UNDERCOVER TWIN (19 page)

He cocked a brow. “You get to set conditions, but I don’t?”

“Works for me,” she teased.

He grabbed her and swung her up into his arms. “I agree to condition three, but everything else will have to be renegotiated.” He limped with her to the bed.

“Wait, I have one more condition,” she squeaked.

He dumped her on the bed and followed her down, covering her with his body. “I’m losing my patience. Make it quick.”

“I want you to show me your tattoo.”

He blinked, then let out a shout of laughter.

Heather clapped her hand over his mouth. “Hush. Rafe and Darby might hear us. And we still have to renegotiate new conditions.”

He grinned and smoothed her hair back from her face. “That’s exactly what we’re about to do, darlin’. Negotiate.” He leaned down and whispered exactly how he would negotiate, exactly how he would wring an agreement out of her to his every demand.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from JUSTICE IS COMING by Delores Fossen.

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Chapter One

Marshal Declan O’Malley eased the saddle off his
chestnut stallion. He tried not to make any sudden moves, and he didn’t look
over his shoulder, though Declan was pretty sure someone was watching him.

That “pretty sure” became a certainty when he spotted the
footprints on the partially frozen ground.

What the heck was going on?

Since he’d been a federal marshal for nearly six years, he was
accustomed to having people want to do him bodily harm, but threats like that
rarely came right to his doorstep.

Or rather to his barn.

Declan put the saddle on the side of the watering trough and
adjusted his buckskin jacket so he could reach the Colt in his belt holster. He
gave the chestnut’s rump a gentle slap, and as Declan had hoped he’d do, the
stallion headed for some hay in the side corral. If there was going to be a
shootout, Declan sure didn’t want his horse caught up in the gunfire.

He stepped to the side of the barn door. And waited.

Listening.

But the only thing he could hear was the bitter December wind
rattling the bare trees scattered around the grounds. He didn’t mind the cold
when he was on his daily ride, but he minded it a lot when he was waiting for
something bad to happen.

Or maybe not bad.

He looked at the footprints again. Small. Like a woman’s. He
hadn’t been in a relationship in the past three or four months, but maybe this
was an old girlfriend come to visit. Still, it didn’t feel like something that
simple.

Or that fun.

His house wasn’t exactly on the beaten path, not even by
rural-Texas standards. He was literally on the back forty acres of his foster
family’s horse-and-cattle ranch. A good ten miles from the town of Maverick
Springs, and with not even a paved road leading to his place. Besides, there
wasn’t much of value in his small wood-frame house to make it a target for
thieves.

Declan glanced around. Kept listening. And when he was finally
fed up with the cold, he drew his Colt and moved away from the barn door so he
could follow those footprints. From the looks of it, the prints started at the
back of his barn, and that meant somebody had probably walked in from the
pasture and checked out the barn itself.

Maybe looking for him.

Or looking to make sure he’d indeed gone on his daily ride.

And then the trespasser had made her way to the back of his
house. Declan went in that direction now, using the trees for cover.

Finally, he saw something.

Or rather
someone.

There was a person dressed in dark clothes and equally dark
sunglasses peering around the edge of his back porch. Judging from her size, it
was probably a woman, though he couldn’t be positive since his visitor was
wearing a black baseball cap slung low on her head, and the brim covered most of
her face. Declan expected her to duck out of sight when she spotted him.

She didn’t.

She put her index finger to her mouth in a keep-quiet
gesture.

What the hell?

And just to confuse things even more, she motioned for him to
come closer.

Declan debated it. He debated calling out to her, too, but she
frantically shook her head and made that keep-quiet gesture again.

He looked to see if she was armed. Couldn’t tell. But since
she’d had ample opportunity to shoot at him and hadn’t, Declan decided to take
his chances. He didn’t put his gun away, but he went closer.

Yeah, it was a woman all right. About five-six, with an average
build. Judging from the strands of hair that had slipped out from the back of
the baseball cap, she was a brunette.

