Читать книгу The Sheriff's Surrender - Marilyn Pappano - Страница 7

Neely stood at the living-room window, staring off to the west as the setting sun turned the sky pink, lavender, blue, and every shade imaginable in between. When the darkness began to gradually seep over the colors, she was tempted for one whimsical moment to applaud and call out, “Good job!” and “Do it again!” Of course, she did nothing of the sort. She smiled, though—to herself, for herself—and wished she could grab hold tight of this fleeting serenity and wrap it around her for a little longer. She had so few truly peaceful moments in her life that they’d become dear.

“Get away from the window. Someone might see you.”

She didn’t argue with the curt command—didn’t point out that she stood in a darkened room on a dusky evening, or that the blackjack oaks that grew thick as weeds between the street and the yard made it impossible to see that there was even a house back here. She simply moved away from the window and toward Reese.

She’d offered her help with dinner and he’d turned her down. She’d said she would set the table and he’d told her to go away. Now she stood in the doorway of the brightly lit kitchen, hands clasped behind her back, and watched as he dished up steaks and baked sweet potatoes. If she could be reasonably certain that he wouldn’t snarl or snap at her, she would make some lighthearted comment about how she liked having a man cook for her. But he would snarl or snap, and she wasn’t up to it tonight.

And so she said nothing as he carried the plates to the table, then the glasses and a pitcher of tea, or as he gestured for her to take a seat. She didn’t compliment him on the flavorful steak, grilled to just the right degree of doneness, and she certainly didn’t speculate on how he’d remembered after all these years that she liked her beef medium-rare.

Halfway through the meal, she paused to refill her glass, then evenly asked, “Is there anything at all we can talk about that won’t make you angry?”

He pretended to think about it for a moment, rubbing his jaw with one long, slender finger, then shrugged. “Not that I can think of.”

The wise course would be to accept his answer, finish the meal in silence, and return to the living room, where the television would talk at her if not to her. Naturally she didn’t go that route. “Aw, come on, Reese. You always prided yourself on being able to talk to anybody about anything, no matter how much you detested them.”

“That was before I knew just how much I was capable of detesting someone.”

She didn’t wince, didn’t give any indication that he’d scored a hit. She kept her expression bland, her voice level and empty of emotion. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what I’ve done the last nine years, how many people I’ve screwed and how many lives I’ve destroyed?”

She’d certainly screwed up her own life, and it wasn’t fair. All she’d ever wanted was to be a good lawyer and to help people. She’d dedicated most of her thirty-five years to achieving those goals, and what had she accomplished? The only man she’d ever loved despised her. He’d taught her to despise herself. Her noble career was a joke. Judy Miller was dead, and if Eddie Forbes had his way, she would soon be dead herself.

“I am curious about one thing.” Reese laid the steak knife aside as if he didn’t trust himself to talk to her with it in hand.

“How did you sucker Jace into believing that your life was worth saving?”

A faint tremor passed through her, making her pull her hands into her lap before he noticed. She summoned her best smile, her most casual shrug and her most intimate voice, and replied with her own question. “How do you think?”

Neely knew exactly what he thought, without needing to see the suspicion enter his gaze, or the tension that set his jaw and knotted his fingers. Keeping the smile in place through sheer will, she laid her napkin on the table and rose as gracefully as she could. “Dinner was wonderful. Hope you don’t mind if I leave the cleanup to you.” Still smiling, she left the room.

Her bedroom was dark once she closed the door, but she didn’t need light to make it to the bed. She sat on the mattress and let the smile slip as a great shudder rocketed through her. She had never thought she would see the day when she would anticipate taking up residence in a jail cell, but as far as she was concerned, tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. Anything would be better than staying here one moment longer than necessary.

Well, anything besides a middle-of-the-night-wake-up call with fully automatic assault weapons.

