Guardian Ranger (3 page)

She’d never come that close to violence like that before. Never had violence actually directed
at
her. Cale had always protected her from everything and everyone.

Cale wasn’t there anymore.

“Even though my friend was coming, I didn’t want Veronica driving home alone. I figured Gunner could wait a bit.” Jasper reached for her hand. Shocked her when he lifted her fingers to his mouth and brushed a light kiss over her knuckles. “So I followed her, and I’m damn glad that I did.”

Her heart had slammed into her chest.
I’m glad, too.

“I want to talk with these prisoners,” Gunner suddenly said.
“Alone.”

Wyatt tensed, then glanced over at the deputy who was on duty that night, a young guy with pale skin and wide eyes. She knew the deputy well, as well as she knew Wyatt. Deputy Jimmy Jones had lived in Whiskey Ridge his whole life. Quiet, shy, but the twenty-two-year-old was fierce about protecting those in his county.

When she’d first met Jimmy, she’d felt much sympathy for him because the boy he’d been...well, his life had been a nightmare. But Jimmy had pulled himself out of that darkness, and now he was fighting to be better, stronger.

“Why are you wanting to talk to
my
prisoners without me present?” Wyatt asked. “That’s not what I’d call regular—”

Gunner lifted out his ID again. “I want to talk to them because I think they might fit it on
my
case.” A brief pause, then, “They fit the profile of some men I’ve been tracking with the FBI.”

They did? That was news to Veronica.

Jasper’s fingers tightened around hers.

“Let me talk to them and see if we need to take over jurisdiction here.” Gunner shrugged and walked toward the glaring men in the cell. “If I can tie them to the other abductions...” He said this part loudly, deliberately so, or at least that was what Veronica thought.

The injured man, a wiry guy with light blue eyes and sandy hair, seemed to pale even more. Then, for the first time, he spoke, shouting, “We didn’t take anyone!”

“Anyone else, you mean,” Gunner corrected. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Wyatt. “Give me some time with them, alone. I’ll find out everything I need to know in my interrogation.”

Jasper nodded, as if granting his permission. Veronica frowned, but Jasper said, “You take care of them, Gunner, and I’ll take Veronica home.”

Home?

But Wyatt was nodding now, too. Well, wasn’t it great that they were all in agreement? She was breaking apart on the inside, and they’d formed some sort of guys’ club.

“You do need to head home, Veronica,” Wyatt told her. “We’ll take care of these men.”

She didn’t move. Her gaze had turned back to the two men. Their faces were now etched in her memory. They were young, younger than she’d suspected when their car had first slammed into hers. They barely looked twenty. One still had acne.

And they were sweating. More so than Wyatt. They looked afraid and as she swept a fast glance at the man called Gunner, she realized that they
should
be afraid.

Jasper was danger wrapped up in a handsome package. Gunner...he was just lethal. An icy intensity burned in his dark eyes, and his hard features hinted at the hell he must have seen over the years. This was a man well acquainted with death and darkness. This was a man who scared her.

Her breath eased out slowly. Despite the fact that both Jasper and Wyatt wanted her to head home, Veronica wanted to stay. She wanted to face these men and find out just why they’d tried to take her.

“You can’t hide from the dark.”
Another rule from her brother.
“The night comes whether you want it to or not.”
He’d first spouted that one when she was seven and terrified of monsters. She’d wanted to hide in her closet.

Now she knew that hiding did no good. The monsters, the real ones, could find you no matter where you went.

She took a deep breath and headed toward that cell. Jasper tensed and gritted,
“Veronica.”

She kept walking and only stopped when she was a foot away from the bars. “Why?”

The injured man flinched.

“Why did you hit my car? Why did you try to take me?” They’d both had knives. Both had threatened her with them, but the blades had never sliced her skin.

Wyatt grabbed her arm. “You can’t do this.”

Um, she
was
doing this. Because she wasn’t a coward. These men wouldn’t make her cower in the dark.
The night comes...

Wyatt tried to pull her toward him. “There are rules about questioning suspects. They have rights. You can’t just—”

“I have rights, too,” she snapped back at him as a sharp burst of anger filled her chest, driving right past the chilling fear that she’d known for the past few hours. “I think I have the right not to be stuffed in the back of a trunk on a Saturday night.”

