Sinclair Justice

Book 2: Texas Rangers Novel

by Colleen Shannon

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense; Western Romance

Synopsis

Ranger Proud, Ranger Strong . . . Texas Rangers swear to uphold the law to the letter. But Captain Ross Sinclair isn't about to play by the rules to destroy a major human trafficking cartel—especially now that the only chance to break this case just strode into his life with attitude as long as her gorgeous legs. Heiress Emm Rothschild is taking names and raising hell as she searches for her abducted sister and niece. And the evidence this wild-child turns up sets off a lethal chain of events—challenging Ross to keep her reckless determination and seductive daring up close and dangerously personal . . . Now a blindsiding betrayal has Emm heading straight into harm's way. And Ross will have to put his badge and career on the line to get justice—and prove to the woman he loves that a Ranger's word is a forever bond . . .

Release date: July 21, 2015

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 230

Sample

The sign said: “Amarillo: 50 miles. Beaumont to El Paso: 1046. Welcome to Texas.”

Managing not to yawn at the needless reminder of how large this state really was, Mercy Magdalena Rothschild pressed slightly on the accelerator, impatient to finish this interminable trip. A new BMW M4 convertible was a great way to cover the miles, but it was still a huge distance from Washington, DC, to the booming metropolis of Amarillo, Texas.

Emm, as her best friends called her, was not looking forward to her destination, or to the tasks ahead, though as soon as she’d seen the job posting for historic preservation trust officer, she knew she had to apply. But the fact that she had another mission in coming to this border state never left the back of her mind. An unapproved mission even her parents didn’t know about. But there was one skill she now excelled in after ten very expensive years of higher education: how to do research.

Even of the criminal variety.

Even of the missing persons variety.

But thinking about Yancy and Jennifer would only bring the tears, never at bay very long, back to her tired eyes, and on this long and winding road, she couldn’t afford that. Trying to distract herself, she shuffled to the Beatles tune of the same name on the iPhone connected to the car’s onboard computer system.

The song, one of her favorites, still wasn’t distraction enough even when she sang the lyrics about a long and winding road leading to someone special’s door. She broke off in midrefrain. Yeah, like she’d meet someone in Texas. To say men didn’t get her was putting it mildly, but their reaction was consistent, as different as all five of her prior boyfriends had been.

One of them had even declared plaintively, “You’re just weird, you know? And why do you use such big words?”

Because words are the font of knowledge and life, you dullard, learn a few, she’d wanted to say but had held her tongue as the door closed behind him.

As her song list cycled into another optimistic tune, Emm sighed, doubly depressed now. Her eyes burned behind her sunglasses, but the ache had nothing to do with the bright spring light. Yancy had been missing for six months, nine days—she glanced at her watch—and thirteen hours. Jennifer longer than that. She’d never forget the knock on her door at her tiny efficiency after eleven p.m. almost six months ago.

The Baltimore detectives who’d taken the missing persons report stood there, looking uneasy. “Ma’am, we have news about your sister and her daughter. May we come in?”

In her matchbox living room, they laid it out to her. The reward she and Yancy had posted for information leading to Yancy’s missing daughter Jennifer had finally yielded a clue. Yancy had, as usual, been hell-bent and determined to follow up on her own because her younger sister Emm was embroiled in oral exams for her PhD. Then Yancy had disappeared, too. . . .

Of her own volition, before she even completed her orals, Emm had canvassed the downtown Baltimore bars Yancy favored, handing out and posting flyers for both women. Mother and daughter strikingly resembled each other: both naturally slim blondes. Yancy had been twenty-one when she’d had Jennifer, so she was only in her late thirties and looked a decade younger.

Finally, three months after Yancy’s disappearance, nine months after Jennifer had been taken, one of the flyers yielded a tip. The night cook at a seedy little café in downtown Baltimore remembered coming off duty at one in the morning, and he’d seen a woman who matched the picture of Yancy being forced into a big black sports truck with Texas plates. Her scream was choked off as she was jammed into the front seat between the man who’d snatched her and the driver. He gave the detectives a description of the man who’d grabbed her but never saw the driver.

