Surrendering to the Sheriff (11 page)

“I’m Sheriff Braddock,” Aiden called out to the shooter. “Drop your weapon.”

That didn’t happen. There was a fourth shot. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to come Aiden’s way, but he was out there and could be gunned down.

“There,” Seth said. He used his gun to motion toward a cluster of trees that were about thirty yards from the building.

At first Kendall didn’t see anything, but then there was a blur of motion. Someone running from one tree to the other. However, she couldn’t tell if it was Yost. Maybe it was an innocent bystander just trying to get out of the way of those bullets.

Kendall pulled in her breath. Waiting and praying. The seconds crawled by, turning into one very long minute. No more shots. No more blurs of motion.

“The deputies are here,” Seth told her.

But when Kendall tried to see, he blocked her way again.

“They’re just up the street,” he added.

Good. Hopefully, just their arrival would cause the shooter or Yost to back off. If Yost was indeed the one doing the shooting, that is.

Just as that thought crossed her mind, someone fired. The shot seemed even louder than the others. Judging from the way Seth’s shoulders tensed, the bullet had come closer to the building.

It was the same for the next shot.

But that bullet sounded different. It took Kendall a moment to realize why. It was the sound of a shot hitting someone.

“Aiden?” she called out and would have bolted to the door if Seth hadn’t caught on to her.

“You can’t go out there,” he insisted.

Yes, she knew that. She couldn’t put the baby in danger that way, but she had to make sure Aiden was all right.

“It’s not Aiden,” Seth warned her.

Because she was trying to fight through the panic, it took her a moment to realize what he meant. Then she spotted the movement in the trees again. Not a blur this time. Someone pushed through the low-hanging branches and staggered out into the parking lot.

Yost.

Even from the distance she could tell it was the same man who’d spoken to her in the pharmacy. He wasn’t wearing a ski mask as he had been when he kidnapped her, but he did have a gun in his hand.

“Drop your weapon!” Aiden shouted to him. He came out farther from the building, his own gun aimed right at the man.

Kendall braced herself for a shoot-out. Yost had already tried to kill them at least once, and he likely wouldn’t hesitate to try again.

But Yost didn’t lift his weapon. It stayed by his side while he clutched his chest with his left hand.

That was when Kendall saw the blood.

The man had been shot.

“He can’t die,” she blurted out. “He has to tell us who hired him.”

“Call an ambulance,” Seth ordered the deputy. “He’s alive,” he added, glancing back at her. “Wait here, and I’ll see what I can do to keep him that way.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dead.

That was not how Aiden had wanted this to play out.

He’d wanted Yost alive and talking. Especially talking. But the two gunshots to the man’s chest had prevented him from saying anything, along with killing him within a matter of seconds.

Hard, though, to feel any sympathy for the man who’d kidnapped Kendall and then shot her.

Within minutes of Yost’s collapsing in the parking lot, Aiden had gone after the shooter. So had two of his deputies while Seth and Jeb had stayed behind in the office to protect Kendall in case this had been some kind of diversion. But after a half-hour search of the area and no trace of Yost’s killer, Aiden and the others had given up.

Yeah, definitely not how Aiden wanted this to go.

The look on Kendall’s face sure wasn’t helping, either. Aiden already felt as if he’d failed her and the baby, again, but now her face was even more bleached out than before, and while she was trying to put up a strong front, she was doing it by leaning on Seth.

Literally.

Aiden tried not to feel jealous about that.

After all, it was Seth who had stayed with her during the attack, and he’d continued to stay with her after Aiden returned to the office and started the flurry of calls to arrange a full-scale search for the killer. But even after Aiden finished those calls, Kendall had stayed by Seth, his arm around her while she continued to look more and more upset.

Since Aiden had plenty to do, he ignored the arm position, tried to ignore the rest of her reactions and got back to work.

“Anything yet on the recording that I got from my mother?” he asked Jeb. The one that might implicate Joplin in all this.

The young deputy shook his head. “The Ranger Lab hasn’t finished with it yet. I’m still trying to get in touch with Joplin so I can ask him about it, but he’s not answering his phone. The calls are going straight to voice mail.”

Not a good sign.

Well, maybe not.

The lawyer could just be tied up with another case, and if Joplin was as guilty as sin, then maybe he was already on the run. Headed far away from Kendall. And if he was indeed in flight mode, maybe he’d get caught. Aiden needed something to break in this case soon.

Also something to break that armlock Seth had on Kendall.

Yep, it was bugging him, and it was bugging him even more that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.

He checked out the window to see how things were progressing in the parking lot. The ME was there as Yost’s body was being loaded into the van. A pair of CSIs were processing the area for evidence.

They might get lucky and find one of the spent shell casings from the killer, which would really come in handy, as the bullets that’d killed Yost had gone clean through. If they could get their hands on just one slug or casing, they’d be able to determine the type of gun. Might even be able to get a match if the gun had been used in some other crime.

