WANTED (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

The day was still going at breakneck speed, but one look at Lyla, and Wyatt knew he had to slow down this pace. At least temporarily so he could get her back to the ranch.

She was literally asleep at his desk.

Worse, Wyatt wasn’t sure how long she’d been that way. He’d gotten so caught up in trying to help Stella and dealing with the investigation that he hadn’t realized just how late it was. Half past three, which meant she’d spent the better part of the day at the marshals’ building. Considering she’d slept very little the night before, she had to be exhausted, and that wasn’t good for either her or the baby.

“I’m getting Lyla out of here,” he told Declan. Like Wyatt, his brother had been on the phone for hours, still was, but he gave Wyatt a go-ahead nod.

Leaving didn’t mean Wyatt wouldn’t continue to help. All of his brothers had pitched in to try to stop Stella’s arrest, but so far they were batting zero. Mainly because Stella wasn’t cooperating. She’d lawyered up and was refusing to talk to any of them.

That didn’t make her guilty.

Well, guilty of murder anyway. No. She was almost certainly doing this to protect Kirby. Unfortunately, Greg’s statement, which he’d now officially made and signed, put Stella at the crime scene, and that slap from Webb gave her a motive.

“How about you?” Wyatt asked Kirby. “Want a ride back with us?”

But he knew Kirby’s answer before he’d even asked the question. Kirby just shook his head.

On a weary huff, Wyatt grabbed their coats, went to his desk and gave Lyla a gentle tap on the shoulder. She snapped to a sitting position, but then she looked around as if trying to figure out where she was.

“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes.

“Don’t be. You needed the rest, and I should have gotten you home by now. To the ranch,” he corrected when he realized what he’d said.

It wasn’t Lyla’s home, and he was reasonably sure she didn’t want to be there. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.

She stood, wobbling a little, and he resisted the urge to scoop her up into his arms and carry her down the stairs. Four of his brothers were in the office. And his boss. Along with Kirby, who was refusing to leave. Best not to have to explain to his family yet why he’d be carrying a perfectly healthy woman. But he’d have to explain things soon.

Once they had Stella’s confession nixed.

Lyla glanced around the room as they put on their coats and headed out. “Please tell me that Travis, Zeke and Greg haven’t all been released.”

“Travis has. No grounds to hold him, since we still haven’t made a concrete connection between him and the missing gunman. Greg’s in the interview room, finishing up his statement with Ranger McKinnon, and Zeke’s in another room, waiting his turn to be interviewed.”

“And Stella?” she asked hesitantly.

“In Saul’s office with her lawyer. Unless something drastic happens, Ranger McKinnon will take her into custody when he’s finished with Zeke.”

That sounded about as unright as anything could sound. Stella was going to be placed under arrest, and so far there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Wyatt paused at the front door, looked out. He half expected Travis to be there, waiting to add some wisecracking remark that would make Wyatt want to break his face. But no Travis. No sign of a gunman, either. So, Wyatt got her moving to his SUV.

The clouds were iron-gray, and the temperature had dropped. There’d been no time to check the weather, but it looked as if a winter storm was moving in. The way his luck had been running, they’d get a blizzard.

“What else did I miss when I was asleep?” she asked once they were on the road.

A lot. But Wyatt wouldn’t tell her about the family debate on how to handle Stella’s confession. It hadn’t been pretty and had involved a lot of emotion. All of them had agreed to try to have the confession tossed out, but none of them had come up with a reasonable way to make that happen.

Though some unreasonable ways had been bantered about.

Kirby had wanted to hog-tie her.

No need to go through all of that again, so Wyatt stuck to the investigation itself.

“It was rattlesnake venom used to kill Sarah,” he explained. “But it’s a dead end because it was such a small amount that the killer could have gotten it from dozens of places around the state.”

She groaned softly, obviously disappointed about that. “What about the surveillance footage? Anyone other than Greg and Zeke on it? Or should I say Spenser and Zeke?”