“Inside,” she whispered and tipped her head to his back door.
“Please,”
she added.

Well, if she was a criminal, she was a polite one, that was for
sure. The
please
didn’t sway Declan one bit, but her
shaky voice did. There was fear in it. Or something. Something that told him she
wasn’t a killer.

Well, probably not.

He’d been wrong before. And he had the scar on his chest to
prove it.

But did that stop him?

Much to his disgust, nope, it didn’t. He’d never been a
cautious man, and while this seemed like a really good time to start, Declan
went even closer, still looking for any sign that she was armed.

Okay, she was.

Without any prompting, his mysterious visitor opened the side
of her jacket to show him the gun—a Glock—that she had tucked in a shoulder
holster. Since she made no attempt to draw it, Declan walked even closer, up the
side steps. He also tapped the badge he had pinned to his holster, just in case
she didn’t know she was dealing with a deputy U.S. marshal.

She kept her head down so he still didn’t have a good look at
her face. “I know exactly who you are, Declan O’Malley,” she whispered.

Well, that wasn’t much of a stretch. Everyone in Maverick
Springs knew who he was. He and his five foster brothers, who were all marshals,
too. Anyone could have found out his name and where he lived within minutes
after arriving in town. Heck, he didn’t even have a burglar alarm because he
figured no one would be stupid enough to do what this woman was apparently
trying to do.

“Inside,” she repeated.

It wasn’t caution but rather common sense that had him staying
put when she turned toward his door. “I want answers first,” he insisted.

“Shh.” The fear in her body language went up a significant
notch, and she fired a few nervous glances around his yard.

Confused and now somewhat riled at, well, whatever the heck
this was, Declan followed her glances but didn’t see anything out of the
ordinary. Only the woman.

He cupped her chin, lifted it.

And groaned.

Yeah. He recognized her all right, and it wasn’t a good kind of
recognition, either.

Eden Gray.

What in the Sam Hill was she doing here at his house?

He opened his mouth to demand some answers but her hand flew
up, and she pressed her fingers to his mouth. Cold fingers at that.

But soft.

And she smelled like some kind of girlie hand lotion. It
definitely didn’t go with that Glock she was carrying or the fact that she was
trespassing.

“They might hear you,” she whispered. “Inside,” she insisted
again.

“They?”

She eased down her fingers, stepped back and yanked off her
glasses. Those eyes caught him off guard for just a moment. Ice blue but somehow
without a hint of cold in them. Definitely memorable, but he hadn’t needed to
see her eyes to know this was a blast from his past that he didn’t want or
need.

Well, a blast he didn’t need anyway.

For a split second, his body overrode his brain, and that whole
want
thing came into play. In those brief
moments, he didn’t see Eden Gray, a person who despised him, but rather a hot
woman. One who just happened to be armed and acting crazy.

She swallowed hard.

Something different went through her eyes. Not fear, but Declan
recognized the look. It was the quick glance that a woman gave a man when she
was interested but didn’t want to be.

Declan was afraid he was giving her the same look right back.
Oh, man.
One day he was going to learn to think
with his head only and not some other body part that often got him into
trouble.

She swallowed hard again. Turned. And she eased open the door.
Sorry,
she mouthed.

Declan didn’t ask for what. He didn’t want to know. He only
wanted answers, and that was why he followed her inside to his kitchen.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

But she still didn’t answer. She hurried to the window over his
sink and looked out. She did another of those shifty glances that he often did
when he was doing surveillance or in the presence of danger.

“You obviously remember me,” she finally said.

He gave her a flat look.
“Obviously.”

“This way,” Eden added. “I have to show you something.” And she
headed toward his living room that was only a few yards away.

She would have made it there, too, but Declan snagged her by
the arm and whirled her back around to face him. “Remembering you doesn’t tell
me why you’re here. Now spill it, or I’m tossing you out.”

“You can’t.” Eden was breathing through her mouth now, and her
pulse was jumping in her throat. But that didn’t stop her from shaking off his
grip, catching his arm and pulling him into the living room.

