Targeted For Murder

Never mind the location was so remote mail arrived via boat service. Oh well, if it was good enough for novelist Zane Grey, who wrote in a nearby cabin, it was good enough for Cooper.

“I don’t have time,” she said.

That’s right. She was in a hurry to run away.

“Could you at least open the door?”

The door creaked open slowly. Her posture was defensive. She would to fight her way out of here if he forced her.

He threw his hands up in surrender. “Whoa. I’m not the bad guy here, remember?”

Her wary expression didn’t change, but she stood aside, albeit reluctantly, then waved him in.

Cooper shut the door behind him.

“I can’t stay here. If there’s someone coming for me, I need to disappear. You’re holding me up.”

“I thought you should know it’ll be a while before anyone shows up to check on the guy who went into the river.”

Her face scrunched up. “So you did call the sheriff.”

“I tried. But deputies run thin around here.” He wouldn’t go into population to square mileage.

“Thanks, but you’re not helping. Why did you come again? To hold me for the law?”

Cooper wanted to kick himself. “Just trying to do the right thing.”

“You mean you were trying to cover yourself.”

“And you. But hey, I don’t even know your name.”

“Megan Spears from Iowa.”

Cooper frowned. Scratched his head. Megan Spears from Iowa? Right. After refusing to tell him anything earlier, she was suddenly willing to share her full name and where she was from? Unlikely. It had to be a false identity. But it was better than just calling her “the woman” in his head. “It’s nice to meet you, Megan Spears from Iowa.”

Megan Spears from Iowa sagged, probably just realizing her faux paus.

“So you don’t want to give me your real name. It’s okay.”

What am I getting myself into? I don’t have anything left to give, especially to help a girl in this much trouble.

“I need to disappear and yesterday.” Her words were strong, but they belied her appearance—scratched, bleeding and exhausted.

She tried to push past him.

“Wait,” he said. “I can help. I teach survival training. I have a military background. Just...let me help you.”

Hadley shrank if only a millimeter. “I’m listening.”

A half grin cracked into her lips. But why was she staring? “What?”

“You have a gash on your forehead. You’re bloody and bruised and you don’t even care. I saw how you fought. I think... I think I could believe your background.”

So she had trust issues, huh? Well, with trained killers after her, he could hardly blame her. Cooper had just offered her the first real chance to believe someone in a while, it would seem.

Cooper offered his own half grin. Except his smile wiped away the moment.

Her lips flattened. “It makes no difference. I need to leave.”

“Do you know where you’re going next? Where to hide?”

“It’s none of your business.” This time Megan pushed by him and he let her.

The sun was setting and the air grew chilled. “If you need to hide, I can help you. Don’t you get it?”

She whirled on him. “Why would you help me? You don’t even know me.”

He’d been asking himself that same question, and wondering if he even still had what it took to deal with this kind of life-and-death situation, that is, after failing so miserably. “I’ve trained my whole life to help people. It’s what I do. My business is about training people to survive. So I recognize when someone is desperate and needs help. I can’t turn my back on you. I won’t.”

His reasons went deeper, much deeper, he suddenly realized. He hadn’t seen how desperate his brother was until it was too late and he’d taken that suicide plunge. That had shaken Cooper’s confidence to the core. Even his father had blamed him. Hadley was desperate for far different reasons—he could see that and had no excuse this time. Without Cooper’s help she would die.

Now, how did he convince her to let him help?

“The kind of survival assistance I need goes far beyond what you train people for.”

“How do you know?”

She cocked a brow.

“And you’re up to the task?” he asked.

She turned her back on him and started for the old Jeep Wrangler soft top.

Cooper followed. He’d been on foot all day and had found his way here, trailing her from a distance.

How did he convince her? “How about just for the night? Just so you have time to think and rest. You can stay at the apartment above the storefront for Wilderness, Inc., in Gideon.”

“Whose apartment is it?”

He’d be embarrassed to admit it was his, once she saw it, but she’d figure it out soon enough. He’d have to be up-front with her from the start. One small white lie and she would run. “Mine. I’ll sleep in the office downstairs until you figure out your next step.”

“How do I know you’re not trying to keep me here until the sheriff comes?”

Another good question. That hadn’t been his intention.

“You want to know if the man is dead, don’t you? Getting the sheriff involved will mean people searching for a body down the river.” That was the wrong thing to say—she wanted fewer people involved, not more. “He doesn’t have to know about you. I’ll tell him I saw a woman getting attacked, I fought with a man and the woman disappeared. That’s all.”

“So you want to do the right thing and call the sheriff but you’re not going to tell him the whole truth?”