Читать книгу The Lawman's Last Stand - Vickie Taylor - Страница 7

Fight, or die.

The unspoken omen pierced the heavy cloak of semiconsciousness clouding her mind the way a foghorn pierced a misty sea. It surrounded her. Reverberated inside her. Rallied her senses to consciousness.

She didn’t want to die.

Forcing her sluggish eyelids to part, she found herself alone in the cold and the dark. Her first cognizance of where she was and how she’d gotten there came from the soft ping of ice crystals against glass. The windshield. The storm. The accident.

Or was it an accident?

Lying lengthwise across the seat of her old pickup, the woman the people of Pine Valley, Utah, knew as Gigi McCowan lifted her cheek from the frigid vinyl, uncurled fingers stiff from the cold, and probed her aching forehead. Wincing at the lump she found above her right temple, she pulled her hand away. Her aching head would have to wait, as would her throbbing knee. At the moment she had other priorities—like staying alive.

Outside, the wind that had howled earlier, driving a late winter storm before it, had diminished to a soft weeping. The creak of brittle branches added to its lament.

A footstep sounded somewhere above her, at the top of the ravine maybe, the light crunch of a boot on frozen ground.

Her nerves jangled, instantly clearing her pain-shrouded mind. Her senses went on full alert. Soundlessly she reached down to the floorboard and wrapped her fingers around the smooth, cold handle of the twitch. A fitting weapon for a veterinarian, she thought—an instrument designed to cause pain. The twitch was a baseball bat with a noose tied through a hole in the thick end. By pinching a horse’s muzzle through the loop and twisting the bat until the rope bit into the tender flesh, she could coerce even the most agitated animal into standing still while she treated its wounds.

Sometimes you had to hurt them a little to make them better.

Tonight her motives weren’t so humanitarian. She just wanted to hurt the man in the blue Mercedes who had run her off the road. Hurt him before he hurt her.

She tightened her grip on the twitch. Despite the cold, her palms were sweating. Her breath clouded in front of her face the way the mist had hung over the mountain peaks that morning. The sight had made her heart swell, and despite the chill in the air, she’d taken her coffee out on the porch, settled down in a weathered Adirondack chair, and just sipped, and stared.

Dawn bloomed against a backdrop of violet-and-peach-pastel mist many a morning in this part of Utah. Color Country, the locals called it. Paradise was a better word, to her mind. That was why she’d stayed so long. Too long. She’d fallen in love with the forested hillsides, the columns of rock that stood guard over the wilderness like Indian totems, the community that had taken her in as one of their own.

Now it was all gone to her, evaporated into nothingness, like the mist she’d watched that morning. Paradise lost. Even if she survived the night, she would have to leave Utah.

A twig snapped outside. A barrage of pebbles skittered down a slope.

Tears jammed up behind her eyelids. She blinked them back, fighting the need to sniff, not wanting to give herself away to the stalker nearby.

“Dammit,” a muffled voice rumbled.

Her sawmill breath and the pounding of her heart almost drowned out the word. From the sound of it, the stalker was trying to negotiate the steep wall of the ravine, and having trouble. With any luck, he’d fall and break a leg. But luck was fickle tonight. The uneven footfalls righted themselves and crunched toward the truck.

Too late, she noticed the driver’s side door was unlocked.

No time. No time.

Stretched out across the truck seat, her heels against the door handle, there was no room to swing the twitch. She would have to go for a punch. She hid the bat alongside her thigh and lay perfectly still.

The handle clicked. Hinges creaked. A gust of cold air rushed over her prone body.

And she struck.

She punched the bat out the door as hard as she could, sitting up and throwing her weight behind the blow. The rounded end of the bat hit bedrock in the midsection of a man. For a second, victory thrilled through her. Her attacker toppled backward, the breath whooshing from his lungs.

Her victory was short-lived, though. Before his backside hit the ground, he grabbed hold of the end of the bat and yanked, his weight and momentum dragging her out of the truck before her panicked fingers could release their grip.

She wound up in a heap on top of him. Instinctively she raised her fists to fight, but strong hands locked her wrists in iron grips, staving off her blows. She opened her mouth to scream—

“Gi-gi?”

