Dakota Marshal. Jenna Ryan
of her blackberry pies, and she’ll let you use her private john.”
Alessandra thanked him, bought two pies and was immediately ushered into Ellie’s paying-customers-only washroom.
It smelled like pine cleaner and the toilet did flush—if she pulled really hard on the chain. The cold-water tap almost worked, as well. The mirror didn’t. A haze over the glass gave her face a tintype-photo look that would have made her laugh if she hadn’t glimpsed the remnants of an old bus through the window behind her. The thing had fallen on its side like a drunk elephant with its fire-blackened underside fully exposed.
For a motionless moment, Alessandra’s throat muscles seized, so badly that she couldn’t swallow. Voices swarmed in her head.
An elderly man: “I’m off to Chicago to visit my brother….”
A geek: “I’ll have this textbook read by the time we hit the city limits….”
A wispy woman from Arizona: “Excuse me, do you suffer from motion sickness…?”
A young marine: “I’m getting married in three months….”
Words and faces overlapped. She felt the floor moving, the bus skidding, rolling. She heard glass shatter, metal shriek, murmurs turn to screams.
With a huge effort, Alessandra tore her eyes from the mirror. But not until she saw another face that drifted in. McBride.
Sexy, smoke-gray eyes stared at her. “Don’t worry, I’m a cop. Give me your hand. I’ll get you out of here….”
“You all right, dear?” A rusty female voice shattered the spell.
Alessandra jolted back to the present. She breathed out, dried her hands and checked her reflection one last time. “I’m fine, thank you.”
When she opened the door, Ellie offered a toothy, yellow smile. “I thought maybe you’d passed out from the heat. We don’t get many customers here, us being so remote and all. When we do, I like to give them a special parting gift.”
Letting her smile grow bigger, she produced a knife from the pocket of her apron.
Chapter Five
The knife was the second thing McBride saw when he turned the corner inside the shack. The first was the startled expression on Alessandra’s face. He would have knocked the woman called Ellie through the paper-thin wall if Alessandra hadn’t glanced up and given her head a shake.
“It’s to cut the pies,” she told him quickly, and recaptured the woman’s attention with a smile. “Thank you, for the pies and the gift.”
Fifteen minutes later, and on the road yet again, McBride asked her, “You weren’t sure about that knife at first, were you?”
She examined the serrated blade. “No, and I put the blame for my mistrust squarely on your shoulders. I used to think people were basically nice and well meaning. Lately, I see everyone as a potential front for a hit man.” A sparkle in her eyes softened her words. “You are such a badass, McBride.”
“Had a chat with Eddie while he was holding you, huh?”
“Yes, and I relayed our entire conversation to you while you were bleeding all over that old logging camp. How’s your shoulder?”
“Poultice is helping.”
After she tucked the knife away, he felt her eyes slide in his direction. “Your way’s not working, is it?”
Damn. She knew him too well. Now it was time to either jump out of the truck or irritate her into silence by pretending not to know what she meant. He did neither.
“The dangerous cases just come to me, Alessandra. I don’t go looking for them.”
“Yes, you do. The more the danger, the more you like it. Because even though you balk at a by-the-book approach, you always get the job done. You were never meant to be married, or anything more than superficially involved with a woman. We made a mistake, an incredibly hot one for a while, but our marriage was wrong from the start. Death is your shadow, McBride. Except that one day the roles will be reversed. Death will be real, and you’ll be the shadow. I need you to sign the divorce papers.”
His stomach clenched, but beyond that, he didn’t react. Didn’t want to think about Alessandra as part of his past. He knew it was unfair to her, and really, if he’d been asked, he wouldn’t have been able to explain to anyone, least of all himself, why he rejected the thought of divorce so completely.
“McBride, look out!”
When she made a grab for the wheel, he swore. Directly in front of them, in the middle of the road, stood a white-tailed doe and two half-grown fawns. He swerved, hit the brakes and felt the truck begin to slide.
The back end struck something—not one of the deer, he hoped—fishtailed and slammed into a large spruce. Which was the only thing that kept them from falling into the creek bed some thirty feet below.
Several seconds passed before Alessandra released a slow breath. “If it’s any consolation, we missed the deer. Did we damage anything?”
“Only the outer edges of my pride.”
Her eyes danced a little. “So nothing important, then.”
“I’ll let you know in a minute.”
It didn’t take half that time to determine that the rear axle was bent. Not undrivable, but the work needed would cost more than just money.
With Alessandra’s help, McBride changed the flattened left tire and limped the truck the rest of the way to Ben’s Creek.
One of the things he’d always appreciated—and, yes, loved—about Alessandra was that she never bitched or berated. She did what she could, what she had to and left the rest to him.
The unpaved road widened, the terrain began to open up and the woods thinned as they approached the valley town of Ben’s Creek. Small houses dotted the landscape. He saw a kid with an iPod, train tracks bordered by weeds half as high as his truck and a small filling station with three men sitting in chairs beneath the overhang.
Alessandra regarded the unmoving trio. “Doesn’t look terribly promising, does it?”
“It’d look a lot better if they saw you.”
Unfastening her seat belt, she stretched her back muscles. “I figure it’ll take the better part of a day to repair that axle, McBride. Given the fact that it’s after eight now, getting dark and I have no intention of sleeping in your truck again, someone in this town is going to see me. Might as well be these guys.”
She had the door open before he could get his teeth unclenched. How the hell had she gotten more bewitching since their separation? More to the point, how was he supposed to fight the hunger gnawing in his belly and his groin?
Stuffing his gun in his waistband, McBride reached for his jacket, forced a lid down on the heat and followed her into the thankfully cool night air.
Every head on the porch went up at Alessandra’s approach. “Hello.” McBride heard the smile in her voice and allowed himself a vague one of his own. Just keep breathing, boys. The blood will start moving again in a minute.
The youngest of the men, seventy-five if he was a day, stood. “Hello back at you, ma’am. I’m Larry Dent. These are my brothers. Folks hereabouts call ’em Curly and Moe.”
“What did your parents call them?”
“Among other things, Curly and Moe. Our ma died watching the Stooges on TV.” His grin gave way to a shrewd once-over for McBride. “You together?”
Since he didn’t mean that in the traveling sense, McBride draped an arm across Alessandra’s shoulders. “Married six years. Is there a mechanic in town?”
“Repair shop’s mine,” the oldest