Stone Cold Christmas Ranger Read online

  Wait. Why was she staring at his mouth?

  The man’s brows drew together as he looked around the room. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, are you... You are Alyssa Jimenez, aren’t you?”

  “And you must be the Texas Ranger Gabby’s trying to hide me from,” Alyssa offered drily. “How did you find me?”

  “I followed Gabby.”

  She laughed, couldn’t help it. She’d expected him to lie or have some high-tech way for having found her not-publicly-listed office. But he’d told her the truth. “Awfully sneaky and underhanded for a Ranger.”

  His mouth curved, and the fluttering was back tenfold. He had a movie-star smile, all charm and white teeth, and while Alyssa had seen men like that in her life, she’d never, ever had that kind of smile directed at her.

  “You must know Ranger Cooper, antithesis of all that is sneaky and underhanded. We aren’t all like that.”

  Something about all that fluttering turned into a spiral, one that arrowed down her chest and into her belly. She felt oddly shaky, and Alyssa had long ago learned how to ward off shaky. She’d grown up in isolation as part of a criminal family. Then she’d been kidnapped for two years, locked away in little more than a bunker.

  She was not a weakling. She was never scared. The scariest parts of her life were over, but something about this man sent her as off-kilter as she’d ever been.

  It wasn’t fear for her life or the need to fight off an attacker, but she didn’t know what it was, and that was the scariest thing of all.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, edging behind her cracked desk. She had a knife strapped to her ankle, but she’d prefer the Glock she’d shoved in the drawer when Gabby had stormed in an hour earlier.

  She wouldn’t use either on him, but she didn’t want him to think she was going to do whatever he wanted either. He might be a Texas Ranger, but he couldn’t waltz in here and get whatever he wanted. Especially if what he wanted was information about Jimenez.

  “I have some questions for you, Ms. Jimenez, that’s all.”

  “Then why is everyone trying so hard to keep you from meeting me?” Alyssa returned, sliding her hand into the drawer.

  The Ranger’s eyes flicked to the movement, and she didn’t miss the way his hand slowly rose to the holster of his weapon. She paused her movement completely, but she didn’t retract her hand.

  “Maybe they’re afraid of what I’ll find out.”

  She raised her gaze from his gun to those shocking blue eyes. His expression was flat and grim, so very police. Worst of all, it sent a shiver of fear through her.

  There were so very many things he could find out.

  Chapter Two

  Bennet didn’t know what to make out of Alyssa’s closed-down gas station of an office. Could anyone call this an office? It looked like nothing more than an abandoned building, except maybe she’d swept the floors a little. But the windows were grimy, the lights dim, and most of the debris of a convenience store were still scattered about.

  Then there was this pretty force of a woman standing in the midst of all of it as though it were a sleek, modern office building in downtown Austin.

  She wore jeans and a leather jacket over a T-shirt. The boots on her feet looked like they might weigh as much as her. Her dark hair was pulled back, and her dark eyes flashed with suspicion.

  Something about her poked at him, deep in his gut. He tried to convince himself he must have dealt with her before, criminally, but he was too practical to convince himself of a lie. Whatever that poke was, it wasn’t work related.

  But he was here to work. To finally do something worthwhile. With no help from any outside forces.

  She didn’t take her hand off what he assumed to be a weapon in the drawer of her desk—though it was hidden from his view—so he kept his hand on his. Alyssa might be a friend of people he knew, but that didn’t mean he trusted her.

  “I guess what you find out depends on what you’re looking for, Ranger...” She looked expectantly at him.

  Though she was clearly suspicious, defensive even, she didn’t appear nervous or scared, so he went ahead and took his hand off the butt of his weapon. He held out his hand between them. “Bennet Stevens. And I don’t know why your friends are being so protective of you. All I’m after is a little information about a case I’m working on. If you have no connection to it, I’ll happily walk away and not bother you again.”

  Nothing in her expression changed. She watched him and his outstretched hand warily. She was doing some sort of mental calculation, and Bennet figured he could wait that out and keep his hand outstretched for as long as it took.

  “What kind of case?”

  “A murder.”

  She laughed, and something in his gut tightened, a completely unwelcome sensation. She had a sexy laugh, and it was the last thing he had any business noticing.

  “I can assure you I have nothing to do with any murders,” Alyssa said, still ignoring his outstretched hand.

  “Then what do you have to do with?” he asked, giving up on the handshake.

  She cocked her head at him. “I’m pretty sure you said that if I didn’t have anything to do with your case, you’d leave me alone. Well, you know where the door is.”

  He glanced at the door even though there was no way he was retreating anytime soon. His initial plan had been to come in here and be friendly and subtle, ease into things.

  It was clear Alyssa wasn’t going to respond to subtle or friendly. Which meant he had to go with the straightforward tactic, even if it ended up offending his friends.

  He held up his hands, palms toward her, a clear sign he wouldn’t be reaching for his weapon as he slowly withdrew two papers from his shirt’s front pocket.

  He unfolded the papers and handed the top one to her. “Is that you?”

