Relentless Protector Read online

  Sweet Girl Baby. The familiar words sent a queasy ripple through Lisa’s midsection, but she was too occupied with keeping herself and her son alive to think about it now.

  * * *

  LONG AND LEAN AND standing tall as Texas, Cole Sawyer strode into First National as if he owned the place. Months of doubt and worry over whether he had done the right thing mustering out of the army had all been vanquished by the letter of acceptance in the inner pocket of his jacket. The letter guaranteeing him a place in the next class of U.S. Marshal recruits two months from now in Georgia.

  The army brass had hated losing a warrior in his prime, and his fellow Rangers couldn’t understand why a trained sniper, a hawkeyed marksman who could take down a camouflaged enemy a half mile distant, would “bail” on them. Why he would allow a single incident, viewed through his scope, to instantly, irrevocably make him lose his taste for the kind of clean kills that supported his team’s mission.

  Better he should move his accounts rather than leaving his money at the military credit union, where he would continue running into his former comrades all too often. Where he would be forced to face their disappointment or, worse yet, their attempts to convince him that in wartime, people died, that he hadn’t been the one to kill them.

  He was sitting in a glassed-in booth, filling out the paperwork to open his new accounts, when he saw the brunette walking past him toward the teller’s counter. After months of self-imposed celibacy, he couldn’t help noticing her, his eyes drawn to the curvy figure that her loose raspberry-and-white scrubs could not hide and the wavy, coffee-rich hair that fell well past her shoulders. His gaze flicked to a pretty face, no older than late twenties, and his heart jerked as he was slammed with recognition, followed instantly by guilt.

  She was one of the widowed military spouses featured in last month’s article in USA This Morning—a woman widowed thirteen months before. Widowed because he’d failed her husband.

  He’d known that Lisa Meador and her son lived in town still, had made a note of where she worked and found out where their house was, when he was still thinking of going to her and explaining his role in her husband’s death. Of begging her forgiveness for that one death, one of many. Somehow, though, his C.O., Drew Woodsen, had gotten wind of it and ordered him to steer clear. Cole would have gone anyway, if Woodsen hadn’t made him understand that his appearance would only amount to a selfish—and totally unnecessary—bid for absolution that would end up causing Lisa and her son even more pain.

  Cole meant to drag his gaze away before she caught him looking, but there was something in her glazed, wide-eyed stare that brought him to his feet. Something he’d seen frozen on the features of the female terrorist in the moments before she’d self-detonated in the center of that crowded market.

  Could Devin Meador’s widow be so undone by his death, or facing such financial hardship, that she would actually...

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Sawyer?” asked the bank’s customer service manager, a stout, middle-aged woman with a sprayed blond helmet of a bob. Following his gaze, she smiled on seeing Lisa. “Oh, she is a pretty thing. A friend of yours?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a wink he wasn’t feeling. “Would it be all right with you if I drop these papers back here first thing in the morning?”

  Misreading his distraction, the manager laughed. “Anything for love. You have a pleasant evening.”

  Cole stepped from her office, feeling for the concealed handgun hidden in his waistband just in case. Licensed to carry in the state of Texas, he had come armed only to safeguard the cashier’s check he’d meant to deposit, a check representing the bulk of his life’s savings.

  Never in his wildest imaginings had he figured on the possibility that he might have to stop a bank job, a holdup by a woman radiating the sort of desperation that got people hurt—or killed.

  He hoped his instincts were off, that his own guilt had him imagining things, and the look he’d seen on her face signaled something far more mundane. Maybe she’d been laid off or was behind with a car payment, not planning to resort to a federal crime. As she reached inside an oversize straw handbag at the teller’s station, he willed her to come up with a paycheck, or maybe a withdrawal slip or her ID.

  He gazed across the bank lobby, but he found no help there. Only a big-bellied, older security guard looking at his watch. Checking to see it was just ten minutes before he could lock the doors and get home to enjoy his evening. Mentally, the man had already clocked out.

