get too far from the bowl of milk in the kitchen. Grace passed by her then closed the door and went around turning off the lights, alone at last in the old house that brought back way too many memories.

“Focus on the good,” she told the cat, but meant the words for herself.

She picked up a box of Twinkie snacks from the counter, something she’d grabbed at the last gas station she’d stopped at on her way here. “Straight to the hips,” she said to the cat as she opened the box.

She had the Twinkie halfway to her mouth when another clap in the distance stopped her. This time, she recognized the sound.

The gunshot came from the vicinity of the mesquite grove behind the fields.

Maybe she had a lost hiker on her land, or a birdwatcher—it had happened before. Then another shot came quickly, and another. Nine altogether.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Pause. Bam. Pause. Bam. Pause Bam. Pause. Bam. Bam. Bam.

Morse code or coincidence? If it was Morse code, the pattern spelled SOS.

Getting in trouble was easy around here, what with the snakes and the heat and other hazards of the land. And with the storm coming… Nobody should get stuck out there in that kind of weather. She set the Twinkie back in the box and put a bowl over it upside down on the counter so it wouldn’t tempt the cat. Comfort food would have to wait. She’d need both hands for driving in the dark.

She hurried back to the front door and stepped into her boots, made sure she had her cell phone in her pocket and grabbed the industrial-strength flashlight from the peg. On second thought, she grabbed her grandfather’s old hunting rifle, as well, along with a handful of bullets, then rushed to her car as the first raindrops splashed to the ground.

The paved road that led to town snaked in the opposite direction from where she was headed. She took the dirt road to the fields, beyond which lay sparse woods and brush and grassland—God’s best country.

Darkness surrounded her, nothing visible beyond the path the headlights illuminated as the pickup rattled over the uneven ground. She wasn’t scared, not on her grandfather’s land. Her land. She knew every acre of it, had driven over it, ridden over it.

The road soon turned into an overgrown trail, bushes scratching against the side of the pickup. She pushed through and came to an open area, rattled over the dry clumps of grass. She slowed for two dry creek beds, then took the bumpy ride across them. It hadn’t rained in forever. According to Dylan, just the week before, they’d had a pretty bad dust storm.

When she reached the spot she thought the shots had come from, she drove around in expanding circles, then continued on foot when the pickup could no longer handle the terrain. The flashlight found a pair of armadillos out on a date, but no humans. She loaded the rifle and squeezed a shot into the air.

A full year had passed since the last time she’d pulled a trigger. Tension settled into her shoulders, pulling her muscles tight.

The shot reverberated in the silence of the night. Then another shot answered. Her heart rate picked up as she ran that way. Her palms were sweating. The trembling came. Then the flashbacks—of other dark nights, other shots, blood and pain, people dying. She kept on running.

After a few hundred feet or so, she could see a pinpoint of light in the distance, a flashlight that led her to a barely conscious man.

For a terrifying second, she was still on a battlefield, her mind unable to distinguish between past and present. Then the gruesome images slowly faded and she came back to reality, to the man lying on the ground in front of her.

“Are you okay?”

In his early thirties, he wore black cargo pants covered in blood, a black T-shirt and military-issue boots. She would have taken him for a border agent, but he didn’t wear their insignia.

Not a local, either. She’d known most everyone around these parts at one point. He was about her age, so if he’d grown up here, they would have gone to the small school together in Hullett. She would have recognized him, despite the smudges of blood that covered his features.

Probably not one of Dylan’s businessmen, unless he was their trainer. The stuff on his belt was all professional grade and then some. Question was, what was he doing here all alone, so far from the ravine? She took his gun and tucked it into her waistband behind her back, out of his reach. Probably an unnecessary precaution. He didn’t look ready to reach for anything.

“What happened? What’s your name?”

His eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He was only semiconscious, but he kept his hands pressed tight against a wound on his thigh. Smart man—he was focusing his energies where it most counted. She held the flashlight closer.

Gunshot wound. The bullet had gone in the back and came out the front. Definitely not a self-inflicted, accidental injury.

Keeping her rifle close at hand, she slipped off his belt and made a quick tourniquet. Then she ran back to her pickup, grabbed a half-empty water bottle that was still warm from the day’s heat. It’d do in a pinch. She shook him so he’d revive enough to drink. He needed to replenish his fluids.

He needed an IV, but he wouldn’t get that here.

When she had done all she could, she dialed 911. She didn’t get through, of course—no reception. Cell phone coverage was spotty out here on a good day. With the storm moving in, the bars on her display were flatlining.

“Help.” The single word slipped in a rasp whisper from the man’s lips.

And when she looked up, his eyes were open again. She couldn’t see their color in the dark, only that they were disoriented. “I’m trying.”

He was a big man but, like her brother, she’d served in the United States Army and had gotten the best possible training. She bent and worked the guy’s arm over her shoulder, supported his body weight as she struggled forward and dragged him toward the truck.

The rain had been picking up steadily, turning into a downpour. Her feet slipped in the mud, but she wouldn’t allow herself to stop, wouldn’t allow him to slide to the ground. If he did, she might not be able to pick him up again.

She peered through the rain into the darkness, making sure she kept aware of her surroundings and didn’t let him claim all of her attention. Hurry. Her rifle hung over her shoulder, his gun tucked behind her back, no way for her to quickly reach for either if whoever had shot him came back and caught her by surprise.

Lightning lit up the sky. The water was coming down in sheets by the time she reached her pickup. She dumped him in the passenger seat then ran around and jumped behind the wheel. The dry creek beds could fill quickly in weather like this. Then they’d both be trapped out here.

He coughed and opened his eyes as she drove way too fast over the uneven road, the pickup rattling.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Ryder… McKay.”

She didn’t know any McKays around here. “Do you know who shot you?”

He passed out again before he could have answered.

Hot anger hit her, a hard punch right in the chest. This was her land, dammit. Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen here.

