Page 1 of Ransom for His Secret Son

Chapter One

Sheriff Brody Walker stepped from his cruiser, his boots crunching on the loose gravel of the parking lot, and he caught another flash of movement. A man he’d spotted earlier peering around the side of a mausoleum. The man was flat-out running now, and he darted around the milky white headstones in the Lost Canyon Cemetery.

Brody soon saw something else.

The guy was armed.

And there was someone chasing after him. A blonde woman wearing dark pants and top. She, too, had a gun clutched in her right hand.

What the heck was going on here?

When Brody had been driving home from work and had seen the man in the cemetery, he assumed the guy had been visiting the grave of a loved one and that something had spooked him, causing him to hide. Maybe a coyote or a bobcat. Clearly, it wasn’t that, though, since the guy was glancing over his shoulder at the woman chasing him. So this could be some kind of robbery attempt.

Or worse.

But where had they come from? There were no other vehicles in the parking lot, and the cemetery wasn’t exactly on the beaten path. Soon, he’d want an answer about that—once he’d neutralized the threat.

Brody drew his Glock from his shoulder holster before he ran to the nearest headstone and ducked behind it for cover. Best not to be out in the open if one of them turned their gun on him.

“I’m Sheriff Walker,” he shouted. “Stop where you are and put down your weapons.”

The man kept running, but the woman obeyed, practically skidding to a stop and snapping toward Brody. The light from the setting sun was all wrong for him to see her face, but he had no trouble seeing her whole body go stiff. For a heartbeat, anyway.

“I can’t let him get away,” she shouted, and she took off running again after the man.

Hell. Brody knew that voice. And this cemetery was the last place he’d expect to see her. The woman he hadn’t forgiven for his wife’s death. The woman who still haunted him.

Remi Cross.

It’d been six years since he’d seen Remi, right here at this very cemetery on the day of his wife’s funeral. After that, Remi had thankfully slipped out of his life, ensuring that he didn’t get a reminder of his wife’s death anytime they ran into each other. So why had she come back?

And moreover, why was she chasing some guy in the cemetery?

“Stop,” Brody shouted again, the anger rolling through him in a hot wave.

Neither listened this time, fueling his anger even more, and the man disappeared behind a mausoleum at the far back of the cemetery. Remi sprinted toward him.

Just as the gunshot blasted through the air.

Remi hadn’t been the one to fire it either. No. The shot had come from the man, and Brody could still see his hand and the gun he had aimed at her.

She dropped to the ground, but Brody couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or not. Using the voice command on his phone, he called for backup and an ambulance, and he hurried out from cover, threading his way from gravestone to gravestone. Making his way toward her.

“Remi?” Brody yelled, his heart thundering as he closed the distance between them. There might not be much love lost between him and Remi, but he didn’t want her bleeding out.

When he reached her, he stooped lower. Just in the nick of time since the man fired another shot. This one smacked into an angel statue’s wing and sent shards of marble flying.

Muttering some profanity, Remi ducked her head and rolled to her side. She pressed herself against the back of a weathered tombstone, and she shot Brody a glare that said Stay back.

Brody had no intention whatsoever of doing that. Now that he could see she hadn’t been shot and didn’t need medical attention, he intended to catch the gunman and put an end to this.

Whatever the heck this was.

The last he’d heard, Remi had turned in her San Antonio PD detective’s badge and had become a private investigator. And supposedly a good one, at that. So maybe this was the job for her. Well, it was his job as the sheriff of Lost Canyon, Texas, to put a stop to any threats, and this guy shooting at them definitely qualified as a threat.

The cemetery was a good half mile outside of town, and Brody hadn’t spotted any other visitors, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t drive past and get hit by a stray bullet intended for Remi or him.

“Put down your gun,” Brody shouted to the man, and he levered himself up enough to take aim.