Settling an Old Score - Delores Fossen Page 0,2

have taken her to the hospital just to be sure.”

If Ashlyn heard any of that, it didn’t register on her face. As the baby’s fussing got louder, Ashlyn moved faster. She practically barreled up the steps, and the moment that she reached him, Eli stripped the gun from her hand.

She made a strangled sound of fear and frustration, but she didn’t fight to get the weapon back. Instead, Ashlyn dropped to her knees and picked up the baby, pulling the infant right against her.

“She’s okay,” Ashlyn said, raw relief in her voice, and she just kept repeating it.

He’d known Ashlyn since they were kids, but it’d been two years since he’d seen her. Not since that night of Marta’s death and the shooting that’d nearly ended Ashlyn’s life, too. She hadn’t actually cried that night, had been more in shock and then too drugged up on the pain meds for her injuries. However, she was crying now, and the tears were streaming down her face.

Eli wasn’t immune to those tears, either. Ashlyn’s grief already felt like a fist around his heart, and that fist was squeezing hard now.

He tucked both of their guns in the back waist of his jeans and glanced out at her car to make sure no one else was inside. If there was, he didn’t see them.

“Whose baby is this? Is she yours?” he demanded, and he made sure his lawman’s tone came through loud and clear.

But his tone faltered a bit when he recalled something. Yet more memories of the attack two years ago. Ashlyn had been shot three times, and the bullets had done a lot of damage. Eli was pretty sure he remembered the doctors saying that she’d never be able to have a child.

An injury like that was something that only added to his nightmares. One woman was dead and the other wounded to the point that it had changed her life forever and taken away her chance to become a mother. A biological one, anyway.

“She’s mine. Her name is Cora, and I adopted her,” Ashlyn added as if she’d known he was thinking about the shooting.

Eli hadn’t heard about the adoption, but then Ashlyn wasn’t exactly a frequent visitor to Longview Ridge. Probably because she hadn’t wanted to risk running into him. By avoiding him, she’d also avoided the inevitable gossip that came with living in a small town.

“If you didn’t bring Cora here, then who did?” he asked.

Ashlyn still had tears in her eyes when she looked up at him. She opened her mouth, closed it and shook her head for a third time. She glanced away from him as if trying to figure out how to answer, and with the baby gripped in her arms, she quickly stood.

“Oh God,” she blurted out. “They could be watching us. They could still hurt her.”

That got his attention, and even though Eli still didn’t have all the answers he wanted, he hurried Ashlyn inside his house and shut the door. Eli immediately started to pat Ashlyn down, working his hands around the baby.

Ashlyn made a sound of outrage. One that Eli ignored.

“You showed up here out of the blue and pulled a gun on me,” he grumbled. “Just in case you’re carrying our bad blood to the next level, I don’t want you trying to kill me.”

She didn’t exactly jump to defend herself or claim that killing him had never been on her agenda. That didn’t ease the tight muscles in his chest.

“I would have done anything to get her back.” Ashlyn’s voice trembled as she kissed the baby again. But then she froze for a moment before she looked up at him. “And they knew that. Oh God. They knew that.”

“They?” Eli challenged. Once he was certain she wasn’t armed, he engaged the security system and looked out the side window of the front door.

“The men who took Cora.” Her breath shuddered, and she started to sob again.

Eli didn’t have a stone heart, so that got to him. So did the fact that an innocent little baby was somehow involved in this. Whatever this was.

“Keep talking,” he insisted while he continued to keep watch. Ashlyn had left on her car headlights so that helped him see the road that led to his house. “Tell me what happened.” And then he would almost certainly need to call Kellan. First, though, Eli wanted to hear the specifics so he’d know what to relay to his brother.

“I was in bed at my house. Cora