The creek beds were filling up, but she made her way across them. The mud proved more dangerous, at the end. The pickup’s tires spun out on a steep incline she tackled. Long minutes went wasted before she could maneuver the truck free.

“Hang in there,” she murmured, not knowing which one of them she meant to bolster.

Her windshield wipers swished back and forth madly and still weren’t enough. Intermittent lightning flashed across the landscape. The thunder sounded like heavy shelling. The ground shook as if bombs were falling. Not now. She bit her lip hard and used the sharp pain to yank herself back from the edge.

She navigated the barely visible road, doing her best to pay attention to everything at once: the mud, the injured man, the trees that could be hiding the shooter.

The drive back to the house took three times as long as the drive out. “Okay, we’re here. You’ll feel better once you’re flat on your back and we’re out of this rain.”

She parked by the front door and dragged the man in, ignoring the mud they tracked all over the floor. A particularly nasty bolt of lightning drew her gaze to the window, and for a second she could see all that driving rain drowning the open land, field after field. No other houses.

Neighbors would be nice. The kind of close neighbors you could run over to in a time of need. But the ranch was in an isolated spot, the farthest house from town.

“Here we go.” The old couch groaned under the man’s weight as she laid him down. “I’ll be back in a second.”

She dashed back to the truck for her rifle and the veterinary supply bag behind her seat. She locked the front door on her way back in, something her grandfather hadn’t done once in his life. They lived in good country, around good folks, he used to tell her.

She wondered what he would think about this. He’d have words to say. And not the kind of words you’d find in a church bulletin.

She wiped her face. No time to dry herself fully. Bag. Scissors. She cut off the man’s pants so she could do a better job at assessing and cleaning his injury. If being a field medic in the army had taught her anything, it was to be resourceful and find a way to use whatever she had at her disposal. The veterinary bag was a godsend.

“Wake up. Can you hear me?”

No response. He didn’t even flinch.

Clean the wound. Stop the bleeding. Dress the wound. Make him drink so he had enough fluids in him to get his blood pressure back up enough for him to permanently regain consciousness.

“You’re going to make it. That’s not a suggestion. That’s an order.” She snapped the same words at him as she had at soldiers on the battlefield.

She checked his limbs—everything moved, nothing felt broken. His heart beat slowly but steadily. His pupils were the same size, responding to light. His airways were open. He was in top combat shape, a big point in his favor. The patient’s physical condition always had a big impact on recovery.

Once she finished with the basics, she moved to the niceties. She washed his bloody hands, then wiped his face with a wet washcloth. She’d definitely never met him before. In the light of the lamp and without the smudges on his face, she could fully see him at last: tussled dirty blond hair, straight nose, a masculine jaw, sexy lips. The fact that he looked drawn failed to deduct from how ridiculously handsome he was.

“Ryder McKay,” she said his name out loud, then felt foolish when the cat padded in and gave her a curious look.

The scrawny feline assessed the situation while she licked her lips.

“That better not be cream on your whiskers,” Grace warned the cat, pretty much resigning herself to the fact that her Twinkie was history. “And you better not get sick from all that sugar. I’m not kidding.”

The cat flashed her a superior look then strolled away.

The man’s eyes blinked open slowly, the color of desert honey, then closed again.

“Ryder? You need to wake up. Can you hear me?”

He didn’t stir, not even when a loud banging shook the front door the next second.

Grace jumped to her feet, faced the door in a fight-ready stance, her heart lurching into a race before she caught herself. It’s not an attack. Someone’s just stopping by for a visit. Most likely.

Could be Dylan. She walked to the window, but could see only her own pickup in the driveway through the sheets of rain.

Looking sideways, she could just barely make out a shadow outside her door. Maybe Ryder McKay had a partner out there who was looking for shelter. She hurried to the door and put her hand on the key, but then hesitated. Whoever was outside could just as easily be the one who’d shot McKay.

She ran back to him and pulled the large afghan over his head, covering his entire body. The couch stood in line of sight from the front door. This way, at least he wouldn’t be immediately seen.

The late-night visitor knocked again, even louder and more forcefully.

She strode back to the door, reached for her grandfather’s rifle that she’d hung back up on the peg, then drew a deep breath. “Who is it?”

Chapter Two

The short, plump woman on the other side of the door stood soaked to the skin and poised to flee. She was unarmed and covered in mud—must have slipped a couple of times on her way here. She broke into rapid Spanish.

Grace put away the rifle and motioned her in. “Yo no habla Español. Lo siento.”

She’d forgotten ninety percent of the Spanish she’d learned in high school. And the woman spoke way too fast to even catch individual words, anyway.

But one didn’t have to be bilingual to understand that she was in trouble and ready to drop from exhaustion. Scratches covered her arms, dirt and leaves clung to her wet hair, dark circles rimmed her eyes. She rushed on with her torrent of unintelligible words.

Maybe her car had broken down somewhere. Nothing they could do about that until morning.

“Mañana, all right? We’ll figure this out tomorrow. How about you take a nice hot shower and get some sleep?”

Grace motioned her to the stairs and kept her body between her and the sofa to block the woman’s view of Ryder, barely covered by the afghan. Upstairs, she showed her to the bedroom she’d cleaned for herself earlier, pointing out the bathroom next door.

“Cómo te llamas?” She used one of the few expressions she remembered, as she pulled a dry T-shirt and sweatpants from the bag she’d brought and hadn’t unpacked yet.

The woman put a hand to her chest. “Esperanza.” Then she rushed on with plenty of things to say, unfortunately all in Spanish.

“Okay, Esperanza. Me llamo Grace. “She handed over the clothes. “Take it easy, get some rest.” She pointed to the bed. “You’re safe here.”

Esperanza, barely strong enough to stand, stopped talking and nodded. Her shoulders slumped, tears gathered in her eyes. She looked pitifully, heart-twistingly dejected, but seemed to accept at last that they weren’t going to understand each other. She moved to leave.

