Behind the Shield Read online

  “How can you look at me?” Madeline asked

  Carson swallowed hard and studied his boots. He didn’t have a clue how to answer. Madeline’s rigid shoulders and defiant eyes suggested she was as uncomfortable with this conversation as he was.

  “You saved my life,” Madeline whispered. “You took me into your home. Why not lock me up in protective custody? Why are you helping me? Save yourself the grief.”

  “I thought I hated you. I thought I should hate you. You aren’t your father. You’re not responsible for what he did.” He almost said how much he liked looking at her, how much he wanted to hold her and kiss her.

  Madeline ducked her head and lowered her eyelids. Her shy, sideways look sent rational thought from his head. A small voice told him he tread dangerous waters, but he longed to feel the texture of her skin.

  He couldn’t help himself. When she lifted her face, he kissed her….

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  We have a superb lineup of outstanding romantic suspense this month starting with another round of QUANTUM MEN from Amanda Stevens. A Silent Storm is brewing in Texas and it’s about to break….

  More great series continue with Harper Allen’s MEN OF THE DOUBLE B RANCH trilogy. A Desperado Lawman has his hands full with a spitfire who is every bit his match. As well, B.J. Daniels adds the second installment to her CASCADES CONCEALED miniseries with Day of Reckoning.

  In Secret Witness by Jessica Andersen, a woman finds herself caught between a rock—a killer threatening her child—and a hard place—the detective in charge of the case. What will happen when she has to make the most inconceivable choice any woman can make?

  Launching this month is a new promotion we are calling COWBOY COPS. Need I say more? Look for Behind the Shield by veteran Harlequin Intrigue author Sheryl Lynn. And newcomer, Rosemary Heim, contributes to DEAD BOLT with Memory Reload.

  Enjoy!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  BEHIND THE SHIELD

  SHERYL LYNN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sheryl Lynn lives in a pine forest atop a hill in Colorado. When not writing, she amuses herself by embarrassing her two teenagers, walking her dogs in a nearby park and feeding peanuts to the dozens of Steller’s jays, scrub jays, blue jays and squirrels who live in her backyard. Her best ideas come from the newspapers, although she admits that a lot of what she reads is way too weird for fiction.

  Books by Sheryl Lynn

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  190—DOUBLE VISION

  223—DEADLY DEVOTION

  258—SIMON SAYS

  306—LADYKILLER

  331—DARK KNIGHT*

  336—DARK STAR*

  367—THE OTHER LAURA

  385—BULLETPROOF HEART

  424—THE CASE OF THE VANISHED GROOM†

  425—THE CASE OF THE BAD LUCK FIANCɆ

  467—EASY LOVING

  514—THE BODYGUARD†

  518—UNDERCOVER FIANCɆ

  608—TO PROTECT THEIR CHILD**

  612—COLORADO’S FINEST**

  763—BEHIND THE SHIELD

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Police Chief Carson Cody—A cowboy cop who can’t allow his shattered heart to stand in the way of duty.

  Madeline Shay—A half-Apachean artist who can’t hide from her family’s legacy of destruction.

  Frank Shay—He was evil in life and pure trouble in death.

  Tony Rule—This gorgeous, wealthy bad boy will do anything to get close to the lovely Madeline.

  Ivan Bannerman—An insurance fraud investigator looking to commit a few frauds of his own.

  Judy Green—She can’t stand seeing Carson lonely and bereft, and would like nothing better than to fill the void in his life.

  Maurice Harrigan—The mayor of Ruff yearns for vengeance for the death of his son, and since the father is dead, the daughter makes the perfect target.

  This is for Denise O’Sullivan,

  who loves cowboy cops as much as I do.

  Thank you for the inspiration, m’dear.

  Thank you, too, to the kind folks at Chins Up

  who have filled my cup to overflowing

  and put footsteps on my stairs again.

  And of course, as always, thank you, Tom,

  for always being my rock.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Back off, boyo. Today is not the day to bug him.” Shaking her head, with an expression of dire warning, the dispatcher held the arm of the young officer.

  Wanda spoke softly, but Chief Carson Cody heard. Annoyance prickled his scalp.

  It irritated the devil out of him to witness the pity he saw on every face this morning. It started with Judy, the woman who came to his house three days a week to clean, cook and do the laundry. Instead of her usual chatter, Judy had greeted him with a cloud of worry in her eyes.

  She acted as if she expected him to go berserk and start shooting up the town.

  Folks stared when he drove the cruiser along Ruff’s Main Street. Nobody waved or shouted a greeting. In the rearview mirror he caught quite a few heads bent together in whispered conversations. Even old Luke, the aged war veteran who hung around the courthouse, engaging passersby in arguments, looked away when Carson climbed the steps.

  As he entered his office, Wanda said, “It’s the anniversary of…you know.”

  Carson took care not to slam the door.

  Anniversary. Like some twisted antiholiday. All the town of Ruff needed were banners strung across Main Street. They could offer prizes for the first person who spotted Ruff’s police chief cracking up.

  He aimed his white Stetson for the hat rack, but paused.

