Читать книгу The Lawman's Last Stand - Vickie Taylor - Страница 8

After a chilly morning at his cabin—one due more to the frosty demeanor of his houseguest than the unusually cool spring weather—Shane dropped Gigi off at John Lane’s scrap yard. She’d called John not thirty seconds after sunrise, the moment the ice on the roads began to melt, and talked the tow truck driver into going after her truck. Then she’d banged around the kitchen under the pretense of making coffee until Shane couldn’t stand the noise and got up to see what the racket was about. She’d seemed so desperate to leave that Shane had joked that if she was in such a hurry, she needn’t have bothered to wait for him to take her to town. She could have just stolen his truck and driven herself.

Gigi hadn’t laughed.

Shaking his head, he pushed his way through the door to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office with one hand, carrying a cup of coffee from the diner in the other.

Bailey Henrickson, the young state trooper sent to keep an eye on things until a new sheriff was appointed, greeted him. “Hey, Agent Hightower.”

“Hey yourself.”

He hurried past Bailey, hiding his grin. Shane couldn’t help it. He liked Bailey. The kid seemed to be a fair enough lawman, but his ears were just too damned big for his head. Especially when he put on his smoky hat and it pushed them out to the side.

Keeping his head lowered, Shane sat at the desk in the corner. The one with the computer. He felt Bailey watching him, but he didn’t look up.

“Something I can help you with?” Bailey finally asked.

“Nope.”

A minute, maybe two passed while the PC booted up.

“Something you need?” Bailey said.

“Just a little information.”

He heard the kid shuffle some papers. “You know, you aren’t officially supposed to be using that equipment anymore. You’re supposed to be headed back to Phoenix and the almighty DEA today.” He grinned. “You can leave the sheriff’s badge and the keys to the Blazer with me.”

Shane smiled into his coffee cup. “You kicking me out, Trooper?”

The paper shuffling stopped. “Well, no sir. But…”

“Good. Because I’ll be done before you could call for backup.”

“Ha!” Bailey barked. “State Trooper needing backup to handle one sissy DEA agent. That’ll be the day.”

Shane grinned wider, tapping out a few commands on the keyboard.

A chair scraped back and Bailey’s footsteps echoed across the wood floor. Shane looked up, and raised his hand to his mouth, coughing to cover his laugh. The kid had put on his hat.

“If you’re going to be here a few minutes, would you mind catching the phone if it rings?” Bailey asked. “Think I could use a cup of that slimy diner coffee myself.”

“Sure. You go ahead. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

The deputy left. All the better. Shane could do what he needed with Bailey here, but it was best if he wasn’t. Accessing people’s private information for personal reasons wasn’t strictly legal, but Shane had questions that needed answering.

He didn’t know why Gigi’s reaction last night bothered him so much. He’d been rejected before. It wasn’t like he was any great prize. He was leaving town today, anyway. Even if he weren’t, it wasn’t like they had any future. It wasn’t like he was dreaming of blond-haired babies with wild blue eyes. Shane wasn’t family material. Never had been, he guessed.

But Gigi had responded to him—hell she’d electrified and incited him—at least at first. Until she’d remembered what she was doing. Or who she was doing. A cop.

He’d lain in bed after he’d left her, thinking about her. His nose had wrinkled, catching a scent eight years in the DEA had taught him never to ignore. He smelled trouble—a wispy tendril, like the first curl of smoke from kindling—but trouble nonetheless. He just wasn’t sure what kind.

From here, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, he had access to every database available to law enforcement, as well as a few that weren’t supposed to be available to anyone, law enforcement or not, courtesy of many hours in the computer lab at Arizona State. He’d worked the night shift to put himself through school, and in those long stretches before dawn, he’d learned a great deal about computer systems that wasn’t in the textbooks. In half an hour, maybe less, he’d know everything there was to know about Gigi McCowan. Then he could head back to Phoenix.

His fingers laced together, he cracked his knuckles and set to work. Sixty-five minutes later he sighed, rolled his head around his shoulders and admitted he’d been wrong.

Hunched over the flickering screen, he pinched the bridge of his nose, then scanned the text again to be sure he’d read it right. “Well I’ll be damned.” He definitely wouldn’t be going back to Phoenix today.

