One Night Standoff

chapter Three



Three Months Later

Clayton spotted the woman on the stepladder perched in front of the stained-glass window inside the country church. She was about five-six. Dark brown hair. Average build. Well, average build from what he could tell. She wore a drab green lab-style coat over her jeans.

He stayed back behind the last row of pews so that she wouldn’t see him, but he could see her.

The light in the church was dim, thank goodness, so Clayton was able to remove his sunglasses, but he was careful to dodge the lines of sunlight piercing through the beveled glass around the window panels. The last thing he needed was a migraine. Even the mild ones were a bear, and something he’d had to deal with since the shooting. Today he didn’t want to deal with the pain.

He wanted to deal with this woman who might have answers.

Clayton waited, watched until she finally put her soldering iron aside and pulled off the mask that’d covered her nose and mouth.

It was Lenora Whitaker, all right.

Keeping a firm grip on the sides of the ladder, she stepped down to the floor, propped her hands on her hips and looked up at the glass angel’s wing that she’d just repaired. She must have been pleased with the results, because she nodded, smiled. Turned.

The color drained from her face. The smile, too. Almost as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Clayton,” she said in a rough whisper.

Well, at least she remembered him. Clayton wished he could say the same about her. Yeah, he knew those features because of the surveillance footage he’d studied, but he didn’t recognize her.

Still, there was something familiar about her that went beyond recorded images. Maybe because she’d once been in his protective custody.

Something else he couldn’t remember.

She didn’t come closer, but pulled a rag from her coat pocket and wiped her hands. She also dodged his gaze. “How are you?”

“Better than the last time you saw me.”

That brought her gaze back to his. “You got your memory back?”

He lifted his shoulder. “Some of it.” Including all of his childhood, even the rotten parts. Most of adulthood, too. “Not about you, though.”

Clayton paused, studied her expression. Her forehead was bunched up, and while there was concern in her eyes, there was also discomfort.

Probably because he’d found her.

“According to Harlan’s account,” Clayton said, “you didn’t hang around long after I was shot.”

She nodded, swallowed hard. “But I called, to find out that you’d made it out of surgery.”

Yeah. Harlan had told him that, too. But what was missing were the details.

“How’d you find me?” She turned away from him and started to gather her supplies, which she stuffed into a metal toolbox.

“It wasn’t easy.” In fact, it’d been downright hard. Clayton tipped his head to the stained-glass panel. “Not many people do the kind of work you do, so I kept calling churches and other places that have this sort of thing.”

And he’d finally located her through a supplier who was billing a minister in the small town of Sadler’s Falls for repairs to an antique stained-glass window. Lenora’s area of expertise.

“I called the minister,” Clayton explained. “And I posed as someone interested in a getting a referral for some stained-glass repairs needed on a house I’m restoring. He told me about this woman he’d just hired, but I didn’t know it was you until I saw you just now.” He paused. “You’re using a fake name.”

“Yes. After what happened, I thought it was the safe thing to do.”

Probably. But Clayton still needed answers that he hadn’t been able to get from anyone else.

She glanced at the scar on his forehead. It had faded considerably since his surgery three months earlier, but it was a reminder of just how close he’d come to dying.

“I’ve been looking for updates about the shooting,” she said, “but the marshals still haven’t found the person that hired the gunman who put a bullet in you.”

“That’s true.” Not from lack of trying, though. The investigation had been a priority for his foster brothers. And now for Clayton. “But I thought you’d be able to help with that.”

Lenora quickly shook her head. “I can’t. I have no idea who’s behind this.”

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

The pulse in her throat jumped, but before she could repeat her denial, Clayton walked closer, his cowboy boots thudding on the scarred hardwood floors of the old church.

Lenora backed up, and she pulled the sides of the coat closer, hugging it against her body. “You’re accusing me of lying.”

“Yeah,” he readily admitted, and he held out his phone so she could see the video that he’d loaded. “The diner where I was shot doesn’t have a security camera, but there were plenty of them on the Marshals building across the street.”

And thanks to one of those cameras, he could show her the footage of them sitting down in the booth directly in front of the window.

“I understand we sat in that particular spot so I could watch for the black truck that I thought had been following you,” he explained.

She nodded but didn’t say anything. Lenora just watched. There was no audio, but it was clear that Lenora and he were talking in the diner. Clayton waited until the feed got to the first stopping point, then paused the video. He zoomed into his expression.

“I don’t need a body-language expert to tell me that I’m surprised there. Shocked, actually.” He dipped his head down slightly, forcing eye contact. “What did you say to me to put that look on my face?”

She didn’t glance away this time. He was watching her closely. It seemed as if she was having a serious debate with herself—a debate that didn’t turn out well for Clayton, because he saw the exact moment when she decided to lie.

“I can’t remember specifically what I said, but we were talking about the break-ins at the place where I used to live.”

He didn’t doubt that had come up in conversation—Clayton had read the reports of both break-ins—but since he’d already known about them before Lenora showed up at his office that morning, there probably wasn’t much she could have told him that would have shocked him.

So why was she lying?

This was one area where Harlan hadn’t been able to help. His brother had been in the office the morning of the visit, but he hadn’t been privy to what Lenora and he had discussed. Too bad. Because Clayton had the feeling that it was more than important, and he wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he had answers.

Clayton hit Play on the video, and they watched in silence. Well, verbal silence anyway. Lenora was glancing at him from the corner of her eye. He was doing the same, trying to remember anything and everything about her. She certainly didn’t feel like a stranger. And her scent...

That was familiar, too.

