Delores Fossen - Lucas

“Of course,” Tillie quickly agreed.

Hailey was shaking her head before the nanny even answered.

The head shaking caused Lucas to scowl again. “I’m going to protect my son,” he snarled as if she didn’t want the same thing.

She did. More than anything, she wanted him safe. Lucas and his family, too. “But I want to see him.”

That got Lucas’s muscles tightening again. “And then what?”

It was a good question. Hailey didn’t have anything resembling a good answer. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I need some answers, and I think the place to start is with my sister.”

“I agree,” Lucas said without hesitation. “I’ll want her contact info and anything recent you have on her. I’ll especially want to know why she could want you dead.”

“I don’t know any of those things,” Hailey had to admit. “I haven’t seen or heard from Colleen since I’ve been in WITSEC.”

Lucas huffed, clearly not pleased that she hadn’t given him something to go on. “You two were close?”

“Once.” But that was another round of bad memories. “We were both working as computer systems analysts for Preston DeSalvo’s company. I testified against him, but Colleen didn’t. She claimed she didn’t see the incriminating evidence that I found.”

Lucas jumped right on that. “She lied?”

“Maybe. But I can’t believe she’d be the one behind this. I’m still her sister.”

He gave her a flat look. “Cain and Abel were brothers, and you know how that ended.”

Yes, with one murdering the other, but Hailey had to hang on to something, and that something was that her only sister hadn’t betrayed her like this. Still, she wanted to talk to Colleen and get this all sorted out.

She nearly reached for his phone to make a call, but there was no one who came to mind that she could trust. Well, no one other than Lucas.

“I’ll bring Colleen in for questioning,” Lucas said as if reading her mind. He didn’t get a chance to add anything else because the sound got their attention.

A shot.

Even though it was in the distance, it still caused Hailey’s heart to slam against her chest. She held her breath, waiting, and even though she tried to steel herself for whatever would happen next, she still gasped when Lucas’s phone buzzed.

“Mason,” he said looking at the screen before he answered it and put the call on speaker.

She hadn’t thought her heart could beat any faster, but she’d obviously been wrong. Mason was with the baby, and if he was calling then maybe that meant the shot had been fired close to the house.

Or in it.

Hailey pressed her fingers to her mouth and listened, praying.

“Sawyer fired the shot,” Mason said. “The guy’s alive for now.”

“Is he talking?” Lucas asked.

“No, but I just called an ambulance, so maybe he’ll say something on the way to the hospital. Sawyer has a way of getting dirt to talk.”

Good. But that didn’t mean this was over. “Are there any other attackers out there?” Hailey pressed.

Just as the ranch hand had done, Mason hesitated. “No. Nothing else is showing up on any of the security feeds, either. It looks as if this clown came alone. And I don’t think he came here to kill anybody. He had surveillance equipment on him.”

So there could be others on the way. It was too much to hope that this guy’s injury and arrest would get the person behind this to back off.

“It’s safe for you to come to the house,” Mason continued. “If you want to come, that is.”

She knew what he meant by that. Mason was giving his cousin an out in case Lucas didn’t want her to see the baby. Hailey was about to insist that happen when Lucas gave Grayson the go-ahead to get moving.

Toward the house.

Hailey sat back up, keeping watch around them, but she was also looking for the house. It finally came into view since it was the first building on the ranch road. All of the interior lights were off, probably as a safety precaution, but there were security lights on all four corners of the property. Enough for her to see the barn and corral that hadn’t been there a year ago.

Lucas was making this place a home.

Part of her was thankful for that. Their son deserved it. But she was betting there was no place in this home for her.

Grayson pulled to a stop directly in front of the porch, and the door opened. Mason. Yet another unfriendly face, but then, Mason usually looked unfriendly. As he’d done at the sheriff’s office, Lucas got her in—fast. This time, though, he didn’t carry her. He looped his arm around her waist to steady her, and the moment they were inside, he moved away from her.

Hailey immediately looked around for the baby. But there was no sign of him or the nanny. She was about to demand to see him, but Mason stepped in front of her.

“Just got a text from Sawyer,” Mason said, his voice low and dangerous. “The guy he shot is drifting in and out of consciousness, but this is what the guy said.”

He held his phone screen up for her to see, and the words there caused her to drop back a step.

Hailey Darrow paid me to take the kid.

Chapter Five

Lucas didn’t know who looked more shocked by the accusation that the wounded gunman had just made. He or Hailey.

“I didn’t,” she said, her gaze firing between Mason and him. “I only left the hospital a couple of hours ago.”

Mason didn’t seem convinced. “You were conscious for a week. You could have called someone and set this whole thing up.”

The anger flared through Hailey’s eyes, and she opened her mouth as if ready to return verbal fire, but she was obviously spent. Heck, so was Lucas, and while part of him hated to defend the woman who’d tried to run from him, he couldn’t see how this would have played out.

“There was no phone in her hospital room,” Lucas explained. “And yes, she could have borrowed one from someone on the staff, but that kind of thing doesn’t stay a secret very long.”

Lucas could have gone on and mentioned the part about Hailey not having touched her bank accounts since she’d been in the coma, and it wasn’t as if she’d had wads of cash lying around the hospital to pay someone to carry through on something like this.

Even Lucas’s own explanation didn’t seem to convince Mason. “You trust her, then?” Mason asked.

“No,” Lucas readily admitted. “But if Hailey intended to take the baby, she wouldn’t have done it this way.”

At least, he hoped like the devil that she wouldn’t. The baby and other members of his family could have been hurt by the thug who’d trespassed onto the ranch.

“Thank you,” Hailey said to him.

For some reason, that riled Lucas. Maybe because he didn’t want to do anything for her that would cause her to say something like that.

“So, who did hire the lying sack of dirt?” Mason asked.

Hailey shook her head, but it was clear from the way she was looking around that her attention was elsewhere. She obviously wanted to see the baby, and Lucas tried to remind himself that if their positions were reversed, he would have wanted the same thing.

Of course, their positions would never be reversed because he would have never gone on the run from the law.

“I’ll question Hailey’s sister, Colleen, and Eric DeSalvo in the morning.” Lucas tipped his head to the hall that led to the bedrooms. “Is Tillie in the nursery?”

Mason lowered his phone and nodded. Even though he didn’t voice his disapproval as to what was about to happen, it was on his face. “I’ll wait here until I get the all-clear from Sawyer.”

Lucas thanked him and made a mental note to thank all the others who’d pulled together to keep Camden safe. For now, though, he had to focus on getting through this. And this was having Hailey see the baby.