She didn’t know how long she sat there—long enough for the sounds of cleaning in the kitchen to stop, long enough to make her flinch when she turned on the bedside lamp—before she finally stood up. She removed a toiletries case and night-clothes from her suitcase, eased the door open enough to see that the lights were off in the kitchen and on in the living room, then padded next door to the bathroom.

Like the guest room, it was functional—all the necessary appointments, clean lines, nothing unusual or remarkable. Everything was white—counter, floor, walls, the plumbing and light fixtures, even the towel rods and the towels they held. The only spot of color in the room was her. She didn’t know whether she loved the pure starkness of it all or hated it. Not that her opinion mattered one bit to Reese.

After showering, she wrapped one white towel around her body, another around her head. By the time she’d brushed and flossed her teeth, dried her hair, smoothed three different moisturizers over their appropriate body parts, added a dusting of powder and put on her T-shirt and shorts, the pristine bathroom looked well-used. Though she was tempted to leave it that way, she repacked everything and left the room almost as spotless as she’d found it. She couldn’t do anything about her scents that lingered, but they would be gone before Reese ever noticed them.

Kind of like her.

Suddenly weary, Neely returned to the bedroom, put the toiletries back in the suitcase and folded her dirty clothes on top of it, then stretched out on top of the covers. She felt more alone in that instant than she’d ever felt before. Even her toughest times—when her father had been taken away in handcuffs, when Reese had left her bleeding on the courthouse steps, when she’d lain in the hospital praying that he would come to see her, when she’d driven away from Thomasville and known she would never return—hadn’t felt quite like this. If she were a weaker woman, she would cry, but she’d learned well that crying resolved nothing. It hadn’t brought her father back, or Reese. It hadn’t made her feel any less betrayed or helped her deal with her disappointments.

She’d had so many disappointments, and had caused so many more.

When this was over—if she survived—she needed a new life and a new job in a new place. She would forget about making a difference, about helping people or being important to someone, and she would concentrate on keeping to herself, not getting involved, not doing any harm or destroying any lives. She could work as a waitress or get some dreary office-drone job where she would spend her days alone in a cubicle, having little contact with the outside world and zero chances to screw up.

As she turned onto her side to face the window, she smiled faintly. She didn’t indulge in self-pity often, but when she did, she did it well. Anyone watching her now would think her life had gone to hell in a handbasket, when the truth was, she still had a lot. No one could take away her law degree and ten years of hard-learned experience. Her bank accounts were healthy beyond her greediest dreams. She owned a beautiful house that would bring a small fortune in Kansas City’s current market. She was alive and well, at least for the time being, and might actually manage to stay that way. She had a lot to live for.

Just not the sort of things she’d always imagined herself having by now. No family, but sisters with problems of their own and a mother who’d never been more than ineffectual. A house, but no home. Acquaintances, but no friends. Occasional sex partners, but no lovers.

No Reese.

She smiled again, but this time there was no self-mocking in it. Just enduring regret that she feared would never go away.

Waiting for sleep to overtake her, she stared out the window until her eyes grew gritty, until simple tiredness passed into fatigue. She watched the already-dark sky turn even blacker as a storm crept in, taking its sweet time in reaching Heartbreak. Lightning appeared first, far off on the horizon, then before long, distant thunder rumbled through the night—low, deep, unsettling. It seemed to vibrate through the cabin’s thick log walls, through the wooden planks of the floor and the old oak bed, and right on through her body—long, relentless grumbles. She tossed restlessly, then gave up and went to the nearest window.

She loved thunderstorms—loved their primal edge, their cathartic fury. They were less impressive back home, where the lightning had to compete with millions of city lights, where the thunder was often just one more grumble in a clamor of city noise. But here there was only one man-made light—a flood lamp outside the barn—and the thunder was challenged only by the wind and the approaching rain. If she were free to do whatever she wanted, she would go outside on the front porch, curl up in one of the rockers and breathe deeply of the clean, sweet air. She would let the wind blow her hair and clothes every which way and when the driving rain arrived, she would let it drench her to the skin, and maybe, once the storm had passed, she would have been washed just a little bit cleaner.