He didn’t know who the woman who’d spent last night in his cabin was, but he did know one thing—

She wasn’t Gigi McCowan.

Gigi took one last look around as she waited for John Lane to dig out his paperwork. Her pickup truck was still strapped to his wrecker in the drive.

She spun slowly, her gaze skimming over the junkyard to the mountains beyond, trying to memorize everything from the piney smell of the mountain air to the calls of birds in the treetops. She had to memorize it, because soon memories would be all she had left of Utah.

She took a deep breath and turned, hearing Mr. Lane walk up behind her.

“You’re sure you want to do this? Trade your pickup for my old Jeep?” John Lane asked. “Damage on your truck doesn’t look too bad. I can have her good as new in a day or two, and it’s bound to be worth twice what my heap is worth.”

She put on a false smile. She loved her old pickup. It was worn in all the right places. But she couldn’t afford to wait a day, much less two, for him to fix it. “I’ve been thinking I need something that eats a little less gas,” she said. “And after that ice storm last night, four-wheel drive sounds pretty good, too.”

“All right then.” He handed her the keys and title.

“You’ll be sure to take the rest of the veterinary supplies out of the back and give them to Mariah Morgan out at the Double M?” She’d already taken the few supplies she might find useful and boxed them up in the back of the Jeep. The remaining supplies weren’t much to offer Mariah in the way of goodbye, but they were all she had to give. Besides, it would be a shame to let them go to waste.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nodding, she turned to survey her new vehicle.

Once, the Jeep had probably been fire-engine red. Now it had faded to the color of weak tomato soup. But the motor sounded fine and it had a full tank of gas. It would do.

The road blurred in front of her as she headed south, out of town. She tried not to think about never coming back here. She’d always known she would have to leave one day. She just hadn’t thought it would be in a run-down Jeep with nothing except her survival bag and the clothes—dirty clothes at that—on her back.

She wished she could have risked stopping by the house, just for a minute. Besides her clothes, she’d like to have picked up the few prizes she’d gathered on her frequent mountain hikes—a pine cone as big as her forearm, a smooth, round stone with grain in it in the shape of a peace sign, and a walking stick. Not much to show for twenty-eight years of living, but it was all she had.

Used to have. Even those few treasures were gone now. It was time to move on to a new life.

Except she liked this life.

Her eyes stinging, she pulled into a small rest stop fifteen miles outside of town. In the women’s room, she pinned her hair back and slipped on the wig from her emergency bag. Dark contacts came next, coloring her eyes from blue to brown. She studied her new image in the cracked mirror over the sink. Not bad for two minutes’ work. She didn’t look anything like herself.

That random thought almost brought her tears back. She couldn’t help but feel she’d finally given up the last vestiges of her true self. There was nothing left of the person she used to be. But that couldn’t be helped.

A new life was better than no life at all. Better than death.

Squaring her shoulders, she slung her pack over her back and stepped out of the washroom.

And stumbled into a broad male chest.

Shane.

He steadied her elbow, setting her back on her feet. Her hand brushed the fine, crisp hair of his forearm as she pulled away. The sensation shot up her arm like a jolt of static electricity.

His head tipped a fraction, and she felt his gaze peruse her slowly, even if she couldn’t see it behind his reflective sunglasses. She burned under his scrutiny, from the tips of her ears to the ends of her curling toes.

Shane.

He straightened, his jaw set perfectly square, and stood with his hands behind his back, his feet shoulder width. He looked very tall. Very disciplined.

Very cop.

“This is a new look for you, Doc,” he said, reaching out to finger her shoulder-length fake hair. He let the wig go and folded his sunglasses into his shirt pocket.

Being able to see his eyes heightened the effect of his gaze. She felt her face heat.

“A girl gets tired of same ole–same ole.” The quaver in her voice didn’t sound too convincing, even to her. She swallowed hard. “Did you need—I mean, is there something I can do for you?”

“You didn’t mention that you were leaving town today.”

“No, well, yes…it was sudden. My aunt is…sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” She jangled her keys in her hand. “I hate to run like this, but I really should get going.”

Shane moved himself between her and the Jeep. “You know, all this time I thought you were avoiding me because you just didn’t like me.”