  And why wouldn’t he, with no other customers in the lobby but the fortyish business type filling out his deposit ticket at an island counter and the pretty raspberry-and-white scrubs woman who pulled out a piece of paper and passed it to the teller before shoving her hand back into the bag...?

  Where she was holding something, Cole was certain. Something that—damn it all—had to be a gun.

  Though he couldn’t see the weapon, he knew it from the way the petite, red-haired teller stiffened and took on the same pale green color as the maternity blouse that covered the late-term swell of her midsection. Cole edged a few steps closer, his hand on his own gun.

  His heart was thumping, adrenaline priming every nerve and muscle, readying him for a fight he didn’t want—the fight to keep everyone inside this bank alive, including his fellow soldier’s widow. No matter how justified the circumstances, he knew that any discharge of his weapon would trigger an investigation, which could easily result in his missing the start date for his training class. And heaven only knew when there might be another.

  But no matter what it cost him, it wasn’t in Cole Sawyer to walk away from trouble, not the sort of trouble that could get a pregnant teller or a distressed widow killed. Swearing he wouldn’t fire unless he absolutely had to, he took another cautious step.

  “Don’t scream, don’t even think of triggering an alarm, and you’ll be fine, I swear it,” Lisa whispered, the tension in her own voice like the sizzling of a fuse.

  A fuse quickly burning toward a deadly detonation. Cole saw it all too clearly, as the teller’s green eyes widened even farther. She was about to lose it, about to give way to a fit of shrieking guaranteed to spell disaster....

  A disaster he had the chance to stop. A second chance...

  He took another step, trying to gain an angle that wouldn’t put the pregnant woman in his line of fire.

  He was interrupted by a sharp cry of alarm, not from the teller but from the friendly service manager who’d helped him. “Oh, no!” Her terror echoed off the glass and marble of the room. “He’s got a gun!”

  She was pointing at him, he realized, as Lisa whirled in his direction, her weapon rising from her purse.

  Cole acted on instinct, diving to one side to avoid fire from both the robber and the security guard, and getting off a single shot of his own, a shot meant to disable and not kill. Because in spite of all his training and several hard lessons underscoring the damage a wounded combatant could still inflict, an older instinct guided his hand. An instinct prompted by the desperation in the brunette’s beautiful brown eyes....

  And the trickle of bright red blood already dripping from her hairline before he squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter Two

  “No!” Lisa shouted without thinking.

  At the crack of gunfire, she dropped the unloaded weapon Evie had forced on her and bolted toward the door, her mind consumed with getting to Tyler, who was sitting bravely with his dog and stuffed toy inside the car with a pair of stone-souled criminals.

  “You screw this up, it won’t go well for him,” the self-styled Evie LeStrange had warned her. Lisa had done exactly as they’d ordered, complying to the letter, yet everything was self-destructing all around her.

  The next few seconds unfolded in slow motion: the guard reaching for his weapon, then gasping and falling forward, clutching at his chest. For an instant, Lisa thought the tall man who’d fired on her must have somehow hit him. Had the bullet missed her and then
ricocheted?

  It was only then that she felt the slash of pain across her upper right arm, an injury that explained why she had dropped the gun. But she couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t think of anything but closing the gap between her and her car before the blue-eyed woman and tattooed man realized—

  As her hand shot toward the door, something struck her like a freight train, but it wasn’t another bullet. Instead, it was the big, athletic-looking “hero” who’d wrecked everything. She screamed as the speed and force of his tackle slammed her to the floor.

  “Please!” Too desperate to register the pain, she struggled to get out from underneath what felt like a brick wall. It was a testament to adrenaline that she partially wriggled free, staring through the glass door—just in time to see her car peeling out.

  “My baby! They’re taking him,” she shouted at the man who’d grabbed her shoulders. “Get off me, you idiot! They’ll kill him if I don’t bring them the cash.”

  * * *

  “WHAT?” COLE’S brain felt battered by her words.