She said Spenser’s name as if it were profanity. Wyatt felt the same way. He sure as hell didn’t like that the man had waltzed in after all these years and implicated Kirby.

Which was probably the reason Stella had confessed.

“Neither Travis nor Billy popped up on the footage.” But Wyatt had to shake his head. “Of course, they could have come in earlier and just waited around.”

“Or they could have just hired someone,” she added. “Someone whose face wouldn’t have stuck out on the security cameras.”

Yeah. And that, too, was something that Wyatt had already considered. But it didn’t rule out any of their suspects. Even Greg and Zeke. Because one of them could be behind this and still have shown up at the hospital to make himself look as if he’d been set up.

“There was a landline in Sarah’s room,” Wyatt continued, “and it was off the hook, as if someone had just used it.”

“You mean Sarah?”

Wyatt lifted a shoulder and made another check of the mirrors. No one else was on the road. “Her prints are on it.”

“That’s not proof. The prints could have been planted there by simply taking her hand and putting it on the surface. But if I could take a look at it, I might be able to determine pressure points. If someone was holding her hand on that phone, sometimes the grip pattern is off.”

“Giving you access to the evidence might be hard to do.” He figured that would get her looking in his direction, and it did.

“I’m officially off the case?”

He nodded. “The governor’s assistant called and made it clear that we weren’t to have any part of this. But that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to investigate on our own. Maybe after you get something to eat, then you can call one of your CSI friends who can in turn contact the lab and make sure they’re doing a check for the grip pattern on the phone.”

“Of course.” He heard the disappointment in her voice. They’d known they would be taken off the case, but it felt like being fired for doing something wrong. Well, he’d done wrong, all right, but it’d been for the right reasons.

To keep Lyla safe.

And if necessary, he’d continue to do wrong.

“I spoke with Sarah’s doctor,” Wyatt went on, “and he said she had been responding more lately and that he thought she might be coming out of the coma.”

“Billy was right,” she mumbled.

About that anyway. But since this whole mess with Greg, Zeke and Travis, Wyatt wasn’t ready to completely eliminate Billy as a suspect in either his father or his mother’s murders.

Lyla stayed quiet a moment, obviously giving that some thought. “Is it possible that Sarah came out of the coma but then pretended to still be in one?”

“It’s possible.” Wyatt had asked the doctor that, too. And if that’s what had indeed happened, then she could have made the calls herself.

But why?

Could Sarah have done that to get her accomplice to come to her room, or had she made the calls because she’d been genuinely afraid for her life? Unfortunately, the answer to that might be buried with her.

Wyatt took the final turn toward the ranch when he heard the sound. A loud popping noise. The steering wheel immediately jolted to the right, followed by a much louder sound as if a helicopter were hovering overhead.

No helicopter though.

“The tire blew out,” he told Lyla.

Not the best time for something like this to happen, but at least they were close to the ranch. The white fence surrounding the pasture was just ahead and to his right. Rather than take the time to change the tire himself and risk being out in the open with Lyla, he could just call one of the ranch hands to come and get them.

Lyla grabbed on to the dash. Just in time. Because there was another hard turn of the steering wheel, followed by the grinding noise of his tire rims scraping over the asphalt. He had no choice but to bring the SUV to a stop on the shoulder.

Everything inside Wyatt went still.

What were the odds that he’d have two blowouts within seconds of each other when he hadn’t seen any debris on the road?

Slim to none.

“Get down!” he ordered Lyla.

But his warning was already too late. The bullet blasted across the top of the SUV.

* * *

L
YLA
DIDN
’
T
HAVE
TIME
to react. But Wyatt sure did. He shoved her down on the seat, covering her body with his, and in the same motion, he drew his gun.

Just as another shot slammed into the SUV.

The fear was instant. So was the burst of adrenaline. Followed by the absolute terror that her baby and Wyatt could be harmed. They had to get out of there because the bullets just kept coming.

Despite the panic crawling through her, Wyatt seemed to stay calm, though every muscle in his body had turned to iron. Still, he grabbed his phone and made a call.

