Friend, Lover, Protector. Sharon Mignerey
hadn’t given up, either.
The train was close. Too close.
The train whistled, long and loud and sounded to Jack like a death knell. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Come on, baby,” Dahlia muttered under her breath, leaning forward as if doing so would make the van go even faster.
The whistle blared again.
The van clattered across the tracks.
The train whizzed past, so close he could feel the compression of air between the train and the van.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
“You’re nuts! Nobody plays chicken with a train.”
She didn’t reply, which was just as well. If looks could kill, he was a goner.
Jack turned to look behind them. The car chasing them had come to a halt on the other side of the train. If luck was with them, the train would be a long one. A very long one.
It was. Each of the cars filled with coal. The train moved much slower than he had imagined.
He let out a sigh and glanced at Dahlia. He had never been with a more magnificent woman. Not just because she drew him physically but because of her courage and determination. Without exception the women he knew would have resorted to tears or hysteria by now. Thank God Dahlia wasn’t one of those.
When she flashed him another glance with her surprisingly dark eyes, he admitted to himself that he liked her even if she had scared a decade off his life. And liking her…that hadn’t been part of the deal.
Three blocks later Dahlia abruptly turned right, and a half block later brought the van to a skidding halt. “Out,” she commanded.
Jack stared numbly at her. “What?”
“You heard me. Out.”
“But, I’m—”
“I don’t want to hear any cockamamy story about bodyguards or anything else. For all I know that guy is after you. Not me. And one way to tell is get rid of you. Out.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” she said. “You’re a crazy person.”
“I’m crazy?” he shouted. “You’re certifiable. You could have gotten us killed.”
“Like we wouldn’t have been if we’d been stuck on the same side of the tracks as that guy. Get out. Right now.” She held up her HAM radio. “Or I’m calling the cops.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.” He opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. “Call the cops, Dahlia Jensen, or better yet, go see them ’cause you’re gonna need them. And do it soon.” He slammed the door, and she sped away.
Frustration and fear for her vied equally with a reluctant admiration. He could only hope that she was going to the cops as she had said. Since he’d deliberately left his pack in the van, he had the opening he needed to look her up as soon as he identified the car following them. Not that he needed an excuse. His best friend had asked him to keep the lady out of harm’s way, and he would, with or without her cooperation.
At the moment, though, he wished he was with his platoon. The intelligence that had come down over the month had them all believing that they’d be deployed for a recon mission. There he knew what to expect, and he had trained for it. Even though he was on medical leave, he was carrying a pager. If the mission went down, he would be called back to be part of the support team.
This business with Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D.—correction, blond bombshell—had him feeling as nervous as he had the first time he’d trained under live fire.
Five minutes later Dahlia pushed open the doors of the police station and marched over to the desk, where a receptionist watched her approach. She had been expecting a crusty desk sergeant like the ones usually seen on television.
“Can I help you?” the young woman asked.
“I’d like to report a crime.” That sounded pretty mundane compared to the fright that raced through her veins.
“Let me get an officer to take your report.”
She called someone named Bob on the phone, and Dahlia stood for the next two minutes drumming her fingers against the counter and refusing an offer of coffee. That was all she needed—more acid in her stomach.
A door slammed, and she watched an officer amble toward her, reminding her of Jack’s deceptively slow walk this morning. The officer, like the receptionist, looked young enough to be a student at the university.
He smiled. “Officer Bob Jones. Can I help you?”
“I was fired at this morning. With a gun,” she added, just in case he didn’t understand.
His eyebrows shot up, and Dahlia sensed she had his attention as she hadn’t before.
“Please. This way.” He led her down the hall, and two minutes later she sat at a table across from him and a concerned-looking sergeant.
Succinctly Dahlia related what had happened and did her best to answer their questions. No, she didn’t know the man shooting at her. When she was asked for a description, she drew a blank—all she remembered was the gun, which looked like any other to her. As for the car, it was beige or light brown or white. Dirty. She couldn’t answer the questions about whether it had two doors or four, its make or model or any other useful details about it, not even if it had Colorado plates.
The two policemen looked at each other and finally Jones said, “You haven’t given us much to work with here.”
Dahlia didn’t like admitting they were right. “I want protection.”
“You think this was personal, then? You have an ex giving you trouble?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know this guy.” She snapped her fingers. “A bullet hit my van. I heard it ping. So there’s gotta be a dent, right, maybe even a hole?”
The two officers followed her out to her van. After a scant minute of looking, she realized this was going to be futile. She had been caught in several hail storms, so the van was damaged from that. Plus, she usually traveled on gravel roads, and that probably accounted for some of the other damage. Identifying a single small dent made by a bullet from all the others wasn’t going to work. No hole, which meant there wouldn’t be a bullet.
Officer Jones shrugged, then said, “What probably happened here, ma’am, is the fellow was looking for an easy victim to rob. There’s nothing to indicate that you need protection.”
Jones pulled a card from his pocket and passed it to her. “Anything else comes up…you call me.”
It was only after she began driving away that she realized she’d failed to mention Jack Trahern at all. Odd, especially as she had been thinking about him the whole time.
Jack watched Dahlia’s van speed away as he shoved his revolver into the waistband of his jeans and pulled the tail of his shirt out to cover it. Then he calmly walked back to the main thoroughfare and stepped behind an enormous cottonwood tree to wait for traffic to resume after the train went by. At the very least he’d have a license plate number.
This was far different from his normal stakeout as a sniper with the Army Rangers. The last time he had been on surveillance, he had been hidden in a tree in a South American jungle, doing his best to ignore the mosquitoes and covering his team through a sniper’s scope attached to his rifle. Hostages from the American diplomatic corps had been rescued in a mission that would be classified for some time.
The landscape in front of him today was so ordinary it was difficult to imagine that danger lurked on the other side of the long coal train, which rolled past for another six minutes.
The plates turned