Lone Rider Bodyguard. Harper Allen
hurt him, please.” Her tongue felt as if it had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. The keys jingled crazily in her shaking fingers. As she dropped them into his outstretched palm she tried again, her words spilling out in a moan.
“You couldn’t live with it on your conscience. Do what you want with me, but please don’t hurt my little one.”
“Ah don’t rahtly get paid to have no conscience.” His mockery of her speech was accompanied by a thin smile. He reverted to his own toneless voice. “God, it’s been a long time since I heard cornpone as thick as that. Get out of the car, Ellie May, and don’t even think about reaching for that gun by your feet.”
Even as he spoke, the sound of a shot and then of returning fire came from the direction of the portale. Two more shots split the night, and on the heels of the second one Susannah heard a sound she’d never heard before.
A man was screaming. Tye’s rifle had found a target. As the scream broke off abruptly and she half fell, half stumbled from the vehicle, the man beside her stiffened. Then he shrugged.
“Lucky for me I won the toss and came after you. Whoever your friend is, he’s done this before, but I’m a professional, too. Kneel down on the floor and it’ll all be over in a minute.”
“Why?” Instead of complying, Susannah stood her ground, her desperate gaze holding his. “Why have you people been hunting me? Why do you want to kill me?”
“I’ll give you the same answer I gave your husband. Payback. Which reminds me—I guess I’d better take something in the way of confirmation.” Roughly pulling her purse from her, he set it on the hood of the vehicle and carelessly tipped it upside down. Her wallet spilled out first. “So that’s why it was so hard getting a line on you. No credit cards. No ATM card. Not as dumb as we figured, are you?” Unzipping an inner pocket, he drew out a folded paper.
“My wedding certificate,” she said, the fear in her voice overlaid with a thread of trembling anger. “One day Daniel’s going to ask, and I want to be able to show him his daddy and me were married when we made him.”
“Since the brat’s never going to get old enough to worry about it now, I’ll just take this for—”
“No!”
Even as she lunged at him he brought his hand up and shoved her back, with no more emotion than if he was swatting a fly. His features tightening impatiently, he turned to the passenger side of the four-by-four, but by then Susannah had regained her balance, and before he’d taken more than a step she launched herself at his back and was on him.
“Not my baby! You don’t even touch him!” The terrified order came out in a thick, clogged voice she didn’t recognize as hers. Her grasping fingers went instinctively for his face. “You don’t touch my baby!”
“What the—”
His words were a disbelieving snarl. Turning so swiftly that one of her hands almost lost its grip, he made an inarticulate sound of rage when he found she was still clinging to his back. He stumbled against the garage wall and Susannah felt the skin being abraded from her arm as it scraped along the rough concrete.
“Damn you, bitch, let go of me!” His hands, one of them still holding the gun, wrenched at her wrists and managed to break her hold. She fell from him, striking her head against the wall as she did and landing jarringly on the floor at his feet.
“Goddammit, you could have blinded me!” He thrust his scratched face into hers, his features twisted in rage. “Did you think you could stop me from sending the brat along with you—”
“Over here!”
The shout came from just past the opened garage door. As the sandy-haired man’s head jerked up and he instinctively swung his gun around, the very air seemed to tear apart with the force of a double explosion. Susannah saw his head snap back, saw the just-fired gun drop from his hand, saw him fall to the floor beside her. She caught one horrific glimpse of his blood-soaked chest and scrambled to her feet, instant nausea rising at the back of her throat.
She made it to the front bumper of the vehicle before she threw up.
“For God’s sake, did he hurt you, Suze? Where’s Danny?”
Even before the hoarsely urgent questions had left Tyler’s lips he was beside her, an arm around her hunched shoulders, a hand holding back her hair as the thin bile spilled from her. She raised her head, wiping her mouth with the back of a trembling hand. Pulling from him, she ran to the passenger side of the vehicle.
In the past fifteen minutes her baby had been taken from his bed and hastily strapped into a car, and the world had exploded around him. But there was a contented little bubble of spit at the corner of the rosebud mouth. Danny exhaled softly in his sleep, and the bubble burst.
Susannah’s eyes flooded. She started to pull the edge of the blanket up around his shoulders, but her hand was shaking too badly to complete the small task.
“He’s grown.”
Gently moving her aside, Tye adjusted the blanket. He stood for a moment looking down at the child who’d been named for him and another strong man, and Susannah stood looking at him.
The T-shirt he was wearing was ripped at the shoulder, with a dark V-shaped patch of sweat running from the neckband to the middle of that washboard stomach. One tanned bicep sported a still-bleeding gash. Dried blood mixed with dirt smeared a hard cheekbone.
And still there was a golden glow about him.
“Babies—babies do that,” she answered unevenly. “The other shooters, Tye—they could be anywhere. We should—”
“I got one. Two, I guess,” he corrected himself, his jaw tensing as he flicked a glance over his shoulder at the body in the corner of the garage. “The one I took out first got hauled away by his buddy. The speed their car was going, with any luck they’ll break an axle before they make it to a paved road and Sheriff Bannerman and his men will find them. The man I came here with, Del Hawkins, should have made the call by now,” he added.
“And Greta? I saw her get hit, Tye,” she said, her fearful gaze on his. “We’re going to have to get her to—”
“She’s beyond any help Doc Jennings can give her,” he said, his voice harsh with emotion. “Del’s getting a medical chopper out here.”
Susannah closed her eyes, unbearable pain rushing through her. “I—I brought this to her,” she whispered. “She took me and Danny in, and the men who are after me got her instead. I should have known they’d find me here, Tye! I had no right to put her at risk like this!”
“Listen to me!” His hands were on her shoulders. He gave her a small shake, sharp enough that her eyes flew open and she raised her gaze to his in shock. His face was grim.
“If anyone’s at fault, I am. I should have pushed Bannerman harder when I realized he wasn’t convinced of my story the day I found you gone. I should have guessed someone had taken you in, instead of hitting gas stations and motels asking if anyone had seen a woman with a baby who looked like she didn’t belong with whoever was transporting her. But I didn’t. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
A muscle moved at the side of his jaw. His eyes, bluer than heaven in the tan of his face, blazed down at her.
“And I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you and Daniel unprotected,” he grated. “It won’t happen again. From now on I’m not letting the two of you out of my sight.”
He kept saving her and she kept leaving him, Susannah thought again, meeting his gaze and experiencing again that almost-painful current flowing from him to her and back again. It seemed he’d decided to change the pattern.
For a moment she couldn’t identify the feeling spreading through her. Then she recognized it for what it was. For the first time in nine months she felt completely, totally safe.
And