  It was a picture of a young girl, surrounded by five dangerous-looking men. Men who were confirmed to be part of the Jimenez drug cartel.

  Bennet had no doubt the girl in the picture was Alyssa. Though she did look different as an adult, there were too many similarities. Chief among them the stony expression on her face.

  She looked at the picture for an abnormally long time in utter silence.

  “Ms. Jimenez?”

  She looked up at him, and there wasn’t just stony stoicism or cynicism in her expression anymore, there was something a lot closer to hatred. She dropped the picture on her ramshackle desk.

  “I really doubt I need to answer that question since you’re here. You’ve decided it’s me whether I confirm it or not. You clearly know who those men are, decided I’m connected to them. I doubt you’ll believe me, but let me head you off at the pass. I have not contacted anyone with the last name Jimenez since I was kidnapped at the age of twenty.”

  He wouldn’t let that soften him. “Then I guess it’s fitting that the case I’m looking into is sixteen years old.”

  Confusion drew her eyebrows together. “You want to question me about a crime that happened when I was eight?”

  “Yes.”

  She made a scoffing noise disguised as a laugh. “All right, Ranger Hotshot. Hit me.”

  “Sixteen years ago, a Jane Doe was found murdered. She’s never been identified, but I found some similarities between her case and a case connected to the Jimenez family. Your family. I’d like to bring some closure to this cold case, and I think you can help.”

  “I was eight. Whatever my brothers were doing, I had no part in.”

  “Brothers?”

  She didn’t move, didn’t say anything, but Bennet nearly smiled. She’d slipped up and given him more information than he’d had. He’d known Alyssa was connected, but he hadn’t known how close.

  Yeah, she was going to be exactly what he needed. “I’d like you to loo
k at the picture of the Jane Doe and let me know if you remember ever seeing her with your brothers. It’s not an incredibly graphic picture, but it can be disconcerting for some people to view pictures of dead bodies.”

  Alyssa rolled her eyes and snatched up the picture. “I work as a bounty hunter. I think I can stand the sight of a...” But she trailed off and paled. She sank into the folding chair so hard it broke and she fell to the ground.

  Bennet was at her side not quite in time to keep her ass from hitting the floor. “Are you okay?”

  She was shaking, seemed not to have noticed she’d broken a chair and was sitting in its debris, the picture fisted in her hand.

  “Alyssa?”

  When she finally brought her gaze to his, those brown eyes were wide and wet and she was clearly in shock.

  “Where’d you get this?” she demanded in a whisper, her hands shaking. Hell, her whole body was shaking. Her brown eyes bored into his. “This is a lie. This has to be a lie.” Her voice cracked.

  “You know her?” he asked, gently rubbing a hand up and down her forearm, trying to offer something to help her stop shaking so hard.

  Alyssa looked back down at the picture that shook in her hands. “That’s my mother.”

  * * *

  THE TEARS WERE sharp and burning, but Alyssa did everything she could to keep them from falling. She forced herself to look away from the picture and shoved it back at the Texas Ranger, whatever his name was.

  It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Her mother had left her. She’d been seduced away by some rival of her father’s. That was the story.

  Not murder.

  It didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense. She tried to get ahold of her labored breathing, but no matter how much she told herself to breathe slowly in and out, she could only gasp and pant, that picture of her mother’s lifeless face seared into her brain forever.

  Murder.

  She realized the Ranger had stopped rubbing her arm in that oddly comforting gesture and instead curled long, strong fingers around both her elbows.

  “Come on,” he said gently, pulling her to her feet.

  Since the debris of the rickety chair that had broken underneath her weight was starting to dig into her butt, she let him do it. Once she was standing somewhere close to steady on her feet, he didn’t release her. No, that strong grip stayed right where it was on her elbows.

  It was centering somehow, that firm, warm pressure. A reminder she existed in the here and now, not in one of the different prisons her life had been.

  She blinked up at the Texas Ranger holding her steady. There was something like compassion in his blue eyes, maybe even regret. His full lips were downturned, slight grooves bracketing his mouth.

  He was something like pretty, and she’d rather have those cheekbones and that square jaw burned into her brain than the image of her dead mother.

  “If I’d had any idea, Alyssa...” he said, his voice gravel and his tone overly familiar.

  She pulled herself out of his grasp, pulled into herself, like she’d learned how to do time and time again as the inconsequential daughter of a criminal, as a useless kidnapping victim.

  She’d spent the last two years trying to build a life for herself where she might matter, where she might do some good.

  This moment forced her back into all the ways she’d never mattered. What other lies she’d accepted as truth might be waiting for her?

  She closed her eyes against the onslaught of pain. And fear.

  “My brothers didn’t murder my mother, Ranger Stevens,” Alyssa managed, though her voice was rusty. “I know they’re not exactly heroes, but they never would have killed my mother.”

  “Okay.” He was quiet for a few humming seconds. “Maybe you’d like to help me find out who did.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t emote. She’d worked with law enforcement before, but she was careful about it. They usually didn’t know her name or her friends. They definitely didn’t know her connection to the Jimenez family.