When the detectives asked why he hadn’t come forward earlier, he gave the usual spiel about being afraid of being deported, but when the señorita—“that was you, Ms. Rothschild,” they’d told her—had pleaded for information, he overheard and felt guilty. Besides, he wanted the reward to send back to his family in Mexico.

“But what exactly does this mean?” Emm had asked. “Yancy was taken to Texas? What about Jennifer?”

The detectives seemed uneasy. The younger one looked away, but finally the older detective, Sergeant Ruiz, answered quietly. “Three months ago we had an urgent message from your sister asking us to call, saying she had a lead on her daughter’s whereabouts. We were working a dual homicide and by the time we called her back, her phone went straight to voice mail.”

Emm wearily rubbed her tired eyes. “So? I was preparing for my orals, so she didn’t even call me to tell me she was going after Jennifer. What does the phone call have to do with her being missing?”

“We think she got too close, that she must have stumbled across the northeastern source of the human trafficking ring. And they . . . took her, too.”

Or worse. Emm heard what he didn’t say.

He seemed oblivious to her doubts, going on calmly, “At least that’s what we think if the eye witness is correct. So we combed surveillance footage all over DC’s major arteries for a similar truck with Texas plates. The cook didn’t recall the number. We found several matches heading south on the interstate, but none of the registered owners match the physical description given by the witness. In the meantime we informed the Texas authorities and were told there’s a high-end snatch-and-grab ring with national reach culminating in West Texas. They bring in the . . . their . . . their . . .” He cleared his throat.

Emm inserted quietly, “I think the term is merchandise.”

He looked relieved and nodded. “Anyway, they bring them from all over the nation through Texas to the border. We still haven’t figured out how they smuggle them across. The Texas Rangers are heading the task force along with the Border Patrol. We’ve given them all the information we have but will work the case from this end as well.”

Emm had to clear her throat because as she asked the question, she dreaded the answer. “What is the . . . the merchandise used for? Surely Yancy is too old for, for . . .”

He opened his mouth, swallowed, and then looked away, for the first time showing some genuine regret. The younger detective reached out to pat her shoulder, but under a sharp look from his partner, he froze and his hand dropped back to his side.

Emm closed her eyes, biting her lip to stifle a moan. She was a trivia and science buff. The average American citizen might not be aware that slavery was worse now, in the technological age, partly because of the anonymity of the Internet, than ever before in human history, but she knew the statistics. Recent UN estimates pegged the worldwide trade in human flesh at $32 billion and rising.

She also knew the vast majority of the kidnapped women were forced into prostitution. Yancy was beautiful, and though she was thirty-nine, looked twenty-five. After being taken more than nine months ago, Jennifer was probably nothing like the vibrant young seventeen-year-old she’d once been. But she was probably too valuable to greatly mistreat.

But Yancy? Emm’s wild, irrepressible one year older half sister wouldn’t tolerate boundaries, or orders. Once on the inside, assuming she’d been taken by the same people, she’d risk her life to find her daughter. And she would not take well to captivity.

“What can I do?” she whispered over the tears she was restraining.

“I know this is difficult, but keep handing out flyers,” Ruiz suggested. “Try maybe to find out why she was in that part of Baltimore. We’ll let you know if we get any more leads. Inform us immediately if you get any new information, no matter how insignificant.”

“And you’ll apprise me of any new leads?”

Ruiz’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course.” Both men gave her sympathetic nods and left.

And that had been that. Three months passed, but neither detective had called her, even when her old friend Curt Tupperman, a freelance investigative reporter for several well-known papers, wrote a follow up article on the kidnappings. He broke the story, saying that various agencies believed the Baltimore area to be the East Coast beginning of the pipeline they speculated ended in the border town of El Paso or Del Rio, with stops in Dallas and Amarillo.

When Emm called Ruiz to ask for more information about the pipeline, he didn’t call her back. Wondering why he’d stonewall her, Emm finished her demanding doctorate. In her spare time, she talked to everyone she could think of: classmates, friends, acquaintances, tenants in her sister’s apartment building, old bosses, old boyfriends, including Curt, who had dated Yancy for two years and seemed upset when Yancy broke it off about six months before she was taken.