“No. You stay here. Mañana, we’ll take care of everything. You can’t go anywhere else tonight.” Grace pointed at the rain lashing the window. “Muy peligroso.” Very dangerous.

The woman paled, then nodded, the fight going out of her. She sank onto the bed.

“I’ll bring you something to eat, okay?” Grace grabbed her bag then left the woman and padded downstairs.

She made two sandwiches for Esperanza and grabbed a bottle of water to take to her. The woman accepted the nourishment, setting everything on the bedcover next to her.

“Good night. Buenas noches. Everything will be better in the morning. You’ll see. Mañana. “Grace gave a big thumbs-up.

But the woman didn’t cheer up in the least. She looked heartbroken beyond words.

Grace went back downstairs and mopped up the mud, exhaustion settling into her bones. She didn’t look forward to having to clean another bedroom before she could go to sleep. But by the time she changed into dry clothing and was ready to head back up the stairs, Ryder was blinking awake. She grabbed the chance and poured some orange juice into him.

“Are you with the team-building people?” In that case, she could call Dylan once her phone decided to work again, and he could get in touch with the rest of the guy’s team. They had to be looking for him.

But after clearing his throat, the man said, “border protection,” his voice hoarse and weak.

She winced, thinking of Esperanza upstairs who might or might not be from the local Hispanic community. Maybe she’d just sneaked across the border. Not something that normally happened on the ranch. The south side of the property was pretty inhospitable terrain, even discounting the impassable ravine. No shade, frequent brush fires, an endless walk and several families of ocelots in the brush were a pretty good deterrent.

There were easier places to cross, and most everybody knew it.

Yet, Esperanza was here.

And someone had shot Ryder.

Unfortunately, he passed out again before she could ask him any questions about that. Familiar anxiety, one that often stirred without warning these days, tightened her muscles. She worked her breathing to keep those muscles from locking up completely. No big deal. Just an injured man. She wasn’t in the middle of full-out war or anything.

Rain pelted the windows as she looked into the man’s pale face. He’d be gone, come morning. So would Esperanza. She would drive the woman into town where Esperanza could get back to her people or at least find someone who spoke Spanish.

Then she would take care of her brother’s remains and go home, Grace decided, and making a decision—an escape plan—relaxed her a little. She’d planned on staying a couple of days, but the peace and solitude she’d come to seek had been shattered. She looked at the urn on the mantel.

“Nothing ever turns out the way you’d expect,” she told Tommy, and missed his quiet, strong company suddenly with a sharp, heartrending pain.

RYDER WOKE TO THE SUN shining through the windows and had no idea where he was, which he found less than encouraging. His weapon was gone. Bad news number two. And he didn’t have pants on, which added to his general sense of unease. He looked around the faded living room, at the old, rustic furnishings. He recognized them and the unique fireplace from when he’d peeked through the windows last week. He was at the ranch he’d thought abandoned.

Female voices captured his attention, an indistinct chatter. There were people in the house with him. Could be good news, or bad. He needed to face the music either way.

He drank the orange juice left on the rustic side table next to the sofa, then glanced under the bandage on his leg and noted the professional-looking stitches. Obviously, at one point he’d gotten medical help. Yet he didn’t remember a trip to the hospital, or here.

Ignoring the pain, he quietly pushed to his feet and wrapped the pink-and-purple afghan around his waist—an indignity he couldn’t find a way around. He turned to look for a weapon. Yowza.

Dizziness hit him so hard, he had to brace his hand against the back of the sofa. He moved slower as he stepped forward and grabbed the poker from the fireplace, then headed toward the voices.

Two women stood by the kitchen counter, trying to communicate, one in English, the other one in rushed Spanish. Neither noticed him. The Mexican woman looked drawn and scared; the tall, lean Texan seemed exasperated.

Neither was armed, so he leaned the poker against the wall before he stepped forward. Not so far, of course, that he couldn’t easily reach back for the makeshift weapon.

All conversation stopped. Sharp tension filled the sudden silence as they turned to him.

He put a friendly smile on his face. “Ladies.”

The Texan dashed for him on legs that went on forever. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.” She propped him up, then helped him to a chair by the table. Her dark auburn hair was chin-length, a stubborn wave curled under her ear. Emerald-green eyes shone from her face.

Something about her body pressed against his felt familiar. He had a sudden flashback of the two of them in the dark, in the rain.

“Here.” She moved with purposeful efficiency as she settled him on the chair. Her soft hair tickled his jaw for a second before she pulled away. “Let me make you some eggs. You need the protein.”

He needed a lot of things, his Beretta being at the top of the list. But it didn’t seem polite to demand a handgun when someone just offered to feed you breakfast. “Where am I?”

“At the Cordero ranch. I’m Grace.”

She was pretty in a simple sort of way—no overdone makeup or freaky hairdo—her look and gestures natural, if not completely relaxed. She had a lean body that clearly saw regular exercise. She kept casting wary glances his way. “Do you remember me bringing you back here?”

“Not exactly.” He remembered running into smugglers who shot him. Then he remembered being on the brink of death, getting desperate enough to shoot his gun into the air, risking leading the smugglers back to him. The desperate act of a man who’d run out of choices.

But Grace had showed instead of the gunmen, apparently.

Must have been his lucky day.

Unless, of course, she was somehow connected to the smugglers. But then why would she save him? He decided to trust her for the time being, but moved his chair, anyway, so he’d be within reach of the knife on the counter.

A rough-looking cat appeared from nowhere and measured him up.

“Her name is Twinky,” Grace said. “She’s a stray.”

The cat sauntered closer, rubbed herself against his legs, then sauntered away.

The Mexican woman kept wringing her hands and talking all through their exchange.

Grace shot him a helpless, reluctant look. “Do you know what she’s saying?”

He asked her to slow down a little and focused on the flood of words. “She’s looking for her husband and her kids. Five-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.”

Grace paled, her gaze flying to the window. “They were out there last night with her?”

He repeated the question in Spanish, then translated for Grace.

