Royal Protector

If Lexie Dale was famous—or even infamous—maybe that would explain why she’d gone so far out of her way to find this place. And it might also explain the motive behind the abduction attempt. So, who was she? And how had she learned about Destiny Canyon Ranch in the first place?

The need to question her nagged at him even harder. He took a last swig of coffee. “Well, I’d better go talk to our guest and find out for myself if there’s any truth to what Tucker said.”

“You’re not going to wake that girl, are you?” Mo asked, her disapproval ringing in every word.

“Only if she’s still asleep,” he said.

Before Mo could stop him, Lucas strode out the kitchen door and across the pine-paneled great room, toward the wide, hardwood staircase.

At the second-floor landing, he made a right and walked past the door to his father’s room to the guest room at the end of the hallway. He raised his hand to knock, when the door behind him opened slowly.

“Mo? Honey, is that you?”

Lucas turned around and walked back to where his father stood in the doorway. “Morning, Pop. How’re you feeling today?”

“Not too bad for the shape I’m in.”

The specialists had said Will wouldn’t make it through another Colorado winter, but Doc Rogers said he wouldn’t put it past Will Garrett to live a hundred years just to spite them. Lucas was less optimistic. Ever since his mother died five years ago, his father had been going downhill. Without the love of his life beside him, Will just didn’t seem to have the heart to go on.

“Lots of excitement around here yesterday,” Will said. “I suppose you’ve got your hands full with this homicide investigation.”

“Seems like,” Lucas confirmed. “But I don’t want you worrying about it, Pop. Everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I’m not worried,” Will said. “I know you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring him in. This county is lucky to have you on the case, son. I just hope that sweet little blonde is going to be all right.” He cocked his head in the direction of the guest room down the hall.

“Then, you’ve met Miss Dale?”

“Lexie?” Will smiled and for an instant, his eyes seemed less tired. “Oh yes. Last night, around midnight, I was coming back from the bathroom and stopped to rest a spell on the window seat. She asked if there was anything she could do to help me and I invited her to sit and chat a while.”

The small effort of standing seemed to weaken him. Though Lucas wanted to know what Lexie had said, his concern for his father took precedence. “Maybe you should lie back down, Pop.”

“No, son. I want to go downstairs. I’ve been aching all morning to get outside and sit on the porch for a spell. Your mother and I used to do that, you know. It was one of our favorite pastimes. After I retired, Rose and I had the time to sit and enjoy the view. Just looking out at the mountains and talking about all the things we’d done with you kids and the way we’d built this place…well, it was a sweet time, son. It truly was.”

Ten years ago, when Will had finally agreed to retire, Lucas had been fully immersed in his career in lawenforcement. Cal had not only had Lucas’s blessing, but a measure of gratitude, when he’d agreed to take over the reins of the Garrett ranch. Cal’s father, Duncan Garrett, had been Will and Rose’s first born son, the older brother Lucas had never known. Duncan’s life had already been lost in the jungles of Vietnam almost five years before Rose and Will Garrett’s late-in-life son, Lucas, was conceived.

After his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent abandonment, Cal and his younger sister, Jolie, were raised as Lucas’s siblings on the ranch. With three active young children to raise, Rose Garrett depended heavily on her older daughter, Maureen. Lucas sometimes marveled at the degree of dedication Mo had shown the family. But if the sister who was some twenty years his senior ever resented the years she’d spent tending her younger brother and two young cousins, she’d never shown it. In fact, if anything, it seemed the difference in their ages had given them a special closeness. Lucas adored his mother, but in Maureen he’d always felt he had a second mom, an older, wiser loved-one to whom he could come for kindly wisdom and counsel.

“If you can just help me down this last step…” Will said. Lucas offered his arm for support. Lucas waited until his father was comfortably situated on a porch chair with a blanket tucked around his legs, then he asked, “What did you and Lexie talk about, Pop?”

“Oh, a little of this and that. Mostly, we talked about her late grandfather, how she could always turn to him. How she still missed him. How she wished she had someone to talk to now for advice.”

