The Lawman's Last Stand

“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.