Free JOSH by Delores Fossen Page B

fund, and I think she did it to set up this operation.”
    Josh looked at Bryson to see what he thought of this, but the man certainly didn’t deny it.
    “Find Sierra and the baby,” Bryson said, standing. “If she’s guilty, put her in jail, but the child is mine.”
    Grayson stepped in front of the man before he could leave. “If you get another ransom demand, I want to know about it.”
    Bryson stared at him, the muscles stirring in his jaw, and he finally nodded. “Just don’t do anything to endanger that baby.”
    Bryson left both the photo and the ransom demand on the table and walked out. Valerie started after him, but then stopped right in front of Jaycee.
    “If Sierra contacts you for any reason, don’t believe a word she says.” And with that not-so-sisterly warning, Valerie left, too.
    “I’ll bag the ransom letter,” Grayson said the moment she was gone. “Doubt we’ll get anything from it, though, since it was in Bryson’s pocket.”
    Josh agreed, but it was still something that should be done. Grayson left to get the evidence bag, but Jaycee and he stayed put, staring at the photo.
    “This baby seems awfully important to Bryson,” she commented.
    Yeah, and Bryson hadn’t talked about his love for the child, so maybe something else was going on. Josh fired off a text to his cousin, FBI agent Kade Ryland, and asked him to do some digging into Bryson’s background and marriage.
    “So Bryson could be a suspect,” Jaycee concluded. “What exactly was there about him in the laptop recovered from the baby farm?”
    “No mention of a ransom demand or a connection to a possible captive, that’s for sure. It appeared to be some kind of payment to Bryson.”
    “Payment to him?” she questioned.
    “Or it could be a falsified payment to make him look guilty. Grayson didn’t want to bring it up yet until we know exactly what it is. We didn’t want to give Bryson time to come up with some kind of explanation before we spring it on him. If he lies, then we’ll have cause to arrest him.”
    She made a sound to indicate she was giving that some thought. “Any way to match it to money deposited into his account?”
    “Accounts,” Josh corrected. “The man has dozens of them. We got the court order to look at them, but it’s going to take a while to go through all of them.”
    And that was time that Josh didn’t want to spend with Jaycee standing around the sheriff’s office. Yes, they had three lawmen in the place, but he preferred her at the ranch where someone couldn’t just come walking in the door.
    Like those three guards who’d escaped.
    Josh motioned for her to follow him down the hall and toward the back exit where he’d parked. “I need to apologize,” he said, keeping his voice low so they wouldn’t be overheard.
    She didn’t ask the reason for the latest apology, which meant she knew he was talking about that near kiss. Jaycee only nodded. “Our bodies are having a hard time remembering we’re enemies.”
    Not good. One of them should be sane about this. And besides, they weren’t enemies. He was just having a hard time forgiving her.
    The baby was helping with that.
    Hard to be angry at the woman carrying his child.
    “Call me if you find out anything,” Josh told Grayson, and Jaycee and he headed out.
    As he’d done on the trip in, Josh checked the parking lot and Main Street to see if there was anyone or anything suspicious, but it looked like a normal weekday in Silver Creek. Still, he hurried to get Jaycee into the truck, and then drove away. However, he’d gone less than a half mile when his phone rang.
    It was Grayson. And that meant something big had probably come up for him to call so soon. Even though it could be something neither of them wanted to hear, he decided to put the call on speaker.
    “I just talked to Nate,” Grayson said the moment Josh answered.
    “That’s Grayson’s brother,” Josh explained to Jaycee. “Nate’s a lieutenant with the San