The wail died in her throat.

He had spit out her name in two short gasps, like he didn’t have enough air for words with multiple syllables—which he probably didn’t, given the way she had planted the bat in his gut. Still, the voice had sounded familiar.

A new chill raised along her spine as she put a name to the voice. Shifting her gaze down, she groaned.

Familiar, silver-plated eyes shone up at her. Odd that the cloud-muted moonlight should give his eyes such a cold sheen. In the daylight, she knew, his eyes were warm and soft, and blue as cornflowers. Trust-me-baby blues, she and her girlfriends had called those kinds of eyes as teenagers, for all the innocent girls eyes like that had lured into the dark recesses under the high school bleachers. But Gigi knew better than to fall for trust-me-baby blues.

Or at least she thought she did, until she met Shane Hightower.

“Are you…all right?” His breath warmed her cheek.

No! She was definitely not all right. She was splattered across a man’s chest like spilled paint. And not just any man, but Shane Hightower—Special Agent Shane Hightower, of the DEA—a man she’d spent the better part of the last two months avoiding. Even before she had known he was DEA, she’d known enough to stay away from him. He’d been introduced to her and everyone else in town as the interim sheriff when the old geezer who used to run the county had retired suddenly. Shane’s true identity as an undercover agent, sent to Pine Valley to ferret out a narcotics ring run by a couple of local deputies, had been revealed just three weeks ago when he’d made a dramatic arrest on the mountain.

Looking down, she saw he still wore the Washington County Sheriff’s badge pinned to his leather bomber jacket—helping out until a new interim sheriff could be named, she’d heard. But sheriff or federal agent, the difference didn’t matter much to Gigi. One kind of cop was as dangerous to her as another.

Yet here she was, lying as intimately with him as two people could lie without…well…being intimate. Knee to breastbone, not a molecule of air wedged between them. Her softness molded to his hardness. Her curves pressed into his hollows. She should move, but she couldn’t. She felt frozen in place, frozen in time.

“Dr. McCowan? Are you all right?”

His words lifted her stupor. She couldn’t afford to have this man worried about her. She couldn’t afford to have him think about her at all.

She lurched away from him, disengaging tangled arms, legs, and knees, as she rose. “I’m fine,” she assured him.

He followed her up slowly, eyeing her all the while. “You’re sure?” He twisted right, then left, methodically brushing slush and wet leaves from the sleeves of his coat and the back of his khaki trousers.

“I said I’m fine.” Regretting the snap in her voice, she crossed her arms over her chest and took a deep breath. She did not need to pick a fight with a federal agent, but she was scared, tired and cold. And her head hurt.

“Good.” Very slowly, very precisely, he turned toward her. When he looked at her, his gaze pulled her pulse to her extremities. She could feel her heartbeat in the soles of her feet. The pounding made her head ache even worse.

“Then what the hell did you think you were doing coming at me like that?” he asked.

Her jaw fell slack. So much for not picking a fight. “Coming at you? What were you doing sneaking up on me?”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I thought you might be hurt. Your truck is twenty feet off the road in a ditch!”

His words hit like tom-toms inside her skull. “You could have called out. How was I supposed to know who was out there?”

“I did call out.” He swung his hand up the ravine toward the roadside. “Up there. Why didn’t you answer me?”

She reached for her throbbing forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “I might have—” all this shouting was making her woozy “—if I’d been conscious.” The drumroll in her brain built to crescendo and she swayed on her feet.

“Whoa, there.” He reached out and steadied her elbow. “I thought you said you were all right.” Just like that the ire was gone from his voice, replaced by concern.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.” She tried to step away, but his grip on her elbow tightened, preventing her escape. “That idiot could have killed you.”

A surge of fear jolted her. She jerked as if she’d touched a live wire. “How did you know?”

“I was above you on the switchback curve. I saw that car sideswipe you. Did you get a look at him? A license plate?”

Her heart fluttered, and she told herself to stay calm. He didn’t know anything; he was just curious. Cop curious, a voice in her head warned. Not good.

“No, nothing,” she told him, hoping he would drop the interrogation.

A heavy pause hung between them. Shane’s brows drew down in to a frown. “The sorry pissant didn’t even stop. Least he could have done was come back and made sure you were all right.”

