SIENNA HAD BEEN killed by members of a homeland terrorist group that preyed on Mexican illegal immigrants as well as those who had immigrated legally and were born in the States.
They were a white supremacist militia that had on several occasions kidnapped their victims, hunted them, then killed them with such torturous means that Hannah had actually had nightmares after reading about the events in the newspapers two years ago.
Many of those militia members had been known and trusted members of the community. A sheriff’s deputy, the mayor, a bank president, the owner of a local ranch. She had taught the children of several of those men in school, and she had watched how their families’ lives were destroyed once the news hit.
Sienna Grayson and Sabella Malone had been kidnapped by the group when the terrorists found out that Sabella’s lover had discovered evidence against them in one of the trucks that had been in the garage, and had turned it over to authorities.
In retaliation, the militia had kidnapped her and the sheriff’s wife. Sienna hadn’t survived. When federal agents had moved in on the group Sienna had been killed.
It had been tragic. The community had turned out in force to mourn with Rick. Though many of them had dis-liked Sienna personally, it seemed everyone had cared for their sheriff.
He was a good man, Hannah thought as they drove through town. He was a good sheriff. In all the years he had held the post there had never been a whiff of scandal attached to his office.
He kept his life, both private and public, squeaky clean. If Rick Grayson had skeletons, and she was certain he did, then they were buried so deep in the proverbial closet that she doubted anyone would find them.
To call him private was an understatement. Even before his wife’s death, Rick hadn’t been a whiner or the type of man that told everyone his business. After her death, he seemed to have closed up even further. Though Hannah would have been surprised if he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry about that, Hannah.” His voice was a black velvet whisper through the night as he spoke. “Jay has things set in his head and there’s no convincing him otherwise.”
“Things like the rumor that you shot your wife?” she asked, catching the little flinch her words evoked.
“Yeah, things like that.” He shifted his shoulders as though the weight of them were a burden.
“Jay was always fiercely protective of Sienna,” she stated. “I went to school with him. He would never let anybody say anything bad about her.”
But there was plenty said. Jay had gotten a reputation as a gutter fighter at a young age because of his defense of his sister. It was too bad she hadn’t been equally protective of her reputation. Not that Hannah could say that to Rick.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Rick agreed with a heavy sigh as he glanced back at her. “It didn’t do anything for the mood though, did it?”
The wry smile that tugged at his lips surprised her. He was obviously trying to brush off the encounter, to recapture the heat and sensuality that had been there earlier.
“We could talk about it over a cup of coffee if you like?” She smiled as she turned away from him, a flash of light catching her eyes.
She heard Rick curse as her eyes widened and fear clenched her chest tight. Leaning forward, she peered out the window, her throat tightening.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Is that my house?”
There were police cars in her front yard, several in the street in front of her house. Her front door was hanging open and several officers were talking to neighbors.
“Hang on, Hannah,” Rick commanded as he drew the truck to a stop and reached out for her, grabbing her arm as she moved to exit the truck. “Let’s see what happened first. Stay put.”
The ring of authority in his tone made her remain still and silent for several precious moments as he jumped out of the truck and rushed around to the door.
She had already thrown the door open and was in the process of getting out of the high cab when he gripped her waist and helped her to the sidewalk.
“Let’s see what’s going on before we jump to conclusions,” he warned her.
Hannah nodded, grateful for his arm as it reached around her back, pulling her to him.
The sense of safety that wrapped around her stilled the shudders that had begun racing through her, but nothing could still the fear that tightened her chest and her throat.
“Sheriff, you found her.” A young officer moved from the front yard toward them, his expression concerned as Rick stopped, holding her back.
“She was with me all along, Officer Johnson,” Rick informed him as Hannah’s hand lifted to her throat, her chest tightening further as she stared at her house.
It was small. It wasn’t roomy, but it was hers. It held her possessions, her life. It was her refuge, and now strangers were walking through it?
“What happened here, Officer Johnson?” Rick asked, his tone becoming commanding.
“Sorry, sir.” The officer jumped to attention. “At approximately nine o’ clock this evening we received notification from her security company that her alarm had gone off and they couldn’t reach her.” He turned to Hannah. “Did you have your cell phone on you, ma’am?”
Hannah’s gaze jerked back to him as she shook her head. “I noticed it missing this morning. I haven’t found it yet.”
“Well,” he continued, “when the security company couldn’t reach you we were called out. Your car was in the drive, your parents hadn’t heard from you, so we entered the house to make certain you weren’t in trouble.” He waved toward the broken door as he grimaced. “Sorry, ma’am. It was the only way in.”
“Find anything?” Rick asked as he began to draw Hannah toward the house.
As the two men talked Hannah felt the overwhelming urge to run. She didn’t want to go into her home when all these people were milling around in it. She wanted them to leave. She wanted to lock herself in and make certain the few things she had were still safe.
