The Lawman's Last Stand. Vickie Taylor
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.
She almost made it. Almost got away. But she tripped over him as she tried to run. Her foot connected with his back and his gasp, sharper than it should have been from the light kick, made her turn instinctively. Already off balance, her sudden shift in direction brought her crashing to the ground facedown. Her chin hit the ground with a thunk, and she bit her tongue. The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth.
Before she could recover, he was riding her, his hands pinning hers to the ground above her head, just enough of his body weight grinding her chest into the dirt to effectively restrain her without crushing her.
“Get off!” she screamed. “Get away from me!”
She struggled mightily, but with little effect. Not against his superior size and strength. She resorted to mindless kicking and writhing, but facedown she had no leverage, no way to strike at him. He clamped one heavy thigh over hers and locked her legs in a vice grip between his.
Gradually, she went still. Everything but her heart, that is, which continued to pound so fast that she couldn’t separate one beat from the other.
“Are you through?” He sounded as if he were talking with his teeth clamped together. Like he was in pain.
She hadn’t thought any of her blows had connected. Or that they’d had the power to hurt him if they had. But maybe she’d been wrong.
She nodded, her cheek scratching in the dirt and decaying leaves beneath her.
“Good.” He loosened his grip on her wrists and lifted a measure of his weight from her back, but didn’t let her get up, or even turn over. She gulped in mouthfuls of cool, mountain air.
“Now what are you running from?” he asked. This time no sympathy, no sincerity tinged his voice. His words were flat and devoid of any emotion at all, except maybe disillusionment, if that could be called an emotion. “What have you done?”
When she didn’t answer, something cold and metal scraped over her left wrist. Handcuffs! “What are you doing?”
“People don’t live under assumed names or refuse to talk to the law after someone shoots at them. Not unless they have something to hide.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
He paused with the second cuff pressed against her right wrist. “Then tell me what’s going on.”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. And in his lack of understanding he would arrest her. He would take her to the pitifully defenseless sheriff’s office in town. There, he and the deputy wouldn’t have a chance against the man bent on getting to her, because getting to her meant getting through them. More good men would die because of her. Would the killing never end?
“It’s not what I did,” she explained, her voice sounding tinny. Trapped. “It’s what I saw.”
“What?”
She closed her eyes, and as always, the vivid images played out in her mind. Two men in the stable, talking in hushed tones. The squeal of car tires. Three firecracker pops. Blood and other matter sprayed on the wall across from where she stood, out of sight behind the wash rack.
The victims hadn’t even had time to cry out. They’d died quickly, their screams stillborn in their throats.
“Murder,” she whispered. “I saw a murder.”
Chapter 3
Murder.