LITMIR.BIZ

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left. She’d had a trouble-free pregnancy and she wasn’t due for six weeks. It seemed nothing could go wrong.

      And then everything had.

      There was never a cat stuck in a tree when you needed one.

      Sawyer Morente glared at the ringing cell phone he’d tossed on the desk beside him and, seeing his brother’s number flash on the screen, wished he’d had enough sense to turn it off. Right now he’d rather talk to anyone but Cort—even elderly Mrs. Garcia, who summoned the paramedics nearly every week, always making sure she suffered her chest pains on a day when Sawyer was on duty because she said she liked the way he took her pulse. At least he’d have a reason not to talk to his brother.

      Tonight, though, had been unusually quiet for a Friday, especially after a week of what seemed like almost back-to-back calls. Apart from the small electrical fire keeping the three-man fire crew busy for the last hour, there hadn’t been any alarms at the main engine house centered in Luna Hermosa. The early-spring storm rumbling down across northern New Mexico from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains seemed to have kept most people off the roads and out of the kind of trouble Sawyer got called to handle.

      His partner, Rico Esteban, slouching in one of the office chairs, his feet propped on Sawyer’s desk, glanced up from the Sports section. “You gonna answer that? It’s getting annoying.”

      “Tell me about it,” Sawyer muttered. It was the fourth time Cort had called this week, and Sawyer was getting tired of telling his little brother he didn’t want to talk about the letter—the one that lay in a mangled ball somewhere in the vicinity of his kitchen trash can. Cort, for some reason Sawyer couldn’t fathom, wanted to answer it.

      The only response Sawyer wanted to communicate to the letter writer was, Go to hell. After twenty-six years without a father, I don’t need one now.

      On the fifth ring, Sawyer jabbed the talk button on his cell phone. “Go away, Cort.”

      “Nice to talk to you, too, buddy,” Cort said, his voice slightly distorted by static.

      Another streak of lightning slashed the sky, giving Sawyer hope that they’d suddenly be disconnected. “You know, it’s no surprise you’re the sheriff’s golden-boy detective. I’d take jail time over being hounded by you any day. Isn’t there someone else you can irritate this week?”

      “Just you. And you’ve been doing your best to avoid me. Why bother having a house if you’re never off duty?”

      “Obviously not my best or I wouldn’t be talking to you—again,” Sawyer said, ignoring the familiar jab about his working hours. Already restless with the conversation, he pushed away from his desk and paced to the office window. “And I wouldn’t be avoiding you if you would just let this go.”

      “You can’t ignore it forever,” Cort said, repeating the same argument he’d been making since Monday, when they’d gotten the letters.

      Sawyer wanted to ask him why, but the question would be wasted on Cort. Instead his brother would patiently drive him crazy until Sawyer either finally gave in or relocated and changed his identity.

      “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to deal with this.”

      “I am dealing with it,” Sawyer snapped. Rico looked up from his paper, then pretended he hadn’t when Sawyer scowled in his direction. Sawyer turned his back on him to stare out the window. “I’m dealing with it just like he dealt with us all those years after he finally got tired of knocking us around. I’m pretending he doesn’t exist.”

      Despite the static, Cort’s frustration came through loud and clear. “The man only lives a few miles out of town. He does business here. Hell, we went to school with his son. Although if things had been right, Rafe wouldn’t have grown up a Garrett—”

      “Don’t go there,” Sawyer interrupted. “We had nothing to do with that.”

      “My point is, Garrett’s not going away.”

      “Maybe that’s where you inherited it from.” Sawyer gave up trying to argue his point with Cort. Their father had never wanted them from the beginning. Big and rough, with a nasty temper made nastier by his love affair with Jim Beam, he’d made Sawyer the target of his rages early on. Then when Sawyer was seven and Cort barely five, he’d kicked them off his ranch and out of his life completely without a word of regret or explanation.

      When Sawyer had asked about his father, his mother refused to talk about him, except to say that Jed Garrett loved his ranch above anything and anyone else and that Sawyer and Cort didn’t need a father who didn’t want them. And she’d made the break complete by legally dropping Garrett’s name and giving her sons her proud family name, Morente.

      Sawyer might have believed what she’d told him if he’d never known that his father had adopted Rafe, remarried and had another son with his second wife. But he did know. And because he knew, he’d wasted years wondering what made he and Cort so unlovable that their own father despised them and completely denied their existence.

      Now their mother was dead and suddenly Garrett wanted a reunion with his two oldest sons.

      Sawyer didn’t know what had prompted Jed Garrett’s questionable display of fatherly interest and he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want anything from Garrett, now or ever.

      “If it’s that important to you, then you answer him,” Sawyer said at last. “But you’re on your own, brother. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

      The strident tones of the station alarm followed by the dispatcher’s voice drowned out whatever reply Cort started to make.

      Two-vehicle accident with injuries. Woman in labor. Mile marker 223, Highway 137 at Coyote Pass.

      “Gotta run,” Sawyer said, hanging up and cutting off Cort’s exasperated curse.

      The wail of sirens jolted Maya and she whispered a prayer of thanks as the flash of red and yellow lights broke into the darkness around her. She had been trying in the last few minutes to convince herself everything was going to be fine, but her attempts had been a miserable failure, underscored by visions of herself delivering a premature baby alone in her Jeep and everything going more wrong than it already had.

      At least now she had a hope of safely delivering her baby in a hospital bed.

      A man’s face suddenly appeared at the window, blurred by the rain. He took a quick glance at her and around the vehicle, tried the driver’s door and then flashed her a reassuring smile.

      “Be with you in a minute,” he called through the window.

      Maya closed her eyes against another contraction, and about the time it eased, she heard glass break and the rear door open and then the Jeep creaked and shifted. It took her a moment to realize someone was climbing over the backseat toward her.

      “How are you doing?” he asked as he managed to somehow maneuver himself around jumbled boxes and suitcases and into the seat beside her. Already cold to the core, Maya clutched her blanket closer and tried to keep from shuddering as his shoulder brushed hers, sprinkling her with the droplets clinging to his hair and clothing.

      It was the man she’d seen at the window, and the small space suddenly seemed filled with him. In the dimness, broken only by the strobe of the emergency lights, she could only see he was dark, with a smile as potent as any remedy for terror she could think of right now.

      Before she could answer him, he flicked on a penlight and began checking her over. “Now there’s a stupid question. I’m going to have to work on my opening line.” He worked quickly, asking her several questions about the accident and her pregnancy.

      “This is not supposed to be happening,” Maya said just as another contraction started.

      “I figured that. Here—” he took her hand in his “—go ahead, squeeze tight.”

      She hesitated, torn between hating the weakness that

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