“They came to the U.S. with her husband two months ago.”

He asked a couple more questions and got the rest of the story. Didn’t much like it.

“Her husband got a visa to come and work for the wire mill in Hullett. The whole family was supposed to get papers, but something delayed hers at the last minute. The company representative told her she had to stay behind for a few days, and then she could come after her family once everything was straightened out.”

The woman was clearly distraught and desperate, wringing her hands as she waited for him to finish translating. He didn’t think she was lying.

Grace brought him another glass of orange juice, then got a carton of eggs out of the fridge, her attention on him as he continued to translate.

“She was told the children should go ahead with the husband. School was starting. The representative even got them fully loaded backpacks and everything.”

His instincts prickled. He asked a few more questions.

“She says she last saw her family when they crossed the border. Never heard from them again. Never heard from the company representative. She can’t reach him at the phone number he’d given her. She talked to the Mexican police. She even called the Hullett police here. Neither would help her.”

Grace turned on the stove under the eggs then put a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. The small, sympathetic gesture made tears gather in the woman’s eyes all over again.

“Did you come across the border last night with a guide?” he asked in Spanish, wanting as much detail as possible.

She hung her head, her shoulders tensing as she backed away from him. For a second he thought she might make a run for the door. Grace either understood some of his words or she’d guessed them because she positioned herself so she could block him if he made a move. That she thought he might give chase was flattering, but wholly impossible. He could barely put weight on his injured leg.

Then, peeking from behind Grace, the young woman gave a hesitant nod at last, and rushed to explain.

“She’s afraid that something terrible happened to her family,” he told Grace. “All she wants is to find them and make sure they’re safe.”

“I’ll take her to town after breakfast and help her with the authorities,” Grace said immediately. “If you could, please, tell her.”

He shook his head. “When I call in and they come to pick me up, we’re going to have to detain her. Other people will want to ask her questions, too. She’s here without papers. She’s not going to be let loose, no matter what her purpose is here.”

And then it happened. In the blink of an eye, Grace Cordero morphed from a pretty hostess cooking for her guests into a stunning warrior amazon. The gentle, nurturing aura disappeared in a second. She pulled herself to full height and stalked right up to him, a steely expression coming onto her face.

Yowza. The budding interest his battered body had registered toward her earlier turned into instant, fullblown lust. Whatever blood he had left rushed south.

All right, then. Looked as if he was going to live, after all, he thought with some amusement and not a little surprise at his visceral response to her. It’d been a while since a woman made him sit up and take notice. He’d been too busy lately.

Her eyes flashed as she faced him down, her jaw tight, her shoulders stiffening. “She stays where she is.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the hard tone carried plenty of warning.

While she had a core of kindness, one that would push her out into a storm in the night to save a stranger, one that would have her take in a distraught woman without questions, she also had a whole other side. His instincts said it was a side a smart person wouldn’t mess with. He had a feeling Grace Cordero would make a bad enemy.

“Do you live here?” he asked her in a mild tone to defuse the sudden tension.

“I arrived yesterday morning,” were the words that came out of her mouth, but the flash in her eyes said: none of your business.

“How long are you staying?”

Her chin came up. “As long as it takes to help Esperanza.”

And Ryder drew a slow breath. Grace wasn’t staying. Not if he had anything to do with it. Her land wasn’t safe now, and it would be even less so in the upcoming weeks. She needed to leave.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE UTTER devastation in Esperanza’s eyes reached the grief in her own heart. She knew what it was like to lose family. She had nobody left.

Grace pulled her cell phone from her pocket and tossed it to Ryder. She’d done the best she could last night, but he still needed medical attention. “Call whoever you need, but leave me and Esperanza out of this.”

The sooner he left, the better.

She’d meant to call first thing in the morning, but hadn’t had the chance. She’d ended up sleeping in the recliner to keep an eye on him overnight. She’d woken to Esperanza coming downstairs, and drew the woman into the kitchen so they wouldn’t wake Ryder. Of course, he woke up, anyway, a few minutes later.

Unconscious, he’d been manageable. Sitting at her kitchen table, he looked fairly intimidating. He was pale and weak, but obviously well-built, a fighting machine on his better days. He had a sharp gaze, a pronounced, masculine chin, straight nose and a mouth that awakened some secret feminine longing inside her.

Not to be acted upon, obviously.

“If you work for border patrol, why aren’t you wearing their uniform?”

Esperanza watched, her face scrunched with worry, probably aware that her fate was being decided.

“I’m on a special team.”

If he thought that would impress Grace, he had another think coming. “Can’t say I trust government men as far as I can throw them.”

He kept his face emotionless as he asked, “Any particular reason?”

She didn’t mind telling him. All the anger was still there, simmering just under her skin.

“My brother was in the first Gulf War. Got sick. The government never acknowledged that he’d been exposed to biological weapons. We went through hell to get him proper health care.” She was convinced that if Tommy had gotten better help earlier, he would be still alive today.

The thought tore open a barely scabbed over wound deep inside her.

“And here you are, a doctor, unable to help him. That must have been doubly frustrating.”

She shot him a blank look.

He gestured toward his injured leg. “You put in some fine stiches.”

“I was an army medic.” And now almost a veterinarian. She could still save lives, and animals were so much less complicated than humans.

He looked at her through narrowed eyes, as if he was trying to puzzle her out. Good luck with that. These days her thoughts were such a tangled mess, she could barely make sense of them herself.

Nor could she make much sense of him, so far. Beyond his name, she still barely knew anything about him. Well, other than he was annoyingly hot.

Since he was strangely getting under her skin, she decided to go on the offensive. “What were you doing on my land?”

“That’s classified information.”

Of course it was. If she had a dollar for every time she’d heard that answer while trying to investigate just what chemicals Tommy had been exposed to…. She returned to the stove to remove the eggs from the fire.

He was dialing the phone behind her, but said very little beyond his location when the other end picked up. He was long done before she turned around with his breakfast. Maybe he’d be in a better mood to help once he was fed.

