WANTED (2 page)

“Rocky Creek Children’s Facility,” he supplied.

He tried not to go back to those bitter memories. Failed. Always failed. But bad memories weren’t going to stop him from doing his job. Wyatt went back to the center of the living room so he could keep watch to see what the bozo with the gun was going to do.

“Webb’s body was found, what, about six months ago?” she asked.

“Eight. The Rangers are still investigating it.” He paused, to try to figure out if this was old news to her, but he couldn’t tell. “Webb’s wife, Sarah, confessed to the murder, but she had an accomplice. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to say who her accomplice was, because she’s in a coma.”

And Sarah had been that way since she’d tried to kill his brother Dallas and Dallas’s wife, Joelle. Dallas had had to shoot the woman, and she’d been in a coma ever since.

“Your foster father is a suspect,” Lyla whispered. “I remember reading that in one of the reports.”

Yeah. Kirby Granger was indeed that. And worse, he might have actually done it, though Wyatt never intended to admit that aloud.

Not to her.

Not to anyone.

Especially if it turned out that Lyla Pearson was living proof that Kirby was not just innocent but that someone else was willing to do pretty much anything to cover their own guilt.

“You’re a suspect, too,” Lyla added. Her breathing kicked up a notch, and she got to a crouching position. Maybe because she was just now realizing she could be in danger—from him. Heck, she might even be thinking of running.

Wyatt nodded, watching both her and the window.

She blinked, and he saw the doubt in her eyes. Lyla shifted her position again. Oh, yeah. Definitely planning to run.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” he said. “But I suspect you know a lot more than you’re saying.”

The remark had no sooner left his mouth when Lyla leaped to her feet and started toward the hall. Probably to get the .38 that was somewhere in her bedroom. Wyatt hadn’t seen the gun, but he figured it must be in the house.

Wyatt latched on to her, trying to stay gentle, but it was hard to do when she brought up her knee to ram into his groin. He had no choice but to drag her to the sofa and pin her body with his.

It didn’t put him in the best of positions. He could no longer see the window or the gunman, but it stopped her from getting away.

Lyla frantically shook her head and tried to punch him. “Why are you doing this?”

He dodged her fist, barely. “Why are
you
doing this?” And Wyatt dropped his gaze to her stomach.

“I don’t understand.” The words rushed out with her breath.

Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. But Wyatt decided to test a theory or two. “I think you got pregnant so you could manipulate this investigation.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “My baby has nothing to do with Jonah Webb’s murder.”

“You sure about that?” he countered.

“Positive,” Lyla mumbled, but there it was. The doubt that slid through those intense brown eyes. “Why would it? Why would my baby have anything to do with this?”

Wyatt took a deep breath. Had to. “Because that baby is mine.”

Chapter Two

Lyla figured either Marshal Wyatt McCabe was insane, or someone had told him some huge lies. Either way, she had to get away from him.

She put her hands against his chest and gave him a hard shove. She might as well have been shoving a brick wall, because he didn’t budge. He wasn’t exactly what she would call muscle-bound, but he was solid.

“Please.” Lyla tried to reason with him. “Let me go. Neither me nor my baby has anything to do with you or the murder investigation.”

The marshal made a
yeah right
sound, but he did move off her. Not far, though. He levered himself up but continued to loom over her. Continued to volley glances out the window, too. Did that mean the man with the gun wasn’t working with Marshal McCabe?

Lyla wasn’t sure.

She wasn’t sure of anything any longer except that she wanted to get away from both men. Her keys were already in her car, which was parked in the garage. If she could get to it, she might be able to escape.

Might.

But she couldn’t risk getting shot. Of course, these men might have something much worse in mind than just hurting her. They might want to kill her.

But why?

She shook her head. Marshal McCabe obviously wasn’t the only one with questions.

“Who’s the gunman?” she asked him again. Maybe now that the facade of the helpful lawman was gone, she’d get some straight answers, because the ones she’d gotten from him so far hadn’t made a lick of sense.

McCabe lifted his shoulder. “I don’t know. Your bodyguard maybe?”

“I don’t need a bodyguard.” But she rethought that. “At least, I didn’t until twenty minutes ago. Clearly, I need one now to protect me from you.”

He studied her as if trying to decide if that was a lie or not. It wasn’t. In fact, everything she’d told the lawman had been the truth, but he obviously didn’t believe her.

