Her Texas Lawman Read online

  “I can protect you, Shayne.”

  “I know you think that,” Shayne answered. “But you’re the opposition!”

  “Look, Shayne,” Noah said. “I don’t blame you for feeling this way. I wouldn’t depend on us either if I was in your position.”

  “So why should I?”

  “Because I’ve made a promise to you. I will take care of you and make sure you’re protected, no matter the outcome.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You have no reason to other than my word.”

  “Please understand then, this isn’t about you.”

  “Will you give me a chance at least? A chance to prove to you that we’re on the same team?”

  Shayne took a few steps forward, the pull of being so close to him drawing her like moth to flame.

  “Please, Shayne? Will you give me that chance to prove that I will keep you safe?”

  “Okay. I can do that if—”

  The explosion happened without warning. The kitchen window shattered in a rain of glass.

  Shayne barely had time to scream before Noah dragged her to the ground.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to Midnight Pass, Texas. I bet you thought everything had wrapped up nice and neat with the capture of former FBI director—and now FBI betrayer—Rick Statler. But Rick had a few more connections up his sleeve and has escaped custody, determined to exit Midnight Pass just as he’d always planned—on top. There are only two things standing in his way: his former girlfriend, Shayne Erickson, and the FBI lead determined to bring Rick to justice, Noah Ross.

  Noah believes he has a lot to atone for. The death of someone in his past haunts him and missing the depths of Rick’s depravity has hit their FBI unit hard. They should have known there was a snake in their midst and no one feels this more than Noah.

  Shayne also knows something about regret. She’s spent the past month since being rescued desperate to figure out how she could have missed all the signs that the man was a manipulative psychopath. When it’s discovered Rick is staying in Midnight Pass out of some sense of unfinished business, Noah knows Shayne is the key.

  Danger is mounting once again in Midnight Pass. But this time, it’s leading to a showdown of epic proportions. I hope you enjoy this race against time to catch one of the most dangerous men to ever set their sights on the Pass.

  Best,

  Addison Fox

  HER TEXAS LAWMAN

  Addison Fox

  Addison Fox is a lifelong romance reader, addicted to happily-ever-afters. After discovering she found as much joy writing about romance as she did reading it, she’s never looked back. Addison lives in New York with an apartment full of books, a laptop that’s rarely out of sight and a wily beagle who keeps her running. You can find her at her home on the web at addisonfox.com or on Facebook (Facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor) and Twitter (@addisonfox).

  Books by Addison Fox

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Midnight Pass, Texas

  The Cowboy’s Deadly Mission

  Special Ops Cowboy

  Under the Rancher’s Protection

  Undercover K-9 Cowboy

  Her Texas Lawman

  The Coltons of Colorado

  Undercover Colton

  The Coltons of Grave Gulch

  Colton’s Covert Witness

  The Coltons of Mustang Valley

  Deadly Colton Search

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  For the sisterhood of cousins—Beth, Katie, Carol, Ellen, Margaret, Heather, Alisha, Ramona and Neeley.

  Dancing till we dropped at all the weddings and the Thanksgiving candy basket and impromptu band concerts (apologies forever for my oboe solo) and celebrating the joys of welcoming the next generation.

  Some of us have spent our whole lives as cousins and others we’ve been lucky to pick up along the way. How lovely to know we’re also friends.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Excerpt from The PI’s Deadly Charade by Anna J. Stewart

  Chapter 1

  Noah Ross looked out over his team in the south Texas FBI field office, headquartered in the heart of Midnight Pass, and mentally cursed their continued bad luck. He counted himself fortunate—he hadn’t had a team this good in his decade and a half with the Bureau—and they fought by his side every day. But even with their dedication, expertise and collective smarts, they were no closer to their goal: capturing their former boss and the recent predecessor of Noah’s current position, Rick Statler.

  “Intel puts him in Juárez on Friday.” Ryder Durant gave his report with a steady calm and minimal inflection in his voice. No mean feat considering the man’s hatred for their quarry.

  Durant was one of the best on the team. He also had a personal interest in this one since Statler had held Durant’s fiancée, Arden Reynolds, and Statler’s ex-girlfriend, Shayne Erickson, at gunpoint a month prior.

  Noah quickly amended his thought. The running assumption had been that Shayne Erickson was Statler’s ex, but in the weeks since the hostage situation that proved to be all it was. An assumption.

  One they had continued to review, over and over, as they evaluated the time Statler had spent with the woman and what his possible connections might be since he escaped FBI custody two weeks prior.

  Arden had sworn up one side and down the other that Shayne wouldn’t have helped Statler, but Noah was keeping his options open. He’d managed far too many cases where a hurt, misbegotten woman was left behind, only to pair up with a piece of scum after a few frilly promises.

  Hadn’t his ex-wife done the same? Or was the proper term late wife? The monikers conflated in his mind too often for comfort, and on the way to being an ex before she died was too complicated to work through every damn time he thought of Lindsey.