Her heart leaped. “Of course not. I mean, I haven’t been avoiding you. And I—” Her mouth suddenly felt like she’d been lost in a desert for days. “I like you.”

“Yeah, I figured that out last night when I kissed you. That’s what finally tipped me off.”

“Tipped you off to what?”

“That it’s not me you’re afraid of.” He thumbed his badge off his chest. “It’s this.”

“No, it’s just—”

“I know,” he said, the challenge in his words clear despite the dead calm in his voice.

Her heart bucked. “Know what?”

“That Gigi McCowan, D.V.M., is sixty-two years old and lives on the thirteenth hole of a nice retirement community in Ocala.”

She’d thought her plan was perfect. The forger from whom she’d purchased her false identification in New York was reputed to be the best. The real Gigi McCowan, her mentor in vet school, had even gone along with the scam, providing authentic diplomas and transcripts so that she could apply for and receive a real veterinary license from the state of Utah. She didn’t see how anyone could have figured out she wasn’t the real thing.

But then Shane Hightower wasn’t anyone.

Knowing it was the wrong body language to send, but unable to stop herself, she crossed her arms over her chest. “There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake. You lied to me. You’ve been lying to everyone. The town, your customers, your friends.”

Her throat bobbed, grasping for words and finding none. She clenched her upper arms to stop her fingers from trembling. The lies that should come easily weren’t there anymore. In their place, she found only deep, cutting remorse.

Shame.

The tremor in her hand became a full-fledged quake. Her keys fell and clanked on the gravel. She bent to retrieve them.

Without warning the Jeep’s driver’s side window exploded over her head. Before she knew what had happened, Shane tackled her and rolled along the ground, cradling her against him as tires squalled.

Over Shane’s shoulder she glimpsed an arm holding a pistol out the window of a midnight-blue Mercedes—the same Mercedes that had run her off the road the night before.

How had he found her? Had he been following her all morning, waiting for his chance to attack, or had Shane brought him?

Fire flashed from the gun’s muzzle. He was shooting at them! But there hadn’t been any noise. No shots.

She didn’t have time to decipher the meaning of that, as Shane tucked her head against his shoulder and rolled again, this time propelling her behind the bumper of the Jeep. With the vehicle as cover, he raised up and pulled a weapon from under his jacket in one fluid movement. Gigi sat up beside him, and he pushed on the top of her head with his free hand. “Get down.”

She took his advice as another volley of bullets skittered across the hood of the Jeep. Still no gunshots. They must be using a silencer. But then, they were pros, she knew that.

Shane returned fire. He certainly wasn’t using a silencer. The explosions from the muzzle of his gun pounded her eardrums. The Mercedes sped past the rest stop, and Shane grabbed her hand and pulled her into the Jeep, snagging the keys off the ground as he went.

He shoved her into the driver’s seat, handing her the keys, and then climbed in the back. “Drive,” he shouted as the Mercedes did a one-eighty a few yards down the road.

“Me?” She yelled, stabbing the keys into the ignition. “Why me?” He was the DEA agent; she was just a civilian. She wasn’t trained for this sort of thing.

“Because I’m going to be busy shooting.” To prove his point, he leveled his weapon and squeezed off two rounds at the approaching Mercedes. A slug from the sedan clinked off the roll bar, convincing her that starting the Jeep’s engine was more critical than arguing at this point.

The Jeep roared to life and she slammed it into reverse so hard that the lurch almost sent Shane flying into the front seat. He grabbed the roll bar for support. “Go! Go!”

She blasted onto the roadway, turning the Jeep so that she faced the attacker head-on. She stomped on the gas, and this time Shane was nearly flung out the back of the Jeep. They flew by the Mercedes before either Shane or the other driver could regroup and get off another shot. The unwieldy luxury car squealed into another one-eighty, giving Gigi and Shane a few seconds’ lead.

“That way. That way.” Shane waved with the gun in his hand to one of the county roads that wound down the mountain.

Gigi complied, bringing the Jeep around in a screeching turn. In the rearview mirror, the sun gleamed off the polished hood of the sedan, too close behind them.

Shane clambered into the front of the Jeep then turned around, kneeling backward in the passenger seat, his gun arm braced on the seat back as he squeezed off another shot at the sedan. “Faster!” he yelled. “He’s gaining on us.”

