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gunman in the house?
    They moved slowly, with Tucker checking every corner until they worked their way to the kitchen.
    â€œStay here,” he insisted.
    With his gun ready, he first looked out the kitchen window where his sister and the other two men still were. Everything must have been okay there because he started to check out the rest of the house.
    Laine hurried to the babies to make sure they were okay. They appeared to be. Since she was soaked to the bone, she put the blanket between the babies and her wet clothes before she scooped them into her arms.
    Even though they were too young to understand, they were perhaps sensing the horrible nightmare that’d just happened. She tried rocking them so they would stop crying and she could hear what was going on in the house.
    It seemed to take an eternity for Tucker to return, and when she saw him, Laine released the breath she’d been holding. He no longer had his gun raised, and there was some relief in his eyes.
    â€œAre you okay?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
    â€œI’m fine,” Laine lied. Her scrapes and bruises would all be minor, but it might take a lifetime or two to feel fine.
    His phone rang, and he yanked it from his pocket. “It’s Colt,” he relayed to her, and he answered it.
    Laine couldn’t hear what his brother was saying, but she knew from his expression that it wasn’t good news. “The rain washed away the tracks,” Tucker explained, a muscle flickering in his jaw.
    So they’d lost him.
    Laine couldn’t stop the sound from making its way through her throat. This wasn’t over. The babies still weren’t safe.
    â€œWe’ll get a CSI team out to look for anything to indicate where he’s heading,” Tucker added, though he didn’t sound convinced that it would do any good.
    The man probably had a vehicle stashed nearby and was already long gone.
    Tucker didn’t stay in the pantry. Instead, he went to the back door, opened it and kept watch over the two gunmen they had managed to capture. He also motioned toward the ambulance, obviously giving them the go-ahead to come closer to the house. After he’d done that, he glanced back at her, and this time, there was no relief anywhere on his face.
    Just questions.
    Well, one question anyway.
    â€œWhat the heck was that clown talking about back there?” Tucker asked.
    Laine knew exactly what Tucker was referring to, and she remembered every word of what the man had said.
    You might wanta check your facts there, bud. She’s a lot of things, but innocent ain’t one of them.
    She opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. Obviously that reaction didn’t please Tucker, because he mumbled some profanity and snapped back around to face her.
    â€œWhat did he mean?” Tucker demanded. “And what the heck are you really doing here?”
    Â 

Chapter Five
    Tucker had a dozen other things that he should be doing. For one thing, he should be helping Rayanne guard the two dirtbags she had facedown and cuffed on the ground in the drenching rain. For another, he needed to watch for Colt to make his way back to the house so they could transport the prisoners—one to the jail and the other to the hospital.
    Instead, here he was questioning Laine.
    And it was obvious from her reaction that she had something to tell him that he didn’t want to hear.
    â€œDid you lie to me when you said a woman had been killed?” he demanded.
    â€œNo!” She struggled to get to her feet. It wasn’t easy with two crying, squirming babies in her arms. “I saw her, and they murdered her.”
    She sounded convincing enough, but Tucker would wait for some evidence. Still, it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe it now that the attack had happened here. Those goons had been trying to cover up something, that was for sure.
    â€œThen, what did the man mean about you not being innocent?”