She split the eggs between him and Esperanza, who ate quickly, standing by the counter. She didn’t seem to want to go anywhere near the table and Ryder. Grace couldn’t blame her. Even in a weakened state, the man was pretty intimidating.

“Much appreciated,” he said and dug in. Whether he was hungry or simply ate because he knew he needed the energy, he did a fair amount of damage in a short time.

Grace watched him for a minute or so, wanting to give him time to eat in peace, but she ran out of patience too quickly. “Esperanza needs to find her family. I want to help her.”

“The authorities will help her,” he said between two bites, then spoke to Esperanza briefly in Spanish.

Tears rolled down the woman’s face as she set her empty plate in the sink. She looked as if she’d just been told that she’d be taken out back and shot.

“The authorities have done nothing to help her until now,” Grace argued, frustration humming through her. She hadn’t been able to help her brother, but she could help Esperanza. If Ryder didn’t stand in her way.

He finished his eggs, leaned back in his chair and watched her for a few seconds. Then his face hardened suddenly. “How long have you been aware that you have drug smuggling and human trafficking on your land?”

The air got stuck in her lungs. “We never had any of that out here.” Of course, she hadn’t lived here for years. Still, Tommy hadn’t mentioned anything. Neither had Dylan.

But Ryder had gotten shot. Had he been confronting drug runners? And Esperanza was here. What if all this was just the tip of the iceberg?

“Were you shot by smugglers?” Not that she was ready to believe that, but she couldn’t pretend that it had been a hunting accident, either. She’d known from the beginning that it had been something a lot more sinister; she just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. She sank into the chair across the table from him.

She’d come to spread her brother’s ashes in the most peaceful, nicest place on earth, in accordance with his wishes. But suddenly, the ranch seemed a much more dangerous place than she’d remembered.

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

God forbid someone told her what was going on on her land. But instead of pushing for an answer about that, she decided to pick her battles. “Esperanza had nothing to do with whatever happened to you. We both know she didn’t shoot you. How about you give her a break?” “I can’t.”

“You could pretend you never saw her. I could have just hidden her upstairs until you were gone.” In hindsight, not doing just that had been incredibly stupid. They could have avoided all of this.

“I don’t play those kinds of games.”

No, he probably didn’t. He looked as serious as a longhorn stampede.

“Don’t you have a heart?” The words burst from her in a fit of frustration.

“I’m going to take her into custody,” Ryder said in a tone that bore no argument. “We’ll consider it a voluntary surrender. I might be able to arrange for her record not to be marked, so she’ll be able to get an actual visa and come back legally as soon as that’s processed.”

“And who’s going to look for her husband and children?” she challenged.

He measured Esperanza up, then turned his attention to Grace. “I will. I’m interested in criminal activity in the area. Her family’s disappearance could be connected to the case I’m investigating.”

“Which is?”

“A matter of national security.”

She could have cheerfully strangled the man. “Whatever happens on my land concerns me.”

“The concerns of private citizens are secondary in this case.”

Words easily said. And easily abused.

And what if he didn’t follow through? If he found that there was no connection, after all, he’d probably drop the search in a second. She could all too easily see the kids and the husband becoming yet other victims the system failed.

She leaned forward in her seat. “I can help you. I’ve been living in Bryan for the past few years, but I know this area. I know the people around here.”

He pinned her with a hard look, suddenly appearing stronger than he had a minute ago. “Not only won’t you involve yourself in this, you won’t talk about it, either. To anyone. You never saw me. I was never here. Is that clear?”

The strength of his voice surprised her, gave her a glimpse of what he might be like when he wasn’t waylaid by massive blood loss. Tough and stubborn. She gritted her teeth, fighting the urge to upend the egg plate over his head.

But he distracted her with, “I don’t suppose you have a spare pair of men’s pants.”

She was tempted to leave him in the pink-purple afghan her grandmother had crocheted, just to spite him. But she didn’t want to risk the afghan slipping as he got up. So she shot him a glare and stomped up to Tommy’s bedroom, grabbed the rattiest, most ridiculous-looking farmer’s overalls out of the closet and brought them down. The man needed something loose. Tommy’s jeans would have never fit over his bandages.

He lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, just took the denim and shuffled into the laundry room that opened off the kitchen. She tried not to stare when he came out. The overalls ended above his ankles, since Tommy had been shorter. His dirty-blond hair stuck up in every direction, his face pale.

And the bastard still managed to look sexy. It was the lips, she decided, and turned from him as the sound of arriving vehicles filtered in from the outside. She strode to the door and yanked it open to glare at the men, presumably Ryder’s buddies who’d come to take him and Esperanza away.

She lost her breath for a second.

Oh, sweet heaven. For real?

The men who strategically exited the dark SUVs—all combat ready—wore the same black commando gear Ryder had had on when she’d found him. They were all built, moving with grace, radiating strength. They were so hot, all five of them, that they could have had their own pinup calendar.

If it weren’t for the all too real we-mean-business look in their eyes and their authentic arsenal of weapons, she would have thought that they were hot stuff actors hired to play a commando team in some top budget movie.

They looked her over, some with suspicion, some with appreciation, and honest to goodness made her feel flustered. No small feat, considering that during her military career she’d been surrounded by thousands of horny men.

“Ma’am,” said the tall, Viking-looking one with the reddish-blond hair. “We’re here for a friend of ours.”

He didn’t introduce himself, nor did he refer to Ryder by name. She itched to know just what kind of an op they were running.

“In there.” She jerked her head, hating the way the morning was turning out. She might have been able to stand up against Ryder in regards to Esperanza, but no way could she stand up against the six of them.

Game over.

She watched as they tried hard not to laugh at Ryder’s appearance in the overalls. But there was a lot of smirking going on as they helped him to the door.

He stopped in the threshold. “I appreciate the help, Grace.”

She didn’t say you’re welcome, just stood there with her arms crossed.