No one knew why Yancy had been in downtown Baltimore or of anyone who drove a macho Texas truck. The detectives were obviously off on another big case. Yancy was just another missing woman, and since she was Emm’s half sister, she wasn’t even a Rothschild.

Now, three months later, on a long lonely road to nowhere, Emm glared around at the sere landscape too tough to yield more than mesquite and cactus. Maybe Yancy was already dead. Maybe Emm was on another foolish crusade, as her father had scolded her. Maybe her sister was buried in this wasteland. . . .

Emm removed her sunglasses to swipe angrily at her eyes, pressing harder on the accelerator.

So far, despite all the pressure she was under, she’d been good, exceeding the speed limit only when she could see for miles or had another speeder to follow. She looked around, even over her shoulder, and the landscape was so open she could see from horizon to horizon. Nothing. She was dying to try this new baby out. She knew the effort and expense her father had expended to give his only natural daughter this hundred thousand dollar–plus vehicle, partly his way of voicing his regret that his wife was a self-absorbed alcoholic who had long ago lost interest in her older daughter’s fate. As sales manager for a BMW dealership, her father made good money and had been able to get a screaming deal on this car, but the only Rothschild inheritance he had was a silver dollar collection given to him by a remote relative. And the name, all too often, had been more of a burden to Emm than a boon. People assumed she had money and that she was cold and snooty because of her unusual grasp of the English language. Wrong on both counts.

Yancy had even less money; her own father had passed when she was a child, and their social-climbing mother was not happy about her willful older daughter, who refused to get a steady job or go to college. But Yancy and Emm, only a year apart, had always been close. And Jennifer . . . the tears threatened again as she remembered her beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed niece. She tried to picture her as she likely was now, a dead look in her eyes, forced into short, tight dresses and hooker makeup.

Emm’s foot twitched at her unhappy thoughts, pushing down until the speedometer passed the conservative eighty, only five over the limit, the speed she’d tried very hard to maintain since she’d hit the Texas state line. She knew the expensive red sports car and her Maryland plates made her a delectable morsel to the typical Texas highway patrolman’s ravenous appetite for revenue.

She looked around again. Clear. What was the harm in letting her hair down a bit? She was properly dressed in a sensible gray suit, sensible shoes, with her hair sensibly tied back, her usual camouflage for fieldwork. She was a female in a world of men, and she’d learned long ago to downplay her considerable good looks. Especially in a place as conservative as Texas. West Texas was the most conservative part of the state, the last bastion of the rugged individualist.

Badly needing her usual stress reliever, Emm gave up her battle. Speed was her only vice. Not the oral stimulant, but the automotive version, which was almost as addictive. She had twelve speeding tickets to prove it and had already lost her license twice, getting it back at great cost. Her insurance was astronomical, but nothing invigorated her as much as the wind howling through her hair and the roar of a powerful exhaust cheering her on.

Besides, she reasoned to herself, this car was meant for speed and she only had about thirty miles left to her destination.... She’d earned her favorite high after twelve years of tough academic work.

The needle hovered at a mere eighty-five now, ten over the limit. She took a last careful look around, but this section of road was too open for a speed trap. The needle on her M4 convertible didn’t bobble when she pressed on the gas—in one gentle arc it went from eighty to one hundred in about two seconds. The engine was so smooth, the throaty growl entirely too civilized. The sleek German machine wasn’t even challenged. Feeling one of her hairpins fly free and not caring, Emm pressed harder on the accelerator.

Finally the engine roared back, as if to say, That all you got?

Laughing, having the best time since graduation, Emm pressed harder still: 110, 120, man, this baby could fly. . . .

The wail of the siren was faint at first.