Lyla tried to remember everything she knew about Marshal McCabe, but other than the sketchy details about the Webb murder investigation, she drew a blank.

“We’ve met before?” she asked, though she was certain they hadn’t. McCabe was the sort of man a woman tended to remember. Tall, good-looking. Dark brown hair and gunmetal-blue eyes.

Yes, definitely the sort to be remembered.

“No,” he answered. “But you know me.”

“I don’t,” she insisted.

That baby is mine,
he’d said, but he had to be wrong about that.

Well, maybe.

“I used in vitro fertilization to get pregnant,” she explained, though judging from the flat look he gave her, he already knew.

“Yeah. At the Hanover Fertility Clinic in San Antonio,” he supplied. “You had the procedure done two and half months ago, on your thirty-first birthday, and it worked on the first try. You got the news two weeks later that you were going to be a mom.”

A chill went through her. It was downright creepy that this stranger knew such private things about her, but it chilled her even more to know he might have told the truth about the baby being his.

“The clinic assured me that the donor I used would be anonymous,” Lyla explained. “In fact, I insisted on it, because I intend to raise this baby myself.”

“Yeah,” the marshal repeated. “Old baggage. I know about that, too.”

Lyla snapped back her shoulders, ready to blast him for invading her life and privacy this way. It wasn’t any of his business about her failed relationships.

She had to get her teeth unclenched so she could speak. “I want you to get out of here now. The deputy’s already on the way, and if you don’t leave, I’ll have him arrest you. I don’t care if you’re a marshal or not.”

“Oh, I’m a marshal, all right, and I believe you manipulated that in vitro procedure so you could force me to cooperate.”

Lyla tried to throw her hands in the air, but McCabe pinned them to the sofa. “And how could I possibly have manipulated it?”

He glared at her. “By switching mine and my late wife’s embryo with the one you should have received.”

Oh, yes. He was crazy.

“I didn’t switch anything. There was a slim-to-none chance that I’d get pregnant the old-fashioned way, because my body rarely produces eggs, even with fertility treatments. So, I used the donation the clinic gave me.” She paused just long enough to gather her breath. “And what possible proof do you have that it was yours?”

“All the proof I need.” But McCabe paused, mumbled some really bad profanity. “Four months ago I hired a surrogate to have a baby, using the embryo that my late wife and I’d stored at a clinic. Not Hanover,” he quickly added. “Another one in San Antonio. But then the surrogate changed her mind and decided not to go through with the pregnancy.”

Lyla mentally went through all that. “And you think I somehow got yours and your wife’s embryo instead of the anonymous one I requested.”

“I know you did,” he fired back. “Last month, the clinic called me and said the embryo was missing. They said maybe it’d been stolen or accidentally donated, and I followed a very hard-to-follow paper trail that eventually led to you.”

Oh, mercy. Maybe it was true, then, but Lyla wasn’t just going to take this man’s word for it. “I want to see this paper trail.”

Marshal McCabe tipped his head toward the barn. “After I hear what your gun-toting friend has to say.”

“He’s not my friend!” she practically shouted. “And so what if the clinic accidentally gave me your embryo? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you in my life, and I don’t want you part of my baby’s life.”

Except there was the possibility about this being his late wife’s embryo. No. Did that mean he’d have some kind of legal claim?

That couldn’t happen.

“The switch wasn’t an
accident,
” he insisted. But then he shook his head. “At least I don’t think it was. I think there’s something bad going on here and that you’re a key player in this wrongdoing.”

Lyla couldn’t argue with the
something bad
theory. He was there, right in her face. But she’d done nothing wrong and had taken no shortcuts in getting pregnant with this baby.

“I don’t know where you got your information about me, but there’s no reason whatsoever that I’d want to have your baby.” And she didn’t bother to say it nicely, either. “I want you arrested and out of here. That’ll happen as soon as the deputy arrives.”

Soon couldn’t be soon enough, though. Lyla prayed that whoever the sheriff had sent out was speeding to her ranch right now.

“If I explain to the deputy what I’ve learned, maybe he’ll arrest you,” McCabe threatened right back. “Because one way or another, you will tell me what’s going on.”

