Serve and Protect (Heroes of Evers, Texas #3)

  Serve and Protect

  Heroes of Evers, Texas Series

  Lori Ryan

  Contents

  Copyright

  A Note From The Author

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lori Ryan

  Copyright 2015, Carolyn Shannon.

  All rights reserved.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to people, places, persons, or characters are all intended as fictional references and are the work of the author.

  A Note From The Author

  Thank you so much for reading the crazy weird stuff that comes out of my head! It amazes me that you guys keep showing up here book after book to see what my characters are up to, and I truly love you for it! Please keep in touch with me afterward.

  If you go to my website at www.loriryanromance.com, you’ll see a spot right up front to join my mailing list. I’ll send you all kinds of fun stories and updates on my life and the worlds my characters live in. It’ll be fun. I promise!

  If you love the book, please consider leaving a review at the retailer or website of your choice. If you hate the book, please send all letters of complaint to Scott Silverii at SilverHart Publishing;)

  Introduction

  Ashley Walker was one of the lucky ones. Adopted when she was fourteen years old by a family willing to love her as their own, they stuck beside her through all the hell she put them through. A kind of hell that would haunt her forever. But now she’s put her past behind her—or so she thought.

  Garret Hensley never imagined he’d be chasing the killer of the woman who’d set him on the path of law enforcement. She’d given him reason to believe in himself, to believe he could make a difference. And he suspected her giving heart was the reason her life had been cut so short.

  When the evidence leads him to Ashley Walker, he knows he has to ignore the feelings she stirs in him, because getting her to reveal the truth of her past is the key to finding a killer.

  1

  Ashley Walker looked out over the surface of the lake to where her siblings floated on inner tubes, a slow smile spreading on her face. She pressed her feet to the sun-warmed wood of the dock and let the heat soak into her skin. The day was perfect.

  Well, that wasn’t quite true.

  Emma was two beats away from pushing Sam to his limit with her nagging, but that was a fairly normal state of affairs. Emma micromanaged. That’s who she was. For the most part, all of the Walker siblings tuned her out when she got this way.

  “I’m just saying, you could have handled it better.” Emma’s tone said there wasn’t any “just saying” about it. She flat-out thought she was right and she planned to make sure Sam knew it.

  Sam growled at her. When push came to shove, he’d defend any of them to the end, but Emma walked all over his last nerve, then followed that up with a tap dance. “Carrie Ann knew damned well walking in that I wasn’t looking for a relationship. It’s not my problem she got buyer’s remorse afterward. If she didn’t want a one-night stand, she should have walked away the ten or so times I gave her the chance.”

  “She’s your secretary!” The indignation in Emma’s voice carried clear across the water. Their other brother, Nathan, was busy working his inner tube behind Sam, whose head lolled back, eyes closed as he appeared to relax in the sun, despite the argument with Emma. No doubt that was egging Emma on even more. She hated nothing more than being ignored.

  Sam didn’t answer, and Ashley had to agree with Emma a little. Sleeping with his secretary had been a boneheaded move. The woman clearly had I want marriage and a family stamped on her forehead, and now Sam had to work with her every day. But men were idiots. That was nothing new.

  Ashley watched Nathan paddle, and knew he planned to dunk Sam. Nathan was the youngest of them all at twenty-two, and still the clown of the family. He also couldn’t help trying to defuse the argument. But he was underestimating Sam. Ashley knew better. Just because his eyes were closed didn’t mean you could take Sam out. You had to wait until that man was dead to the world asleep before trying a stunt like that.

  She pressed her lips together, biting them to keep from laughing as she watched Sam’s lips twitch the tiniest bit at the edges. Nathan paddled closer, using only the smallest movements of his hands to creep up on Sam. Emma seemed oblivious to Nathan’s actions.

  Sam turned suddenly and dove onto Nathan’s tube, taking them both under the water together, and drenching Emma with the resulting splash. Her sister Cora had been smart enough to paddle slightly upstream to get herself out of the way. Ashley knew she was the smartest of them all for not going into the water with the boys to begin with.

  She looked down at her tablet’s screen and smiled. In truth, she had other reasons for not joining in the fun today. She had her own party going on online and didn’t want to miss a second of it.

  The cover of her latest book looked so good, she wanted to cry. Her cover artist had nailed it—from the colors, to the fonts, to the picture of the couple, to the size of her pen name. The bulging biceps of the male model encircled the woman protectively, but she was no mouse. She held a gun comfortably by her side as if it were an extension of her body, perfectly representing the heroine Ashley had penned. She never authored a heroine who was content to simply sit back and let the hero do all the fighting. And in her latest book, the heroine was every bit as well-trained and tough as the hero.

