A Bride By Summer

“He’s out in the pasture, but he’ll be back by six.”

“Then I’ll have enough time to do some training drills with Trixie before dinner.”

Her mother followed her up the stairs to her old bedroom. “What happened today?”

Kellie walked over to the dresser where she kept her older clothes and pulled out a top and some jeans. “He found out how the stalker got my cell-phone number.” While she changed outfits, she told her mom everything. “He’s so amazing, I couldn’t believe it. Talk about methodical. His mind works differently than the average person’s.

“I found out his parents wanted him to go into law, but he broke his engagement to this girl and left college to join the Austin police department. He knew what he wanted and went after it. Now he’s a Texas Ranger.” She stared at her mom. “He can be formidable, but it’s cloaked in sophistication. He told me he was going to catch this stalker.”

Her mother eyed her pensively. “You believe in him.”

“Utterly. He’s incredible. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“No. Neither have I. Your cousin wants to hear all about him.”

Kellie nodded. “I’ll call her tonight when I get back to the town house. Has anyone else phoned?”

“Yes. Besides many of your friends, news of your marriage has prompted the Statesman and the Chronicle to get in touch with you for a story and a photo op. Even Tammy White from Hill Country Cowboy Radio is asking for another interview. She said you were a dark horse for pretending that you didn’t know Cyril Vance when you were already married to the gorgeous Texas Ranger.”

Heat crept into her face. “What did you tell everyone?”

“That you’d get in touch with them when you had time.”

“Thanks, Mom. You’re an angel.” She pulled on a pair of cowboy boots she kept in her closet. “I’ve got to get out there so Trixie won’t think I’ve abandoned her. See you in a little while.”

She flew out of the room and down the stairs. Once she left the house, she ran all the way to the barn. But her thoughts weren’t on Trixie. They were concentrated on the man who’d be at the town house later tonight to let her in. She found she was breathless just thinking about it.

Chapter Five

Pleased to discover that Vic was already at the town house, Cy drove into the garage, anxious for them to share information. His friend was dressed in the roofer uniform he’d worn the other day. He’d parked the roofing truck near the end of the alley.

“You got back earlier than I’d thought,” Vic said as Cy entered the kitchen.

“That’s because I found the information I wanted.” He removed his jacket and tie and laid them over one of the chair backs, then he grabbed a soda from the fridge. “Do you want a cola?”

“Sure.” They both took a long drink. “I brought Kellie’s phone back, but she’ll have to wait for her laptop,” Vic informed him.

He saw it lying on the table. “Good. She’ll be glad to have it.” Cy reached for it and checked the messages. The stalker had sent three more. He put on the speakerphone so Vic could hear them, too. It was more of the same enraged vitriol.

Cy swallowed more of his drink. “I have news. Kellie’s friend put her cell-phone number in the WPR Association’s database. After some searching I discovered that a Denny Denham worked for Standard Computer Services as a tech in Colorado Springs starting in April of this year. He was called out on a problem at WPRA and signed the work order June 20. After that, he quit his job on the excuse he needed to be with his sick mother in Michigan.”

Vic’s whistle sang throughout the kitchen. “I talked to Rafe. Get this. He said the voice on Kellie’s phone meets the criteria for a person from Virginia Beach or Charleston, South Carolina.”

“A long way from Texas,” Cy mused aloud. “Charleston’s the place where one of the victims was killed.”

“Yup. The minute I heard that, I started a search of all identical twin boys born in both the Virginia Beach area and the Charleston area over the time period I’ve estimated. I’m waiting for them to get back to me.”

“You do great work. At this point I’m wondering where these killers saw Kellie and decided to target her. Until now they’ve operated in the other half of the US.”

“You’ll figure it out. In the meantime Stan told me that he couldn’t get a good read on the half fingerprint from the garage-door pad.”

Cy’s eyes closed for a minute. “That was a long shot. Did the woman show up at the mailbox today?”

“No. Nothing went on around the town house. It’s a waiting game now.”

