Desperado Lawman

“Maybe, but you’re standing by Joey for your own reasons, not because you think there’s any possibility he’s telling the literal truth.” He narrowed his gaze on her. “Why is it so important to you that he doesn’t go back into protective custody? Is there another threat to him you’re not telling—”

Connor broke off abruptly. From the parking lot outside had come the solid thunk of a car door closing, and even as he strode to the window he heard a second thunk. He pushed the drapes aside and saw an unmarked sedan almost identical to his own, two men standing by it in neatly unobtrusive suits and with expressions of grim alertness as federal issue as their car.

He let the curtain fall closed. “Your ride’s here,” he said shortly. “When you get to Albuquerque, take my advice and don’t count on Area Director Jansen cutting you as much slack as I have. You should have come clean with me from the start.”

“I’ve come as clean with you as I can, Agent Connor. I know you don’t accept that, but it’s true.”

Tess bit into her lower lip. She shook her head, her gaze searching his.

“The thing is, Virgil, I think you do believe in monsters,” she said slowly. “You just can’t admit it, because if you did your world wouldn’t be controllable anymore. What happened that made you build that rigid box around yourself? Did you go up against them once and lose?”

His first impression of her had been correct, Connor told himself tightly, slipping his gun into his shoulder holster. The woman was more than a little out of touch with reality.

“I don’t see operating on logic and reason as being boxed in,” he grated. “Which is why I’m not the one who’s going to have to tell a nine-year-old boy that I’m not the person I let him think I was,” he added.

He regretted his comment even before he saw the suddenly stricken look in her eyes. “Sorry, that wasn’t necessary,” he muttered. “Whatever I thought when I first saw you with Joey, you’ve convinced me that you only wanted to—”

“No, you’re right.” The husky tones came out unevenly. “I shouldn’t have acted as impulsively as I did. I should have thought things out more logically, like you say.”

She was finally beginning to see the light. Connor felt obscurely relieved. Her attitude would be a deciding factor in Jansen’s decision whether or not to—

“I should have stayed away from the highways and stayed on the back roads.” She exhaled sharply. “Dammit, I should have taken Joey up on his suggestion to show me how to hotwire a car in that diner parking lot when mine broke down. We would have been long gone by the time you got there.”

She hadn’t seen the light. She was never going to see the light. Her stubborn defiance was going to land her behind bars, he thought angrily. And it wasn’t his problem anymore.

“I would have caught up with you sooner or later.” Two sets of footsteps were approaching along the concrete walkway. He grasped the doorknob as he heard the soft squeak of a sole outside. “Be thankful this didn’t turn out any worse than—”

Whenever he thought about it afterward, for the life of him Connor couldn’t remember how the gun got into his hand. Even after racking his brains to reconstruct his actions, the nearest he would ever get to an answer was the dim recollection that his right hand had already been moving across his body as the door had opened.

They looked like agents. One of them was displaying an ID case with a photo and badge, and the other was reaching into an inner suit pocket, presumably to obtain his own identification.

“Agent Connor? I’m Agent Petrie and this is my partner, Agent Malden.” The one holding out the ID case snapped it shut and gave a thin-lipped smile. “Area Director Jansen sent us to—”

Even as the logical part of Connor’s mind was telling him the men confronting him had to be what they appeared to be and that he was about to make the worst mistake of his career, he made his move.

“Tess—get down!”

His shout cutting explosively across Petrie’s words, Connor swung the gun he was holding around in a powerful arc toward the two agents.

Chapter Five

“Don’t let Skinwalker get me, Tess!” Joey cried frantically.

Eyes still wide with shock at Connor’s shouted warning, Tess whirled around to the bed, where her nephew was sitting bolt upright, his face drained of color. His gaze was dark with terror; he was staring at nothing.

He was having a nightmare. Relief flooded through her as she rushed to his side, but on its heels came quick fear.

“It’s okay, Joey, I’m here.”

Wrapping her arms around his shaking shoulders, she saw awareness returning to his eyes, and her own bewildered gaze darted back to the doorway in time to see the revolver in Connor’s hand smash against the cheekbone of one of the agents standing in front of him. The air rushed from her lungs as completely as if she had taken the blow herself.