“Nothing was stolen that we can tell,” the officer was saying. “The back door was kicked in. They didn’t even try to keep from setting off the alarm. The uhh…” He glanced at Hannah. “The bedroom is the only room that appears to have any damage.”
“Hannah!” Rick’s voice was sharp as she broke away from him and ran for the house.
She pushed past the officer at the front door, knees shaking, her heart in her throat, and rushed upstairs to her bedroom, aware that Rick was following close behind.
Damage to her bedroom? Her sanctuary?
She ran into the room then came to a hard, dead stop.
Rick cursed harshly behind her, his voice dangerous, icy, but all Hannah could do was stare in humiliated horror.
Okay, she didn’t have an active sex life. She had a few toys. Well, several adult toys actually. A vibrator, a soft gel dildo, and a little egg-shaped clitoral vibrator.
The clitoral vibrator hung from the fan over her bed, twirling lazily as she stared at it in agonized humiliation for long seconds.
The gel penis-shaped toy was stuck to her dresser mirror where the words whore had been printed in block letters with red lipstick. And her vibrator? It had been shoved into the ripped lips of the huge teddy bear that sat in a chair beside her bed. A gift from one of her brothers.
There were police officers in her bedroom. They stared with her, their gazes shifting from her as she stared around the room, shame burning through her.
“How did someone have time to do this?” Rick asked, his voice so icy, so stone cold that even Hannah flinched.
“Sheriff Grayson.” An older man dressed in a rumpled suit stepped forward.
“Detective Dickerson, how the hell did someone have time to do this before your men arrived?”
“Response time between break-in and our arrival was fifteen minutes,” the detective stated. “The security attempted to call Ms. Brookes’s contact number and when she didn’t answer they alerted us. According to the security logs, her pass code was punched into the alarm an hour before the break-in, though. How long has she been with you?”
“Longer than that,” Rick stated as Hannah turned to the detective in shock.
“No one has my code.” She shook her head in confusion. “No one. Not even my brothers or parents.”
The detective shook his head, his lips flattening as he rubbed at his temple for a second.
“Someone knew what the hell they were doing, then,” he said. “There are devices that can get past this system, but your normal burglar doesn’t have them. Who wants to get at you that bad, Ms. Brookes? Bad enough to do this when they found you weren’t here.” He turned and looked around the room before returning his gaze to her.
“I’m just a teacher,” she whispered.
“Any parents threatened you? Harassed you?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head fiercely.
The questions didn’t stop. They were insistent, probing. Hannah couldn’t take her eyes off her bedroom as the detective interrogated her.
Other than the toys that had been displayed, nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. They had found the most humiliating things and used them to hurt her.
But why?
As she answered the detective’s questions she fought to understand. As far as she knew she didn’t have any enemies, she told the detective. No, she hadn’t argued with anyone lately. No, she wasn’t dating anyone and hadn’t in more than a year. Until tonight, Rick injected.
It went on and on until she felt as though she were going to scream in frustration. She just wanted them to leave. She wanted everyone out of her home so she could hide the evidence of her loneliness and lick her wounds in peace.
“Well, we’ve dusted for prints.” The detective finally rubbed at his nose as he stared around the room again. “If we find out anything, we’ll let you know. But honestly.” He shook his head again. “I doubt we’re going to. Someone was pretty thorough here.”
“Thanks, Will,” Rick was saying. “Could you let me know what you find, as well?”
“Sure thing. I’d suggest you get her out of here for a while. Get the doors fixed and install some additional security.”
Hannah shook her head. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“She’ll be at my place,” Rick stated.
“No.” She tried to inject a measure of strength in her voice, but she heard it shake, heard the tremor in it herself.
“Like hell.” Rick’s tone was gentle but firm. “You can’t stay here, Hannah, and you know it. You can come back tomorrow, do what you have to do. Tonight, you can stay at my place.”
She didn’t want to leave.
“I have to clean…” She could feel the tears building in her voice.
She wanted to wipe away the embarrassment. She needed to hide her personal items, needed to get them out of sight.
“It can wait until tomorrow.” His voice lowered. “The police officers will secure the doors for tonight and tomorrow I can come over with you and replace the doors.”
“But…”
“No buts. It can wait till tomorrow.”
She felt like a child, uncertain, frightened. She couldn’t believe someone had done this to her. She couldn’t understand why they would want to.
She let Rick draw her away from the bedroom, her eyes going once again to the toys that were laid out for the world to see.
“This is so humiliating,” she whispered as they left the house, his hand at her back as he led her down the steps. “Why would anyone do that?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the crowd outside her home, wondering how many of them knew what her room displayed. There were no secrets on a street with neighbors like hers. They were good people, kind, caring, and nosy as hell.
Everyone probably knew she had toys and were speculating about them. Poor Miss Brookes. She couldn’t get a man so she bought toys instead.
Shame flooded her face once again.
