JOSH by Delores Fossen Page A

though he sounded as suspicious as Jaycee felt. “Anything specific you want me to tell him?”
    “Yes. Tell him if he cares about this baby at all, he’ll get his butt down here to Silver Creek right away or he’ll never see his child.” But Sierra waved that off and sniffled again. “It’s just the nerves talking.”
    Sierra paused, gathered her breath. “Bryson cut me to the core when I told him I was pregnant. I wanted him to divorce his cold fish of a wife and marry me. But he refused.”
    Of course he did. His rich wife gave him the standing in the community that he wanted. But what about that standing once everyone learned he’d cheated on his wife and gotten another woman pregnant? He might collect his inheritance but could lose everything else.
    Grayson’s phone rang, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Mason,” he told them, and answered it. “What’d you find out about those suspicious vehicles?”
    Jaycee couldn’t hear what Mason said, but the call was short. Grayson ended it and looked at Sierra. “False alarm on the vehicles. Some kids on a class trip got food poisoning, and this was the nearest hospital. Come on. I’ll take you to see the doctor.”
    Sierra didn’t argue. She wobbled a little when she stood and touched her hand to her head. “Someone please call Bryson and tell him what I’ve been through.”
    “I will,” Josh assured her.
    “Tell him to come to the hospital,” Sierra added. “I need to see him.”
    Josh just nodded, and they watched as Grayson took her by the arm and led her back out to the squad car.
    “You believe her?” Jaycee asked.
    Josh shrugged. “I believe she’s a gold digger, and that means I automatically distrust her.”
    Yes, so did she. Besides, Sierra was giving off mixed signals about Bryson. In one breath she was bad-mouthing him, and in the next she wanted to see him. Of course, she could have wanted to see him just to try to get money out of him. Still, that seemed a strange reaction considering the ordeal she’d just been through.
    Josh located Bryson’s contact number in Grayson’s files, and he made the call. “No answer,” he muttered after letting it ring a half dozen times, and he left a message for the man to contact him ASAP.
    “What about Valerie’s financials?” Jaycee asked.
    Josh nodded, and he fired off a text. This time to his cousin Kade Ryland, who was an FBI agent. He asked not just for info on Valerie but for a search warrant for Sierra’s apartment.
    “The warrant shouldn’t be hard to get,” Josh said to her when he finished texting. “We can tie it to her kidnapping and the baby farm investigation.”
    “Good. And during the search maybe they’ll run across those bank statements that Sierra said she had. If not, I figure Sierra would gladly hand them over since they seem to implicate her sister of some wrongdoing. Or not,” Jaycee quickly added.
    “Yeah. This could be just a bad case of sibling rivalry.”
    He checked the time and tipped his head to the door. “Ready to get out of here? I can have Gage or Bree escort us back to the ranch.”
    Jaycee hated to tie up so much manpower just to protect her and now Sierra. However, after what’d happened on their last drive to the ranch, she welcomed the extra security.
    “Let me get everything ready,” Josh said, but he didn’t even make it a step before his phone rang.
    Jaycee expected it to be Bryson returning his call, but she saw emergency dispatcher on the screen.
    “Deputy Ryland,” Josh answered. And since he didn’t put the call on speaker, Jaycee moved close enough to hear. She prayed this wasn’t yet more bad news.
    “There’s another woman trying to contact you,” the dispatcher told Josh. “She says her name is Miranda Culley and that it’s important. Could be some kind of prank—”
    “I’ll talk to her,” Josh interrupted. “You know her?” he mouthed to Jaycee.
    But she had to shake her head.
    “Deputy Ryland?” the woman