The wind whipped through the Jeep’s open canopy. “Faster? We’re on a mountain. That’s a sheer cliff over there. If we skid over the side, we’re dead!”

“And if that guy catches up to us in the open, we’re dead! Take your choice.”

Holding her lip between her teeth, Gigi pushed the accelerator to the floor. Briefly, the Jeep pulled away from the Mercedes, but the car soon matched the Jeep’s speed, and then some.

The driver behind her was firing again, but the bullets weren’t hitting the body of the Jeep. He was probably aiming at the tires. Gigi said a silent prayer that he didn’t hit them. Not with those cliffs so close to the side of the road.

Pointing at a break in the trees, Shane said, “Turn there, up ahead. On that gravel road.”

Gigi slammed on the brakes and swung the Jeep into the narrow opening. She swung her head from side to side, not liking what she saw. Walls of trees hemmed them in, pushed them forward. They were trapped. The trees encroached so closely on the road that they had no maneuverability.

But neither did the car behind them. Even with its superior speed, the sedan couldn’t pull alongside for a clean shot.

Shane checked the progress of the car behind them. “All right, scum. You wanna play, let’s play.”

“Play?” Gigi adjusted her clammy grip on the steering wheel. “You think this is a game?”

“Just keep driving,” he ordered. “As fast as you can.”

Gigi checked the rearview. The Mercedes plowed down the trail behind them, leaving a plume of dust in its wake.

The front right tire of the Jeep dropped into a deep rut in the road and then rebounded with a vengeance, catapulting Shane out of his seat. He grabbed the roll bar with both hands.

“Faster,” he ordered.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

Gigi looked over her shoulder. The Mercedes was right behind them. The gun hung out the window.

“Duck!” Shane shouted. Several rounds dinged off metal. She couldn’t tell where. Keeping her head as low as she could and still see over the dashboard, Gigi pressed the accelerator to the floor.

“All right, get ready,” Shane called.

She glanced up warily. “Ready for what?”

He dropped into the passenger seat and climbed across the console until he was practically sitting in the driver’s seat with her. “Ready to hit the brakes and make a hard right turn.”

“Why?”

“Because the road ends right up there.”

“What!” She raised her foot to stomp on the brake, but he quickly kicked her foot away. Then he stomped on the gas.

“Move over,” he yelled.

Move? Move where? She crushed herself against the door, giving him haphazard control of the Jeep.

He pushed the accelerator to the floor once again and locked his fingers around the steering wheel. “Hold on! Five…four…”

The road ahead disappeared into nothingness. Gigi grabbed the door handle.

“Three…”

She let go of the handle and wrapped her arms around the headrest of the seat.

“Two…”

Her heart stopped, she let go of the headrest and, in a moment of sheer desperation, coiled herself around him. She buried her cheek against his chest.

“One… Now!”

Shane stood on the brake and yanked the steering wheel viciously around to the right, sending the Jeep fishtailing into a tight curve surrounded by a choking cloud of dust and gravel hail. Gigi ground her chin into him and held on.

He jerked the wheel back to the left, pulling the Jeep out of the spin within feet of the cliff and driving parallel to the precipice.

Over his shoulder, she saw that the driver of the car had finally seen the danger ahead. He was reared back from the steering wheel, elbows locked straight as if could push himself away from the cliff by physical force. The big sedan’s brakes ground and groaned with the effort, but couldn’t stop his momentum in time. Just as it slid to a halt, the nose of the Mercedes edged over the embankment. The car tottered forward, then back, coming to an unsteady rest with the front half of the car hanging precariously over the edge. A shower of pebbles clattered down the slope, then all went quiet.

Shane stopped the Jeep. Slowly Gigi uncurled her fingers from the front of his shirt and looked up at him.

He had the audacity to grin. “Antilock brakes aren’t so nifty when stopping fast is more important than stopping straight.”

“I can’t believe we just left him there. Aren’t you going to arrest him or something?”

Gigi glanced at Shane. His once golden tanned complexion had jaundiced. He hadn’t said a word in the ten minutes since he’d ordered her to drive, leaving the man who’d ambushed them dangling off the side of a cliff. For an experienced federal agent, he wasn’t taking a little thing like a shoot-out too well.

