Page 1 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

Chapter One

Deputy Luca Vanetti ran through the ER doors the moment they slid open, and he made a beeline to the reception desk. The nurse on duty saw him coming and got to her feet. Luca figured the concern on her face was a drop in the bucket compared to his.

He tried to tamp down the worry and fear that were firing through him. Tried not to jump to any bad conclusions, but Bree and his baby boy could be hurt.

Or worse.

No, Luca couldn’t deal withworseright now.

He just needed to see Bree McCullough and his two-month-old son, Gabriel, and then try to get to the bottom of what’d happened. Bree and he might barely be on speaking terms, but they both loved Gabriel, and Bree would know what a gut punch it was for Luca to get a report that she’d been in a serious car accident.

“Where are they?” Luca demanded before he even reached the reception desk.

The nurse, Alisha Cameron, was someone he’d known his whole life. Something that could be said about most people in their small hometown of Saddle Ridge, Texas, where there weren’t many degrees of separation.

Alisha motioned toward the hall. “The exam room on the right. Slater’s already here.”

Slater McCullough was not only a fellow deputy at the Saddle Ridge Sheriff’s Office, but he was also Bree’s older brother. Luca had expected him to be here since Slater was the respondingofficer who’d arrived on the scene of the single car accident, only to learn his sister was the driver.

“Gabriel wasn’t in the vehicle with Bree,” Slater said the moment he spotted Luca. “I just got off the phone with the nanny, and Gabriel’s with her.”

Some of the tightness eased up in Luca’s chest. Some. His baby boy wasn’t hurt. “And Bree?” Luca managed to ask.

“She’s in with the doctor now,” Slater said after he swallowed hard. “She has a head injury, and they’re examining her.”

“How bad?” Luca wanted to know.

Slater shook his head. “I’m not sure. When I arrived on scene, she was trying to get out of the car, but her seat belt was jammed, and she couldn’t reach her phone. There was blood,” he added. “Some scrapes and cuts, too, on her face, but I think most of those came from the airbag when it deployed.”

“What happened?” Luca wanted to know. “Why did she crash?”

“I’m not sure what caused the accident.” He paused, his gaze meeting Luca’s. “Her car went off the road right before the Saddle Ridge Creek bridge, and she slammed into a tree. If she hadn’t hit the tree, her car would have plunged into the creek.”

Hell. That was where his parents had been killed, so Luca knew firsthand that a collision like that could have been fatal because the creek was more than twenty feet deep in spots. But crashing into a tree could have killed her, too.

Luca studied Slater’s eyes that were a genetic copy of not only Bree’s but of Gabriel’s. “Why did she go off the road?” he pressed.

Slater shook his head again. “I don’t know. Like I said, she was woozy, and I arrived on scene only a minute or two before the ambulance got there. The EMTs loaded her right away and brought her here.”

Because Luca knew Slater well, he could see that Slater was worried. And troubled. “You said Bree has a head injury. How bad?” Luca asked.

“I don’t know,” Slater repeated. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Other than what I’ve told you, the only other thing I know is a delivery driver traveling on that road spotted Bree’s car and called it in. There were tread marks nearby, but I have no idea if they were from her vehicle or not. The delivery driver didn’t see any other vehicles around.”

So, maybe she’d gotten distracted or something and had lost control of the car. That wasn’t like Bree, though. She was usually ultra-focused. A skill set she needed for her job as legal consultant for the Texas Rangers. But she was also the mother of a two-month-old baby, and it was possible lack of sleep had played into this.

That possibility gave Luca another gut punch. Because he could see how this would have played out. Even if Bree had been exhausted, she wouldn’t have asked him for help. In fact, he was probably the last person in Saddle Ridge she would have turned to. Ironic, since they had once been lovers.

Had.

That was definitely in the past, and as far as Bree was concerned, it wouldn’t be repeated. Luca was learning to live with that even though they’d had an on-again, off-again thing since high school. Theoffhad become permanent eleven months ago when they’d landed in bed after Bree’s father had been murdered.

That brought on gut punch number three of the day.

Because Bree’s late father, Sheriff Cliff McCullough, hadn’t only been Luca’s boss, he’d been his surrogate father after Luca’s parents had died in a car crash when Luca had been just sixteen. Luca had been grieving and on shaky emotional groundfollowing Cliff’s murder. Bree had been, too, and they’d spent the night together.

The night when she’d gotten pregnant with Gabriel.

Bree hadn’t told him that though until four months ago when she’d moved back home. Only then had Luca learned he was going to be a father. Luca hadn’t quite managed to forgive Bree for shutting him out like that, but she apparently didn’t want his forgiveness.

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