Virgil Connor had just attacked one of his own people. Either he’d suddenly lost his sanity, or…

…or he’s working against the Agency. The terrifying possibility seemed the only explanation for what she was witnessing, but it didn’t make sense. If Connor had no intention of allowing her and Joey to reach Albuquerque, then why had he phoned Area Director Jansen? And why had—

She froze. Caught off guard, the man Connor had struck had staggered sideways and fallen to his knees outside the door. An object spun from his grasp and clattered to the ground.

The object was a gun. And Malden had been reaching for it before Connor had reacted.

“Under the bed!” Tess tightened her grip on her nephew’s shoulders. “Get under the bed and stay there until I say it’s safe to come out, understand, Joey? If something happens to me, do what Connor says.”

Mutely he nodded. Any other nine-year-old would be firing questions at her, she thought, as he scrambled off the bed, but someone had made the monsters real for Joey.

Deep inside Tess a hot flame of rage ignited, flared dangerously high and then steadied into an icy fury. Whoever that person was, she told herself, she would make him pay for what he’d done….

If she and her newfound nephew got out of here alive.

In the few seconds it had taken to attend to Joey, the confrontation at the doorway had evolved with frightening speed. She took in the situation with a glance.

Petrie had obviously gone for his own weapon when his cohort, Malden, had fallen. It would have been simple for Connor to have thwarted the agent’s intentions by opening fire, except for the possibility that a stray bullet from any ensuing gun battle might have found an innocent victim. As he had outside the diner, Connor had chosen not to take that risk. She saw worriedly that he’d dropped the revolver he’d used to disable Malden.

The man who’d identified himself as Agent Petrie had no such scruples. Even now he was attempting to bring the automatic in his grasp into position, but Connor, his height and weight definite advantages, was gaining the upper hand. Petrie’s features contorted in agony, his right arm bent back at an angle, but still he didn’t release his grip on his weapon.

“Drop the gun, or the next thing you hear’ll be the sound of your arm breaking,” Connor ground out. “I’ve heard that sound once or twice myself, and believe me, it takes the fight right out of a man.”

The epithet Petrie grunted out in reply was made even more graphically obscene by the raw fury in his tone. Tess saw a flicker of distaste and reluctance cross Connor’s face.

“If that’s the way you want it,” he said briefly. With no discernible effort, he forced the other man’s arm back further, and from between Petrie’s thin lips came a whistling noise.

“All…all right,” he gasped. The fingers that had been clenched so tightly opened in defeat and the gun he’d been holding fell to the worn scrap of carpeting by the door. “Ease off, damn you!”

“Not until you tell me who sent you to kill Joey Begand,” Connor said. She heard an edge of cold rage in his tone. “What happened to the real backup Jansen was sending me? Did you and your partner ambush them along the way? And how did you intercept a secure communication between an area director’s office and an agent in the field anyway, dammit?”

With every question he increased the pressure on Petrie’s arm, and again a breath whistled painfully in the man’s throat. Incredibly, this time it was accompanied by a rusty laugh.

“You’re not even warm, Fed. Yeah, we were sent to eliminate the kid, and if we could we were supposed to make it look like you snapped and shot him yourself. But we didn’t intercept—”

The first shot caught Connor high on the shoulder, breaking his hold on Petrie. Even as Tess’s horrified glance took in Malden, still prone, but with his trouser leg pulled up to reveal an empty ankle holster, the man fired a second time. His wavering aim missed Connor and hit Petrie.

In the middle of Petrie’s forehead a small, neat hole appeared. On the open door behind him was a brilliant explosion of scarlet. His eyes wide and sightless, slowly he collapsed to his knees, pitching face forward onto the carpet. Instant nausea rose in Tess.

But there was no time for squeamishness. Already Malden’s unsteady aim was swinging back toward Connor. Forcing herself not to think about what she was doing, she threw herself across Petrie’s lifeless body, her outstretched arm scrabbling past him for the automatic pistol he’d dropped only seconds ago.

Her fingers closed around it. Clumsily she flicked the safety off, raised herself onto her elbows and squeezed the trigger.

The report of her shot was overlaid with another, louder discharge that came from behind and above her. As if swatted by a giant hand, Malden lifted off the ground, completing a half roll before landing again, this time on his back. One knee jerked up and then slid back down.

She’d just killed a man. This time when the bile rose in her throat, Tess knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep it down. Scrambling to her feet, she took a lurching step across Petrie’s body toward the door, her gaze fixed on the tired clump of bushes just beyond the walkway.