One Night Standoff

“Because after you were shot, I tried to call my handler. My task-force leader,” Lenora corrected. She’d always hated the term handler. It made her feel like a circus animal that needed to be controlled. “His name is James Britt, and he didn’t return my call for two days.”

Clayton stayed quiet a moment. “That’s unusual?”

“Very, especially considering I left him a frantic message to call me immediately.” She pushed her hair from her face. “But the truth is, I was concerned about James prior to that. He’d started to question me about what I really saw the night Jill was murdered. He seemed to try to make me doubt that Riggs was the one to pull the trigger.”

“It was Riggs,” Clayton verified. “I saw him, too.”

Lenora nodded. “James knows that, but he kept pushing, as if he was looking for some kind of discrepancies in my report. I dismissed it, thinking he was just trying to prepare me for my testimony at the trial.”

“That’s possible,” Clayton admitted.

Possible, yes, but Lenora hadn’t been able to shake the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“When James finally called me back after your shooting, he asked me if I’d gone back to my old ways. If I was running laundered money again. He wanted to know if I’d done something to get you shot. I didn’t,” she quickly added.

Clayton made a sound to indicate he was giving that some thought. “A few days before I was shot, someone broke into your place and vandalized it. I’ve been looking into any connection between that and the shooting, but I can’t find it. Did you?”

She had to shake her head. “And I looked. The Eagle Pass police weren’t able to get any prints or trace from the break-ins, so there was no arrest.”

He continued to stare at her. “So your solution was to go into hiding.”

“I had the baby to think about.” And Lenora wasn’t going to apologize for that. “I didn’t want to take any more risks than I’d already taken.”

“And I wasn’t around to help you.” He blew out a long breath, stood and stared down at her. “Well, I’m around now, and I want you to go back to Maverick Springs with me, to my family’s ranch.”

Lenora got to her feet, too. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s too dangerous for me to come out of hiding and go with you. Obviously this person is after me, not you, because you’ve been out of the hospital for weeks now and no one has tried to kill you.”

“Not yet. But I think we should get to the bottom of what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Maybe Riggs hasn’t sent anyone else after me because he knows it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. After all, the last person who tried to kill me is dead. Thanks to you,” he added.

Yeah. Thanks to her.

Too little, too late.

By the time she’d put a bullet in their attacker, Clayton had already been shot.

“I shouldn’t have come there that day to tell you about the baby.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “But you’re not the only one dealing with old baggage here. It played into my decision to tell you.”

“Old baggage or not, you should have told me,” he confirmed.

“But you don’t even remember me, do you? You don’t remember sleeping with me.”

His gaze slid down her face to her body. Something different went through his eyes this time. Something she had no trouble recognizing.

Attraction.

Yes, she’d felt it, too, the first time she’d ever looked at him. And every time since.

She huffed, stood and would have gone to the window if it wouldn’t have put them so close. “It hardly seemed fair to go waltzing into your hospital room to tell you that your one-night stand had led to an unexpected pregnancy. I wanted you to focus on your recovery.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been fair, but it would have been the right thing to do for the baby.” The sunglasses went back on so he could have another look outside.

The right thing. In other words, turn over her safety—and the baby’s—to him. Under normal circumstances she might have considered it, but it was crystal clear that Clayton was in no shape to be offering her protection.

Not yet anyway.

Her best bet was to regroup, go back into hiding under a different name. And a different job. One that couldn’t be traced to anything in her past. Then, once things had settled down and his shooter was in custody, she could go to him and have him be part of their baby’s life.

It seemed like a logical plan. But one look at Clayton’s firm expression and she knew this would be a hard sell, if she could convince him at all. However, before she got a chance to sell anything, she saw Clayton shift his position. He leaned in closer to the glass.

“A dark blue SUV just parked at the end of the road,” he relayed to her as he locked the front door. “Anyone you know?”

No one that immediately came to mind. These days she had no friends and only a very few acquaintances. Lenora hurried to the window and spotted the SUV.

“The minister, maybe?” Clayton asked.

“No. He’s out of town all this week and gave me the keys to the church so I could let myself in.”

Clayton glanced at her. Again, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she figured there was displeasure lurking behind those dark shades. “Not wise. You’re out here alone all by yourself.”

That scolding put some starch in her posture. “I prefer working in solitude. Plus, I have a gun with me, and you know I can shoot.” Then there was the whole part about her not trusting anyone. She figured trust would get her killed faster than going it alone.

“Good,” Clayton mumbled, as if he hadn’t actually heard what she said. Probably because his attention was fastened to the SUV.

No one got out of the vehicle. It just sat there with the front of it aimed right at them. It seemed menacing, but Lenora tried to assure herself that it could all be nothing. She’d gone three months without any contact with someone who wanted to hurt her. Of course, that was before Clayton had found her.

Had someone else found her, too?

Someone who’d hired another triggerman to finish the job that been started at the diner in Maverick Springs? Or maybe it’d even started before that, with Jill’s murder.

Mercy, she needed answers.

“There’s a back exit.” She let him know in case they needed another way out.

“Yeah. It’s locked from the inside. We might have to use it.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew about the locked exit. Clayton had no doubt scoped out the church before he’d come inside and surprised the heck out of her. So much for all her training. She hadn’t even heard him skulking around the place.

“Neither lock will hold if someone wants to get inside,” Clayton added. “Hand me the keys.”

She riffled through her pocket and came up with them, and he jammed the key inside the internal deadbolt so the door was now double-locked. It was a good precaution to take, but the door was made of wood. Old wood at that. She doubted it would stand up to some hard kicks. There hadn’t been a lot of need for security in this little country church.

Well, not before now, anyway.

The driver’s side door of the SUV eased open, and in the same motion, Clayton drew his Glock. That put her heart right in her throat, and Lenora took out the small Smith & Wesson from the slide holster at the back waist of her jeans. It wasn’t a comfortable fit anymore with her growing belly, but she was thankful that she’d decided to wear it anyway.

Clayton’s mouth tightened. “If things go wrong here, I don’t want you using that. I want you as far away from bullets as possible.”

Lenora wanted that, too, along with wanting Clayton to be safe, but she had to be ready, too. She also had to keep hoping that this was just a false alarm, because the alternative was for her to accept that there was some kind of grand-scale conspiracy to murder her.