  Besides, he preferred ex, anyway. While he had desperately wanted her out of his life a decade ago, he’d never wanted her dead.

  Ignoring the shot of regret he’d never been able to convince himself to abandon, he refocused on Durant and his report. “So, Mexico is his latest known whereabouts?”

  “It’s false.” Ryder’s response was immediate and devoid of emotion. “He knows how to cover his tracks and there’s no way he’d let himself be seen that easily on local cameras. He’s either stayed close or he’s far from here. But the intel feels like a plant.”

  “Do you think he’s close?” Noah asked.

  “Yeah.” Ryder lifted his cap and ran a hand through his hair. “I think he’s got further plans here in Midnight Pass.”

  “You think he’s going to make another play for Shayne Erickson?” Brady Renner spoke up.

  “We have to assume that despite showing no signs of attachment behavior before, Statler’s attached to Erickson,” Durant answered. “That was clear when he kidnapped her. He also doesn’t like to lose. He’s spent too long and come too far to give it all up now.”

  Noah cursed the realities of what they were dealing with. An ex-FBI leader who knew intimately how they worked, now with pr
oven mob ties and an ex he’d formed an unhealthy attachment to. Hadn’t his escape further attensted to his determination? A well-placed bribe against a vulnerable agent assigned to hold him and Statler had escaped into the seeming ether.

  And that bribe only scratched the surface of what the man was capable of.

  Statler’s list of sins was long and growing longer with each discovery the team made. From supporting local criminals when he was still in Boston to the trafficking and criminal underworld he supported once he got his promotion and arrived in Texas, Rick Statler had fooled a lot of important people for a very long time.

  Which only added to the crap storm that hovered over them as they worked the case.

  Top brass with egg on their face never boded well for anyone.

  “Any other sightings?”

  “Nothing else in the past week.” Durant shook his head before standing and walking to a large dry-erase board they’d set up in their conference-room-slash-war-room. He gestured to the map they’d set up, a trail of surveillance photos tacked beside it. The same board had the supposed sightings to date as well as the safe house where Statler had hidden out. Ryder’s K-9, Murphy, had advanced first on that rescue mission and had taken Statler down pretty hard.

  Ryder continued, “And even with the few weeks he spent in custody on antibiotics, Murphy’d done a number on him. I know we keep saying he could just as easily be holed up here in town as he could be buried deep somewhere in Mexico while the heat cools off, but my money’s on here.”

  Noah’s money was on here, too, but he valued Durant’s assessment. He’d also been doing this long enough to know that sometimes it was worth it to talk things out. Put one idea after another, trying them on for size. Which brought them squarely back to Texas or points farther south or any freaking place in between.

  That was what they were dealing with.

  And they had so little to go on, nothing pointing them in any definitive direction.

  So they’d keep working what they did know. Or were still uncovering. A shocking amount continued to come out on Statler’s past activities, on top of the exhaustive interrogation they’d done while they had him in custody. The discovery that Statler was working with several drug cartels outside the country had put everyone on edge.

  But the biggest surprise—discovered on Shayne Erickson’s tech after they’d confiscated it—was that the work with the cartels was the tip of the iceberg. Statler had apparently gone all in with a prominent and multifaceted Russian mob organization, a situation that had only escalated the scrutiny on the case and ensured the highest echelons of government wanted this situation handled PDQ.

  What Noah still hadn’t pieced together was how Statler had worked it all so far under the radar.

  Sure, there were ways around the system. Someone with a determination to do bad things could always find a way. It was harder in the Bureau, but that didn’t make it any less true. What he couldn’t figure, though, was how the man had fostered the depth of connections that he had and how he had done it with no one the wiser.

  They’d yet to find even a whisper that Statler had another inside man helping him. Even the junior agent who’d helped him escape had been nothing but an opportunity on Statler’s part—a weak link he leveraged. Nor had the tech team had much luck beyond skimming some search details off Statler’s equipment that would raise eyebrows.

  Yet somehow Shayne’s computer held the key to everything?

  It didn’t play for him.

  Nothing ran nowadays without a digital footprint. Yet Statler had skulked around like a freaking ghost except on his girlfriend’s devices.

  Which brought Noah right back to Shayne Erickson.

  Was she the connection? By all accounts the woman was a successful consultant, specializing in wireless communications. She had a home office, extensive electronics and a professional ability to use them.

  Which circled him right back around to traitorous-girlfriend territory.

  Noah gave the meeting another five minutes before dismissing everyone to lunch. After they were all gone, he got up and stood before the same board as Durant. His gaze drifted to Shayne Erickson’s photo, just as it had so many times over the past month. He skimmed the various images tacked up on the board, one of her on Main Street in a yoga outfit, another of her speaking at a conference and a third of her, also in professional mode, in a headshot that had been pulled off her website.

