One Tough Texan. Barb Han

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      “How’d you know he’d be there?” he asked, redirecting his thoughts to something he could fix.

      “I’d tracked him to the area based on a meeting he’d set up to talk to someone about a new transportation route and so I used an informant to plant a tip. I knew that if he could get me on Perez’s radar that I’d have a good chance of becoming his target. My informant had already told me that Perez had a buyer for a sixteen-year-old blonde, so he set me up.”

      She’d fit the clean-cut American teenager to a T. Even now with her blue-striped pajama pants and white tank, she looked years younger. Her hair was drying and the rubber band looked barely able to contain her waves.

      “And then you came along and...” She didn’t say that he’d ruined it but he could tell based on her expression that’s exactly what she was thinking.

      “If I interrupted your plan to be kidnapped by one of the most dangerous men in the country, then I’m glad I came along when I did,” Joshua said. He pointed to her right side below her armpit where blood flowered. “How bad is that?”

      She glanced down and panic flitted across her face as she hopped up. “Oh.”

      “Don’t move. You’ll only make it worse.” He glanced around the small room looking for some kind of emergency kit. “You have first aid supplies?”

      “Not much. I meant to pick some up.”

      “Hold on.” He ran out to the Jeep and retrieved his, shivering in the cold. The temperature must’ve dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour alone. On the ranch, he never knew when he’d need first aid so he’d gotten in the habit of keeping supplies on hand wherever he went.

      The thunder had eased and the rain was coming down in a steady beat. He planned to head out at first light as soon as he knew she’d be okay.

      Joshua returned to the room a few minutes later and found Alice as he’d left her. Head against the headboard with her eyes shut. Since her hand was closed around her Glock, he didn’t want to startle her.

      He moved closer so that he could disarm her if need be. He didn’t take her skills lightly. She was good with a weapon but he was better. Couple that with the fact that exhaustion was slowing her reaction time and he had the edge he needed.

      Her eyes snapped open the second the bed dipped under his weight.

      “It’s me,” he said, his hand covering hers on the weapon as she brought it up. Physical contact sent a different kind of heat through him. A sexual attraction wasn’t appropriate or wanted, especially under the circumstances.

      She apologized and then shook her head.

      “How long has it been since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?” he asked. There were other more pressing questions he needed to ask, but he reminded himself not to get too personal with someone he would never see again after tonight. Because he had every intention of helping her and then getting back to the ranch to deal with his own problems.

      “A while, I guess.”

      “What else do you know about Perez?” he asked to distract her as he lifted her shirt enough to see where the blood came from. He was worried about Alice. He peeled back the bloody bandage to reveal a two-inch gash three inches below her armpit.

      “Most of these criminal rings take girls from places where huge crowds are gathered, like the Super Bowl. Not Perez. He searches for just the right one, looks for a certain kind and mostly prefers all-American types. He seems to have a particular affinity for blondes although Isabel—” she flashed her eyes at him as he cleaned the blood off the cut and then she continued “—that’s her name, is a brunette. I can see why he’d take her, though, because she’s a beautiful girl.”

      There was probably no way he could convince Alice to follow him to the ranch until he could dig deeper into the situation and things settled down. Her eyes were pure blue steel and determination and she’d left behind a job she loved to track down this girl. This was the closest she’d been to getting answers and he highly doubted he could convince her to slow down.

      “Innocent girls and blondes fetch a higher price. His target age range is twelve to sixteen years old.” She winced.

      He apologized as he finished cleaning her wound, warning her that the next part might hurt more. “I’d be happy to take you to the ER.”

      Her head was already shaking before he could finish his sentence.

      “Those are practically babies,” Joshua ground out, thinking about what she said about the girls. Anger bit through his normally easygoing nature.

      She nodded. “He likes to target places where there won’t be a lot of extra security or cameras. Remote spots in small towns like this.”

      Joshua blotted her wound with fresh antibiotic ointment on a clean piece of gauze.

      “Then, he sells them to various jerks or uses them to farm babies for high-profit adoptions,” she said.

      Didn’t this conversation just spike Joshua’s blood pressure in two seconds flat? No matter how many years he spent on the job he’d never get used to people who hurt children. He shook his head as he placed a new bandage over her cut.

      “I learned that several of his girls have been used for the sole purpose of being impregnated and then held captive through multiple pregnancies,” she continued.

      Joshua knew all about those sickening operations. He’d get more information out of Alice if she believed he was a civilian. He pretended to be hearing this for the first time even though he didn’t feel right deceiving her. “Do I want to know what Perez does once he...uses the girls?”

      “Dumps the bodies once he’s made enough from the babies and the girls start to become liabilities,” she said with an involuntary shudder. “And that’s just one of the things they could be doing with her. Perez has been known to sell them to a high bidder, which is why he likes a specific look. He knows the market and what his customers like. He gets a sense for their taste and then snatches a few girls to give a ‘client’ options.”

      Joshua had learned even more about illegal adoption rings when his oldest brother Dallas got involved with a woman whose baby was almost abducted before Halloween. Thankfully, Kate and baby Jackson were doing fine and Joshua figured a wedding announcement would be coming soon since Dallas and Kate had fallen in love during the process.

      “I can’t imagine the kind of monster it would take to do something like this to children,” Joshua said, and then apologized as soon as he realized that Isabel was most likely in the hands of someone like that. By now, she could be pregnant, abused or dead. And that explained the worry lines etched in Alice’s forehead. Being on the job, she would know firsthand what a deviant like Perez would do. And Joshua hated seeing her go through something like this when she should be home with Isabel, doing normal stuff girls do this time of year like holiday shopping.

      “No need to be sorry,” she said. “Believe me, it won’t help Isabel.”

      “How do you know she didn’t run away? Maybe she needed a change of scenery and she’s somewhere safe in another city,” he offered.

      “We’re close and I stay in touch with her foster СКАЧАТЬ