And who would call her a whore? She had toys for a reason. She hadn’t even had a date in forever, let alone actual sex. Tonight was the closest she had come in years.
“Come on.” Rick bundled her back into the truck before loping to the driver’s side and stepping in. Slamming the door behind him, he was pulling from the street within seconds and reaching across the console to grip her hand with his. “It’s going to be okay, Hannah.”
She rubbed at her forehead with her free hand before staring out the window in confusion.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said again. “Why do that?” She turned to stare at him, unable to comprehend the reason behind such maliciousness.
“We’ll find out why,” he stated, and she actually believed he might do it. He seemed more angry than she was. Anger hadn’t hit her yet, though. She was still in shock, uncertain and confused.
Rick continued to stare out the windshield, glaring into the night. He had a feeling that what had happened tonight had nothing to do with Hannah, and everything to do with him.
He should have stayed away from her last summer. Some instinct had warned him last summer that he was making a mistake. What if those two dates, seemingly innocent and going nowhere, had made her a target because of him?
“We’ll figure it out, Hannah,” he promised her, feeling her hand tremble beneath his as he drove through the night to his ranch. “Until we do, I promise you’ll be safe.”
He couldn’t let anything happen to her. Sienna had done enough to destroy his life; he wasn’t going to allow her ghost to finish him off.
Making the turn up the paved road to his home several miles from the main road, he kept his gaze roving through the night, searching for anomalies, or anything out of the ordinary.
He knew his home like the back of his hand. For several months after the militia had been disbanded he’d had a few problems on the ranch. Cattle that were killed senselessly, a few attempted break-ins, nothing serious. Harassments, little else.
This wasn’t harassment. He would consider this war, and he would let the few remaining members of the terrorist group who hadn’t been arrested know it. Hannah wasn’t going to be a target for their revenge.
“Here we are.” Using the automatic garage door opener, he pulled the truck inside and turned it off. Closing the doors from the control inside the truck, he opened his door and stepped out quickly to open Hannah’s.
She already had her door open. Gripping her waist he helped her from the truck, realizing how small she was, how delicate, as he set her on her feet before him.
He deactivated his alarm with the control on his key ring before opening the door and leading her into the kitchen.
His security system was more advanced than most, installed by a team of agents so deep cover that most in the government didn’t know they existed. The men who had helped round up the militia two years before; one of them was still a resident of Alpine and married to the wife he’d had before his “death.”
That one still amazed him.
“Come on, I’ll get you something to wear and you can take a hot shower.” Gripping her hand he led her to his bedroom. “I’ll fix you some hot chocolate or something. That always helps Kent sleep.”
Thank God he’d relented and allowed Mona to take his son camping with her. If someone was targeting him over the destruction of the militia two years before, then he didn’t want his son involved in it.
“Rick, you don’t have to do this,” she protested as they entered the bedroom.
At least he’d thought to make the bed this morning. The bedroom was in fairly good shape. There was dust on the furniture, the wood floors a little dull. He’d stacked his clothes on the dresser rather than putting them away after Mona had returned them to him.
He didn’t always have time to clean house.
Moving to the stack of clothes, he removed a t-shirt and brought it back to her.
“This should be long enough for you.” His lips twitched with humor as he surveyed her. “You’re a short little thing, aren’t you?”
For a second the fear evaporated from her eyes, to be replaced by a narrow-eyed warning.
“No short jokes, please,” she ordered him with what he imagined was her “teacher voice.”
“I wasn’t joking,” he assured her. “I was simply making an observation. You’re cute, though.”
If anything, that steely glint in her eyes got brighter.
“Great, I’m cute,” she muttered. “Puppies are cute. Squirrels are cute.”
“You’re cuter?” He almost grinned as the pouty curve of her lip tightened.
She had to look up at him. If he wanted to kiss her without straining his neck, then he’d have to grip the curves of her ass and lift her to him. He liked doing that. He liked the delicacy and feminine allure of her stature.
“I’m not cute,” she bit out, obviously put out by the description. “Now where’s the bathroom? I need that shower.”
He hid a grin as he turned and led her to the bathroom door. “You can take a nice, long Jacuzzi bath or a hot shower,” he said. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re done.”
He left her alone, closed the door behind him, and blew out a breath.
Hell, he wished he could stay. He’d like to sink into that big bathtub with her and wash her from head to toe. Or take her in the shower, watch the water stream around her as he lifted her to him and took her against the wall.
He could feel beads of sweat popping out on his forehead at the thought. His cock pounded in approval. The blood rushed through his veins in excitement.
So the night hadn’t ended as he had envisioned, but he could work with this. Before the night was out, he might even have her in his bed. That was even better.
He could handle that. For one night, he assured himself. Just one night. One morning. To awaken beside a woman that wanted him. To greet the day with pleasure rather than an empty bed. A soft, passionate woman rather than the memory of the dreams that haunted him at night.
One night. That was it. Then things would go back to normal. Whether he wanted them to or not.