“Did she ask for your advice, Pop?

“Well, yes. As a matter of fact, she did. Not outright, in so many words, understand. But I could tell she had a lot on her mind and was just itching to say it.”

Lucas shook his head. Was this the same woman who’d guarded her every comment during their interview yesterday?

“And did you give her advice, Pop?”

“Yes, I guess I did.” He seemed almost happy as he gazed across the front yard at the sunlit meadow. “She asked me if I thought it was worth the effort for a person to fight for what she wanted, even if it was something that didn’t seem like it would ever work out, even if other people disapproved and told her she was dead wrong.”

Lucas knew without asking how his father had answered Lexie’s question. Will Garrett had never run from a fight in his life. “You told her to stand her ground, of course.”

“Damn right, I did.” He nodded to himself. “You know, son, I like that little gal. And I can tell she’s got something heavy on her mind, something big, a problem she’s not sure she can handle on her own.” He met his son’s gaze. “Maybe you can find a way to help her, Lucas. I got the feeling she could use a friend about now.”

Lucas patted his father’s shoulder and smiled. “I’ll see what I can do, but right now I have to get going, Pop. I need to talk to Lexie.”

Will smiled. “You do that, son. You talk to her.” His smiled faded. “But don’t go pushing her too hard with all your official questions, you hear? She’s been through enough.”

Again, Lucas stopped short of making his father any promises where Lexie Dale was concerned.

When he returned to the house he reported to Mo that their father was on the porch, then he hurried up the stairs. What was it about Lexie that caused everybody in his family to want to protect her? First, Mo. Now, his father. Maybe Lexie Dale really was an alien, a supernatural being who’d cast an intergalactic spell over all of them.

He knocked twice on her door and waited. When he heard no movement on the other side, he knocked again. This time louder and with more authority. “Miss Dale. Lexie. It’s Lucas Garrett.” But still there was no answer, no sound at all on the other side of the door.

Finally, Lucas turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room was empty. The bed had been neatly made, almost as if it had never been slept in.

As a number of disturbing scenarios played through his mind, Lucas retraced his steps and pushed out the front door. On the porch, Mo was tending to their father, but Lucas didn’t stop to talk or inform them of where he was going.

As he strode across the meadow toward the cabin, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned by the sight of Lexie’s rented SUV still parked where it had been yesterday in front of her cabin. If she’d walked out of his family’s house without a word to Mo, knowing his sister would be concerned by her unexpected absence, then Lexie Dale’s behavior could only be called rude and thoughtless.

But what if she hadn’t walked out, Lucas thought, what if she’d been taken by force? The thought propelled him even faster across the meadow. When he reached the cabin, he was surprised to see the door that opened into the small two-room cabin standing wide open.

“Lexie!” he called out as he crossed the small yard and walked up onto the porch.

There was no answer, but what he saw as he stood on the threshold stopped him cold. The interior of the cabin looked like a scene from a low-budget horror movie. The small, hand-hewn, knotty pine table and chairs had been overturned. The bedding had been ripped off the bed and the mattress pulled from its pine frame. Each of the six drawers had been pulled from the dresser in the corner and the contents dumped in a heap in the middle of the floor. The clothes strung all over the room were distinctly feminine. Lexie’s clothes. But where was Lexie?

Where was the deputy assigned to guard the cabin last night? Had Lexie’s change in venue pulled his attention away from the cabin? The questions came to Lucas in rapid succession, but there would be no answers, not until he found Lexie.

With his gun drawn, Lucas moved carefully into the room. When he’d made certain no one was waiting behind the door in ambush, he made his way toward the bathroom.

Past the open door, he saw her. Seated on the floor, surrounded by the chaos of the ransacked room, she seemed almost in a state of shock. The shower curtain sagged behind her, where it had been torn from the rod. All of her belongings had been ruined. Her cosmetics were everywhere, crushed underfoot on the floor, along with a tangle of jewelry and the remains of a broken hair dryer.