“I had a gun,” he said then.

Fine. She stepped to the hall table and pulled open the top drawer, then handed him his gun belt.

He left with a nod, followed by one of his buddies—built like a tank—who was escorting Esperanza. Half of the man’s left eyebrow was missing, giving him a fierce appearance. Esperanza looked about ready to faint.

The rest of the men inspected Grace’s living room as if they were undecided whether to leave or pull out a search warrant.

Twinky padded in from the direction of the kitchen; the Viking gave her a careful look.

Grace rolled her eyes. “What? You want to frisk the cat?”

The man’s startling blue eyes cut to her and he coughed. His face remained impassive, but he might have been trying to cover up a laugh. The others strode out and he walked after them.

She followed after Esperanza and gave the crying woman a hug. “Lo siento,” she whispered into her ear. I’m sorry. “I will do whatever I can to help. I’m going to look for your family, okay?”

And maybe Esperanza understood, because she slipped a folded-up piece of paper into Grace’s hands, careful so nobody would see the furtive maneuver, her red-rimmed eyes hanging on Grace’s face, begging. She looked as miserable as a person could be, but followed the men without resisting. Then she disappeared in the back of one of the vehicles, no longer visible behind the tinted window.

“I do appreciate what you did for me,” Ryder said again as he got into the passenger seat of the same vehicle.

Grace turned her back on him, marched inside the house, then slammed the door behind her.

Only then did she open the piece of paper.

Two little kids smiled at her from the photograph, a boy and a girl, their eyes laughing into the camera. Their parents stood behind them, a world of love in their eyes as they looked at their children. She turned the photo over. Paco, Esperanza, Miguel y Rosita.

Miguel was maybe two inches taller than his twin, his arms protectively around his little sister.

She had a picture in that same pose with Tommy, although the age difference had been bigger between them.

She glanced at the brass urn on the mantel and her heart constricted.

What if Ryder didn’t fulfill his promise?

Children, even American children, fell through the cracks every single day. What if nobody went to look for Rosita and Miguel?

She squared her shoulders. Somebody would, she decided.

Chapter Three

Ryder took notes at the SDDU’s new satellite site as Esperanza Molinero repeated her story. Raymund, better known as Ray, Armstrong, sat with them. The two of them were senior team members, based on length of service in the SDDU. The rest of the men busied themselves elsewhere so as not to overwhelm her and make her feel threatened.

“Did the guide bring a whole group or you alone?” he asked in Spanish.

“I sold my wedding ring so he would bring me. I came alone. I sold my bicycle and our furniture. Even the kitchen table Paco made me as a wedding gift. Where will my Paco eat when he comes home?”

Ray exchanged a look with Ryder that said he didn’t expect that issue to come up. Something Ryder had considered, as well. The man should have called his wife by now, got word back to her. If he hadn’t, he was possibly dead, or in some other bad trouble.

“Was your husband a drug mule? Did anyone give him any suspicious packages to take to the U.S. with him?” Ray asked, sliding lower in his chair, trying to look as small and nonthreatening as he could, a challenge for a big chunk of Viking like him. The blood of his marauding ancestors ran thick in his veins, there was no mistaking it. Mostly, it was an advantage, but not today. Esperanza eyed him warily.

Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “My Paco was a good man. An honest man.”

“The kids were given backpacks of school supplies from the so-called company representative,” Ryder put in, repeating what she’d told him at the ranch.

Ray asked Esperanza about that; she insisted that the bags contained nothing but notebooks and pencils. She looked confused, probably not understanding why they were asking her about the bags instead of her kids.

“Of course, she wouldn’t have checked the padding,” Ray said in English.

Ryder nodded. Exactly.

“You’re sure about his name?” He wanted to get back to the human trafficking. The same man who brought her over might be the guide for the terrorists, in the not-too-distant future.

“Dave,” the woman said then struggled with the next word. “Snebl.”

“Where did you cross?”

“I couldn’t see in the dark. We walked for a long time together. When he saw the storm, he said he was leaving. I gave him everything I had, all the rest of my money, my bag. But he turned around. He told me to keep walking.”

She was lucky he didn’t hurt her. Robbing people who came across the border was a common racket. If their guide didn’t do it, then one of the groups who made a living from robbing illegal immigrants did. The men and women usually brought their most valuable possessions with them to start a new life. The hits could be lucrative, and the victims couldn’t turn to the police, so the robbers nearly always got away with it.

Ryder shifted in his seat. His job was to defend his country and if he saw anyone breaking the law, do something about it. Either you broke the law or you didn’t. He preferred to look at things in black-and-white. He hated shades of gray.

He was a soldier. He got a command, he carried it out. There was no evaluation of the mission, no second-guessing his superior officer. That was how the army, where he’d started out, worked, as did his current team the SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, a top secret commando team.

But nothing seemed clear-cut here. The land along the border was its own universe. Some of the people he’d met were clearly criminals, others victims, some both at the same time. Motivations were complicated.

He thought of Grace Cordero—the definition of complicated. A smart man would leave that attractive bundle of trouble well alone. Like he was going to do. To get a good head start, he put Grace from his mind and focused on the woman in front of him.

“Please,” she begged them. “Help me.”

He did feel sorry for Esperanza. She didn’t cross the border with criminal intent, she didn’t want to stay and live off taxpayer’s money. She was looking for her husband and children because the authorities had failed her.

Yet, what she’d done was illegal.

He had no choice but to take her to border patrol and send her back home. No choice at all, even if a sharp-eyed beauty called Grace Cordero would hate him for it.

She didn’t believe in the system.

He did. He’d sworn to defend it.

“Doesn’t make any sense, if you ask me,” Ray said in English. “The Cordero ranch isn’t a known smuggling corridor. The terrain is too rough. There are easier points for crossing.”

Yet the man who’d shot him had been out there. Ryder smoothed his black cargo pants over the bandages on his thigh. He’d been to the emergency room and back, the wound had been disinfected again, his stitches inspected and pronounced exemplary.

