Page 44 of Protecting the Newborn

The beefy gunman dropped, too, but he wasn’t shot. He was coming after Carmen, no doubt to get back his human shield.

He failed.

There was another round of gunfire. Gracelyn couldn’t get in on this one because Carmen was in front of her, but her shot wasn’t necessary. Bullets slammed into the gunman, and he used his last breath to snarl out some profanity. Gracelyn figured he was dead before he even hit the floor.

Gracelyn continued to hold her breath. Continued to watch for another attacker. Someone, maybe Woodrow, shut off the alarm, but around the office, the phones continued to ring.

“Is anyone hurt?” Duncan called out.

“I’m okay,” Carmen answered.

Gracelyn didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because she couldn’t unclamp her throat enough to speak. She just wanted to hear Ruston’s voice. She needed to know he was okay.

“I’m fine.” That came from Woodrow. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Duncan confirmed.

“I’m okay,” Ruston finally said. “Gracelyn?”

“Okay,” she finally managed. The relief came. Well, relief about Ruston and the others, anyway.

“Allie, were you hit?” Gracelyn called out.

Nothing.

No response.

Not for a couple of seconds, anyway, and then she heard Duncan curse. “Allie’s not here.”

Alarmed, Gracelyn stood, her gaze zooming to Duncan’s office. Since the glass was now gone, she had no trouble seeing directly inside. And what she saw was the open side door that her sister had almost certainly used to escape.

Chapter Eleven

Ruston seriously doubted Gracelyn was actually sleeping, but since she wasn’t saying anything, he stayed quiet as well.

And replayed every second of the nightmare that’d happened at the sheriff’s office.

That’d been over twelve hours ago, and after the shots had ended, both Gracelyn and he had gotten caught up in the investigative whirlwind of trying to piece everything together. That had been both an exhausting and frustrating process that was merely on pause so everyone could get some rest.

In Gracelyn’s and his case, they’d chosen for that “rest” to happen at the ranch so she could be with Abigail. Ruston had even managed to get Gracelyn to eat something before they’d gone to bed. Well, she had gone to bed, and he’d taken the chair again. She had offered to share the queen-size bed with him, and that’d been a damn tempting offer, but he didn’t have a lot of willpower right now when it came to Gracelyn. What could start as a hug of comfort could turn into a whole lot more, and Gracelyn didn’t need that right now.

Like him, she needed some rest so she could approach the investigation with a clear head.

Clearly, Duncan wasn’t in the rest mode, because even though it was well past midnight, Ruston’s phone lit up with a text from him. Ruston had put his cell on silent, even shutting off the vibration so that it wouldn’t wake Gracelyn if she did indeed manage to fall asleep. But she must have seen the flash of light, because she sat up, her gaze racing across the room to him.

“Did they find Allie?” she whispered.

The only light was coming from the ajar bathroom door, but Ruston had no trouble seeing that she was not only wide-awake but that she was just as on edge as he was.

He shook his head. “Duncan got IDs on the two dead fake cops, though. And they were fake,” he emphasized, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. Abigail was only an hour into what should be a three-or four-hour stretch of sleep for her, and he didn’t want to disturb her.

Apparently, Gracelyn was concerned about disturbing Abigail, too, because she moved as if to get out of bed to come to him. Ruston fixed that by going to her. He sat on the edge of the bed so they could talk, but he hoped this would be a short conversation. He was still hanging on to the hope that Gracelyn might actually get some rest tonight.

She wasn’t wearing the pajamas that Joelle had brought in for her but had opted for a loose pair of loaner jogging pants and a T-shirt. Her shoes were right next to the bed beside her freshly restocked go bag. All indications she was ready to get Abigail out of there if necessary.

Ruston was hoping like the devil it wouldn’t be necessary.

“The dead men are Eddie Baker and Andre Culpepper,” Ruston told her. “Both have criminal records. According to Carmen, when they showed up to escort a prisoner to Austin, she thought there was something suspicious about the paperwork they had. She was about to call Austin PD when one of them grabbed her.”

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