  The water splashed when Cora pulled her tube up to the dock, hanging onto the large rope ladder their dad had tied to the wood pylon years before. Cora leaned her head back as she shaded her eyes against the sun.

  “How is the release going? Good so far?”

  Cora was the only one who knew that Ashley was the person behind the pen name Leigh Dare. She hadn’t really planned to keep the secret from her family and friends for so long. At first, when she’d decided to self-publish romantic suspense novels, she’d been afraid the books wouldn’t sell. That she’d be a failure. So it had seemed like a good idea to let that failure be a private thing. And then, when her books had taken off, she’d been so stunned, she hadn’t known what to do. Cora, of course, had figured it out. Cora was as avid a reader of romance novels as Ashley was. She’d read the books and spotted several phrases A
shley regularly used, and she’d figured it out by the third book.

  Ashley smiled and nodded. “Yeah, people are posting that they love it so far. It’s still surreal.”

  Watching hundreds of people congratulate her on the Leigh Dare Facebook page on her release day was still a dream. It still shocked her that anyone wanted to read her books. The fact that they loved them enough to contact her was unbelievable. Then, as people read the book, they posted their favorite quotes, or came on to tell her they loved it so far.

  A few people had begun to tweet the links to their reviews. And those reviews raved about her latest hero and heroine. They loved the way Aiden Kane and Alexa Mayer played off one another. The way the sexual tension built until it exploded as they raced across the country, desperately trying to figure out who was trying to sabotage Dalton Chemical’s latest research project.

  Cora laughed. “Of course they do. The series is a huge hit, Ash. You’re really good. Freakishly good, as a matter of fact,” she said, pushing her feet lazily against the dock so that her tube bounced back and forth on the water.

  Ashley grinned. “I am, aren’t I?” She could say that to her sister because Cora was one of the few people who knew Ashley really wasn’t as arrogant as her previous statement made her sound. Cora knew Ashley on a level no one else did. And she knew Ashley was incredibly humbled by her success in this new arena. Humbled and grateful beyond words, so she chose to go the tactless joke route instead.

  Ashley’s phone rang and she glanced at the screen before putting it back down. When Cora gave her that raised brow look that said fess up, Ashley rolled her eyes. They’d always had a weird ability to communicate, even though they weren’t related by blood. When Ashley had first come to the Walkers as a foster child, she’d hated Cora. Resented her. In fact, at one time or another, all of the Walker children had been so at odds, no one would have thought they’d ever be as happy as they were now.

  Within the first year, Cora had knocked down Ash’s defenses. They were as different as night and day, both physically and in personality, but their bond was strong.

  “It’s Alice,” she mumbled. Mumbling was not at all like Ashley. She spoke loud and clear and put out whatever she was feeling or thinking for the world’s consumption. Without hesitation. Without censorship. But the recent calls from her former social worker, Alice Johnson—three of them in just as many days—made her want to close in on herself.

  Cora’s forehead wrinkled up. “Ah. I get it,” she said after a moment. “It’s almost your anniversary.”

  Ashley pressed her lips together and nodded. “I just don’t want to revisit it this year, you know? She hasn’t called the past few years, so I’m not entirely sure that’s why she’s calling now, but I just, well, you know.”

  Cora did know. None of the Walker kids wanted to be reminded of the reasons they had become Walkers in the first place. Their pasts weren’t fun, by any means. But they were all happy to be Walkers now. Theirs was a family truly built on love. Blood, sweat, tears, and love. They celebrated that, having moved past their backgrounds, for the most part. But sometimes their former social workers thought about them around their “anniversary dates” and got in touch. Ashley was fairly sure they didn’t even do it consciously. They wouldn’t ever seek to hurt the kids they’d helped. But as much as they were all grateful to the people who had helped them get out of the situations they’d been in, they weren’t eager to revisit those times.

  “Maybe she’s figured out your secret and wants to congratulate the next New York Times bestselling author,” Cora said with a grin.

  Ashley laughed, with a glance to her siblings to be sure they were far enough away they didn’t overhear Cora. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. It’s probably not related to my anniversary date at all. I’ll call her,” she said, dismissing the alert on her phone that told her she had a new voicemail. “But not until we get back. I just want to relax for now.”

  Now it was Cora’s turn to laugh. “You mean watch your book’s rank obsessively, read every blog post or review posted, and stalk your favorite readers online to see if they mention Dead Run in any comments or posts?”

  Ashley grinned. “Exactly. Relax.”

  She grabbed the reading glasses that sat near her Kindle—this pair hot pink with white temples—and shoved her feet back into her flip-flops. She stood and shaded her eyes, looking down at Cora, who still bobbed on the gentle waters of the lake. Emma and Sam still fought in the background, and she could hear Nathan joking around, trying to distract the pair.