She’d glimpsed something black and big and shiny out of the corner of her eye as she streaked past a gate in a long row of white fencing, but she’d discounted it as a rancher’s truck. She looked in her rearview mirror and stifled a groan, immediately taking her foot off the gas pedal. A siren wailed and she saw a blue and white light flash from a side of the SUV’s roof. The light had obviously been attached only when the driver saw her zip past, so this cop was not a typical highway patrolman.

The neat little speech about how big Texas was, and no, she really didn’t know she was going that fast, her Beamer was a new graduation present, went out the window with her deep breath. “Good going, Emm,” she said to herself. “No one’s more hard-nosed than an undercover cop.” She pulled to the side of the road, got the registration from the glove box, and took her insurance card and her Maryland driver’s license from her purse.

In her side mirror, she watched the man approach. He was tall, over six feet, with iron gray hair she could just glimpse under his expensive Stetson. Black, of course, to match his black jeans. His shirt was white, a dress shirt crisp with starch, sort of like his spine. His eyes were covered in mirrored shades, but there was no mistaking his glacial tone. “If you want to race that fancy little import, I can give you the address of a racetrack in Lubbock. Do you have any idea how fast you were going and all the lives you endangered, including mine, as I was about to pull out of my driveway, by driving like that?”

“I’m sorry, Officer, I was just in a hurry to get to Amarillo. You know, I’m like that bumper sticker: ‘I’m not from Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.’ ” He’d stopped at her open window now and perused her documents, glancing between her driver’s license photo and her flushed face. Her hairpins had long ago lost the battle, and her brown mane, shot through with blonde and red highlights, was tangled. She took off her sunshades so he could see her eyes. She blinked. “See, blue? Just like it says. I promise I’m not here to commit murder or fraud. . . .” So far her attempt at charm had been an abysmal failure, so she tried her original approach. “This car was a graduation present after I got my PhD. I’m still learning all the bells and whistles. I truly didn’t know how fast I was going.”

He didn’t buy it, obviously. His mouth was beautifully shaped, meant for laughing, but she couldn’t get it to even twitch. She’d been out of the dating scene too long.

With a curt, “Don’t move,” he stalked back to his SUV to run her ID. She stifled another groan. It had almost taken an Act of Congress to get her license back last time, not to mention thousands in fees and a good traffic attorney. Once he saw how many tickets she had. . . . Nevertheless, she was stunned when he returned to her side of the car with a pair of handcuffs.

“Get out of the car, please.” He stepped back slightly, appraising her with eyes she knew were arctic behind the shades.

She looked at the Start button on her dashboard. She had one of the new ignitions, the kind that started only when the key was in the car. Her foot was on the brake, so she only had to punch that Start button and she could quite literally leave him in the dust.

Be sensible, Mercy Magdalena, she could hear her Irish grandmother pleading from the grave. This was not a good beginning to her first field investigation, and fleeing an officer of the law would not endear her to her federal employers. She looked at him from the corner of her eye. Besides, she might need some help from the local constabulary in looking for Yancy.

He’d stiffened alertly, as if he’d read her mind. His icy politeness softened to a Texas drawl that was somehow more menacing. “Please, do it. Resisting arrest carries a much longer sentence than speeding, and I’d purely love to buy your car at the police auction.”

She took her foot off the brake and put the vehicle in Park. “It’s not fair that you can drive as fast as you want, but even though I’ve never had an accident and I’ve driven on racetracks, I can’t go over eighty.” She bit her lip when an eyebrow arched above his sunglasses. “Seventy-five, I mean.” Slowly, sullenly, she put the car keys in his outstretched hand.

He finished scribbling a ticket and handed her a small board so she could sign. Reluctantly, she did so, stuffing the ticket into her purse without looking at it. “What have I done that’s so awful? I was only trying out my new car and no one’s even passed us since we’ve been sitting here.” She got out of the car. She didn’t like the way he towered over her, so when he moved to put the cuffs on her, she stuck her hands behind her back. “Let me go. Please? I promise not to exceed the limit again.” Until I make it out of this Podunk state . . .

“Lady, I have a feeling you exceed every limit there is, but that’s the judge’s problem. You’ve already made me write my first speeding ticket in at least ten years.” He pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, chewing on it as if he badly wanted to light it.