“Lexie!”

She turned and looked up at him, seemingly oblivious to the blood trickling from her left hand.

“What the hell happened here?” He moved into the small room and reached down to pull her to her feet. “My God, are you all right?”

She allowed him to pull her to her feet. “I— I’m fine. I just walked in and found it like this.”

“You’re bleeding.” She looked down at the broken pieces of a perfume bottle still in her hand.

“Here.” Carefully he took the jagged pieces from her and dropped them onto the floor. She stood without speaking as he wrapped her hand in the lone towel still hanging on a hook over the sink.

The look on her face was haunted and her eyes shone with unshed tears. Lucas put his arm around her and led her out of the cabin and onto the sun-drenched porch.

“What’s this all about, Lexie?” he asked her. “Why would someone want to do this to you?”

When she looked up at him, he found he had to steel himself against the abject vulnerability reflected on her face. “It—it’s hard to explain,” she began. “I— I can’t—”

“But you have to,” he said softly, firmly. “I can’t protect you unless I know what’s going on. I can’t help you until you trust me. Trust me, Lexie.”

She met his gaze with a look that told him she longed to do exactly that, to place her trust in him and damn the consequences that until this point had her scared silent.

She opened her mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything. The lawman in Lucas sensed she was ready to crack. If he pushed her now she might be able to give him the answers he needed to catch a killer.

But the man in him held back, momentarily overwhelmed by compassion for a woman who he sensed had already been through more than her share of pain. He remembered his father saying she needed a friend. Was it possible to be that friend and still do his duty?

“Come with me, Lexie,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk in town, at my office.”

She hesitated for a moment and looked back at the ravaged mess inside the cabin. “But what about—”

“I’ll have my men take over here, and see to your things.”

Then he put his arm around her and walked with her across the meadow and into his family’s home where he knew, at least for the moment, she’d be safe.

THEY’D SPOKEN LITTLE on the drive into town, and they remained separated by an uneasy silence while Lucas ushered Lexie past Sylvia’s desk and into his office. It wasn’t that he’d gone soft, he told himself as he directed her to the chair opposite his desk. He did not intend to let her off without another round of solid questioning. But she had been through another ordeal this morning and it seemed only right to give her a little time to recover from the shock of finding her possessions rifled. Besides, giving her time to mull over the seriousness of her situation just might convince her to cooperate.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he told her. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? A lawyer?”

“I don’t need a lawyer. Not unless you’re planning to charge me with something.”

Lucas shook his head. “No. But I do need answers, Lexie. And I don’t intend to let up until I get them. If you’d feel better with counsel present, now’s the time to let me know.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” she said calmly, in a voice that revealed none of the emotion he’d witnessed less than an hour ago inside the ransacked cabin. “There’s nothing more to say. I told you everything yesterday.”

“I remember what you said.” Lucas leaned back against the edge of his desk and folded his arms across his chest. “All right. Then let’s talk about today.”

She nodded uncertainly.

“Do you have any idea why someone would ransack your cabin?”

“No.”

“Any idea what they might have been looking for?”

Again, she responded with a flat, “No.”

“Who was Hugh Miller?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, who was he? We know that wasn’t his real name. And the address he gave Mo when he checked in was phony, too. Who was he, Lexie?”

When she didn’t reply immediately, he pressed her. “His prints have been sent to CBI and it’s only a matter of time before they match them with an identity. If you tell me now you’ll be saving everyone a lot of trouble.”

She rose and moved over to the window where she stood with her back to him. “I only knew him as Hugh Miller.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you anything more about the man.”

“Can’t or won’t?” It took some doing, but Lucas managed to keep his voice even. “Look, Lexie…whatever is keeping you from telling me the truth, it can’t be worse than the legal ramifications that could result from your stone-walling.”

She turned around to face him with an openly defiant expression. “There’s no point in threatening me, Sheriff.”