  “They carjacked us and forced me—please! That’s my Camry they’re driving off in, and my son is inside. They’re getting away.”

  In a fraction of a second, the pieces spun together: the drip of blood he’d spotted; the sheer terror in her eyes; the medical scrubs, sensible tennis shoes and tired appearance of a woman on her way home from work, not someone planning a crime. And she was frantic to get out of this lobby.

  No wonder—if she was being truthful. If her son had truly been abducted by carjackers, waiting around for the cops could get him killed.

  Another man might have left the matter for the authorities to handle, but if Cole’s recent experience as a Ranger had taught him nothing else, it had seared into his brain the lesson that even a moment’s hesitation could make the difference between a positive outcome and an unthinkable tragedy. Another Meador family tragedy to add to his account.

  The hell with that, he decided, hauling Lisa to her feet. As he dragged her with him out the door, he tuned out everything extraneous, from the bank manager’s screams to the businessman’s frozen stare to the security guard’s slow crumple, his hand still clutching his chest. Most especially Cole ignored the folded letter in his pocket, the future that would mean nothing if he had to allow Devin Meador’s child to die to claim it.

  “Get into my truck! We’ll follow,” he shouted as a dark-skinned man in work coveralls ducked behind a vehicle.

  The panicked reaction made Cole realize he was still carrying his Glock in plain sight. But he didn’t give a damn about that; this moment was combat, plain and simple, one thing he understood. Act first and deal with cleanup when the smoke clears. They had to catch up with her car, which had taken a right out of the lot, then zoomed past a strip mall before careening around a curve and disappearing.

  Desperate as Lisa Meador was, she still hesitated for an instant, clearly paralyzed by her fear of the man who had just shot and jumped her.

  “It’s all right!” he shouted at her. “Get in. I’m Ranger Captain Cole Sawyer.”

  Whether it was his rank, the mystique of the Ranger reputation or desperation to reach her son, she scrambled into his truck, a big black Ram that should eat up the distance between them and her sedan in no time. When he fired up the engine, he saw that he was leaving prints all over, bloody prints from where he’d fought to hold her down.

  “That way.” She pointed out the direction the silver car had taken. “I’ll bet they’re heading out of town on Sunset.”

  He zoomed through a narrow gap in the light traffic, setting off the squeal of wheels as he bulled his way in. He focused on a wreck just ahead, where a motorcycle lay on its side, its leather-clad rider climbing free. He took it as a sign that the fleeing car had made the left, most likely cutting off the cyclist.

  Forced to slow to avoid hitting another driver who had stopped to help the downed rider, he turned onto Sunset Avenue, toward the tree-lined river, a perfect spot to dump a small corpse. He tried to wipe the thought from his mind, to remind himself of a recent news story about a Dallas carjacker who, after discovering a sleeping toddler in a backseat, had carefully dropped off the sleeping child in her car seat outside a fire station, where she was soon found safe. Maybe there was hope these criminals would have mercy on Lisa’s son, too.

  But there were no safe havens along the muddy Brazos River, nothing but the rough dirt roads traveled by fishermen and boaters, or, more often, by hungry coyotes and scavenging feral hogs. So even if the boy did get dropped off somewhere alive, he and Lisa had damned well better find him quickly, before they lost the light.

  As Cole zoomed toward the outskirts of town, small businesses gave way to well-kept older houses, many with equally well-kept gardens or pens containing a few horses or some kid’s 4-H heifer. After all the violence he’d seen in the Middle East, it was stunning to think of crimes as serious as robbery and abduction affecting this seemingly idyllic place.

  “Tyler, baby, hold on,” Lisa murmured. “Mama’s coming.”

  Noting her pallor, he suspected she was closing in on shock. “There’s a clean hand towel in the glove box,” he said. “You’ll need to put pressure on that arm to slow the bleeding.”

  Not seeming to hear him, she kept staring out the windshield. “We’d just picked up our dog at the groomer’s when she shoved a gun in my back. Then she made me take her and her partner in my car.”