“We got the surveillance footage of the high school,” Leland announced when he finished his latest call. “It’s loading on my computer now, and I’ll go over it frame by frame.”

Good. Because all this had started near the high school, so maybe Yost’s attacker had been caught on the footage.

The one good thing in all this was that no shots had been fired near the kids. That was something at least. And they’d also gotten lucky that none of the stray bullets had hit anyone in the park.

Or Kendall.

She’d been in the building during the attack, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have been hurt. Her being in danger was becoming a pattern that Aiden didn’t like one bit.

Of course, there were a lot of things he didn’t like about their situation.

“I’m okay,” Kendall said out of the blue, and that was when Aiden realized he was scowling at her. Actually, he was scowling at Seth, but she probably figured she was in on that facial expression, as well.

“Are you really?” Aiden asked. “Because the stress isn’t good for you. Or the baby.”

A sigh left her mouth, and she finally moved out of Seth’s arms when he got a call and stepped away from her to take it. “It’s not good for you, either.”

She went to Aiden, sliding right into his arms as if she belonged there. “You could have been killed.” Her voice was strained, barely a whisper, but he heard the emotions loud and clear.

Uh-oh.

That wasn’t ordinary concern for a fellow human being. Nope. That was concern for her baby’s daddy. Maybe even for him.

Aiden pulled back, looked in her eyes.

Yeah, it was concern for him all right.

After his reaction to Seth’s embrace, that should have felt darn good. But it only added another layer of complications to their already complicated situation.

Kendall was pregnant with his baby. They were a Texas version of Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers. And because that story hadn’t had a happy ending, this extra layer only made him worry more.

Did that make him move away from her?

Nope.

He’d clearly developed a fondness for complicated layers. Apparently, a fondness for having Kendall in his arms, too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Now she looked up at him. “For what?”

“Everything” seemed like a really good answer.

Kendall stared at him, those eyes so green that they looked like spring itself. Spring with heat, of course. Even now, the heat was there. No doubt in his own eyes, too, so Aiden added another “I’m sorry” for it.

She blinked. Then the corner of her mouth lifted just a fraction.

“Next thing, you’ll be apologizing for the weather.” Kendall took his hand, pressed it against her stomach. “The baby and I are both fine, and you’re the reason for that.”

Another uh-oh.

That was playing with fire in its purest form. Her gratitude. Touching her stomach. Touching her anywhere for that matter.

Seth noticed, of course.

And Aiden didn’t think it was his imagination that Mr. FBI hurried to finish his call so that he could come back to his step-aunt’s aid. However, Kendall stayed put, right against Aiden, even though he did move his hand from her stomach to her shoulder.

“That was Sawyer Ryland, the agent who’s investigating the attack at the jail,” Seth informed them.

That got Aiden’s attention. Kendall’s, too. “Did he find out anything?” she asked.

“It’s all preliminary stuff, but obviously plenty went wrong yesterday. Ryland thinks that a few of the male prisoners were paid off to cause a commotion to get the guards to the cell block after the power went off.”

That would explain why there was only one guard at the checkpoint. “Have any of the inmates talked?”

Seth nodded. “One said money was deposited into his online account. Not much, just a couple of hundred dollars, but he’s claiming the only person he dealt with is the dead guard, Deacon Lynch.”

That was likely true. Because the person who’d hired Lynch and Yost probably wouldn’t have wanted to have his identity revealed to inmates.

“How the heck did Lynch even become a jail guard?” Aiden asked.

Seth gave a frustrated huff. “Because he doesn’t have a record as an adult. He had a juvie one, but it was sealed, of course. But what he did have was debt and plenty of it. Two ex-wives, five kids, and he was way behind in his child support payments. At least he was until a couple of days ago when he gave one of his exes the five grand he owed her.”

Those debts should have been a red flag to the county agency who handled employment records for the guards, and Aiden would do some checking to see who’d dropped the ball.

But there were other things that needed checking, too.

At least five grand to Lynch alone. Probably that and maybe more to Yost and his dead co-kidnapper. The SUV, the weapons and ammo. The bill for this fiasco was adding up, and that meant a money trail.

One that Aiden had possibly already found.

“Any indication if there were other guards working with Lynch?” Kendall asked Seth before Aiden could say anything.

“None right now, but there were definitely some breaches of protocol and security during the attack. There’ll be some heads rolling.”

And Aiden would make sure it happened. Even though he wasn’t in charge of the jail, it was right there, practically under his nose, and he didn’t want anything like this happening again.

“What about the generator?” Aiden asked. “Anything back on why it failed to kick in when the power was cut?”

“Someone tampered with it,” Seth answered. “But the person also disabled the camera out there.”