Lucas felt his control slip. An innocent witness afraid to come forward was one thing, but Lexie’s constant evasions were making him question just how innocent she really was. “Damn it! A man is dead. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. The note of desperation in her voice touched off an unwanted rush of protective instincts inside Lucas. She stood silently for several minutes, then sighed and turned to face him once more. “I know you’re trying to help, Lucas. But there’s no need. Every-thing…well, it’s just too late.”

“Too late for what, Lexie?”

She started for the door. “Could you please arrange for someone to drive me back to the ranch?”

Lucas covered the length of his office in three long strides. “What are you hiding, Lexie? Tell me.”

“Let me go.”

“Do you know why he was killed?”

“No!” Although he couldn’t yet begin to explain why, Lucas sensed a world of pain behind that single word.

“You never knew him as anyone but Hugh Miller?”

“That’s right.”

Well, at least that’s something, Lucas thought. “How about his family? Do you know how to contact them?”

“I don’t know anything about his family…or even if he had any.”

“Why was he here, Lexie? What did Hugh Miller have to do with you?”

A look of something close to panic flickered across her face and Lucas could feel her shutting down, again.

“Level with me, Lexie. I can help you, but you have to tell me the truth.”

“I can’t!” When she tried to push past him, he reached for her hand and held her where she stood.

“Let me go! You have no right to detain me.”

Her wrist felt warm and fragile. “I’m just trying to help you.”

She shook her head and pulled away from his grasp. “I know,” she said. “And I appreciate your position. But you don’t understand. Things are not what they appear. It’s out of your hands. Out of mine! There’s nothing anyone can do, now.”

“Tell me what that means, Lexie. Why is it too late? What are you involved in?” Even as he asked the questions, Lucas hoped against all reason that she was as innocent as she claimed to be.

“Please,” she nearly begged him. “Just take me back to the ranch.”

They stood close, so close the faint perfume that was her essence mingled with his every breath, so sweet and distinctly feminine, he could almost taste it.

“I only want the truth,” Lucas said. “And I’m not going to stop until I get it.”

She walked past him to the window and stood once more gazing out at the mountains in the distance.

He moved across the room to stand close behind her, so close it was hard not to touch. “Tell me what has you running so scared. I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, but you have to trust me.”

He watched her shoulders tense and he felt torn. He didn’t enjoy pressuring her, but he had a duty to bring in a killer.

And if there was a battle raging inside Lexie Dale, Lucas meant to come out the winner.

“Just tell me the truth,” he continued to urge in a low, even voice.

As the moments of taut silence stretched between them, Lucas sensed she wanted to give in. It took every bit of control he possessed, but he allowed her the time she needed to reach her decision. The vow he’d made to her was real. If there was a way to protect her, to help her out of whatever trouble had her scared silent, Lucas would find it. After all, as a cop it was his sworn duty to protect, even if the reaction she sparked inside him was anything but professional.

“Lexie?” he said finally.

She sighed. “There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said without turning around. Her words were tinged with a sadness Lucas could not ignore.

He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders and turned her gently around to face him. With the tip of his finger, he lifted her chin so that he could look directly into her face. The eyes that stared back at him seemed haunted and the expression on her face was one of uncertainty mixed with loneliness. Lucas felt his heart turn over at the sight of such aching vulnerability, and before either of them realized what was happening, he gathered her into the circle of his arms.

She didn’t resist, but seemed, instead, eager to lose herself within the shelter of his embrace. For the space of a few breathless heartbeats the grim circumstances that had caused their paths to cross ceased to exist.

When the phone rang, she pulled back, out of his arms. It rang a second time, before Lucas turned away and reached for it.

“It’s Ritter, with the Burea of Land Management,” Sylvia’s voice announced.

“Tell him I’ll get back to him.”

“He says he’s got to talk to you, Sheriff. One of their trucks was stolen.”

“Get the information and tell him I’ll send a deputy out to talk to him.”

“Want me to dispatch Burt?”