  A distant idea began to take shape, nagging from somewhere deep in his brain that there was a clue to her whereabouts in those photos.

  Although she’d been nothing but cooperative after her kidnapping rescue, they ultimately questioned her in every way imaginable and then needed to let her go. But since the news broke of Rick Statler’s escape from FBI custody, Shayne had disappeared, too. Was she on the run? Helping Rick?

  Or maybe she was running scared, fearful of being the man’s next target.

  He turned that last one over as he took his fill of the photos on the board: the soft fall of blond hair resting against her petite shoulders, clad in a black business suit. Bright blue eyes stared back at him from the photo, their seemingly clear vision as unsettling as always. He was a good judge of character, damn it. And he didn’t give people the benefit of the doubt because they were attractive or because somewhere deep beneath his breastbone he felt a soft tug.

  And he sure as hell didn’t give them the benefit of the doubt because he could still remember their arms wrapped tightly around his neck as he carried them from the room they’d been locked in as a prisoner for nearly forty-eight hours.

  Until proven otherwise, he had to keep up his guard.

  And until proven otherwise, he had to believe Shayne Erickson was in league with the enemy.

  * * *

  Shayne Erickson stared at the darkened face of her cell phone and cursed her situation once again. Turned off, it was nothing but an expensive—and useless—screen. Just like her tablet and her computer. Which hadn’t kept her from hanging tightly on to all three, each wrapped securely in a bag that rarely left her side. Nor had it stopped her ridiculous vigilance in keeping them charged.

  She had no desire to be tracked the moment she turned them on, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to use them should the need arise.

  Only so far, nothing had arisen except for endless hours of boredom and self-recrimination.

  The boredom was a steady reminder that she likely spent far too many of her normal waking hours on all three devices.

  And the self-recrimination because...well...how in the hell could she have been so stupid?

  Over and over, she’d thought through the past months in her relationship with Rick Statler. Every conversation. Every date. Every whisper of their time together. And never, in any of those thousands of moments, had she ever considered that he was a psychotic monster?

  Not once?

  How could she have been so utterly freaking clueless? The man was a violent criminal, involved in any manner of sordid, horrific crimes.

  And now he was a violent criminal on the loose.

  She was a smart woman. Hell, she prided herself on being savvy and self-aware. The room she was currently hunkered down in was proof of that. Her business had taken her all over the country and even expanded into the occasional international job. She’d recently taken up a lease to set up an actual office outside her home.

  It was a small space—she didn’t need much room—in a newly built office complex about twenty minutes outside Midnight Pass, but it did put her closer to the airport when she needed to travel. It had also given her tangible proof of her work. Something that required her to get dressed and do more than sit behind a desk in her home office still clad in her proverbial bunny slippers.

  She ran a business. A damn good one.

  And because of it, she knew the score. She had experience. Str
eet smarts. And at thirty-two, she’d learned long ago there was no such thing as Prince Charming. There was Prince-Charming-from-Time-to-Time and that was about as good as it got.

  For anyone.

  So how had she let Rick Statler slip beneath her guard? Because he was attractive? Thoughtful to her? Interested in her work?

  What had prompted her complete and total lapse in judgment?

  Because Rick Statler wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill jerk who’d shown his true colors and ghosted her after they’d had a few dates and a few rounds of sex. The man was certifiably psychotic, with a list of kills to his credit and Russian mob connections. Connections he had used her former computer—still in FBI custody, thank you very much—to contact.

  The new laptop secured in her bag was a small, unexpected boon, courtesy of an anxious shot of paranoia. That first night at home, before the FBI had come with their warrants, she’d glanced over at the new laptop she’d purchased for her business. Some strange sixth sense had compelled her to make a full copy of her existing laptop, and she was grateful for it now.

  She was quite sure the federal geeks would figure out she’d done it, but for the time being, at least she had something. And the additional paranoia that had her hide the laptop with her next-door neighbor had been the second win. Mrs. Santiago had been so excited for her, watching with hopeful eyes as Shayne’s relationship with Rick had progressed. The older woman—now disappointed and irate on her behalf—had been more than willing to stash a few items when asked.

  Unfortunately, Shayne wasn’t able to get much out of the device because she refused to go online. That was a sure path to discovery, and besides, her expertise involved communications networks, not hacking.

  Obviously, her expertise didn’t extend to picking solid men to share her life with, either. A point made more than evident as Rick had held her and her friend Arden Reynolds at gunpoint while kidnapped in a government safe house he’d repurposed.

  Without warning, she was back in that room, her hands tied behind her with thick plastic zip ties, fear coating her throat in thick, syrupy waves that tasted like metal. Then those moments of freedom when Arden managed to get them out of the restraints as they determined what to do also came back to her. And then the way Rick had stood before her, that easygoing smile somehow twisted into something beyond recognition, as he told her about how good a future they’d have together.