  “It’s my turn to cook,” she said as she looked toward the lake house that was her family’s vacation home. It was only twenty minutes away from their home in Evers, Texas, and it was more a rustic cabin than lake house, with a kitchen, open common room, and two bedrooms, but it was all theirs. Their parents had the master bedroom and all five kids still bunked in the other bedroom, drawing straws over the two sets of bunk beds and one full bed that took up the entire floor space of the room. It wasn’t anything to brag about, but it was a treasured family haven.

  Cora wrinkled her nose. “Foil meals or baked spaghetti?”

  “Foil meals,” Ashley answered with a grin. She was the only one in her family who still stuck to the two meals she’d learned how to make as a teen. Everyone else had managed to add to their repertoire, but she loved the comfort of the meals her mom had taught her to make. They were camping staples, and to her, camping staples were what their time at the lake house called for.

  Cora laughed and shoved off from the dock to rejoin the rest of their family floating several yards away. Ashley waved to the group and then headed up to the kitchen to start cooking. With any luck, her mom would be there and they could chat while Ashley got dinner going. Besides, her mom made a much better salad than Ashley did. Her siblings would be happier with dinner if her mom had a hand in it.

  *

  Garret Hensley walked into the station house and tossed his gym bag onto the warped surface of his desk. The place didn’t exactly scream modern, and lately, he’d felt a bit like his body was going the way of the station house. He kept in shape, so it wasn’t so much that as it was the lack of stimulation. The lack of anything other than work in his life. It wasn’t like he got out much or socialized with anyone who didn’t wear a badge or work in a crime lab. People who didn’t know the smell of a dead body or what it was like to chase down a junkie intent on slipping from your grasp.

  That hadn’t bothered him much in the past, but lately, he’d begun to notice. Hensley had been one of six detective sergeants in the Branson Falls Criminal Investigations Division for five years. He loved the work, but his life was stagnant—empty, somehow. And for some unknown reason, he felt a hell of a lot older than his thirty-three years.

  He ran a hand down his face and looked around the bullpen at the desks of the other detectives and the two animal services officers who also shared the space. They all had the look of people who’d been overworked and underpaid for far too long. Of men and women who’d spent a few too many hours inside. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The animal services officers had tans.

  At least he had kept his physique, Garret thought as he eyed the guts forming on the frames of two of the men taking up space at the desks across from him. He hit the gym or ran every morning without fail. He wouldn’t give in to the temptation to place his sleep over his physical fitness. Not when he’d had to give up healthy eating due to the demands of a job that had him dining from a takeout bag at the drive-through more often than not. The least he could do each day was run the calories off, even when the job kept his sleeping hours to a minimum.

  There was a needling thought at the back of his mind that his life needed to change, but he pushed it aside. He’d been doing this a long time. It was what he knew. The detectives of the CID covered crimes, from robbery, assault, up to homicide for Branson Falls and the surrounding towns for miles. They often had to drive an hour or more to investigate crimes on limited
resources and a shoestring budget. It wasn’t a job someone did for money or luxuries.

  In fact, Garret wasn’t entirely sure why he did the job anymore. But that thought would have to wait. His captain stood in the doorway to his office, and barked, “Hensley!” His standard call to action when they’d caught a case. Garret’s partner, Doug Mann, wasn’t in the bullpen yet. He’d get the info from the captain, then rustle up Doug and head out. Knowing Doug, the older man was probably in the can with his morning paper. Doug was pretty committed to his morning ritual. Another thing Garret was purposefully ignoring was Doug’s upcoming retirement. In six months he’d be breaking in a new partner and saying goodbye to the man who’d had his back in more ways than he could count for years.

  Captain Sharp had lowered his six-foot-four frame into the creaking wooden chair behind the government-issue metal desk that took up most of his office. He didn’t look up as he rattled off Garret’s assignment.

  “One-eight-seven at the apartments over on Guadalupe.” Homicide.

  Garret was glad Sharp hadn’t looked up. He didn’t catch the way Garret’s body swayed at his words. A homicide at the apartment building where Garret grew up. The building where Alice Johnson—a woman who was more mother to him than his own had ever been—lived. He put a hand on the back of the chair in front of the desk and gripped it. Hard.

  He hadn’t known his father—other than to know the Irish spelling of Garret’s name had come courtesy of his father’s Irish roots, which as an adult had struck him as odd, since his mother had given him her British last name. He’d buried his mother when he was nineteen, and other than a few aunts and uncles he never saw, Alice was the only thing resembling family he had left in this world.