A shudder that had little to do with the cold and everything to do with a sorry pissant in a midnight-blue Mercedes racked her body. If Shane hadn’t come along, the man would have come back, all right. But it wouldn’t have been to help.

Had he really left? Or had he sneaked back while she and Shane had been arguing?

She peered into the darkened woods surrounding her. Her mind twisted tree trunks into burly bodies, gnarled limbs into outreached arms, the glitter of moonlight off wet leaves to the gleam of a cold steel barrel trained on her, or Shane.

She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed.

Shane’s scowl deepened. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said.

“But my truck—”

“Is not going anywhere tonight. You can call a tow in the morning.” He smiled, even white teeth flashing in the darkness. Gigi didn’t see what he found to be so happy about. “Guess you’ll have to bunk with me for the night.”

She caught her gasp before it escaped her throat.

“Figuratively speaking, of course,” he explained. “The roads are nasty and getting worse by the minute. I only live a few minutes from here. We have a lot better chance of getting to my place safely than we do of making it all the way to your house.”

Suspicion honed by three years on the run kicked in her stomach. “You know where I live?”

Surprise registered in his eyes. “It’s a small town.”

“And you’re a cop.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“No. It’s just—”

Her mind suddenly changed tack. She knew where he lived, too. A woman like her kept tabs on men like him. And even taking into account that they had both been coming from the same place tonight—their mutual friends Eric Randall and Mariah Morgan’s engagement party—Shane shouldn’t have been here, on this road.

“What are you doing this far east?” she asked.

He paused, looking as sheepish as a teenager caught fingering a beer in his dad’s fridge. “The roads are slick and you left Mariah’s in a hurry. I wanted to be sure you got home okay.”

“You were following me?”

The guilty look on his face quickly turned to stubbornness. “And it’s a lucky thing for you that I was.” He nudged her forward. “Now let’s go.”

Her panic surged. This couldn’t happen. She couldn’t be anywhere near him, much less spend the night with him. “I—I can’t. Really.”

“Why not?”

He turned those trust-me blues on her, and for a moment she considered telling him the truth. About New York. Her father. The man in the Mercedes. But that would be foolish. Shane was a cop, the last person she should confide in.

But what choice did she have with him out there somewhere?

She glanced into the woods, and then up the ravine toward the shoulder of the road.

Shane looked at her quizzically. “What are you gonna do, walk home?”

“Maybe I should wait with my truck. You could call a wrecker.”

Shane shook his head, disbelief settling on his face, and let go of her elbow long enough to poke at the welt on her forehead. “Just how hard did you hit your head, anyway?”

She brushed his hand away.

“Forget it, Doc. I’m not leaving you out here.”

One look at the square set of his jaw and she knew resistance was futile. He wouldn’t leave her here, alone. He was a cop, and he obviously took his job very seriously.

But then, so did the man who was after her.

She held her breath and listened. Other than the slow patter of sleet on rocks, all was quiet. No one was there. No one except Shane, whom she couldn’t afford to make suspicious with unreasonable protests.

Maybe his cabin was the safest place for her to be tonight. She couldn’t go home. The man in the Mercedes undoubtedly knew where she lived by now. But he wouldn’t know about Shane.

She hoped.

Her heartbeat gradually slowed. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “Thanks for the rescue.”

He smiled again. Gigi tried not to notice the dimple that dented his right cheek as he swept his arm grandly toward the hillside. “M’lady…”

She turned toward the open door of her truck. “I need my bag.”

Shane dodged around her and leaned across the seat. “I’ll get it.” He reached to the floorboard and pulled out her tapestry handbag.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it. “But I didn’t mean this one.” She tried to keep her voice light, not to arouse suspicion. “There’s an orange backpack, behind the seat.”

He looked at her, his blue eyes brimming with curiosity.

“Sometimes I’m out all night on emergency farm calls. I keep a few…essentials…in the truck.” She forced herself to smile. The things she carried in that bag were essential all right. To survival. Which is why she called it her survival bag. But she had to think of some other excuse for Shane. “Believe me, by morning you wouldn’t want me around if I didn’t. A woman’s got to have her stuff in the morning, you know?”