“We all have our temptations,” she said pointedly, eyeing the vivid label, which she recognized as a very expensive brand because her Rothschild grandfather, Edgar, smoked the same one. When she tilted her head curiously, eyeing him with bright blue intelligence, he took the unlighted cigar out of his mouth, put it back in his pocket, and continued calmly, “Your hands, please.” The next thing she knew, he’d latched cuffs around her hands, put her in the backseat of his SUV, and started up his car.

“You can’t just leave it there! Someone might steal it.”

“You might be better off if someone did. What kind of idiot gives a speed demon a car like that?”

“My father gave it to me as a graduation present.” She thought she heard a scornful, “That figures,” but when she glared into his rearview mirror, where she could see his face, his lips were still and set into a very stern scowl.

She hated using this card, but it seemed the last one left. “Didn’t you see the name on my driver’s license? A Rothschild is many things, but an idiot isn’t one of them. I can’t believe you’re actually arresting me. I don’t have so much as an unpaid parking ticket!”

“Ma’am, I don’t care what your name is, why you’re here, or even that you’re going to Amarillo. You’re a menace to public safety and your own, and in Texas if I clock you at twenty-five over the legal speed limit, I have the right to arrest you on the spot and confiscate your driver’s license. I clocked you at one twenty-five, fifty over the legal limit. Be thankful I’ve left you your license. For now . . .”

The implication wasn’t lost on her. Her temper, always owing more to her Irish mother than her Jewish father, got the best of her. “So sorry I forgot my palm branch and grapes, but if I admit you’re the boss, will you let me go?”

The SUV swerved slightly as those shades stared a hole in her. She swallowed the rest of her sarcasm, grudgingly impressed that he got the insult, glad when he finally looked back at the road. Great; no telling how much time and money it would take to get her license back after this escapade. She had to bite her tongue a few times, but she managed to keep quiet after that. Typically she could insult people without their being aware of it, but this cop was obviously well read. She was beginning to suspect he was more than a cop. And she couldn’t afford to piss off the chief of police or some other hodunk honcho.

When they finally reached Amarillo, it was bigger and more modern than she’d expected. She looked around eagerly, but their route didn’t take them downtown, where she glimpsed a surprising number of tall buildings in the distance. She sank back against the seat, reality hitting home with a vengeance. Her arrival was less than auspicious considering she was cuffed in the back of an unmarked police car. She looked up at the obviously institutional building looming outside the window as he parked in front of it. Typical bureaucratic block construction.

She’d only been to Texas once. When she was a child she’d been dragged by her Catholic grandmother, who had Texas roots, to see the Alamo in San Antonio. She vaguely recalled a very unimpressive cream adobe structure in the middle of a large city. The only hint of its glorious role in Texas independence had been bullet holes in the walls. Lots of them.

Still, when they’d returned to their brownstone flat in Brooklyn, Emm had checked out books on old missions from her school library. As she grew older, her fascination with old buildings increased to a passion. Now here she was, the ink on her PhD diploma in historic preservation barely dry, driving halfway across the country to investigate the misuse of historic resources in Amarillo, Texas, under the auspices of her new employer, the National Parks Service in Washington, DC. They seemed to have a lot of faith in her because the family trust controlling this particular historic block in downtown Amarillo had both money and clout. Sinclair, she’d learned from her research. She was supposed to see the head of the family, the managing member of the trust, someone named Ross Sinclair. The negotiations to stop the demolition of two old office buildings would be tricky at best in a state notorious for its strong property laws.

Especially now that she’d have to hire a driver to get around and hope this indignity didn’t get back to her employers.

She realized the officer was holding open her door and got out. He caught her arm and escorted her up the steps. She followed meekly enough because she had no choice and because, deep down, she knew she’d been foolish to go so fast. She noted a prominent Texas Ranger seal on the door, and a bad feeling poked her in the stomach.

It couldn’t be . . .

Inside the lobby area, he nodded at a receptionist behind a thick glass wall. She buzzed them in, looking curiously at Emm. Emm . . .