Page 2 of Ransom for His Secret Son

“Don’t kill him,” Remi blurted. “We need him. We need answers.”

Brody didn’t miss the we and wondered if she was talking about him and herself. But she couldn’t be. They sure as heck weren’t a we.

Brody didn’t have time to give that any thought because the man’s shadow shifted near the mausoleum, and another shot cracked through the air, slamming into the ground dangerously close to them.

“Are you hit?” Brody blurted.

His throat tightened with a mix of adrenaline, fury and a whole lot of confusion as to why this fight had been brought here to his turf. Lost Canyon was a small ranching town. A dot on the map. It wasn’t a haven for those evading a private investigator on their trail.

“No, not hit,” she growled, levering herself and wincing in pain. Pain from what, Brody didn’t know. “But he’s getting away. We have to stop him.”

Brody gritted his teeth, his instincts torn between covering a possibly wounded civilian, even if the particular civilian was Remi, and going after the shooter. He caught a glimpse of the man vaulting over a crumbling stone wall at the back of the cemetery, his silhouette vanishing into the thick woods that backed up against the cemetery.

And Brody decided to go for the shooter.

Apparently, so did Remi. Muttering something that Brody didn’t catch, she got to her feet. Wincing again, she took off running.

“You need to stay down,” Brody ordered her.

Of course she ignored him and darted after the fleeing man, her determination as reckless as ever. Brody cursed under his breath, sprinting to cut her off before she got herself killed.

A footrace through a cemetery wasn’t easy, and there wasn’t a direct route to the stone wall. Over the past century or so that the cemetery had been in existence, the graves had been haphazardly placed. Some were huge and some were flat slabs on the ground with mausoleums of all sizes and shapes mixed in. Brody had to dodge all of that. Remi did, too, as they raced after the man.

They reached the wall together, and she didn’t even glance back, vaulting over the stones with an agility that irritated him almost as much as it impressed him. Brody followed, his legs burning as he cleared the wall and landed in the underbrush on the other side.

The landscape beyond the cemetery was a mix of twisted mesquite trees, a dry creek bed, and ankle-grabbing roots that seemed designed to slow them down. It didn’t seem to be doing the same to the man they were pursuing, though. Next to Brody, Remi stumbled but stopped herself from falling. Her breath came out in hard gusts as she kept on moving.

Brody caught up and grabbed her arm, jerking her to a halt. “You’re going to get yourself shot,” he snapped.

She yanked her arm free and glared at him. “Then, stop slowing me down.”

“Look around, Remi.” He gestured at the thicket of shadows and dense trees and shrubs. “You can’t even see him anymore.”

Remi hesitated, her chest heaving from the sprint. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes scanning the area, but it must have been obvious that the man was gone. The underbrush had swallowed any sound of his escape, leaving only the faint rustle of wind through the trees.

“No, no, no,” Remi groaned, shoving her hair back from her face.

Brody kept his gun ready just in case the man decided to double back. “What’s going on here? Does this have to do with your job?”

If Remi heard him, she didn’t bother to acknowledge his questions. Groaning again, she sank down to the ground, pulling up her knees to her chest and pressing her hands against the sides of her head.

In the distance, there were the wails of sirens. Both his backup and the ambulance, judging from the sounds of them. And that was his cue to get them moving back toward his cruiser.

Even though Remi seemed to be in the middle of some sort of meltdown, he latched on to her and hauled her to her feet. “Once I talk to my deputies, I can start a search for this guy,” Brody explained as he managed to get her walking. He also kept watch over his shoulder. “Who is he?”

She glanced back, too, and Brody saw something else puzzling. Remi had looked back not with a sense of dread but with what he thought might be hope that the man might appear out of thin air. A strange reaction to someone who’d just tried to kill her.

“I don’t know his real name, but he called himself John Smith,” she finally said. “He was supposed to bring me info about the baby.”

That got Brody’s attention. “What baby?” he couldn’t ask fast enough. He hadn’t gotten that good a look at the man, but for darn certain he hadn’t noticed him carrying an infant.

She shook her head. Another strange reaction. “I’m not sure whose baby it is. But this John Smith called me about a half hour ago and said he had a missing child, and I could hear a baby crying in the background,” she added. “He said he’d tell me where the baby was if I came straight here and gave him all the files and notes from a case I worked about a year ago.”

Files and notes? That seemed like an odd demand to make of a PI. “You told the cops about this?” he said.

“No.” Her mouth tightened in what could have been regret. “He said if I did, I wouldn’t get the info on how to find the baby. Besides, there wasn’t time. He insisted that if I wasn’t here at the cemetery in a half hour, the deal was off, that the baby would just disappear.”

“And you believed him?” Brody asked on a huff. “Because considering what just happened, I think he lured you here to kill you.”