He retrieved the bag. “I’d want you around in the morning,” he said, his voice grown suddenly husky. “Stuff or no stuff.”

He passed her the bag, and their hands brushed in the exchange. She retreated, and her sore knee buckled.

He caught her before she realized she was falling. Giving her a look that dared her to protest, he helped her up the slope to the road, where blue and red lights strobed over the icy pavement. He was still driving the sheriff’s Blazer. No wonder the guy in the Mercedes had left. He must have made Shane as a cop right away.

He steadied her as she stepped up into the cab and then he walked toward the front of the truck. Her fear redoubled for a moment. She half expected to see the Mercedes come gunning out of the darkness.

Relax, she told herself, studying the sparkling ice on the road. Breathe. No one was gunning anywhere tonight. Not without hockey skates. She was safe.

Shane circled the hood of the vehicle, moving with the natural grace of an athlete, despite the slippery footing. Watching him, she had the same funny feeling in her chest that she’d had the first time they’d met. An acute awareness.

Safe, huh? Safe from the man in the Mercedes, maybe.

Shane Hightower was another matter altogether.

He climbed behind the wheel. With the vehicle’s interior lights on, he switched the heat on full and turned all the vents toward her.

As he worked the knobs, a few strands of damp hair fell across his forehead. The hair on the sides and back of his head was trimmed short. But on top, where the sun had bleached dark blond to shining gold, a longer, heavier layer swept to one side. Brushed back, the cut appeared very conservative, very law enforcement. But when those locks tumbled forward, like now, they gave him a much less civilized look. Rugged. Careless. And very sexy.

She wished she could reach up and push those troublesome locks back in place. It would be easier to remember he was a cop that way.

“Buckle up,” he said.

When she didn’t move, her attention still captured by a silly lock of hair, he reached across her and pulled the shoulder harness over her chest. Her nostrils flared at the sudden scent of damp leather and understated aftershave.

He pushed the metal buckle into the fitting. “There. All set.”

She waited until he’d straightened up to breathe again.

He smiled at her. A very male, knowing smile like he knew what she’d been thinking. She would have called him arrogant, if he hadn’t been right.

Her fingers curled, tightening until her fingernails dug into her palms. As if being rescued by a cop wasn’t bad enough. Did she have to be so unbearably attracted to him, too?

“Sit still.”

“It stings.”

“It’s supposed to sting. It’s good for you.”

“What kind of logic is that?”

“The kind that keeps people from getting infections?”

“It’s not going to get infected.”

“No, it’s not, because you’re going to sit still and let me put this stuff on it.”

“I’m the doctor here.”

“You’re a veterinarian.”

“You didn’t seem so particular when you were the one bleeding to death.”

Exasperated, Shane rocked back on his heels where he squatted in front of the toilet. Gigi—Dr. McCowan, he reminded himself—sat on the porcelain lid wearing an old flannel robe he’d loaned her so she could get out of her damp clothes. She was wriggling like a trout on the line.

“I was not bleeding to death,” he said. “And neither are you.”

He had been wounded, though, thanks to a couple of local drug dealers, even if the injury wasn’t as serious as she made it sound. And Gigi McCowan, the first on the scene once all the shooting had stopped, and the only one around with any medical training, had provided first aid.

Shane had been hurt before in his eight years with the DEA, but never had he enjoyed being doctored—even if it was by a vet—as much as he had that day. She’d been his angel of mercy, sent from heaven to stanch the flow of blood with a gentle touch.

Then she’d turned her face up to him, and one look into her eyes turned his thoughts polar opposite of angels and heaven. Images more congruent with what was sure to be his ultimate fate sprang to mind. She’d made him think of fire and brimstone. A scorching desert sun and a sea of sand.

Sin and sweat and sex.

Even now, her eyes intrigued him. They were blue, like his own, but a shade wilder in color. Indigo, like a pair of jeans not quite broken in.

And mysterious. Those eyes held secrets.

She squirmed on the toilet seat and he realized he’d been staring. Pulling his gaze away, he found his attention captured by her feet instead. Her toes were wiggling, like the rest of her. Bright-pink paint adorned her toenails. He smiled to himself, finding that small vanity endearing. And suiting. Gigi was all movement and bright colors.