  Who was he trying to kid? He hadn’t been right for a year. Today drove home how not right he was. For the past few weeks, as this anniversary approached, an unnerving, unbalanced sensation grew stronger, stripping the landscape of color, robbing his voice of inflection and his thoughts of coherency. He slept poorly. Food lost its flavor. He sleepwalked through his days, doing his job by rote. He settled the cowboy hat back on his head.

  “I’m taking a personal day, Wanda,” he said. “Pete can handle anything that comes up.”

  Behind oversize glasses sparkling with rhinestones, her eyes were grim, searching. “Okay, Chief.”

  He grew aware of stares. When he glanced around the big room crowded with desks and filing cabinets, everyone suddenly got busy. Keyboards clacked. Files rustled. Chair wheels squeaked. Even the window fans seemed to hum louder.

  “I’m okay,” he told the dispatcher.

  “I know that.” Her wide eyes called him a liar.

  CARSON STOOD on the bank of Crossruff Creek. He didn’t want to be here—he needed to be here. Water riffled over the rocky streambed. By mid-June the creek would be barely a whisper and the grasses, now so fragile green, would be tall and dry yellow. Cottonwood trees lined the creek. Gusts of wind turned the leaves inside out and silver. A hawk soared overhead in lazy circles. Fresh deer tracks wove through stands of scrubby oaks and piñon pines, and crisscrossed stretches of sand.

  Too pretty a place for dying. He rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers.

 
Footsteps alerted him. He placed a hand on the butt of the .45 holstered on his hip. Skeeters darted across the water in an insect version of the Ice Capades.

  A branch snapped. He couldn’t muster enough energy to turn around to see who approached. The hawk’s shadow passed the ground in front of him. He watched the bird fold its wings and dive.

  “This is a real pretty place,” a woman said. “Much too pretty for suicide.”

  He didn’t recognize the voice, which was soft and low and cool as spring water. He turned his head enough to see the speaker. She rested a shoulder against the gnarled trunk of a cottonwood and folded her arms. She wore jeans with blown knees and a white T-shirt. Two black braids, gleaming as if oiled, hung over her shoulders. She was Indian, maybe, or Hispanic, but not Navajo. Her face struck a chord of memory, but he couldn’t place it. It bothered him. He never forgot a face.

  He touched fingers to the brim of his hat. “Pardon, ma’am, but I’m not suicidal.”

  “You have the look. Sorry.”

  Sorry he had the look? Sorry she’d mentioned it? He failed to rouse enough energy to really care what she meant.

  Then it hit him who she was. A fist strangled his guts. His throat tightened so he thought he might choke. Such violence of emotion scared him. Maybe the townsfolk were right. Maybe he was about to crack.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyebrows lifted at his churlish question. “I live here.”

  He stared unseeing at the water. He wasn’t the easiest of men when it came to socializing, but his mother had taught him how to be polite even when provoked. That he wanted to yell at this woman, vent his rage and despair and grief, well, it was unsettling.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

  “I heard you coming.”

  Brave or foolish, or both, she pushed away from the cottonwood and stood next to him. She was tall, and her arms were finely muscled. The ragged jeans fit snugly over graceful hips and long legs. Under normal circumstances he’d give this woman a second look on the street, maybe a third and fourth look. She was striking enough to warrant wayward thoughts.

  But she wasn’t worth knowing.

  “Madeline Shay,” he said. Her name was dirt in his mouth.

  “Chief Cody,” she said in return. She sighed. “Is this where it happened?”

  He did not want to talk about it. Not now, and not with her. He couldn’t fathom why she was here. If he didn’t leave he’d do something stupid. He tipped his hat again.

  “I am so very sorry,” she said.

  The words were meaningless, but the undiluted sorrow behind them drained the anger like pulling a plug.

  Oh, God, but he was tired. If he lay down and closed his eyes, he might sleep a year. Or ten years. Sleep through all these agonizing anniversaries until the pain dissipated under its own weight. He sank to the ground, facing the creek, and drew up his knees to rest his arms across them. Madeline sat, too, on the grass, with her back to him and hugging her knees. It didn’t seem possible she hurt as much as he, but it might be so.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said.

  “Do you know why he did it?”

  Anger flashed again. “Is that why you’ve come? Morbid curiosity?”

  She turned her head. A fine hand had sculpted her profile into strong features and smooth planes. Her skin was more golden than brown and a fine spray of freckles banded her nose. “No.”

  “Then why are you here? In this place? On this day?”

  If his anger affected her, she hid it. “Actually I’ve been here a few weeks. And I came down because I saw your car on the road.” She pointed east, up the mesa. “You live there? I see the lights at night.”

  A few weeks. It didn’t seem possible. Ruff, Arizona, was a small community in the midst of rugged mountains and mesas. Folks paid attention to the comings and goings of locals and tourists. Gossip was the favored pastime. Madeline Shay’s presence should make front-page news.

  “I’ve been keeping a low profile,” she said.

  Odd, but not illegal. Or not odd, considering what kind of reception she’d receive if she set foot in town. When she collected her father’s body last year, she’d been accosted on the steps of the funeral home. Calls came in to the police station warning that Madeline Shay was a dead woman if the sun set while she was still in Ruff.