“I’m pretty sure he’ll break in one of these nights, possibly even tonight after he sees Kellie’s parents drop her off. I’ll be waiting for him.”

“Or them,” Vic added. “The crew will cover the front of the condo. I’ll be out in back.”

“Any news on the IP address of the email sent to Kellie?”

Vic shook his head. “Janene’s still working on the source. Tor hidden services mask their locations behind layers of routing. But she got into a site called ‘hangman’ and discovered the owner had left the administrative account open with no password. She logged in and is still digging around. As soon as I hear from her, I’ll let you know.”

“Good.” Cy reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper from the computer services company. “This is the application the stalker filled out to get hired for work at the computer company.”

They sat down at the table to study it. Cy let out a harsh laugh. “Look at that reference. As I told Kellie, it’s full of lies. Two years at another computer company in Omaha, Nebraska, before he moved to Colorado Springs?”

“I’ll call the number and see who answers.” Vic pulled out his cell phone and tried it, then put the phone to Cy’s ear. “You may have reached this recording in error. You can try again or call your operator.” Vic hung up.

Cy rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “No doubt he used his brother, who set up a phony address and phone to send the referral. These killers get around, Vic. They’ve got money to operate. Most likely smash-and-grab stuff, unless they’re living off a family death benefit of some kind. I’ll email this to the agents on the East Coast.”

“Depending on what goes on here tonight, I’ll track things down tomorrow.” Vic checked his watch. “Tell you what. I’m going to leave to get me a bite to eat. But I’ll let you know when I’m back for the rest of the night.”

“I can’t do this without you.” Cy walked him to the back door. After Vic left, he phoned TJ to check in and catch him up on the latest.

“If two of them break in, you may need more backup.”

“Vic and the crew have us covered.”

“I’ll put two more Rangers on alert anyway,” his boss said before Cy heard the click.

A second later his phone rang. The caller ID said Nadine, Kellie’s mother. He picked up. “Kellie?”

“Hi.” The small tremor in her voice brought out his protective instincts.

“Is all well with you and your horses?”

“They’re in fine form.” She’d ignored his question about herself. The tension had to be getting to her. “I just wanted you to know my parents are driving me home now. We should be there in five minutes.”

“Good. Before you come in the house, check your mailbox.”

“I will. See you soon.” She hung up.

He got up from the table and walked into the living room while he prepared himself for what might happen tonight. If the stalker suspected Kellie had been telling the truth about a husband, he might lie low so she would think the menace had gone away. But neither he nor his twin would ever go away. One thing about a sociopath. Once he’d fixated on his victim, he’d dog her to the bitter end no matter how long it took. With two sociopaths working together, they were a lethal combination.

He ground his teeth, hoping both of them showed up. Once they were taken down, Kellie could get on with her life. So could he...

While he was trying to imagine what that would be like now that he’d met her, he heard her key in the lock. In order not to frighten her, he moved to the kitchen so she’d see him when she walked in. After she locked the door behind her, she turned around.

He noticed she was wearing her riding clothes and boots. Kellie’s eyes flew to his. She held up a couple of catalogs. “This was all I found in the box.” She put them on the kitchen table.

Cy thumbed through them, but there was no envelope hiding inside the pages. He looked up. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“Ages ago.”

“Why don’t you sit down and tell me what’s wrong? Did something happen you need to talk to me about?”

Her chin lifted. “What’s wrong is that you’re putting your life on the line for me,” she said in a voice shaking with emotion.

He cocked his head. “Would you rather someone else were doing this job? It can be arranged.”

“No!” she cried out. “No,” she said in a softer tone and looked away. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”

“Then what did you mean?” came his deep, almost-seductive voice.

She folded her arms to her waist. “Situations like this shouldn’t happen to anyone, but I know they do. Horrible things happen all the time, all over the world, and a handful of men and women like you are courageous enough to make the bad people go away. There isn’t a way to repay you for what you have to face twenty-four hours a day in order to protect someone like me.”

Cy put his hands on one of the chair backs. “I get my payment every time I lock up a criminal and throw away the key. There’s no satisfaction like it.”