At least she had been until tonight. Tonight she was different. Still busy, but with a nervous, restless kind of energy.

“Why are you still in Utah?” she asked.

He glanced up. He’d been asking himself that question for days. The docs had cleared him for duty, and he sure as heck didn’t have anymore leave coming. He’d used that up months ago. “I was planning on leaving in the morning.”

At least he should have been planning on leaving. But the rent on the cabin was paid through the end of the month, and somehow he’d never gotten around to packing. The truth was he liked it here. The mountains were peaceful and frankly, small-town law enforcement was more his speed after what he’d been through the last couple of years than the fast-paced world of drug enforcement. He liked it that people here waved to him on the street and knew his name. And then there was Gigi…

Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to go back at all. But wishes weren’t horses, and sooner or later he had to leave. Most likely sooner. “I just wanted to stay for Eric and Mariah’s party.”

The party to which he would never have accepted the invitation if Mariah hadn’t let it slip that Gigi would be there. He wished the best for Eric and Mariah in their marriage and new life together, but he felt out of place at social events like that—family gatherings. Having grown up in a county youth home after being abandoned as an infant, family was a mystery to him.

Almost as much of a mystery as Gigi McCowan.

He went to the party hoping for a chance to prove that the electricity that had crackled between him and Gigi on the mountain had been a fluke. Nothing more than nerves on edge.

After all, he’d just busted a drug operation and nearly gotten himself killed. He’d been hurt, and high on adrenaline. He’d told himself it wouldn’t be like that when they met again.

But it had been. He’d clinked his wineglass against hers in a toast to Eric and Mariah, they’d locked eyes, and the energy had coursed between them. It had built more slowly—less like a lightning strike and more like a bank of circuits, their breakers thrown on one at a time—but it hadn’t stopped until the power to light a city flowed freely between them.

She had to be the source of the energy. Lord knows, his soul was dead as an old battery.

She recharged him.

Then Eric had called her over, given her something, and she’d left, in a hurry. Left Shane standing there with the burgundy he’d been drinking burning a path to his gullet and all his lusty imaginings about taking her out of there himself, taking her home, ending on a cold gust of wind and a slamming door.

And he didn’t know why.

Unsettled, he dabbed at her forehead with the cotton ball.

“Ow.” She swiped her hand out. “Give me that.”

“Fine. You finish your forehead,” he said, handing her the antiseptic and cotton ball. “I want to see that knee.”

Rebellion charged through her eyes before resignation set in. Slowly she slipped one leg out of the slit in the front of the robe. His irritation dissolved in a wave of masculine appreciation. He cupped one hand behind her calf and slid the other down to her ankle for support. Her leg was slender, firm and smooth to the touch. Very attractive.

He flexed her knee gently, carefully supporting her lower leg. “That hurt?”

She shook her head.

Even more carefully, he leveraged her lower leg sideways. Her stifled gasp stopped him.

“I’m sure it’s just bruised,” she said tightly.

“Uh-huh.” It was more than that, and he knew it. He suspected she’d wrenched it pretty good, but he didn’t press the issue. At least it didn’t seem to be swelling. He set her heel on the floor and rested his palm on her good knee.

She lowered her head. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“I’m sure it will be, too. If you stay off it tonight.”

Before she could protest, he scooped her off of the toilet seat and into his arms. She planted her palms against his chest and pushed. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you stay off that leg.”

He paused in the hallway. A turn to the left, and he could settle her in his big bed, instead of the sleeper sofa he’d made up while she changed. But she was bound to argue. And having her in his bed for the night while he tossed and turned on the sleeper might be more temptation than he was ready for.

He turned to the right, toward the great room. Hell, it was the nineties. She could sleep on the couch.

When he deposited her carefully on the cushions, he didn’t have to turn to know what had gathered her attention over his shoulder. The entire east wall of the great room was glass.

He straightened, following her gaze to the midnight void. “The view is a lot nicer during the day,” he explained self-consciously. Not everyone appreciated sitting on the edge of the world the way he did, especially at night.

