Dakota Marshal

Drumming up her own smile, she met his eyes. “You’re very brave, given the circumstances.”

“And your deteriorating mood,” he added.

“More like strained. It’s only been one day and, to this point, our separation’s been fairly amicable.”

He moved closer, his gaze fixed on hers with a smoky intensity that would have unnerved her if she hadn’t been prepared for the sexual punch.

“You won’t get around me with smoldering looks, McBride. After four years of marriage and eighteen months apart, I’ve developed an immunity.”

“You make me sound like measles.”

“You’re a different kind of danger, but still not something I need in my life right now.”

He continued his unswerving advance. “What is it you want, Alessandra?”

She opted to take the loaded question at face value. “To go home.”

“That’s not possible. What else?”

“Stability.”

“If you wanted that, you’d have stayed in Indiana and married the boy next door.”

He was getting very close. Wisdom dictated she move away. She didn’t.

“Trying to skew my thoughts won’t work, either, McBride.”

Another faint smile appeared. “It’s not your thoughts I want to skew.”

Okay, this was getting out of hand. She had every right to be annoyed at him for sucking her into the crazed vortex of his life. Her friends and his insisted he had a death wish, and while Alessandra didn’t disagree, she saw it more as a burning need to prove that he was the antithesis of his father. Wherever the truth resided, however, now wasn’t the time to delve into it.

Hooking a wistful finger in the chain around her neck, she toyed with the delicate links. “You didn’t have to change your lifestyle or your goals for me. I told you that before we separated. I’m not a cop or a U.S. marshal, though I do applaud both professions. I used the wrong word when I said I was looking for stability. What I should have said was ‘sanity.’ You know the deal, McBride, a halfway normal life where I’d be met at the door after work by my pet, not by a homicidal junkie who’s been hiding out behind our trash cans for the better part of the day, looking for a way to extract his revenge on the person who offered his girlfriend a deal in exchange for information.”

“That was one incident.”

“What about the guy who jumped out at us in a restaurant parking lot? Or the nut case who called our home and told me not to try starting my car? What about the candies that arrived courtesy of a drug lord you’d helped to expose?”

“There was nothing but candies in that box.”

“It was the gift giver not the gift that was the point. For the first three years of our marriage you were undercover more than you weren’t. And nothing got better when you ditched your badge and joined the U.S. marshals.”

“You knew what you were getting into.”

“Not as well as I knew what I was getting out of.”

Averting his gaze from hers at last, he regarded the darkened window. “Your point.” When he looked at her again, still at dangerously close range, she saw genuine regret in his features. “I never meant to involve you in this. Rapid City’s where I happened to be when I got hit, and you were the only person I knew I could trust.”

Okay, that wasn’t fair. Before it could fully ignite, the spark fueling her temper fizzled and died, leaving in its wake a jumble of feelings she couldn’t begin to separate.

“You always were good—” She halted as his gaze traveled past her and suspicion replaced regret in his features.

She turned but saw nothing in the misshapen shadows beyond the glass. “Is someone there?”

“Probably not. Get the lights just in case.”

It wasn’t exactly a reassuring remark. But she went for the switch and plunged the cabin into darkness.

“Now what?” she asked twenty silent seconds later.

“Shh.”

He eased them both away from the window. Woodsy night sounds filtered in. Beyond that, everything had gone still and quiet.

Then a twig snapped in the nearby trees, and Alessandra’s senses went on high alert.

Swearing softly, McBride reached for his gun in the back of his waistband.

One of the boards on the porch creaked. There was a rush of movement, a thud of feet and finally a crash as a rock flew through the front window. A split second later, the door slammed open. Emitting an attack cry, a man charged in, hands raised and clutching a very large ax.

EDDIE NOTICED the broken window first, then the tire tracks in the mud. Coming, going, maybe coming again. There was no truck in the vicinity, and no sign of movement inside.

It wasn’t quite dawn. The sky was lightening but the shadows would hide him for another twenty minutes. Plenty of time to get the deed done.

He was savoring the moment when a light went on. The front door opened and a man stumbled out. He was tall and dark haired, but too gangly to be McBride.

The fury that rose was swiftly expelled. Eddie looked at his vehicle, then back at the stranger currently doing his business off the side porch.

A half-naked woman emerged, wobbled in one direction, then the other, until she finally collided with the man. They giggled and staggered back inside.

The light winked out.

Should he do them, anyway, just for being in this remote cabin at this time when he’d been looking for McBride and the pretty veterinarian?

A nasty grin split his face. No. Leaving a trail of corpses was never a good thing. But he had extra guns, and as long as they were too drunk to walk straight, he might as well have a little fun. He’d cover his face with a bandanna, his head with a hat and do the stick-’em-up thing from behind.

If they had any information at all, they’d talk. Then depending on his mood, the inclination of his trigger fingers and whether or not they did something stupid, they’d either live or they’d die.

As for McBride and the pretty vet? Eyes on the prize, Eddie-boy. Bang, bang, cha-ching.

IT AMAZED ALESSANDRA that anything could shock her. However, a second wild-eyed, weapon-wielding youth in one night was too extreme even for McBride’s world.

The young man, trailed by a girl in Daisy Dukes and flip-flops, blasted across the threshold with a Tarzan yell and more fear than aggression in his eyes. McBride disarmed him easily, knocking the ax from his sweaty hands and pinning him to the wall. Alessandra shook off her momentary trance and intercepted the girl as she made a beeline for McBride’s back.

It took fifteen noisy minutes to sort through the confusion. Apparently the college-aged youth was Joan’s nephew. He had his aunt’s permission to use the cabin during his cross-state camping trip. Unfortunately for all of them, tonight was the night he and his girlfriend had reached Dead Lake.

Alessandra knew that she and McBride could have stayed in the cabin until morning. She also knew they’d be endangering innocent lives if they did. So they left. And drove for more than three hours before McBride agreed to stop.

Having been raised on a farm, Alessandra didn’t consider herself a wilderness wimp. But sleeping in McBride’s truck, then attempting to eat breakfast while swarms of mosquitoes, horse and deerflies did the same, proved next to impossible.