“Then you’re an amazing breed of man.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking about you when I saw you perform in Bandera. Only a few exceptional women have the patience and the skills to work year in and year out to thrill the thousands of people who can only dream about what you do on your horse. The heart of a champion is inside you. All I could do watching you at the rodeo was sit back and marvel.”

She eyed him with a frank stare. “What you do and what I do aren’t comparable, but I appreciate the compliment.”

“It was heartfelt.”

“You enjoy the rodeo?”

“All my life.”

Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

“I love it. Growing up we had horses and always went to the rodeo. I still keep my horse on my parents’ small ranch and ride when I have time. Like most of my friends when I was young, I thought it would be fun to try bull riding and calf roping. But our pitiful attempts that ended in pain and suffering let me know it takes a lot more than just wanting to do it. You know...like possessing the skill, like being born to it, like having the guts to go at it again and again.”

Her chuckle delighted him. “That’s my father.”

“Some of us have it. Some of us don’t.”

“Instead, you face a terrifying human enemy with no thought for your own life.”

Cy laughed. “Don’t be deceived. I give a lot of thought to my own life, believe me.”

Her smile slowly faded. “I’ve given a lot of thought to your life, Ranger Vance. Please take care of yourself.” The throb in her voice resonated inside him. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Unless you need me for anything, I’m going to go upstairs.”

He reached for her phone and handed it to her. “You can have this back. Forensics got what they needed from it, but they still have your laptop. I’ve removed all the messages.”

She gripped it. “Did they find a voice match?”

“Yes.”

“A Texan accent?”

“No. The stalker sounds like certain people who live in either Virginia Beach or Charleston, South Carolina.”

Kellie’s surprise over the news caused her to groan. “Charleston was the place where he killed one of his victims.”

“Listen to me, Kellie. If I have anything to do with it, there won’t be any more.”

She nodded. “As I told my mother earlier today, I believe in you. Now I’m going to call some of my friends who left messages with my mom.”

“After you do that, turn the ringer off. If the stalker intends on calling you tonight, I don’t want you bothered by him. You need sleep.”

A pained expression broke out on her face. “What are you going to do?”

“Coordinate with my backup crew.”

She slid him an anxious glance. “You think something might happen tonight?”

He watched a nerve throbbing at the base of her throat. Cy was determined to make her fear go away. “If not tonight, perhaps tomorrow night or the next. Either way we’ll be ready.”

“Then I’ll say good-night.”

“If you need me, phone me. But by no means come downstairs until I let you know it’s all right.”

“Okay.” She held his gaze for a moment longer before she went upstairs. Soon after, Cy’s phone rang. It was Vic.

“I’m walking down the alley to the garage.”

“I’ll open it.”

“Did you know the boss has supplied extra backup?”

“He told me.”

“Chris and Jose will be in a taxi in the alley. Lyle and the rest of the crew are in place.”

“Good. We’re set. This is the window of time the stalker has been waiting for. I’m counting on his making a move any night this week. Next week he knows she’ll be leaving for Colorado. If he thinks she could be married, he’s got to find out and get rid of her husband before he takes her off someplace and strangles her. He’ll need his brother.”

“Yup.”

“See you in a minute.”

Cy hung up and went out to the garage. He lifted the door partway. In less than a minute, Vic came crouching in before Cy lowered it. They both walked through the garage and kitchen to the living room.

“Has Kellie gone to bed?”

“As far as I know.”

“How’s she handling it?”

“The woman is tough. I’m beginning to understand why she’s such a fierce competitor in the arena. That’s the only reason this setup is working.”

“I think it’s more a case of the right two people being thrown together.”

Cy knew where his friend was going with that remark, but now wasn’t the time. “The thing I keep wondering about is why this pervert targeted Kellie specifically. Her beauty provides one obvious answer. But there’s more to it than that. Nothing we’ve learned so far, not even after collaborating with the FBI agents back east, has shed any light. I’m trying to find the missing link.”

“Maybe it will have to come after we catch them.”