He’d been forced to lie down while they’d dripped a full bag of IV fluids into him, and had plenty of time to think. Maybe the spot had been chosen specifically because the smugglers thought nobody would be looking there.

He listened as Ray asked Esperanza some of the same questions she’d already answered, wording them differently this time to see if he could trip her. But she stayed consistent. Nothing indicated that she was lying.

They had alerted border patrol to her presence, but not to the shooting. Their operation was top secret, dealing with a terror threat. His small team had come to the area on the pretense that they were surveying border traffic for a new proposal for increased funding for CBP, Customs and Border Protection.

They were more than a match for their enemies, the special team consisting of trained and experienced commandos who did this for a living. As much as they respected the work CBP did, several recent busts had proven that not all the border agents could be trusted. Some were on the take from the traffickers.

And this was one mission where Ryder’s team couldn’t take any chances.

“I was cold because I had to swim,” Esperanza was saying.

“Rio Grande.” Ray looked at Ryder. “Can’t believe she made it. The current can be a killer in places. Add the darkness and that storm.” He shook his head.

“I was scared that the water would rise to the ceiling and I would drown,” she said, not having understood the two men’s exchange in English.

Ceiling? Then it all made sense suddenly.

“Tunnel,” Ray and he said at the same time. Now at least they knew what they had to be looking for when they were out there scouring the land day after day. All that water from the rain had been running down and filling a tunnel.

“Do you remember anything about where you came out? In brush? Trees? Open fields?”

“In a ditch. I couldn’t see much in the dark and the rain.”

And no matter how hard they pressed her after that, she couldn’t give them any further information. So Ryder escorted the woman to the crossing point, talked to the guards and walked her across. They had her contact information, the village she lived in and the phone number of her priest, since her house didn’t have a phone line.

“Don’t come back,” he told her. “It’s not safe. Your children need a mother. You stay here, and I’ll go and look for them, all right?” he said in Spanish, and handed her enough money to get her to her village.

Tears streamed down her face. “Paco loves me. He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t take my babies. He would die for me. I would die for him.”

“I believe you.” He spoke the truth. He believed in that kind of love between a man and a woman, even if he’d never experienced it himself. His parents had that.

He left her and walked back across to his car, feeling somehow guilty and inadequate, even if he was doing the right thing.

A text message with photo pinged onto his phone as he started the engine—a blue-eyed newborn with a pink ribbon in her hair. A birth announcement from Mitch Mendoza. Ryder grinned, happy for his friend, but he also felt a sense of longing. He wanted what Mitch had—his true mate, the one that could make him happy.

He wanted a partner like Mitch had found, someone who would fight by his side and go with him on missions, someone to have his back during the day and fill his arms at night. Mitch had been over-the-moon happy since he’d met Megan. The couple was assigned to the SDDU’s Texas office, but were on leave at the moment for the birth of their baby.

They had something Ryder had never had before. And he couldn’t help but want a taste of it.

He’d been thinking about a wife lately. Kids.

A call interrupted that warm little fantasy.

“Shep and Mo are heading back,” Ray said. “I’m about to leave for the Cordero ranch to look for the tunnel with the others. Jamie says last night’s rain washed away all the tracks. I don’t see how we can find the damned thing unless we stumble on it by accident. The report on Grace Cordero came in after you left, by the way. Squeaky clean. She has a hell of a service record. She did two tours of duty in Iraq. Are you coming out here?”

“I’m heading into Hullett to talk with the sheriff. Want to see if he has any information on Paco Molinero and those kids.”

“They came through with visas. I don’t think Paco could give us much on the human trafficking.”

A good point, but Ryder wanted Grace Cordero packed up and gone, and the quickest way to achieve that was to close the Molinero case as expediently as possible by finding Esperanza’s family for her.

Then Grace would go back to where she’d come from and his team would have free rein over her ranch. He didn’t like the idea of her out there alone, with criminal activity going on around her. She’d be unsafe and underfoot, a double negative.

He reached the next intersection and took the turn toward her ranch on impulse. But he found the driveway empty when he reached the house. His knock on the door went unanswered.

She’d better not be out there riding around the fields. He would have to warn her about that when he caught up with her. She needed to stay off the land until they figured out what was going on and found the damned tunnel.

He considered looking for her, but then he glanced at his watch and got back into his car. If he wanted to catch the sheriff at the office, he had to get going.

An hour later, he caught the man at his desk.

“So you’re not with CBP?” Sheriff Denholtz ran his thumb over his considerable mustache. His large belly fairly stretched his uniform. His cowboy hat sat on the desk in front of him. He was in his mid-thirties, pretty young to make sheriff. But he acted as if he’d had the job for decades.

“I’m affiliated with CBP.” Ryder gave his cover. Since his team had no idea who they could trust around here, the rule of thumb was to trust no one. “I’m working on a special project.”

“I thought the U.S. Customs and Borders Special Response Team handled those.”

“You’re right about that.” People liked to hear that they were right. When you were trying to build rapport, it didn’t hurt to say it. “This is different,” he added. “My team is here to survey the border situation and make recommendations for policy makers.”

“Strangers coming in, telling our local boys how to do their business.” Denholtz pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and started chewing on it.

“I just need to have a list of Mexican nationals that ran into any kind of trouble here over the past two months.”

The man drew his spine straight. “We don’t have a smuggling problem in Hullett. I run a tight ship.”

“No doubt, Sheriff. Still, if I could get that list.”

The man sucked on the toothpick. “I’ll tell one of my boys to get right on it. I’ll have it faxed to CBP when it’s ready.”

“If you could fax it straight to me, it would be very helpful.” He scribbled the office’s fax number on the back of his fake card and slid it across the desk.

From the look the sheriff was giving him, he wouldn’t hold his breath.

He resisted the urge to take a tougher tone. He needed to gain the local law’s cooperation. If he pushed too hard, the sheriff might wonder if he had a special agenda, and his special agenda was top secret.

