Rustling Up Trouble. Delores Fossen
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Heck, breathing made it worse, too.
“If it hadn’t been for Rayanne,” the doctor said, “you might have bled out. She added pressure to your wound to slow down the blood flow.”
“Rayanne,” Blue managed to say, and he got a glimpse of her peering over the doctor’s shoulder.
The relief was instant, and Blue released the breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding.
Yeah, it was her, all right.
She had her ginger-brown hair pulled into her usual ponytail, though strands had slipped out and were dangling around her face and shoulders. When she stepped to the doctor’s side, he saw the blood on the front of her buckskin-colored jacket.
“You’re hurt.” Blue tried to sit up, but the doctor stopped that.
Rayanne shook her head. “That’s not my blood. It’s yours.”
More relief. It was bad enough that he’d been shot, but it would have been much worse if the bullet had gone into Rayanne instead.
But why did she look so, well, riled at him?
This wasn’t the first time they’d gotten shot at together. As an ATF agent, he had worked on a few cases with her when the investigations had landed in her jurisdiction. So why was she eyeing him now as if she wanted to rip off his aching head?
And the questions just kept coming.
Why had he been shot, and where the heck was he? He knew the hospital part, but he’d been in several hospitals in San Antonio, his hometown, and this wasn’t one of them.
“Why’d those men want you dead?” Rayanne asked. “Why aren’t you dead?” she tacked onto that.
Clearly she had some questions of her own.
Blue opened his mouth to get busy answering them and realized he didn’t have a clue. “Start from the beginning,” he insisted. “I want to know what’s going on. Why can’t I remember how I got here?”
Rayanne huffed. More eye narrowing, and those gray eyes that at times could take on a warm, sensual glow certainly weren’t warm or sensual at the moment. They were like little slabs of ice jabbing at him.
“A sensor alarm went off at the ranch,” she finally said, “and when I rode out to check, I found you trying not to draw the attention of three gunmen who drove up on the back side of the fence.”
On one level that gave him a serious shot of adrenaline, but on another it was just plain confusing.
Think, Blue.
Not easy to do, but he sorted through some of the fog and remembered going to the ranch that Rayanne’s family owned.
Estranged family, he mentally corrected.
Rayanne had told him that she might have to go back to Sweetwater Springs because her mother was possibly going to be arrested for the decades-old murder of an alleged lover, Whitt Braddock.
And that was where Blue’s memories came to a grinding halt.
“Why were the gunmen there?” he asked. “And why are you so mad?”
Her next huff was considerably louder. “Could you give us a minute?” Rayanne asked the doc.
Dr. Howland didn’t seem exactly comfortable with that, but he eventually nodded. “Only for a minute or two. And go easy on him.”
“You want to know why I’m mad?” Rayanne repeated once the doctor had stepped out. “Well, for starters you slept with me almost five months ago and then disappeared without so much as a Post-it note.”
Oh, man.
He’d slept with her?
Blue remembered the attraction between them. Felt it blood-deep even now. But he’d always fought falling into bed with her because he had a strict rule about not having sex with coworkers.
Blue shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
And that was saying something. Rayanne wasn’t exactly forgettable, and sex with her should have stuck in his mind like permanent glue.
“I have amnesia?” he asked. That was sadly the best-case scenario here. The worst would be some kind of permanent brain damage.
She lifted her shoulder. “You’d have to ask the doctor about that.”
And he would, the second the man came back. For now, though, he needed as much info as possible. “What happened after I disappeared?”
Rayanne studied him, the way a cop would study a suspect she thought was lying through his teeth. “I got word that you were dead. I can’t think of any good reason you’d let me believe that other than you really did want me out of your life.”
Oh, mercy.
It felt as if twin heavyweights had slugged each side of his jaw at the same time. Blue couldn’t speak. Heck, he couldn’t even catch his breath. Yeah, he was pretty much the love-’em-and-leave-’em sort, but there was no way he’d do something like that to Rayanne.
Would he?
“I looked for you when you left,” she continued, “but I got a message from your foster brother saying you were dead. That you’d been killed in Mexico.”
There was a massive amount of fog in his head, but he could sort through enough to remember some things.
“I don’t have a brother, either a real one or a foster,” he insisted. “And I sure as hell didn’t die in Mexico. I’m right here.” Blue reached for her, but she stepped back as if he’d tried to tase her.
Before Blue could get out of bed and do something to convince her that he wasn’t the bad guy here, the door flew open. Blue reached for his gun again. Cursed when it wasn’t where it belonged.
However, Rayanne pulled her Colt from her shoulder holster.
False alarm. It was Dr. Howland, but he wasn’t alone.
The sandy-haired, linebacker-sized guy who came through the door spared her and then her gun a glance as he flashed his badge and made a beeline for Blue. Thankfully, this man wasn’t a blurry memory.
It was Blue’s boss, Agent Caleb Wiggs, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—ATF.
At least, Caleb had been his boss five months ago. With everything else going on, Blue figured he could be wrong about that, too.
Rayanne seemed to know him, as well, and judging from her scowl, Caleb wasn’t on her list of friends, either. She reholstered the Colt as if she’d declared war on it, but she watched him with those cop’s eyes.
“You all right, Blue?” Caleb asked. He set a bag on the foot of the bed.
No way could Blue answer yes to that question. It might garner him a lightning bolt for such a big lie. “What’s going on?”
Caleb didn’t answer, but he looked at Rayanne and the doctor. “I need to talk to Agent McCurdy in private.”
“Agent McCurdy?” Rayanne questioned. She huffed. “Don’t you mean former agent?”
That got Blue’s complete attention. Great day in the morning. Along with his mind and gun, had he managed to lose his badge, too?
“I mean agent.” And Caleb didn’t sound any friendlier than Rayanne. “Blue still works for me.”
“Wait a minute,” Blue said, trying to figure this out. It didn’t help that his shoulder started clamoring for more pain meds. “What’s the date?”
“October 6,” the doctor provided. “And I hope everyone remembers that I just dug a bullet out of my patient here. He needs some peace and quiet so he can recover.”
“And he’ll get it,” Caleb insisted.