“You’re right.” He glanced at Vic. “What do you say we do this in shifts? I’ll take the first watch.” He fixed the hide-a-bed so Vic could stretch out when he was ready. “Since we know there’s no side or back door to this place, my hunch is he’ll come in through the garage with a device to let himself in the door into the kitchen.”

Vic nodded. “That makes the most sense. The fence isn’t that high. He’ll be able to scale it easily. I did a patrol of the town houses on the other side of the alley. The tenants don’t have garages and park their cars in covered parking across their street. If someone wanted to hide out, they’d have to jump the fence from this alley into one of the backyards and wait so they wouldn’t be seen.”

After talking strategy for a while, Vic lay down. Cy turned out all the lights in the condo before going into the kitchen. He took out his .357-caliber SIG Sauer and put it on the table. After pouring himself a hot mug of coffee, he sat down in front of his laptop in the dark. Time to catch up on the paperwork for Kellie’s case while he could still remember times and details of their trip to Colorado.

Once he’d finished, he went back to Kellie’s website and scrolled through her scheduled events, starting with the first rodeo of this year. To his shock he discovered she’d entered the Salem, Virginia, Annual Stampede on January 9. His adrenaline surged.

She’d gone back east!

Cy should have thought about that before now, but he’d been so concentrated on the months since the stalker had appeared, only now had he started to explore all the possibilities.

After consulting a Virginia map, he saw that Salem was on the opposite side of the state from Virginia Beach.

He scrolled down quickly. More shocks. She’d ridden in the Walterboro, South Carolina, Rodeo two weeks after leaving Virginia. Cy looked up the South Carolina map. Walterboro was only forty minutes away from Charleston.

Were the stalkers born in Charleston? Did they call it home when they weren’t victimizing women? Vic was still waiting to hear back on the identical twins most likely born there or the Virginia Beach area. His friend was asleep, so Cy would have to wait to discuss the idea with him later.

Needing to do something with all the energy flooding his system, he kept scrolling for more information. On the first weekend of February she rode in the Chatsworth, Georgia, Rodeo. Mid-February she entered the rodeo in Memphis, Tennessee, where another murder had taken place.

In March she’d participated in rodeos throughout the Midwest before returning to Austin via a rodeo in Hampton, Arkansas, and another one in Fort Worth, Texas. But his mind kept going back to the Walterboro Rodeo.

If for some reason the stalkers had gone to the rodeo that night, they would have seen Kellie, who had the best time during the performance that night. That might have been the place they first decided she’d be their next target.

Unless—and it was a big unless—they were born in Walterboro or the surrounding area. Were Cy’s thoughts leaping to improbable conclusions because of the voice match Rafe had found? Could he rely on such a science to provide answers?

Impatient with himself for wanting to find Kellie’s stalker so badly he was starting to cross that line TJ had warned him about, he got up to pace the kitchen. He didn’t want to take the time to fix another pot of coffee, so he opted for a soda from the fridge. No sooner had he sat down again than his phone rang. It was ten to three. A check of the caller ID told him it was Jose.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve got my night-vision goggles trained on a masked figure wearing a dark pullover and pants walking in the alley toward you. Can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman.”

“Don’t do anything. Let’s see what happens, then close in.” He hung up and called to Vic, who sprang off the couch and joined him. “Jose has spotted someone in a mask walking in the alley in this direction.”

Vic nodded and drew out his weapon. While he hunkered under the table, where he had a direct view of the doorway, Cy flattened himself against the wall on the other side of the door.

They remained in position ten long minutes before Cy heard the sweet telltale sound of someone picking the lock, probably with a paper clip and tension wrench. If Kellie hadn’t gone to the police, the scenario happening to her now would have ended her life. As he geared up for the takedown, a rush such as he’d never known took over.

All of a sudden the door opened. Cy came at the killer from behind and put a headlock on him, forcing him to the floor. The stalker let go with a stream of venom while he fought with the strength of a man high on drugs. Cy felt him bite his arm. It took Vic’s help to subdue him long enough to handcuff his hands behind his back and ankle cuff him.

