Page 1 of Protecting the Newborn

Chapter One

Staying behind the cover of some sprawling oak trees, Detective Ruston McCullough pressed the night-vision binoculars to his eyes and got his first look of the place.

His target’s house.

It was one story with a white stone exterior and was positioned dead smack in the middle of about three acres. Woods and old ranch trails formed a horseshoe around the house and the pasture.

Lots of places for someone to lie in wait.

Lots of places for a kidnapper or killer to hide.

Once, the house had belonged to a rancher and his wife, both now deceased, and their heirs rented out the place. The current renter, Lizzy Martin, had been living there for a little less than a month.

And she was Ruston’s target.

Well, she would have been the target if he truly was a scumbag thug hired to kidnap the woman and her baby. He wasn’t. He was an undercover San Antonio PD detective posing as a scumbag thug, but the slime who’d hired him didn’t know that.

The slime, aka Marty Bennett, believed that Ruston was a dishonorably discharged army combat specialist with a rap sheet for assault who would do the job that Marty had hired him to do. That Ruston would kidnap the woman and baby and then bring them to Marty, so the baby could probably be sold on the black market and the woman could likely become a human-trafficking victim.

Ruston wouldn’t be doing that.

No way.

Once he had the kid and woman secure and out of any harm’s way, Ruston’s fellow officers would move in to take Marty into custody at his San Antonio residence. Then Ruston would start creating another undercover persona while other detectives figured out for certain why Marty wanted this particular woman. Trafficking and the black market were always good guesses in situations like this.

But something about that theory didn’t feel right.

If those were indeed Marty’s motives, then Ruston wondered how the heck Marty had even seen her and the baby. This place in rural Texas wasn’t on any beaten path, and judging from the gossip Ruston had picked up from his moles and snitches about this Lizzy Martin, no one had seen her in any of the nearby towns.

All three of those towns, including his own hometown of Saddle Ridge, were plenty small enough that folks would have recalled a stranger, especially one with a newborn baby. Added to that, he had siblings in law enforcement in Saddle Ridge, and neither of them had seen anyone resembling the description he had of Lizzy Martin.

Marty hadn’t given Ruston a photo of the woman. Only her name, address and a few skimpy details. She was supposedly around five and a half feet tall, average build, brown hair and brown eyes. Considering that could apply to many women, Ruston had decided to run a background check on her—a skill set his undercover persona wouldn’t have had, so Ruston had had to cover his tracks there in case Marty was monitoring him.

It had taken a while for Ruston to weed through all the possibilities with the name variations for Lizzy Martin, but he thought the one who had rented this place was a website designer who worked from home. Her driver’s license photo showed a woman who was indeed as average as Marty’s description of her. It seemed to Ruston that Lizzy was actually trying to fade into the background of that DMV photo. That was a lot to assume from a picture, but it had put him on further alert.

People who tried to hide usually had a reason for doing so.

That was why he’d come to the house earlier than planned. Ruston had told Marty that he would take the target at midnight, but he’d arrived four hours before that with the hopes that he’d catch a glimpse of her.

So far, he hadn’t.

But someone was definitely inside the house, because he’d seen lights go on and off.

The breeze rustled through the trees around him, and he welcomed the somewhat cooler night air. It was late June, but in central Texas, it could still be scalding hot even at this time of night. Proof of that was the line of sweat already trickling down his back.

Ruston shifted the binoculars when he caught some movement in the front window. It was indeed a woman, and while he couldn’t see her face, since she had her back to him, her height and hair color fit Marty’s description. He watched as she picked up something.

A baby monitor.

She peered down at a little screen that he saw light up. The binoculars weren’t clear enough for him to see the baby she was watching, but he could make out the outline of a crib on the screen.

Ruston continued to watch until she moved out of sight. A few seconds later, he saw the light go on in the front right window. Probably a bedroom or an office. Since he had verification she was indeed there, it was showtime.

Putting away his binoculars, Ruston eased out from the cover of the trees, and he crouched down to make his way closer to the house. He kept watch, looking and listening for anything or anybody, but the only sounds were an owl, some cicadas and the soft drumming of his own heartbeat in his ears.

He stayed low, not going toward that window with the light since he didn’t want Lizzy to see him and then call the cops. Because there was a child on the premises, the locals would likely respond fast, and word of that could get back to Marty if he had his own moles and snitches in law enforcement. Ruston didn’t want Marty to have a clue this was a sting operation until he had the woman and baby someplace safe.

Keeping up his slow and steady pace, Ruston went toward the back of the house, figuring he would first scope out all sides to see if there was an easy point of entry. He didn’t like breaking in, but that was his best bet. Then he could sneak up on her, and before she could make that call to the locals, he could convince her that he was a cop and was there to help.

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