  He plucked a blade of new grass and stuck the sweet, pithy end in his mouth. “Low profile or not, this isn’t the healthiest place for you.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh. “Healthy or not, it’s mine. I tried to sell it, but there isn’t a real estate agent within two hundred miles who’ll return my calls.”

  He grunted.

  “I promise—I won’t be here more than a few months, Chief Cody. I won’t cause any trouble. I need a place to work.”

  That she was Frank Shay’s daughter made him sick and angry and wanting to throw back his head and howl in rage. But being who she was broke no laws. He couldn’t throw her off her own property. If either was in the wrong, he was for trespassing.

  She rose and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts, sir. Sorry to disturb you.”

  When she faced him, sunshine lit her face. Her eyes were a pale shade of rusty green, striking against her honey-skinned face. Clear, sad eyes that met his straight on. He wondered where her steadiness came from. Not from her father and, from the little he knew, it hadn’t come from her mother, either.

  She asked, “Was it you?”

  The question caught him off guard. He knew what she meant.

  “You’re the one who shot him.”

  He cursed his own imagination and how easily he conjured every detail. Frank Shay crashing through the brush, his breath like a freight train chugging up a hill. Waving the pistol and screaming, “It’s not me! I didn’t do it!” A prickly pear pad clung to his jeans. A funny detail, but Carson remembered.

  “I did.” He knew what would haunt his dreams tonight.

  She looked away. “When I got word he’d been killed, I wasn’t all that surprised. Some people wear a bad end like a hat. You know dying of old age isn’t for them.”

  Carson wondered if she was assuring him she didn’t blame him for her father’s death. It didn’t matter if she did or didn’t. If Frank Shay miraculously reappeared, Carson would be more than happy to kill him again. Only this time it wouldn’t be a clean shot. This time Shay would suffer.

  “He sent letters from prison. I ignored them. If I’d been a better daughter, if I’d written back, visited, things might have turned out different.”

  Frank Shay was the closest thing to pure evil Carson had ever known. “Doubt it,” he said.

  She turned around and tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Carson noticed scars along the tender inside of her upper arms. Round, puckered scars with that unmistakable stain of old burns. His gut clenched.

  “You’re right. He wasn’t a good man. He hurt people even when he didn’t mean to hurt them. It’s just that…he told me things were different. If I’d given him another chance none of this would have happened. I am so sorry.”

  He wanted very much to hate her, to freely grant her the blame. With Frank Shay dead and buried, Carson had no target for the rage eating him up inside. This woman with her sad eyes and lyrical voice was hard to hate. “Not your doing.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not.” She took a step, paused and looked over her shoulder at him. “I’ve got coffee up at the house. It isn’t too old.” That said, she disappeared into the brush.

  He chewed another stalk of grass. He should not have come here. The ghosts were too strong and the memories were too raw. It seemed only minutes instead of a year ago when the call came about shots fired on the old Shay ranch. Boneheaded boys taking potshots at trees had been on his mind. He never, in his darkest nightmares, envisioned finding his wife and Billy Harrigan on the banks of Crossruff Creek, shot to death with neither rhyme nor reaso
n by Frank Shay.

  They hadn’t done a damned thing to deserve Shay’s crazed attack. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong victims.

  Breathing hard, with his heart hammering as if seeking an escape from his rib cage, he scrambled to his feet.

  His life had ended when Jill’s ended. The only difference was that she rested easy in the ground and he had to keep walking and breathing and suffering. He caressed the butt of the sidearm and wondered if he was suicidal.

  He wasn’t one to tolerate waste, and taking one’s own life was the biggest waste of all.

  He walked away from the killing ground. Grief was his cross to bear. He had to figure out a way to live with it. He reached the road where he’d parked the cruiser. A startled mourning dove whirred into the air. By squinting and knowing exactly where to look atop the mesa he could just make out the chimney on his house. Crossruff Creek originated from a spring on his property. Jill, along with Carson’s best friend’s teenage son, had followed the creek down the mesa to search for missing goats.

  He kicked a pebble against the cruiser’s tire.

  He ought to accept Madeline’s offer of coffee. Get inside the house, ask some questions and learn why she was really here. The why of his wife’s death deviled him, always hovering at the edges of his mind, popping to the fore at every opportunity. The murders made no sense. Frank Shay made no sense. Madeline might offer a clue.

  The impulse died as quickly as it had arisen. He could not stomach sitting in the house where Shay’s stink permeated the walls. Besides, the state police had questioned her last year and she’d added nothing to the investigation.

  He drove away, listening to the radio chatter, grateful nothing serious was happening.

  He went home. From the porch he looked toward the Shay ranch. Except for power lines, the landscape looked wild and untouched. He tried to remember if he ever saw lights or activity down there. He went inside.

  Judy had left behind the scent of lemon cleansers and a plate of oatmeal cookies on the kitchen table. Bless her big heart, but whoever had told Judy Green she could cook did the world a disservice. The cookies were dust dry, hard as stone and burned on the bottoms. His freezer was full of heat-and-eat casseroles she made up. They filled the hole in his belly, but he never looked forward to eating them.