His eyes drifted shut. “You want to cross an open field in front of a man with a gun and try to take him down, you go right ahead, honey. Me, I prefer not to go out in a blaze of glory. At least not today.”

“You could have kept him pinned down or something while I went for help.”

“Yeah, I could have. Except the nearest help is in town, better than half an hour away, and I’m out of ammo.”

“Out of ammo?”

“Well, not technically out. I’ve got one round left. In case of emergency.”

“Don’t you carry extra?”

“Sure. In the glove compartment of my Blazer.”

The same Blazer that was twenty miles back in the other direction, at the rest stop, along with his police radio and his cell phone, no doubt.

Shane’s lips curled into a weak smile. “Besides, I wasn’t sure you’d come back for me.”

Gigi didn’t know what to say to that. She was desperate to get out of this town and away from Shane, but leave him one-on-one with an armed assassin… No, she wouldn’t do that. Would she?

“I would have sent someone back, at least,” she grumbled.

Shane sighed. “Well, I guess that’s something.” His eyes pulled open slowly, as if the small act required tremendous effort. “We’ll stop at the first phone we see and call the deputy, although I doubt he’ll find anything by the time he gets out to that cliff.”

Gigi’s stomach turned. The last thing she needed was more cops involved. “Then why bother?”

He scowled. “Because he’ll want to start a search for the guy before anyone else gets shot at, so why don’t you help things along by telling me who the hell that was and what he wanted.”

Gigi steered the Jeep off the county highway and braked to a stop behind a stand of birch. With shaky hands she shoved the transmission into neutral and shut off the engine.

His head rolled toward her. “What are you doing?”

“I need to stop.” Despite her best efforts at control, her voice cracked a little on the last syllable.

“We need to keep going.”

“I said I need to stop.”

He raised his eyebrows and cranked up one corner of his mouth. “You couldn’t have gone before you left the house?”

She wouldn’t dignify that with an answer. She reached up automatically to push her curly bangs out of her face until she realized she didn’t have bangs anymore. She’d almost forgotten. She lowered her hand, yanked at the door handle on the Jeep and bounced out of the vehicle.

“Where are you going?” he called out behind her.

“For a walk.”

“Lady, there’s a man out there with a gun. And you want to take a hike in the woods?”

Everything she knew about Shane Hightower told her this wasn’t going to be easy. He was smart, stubborn, and took his job very seriously. Some might say he was obsessive about it. So how was she going to talk him into walking away? Or letting her walk away?

The way she saw it, only one tactic had a chance of working. She stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “That man is exactly why I want to take a hike. A very long hike. Who knows where I might end up? California maybe. Or Seattle.”

He snarled like a rabid dog. She heard the door on the Jeep open and close, and then his footsteps pounding up behind her. “Who is he?”

She faced him. “I have no idea.”

“No idea? Really? He just showed up and shot at you for no reason. Just like you were all dolled up and sneaking out of town to see your sick aunt.”

He reached up with his left hand and pulled on the fake hair. “Your wig is crooked.”

She slapped his hand away and slid the hairpiece off. With the pins removed, her short curls sprang free. She bent over, shook her head and fingered through the tangled mass. When she looked up, his eyes had narrowed again, and faint, pinched lines had appeared at the corners of his mouth.

“That’s better,” he said, clearing his throat. “Now the contacts.”

She blinked out the tinted lenses and shoved them in her pocket, oblivious to whether or not they’d be ruined. “Happy now?”

“No.” She didn’t doubt him. He didn’t look happy. “Who was that guy?”

“I told you I don’t know.” She started walking again, and he followed, the hairpiece swinging from his fist.

“And I told you I’m not buying it,” he said. “If you don’t start talking quick, you’re getting back in that Jeep and we’re going to town. You can sit in a cell at the sheriff’s office until your tongue loosens up.”

“You can’t do that!”

He caught up to her in one long stride and swung her around to face him. He loomed over her, purposely using every bit of his six-foot-one frame to intimidate her, she was sure. She searched his blue eyes—the same ones she used to think so soft—and found them hard as glaciers. A queasiness started in her stomach and worked its way up into her throat. He wasn’t going to let her go.

She glanced at the Jeep, judging her chances of making it before he caught her. No way.