“Stay away from the windows,” she warned.

Just on principle and because he was now about twelve steps
past being ornery, Declan considered doing the opposite of anything she was
asking. “Give me a reason why I should stay away from my own window.”

“There’s a tiny camera attached to the big oak on the right
side of your front porch.” Her breath trembled in her throat. “And they’re
watching the front of the house. Maybe trying to listen, too.”

Declan shook his head, stared at her and made a circling motion
with his gun for her to continue. He needed more. A lot more, but he needed that
“a lot more” to make sense. So far, that wasn’t happening.

“Did you miss a dose of meds or something?” he asked.

“No.” She stretched that out a few syllables. “I’m not crazy.
And I have a good reason for being here.”

He stared at her, made the circling motion with his hand
again.

“I got here about a half hour ago, while you were out riding,”
she said. “I’ve watched you for the past two days, so I know you take a ride
this time of morning before you go in to work.”

Well, it was an answer all right, but it didn’t answer much.
“You watched me?”

She nodded.

“Really?” And he didn’t take the skepticism out of it,
either.

Until this morning when he’d reined in at the barn, he hadn’t
felt or seen anyone watching him yesterday or the day before. Of course, he’d
had a lot on his mind what with his foster father, Kirby Granger, battling
cancer. The thought of losing Kirby had been weighing on him. Maybe enough for
him to not notice someone stalking him.

He looked her straight in the eye. “Are you going to make me
arrest you, or do you plan to keep going with that explanation?”

She made a soft sound of frustration, looked out the window
again. “I’m a P.I. now. I own a small agency in San Antonio.”

She’d skipped right over the most important detail of her brief
bio. “Your father’s Zander Gray, a lowlife swindling scum. I arrested him about
three years ago for attempting to murder a witness who was going to testify
against him, and he was doing hard time before he escaped.”

And this was suddenly becoming a whole lot clearer.

“He sent you here,” Declan accused.

“No,” she quickly answered. “I’m not even sure he’s alive.”

Okay, maybe not so clear after all.

“But my father might have been the reason they contacted me in
the first place,” Eden explained. “They might have thought I’d do anything to
get back at you for arresting him. I won’t.”

He made a sound of disagreement. “Since you’re trespassing and
have been stalking me, convince me otherwise that you’re not here to avenge your
father.”

“I’m not.” Not a whisper that time. And there was some fire in
those two little words. “But someone’s trying to set me up. Earlier this week
someone broke into my office, planted some fake financials on my computer and
changed the password so I can’t delete them from the server. That someone is
trying to make it look as if I’m funneling money to a radical militia group
buying illegal firearms.”

Declan thought about that a second. “Lady, if you wanted me to
investigate that, you didn’t have to follow me or come to my ranch. My office is
on Main Street in town.”

Another headshake. “They didn’t hire me to go to your
office.”

Mercy. It was hard to hang on to his temper with this
roundabout conversation. “There it is again. That
they.
They
put up the camera that you don’t want me to go
to the window and see. So who are they?”

“I honestly don’t know.” She dodged his gaze, tried to turn
away, but he took hold of her again and forced her to face him. “After I
realized someone had planted that false info on my computer, I got a call from a
man using a prepaid cell phone. I didn’t recognize his voice. He said if I went
to the cops or the marshals, he’d release the info on my computer and I’d be
arrested.”

And maybe she would be. Because some cops might assume like
father, like daughter.

But was she?

Declan pushed that question aside. Right now, that didn’t
matter. “This unknown male caller is the one who put the camera outside?”

“I think so. If not him, then someone working with or for him.
All I know is it’s there because I saw a man wearing a ski mask installing it
right after you left for your ride.”

He shook his head. “If they sent you to watch me, why use a
camera?”

“Because the camera is to watch
me,
” she clarified. “To make sure I do what he ordered me to do.”

“And what exactly are you supposed to do?” Declan demanded.

Eden Gray shoved her hand over her Glock. “Kill you.”

Copyright © 2013 by Delores Fossen