“She does have that right,” Gunner murmured.

Her gaze cut to his. It almost looked as if he was about to smile.

“Do you want these bozos getting released on some technicality that a lawyer tosses up at us? Some B.S. about them not having counsel?” Wyatt’s tension had doubled.

As far as she knew, the men hadn’t asked for lawyers. They hadn’t asked for anything.

“I’ve got this,” Wyatt told her, voice deepening. “Let me do my job, okay? Trust me.”

But he hadn’t done his job before. When her brother had vanished, he’d done nothing.

She pulled away from him, stared once more at the men. Jasper wasn’t saying anything. He’d just come up to stand behind her. Silent. Strong.

When her brother hadn’t come back after a few weeks, she’d started digging. Pushing. Pushing as hard as she could as she dug into his life and the faint trail that he’d left behind.

Had someone tried to push back?

“Is this about Cale?” she asked softly.

She saw the injured man’s eyelids flicker.

Her heart seemed to stop. Then it raced, faster and faster with each second that ticked by. “Do you know where he is?” Veronica demanded, and she lunged for the bars.

Jasper grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her stomach and hauling her back against him.

The men in the cell were smirking now. The taller one, the one with dark brown hair, took a step toward her. “Don’t know your brother.”

Jasper’s hands squeezed her tighter.

Through numb lips, she managed to say, “I never said Cale was my brother.”

That made the smirk vanish. The guy’s eyes cut to Wyatt and blazed a wild blue. “We want a lawyer,
now.
”

“Tell me about my brother!” Veronica yelled back.

Jasper pulled her even closer against him. She could feel the rock-hard muscles of his abs against her back. His head lowered. “Easy,” he whispered in her ear.

Did it look as if she could take this easy? The guy had just admitted to knowing her brother. Random abduction? No way. No. Way.

Wyatt slammed his hand against the bars.
“Veronica.”

Jasper growled. “Watch that tone, Sheriff.”

Wyatt shoved both of his hands into his hair. “They asked for a lawyer. We have to get them one.” He pointed to the deputy. “Go get Tanner Dempsey. He still occasionally practices some defense over in Dallas.”

As far as Veronica knew, Tanner Dempsey was the only lawyer within a two-hundred-mile radius. She’d thought he gave up law after he’d lost that last big case in Dallas, but maybe anyone with a law license would do right now.

When Jimmy rushed to the back of the station, and the back exit, Wyatt glanced at Veronica. Heaving a sigh, the sheriff waved toward his office. “Go cool down in there. When Tanner gets here—”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Veronica said, shaking her head. “There’s no telling how long it will take Tanner to get here.” Provided he was even in town.

A muscle flexed in Wyatt’s jaw. “They aren’t going anywhere,” he gritted. “And if you don’t want to go home, then at least get in my office. You
can’t
be near these prisoners.”

Now she was the one to glare at the men in that cell.

“Don’t worry,” Gunner’s rumbling voice promised, “I’ll find out exactly why these men tried to abduct you.”

Of course, she wanted to know why the men had targeted her, but right now her priority was finding Cale. “I just want my brother back.”

“This is a lead,” Jasper whispered in her ear. “Settle down. We can make this work for us.”

Settling down wasn’t exactly easy. Not after everything that had happened.

He led her toward the sheriff’s office. As they walked away, she saw Gunner taking out his phone and heading for the station’s front doors. “Where’s he going?” she asked. The prisoners were the other way. He wasn’t going to find out much by heading outside.

“He’ll be checking in with his superiors. Briefing them on what’s happening.”

Oh, right. Gunner had said that he was already working some abductions in the area.

Jasper shut the door behind them and exhaled on a hard breath. She rubbed her arms, feeling chilled as the air blew down on her from the vent overhead.

His finger rose and traced over her arms, making goose bumps. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded. She couldn’t hear any sounds from the outer area. The blinds were all shut in Wyatt’s office, effectively closing them off and giving them a bit of privacy.