That likely had been Lynch’s doing, too. He could have managed to tamper with it hours or even days before the attack. And that led Aiden to another question he had about all this.

How had Lynch known that Kendall would be at the jail that day?

Aiden already knew that Kendall visited Jewell two to three times a week, so maybe Lynch just figured she’d be there eventually.

Or maybe it was more than that.

Maybe Lynch knew Kendall would be arriving soon to tell Jewell about the pregnancy.

Of course, that led to yet another set of questions. One in particular that Aiden needed answered.

“Sarah,” Aiden said to his deputy, “could you take over looking at those surveillance films for Leland? I need to borrow him for a while.”

She nodded and went to Leland’s desk, not even asking why the shift in duties. Good thing, too. Aiden really didn’t want to explain this to a lot of people. Seth included. But Seth latched on to it like a dog with a juicy bone.

“What’s wrong?” Seth asked.

This seemed like a good time to take this conversation into Aiden’s office, and he motioned for them to head there. Seth followed, of course, and Aiden wanted to come up with a reason to exclude him. One that didn’t sound petty, since Seth had no doubt noticed Aiden’s reaction to the arm contact with Kendall.

But the truth was, Seth might be able to help.

“For starters,” Aiden said when the four of them were in his office. He aimed the intro at Seth. “You’re not to go off running with what I’m about to tell you. We just need some information right now, and if it pans out, then the running can start. Got that?”

“What kind of information?” There was plenty of suspicion in Seth’s voice. He didn’t answer Aiden’s
got that
, either.

“Money trails. I figure you can use your FBI channels to find a trail faster than I can.” Aiden waited until Seth nodded. “This whole operation would have taken some money. We need to look at Joplin and Palmer to see if they’ve recently moved around this kind of cash.”

Aiden stopped and looked at Kendall. Unlike Seth, she wasn’t glaring at him. There was a healthy dose of sympathy in her eyes. It was sad, but he actually needed it. Because he was about to throw Carla under the bus.

“You’ll also need to look at my mother,” Aiden said to Seth.

Clearly, neither Seth nor Leland had seen that coming, so Aiden spelled it out for them. “It’s possible that Carla withdrew fifty thousand from an account that she’s kept hidden from the family. At best, the timing is suspicious.”

Aiden didn’t fill in the
at worst
part. Judging from Seth’s profanity, he’d already figured it out.

“Your mother came after Kendall because of the baby?” Seth didn’t wait for an answer. He cursed, turned, groaned and then turned back around.

Aiden figured Seth wanted to punch his lights out. With reason. And it wouldn’t help if he told Seth that he hadn’t seen it coming. A massive understatement. He hadn’t wanted to believe his mother was capable of such things.

Still didn’t.

“You might have to dig deep to find this account,” Aiden added. “She’s already aware that someone could be onto her.” Best to leave his sister Shelby out of this for now. “So Carla could have closed the account.”

“If it existed, I’ll find it,” Seth snarled.

It sounded like a threat. Which in this case was good. Because if it came down to an
at worst
conclusion, then Aiden wanted his mother behind bars. No way could he ever forgive her for trying to hurt Kendall and the baby.

Now, with that painful chore done, Aiden looked at Leland. “I want you to call my mother and tell her she’s coming in for questioning. You’ll need to ask her about Kendall’s kidnapping, the attack at the jail. And the two murders,” he added. It wasn’t easy, but he got out the words.

Leland stared at him a moment and looked mighty uncomfortable. “You’re sure?”

Aiden nodded. “It’s got to be done. I want it official, on record. Tell her to bring her lawyer with her.”

Leland stared at him, belted out some profanity. “Well, that oughta be fun,” he grumbled.

“Sorry, I’d do it myself...”

“But it’d be a big-time conflict of interest,” Leland finished for him. “I understand.”

Aiden figured his mother wouldn’t be so generous with the understanding. She’d pitch a fit, cry and disown him.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall whispered to him.

That didn’t make things peachy, but it did help.

More than it should have.

“I’ll get started on this,” Seth said, taking out his phone. He stepped out into the hall, but he’d barely gotten started when Aiden heard the footsteps.

Because every nerve in his body was on edge, Aiden automatically moved Kendall behind him. But it wasn’t a threat. It was Sarah.

“I think I found something, boss,” she said, her voice high-pitched and edgy. “You need to see this.”

Oh, man.
He had no idea what Sarah wanted to show them, but her body language said they were in for yet another round of bad news.

Sarah led him to the computer where the footage from the high school had been loaded, and the moment Aiden’s attention landed on the screen, he spotted Yost.

Alive and waiting beneath a shade tree.

Yost wasn’t exactly in camera range, but Sarah had blown up the shot. The result was a grainy image but enough for Aiden to tell that the man was almost certainly carrying a concealed weapon beneath his windbreaker.

“He’s talking on the phone to someone here,” Sarah said, scrolling through the images.