She looked down into the dark valley below. “It’s beautiful, even in the dark. It’s like the whole world doesn’t exist. Never existed,” she whispered. “But it’s so…lonely.”

“Yeah, well. I guess growing up in a home with thirty other kids taught me to appreciate solitude.”

She smiled wanly, pale in the near darkness. “I know what you mean.”

“Grow up a ward of the state, too, did you?” He wouldn’t have believed her if she’d said yes. She didn’t have the look about her. She hadn’t always been alone.

“No,” she confirmed. “Boarding schools.”

“Ah, the life of the privileged.”

“Privileged, maybe. But also crowded.”

She surprised him, finding that small common ground between them despite their obviously different backgrounds.

“I like the view better at night, myself,” he admitted.

Her expression brightened as she angled her head up. “Look at all the stars.”

Yeah. Look at the stars, shining in her eyes, Shane thought. And he knew, with as much certainty as he knew his name that he’d make love to her some night, with the starlight glancing off her eyes like that.

But not tonight. Tonight he just wanted to make whatever had put the tension in her body and the raw, disturbing look on her face go away.

He cleared his throat, turning his attention to making her comfortable. He got her a blanket and pillow, then when she was settled, he rubbed his hands together. “How about a fire? It’s chilly in here.”

Soon he had a blaze building. He held his hands up to it, feeling the warmth of the flames on his palms. “How’s that?”

He sat on the edge of the couch, next to her thigh. Firelight danced across her cheeks, giving her fair skin a tone more like ruddy honey. She tossed her head and her short, blond curls gleamed, catching the flickering light.

She eased the blanket up to her chin and tucked her arms underneath. “It’s nice. Thanks.”

Her words were sincere enough, but that was no cozy tone of voice. “You’re welcome,” he said, wishing he knew what else to do for her. To help her relax.

Outside, the call of an owl mingled with the whisper of wind through the trees. Pupils dilating, her gaze flew to the window, and the sound, straining to see through the darkness.

Watching her reaction, he wondered if the edge on her nerves might be due to more than just the accident. She should have shaken off the effects of the wreck by now.

Three loud knocks sounded above them like footsteps. She jumped visibly beneath her cover.

“Easy. It’s just limbs on the roof. I’ve been meaning to cut those trees back.”

Still, worry lines creased her forehead. She breathed in shallow, silent gasps, and he felt the lack of oxygen as if it were his own. He hated the vulnerability marring her otherwise flawless features. “Do you want me to sit with you awhile?”

She jerked her head toward him. “No, that’s not necessary.”

Her wide eyes said differently. Unable to resist, he reached out and stroked a springy yellow curl back from her forehead, wishing he could brush away her fear as easily. She’d said she didn’t want him, but he couldn’t leave, not with her so out of sorts.

And himself so out of sorts, as well. Damn she was beautiful in the firelight. In any light.

Forgetting his manners, he searched the depths of her mysterious eyes. Searched beneath the surface of whatever was bothering her to see if she felt what he felt.

And he found it.

Buried deep, the answering call to his cry. A spark of attraction. He studied it with the same awe that early man must have studied fire. She turned her face up as if she might say something, and without thinking he lowered his mouth to hers.

Her lips were incredibly soft. Incredibly warm. He kept his touch light. It was meant to be a kiss of comfort. At least at first. But when her initial shock faded and she leaned into him with a soft sigh of acquiescence, comfort became need. Then need bordered on greed.

He touched his fingertips to the graceful arch of her cheek and slid his hand down, past her jaw, until his palm splayed around the fragile column of her neck. Holding her, he raised over her, slanted his head and probed at the entrance to her sweet mouth. He wanted to feel her, taste her. All of her. He’d wanted her from the moment she’d pushed her way through a dozen armed DEA agents and ordered him to sit still and shut up while she tended his wound and he hadn’t dared do anything but comply.

He surged against her, long-denied desire curling in his blood. Her lips parted, and for an instant he felt the moist slip of her tongue against his.

Then she reared back, pushing at his shoulders with fisted hands. “No!” Panic laced her eyes. She braced against the back corner of the couch and clutched the blanket to her chest with both hands.

He lurched to his feet and took two steps back. The sight of her fear soured his stomach until he had to turn and stalk away. That reaction hadn’t been caused by any accident. It was much too sudden, much too intense. Only one thing could have caused it.

