Virna DePaul - Texas Stakeout

Sometimes they died.

Personally...

He fought to erase the dead eyes staring dully at him in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t.

Dead eyes all looked the same: unblinking and missing life’s sheen. But the first set of dead eyes he’d ever seen—his mother’s—haunted him every day of his life, reminding him of what could happen to a person who refused to accept the bad in others before it was too late.

“So your son’s name is Peter. And you are?”

“Rachel. We’re almost there,” she said. “Down the gulley to the right. Then the spring’s a few hundred yards south.”

He knew how to get to the spring already but kept silent, and instead neck-reined Ginger in the direction Rachel had given. The horse headed downhill and Rachel leaned back to compensate for her weight on the horse’s shoulders. Her still-wet hair brushed his face and he breathed in the scent. Soft and floral, with a hint of freshness. Ginger stumbled and Dylan tightened his grip on Rachel, appreciating the soft weight of her breasts on his forearm. Get a grip, he mentally chided himself. Yeah, Rachel was one hot woman, but she was also the sister of the fugitive he was hunting, and they were on the way to find out if her ranch hand still lived. Appreciating her sweet smell or the luscious weight of her breasts was the last thing he should be doing.

He reminded himself it had been three long months since he’d bedded a woman. Before that, he’d been in a long-term relationship with Ashley, a deputy D.A. back in San Francisco. They’d dated for several years and she’d been pressuring him for more. She’d wanted to move in together. Wanted to move toward marriage. He hadn’t been able to commit. He’d cared about her. Appreciated her in bed and out. But he’d known she wasn’t the one, just as the handful of women he’d dated before her hadn’t been the one. The ones he’d dated after her?

They’d been beautiful. Smart. Urban chic. But they’d bored him. Body, mind and soul. It had been far easier to immerse himself in work. Now there was Rachel Kincaid. Stimulating him in so many different ways and distracting him from his duty. It not only surprised him. It was beginning to piss him off.

Dylan grabbed his binoculars and scanned the surrounding area. It looked clear, but he was still conscious of the presence of his firearm inside his boot. Knew it would take mere seconds to draw his weapon if he needed it.

“There!” Rachel exclaimed, pointing to a spot of blue, deep down among the green rushes that surrounded a bubbling spring. She grabbed the reins herself and pulled Ginger to a halt.

Dylan swung himself off the horse, then helped Rachel to her feet. She stumbled and he caught her—their faces inches from each other. Her eyebrows swung together in a V before she pulled away.

“Josiah?” she called out, pushing through the rushes, gray mud sucking at her bare feet.

She came to a halt next to the bright spot of blue they’d seen, and Dylan came up behind her. When she sank to her knees in front of the crumpled figure, Dylan knew Peter had been right.

The man was dead.

* * *

On her knees, Rachel swallowed against the heave in her stomach. Josiah lay at an odd angle, a few yards from where the spring water bubbled to the surface. Coagulated blood stained his face, no doubt from the severe wound on the side of his forehead. Next to his head, a large jagged rock protruded from the ground. He must have slipped. Hit his head.

She hated that Peter had seen Josiah’s open eyes, so devoid of life. Was that what Jax saw when the school bus had dropped him off and he’d come home to find their parents, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning? She reached a hand out to close his eyes but was stopped by a firm grip on her elbow.

“Don’t touch him,” Dylan growled.

For a second, the timbre of his voice and the weight of his touch made fear shoot through her. This was a stranger, a stranger who’d appeared as suddenly as Josiah had been hurt. Killed. Dylan Rooney claimed he’d been riding after Peter because he’d only wanted to help, but what if that wasn’t the case?

But just as panic and fear started to choke off her breath, she reminded herself that he’d told both her and Peter to stay at the house to call 911. Someone bent on trouble would hardly want more witnesses to deal with, and he would most likely have tried to separate them.

After taking a deep breath, she slowly pulled her arm away from his grip. “I only want to close his eyes. Give him some dignity,” she argued.

“We can’t disturb the scene any more than we already have. This man is dead. We need to back up and wait for the authorities.”

Dylan’s words buzzed inside her head. Two phrases hung in the air, as if a spotlight was on them. Disturb the scene. Wait for the authorities. Then she remembered the way he’d initially ordered her and Peter to go inside the house and lock the doors after them. As if he’d wanted to make sure whatever had hurt Josiah couldn’t hurt them.

Aaron had been beastly over the past month, demanding rights to the water he’d found on her land. Even before that, he’d always been a bit of a jerk, which was why she’d initially wondered if Aaron had been causing Josiah trouble.

But she hadn’t been thinking murder. Now, based on the position of Josiah’s body next to the rock, the most logical assumption would be Josiah had fallen and hit his head.

Clearly this man suspected foul play.

Why?

Dylan held out a hand and after a slight hesitation, she took it. He tugged her upward and she came to standing, facing him.

“Why can’t I touch him?” she asked hoarsely. “What do you mean, ‘disturb the scene’?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he soothed. “It looks like he fell, but it’s always possible something else happened to him.”

“Like what?”

His fingers tightened around hers right before he ran his hands up and down her arms in a comforting motion. Her first instinct was to push him away and tell him she needed answers, not sympathy. But that would be a lie.

She suddenly felt on the verge of collapse. Wanted nothing more than to rest her cheek against his chest and beg him to hold her. Comfort her.

He sighed and lifted one hand to run his knuckles against her cheek. “There are always those who want to hurt others, Rachel. There’s always a possibility that there’s danger where we think we’re the safest. But I’m here. And I’ll help you. You just need to let me.”

Chapter 3

“I don’t understand,” Rachel said even as she pulled away from him. Fear had made her large eyes grow rounder, and Dylan barely suppressed a curse. Scaring her was the last thing he wanted, but he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that her brother had killed this man. For all he knew, Kincaid was still on the property somewhere, a threat to them all.

And yet for all Rachel knew, Dylan was the threat. He needed to extinguish the fear in Rachel’s eyes. Sometimes only the truth could do that.

“I told you my name is Dylan Rooney, ma’am. What I didn’t tell you is I’m a U.S. Marshal and I’m here on important business.”

Rachel backed farther away from him, her bare feet sinking even deeper in the mud that his boots protected him from. She winced, and once again he held out a hand to provide stability. This time she ignored it, staring at him warily.

“Business that has something to do with what’s happened to Josiah?”

“Could be. I’m not certain.”

“But you think he’s been murdered.”

“That remains to be seen,” Dylan said. She shifted, then winced again, reminding Dylan she’d run out of the house barefoot. She had to be in pain. “Here, let’s get you back up on the horse while we wait for help. No sense in you continuing to beat up your feet if you don’t have to.”