A deputy stuck his head in the door. “Gracie Cordero is here to see you, Sheriff.”

Surprise flashed across the man’s face, then a smile spread his mustache. He spit the toothpick into the garbage can and pushed to his feet.

Ryder gritted his teeth as the man passed by him without a word of apology for the interruption.

“Gracie, sweetheart. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?” The words filtered through the door the sheriff had left open behind him.

“Good to see you, Shane. How is Mattie?”

“She’s fine. Kids are so big you wouldn’t recognize them. I heard about Tommy. I’m awful sorry about that. He was a real stand-up guy, your brother.”

“He was.” Grace’s voice turned somber.

Ryder couldn’t see her from where he was sitting, but he would recognize her voice anywhere. She had a melodious tone, not silky and seductive, yet still somehow sexy and feminine, except when she got herself all worked up and her voice turned hard and clipped.

“You back for good, then? Mattie would love that.”

“For a week or two, at least. I’ll stop in to see her and the kids.”

“Anything I can help you with, sweetheart?”

Ryder rolled his eyes. Quite a bit different reception from the one he’d gotten.

“I’m looking for a guy by the name of Paco Molinero. He might have come to town with his two small kids, Miguel and Rosita.”

“You hired someone for the ranch?”

“I know his wife in a roundabout way. He’s gone missing.”

“She ought to report that. I can send a deputy out to her house.”

“She’s on the other side of the border.”

A moment of pause came. “You can file a missing person report, I suppose. You got the details?”

“Most of them. I also have a picture.”

Ryder’s ears perked up at that.

“Joey,” the sheriff called out. “I want you to run this man through the system right now. Let’s see if we get a hit.”

“Yessir.”

“How about a cup of coffee while we wait?” the sheriff offered next. “There might even be a couple of cookies left.”

“Mattie’s?” she asked in a kid’s Christmas-morning voice.

Ryder stood and strode out, but all he could see was their disappearing backs as they walked down the hallway, chitchatting like two old friends. He decided to avoid the indignity of chasing after them.

She laughed and put her hand on the sheriff’s shoulder as he said something amusing. Which annoyed Ryder more than it should have.

He wanted to go after them and demand the information he needed, but he had a feeling the sheriff would resist anyone who challenged his authority here, in his own little kingdom. So he strode out of the station, calling Shep, one of his teammates back at the office, for an update.

The news was less than encouraging. They couldn’t find the tunnel.

“Any luck in Hullett?” Shep wanted to know.

“I’ll get what I came for.”

“Locals proving too difficult for you?”

“The usual small-town stuff.”

“Maybe you’ll find yourself a nice small-town girl.”

Telling the guys that he was looking to settle down had clearly been a mistake. “Maybe you’ll step on a rattler.”

Shep laughed. “Come on now. What was her name again? Vivien?”

“Victoria.” He bit out the single word. On a long night patrol with Shep, he’d unfortunately shared his vision of what he was looking for: tough, athletic, ready to go, a partner in fight as well as in the bedroom. Tough enough to survive his kind of life, but soft enough to be the mother of his children, basically.

He might have shared that he was partial to blondes with long hair, the longer the better. And since they’d been talking about her, it was easier to give her some sort of name, for convenience’s sake. Not that he meant she had to be named Victoria, of course, which would be idiotic. But since then, even to himself, he’d begun to refer to this dream woman as Vicky.

GRACE TUCKED HER SHORT, dark bob behind her ears as she ran down the front stairs of the police station. She frowned at the man leaning against her pickup. His color was better than the day before. He was better dressed, too. This time, Ryder McKay wore a dark gray suit with a dark blue shirt and dress shoes instead of the combat boots.

His hair had a little wave to it so it managed to look tussled even short-cut. He wasn’t the best looking man on his team, although he was plenty hot, but he had the kind of energy, a presence that drew her as the others hadn’t. All the more annoying since she hated him for taking Esperanza away.

He was the last person she wanted to see today.

He limped toward her. Looked as if he’d been waiting for her and his presence here wasn’t just an unhappy accident. Great.

“You should be resting that leg.”

“Let’s sit in your truck for a second.”

As he looked her over, she suddenly wished that she’d bothered to slap on some makeup that morning, or that the jeans she wore didn’t have a hole above her left knee. “What happened to Esperanza?”

“She’s on her way back home. Why don’t we see if we can come to some agreement about how to help her?” His desert-honey gaze held hers.

Awareness zinged up her spine. She went around him and yanked the driver’s-side door open.

“You should keep that locked.”

“You should mind your own business.” She wasn’t used to having to lock anything around here.

He got in next to her, taking up way too much space. “These are different times.”

So maybe they were. Smugglers. People getting shot. People disappearing. Things like that didn’t normally happen in Hullett. Even if she no longer lived around here, she hated the idea of the place changing for the worse. Dylan’s sister, Molly, was usually the one who hated change and wanted everything to stay the same, but for once, Grace agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly.

She tried to take shallower breaths as Ryder’s faint masculine scent, soap and aftershave filled the cab and tickled something behind her breastbone. He smelled as good as he looked. His eyes never left her face.

She reached for the cooler behind her seat and grabbed two bottles of strawberry iced tea. Homemade, her mother’s recipe. Rose Cordero had been gone close to fifteen years now, taken by breast cancer. Grace’s father had been trampled to death by a bull at the rodeo the same year.

She closed her eyes for a second to shut away those memories, then said, “How about a cold drink?”

He smiled at her, and she just barely held back a groan. Was that a dimple in his cheek? The way those amazingly sexy masculine lips stretched over all those white teeth…

Holy Jehoshaphat. And he hadn’t even meant to dazzle her. If he ever tried to seduce a woman in earnest… She put that thought out of her head. She didn’t need to think about Ryder McKay and seduction. She had things to accomplish.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting the bottle. “How well do you know the local sheriff?”

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