But she wasn’t free, and the way her luck was running, the first bolt of lightning that struck would be drawn unerringly to her soaked, superconductor body. Then everyone’s problems would be solved—Eddie Forbes’s, Jace’s, Reese’s and her own.

The flood lamp out back flickered, went off, came on and went off again as the power inside the house surged and ebbed. Next door the refrigerator cycled on and off, as did the central air, before finally shutting down in a silence that seemed eerie compared to the activity outside.

Now she could go outside. Without power, the security alarm would be worthless—unless Reese had installed some sort of backup power source, which he probably had. Besides, if she managed to get out without setting off the alarm, the electricity would surely come back on while she was outside and she would trigger it coming back in and, believing she was an intruder, Reese would blow her away—or, at least, that would be his story. And who would dispute him? Worse, who would care?

But staying inside didn’t mean having to stay in her room, standing at one small window. Neely opened her door, listened, then carefully felt her way through the darkness to the living room. Flashes of lightning led her to a chair in front of the ten-foot-long window, where she curled up, head resting on one fist, and watched the show outside.

She’d been there five minutes, maybe less, when the power started flickering again. Sounding like the little engine that couldn’t, the computer tried to boot up, shut down, then tried again. Finding her way by lightning and touch, she knelt under the desk to turn off the power strip and unplug it from the wall. She’d lost a computer once from just such activity, and though she was sure Reese wouldn’t show the least bit of gratitude, she saw no reason to sit idly by while it happened to him.

She was resettled in the chair, watching as a curtain of rain moved through the blackjacks and across the yard, listening to its great thundering rush, when a thud sounded nearby, followed by a grunt of pain and a curse. She watched as a shadowy form pushed aside the wooden desk chair she’d pulled from its usual spot, then knelt in front of the desk—waited until he was half under, then quietly said, “I’ve already unplugged the computer.”

The next thud was louder—the back of Reese’s head connecting with the underside of the desk’s center drawer—and the next curse was harsher. She didn’t spare him any sympathy—he was hardheaded enough—but turned her attention back to the storm. The rain was pounding the metal roof now in a staccato rhythm that would wake the soundest sleeper…or perhaps lull the lightest off to sleep.

She was right about the gratitude. He sat in the chair that matched hers and fixed a weighty gaze on her that she couldn’t see but could certainly feel. “What the hell are you doing up?”

“Am I restricted to my room at night? If so, you should have made that clear. Or maybe it would be best if you’d just reset the doorknob to the guest room so that it locks from the outside.”

Lightning lit the night sky and the room, giving her an all-too-clear look at him. He wore a pair of jeans and nothing else, and he looked incredible. Broad-shouldered, muscular, smooth tanned skin, narrow waist, ridged belly, lean hips…In sudden need of a cool splash of water, she directed her gaze outside again.

“It’s three in the morning.” His voice was sullen, but surprisingly pleasant—low, deep, masculine—in spite of it. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Why aren’t you?” She wasn’t about to admit that she couldn’t sleep because she was feeling sorry for herself, because she found being thrown together with him again so unsettling. No way was she going to speculate that subconsciously she was afraid to sleep, because the last time she’d done it, someone had tried to kill her. Show him any sign of weakness and, just like other predators, he would use it against her.

“Do you always answer questions with questions?”

“No. Sometimes I don’t answer them at all. On rare occasions, I actually answer with the truth. But not if I can avoid it.”

A particularly loud clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes. In the relative quiet that followed, Reese asked, “What happened last night?”

“Last night?”

Impatience tightened his voice. “Jace said someone tried to kill you. What happened?”

Jace said… His best friend—family—had told him, and yet he sounded as if he wasn’t at all convinced that she was truly in danger. What did he think—that she and Jace had concocted this plan to get the two of them together again? That she’d pined for him for nine years and was now making a desperate attempt to win him back?