“Yes. Thanks, Sylvia.” As he spoke to his secretary his eyes searched Lexie’s face, looking for something—anything—that would solve the mystery that was increasingly surrounding her. “Oh, and, Sylvia, please hold all my calls until I let you know otherwise.”

He hung up the phone but didn’t make a move to close the distance between them. “Level with me, Lexie. Tell me what you know about the man who called himself Hugh Miller. Begin by telling me why he used a false identity.”

She blinked and some of the color left her face.

“You really didn’t know, did you?”

She shook her head. “The first time I saw him was here at the ranch.”

“But you weren’t surprised to meet him. Why, Lexie?”

She stared at him a long moment and Lucas sensed she was close to cracking. Finally, she sighed, moved back to her chair and sat down. “He was a paid bodyguard.”

Her admission wasn’t really all that surprising. Her obvious distress at having been forced to admit it, however, was. “How long had he been working for you?”

“He wasn’t working for me, exactly. My family hired him.” Unmistakable anger turned her eyes a darker shade of blue. “Or to be more precise, my father hired him. He made all the arrangements.”

“What made your father believe you needed the services of a bodyguard?” Lucas studied her face as he waited for her answer and imagined what he’d do to anyone who tried to harm even one hair on her lovely head.

“There was a kidnapping attempt—” She hesitated. “It was a long time ago. When I was a child.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t…remember much. I was very young.”

“What do you remember?”

“Not much. My mother died years ago. And my father…well, it’s never been a subject he’s felt inclined to discuss.” Something about the way she said the word father made Lucas want to punch the man.

“I’ll want to talk to him. To your father.”

Her laugh was short, dry and completely without humor. “Oh, believe me, you will. In fact, he’s probably tried to reach me this morning at the ranch.”

Lucas reached for the phone again. “What’s his number?”

She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t have it with me, but even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to get through.”

“Why not?”

She sat forward in her chair. “Because it doesn’t work that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there’s no way to get through to him. He’s a very…busy man. Lots of meetings. And he travels a lot, too. I wouldn’t know how or where to begin looking for him today.”

“But you spoke to him yesterday.”

She nodded. “Yes. That’s why I know he’s undoubtedly tried to reach me today.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, you seem less than happy by the prospect of talking to your father.”

She shrugged, but the indifference she seemed to want to portray was undermined by the distinct sadness in her eyes.

“Are you sure there’s no way to contact him, now? At his office or at home?”

She gave him a small smile. “Trust me on this one, Lucas. By the time you drive me back to the ranch, His— My father will have left a message instructing me exactly when and where to call.”

Lucas reached for his hat. “Then let’s go.”

She nodded and rose to walk ahead of him out of his office, with all the enthusiasm of a woman headed for the gallows.

Chapter Four

In the outer office, Deputy Eli Ferguson reclined in a chair with his long legs stretched out on the desktop in front of him. “Hey, Lucas,” he said and came to his feet.

“Am I glad to see you!”

Lucas was fortunate to have such a competent second-in-command. In spite of Eli’s few annoying affectations, like wearing his sunglasses indoors and sliding into a west Texas drawl that stretched a single sentence into a lengthy monologue, he was smart and a good leader. Lucas asked Lexie to wait in his office while he turned over the loose threads of the investigation to his deputy.

“I want four more men up on that trail, checking for anything we might have missed yesterday. Also, BLM just reported a stolen truck. It’s a long shot, but there could be a connection.”

“Could be our shooter needed the truck for his getaway. I’ll compare the cast we took of the tire prints on the trail with the BLM vehicles.”

“Put out an APB on that truck,” Lucas said.

The next task was more complicated. “Last night, someone ransacked Lexie’s rental cabin. Send two men over there to check for prints and take photos.”

Eli removed his sunglasses and glanced toward the office where Lexie was waiting. “Is she all right?”

“Mo insisted she stay in the guest room at the house.” His sister had been correct in assuming there was still a danger. “I don’t need to tell you that those cabins are within spitting distance of the ranch house. I sure as hell don’t like the idea of something like this happening so near Pop’s front door.”