to go without a compromise. And Mason considered something else. Why had it happened now, only three days after Abbie had arrived at the Ryland ranch?
A coincidence?
His gut was telling him no.
Mason kept that to himself and trudged the last leg of the distance to the ranch. He headed straight for his office, and this time he didn’t intend to let Abbie run away.
The first thing Mason did was place her on the sofa again, and despite all the sympathy he was feeling, he gave her a warning glance to stay put. Grayson followed him inside, no doubt ready to question Abbie, but Mason didn’t plan to start until he’d located a few things. First, he got Abbie a blanket and then he found her some socks.
“Who killed your mother?” Grayson started. “And why?”
Abbie put on the socks, mumbled a thanks and pulled the blanket around her.
Her sigh was long and weary. “My mother and I went into witness protection after she testified against her boss, Vernon Ferguson, a corrupt San Antonio cop.” Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. “Ferguson got off on a technicality, and shortly afterward he sent a hired gun named Hank Tinsley after us. Tinsley turned up dead a few days later.”
Mason figured there were plenty of details to go along with that sterile explanation. The stuff of nightmares. Something he knew a little about because his grandfather Chet had been shot and left to die. Mason had been seventeen, and even though nearly twenty-one years had passed, the wound still felt fresh and raw.
Always would.
Not just for him but for all his brothers.
That wound had deepened to something incapable of being healed when his father had left just weeks later. And then his mother had committed suicide.
Oh, yeah. He could sympathize with Abbie.
But sympathy wasn’t going to keep her safe.
“You think this Vernon Ferguson came after you tonight?” Mason asked. He stood over her, side by side with Grayson.
Abbie shook her head. “Maybe.”
It was a puzzling answer, and Grayson jumped on it. “You have somebody else other than Ferguson trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know. Over the past twenty years, Ferguson has managed to find me two other times, and both times he sent hired guns. Nothing recent, though. Mainly because we’ve been very careful.”
Mason didn’t miss the we, and later he would ask who this person was in her life. Because it might be important to the investigation. Not because he was thinking she had a boyfriend stashed away. On her job application she had said she was single, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in love with someone.
And for some reason, a reason Mason didn’t want to consider, that riled him a little.
Abbie closed her eyes a moment and when she opened her eyes, she turned them on Mason. “My caseworker is Deputy U.S. Marshal Harlan McKinney over in Maverick County. He’ll need to know about this.”
Mason nodded, but it was Grayson who reacted. “I’ll call him. And check in with the fire chief.” Grayson glanced at her shoeless feet peeking out from the blanket. “I’ll also ask my wife about getting you some clothes.”
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper. Abbie didn’t move until Grayson was out of the office and had shut the door. Then she sat up as if ready to leave.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mason reminded her.
She blinked. “But I figured you’d demand that I leave. It’s not safe for any of you with me here.”
“That’s probably true, but you’re still not going anywhere.” In case she’d forgotten, he took his badge from his desk and clipped it to the waist of his jeans. “You’ve got six lawmen on this ranch.”
Her gaze came to his again. “And yet someone still got to me.”
Yeah, and that meant whoever had done this was as bold as brass, stupid or desperate. Mason didn’t like any of those scenarios.
“Why would Ferguson still want you dead if he got off on the charges with a technicality?” Mason asked. He located a black T-shirt in the closet and pulled it on. He grabbed his black Stetson, too.
“Maybe he still considers me a loose end.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
And that only reinforced the fact that something just wasn’t right here.
Mason pulled his chair over to the sofa and sat so that he’d be more at her eye level. Abbie adjusted her position, too, easing away from him, and in the process the blanket slid off her.
Great.
He felt another punch of, well, something stirring below the belt when he got another look at the gown. And at her breasts barely concealed beneath the fabric. Not a good combination with that vulnerable face and her honey-brown eyes.
“I swear, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. “I didn’t know Ferguson could find me. I’ve always been careful.”
Mason made a heavy sigh and reached out. He doubted his touch would give her much comfort, but he had to do something. He put his fingertips against her arm. Rubbed gently.
And he felt that blasted below-the-belt pull happen again.
Their gazes met, and the corner of her mouth lifted. Not a smile but more of a baffled expression. Either she figured out he was going nuts or else she was feeling something, too.
“For the record, I didn’t think you’d be like this,” she said.
The cryptic remark got his attention, and Mason would have asked what she meant. If her gown hadn’t shifted. Yeah, he saw her breasts. The tops of them anyway. And while they snagged his attention in a bad way, it was what was between her breasts that snagged it even more.
The pendant.
Or rather, the silver concho.
He instantly recognized it because he had one just like it. All of his brothers did. A custom-made gift from their father with their initials on the back. A blood gift he’d given them all just days before he’d run out on them.
Abbie gasped when she followed Mason’s gaze, and she slapped her hand over the concho. Mason just shoved her hand away and had a better look at the front of it.
And there it was.
The back-to-back Rs for the Ryland ranch. This wasn’t a new piece either. It was weathered and battered, showing every day of its twenty-one years.
Abbie tried again to push his hand away, but Mason grabbed both her wrists. He turned the concho over, even though it meant touching her breasts. But it wasn’t her breasts that held his attention right now. It was the other initials on the back.
B.R.
For his father, Boone Ryland.
Mason let go of the concho, leaned down and got right in Abbie’s face, but it took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched so he could ask her the mother of all questions.
“Who the hell are you?”
Chapter Four
Abbie knew her situation had just gone from bad to worse. She also knew that Mason wasn’t just going to let her run out of there again. Not that she could.
Not now.
Not after the gunman’s attack.
She’d opened this dangerous Pandora’s box and had to stay around long enough to close it. If she could. But closing it meant first answering the Texas-sized question that Mason had just asked.
Who the hell are you?
“I’m