  Making note that one of her assailants had been female, he repeated his suggestion as an order. “Get the towel out now. Apply pressure, or you’ll pass out. Then where will your son be?”

  “You know what, Captain?” she fired back. “If you hadn’t gone and interfered, this would already be over.”

  “Maybe you didn’t notice, but that teller you were terrorizing was about to scream when I made my move. You think I was going to stand there and let an armed robber shoot a pregnant woman? Or me?”

  “If you’d just stayed out of it—”

  “Are you going to sit there arguing until you keel over, or are you going to listen and help me save your kid?”

  Her wide-eyed gaze flicked toward him, but after a moment’s hesitation, she did as he’d ordered, then returned her attention to the road.

  “Buckle up.” Shoving his gun beneath the seat, he followed his own advice. There was every indication this was going to be a bumpy ride.

  The click of her seat belt assured him she was holding herself together for her child’s sake. Probably wasn’t even feeling any pain.

  But as obvious as her distress was, he reminded himself that, widow or not, she might not be the innocent she’d claimed to be. For all he knew, she could be a willing conspirator, one who didn’t trust her partners not to dispose of the encumbrance of her child now that their scheme had gone to hell. If she had really been so irresponsible as to willingly leave the boy in the getaway car while she’d knocked off a bank, she was a far cry from the caring mother the newspaper article had made her out to be.

  Unthinkable as it sounded, he couldn’t rule out the possibility. Which meant that for the moment he couldn’t fully trust anything she said.

  “What’s really going on here, Lisa Meador?” he asked, knowing that, even under duress, the use of a person’s name was the one thing most likely to gain his or her attention. Or cooperation, which was critical right now.

  “How do you know my name?” she asked.

  “I saw that article in the newspaper,” he said, though he’d known who she was long before that. “Your son’s name is Tyler, isn’t it?”

  Tears leaking, she nodded. “He’s only five, and he looked so scared and little in his car seat. How can they do this to him, after everything we’ve been through?”

  Compassion squeezed in his chest. So much for keeping his head and reserving judgment. If her son wasn’t really in that car with two kidnappers, she had to be the best liar on the planet. Or a truly gifted actress who knew exactly how to push
his buttons.

  Changing the subject, he said, “We need to call the sheriff’s office. Bring them in on the chase.”

  The moment the words were out, a stomach-dropping realization hit him. Of all the damned luck. “Ah, hell. I don’t have my cell phone.”

  Since mustering out three weeks earlier, he’d gotten back into the habit of never leaving home without it. Unfortunately, his habit of checking his pockets before doing laundry hadn’t been as quick to return. He’d cursed himself this morning, then ordered a replacement, which his provider had promised would be expressed to him tomorrow. Hell of a lot of good that did him now. “What about you, Lisa? You have a phone?”

  “That woman took it when she switched my purse with this bag. Then she hit my head with her gun right in front of Tyler. I was so scared he would cry again and the man with the tattoos would...” Her voice choked down to nothing.

  So she’d been pistol-whipped as well as shot, in addition to the emotional trauma they’d inflicted. Allegedly inflicted, he reminded himself, though his conscience screamed that he owed it to her to believe her. Owed it to her to make things right, though he’d been forbidden to make contact with her.

  He drilled her with another question. “Tell me more about these people. Did you know either one?”

  “Not the skinny man with all the tattoos, I’m sure of that. But the woman—” She pointed with the bloody towel. “Look. Is that a car?”

  It had to be. Beyond a ridge of trees, a rising yellowish dust cloud indicated a vehicle traveling a rutted access road running alongside the muddy Brazos River, no more than a mile or so ahead and to their right. It was heading toward them, but the timing convinced him it had to be their quarry. Maybe they’d dumped her son, then turned around to head back to the main road and make their escape.

  Or maybe all that was just a fantasy borne of his desperate hope that this rash act would quickly pay off. That he hadn’t just thrown away his future for a beautiful pair of lying brown eyes.