“I have no idea,” Lyla insisted, but she was talking to the air, because the marshal’s attention was fastened to the barn now. He practically jumped to his feet and snapped in that direction.

Alarmed at the concern that she saw in his eyes, Lyla jumped up, as well, and followed his gaze. There wasn’t one man but two out there now. Both wearing camouflage fatigues. Both armed.

Oh, God.

Now she had three armed men on her ranch.

“Either your second bodyguard just showed up, or you’ve done something to piss off someone other than me,” McCabe growled.

Even though she didn’t trust the marshal, that didn’t mean Lyla could ignore what he’d just said. Maybe she had riled someone. After all, she was the second in charge of a huge crime-scene-unit lab, and processed all kinds of evidence.

“You think those men are here to hurt me?” she asked, peering out at them.

“Hard to say.”

She was tired of the vague answers. “Then guess,” Lyla demanded. She pinned her attention to the gunmen, too. If they moved one inch, she’d have to move as well. She prayed they didn’t start shooting into the house.

McCabe shook his head. “Maybe there’s someone who doesn’t want you involved in this.”

Well, she certainly fell into that category. Lyla didn’t want to be involved even if she had no idea what
this
was. Still, that was something she would have to work out later. After she had some way to protect herself.

Lyla moved, ready to race toward her bedroom to get the .38 she had in the back of her nightstand drawer.

“I don’t think so,” McCabe snarled.

He hooked his left arm around her waist, dragged her to him and anchored her against his body. She’d only known him a matter of minutes, and it was the third time he’d put his hands on her. Lyla wanted to do something about that.

Actually, she wanted to punch him and run.

But she couldn’t risk hurting the baby. No. As angry and scared as she was, her best bet was to wait for the deputy and maybe try to reason with this man, who claimed to be the father of her child.

A father who might be a criminal.

Lyla tried to think back through their entire conversation. Not easy to do, with her heart and mind racing and with McCabe plastered against her. It was hard to think or breathe with him so close. Still, she forced herself to do just that, and she went back to the part of their conversation before he’d dropped the embryo bombshell.

“Why did you think I had anything to do with the Webb murder investigation?” she asked. Lyla also kept watch on the two gunmen.

“You don’t...yet,” McCabe said.

Despite the clear danger outside, that caused her attention to snap to the marshal. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ll be put in charge of compiling the final investigation, the one that’ll determine who’s responsible for Jonah Webb’s murder.”

Lyla was shaking her head before he even finished. “Not possible. The Texas Rangers have their own crime lab, one of the best in the country.”

“And soon the governor will say there’s a conflict of interest, that the head of the Ranger lab once worked on a case with one of their prime suspects, Kirby Granger.”

“Your foster father,” she mumbled. “It’s true?”

McCabe nodded. “True that they worked together. Not true about the conflict of interest.”

That probably wouldn’t matter. Appearance was everything in this sort of investigation. The sixteen-and-a-half-year-old murder had drawn national attention, and the governor and the Rangers would want to make sure the right people were held responsible for the crime.

Still, there was something about this that didn’t make sense.

“Even if the governor transferred the investigation to the San Antonio Crime Scene Unit, they wouldn’t put me in charge of the case. He’d choose my boss, Dean Mobley.”

“Your boss will excuse himself and insist that you take over,” McCabe said without hesitation or doubt.

Not likely. Mobley and she didn’t see eye-to-eye on much. “Why would he do that, huh?”

“I don’t know, but he will.”

Lyla huffed. “He won’t.” And she would have added more to that argument if she hadn’t heard a welcome sound.

A police siren.

Thank God. The deputy was nearly there. And she hoped he had plenty of backup.

McCabe cursed again, and for a moment she thought it was because of the siren. Maybe it partly was. But he didn’t even spare the front of the house a glance, despite the fact that the police cruiser would soon arrive there. He still had his attention on the two men by the barn.

“Stay inside,” McCabe ordered, and he started for the back door.

Lyla didn’t intend to let him leave. She wanted him arrested. She reached to latch on to his arm, but then she saw the movement.

The two gunmen.

They were no longer behind the barn. They were running. Getting away.

McCabe threw off her grip, and with his gun aimed and ready, he hurried to the back door. Lyla followed him, but there was no way she could stop him. Not with that rock-hard strength.

He’d barely made it to the door before one of the men stopped. Pivoted.

And fired.