  This man knew all of that and had to look like Superman in a cowboy hat on top of it. The last thing she should consider was working with him.

  Except her mother was dead. Murdered. A Jane Doe for well over a decade, and as much as she couldn’t believe her brothers had anything to do with her mother’s murder—murder—she couldn’t believe they didn’t know. There was no way Miranda Jimenez had stayed a Jane Doe without her family purposefully making sure she did.

  Alyssa swallowed. Making sure her mother had stayed a Jane Doe, all the while making sure Alyssa didn’t know about it. Her brothers had always claimed they were protecting her by keeping things from her, and it was hard to doubt. They had meant well. If they hadn’t, she’d have been dead or auctioned off to some faithful servant of her father’s before she’d ever been kidnapped.

  Ranger Stevens released her, and she felt cold without that warm, sturdy grip. Cold and alone. Well, that’s what you are. What you’ll always have to be.

  “Take some time. Come to grips with this new information, and when you’re ready to work with me, give me a call.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her a card from it.

  She took the card. That big star emblem of the Rangers seemed to stare at her. It looked so official, so heroic, that symbol. Right next to it, his name, Bennet E. Stevens. Ranger.

  She glanced back up at him, and was more than a little irritated she saw kindness in his expression. She didn’t want kindness or compassion. She didn’t know what to do with those things, and she already got them in spades from Gabby and Natalie and even to an extent from their law enforcement significant others.

  Everyone felt sorry for Alyssa Jimenez, but no one knew who she really was. Except this man.

  “Do you have a phone number I can reach you at?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything.

  She didn’t want to give him her number. She didn’t want to give him anything. She wanted to rewind the last half hour and go with Gabby to the hospital. She would have avoided this whole thing.

  Not forever, though. She was too practical to think it would have lasted forever.

  “Fine,” she muttered, because, as much as she knew she’d end up working with this guy, the promise of solving her mother’s murder was too great, too important, and she didn’t want to give him too much leverage. She’d make him think she was reticent, doing him a favor when she finally agreed.

  She grabbed a pen and scrap of paper from her desk and scrawled her number on it. He took it, sliding it into his pocket along with the pictures he’d retrieved. She’d wanted to keep them, but she had to keep it cool. She’d get them eventually.

  “I’ll be in touch, Alyssa,” he said with a tip of his hat. He paused for a second, hesitating. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said gravely, before turning and exiting her office.

  She let out a shaky sigh. The worst thing was believing that kind of crap. Why would he be sorry? He didn’t know her or her mother. It was a lame, placating statement.

  It soothed somehow, idiot that she was. She shook her head and collected her belongings. She’d stop by the hospital to check on Natalie and Gabby, and then she’d go home and try to sleep. She’d give it a day, maybe two, then she’d call Ranger Too-Hot-For-Her-Own-Good.

  She locked up and exited out the back, pulling her helmet on before starting her motorcycle. It was her most expensive possession, and she treated it like a baby. Nothing in the world gave her the freedom that motorcycle did.

  She rode out of the alley and onto the street that would lead her to the highway and the hospital. Within two minutes, she knew she was being followed.

  Her first inclination was that it was Ranger Stevens keeping tabs on her, but the jacked-up piece-of-crap car following her was no Texas Ranger vehicle.

>   She scowled and narrowed her eyes. Of course, anyone could be following her, but after the Ranger’s visit and information, Alyssa had the sneaking suspicion it was all related.

  Maybe her brothers had ignored her existence since she’d been kidnapped and then released, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t find her if they wanted to.

  If they were after her now, they wouldn’t give up until they got her. But that didn’t mean she had to go down easy. Certainly not after they’d abandoned her.

  She took a sharp turn onto a side street, then weaved in and out of traffic the way the car couldn’t. She took a few more sharp turns, earning honks and angry middle fingers from other drivers, but eventually she found herself in a dark, small alley. She killed her engine and stood there straddling her bike, breathing heavily.

  Did her brothers know Ranger Stevens was investigating their mother’s death? Did they have something to hide?

  She squeezed her eyes shut, finding her even breathing. They couldn’t have killed their mother. They couldn’t have. Alyssa couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

  Her phone rang and she swore, expecting it to be news about Natalie’s baby. Instead, it was a number she didn’t recognize. Her brothers?

  She hit Accept cautiously, and adopted her best take-no-crap tone. “What?”

  “You’re being tailed.”

  She scowled at Ranger Steven’s voice. “I’m well aware. I lost them.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m tailing them now.”

  “Idiot,” she muttered. How had this man stepped into her life for fifteen minutes and scrambled everything up?

  “What?” Ranger Stevens spluttered.

  Alyssa had to think fast. To move. Oh, damn the man for getting in the way of things. “Listen, I’m coming back out. I want you to let them follow me. And when they take me, I need you to not get in the way.” Her brothers had never come for her, and she’d stopped expecting them, but if they were coming for her now...she was ready.