Duty To Protect

“Deer Lodge.”

“You have relatives there?”

She hesitated, then shook her head.

“You aren’t sure, or you just don’t know them?” He thought a moment. “Or maybe you have someone there on a semipermanent basis?”

“What?”

“Temporary housing at the Montana State Prison?”

“No! I…I’m just going to start over, that’s all. And that’s all you need to know about me.”

“So if I drop you off at the next town, what then? Do you have money for a bus ticket, or are you going to stow away in the next horse trailer you see?”

She drew herself up. “I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Do you have any money? Credit or debit cards?”

Again, the flicker in her gaze. “I’m set. And I’m not your responsibility, so don’t worry about it.”

And that was the kicker in this whole, strange and unexpected deal. Responsibility.

He’d felt the weight of the world on his shoulders when he’d worked in law enforcement…and one case in particular still haunted him. He and the rest of the department had put in sixteen-hour days, trying to solve a serial rapist case that had terrified women throughout the county. In the meantime, four more women were attacked…including his sister’s best friend.

Could he blithely ignore the possibility that this woman was in real danger? The thought cut through him like a switchblade between the ribs.

He sighed heavily. When he arose this morning at four-thirty, he’d had no idea just how complicated his life was going to become. “You can’t just go hitchhiking into some remote part of the country. I don’t believe you do have the money for another bus ticket, and whoever he really is, there’s no denying that someone is trying to hunt you down. So lady, give me your driver’s license. If you check out okay, I’ve got a proposition for you.”

Emma’s heartbeat faltered as she stared back at him.

She’d always been a terrible liar and hated needing to skate around the truth, even though she’d been living a lie throughout most of her life in WITSEC. Jake had probably seen through every one of the whoppers she’d just told.

An abusive ex-boyfriend? Named Randy?

All of it was straight out of a novel she’d just read, and now she was going to be caught up in a web of those lies, trying to keep things straight, unless she managed to part company with this guy…and soon.

If he had a proposition, she could only imagine that it spelled trouble. Still, to flee instead of calmly letting him check her license would set off alarm bells in his mind and lead to more trouble than she was already in. Please, God, help me out, here.

“License?” Jake repeated. “Or is it conveniently missing?”

“O-of course not.” She bent over her purse and pawed through the contents, delaying the inevitable.

No one upstairs ever seemed to listen to her prayers, but during the twenty-four hours since she’d fled her home, Emma had found herself saying a lot of them, and now she mentally recited yet another as she pulled out her wallet and handed over her freshly minted driver’s license. “I’m sure everything is in order.”

She hoped. During her ten years in the WITSEC program she’d had plenty of new identities come and go, but this was the first time she’d created one on her own.

She’d paid a thousand dollars to a guy with the unlikely name of Lance Mendez for her new identification, but whether or not good customer service and guarantees were part of the business model used by furtive men on street corners wasn’t hard to guess.

“Lance” had been recommended by a man she’d approached outside a seedy bar on the lower south side of Chicago, the day after her father’s murder. She’d never been so terrified in her life, driving into that unfamiliar neighborhood.

But she’d never been so desperate, either, and knowing that her dad’s killer would have her in his sights next, her choice had been simple. Die, or disappear.

Now, she tried to look bored as the cowboy studied her, then shot another glance at her driver’s license. “Can you take off that hat?”

She’d worn the cheap knitted hat with a floppy brim in public since cutting her long blond hair short and dying it auburn several days ago, afraid her father’s killer might be stalking her. She’d wanted to hide the new color until she could reveal a totally different persona when she surfaced a thousand miles away.

She took a quick, furtive glance out the truck windows, then slowly dragged it off and ran her fingers through her hair to fluff the flattened curls. She jerked it back on a moment later.

“Traveling kinda light, aren’t you, ma’am?”

“I didn’t exactly have time to pack well,” she murmured, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

No wonder Jake was suspicious. She smelled like a dirty horse blanket and hadn’t washed her face in a good twenty-four hours. Her suitcase was still on that bus, headed to who knows where. She’d fled Chicago without a brush, makeup or even the most basic toiletries in her purse.

Jake probably thought she appeared homeless, deranged and desperate; capable of any charges that had been trumped up to reel her back to Chicago. The murder of Todd Hlavicek, for instance, unless he was still lying on her kitchen floor.

Jake compared her against her license photo one more time, then grabbed a cell phone from the dashboard of the truck, scrolled through his contacts list and hit Send. “Megan. This is Jake. Right, it’s been a while.” He sighed. “No, not anytime soon. Probably never. Hey, I need a favor. Can you run a driver’s license for me?”

Emma jerked her hat back on and forced a smile, though an icy hand clamped around her stomach as Jake read off her license number and description. Lance had needed a photo of her for the driver’s license, so she’d gone to a drugstore passport photo booth right after dying her hair and cutting it short. Did the license look realistic enough? Would the number actually work, or was her false identity going to shatter, here and now?

The woman Jake called apparently put him on hold.

He moved the cell phone away from his face. “I’ve got Megan Peters on the line. She’s the new Pine County sheriff up in Montana, and an old friend of mine. Is she gonna find out things about you that you don’t want me to know?”

“Only if there are errors in the system.” Emma feigned a disinterested shrug, even though her insides were shaking.

The minutes dragged like hours. Weeks.

Then Jake sat up a little straighter and carried on a cursory conversation before ending the call and tossing his phone back onto the dash. A corner of his mouth tipped up in a faint smile. “Megan did a little research. The internet is just one amazing thing, isn’t it?

His folksy demeanor didn’t fool her for a minute. “And?”

“She checked the NCIS, NCIC and CODIS, and you weren’t listed in any of them.”

“What does all of that mean?”

“That you’ve got a ride to Montana, if you want it. Apparently—at this point—you’re not a fugitive, missing person, or someone of interest in the criminal databases. I fact, your name is unusually clean. No charges, ever. No convictions, no warrants, no moving violations. Not even a traffic ticket. No record of property ownership, for that matter. It’s as if you just dropped out of the sky.”

Throwing up her hands and shouting “Thank you, Lance!” probably wouldn’t be a good thing right now. She smiled. “I told you so.”

His lips thinned. “There’s still something that isn’t quite right about this, but I don’t want to leave a lone woman to fend for herself at this rest stop, so I can either drop you off at the next town, or drop you off when I go through Denver. Or, you can ride with me until I get back to Montana, and I can leave you off in Deer Lodge. Your choice.”

“Deer Lodge? Really? You’re heading that way?”

“It’s not my destination, but I can take a detour.”

Hope surged through her, then fizzled away. She didn’t even want to think about what he might expect in return. “I…I’d better get out at the next place there could be a bus stop.”