Lisa Childs - Colton 911 - Baby's Bodyguard

He cursed again.

No. An arrest was not imminent. Forrest Colton might have gotten lucky in Austin, but his luck was about to run out in Whisperwood. And maybe his life, as well.

A week had passed since his brothers had ambushed him at the crime scene. A week of frustration that gripped Forrest so intensely, he wished he’d never accepted the position no matter how temporary it was going to be.

The hurricane had caused so much damage, and not just physically. Emotionally people were dealing with the loss of loved ones and their homes or their livelihoods. The Whisperwood Police Department was stretched thin. The crime-scene techs were understaffed and overworked, so nothing had been processed yet from either scene. And the coroner...

She hadn’t even taken the bodies from their refrigerated drawers yet, let alone begun the autopsies. And until he had more information, Forrest didn’t want to parade in the family members of every missing person to see if the dead woman was their loved one. He didn’t want to put every family that was missing someone through that kind of pain.

Hell, he didn’t want to put one family through that kind of pain. But it was inevitable. Once they figured out who she was.

Everybody expected miracles from Forrest, but his hands were nearly as tied as the poor victim’s hands had been—bound behind her back.

He wrapped the reins around his hands and clenched his knees together as the quarter horse he rode scrambled over the uneven ground. Despite taking the detective position, Forrest continued as a volunteer for the Cowboy Heroes. The team was not done with Whisperwood and the surrounding area, which had been hit particularly hard with flooding after Hurricane Brooke.

The water had begun to recede, though, leaving only muddy areas like the one in which the horse’s hooves now slipped. His mount leaning, Forrest nearly slipped off it and into the mud. Ignoring the twinge of pain in his bad leg, he tightened his grip.

“Whoa, steady,” Forrest murmured soothingly. When the horse regained its balance, a sigh of relief slipped through Forrest’s lips. This was why he usually handled the desk work for the rescue agency and not the fieldwork. But like his brothers, he’d been born in the saddle. He couldn’t not ride.

He wasn’t able to help with the rescues as physically as he would have liked, though. Sometimes his leg wouldn’t hold his weight, let alone the weight of another person or animal. He sighed again but this time with resignation. It was what it was.

He’d accepted that a while ago. And he helped out where he could—like riding around to survey the areas. There were still some people missing, and maybe the floodwater had hidden their remains.

Not that he wanted to find any more bodies.

But that was the purpose of the recovery part of the Cowboy Heroes’ rescue-and-recovery operation. Survivors needed that closure of knowing what had happened to their loved one and having that body to bury. That was why he needed the body in the morgue identified, so he could give her family some small measure of peace.

Until he found her killer.

And he would.

His frustration turning back to determination, he urged the horse across the muddy stretch of land. Heat shimmered off the black shingles of a roof in the distance. He’d started out early from his family ranch, before the sun had even risen much above the horizon, and it wasn’t much higher now. So it was going to be another hot August day, which was good.

The last of the water should recede and reveal whatever secrets it has been hiding. Whatever bodies...of animals and people.

So much livestock had been lost, too. A pang of regret over all of those losses struck his heart. Then another pang of regret struck him when he realized whose house he’d come upon in the country.

Hers.

Rae Lemmon. His new sister-in-law’s best friend, and quite the beauty. He hadn’t lived in Whisperwood for years, but he remembered this was her family home. And maybe he’d subconsciously headed that way.

But why? Sure, she was beautiful, but because she was beautiful, she wouldn’t want anything to do with a disabled man. She’d asked him to dance at the wedding, but that must have only been out of pity or maybe just a sense of obligation to her friend.

And maybe that was why he’d come this way, to check on her place—out of a sense of obligation. She was his new sister-in-law’s best friend, so that almost made her family, too. And as much as the Coltons took care of everyone else, they took extra care of their own.

He knew that because of how everybody had taken care of him after he’d been shot. Well, everybody but one person. But she hadn’t been family yet, and after he’d been shot, she’d returned his ring.

He flinched as the memory rushed over him. Not that he could blame her. As she’d said, she hadn’t fallen in love with a cripple, so he really shouldn’t have expected her to stick around for him. It wasn’t as if they’d said their vows yet either, and now he expected those vows would not have included “in sickness and in health.”

While the old memories washed over him, the horse continued across the muddy field, toward the back of the house. The field was higher than the yard, so he could see into it, could see that a tree had toppled over into the water pooled on the grass. Maybe the roots had turned up a mound of dirt, or maybe something else had made the hole. The pile was almost too neat, as if it had been shoveled there.

Maybe she’d thought the hole would drain away the water.

But as Forrest drew nearer, he peered into the hole and discovered it wasn’t water filling it. Something else lay inside it, something all swaddled up in linen material smeared with mud and grime.

“What the hell...?” he murmured.

He swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted. His boot slipped on the muddy ground, but he used the horse to steady himself. Like all of the horses for the Cowboy Heroes, Mick was well trained and helpful. Forrest patted his mane in appreciation before stepping away from his mount and turning toward the hole. He leaned over and peered inside it, and his boot slipped again.

This time he didn’t have the horse to steady himself, so his leg—his bad leg—went out from beneath him. As he began to fall, he reached out to catch himself. But like his boot, his fingers slipped on the mud, too, and he slid into the hole, knocking the loose dirt into it with him. It sprayed across that weird material.

Whatever it was, it had contoured to the shape of the object beneath it. But it wasn’t an object.

It was a body with arms and legs and a face.

A mummy...like the one his brother Jonah had found. But unlike that body, Forrest suspected the storm hadn’t turned up this one. Someone else had either dug it up or dug the hole to bury it here, like someone had buried the woman by the pharmaceutical company.

But why here? Why in Rae Lemmon’s backyard?

Forrest reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He needed to call in a team to process the scene. Hopefully he could remove himself from it without compromising any evidence. After he called the coroner and some crime-scene techs, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and tried to pull himself out of the hole. Using his good leg, he dug his boot into the side of the hole and climbed out. As he pulled his boot free, some dirt tumbled down into the hole, next to the body, and the sun glinted off it.

It wasn’t just dirt. There was something shiny beneath the mud and grime. Something metallic. Like coins or...

Buttons?

Had those belonged to the victim or the killer?

* * *

Rae closed her eyes and savored the silence. She would have to get up soon for work, but she had a few minutes to rest her eyes and relax. And after Connor had spent most of the night crying inconsolably, she needed some peace. He’d finally fallen back to sleep.