Stone Cold Christmas Ranger. Nicole Helm
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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 look 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