Risky Return. Virginia Vaughan

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СКАЧАТЬ from the store. Don’t you worry, we’ll find this guy.”

      “I appreciate that, Kent.”

      “Any idea why someone would want to hurt you, Rebecca?”

      Now was the time to come clean about the notes, the threats, even the girl she was helping hide out in the Batesville Motel, but something stopped her. Missy had told her that the police were involved in the trafficking ring she’d escaped from two nights ago. And her attacker’s eerie warning to mind her own business entered her thoughts.

      Collin noticed her hesitation. He could always see right through her. “What is it, Rebecca? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

      All she wanted was to go home and crawl into bed and forget this day had ever happened, but she knew she couldn’t. “I’ve been receiving some threats lately. Letters and messages.”

      “What did they say?”

      “They warned me to stop what I was doing or I would be sorry.”

      “And what is it they think you’re doing, Rebecca?” Collin asked.

      She saw the doubt in his face—he was wondering if she’d gotten involved in something illegal. Could he really believe she would have changed that much? Had he? “It’s complicated.”

      “Uncomplicate it,” Kent insisted.

      She looked at them both. The last few days had been a haze of suspicion and doubt. She didn’t know who she could trust in this town anymore. Even her own father was a suspect after Missy had told her about seeing the name Mason Industries, her father’s company, on the building where she’d been held.

      “Four months ago, a pregnant teen in my care went missing. Kent, you classified her as a runaway, but I never stopped looking for her. I think whoever has her wants me to stop looking.”

      “You believe she was abducted?” Collin asked. “Do you have any idea who took her?”

      She didn’t see an ounce of doubt in Collin’s expression and she liked that, but she had to remember she hadn’t seen this man in twelve years, not since the day he’d walked out of their marriage and left her abandoned and alone in New Orleans. “When can I go home?” Rebecca asked, ignoring his question.

      Kent gave her an annoyed look. “I still have some questions to ask you once we finish processing this scene and I need to see those threatening notes, Rebecca. You should have come to me when you received the first one.”

      “I know I should have, but you never believed me that Missy wasn’t a runaway.”

      “I might have changed my mind after seeing those.”

      “I’m sorry, Kent. Please, I just want to go home. My head is killing me.”

      She feared he was about to give her the you-need-to-go-to-the-hospital spiel again, but he sighed instead. “I can have a deputy take you home.”

      “That won’t be necessary,” Collin said. “I’ll take her home.”

      Rebecca wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Collin had swooped back into her life all of a sudden and she hadn’t even gotten her equilibrium back enough to process his return. Now, he was offering to drive her home?

      He held out his hand and she took it, but as she stood, the world around her began to spin. Her knees buckled and she fell, but Collin was there in a shot, wrapping his strong arms around her and keeping her vertical. She soaked in the smell of his musky aftershave as she leaned into him.

      “I’ll help you,” he said, his voice gentle and reassuring.

      She allowed him to guide her to his car, but as she slid inside she realized she didn’t have the food she’d come here for. She pressed her head against the back of the seat. She wasn’t up for any more shopping today. Hopefully Missy would be okay until the morning.

      Collin slid into the driver’s seat, started the car and turned out of the parking lot. She still couldn’t believe she was sitting beside Collin Walsh. It was too unreal to be anything but a dream. And how many times had she dreamed about this man reappearing in her life through the years? Now, he had.

      She reached out and touched his arm just to reassure herself this was real. He covered her hand with his and the weight of it against hers convinced her it was. Collin Walsh was back in town and back in her life.

      He squeezed her hand but the furrowing of his brow told her he was worried. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

      “I will be.” She moved her hand and turned away. She couldn’t sit here drooling over Collin. She had to get back to Missy. But his reappearance in her life was something she hadn’t planned on. “I didn’t know you were back in town,” Rebecca said. In fact, she hadn’t heard of him being back in their hometown in years.

      “My mom passed away a few months ago. She’d been in a nursing home for years. I thought it was time to clean out her house and put it on the market.”

      His mother. Of course. Rebecca had visited with her often, keeping tabs on Collin and his jaunts around the world in the army, reading the letters he’d sent home to his mom until her health forced her to be moved. “I’m sorry about your mother. I always liked her.”

      He gave a slight smile and glanced at her. “Thank you. She always liked you, too.”

      If only her parents had been as easygoing as his mother, things might have ended differently between them. They had never liked Collin, even going so far as to forbid Rebecca from seeing him. That hadn’t stopped her. Nothing could have stopped her from marrying Collin Walsh back then...and nothing had.

      And she’d paid a big price for doing so. She’d lost her husband, her baby and her happy future.

      “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in the store,” he said. “Honestly, I was trying to decide if I should say hi or not when I saw that man grab you.”

      So he’d considered not even speaking to her? It stung her to know she meant so little to him when she’d once loved him so much. But she was grateful he’d been there. She didn’t know what her attacker would have done if Collin hadn’t intervened. Would he have used that knife he’d flashed at her? Or had this attack only been a warning? She wrung her hands and looked out the window. Was he out there somewhere following them? She was suddenly very glad Collin had offered to take her home.

      “Thank you for helping me.” A thousand questions popped into her mind that she wanted to ask him. She’d thought about him often throughout the years, and wondered where he was and what he was doing. “Did I hear you joined the army?”

      “I did. I even became an army ranger.”

      That was impressive.

      “But I left the service three years ago. I’ve been working private security ever since.”

      “Like being a bodyguard?”

      “Sort of, but on a global scale. I was overseas when Mom passed away. Fortunately, her sister was with her when she died.”

      How terrible that he hadn’t been СКАЧАТЬ