“Get someone out here to the east corner of the ranch,” he said to whoever answered. “Someone’s firing shots at us, and we’re pinned down.”

That made the fear even worse, but Lyla tried to concentrate on getting out of this deadly situation.

“Did he shoot out all the tires?” Lyla asked.

“I don’t think so. But the front two tires are both flat. I think it was some kind of explosive device.”

Mercy. That meant this wasn’t just some loosely planned attack on a rural road. The device had likely been set earlier. Maybe even while they were in the marshals’ building. Of course, there’d been plenty of opportunity, since they’d been there for hours. It could have happened when she’d fallen asleep, and Lyla cursed herself for that lapse in attention.

“I should have kept watch when we were in town,” she mumbled.

“Whoever’s behind this would have found a way to make an attack happen,” he mumbled right back.

That was no doubt true, but knowing the truth didn’t make this situation less dangerous. Why had the killer come after them now and like this? The blood evidence at Rocky Creek had been destroyed, and Stella had confessed to being Sarah’s accomplice. Not that she’d actually done it, but why would that matter to the real killer?

Unless there was something else out there that needed to be concealed or destroyed.

Still, that didn’t answer her question as to why someone had come after Wyatt and her again.

“The shooter’s on the driver’s side,” Wyatt told her. “Probably in those woods, and he’s using a rifle. But I don’t think he wants us dead. If he did, he could have set a bigger explosive device on the SUV.”

True, and that only caused her heart to race even more. “So, this is a kidnapping attempt?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he only wants you alive.”

So he could force her to tamper with evidence. Except, that didn’t make sense, since she was officially off the case. Unless this person believed she’d still have access to the evidence.

And she probably could get access.

But not without compromising the entire investigation.

Which might be exactly what the killer wanted to happen. After all, it wasn’t just one murder now. With Sarah’s death, it was two.

“Hold on,” Wyatt told her, and that was the only warning she got before he threw the SUV into gear, caught onto the steering wheel with his left hand and hit the accelerator.

The SUV lurched forward, and despite the two flat tires, somehow Wyatt managed to turn them in the direction of the white fence. It was at least eight feet high. Too high to climb with the bullets flying, but if they could somehow manage to get over it, there were some trees on the other side that they could use for cover.

Maybe.

Unless there was someone waiting for them there.

What they needed was backup, and it was no doubt already on the way thanks to Wyatt’s call. Lyla wasn’t sure how far they were from the ranch, but she thought it was only a mile or two. However, that was way too much, considering they were in the sights of a shooter.

The muscles in Wyatt’s face and arms strained to keep the SUV aimed at the fence, and even though he’d told her to stay down, she had to do something to help. She reached around, gripping the steering wheel with him. It was like pulling at dead weight, but they continued toward the fence.

Wyatt didn’t hit the brakes as they got closer. The SUV plowed right through it, sending the wooden planks flying and battering into the vehicle. Finally, he brought them to a stop next to a pair of oaks. All in all, it was a good position, because the SUV would block the shooter’s view once they were out the passenger’s side door.

“Get behind the tree,” he insisted. “But stay low and move fast.”

Even though her hands were shaking like crazy, Lyla managed to get the door open, and she practically dove out of the SUV. She landed on her feet behind one of the oaks, and she made room for Wyatt so he could join her.

But he didn’t do that.

His phone buzzed, and he hit the answer button. Lyla couldn’t hear any of his conversation because of the gunfire, but when he finished the call, Wyatt glanced at her.

“Get on the ground and crawl to that next tree,” he ordered.

She did, scrambling to put some more distance between the shooter and her.

Wyatt, however, didn’t do the same.

“Come on!” she shouted to him.

But Wyatt only shook his head. He took aim at the shooter from the driver’s side window and fired.

“Go with him,” Wyatt insisted.

It took Lyla a second to figure out what he meant. Then she heard the sound of a horse’s gallop and spotted the ranch hand on a pinto.

“Go!” Wyatt repeated.