Cy rolled his body over and pulled the mask off his head. There was the face of the man in the picture with the longer hair. He leaned over him. “Surprise, Denny, or whoever the hell you are. Was it Donny, Andy or Drew who strangled the woman in Charleston? I’m the husband you and your twin didn’t think existed. You’re under arrest for the stalking of Kellie Parrish.”

By now Vic was on the phone to the rest of the crew. Within seconds Kellie’s town house was filled with agents. Cy took the greatest pleasure in reading him his Miranda rights before he was hauled out to the van.

* * *

THE SOUNDS OF men’s raised voices had brought Kellie awake. She shot out of bed and dressed quickly in a top and jeans. Cy had told her not to go downstairs. But whatever had been going on below, she couldn’t stay up here and not know what was happening. She hurried out of her bedroom and flew down the stairs straight into Cy’s arms.

He must have been on his way up to her because he caught her to him, hugging her hard before he held her away from him. “We caught the twin with the longer hair, Kellie. For the sake of practicality, we’ll call him Denny. In time we’ll catch his brother and you’ll never have to be afraid again.”

The information he relayed filled her with such relief, she could barely find words. “If anything had happened to you...” Her voice sounded raw.

“Nothing did.”

“That’s not true. There’s blood on your forearm.”

“He bit me.”

“Let me see.” She pushed the sleeve of his shirt up to his elbow. “You need to go to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot. You could be infected already.”

“The bleeding has stopped. I’ll take care of it later. Right now we need to talk.” He ushered her over to the couch, where they could sit.

The warmth of his body stayed with her. “I know what you’re going to tell me. This isn’t over yet.”

“No, it isn’t.” In the soft lamplight, his chiseled jaw stood out in stark relief. “We don’t know if his brother was watching what went down here tonight from a distance, or if Denny planned to kidnap you and take you to his brother at another location. What we do know is that when the brother we’ll call Dan realizes Denny has been arrested or isn’t around anymore, his rage will escalate and he’ll come after you himself to finish the job. Dan is the one who approached you in Pendleton.”

Kellie kneaded her hands. “When he finds out you exist—maybe he believes it now—his hatred toward you is what frightens me.”

He gave her arm a squeeze. “Nothing’s going to happen to either one of us. Why don’t you go upstairs and phone your parents? Tell them that one of the brothers is now in custody, and we’re hoping to catch the other one soon. It will be a great relief to them.”

“I know.” She looked into his eyes. “Are you going to get your arm looked at now?”

“I’ll do it after I run by headquarters. Vic will stay here while I’m gone so you’ll be safe. I want you to go back to bed and we’ll see each other tomorrow.”

“It already is tomorrow.”

His lips twitched. When he did that, her heart skipped a beat. “So it is.”

“Cy?”

“What is it?”

Terrified she might give in to the impulse to kiss him and humiliate herself, she got up from the couch. “Thank you. There should be a better way to tell you how I feel, but I can’t think what it is. Please get that arm examined.” Before she blubbered all over the place, she left the living room and hurried up the stairs.

She wished she could go with him, but that was ridiculous. He was a Ranger and had business to take care of. He’d just taken down one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. Cy had done his job and needed to finish up.

Kellie sank down on the side of her bed. The trouble was, she’d come to look at him as someone much more than an officer of the law. They’d agreed to a fictional marriage to trap the killers, but tonight she didn’t feel like a fictional character.

You’d like to be his real wife. Admit it, Kellie.

Appalled by the admission, and shocked that her feelings could run this deep so quickly, she phoned her parents. They were thankful Cy seemed to have accomplished a miracle so fast, and both were overcome with emotions. After they hung up, she got into bed, hoping she could fall asleep. When the phone rang again, she was surprised to discover it was already seven thirty.

She glanced at the screen on her cell, but there was no accompanying ID.

It was the stalker. He’d left a message. She listened to it.

“You’re still lying about having a husband. I saw the police drag my brother out of your garage to their van. You’re all going to be so sorry for what you’ve done. Just wait and see what I’ve got planned.”

He’d been watching the whole time.