The Lawman's Last Stand

“I—I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Can’t stop it? Or can’t trust me?” Impatience flared again. He already knew the answer. “Dammit, you know who I am. You know what I am. All I know about you is that you’ve lied to everyone in this town, and yet I still took a bullet to protect you back there. And you don’t trust me?”

“I—” She stopped before her second word. “You what?”

Raking a hand—the one he could move without feeling as if someone was taking a razor blade to his back—through his hair, he struggled to his knees. The effort required more concentration than it should have. “Never mind,” he said, hoping his voice was steadier than his hand, “Just—”

“You’re hurt?” She looked him up and down, her tears suddenly pooled in wells of deep-blue concern. “Where are you hurt?”

He locked gazes with her as she grabbed the flap of his jacket and peeled it back. Resignedly, he shrugged it off his shoulder and rotated to give her a partial view of his back.

From the way his shirt was stuck to his skin—not to mention her startled gasp—he guessed there must be a fair amount of blood.

“Ow, sh-” Shane gasped, sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep. He never finished the expletive. More because he ran out of air than because he was worried about insulting Gigi’s—or whoever-she-was’s—sensibilities.

She stopped whatever she’d been doing that set his back on fire and stepped around in front of him. A bloody gauze pad still in her hand, she peered at him like a specimen under a microscope, then without a word, cupped her hand around the back of his neck and shoved his head between his knees.

“Hey!” he called out, “What are you doing?”

“You’re white as a ghost.”

“I’m fine.” He sat up, biting back a small moan at the dizziness that assailed him.

Rolling her eyes, she shoved his head back down. “Of course you are. Now take deep, slow breaths before you pass out.”

“I’m not going to pass out.” But he wasn’t going to try sitting up again just yet, either.

Behind him, he heard her tear something. Looking back, he saw her soak a clean gauze pad in something out of a large brown bottle.

“This is going to sting a little.”

He groaned again, figuring that if what he’d felt before was any indication, it was going to do more than just sting. “Just get it over with.”

She steadied his shoulder with her hand. His muscles automatically bunched under her touch, anticipating what was to come.

“Try to relax. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

He tried, but his nervous system had other ideas. She was still holding that soaked gauze.

“You know,” she said, “you weren’t such a wimp last time you got shot, and that wound was a lot worse than this.”

He clamped down on his tongue with his teeth as the gauze pad hit his ravaged back. He knew she was trying to distract him with her teasing. It wasn’t working, but he’d be damned if he’d let her know how much what she was doing hurt.

She drew the gauze across the furrow a bullet had gouged across the middle of his back—far enough to the side to be well clear of his spine, thank God. His lungs burned with the need to draw a breath. He tried visualizing the skim of her fingertips—without the bloody gauze—across his bare skin, but that only succeeded in making other parts of him burn as well. He needed air; he couldn’t seem to fill his chest. The heat got hotter. A sweat broke out on his forehead.

Thankfully, the cleaning and prodding ended.

“You okay?” she asked when the agony stopped.

“You tell me,” he said, lifting his head cautiously.

“You’ll live. The wound is fairly deep, but the bullet just grazed you. It may have nicked a rib, but nothing’s broken, and the bleeding is stopped and it’s clean.” She snapped off her latex gloves as he sat up gingerly. “You’re lucky I’m a doctor.”

“You’re a vet.” He turned around, narrowing his eyes. “You are a vet, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m a vet. What do you think I am, some kind of quack?”

He frowned as she taped a bandage to his back. She was too good to be a fake. The ranchers around here would have seen through her ruse in a week if she wasn’t the real deal.

He straightened up, studying the ruined shirt in his hands, then tucked it under the seat and slid his leather jacket on over his bare chest. It was torn too, but at least the dark leather didn’t show the blood as much, and it was too cold to go without. “Tell me about this murder you saw.” Now that the torture was over, the interrogation could continue.

“There’s not much to tell.”

He knew differently by the tensing of her shoulders, the way the chords of her neck pulled tight. “Humor me.”

She shrugged, packing away her supplies. “I saw two men. Then I heard a car, and there were shots. Then it was over.”

He clenched his fists, knowing there was a lot more to it than that. She had closed her eyes when she stopped talking. Deep lines carved themselves in a frown at the corners of her mouth. It was the same look she’d worn when she’d first told him she’d witnessed a murder. Like she was remembering.

Which she probably was, he realized. He’d seen enough violence to know the images stayed with you, like bad movies on videotape, playing over and over in your mind.

“Who was killed?”

Her eyes opened. “It’s best if you don’t know any more.”

“Best for who?”

“You don’t understand.”

He hopped out of the Jeep and stood next to her as she fidgeted with paraphernalia in her first aid kit. “No, I don’t. You walked away from a murder investigation. Left a killer on the street.”

She was ignoring him. He grabbed her wrist. “How many more people do you think he’s killed since you let him go?”

She wheeled angrily. “I did not let him go. I gave up my work and my home—life as I knew it—to do my part for law and order, to be a good citizen. And this is what I get in return. A life on the run.”

He felt like he’d just been whipsawed. “You were a protected witness?”

“If you can call what they did protection. I barely survived it.”

“Someone got to you?”

She nodded, torture swimming in her expression. “With a little help.”

“Help from who?” She didn’t answer, but her silence was telling. As telling as her lack of trust in cops. “Someone on the inside. A cop?”

She shook her head, her lips clamped tight. He didn’t think he’d get any more out of her, but she raised her head, her lips thin and tight. “I wasn’t even in protective custody two days. He got to me that quick.”

“And you’ve been running ever since.” He loosened his grip on her wrist and ran his hand up her arm in a long stroke. “You can’t let whoever did that get away with it,” he told her.