How had this happened? How had her carefully crafted plan fallen apart so quickly? He’s a cop, that’s how. And she’d let him get too close.

Numbly she backed up until her spine hit the trunk of a birch tree. Nowhere else to go, she stopped, her mouth dry and her heart and lungs fighting to keep up with her body’s demands for blood, oxygen.

He must have sensed the raw panic racing through her veins. His voice gentled to a soothing tone, similar to one she’d use with some mistreated animal brought to her clinic. “Tell me, Gigi,” he crooned. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She shook her head, her hair snagging on the tree bark behind her.

“You’re in trouble. I can help.”

“No.”

“How bad is it? It must be pretty bad for you to be this scared.” The glaciers in his eyes fractured momentarily, replaced by familiar concern. His words stretched out, low and mournful, like an old forty-five record played on thirty-three rpm. “Let me help you.”

She swallowed hard. “You can’t help me. No one can.”

“Why are you running?”

“Because someone is trying to kill me.”

“I mean why are you running from me?” His pale-blue eyes bathed her in sincerity, intensity.

She shook her head, panic and confusion clogging her throat. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she fought an almost overwhelming urge to tell this man—the last man she should tell—the truth. A truth she hadn’t spoken in three years.

He lifted the wig in front of her. “Disguises can’t protect you from men like that. But I can, if you’ll let me.”

He edged closer. The tree bit at her back.

“Let me take care of you,” he said. He reached for her, and her panic reached full bloom, bursting forth in an explosion of movement that set the world back on the right speed.

She knocked his hand away, twisting his arm behind him and using her hip to throw him to his back as she pushed past him. He cursed as he hit the ground.

She almost made it. Almost got away. But she tripped over him as she tried to run. Her foot connected with his back and his gasp, sharper than it should have been from the light kick, made her turn instinctively. Already off balance, her sudden shift in direction brought her crashing to the ground facedown. Her chin hit the ground with a thunk, and she bit her tongue. The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth.

Before she could recover, he was riding her, his hands pinning hers to the ground above her head, just enough of his body weight grinding her chest into the dirt to effectively restrain her without crushing her.

“Get off!” she screamed. “Get away from me!”

She struggled mightily, but with little effect. Not against his superior size and strength. She resorted to mindless kicking and writhing, but facedown she had no leverage, no way to strike at him. He clamped one heavy thigh over hers and locked her legs in a vice grip between his.

Gradually, she went still. Everything but her heart, that is, which continued to pound so fast that she couldn’t separate one beat from the other.

“Are you through?” He sounded as if he were talking with his teeth clamped together. Like he was in pain.

She hadn’t thought any of her blows had connected. Or that they’d had the power to hurt him if they had. But maybe she’d been wrong.

She nodded, her cheek scratching in the dirt and decaying leaves beneath her.

“Good.” He loosened his grip on her wrists and lifted a measure of his weight from her back, but didn’t let her get up, or even turn over. She gulped in mouthfuls of cool, mountain air.

“Now what are you running from?” he asked. This time no sympathy, no sincerity tinged his voice. His words were flat and devoid of any emotion at all, except maybe disillusionment, if that could be called an emotion. “What have you done?”

When she didn’t answer, something cold and metal scraped over her left wrist. Handcuffs! “What are you doing?”

“People don’t live under assumed names or refuse to talk to the law after someone shoots at them. Not unless they have something to hide.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

He paused with the second cuff pressed against her right wrist. “Then tell me what’s going on.”

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. And in his lack of understanding he would arrest her. He would take her to the pitifully defenseless sheriff’s office in town. There, he and the deputy wouldn’t have a chance against the man bent on getting to her, because getting to her meant getting through them. More good men would die because of her. Would the killing never end?

“It’s not what I did,” she explained, her voice sounding tinny. Trapped. “It’s what I saw.”

“What?”

She closed her eyes, and as always, the vivid images played out in her mind. Two men in the stable, talking in hushed tones. The squeal of car tires. Three firecracker pops. Blood and other matter sprayed on the wall across from where she stood, out of sight behind the wash rack.

The victims hadn’t even had time to cry out. They’d died quickly, their screams stillborn in their throats.

“Murder,” she whispered. “I saw a murder.”