Him.

Whatever had possessed him to kiss her? He’d known she didn’t want him. She’d proven it often enough since that day on the mountain. Her medical training had kicked in during the crisis, but afterward, every time he’d tried to get a word with her in town, she’d made a hasty escape.

If he turned north on a street corner, she turned south. If he walked in someplace, she walked out. Just like she’d left Mariah’s tonight almost as soon as he’d arrived.

In a moment of stark self-awareness, he realized that was why he’d followed her. He’d wanted to see her safely home, yes. But he’d also wanted to find out why she was avoiding him. Why she got such a trapped look in her eyes whenever he got close.

In the darkened doorway to the great room he stopped, his back still to her. The spit and hiss of the fire mingled with a barrage of curses heard only in his mind.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, his jaw tight.

“Of course not. You’re a cop.”

“You say it like it’s a dirty word.”

She didn’t respond for a long time. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a long day.”

An apology, or a hint for him to make himself scarce? He had no idea. Still wondering, he left the firelight behind and let the darkness of the hall devour him.

Long into the night, Gigi stared at the fire, dreading the moment the last ember would flicker out. Quietly she reached over the side of the couch and picked up her handbag, the tapestry one with horses galloping gaily across the side. From it she drew a folded square of newspaper. The golden glow of the fire shed light across the banner at the top of the page—Oil Exec Returns to Scene of Crime—For Wedding.

Eric had given her the clipping at the party just hours earlier. How quickly her life could change.

The story had run in the business section of a major Los Angeles newspaper. It described how Eric Randall—an oil executive and now Mariah’s fiancé—had helped the DEA— Shane—bring down a drug operation here. And how in the process Eric had fallen in love with Mariah and resigned from his position with the oil company to return to Utah to marry her.

But the article wasn’t what bothered Gigi. That right belonged to the accompanying picture. A photographer had caught all four of them—Eric, Mariah, Gigi and a wounded Shane unloading from the DEA helicopter that had carried them off the mountain. She’d never even seen the cameraman.

That was how they’d found her. It had to be.

Why she had to leave.

In a way, leaving Utah would be a relief. Her life here was a lie. A necessary one, but still a deception. The more she came to care about this place and its people, her friends, the harder the deception became. And the worst lie of all was the lie she had told to herself. That she was safe here. That they wouldn’t find her, this time. What a fool she’d been.

Feeling the thrum of fear strike up a new beat in her breast, she put the news article back in her handbag, set the handbag on the floor, and picked up her survival pack. She hadn’t been without the bag since she’d left New York, three years ago. The bag was her safety net.

Whether he knew it or not, tonight it was Shane’s safety net as well. If the man after her somehow did manage to find her, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill one unsuspecting DEA agent. He’d killed federal agents before.

Guilt struck a sour chord in her head. She really didn’t believe anyone would find her in the next few hours, but she still should have told him. Her silence—her very presence—put him at risk.

Glancing down the darkened hallway, she thought about telling him now. But he was probably long asleep, and she couldn’t knock on his door in the middle of the night wearing nothing but her bare feet and a soft flannel bathrobe that smelled like him. Not after that kiss.

Not after the way she’d treated him after the kiss. She had no right to ask him for anything, least of all to watch over and protect her. Besides, he was a cop. He would ask questions she couldn’t answer. So tonight, like every night, she would watch over and protect herself.

And she would protect him, too.

Digging past the assorted getaway paraphernalia in her backpack, Gigi wrapped her hand around a solid shape folded inside a cotton T-shirt.

She’d never loaded the gun before. Didn’t want to do it now. But she had no choice. By letting him bring her here, she’d taken Shane’s life in her hands. She had to be prepared to defend it.

With the pistol on her lap, she unzipped an outer pocket of the pack and pulled out the ammunition. Carefully, just like she’d been shown in New York, she inserted the shells.

By sheer will, she kept her hands from trembling. All she had to do was make it to morning, she told herself. Then she would leave Utah forever. Because she’d stayed too long. Because she’d let a cop get too close.

And because somewhere out there, a cold-blooded killer was looking for her.