“When I saw the crash and those guys trying to stuff you in that trunk...” His hand fell away from her. “You scared me.”

She blinked at his words, taken aback. “
I
scared you? I didn’t think anything could scare someone like you.”

He stared at her intently, like a snake targeting his prey. “A guy like me?”

She’d said the wrong thing. She was nervous and scared and when he was this close, she just felt hyperaware of him. Veronica shifted from one high heel to the other. She really hated these shoes. “You know what you are. You’ve seen so much. Done so much. You’ve—”

“Killed?”

There it was. He’d just tossed it right out. So she wouldn’t back down. “Yes.”

His pupils seemed to expand, the darkness taking over the green of his eyes. “Every man can know fear, but you can’t ever let that fear stop you.”

Sounded as though he had his own set of rules to follow.

“I said I’d help you.” He took a step forward. She refused to retreat. So he just got...very close to her. Her breath came a little faster. Her mouth seemed to go dry. Especially when he added, “But my help has conditions.”

“Conditions?” She had to tilt her head back to better meet his gaze.

“You hired me to find your brother, but you didn’t say anything about your own life being at risk.”

“Th-that’s because I didn’t think I was at risk.” And, dang it all, her stutter had come back. She’d tried so hard to defeat that stutter over the years, but when she got too nervous, it still slipped out. Being around Jasper, yes, he made her
too nervous.

“Someone just tried to abduct you. I’d say that definitely puts you in the ‘at risk’ category.”

She tried to get him back on track. “They know my brother.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“They’re a lead for us!”

Another nod.

She wasn’t sure where this was going, so Veronica just asked, “Are you... Do you not want to help me anymore because of the attack?” While she waited on his response, she pretty much held her breath.
Don’t back away, don’t back away, don’t—

The faint lines around his eyes deepened. “I don’t back off a job, no matter what. You should remember that.”

Um, okay. She would. She tended to have a very good memory.

“The fact that you seem to be in danger, that means that I’m gonna be staying close to you, real close.”

He was already close. So close that she could feel the heat of his body against hers.

“I’ll find Cale, but I’m not going to risk you in the process.”

A mercenary with a heart? She wasn’t surprised. Cale had a good heart, too, despite what the rest of the world seemed to think.

“Will you trust me?” Jasper asked her.

She nodded. At this point, he was the only one she could trust. No one else had been willing to help her. Only Jasper.

His pupils had definitely gotten bigger. They almost swallowed the green of his eyes. “Good.” Then his fingers were under her chin. His head was bending toward her.

Was he...was he about to kiss her?

Veronica was pretty sure she’d had this dream once, only she hadn’t been recovering from a near kidnapping in the dream.

“I won’t let you get hurt,” he promised. His voice was rough and dark, the way that she thought it would sound when he was in bed with a woman, whispering in the night.

Her gaze fell to his mouth.

She wanted him to kiss her.

She arched toward him. Maybe she even rose onto her tiptoes.

He wasn’t closing the distance between them.

I want to kiss him.
Maybe it was the adrenaline and the fear still pumping through her. Whatever it was, in that one instant, Veronica felt a little bit wild.

Wild enough to curl her hands around his shoulders. To pull him down against her and to press her lips against his. His lips were firm and a little cool. And they were opening beneath hers. She’d initiated the kiss, but Jasper quickly took over. His lips hardened on hers, and his tongue swept inside her mouth, sliding right past her lips. He didn’t rush the kiss. Didn’t try to take too much from her, too fast. He explored. He tasted. He made her knees feel a little bit weak, and he made her smell smoke.

Smell...smoke?

Jasper pulled his head away from hers. “What the hell?”

He whirled away and yanked open the office door. Over his shoulder, Veronica caught a glimpse of Wyatt rushing toward them.

“Get out of here!” Wyatt yelled. He had keys in his hand. “The storage room in the back is burning!”

Then Veronica heard the crackles of flames.

An explosion shook the building, reverberating with a stunning echo even as a blast of heat seemed to lance over her skin.

Before she could do more than suck in a shocked breath, Jasper was hauling her out of the office and away from the flames—flames that weren’t just in the back room any longer. The flames were spreading around the station, burning with deadly ferocity.