He flattered himself…not that she hadn’t been desperate a time or two. There had been times when she would have sold her soul, would have groveled and pleaded for his forgiveness. She wasn’t proud of it, but then, she wasn’t proud of a lot of things.

But to manufacture death threats… Did he think it was a bogus bomb that had scattered pieces of her car over a city block last week? Had those been bogus bullets tearing through the walls and windows of the safe house last night?

Feeling lost and alone, she managed a careless shrug. “Nothing happened.”

“Jace said—”

“Then ask Jace.” He sure as hell wouldn’t believe anything she told him.

After another shuddering crack of thunder, he spoke again. “Why did he call me? Kansas City has a big department. He’s got friends in other departments all over the area. Why me?”

She looked at him, in shadow one instant, brightly illuminated the next, then got to her feet. “He still has some illusions about you. He believes you’re an honorable man.” She walked as far as the kitchen door before turning back. “But you and I both know better, don’t we?”

Tuesday morning was about as perfect a June day as Oklahoma ever saw. Except for the rain glistening on the grass and quickly evaporating from the porch, there was no sign of last night’s storm. Of course, Reese thought sourly as he walked through the living room, there was no sign inside of his late-night run-in with Neely, but that didn’t mean anything.

He’d smelled the coffee perking the instant he’d awakened and wondered if she’d developed a taste for it over the years. He saw the answer was no when he walked into the kitchen, where she sat at the table, bare feet propped on an empty chair, a magazine open in both hands and a glass of orange juice in front of her.

She wore another of those too summery, too feminine dresses, this one in a soft green that reminded him of his favorite sherbet. It was sleeveless, with a row of buttons from the point of a deep vee all the way to the hem, but she hadn’t buttoned them all. The fabric fell away on either side, exposing ticklish knees, shapely calves and delicate ankles. Her pale brown hair was longer than he’d acknowledged yesterday, long enough to flip up in a tiny curl on the ends, and her glasses—

Apparently suspecting that he’d done a double take on the half-glasses that perched below the bridge of her nose, she peered at him over them. “Do I look like an old-maid schoolmarm?”

With that face? That body? That sleek, waifish hair and those brightly painted stars that decorated the glass frames? Not by a country mile.

She didn’t seem to notice that he didn’t reply but turned his attention instead to filling the biggest mug in his cabinet with steaming coffee.

“For vanity’s sake, I resisted reading glasses for as long as I could, but I finally realized that I never saw anyone anyway, so what did it matter?”

“How do you practice law without seeing anyone?” He wasn’t interested. He swore he wasn’t. He was merely making small talk.

“Well, of course I see people in court, but I hardly ever read there. The rest of the time I’m usually alone.”

Except for meetings in her office, he thought with a scowl. And lunches and dinners outside the office. Movies with friends. Dates. Sleepovers. Weekends away. She’d always been a very social person, more so than he would have liked when he’d been with her. He didn’t believe for an instant that she’d changed.

How social was she with Jace? Intimately so, she’d hinted last night. Though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone else to save his life, that hint was part of what had kept him awake last night. Every time he’d started to doze off, the image of the two of them together had jerked him awake again.

His first impulse was to write off her implication as a lie. She’d proven she wasn’t above lying. Hell, she was a lawyer. One went hand in hand with the other. Besides, Jace knew everything that had happened—all that she’d put Reese through. He might like her, but his loyalty was to family first. He would never have an affair with her without telling Reese first.

His second impulse stopped him from following his first. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened. Barnett men shared a lot in common, including similar tastes in women. He and Jace had dated each other’s exes in high school and again through college. And that would explain why his cousin cared so much about keeping her safe.

Of course, so would the fact that Jace was the best damn cop Reese had ever known. He had an unshakable sense of right and wrong. He hated injustice, hated to lose, and would give up his own life without hesitation to save the least worthy person out there. It was because of him that Reese had become a cop—because of him that Reese tried to be as good. He failed, though. He wasn’t as selfless, and couldn’t be as unbiased. He saw too many of the shades of gray that Jace simply didn’t see.

The soft pad of bare feet on stone alerted Reese to the fact that Neely was coming closer—or was it the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, or the unsettled twinge in the pit of his stomach? He moved to one side and watched as she took a bowl from the cabinet and a box of cereal from the pantry. Considering how little time she’d spent in his kitchen, she seemed very much at home there. She knew which drawer the silverware was in and which of four identical pottery jars held the sugar. What else had she snooped into while he’d slept, or tried to?

She settled at the table again, and for a moment there was only the sound of crunching. Of course the moment didn’t last. “So…I realize you aren’t married now, but have you been?”

“No.” Marriage had never come high on his list of priorities. He’d more or less taken for granted that it was something he would do after he’d done everything else. He had assumed for a long time that he would do it with her, even though their relationship had come with its own built-in problems—namely, her nasty habit of helping crooks stay out of jail. Eventually, he’d figured, between him and the babies they would have, they would get her out of the criminal-defense business and who knew—maybe even make a full-time wife and mom out of her.

He’d been a fool.

“So you’re playing the field.” When he glanced at her curiously, she gestured to the answering machine. “Shay. Ginger.” She lowered her voice into erotic-dream range. “‘Hey, cowboy, come take me for a ride.’”

He tried to ignore the heat that seeped through him—did his damnedest to shut out long-repressed memories of him and Neely, naked and wicked and incredibly good. He’d always enjoyed sex. Even his first time, when he was seventeen and Joelle Barefoot’s cousin had come up from Broken Bow for a week and shown him things he hadn’t even imagined, had been pretty damn amazing. But it had been different with Neely. Not always-fireworks-seeing-stars-multiple-climax spectacular, but…special. Satisfying in ways that went much deeper than mere physical pleasure. Connecting in ways that had nothing to do with Part A sliding into Slot B.

He took a swallow of coffee to clear the hoarseness from his throat. It didn’t work entirely. “Shay’s a friend. So is her husband. And Ginger would be too young to be my kid sister…if I had a kid sister.”

“What about ‘Ride me, cowboy’?”

Her name was Isabella, she’d come to Heartbreak a month earlier to spend a weekend with her college roommate—Callie, the town’s nurse-midwife—and hadn’t left yet, and he wasn’t sure he would ever look at her again without thinking of sex.

And Neely.

“Believe it or not, the riding lesson she was talking about was actually a riding lesson. She’s never been around horses so I taught her the basics.”

Studying him thoughtfully, she chewed a mouthful of cardboard-tasting wheat chaff and washed it down with juice. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?” she asked evenly. “As far as I know, the only thing you’ve ever lied to me about is the way you felt about me.”

“I never lied.” He’d loved her dearly, even though they’d had some very different ideas on some very important subjects such as right, wrong and justice. Even though he’d taken a lot of flak on the job because of his relationship with her. He’d loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone.

Until the day he’d watched Judy Miller die.

“So your definition of always was just different from mine—as, apparently, was your definition of love.”

“No. We’d simply reached the point where I could no longer overlook certain aspects of who you were and what you did. I couldn’t continue a relationship with you and maintain any measure of self-respect.”

She brought her dishes to the sink, rinsed them, dried her hands, then faced him. There were two spots of bright color on her cheeks, made more prominent by her unusual paleness. “I didn’t kill that woman.”

“You made it possible.”

Stubbornly she shook her head side to side. “Feel guilty if you want, Reese, but don’t try to put it on me. I didn’t do anything wrong. My client was entitled to a proper defense, and I saw that he got it. I did my job, and I did it well. End of story.”

“You did your job without regard for the truth, without the slightest concern for the reality of the situation. You wanted to win at any cost, and you succeeded—even though the cost was an innocent woman’s life. You may not have pulled the trigger, Neely, but you put the gun in that bastard’s hand. You put him back out on the streets. You made it possible for him to make good on his threats.”

“I was just doing my job! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Lie to yourself, but don’t bother lying to me. I had to learn the hard way not to believe anything you say, but I did learn.” He walked out then and left her standing there looking…shaken. Upset. Regretful. And guilty. She knew she wasn’t as innocent in Judy’s death as she pretended.

Just as he knew that he shared some responsibility, too, along with the rest of the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department.

Refusing to follow that train of thought, he dropped down into his favorite chair and used the remote to turn on the television and surf through a hundred or so satellite channels before settling on a fifties-era Western. Though he’d seen the show before, he concentrated on it intensely so he wouldn’t have to notice that Neely was still standing where he’d left her, that her head was bowed and her shoulders rounded, or that she looked as forlorn and alone as anyone he’d ever seen.

If she was forlorn, that was her own fault, and being alone was her choice. She’d never faced any shortage of male attention. When they were dating, men had often hit on her right in front of him. Not men in Thomasville, who knew what she did or what he did, but in the city—in restaurants, clubs or just walking down the street. From teenage boys to white-haired grandfathers, it had seemed that no stranger was immune to her charms.

He sure as hell hadn’t been immune the first time he’d seen her. But he was now. He was older, tougher, less susceptible to women in general, to big brown eyes and delicate little smiles in particular. He knew there were things in life more important than great sex and that the price for getting mixed up with Neely was dearer than he could pay. Besides, after today, he wasn’t going to see her again.

And now he’d learned one more lesson—he was never doing another favor for Jace as long as he lived. That was a promise.

In the kitchen Neely finally moved—he heard, felt but didn’t see it—but she didn’t come into the living room. Good. It was easier to keep her out of his mind when she was out of his sight.

She gave him a few hours of relative peace, with nothing but the television to disturb the quiet, before she came in and sat uncomfortably on the edge of the couch. He pretended to not notice her for as long as he could, but clearly there was something she wanted to say, and just as clearly she didn’t intend to say it until he gave her his attention. He waited until the next commercial break, muted the TV and looked at her.

“What are the plans for today?”

His plans were to be rid of her by sundown. Other than that, he neither knew nor cared, and he shrugged to convey exactly that. “Either Jace will pick you up or you’ll go to the jail over in Buffalo Plains.”

“I understand that. But when?”

He shrugged again.

“Is there any reason I can’t go now?”

“Beyond the fact that Jace isn’t here?”

“You could take me to the jail.”

He could do that, Reese acknowledged—could give her over into the custody of the jailer, then go to his office on the floor above. Get some work done. Forget that she was locked up below in a six-by-eight-foot cell with a metal cot, no windows and no privacy even for the bathroom. Forget that she preferred such accommodations over his company. And while he was forgetting that, he would also wipe the last twenty-four hours from his memory. Sure, not a problem.

“Jace can pick me up there.”

But walking out of the jail with her would attract more attention than walking out of this house with her—more attention than his cousin would want. If she really was in danger, Reese wasn’t about to do anything that might increase that danger for Jace.

Her voice grew taut. “I’d rather stay in your jail than in your house.”

“I’d prefer that, too.” But the words felt like a lie. Truth was, he found the prospect of Neely behind bars—an idea he’d once taken great satisfaction in—unsettling. Behind bars in his own jail… Not yet. Not until Jace’s time ran out.

“I gave him until this evening,” he said flatly. “Like it or not, you’re stuck here until then.”

For a long moment his gaze locked with hers, until he finally forced his back to the television. He turned the audio on again and watched from the corner of his eye as she stood and walked out of the room.

He was in the process of giving a small sigh of relief when the back door slammed. Jumping to his feet, he made it to the door in record time, crossed the deck in a half dozen strides, took the steps in one leap and grabbed her arm before she’d made it halfway across the yard. He was prepared for her instinctive jerk, holding tightly enough that she accomplished nothing more than pulling herself off balance. Before she could try again, he pulled her back toward the house.

At the steps, she grabbed hold of the railing and planted her feet. “I’m not your prisoner!”

“You’re in my custody. What do you think that means?”

“I don’t want to stay here!”

“Tough. Now I’d advise you to let go of the rail or risk taking a fistful of splinters with you.”

At first she held on tighter, looking as if she’d like to sink her manicured nails into his hide, but after a moment she grudgingly released the rail and, making an effort at regaining some dignity, sedately climbed the steps. At the top, though, she dug in her heels again. “Let go of me.”

“Once you’re locked up inside.”

Her eyes were dark with impotent anger and her lip was showing the slightest tremble as they stared at each other. There was no doubt he would get his way—he was bigger, stronger, and way too accustomed to being obeyed. The only question was whether she would enter the house under her own power or over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

There was no telling what the outcome would have been if they hadn’t been interrupted by the surge of a powerful engine accelerating down the driveway. As if she weighed less than nothing, he dragged her across the deck and over the threshold, then gave her a shove toward the guest room. “Get in the bedroom, close the door and stay quiet,” he ordered as he closed and locked the door.

There was a time to be obstructive and a time to obey without argument. As Neely watched Reese remove his pistol from the holster tucked at the small of his back, she had no doubt about which time this was. She beat a quick retreat into the guest room, nearly tripping over her suitcase. After locking the door, she leaned against it and gave the room a quick scan. As guest rooms went, for a man who probably shared his bed with most of his overnight guests, the room lacked nothing. As a safe place to hide from unexpected visitors, it lacked everything. There was no way she could fit in the few-inch clearance between the floor and the bed, no cover in the empty closet and, thanks to the shelves and drawers and her own long legs, no space large enough inside the oak armoire.

She was worrying for nothing, she counseled herself. The visitor was probably the mailman or a delivery man, bringing a package to leave on the porch. It might even be Jace, come to rescue her.

But what if it was cause for worry? What if somehow, some way, Eddie Forbes had tracked her down and he’d come to finish what he’d started? He was too big a coward to come alone, so his thugs would be with him. Would Reese be able to protect her?

Would he even try?

Without warning, the doorknob rattled. Neely clamped her hands over her mouth to muffle the startled gasp that slipped out and whirled away from the door, as if those few feet somehow offered more protection.

“Open the door, Neely.”

Even if she hadn’t recognized Reese’s voice, she would have known that scornful impatience anywhere. After taking a few deep breaths to ease her tremors, she twisted the lock, then hastily moved to the opposite side of the bed.

He opened the door but didn’t come farther than a step into the room. “That was one of my deputies. When the alarm’s set off, it automatically dials into the dispatcher. Since I didn’t answer the phone when the dispatcher called to clear it and Darren was in the area, he came by to check it out.” His gaze shifted from her to the neatly made bed, then to her suitcase. For some reason she couldn’t begin to guess at, he scowled. “I told him I forgot about the alarm. Thanks for making me look like an idiot.”

He never looked like an idiot, even when he was being one, so she didn’t feel too sorry for him. Back in Thomasville, they’d had some of the most ridiculous arguments, with him on the side of unreasonable, illogical, narrow-minded fools everywhere, but he’d managed to never look unreasonable, illogical or narrow-minded himself.

Though he’d eventually proven that he was all three.

Clasping her hands together tightly so they wouldn’t tremble, she tried to look braver and calmer than she felt. “I’d really like to go to the jail now.” Before he could turn her down flat again, she rushed on. “There’s no safe place to hide here. If Forbes finds out I’m here, it’s all over. I have no place to go.”

He looked at her for a long still moment, then made a decision he apparently didn’t like, followed by an impatient gesture. “Come on. I’ll show you the safe room.”