Maybe it was his imagination, but that scent seemed to trigger other things. Like the memory of her taste. But that couldn’t have happened. According to every report he’d read, the first time he met Lenora and her friend Jill was when they’d been placed in his protective custody. He wouldn’t have kissed a woman on the job.

Maybe afterward.

After Jill had been murdered. After her shooter had been arrested and put behind bars. Yeah, he could maybe see it happening then, if Lenora had landed in his arms so he could comfort her.

But had they done that?

And if so, why hadn’t Lenora admitted it?

He heard the slight shiver of her breath and looked down at the screen. Their recorded conversation was over, and both had noticed the approaching black truck. Though it was damn hard to watch, Clayton did. And he saw the impact of the bullet as it slammed into his head.

Lenora turned away, or rather started to do that, but Clayton caught her arm, keeping her in place. “Watch,” he insisted.

She did, but from the corner of her eye, and it seemed as if she was genuinely horrified by what she was seeing. Him, slumped against the table, and her, grabbing his gun to return fire.

Clayton hit Pause again the second she pulled the trigger.

It was a clear image of not just the truck but of Lenora. The way she was holding the gun. The expression on her face. The precision with which she returned fire.

“There are only two types of people who react that way in a life-or-death situation,” he said. “Law enforcement and criminals.”

She didn’t ask which he thought she was and didn’t deny his conclusion. Lenora mumbled something, shook her head and walked away from him.

“I need some air,” she said. Before he could stop her, she went to the side door just a few feet away and threw it open.

The hot July sunlight speared through the tiny church.

Clayton couldn’t quite choke back a groan, and he shoved on his glasses. Too late, though. The pain came.

“What’s wrong?” Lenora immediately asked.

He turned away, fought back the throbbing in his head. Maybe it wouldn’t turn into a full-blown migraine.

“The sunlight,” he managed to say. “I get headaches.”

She jerked the door closed and hurried back to him. “From the gunshot?”

He nodded and forced out some hard breaths. Sometimes it helped.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. That wasn’t in any of the reports I read about you.”

Even through the blinding pain that got his attention, and he stared at her.

“Yes, I read reports about you,” she verified. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You could have just asked. Or stayed at the hospital until I came out of surgery. Instead, Harlan said you bolted from the ambulance the second it stopped.”

“I did.” She looked away, repeated it. Lenora turned again, as if looking for a way out, and the movement caused her coat to shift to the side.

Despite the pain, Clayton pulled off his glasses so he could make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. They weren’t. He saw her belly.

Or rather, the baby bump.

It wasn’t huge, but it was there. And even more, Lenora followed his stunned gaze and pulled the coat back over her. The little gasping sound she made didn’t help steady his nerves, either.

“You’re pregnant,” Clayton said.

She nodded.

“How far along are you?” he asked when she didn’t volunteer anything else.

Lenora didn’t jump to answer that, either. “Second trimester.”

He stared at her. “That’s what—four or five months?”

Another hesitation. “Nearly five.”

The brain injury might have robbed him of some of his memories, but he could still do basic math. Nearly five months ago put it just about the time she’d been in his protective custody.

The time frame that was a blank spot in his mind.

“How much do you remember about me?” she asked before he could say anything.

“Not much. Nothing,” he amended. “Everything I know about you I learned from the reports and surveillance videos. And from Adam Riggs.”

Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting that last part, because she sucked in a quick breath. “What did Riggs tell you about me?”

Not as much as Clayton had wanted. And while Clayton would answer her questions about Riggs, he wasn’t forgetting about that baby bump. He would get answers about that before this conversation was over.

“I went to visit Riggs in jail,” Clayton explained, “to try to figure out if he was responsible for shooting me. Of course, he said he wasn’t.”

“Of course.” She huffed. “Anything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, because he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

Clayton couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t remember Riggs gunning down Jill Lang, but he’d seen the crime-scene photos and read the reports. The man was indeed a murderer.

One behind bars.

And one that shouldn’t have had the access to hire a gun to come after Lenora and him.

“Riggs said you ‘had secrets,’ and that’s a direct quote,” Clayton finished. “Any idea what he meant by that?”

He purposely dropped his gaze to her stomach. He doubted that bump had anything to do with Riggs’s cryptic comment, but Clayton figured Lenora definitely had some secrets that needed to be spilled.

She opened her mouth, closed it and then groaned. “I did you a favor by leaving Maverick Springs. My advice—let me keep doing you that favor.”

Clayton stepped in front of her when she tried to leave. Yeah, he could restrain her, but if she opened a door, the sunlight was going to cause the pain to spike again and maybe send him to his knees. After that, he wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. Ironic that a bullet hadn’t stopped him, but now sunlight could.

“Did we have sex?” he came right out and asked. “And is that my baby you’re carrying?”

The questions came easily enough, but there was nothing easy about the emotions whipping through him. He’d come here for answers about the attack and why she’d disappeared, but Clayton hadn’t been prepared for this.

Except there was something familiar about this, too.

A sense of déjà vu, and since he’d never fathered a child, he had to think that maybe the reason Lenora had visited him three months ago was to tell him she was pregnant. That would certainly explain the stunned look on his face in the surveillance video.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lenora said, her voice like a plea. “Just go home and heal. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

Well, the woman knew how to keep him on his toes. He really wanted to know what she meant by that last remark, but first things first.

“Is that my baby?” he demanded.

Her mouth tightened. “We had a one-night stand after Jill was murdered.”

The emotions whipped harder through him. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He cursed, and it was more than several moments before he could regain enough control to speak.

“You should have told me—again,” he added. “After I came out of surgery.”

“You had enough to deal with.”

That answer didn’t help. “What were you going to do? Have the baby and not let me know?”

“I would have told you eventually. When you were better.”

He leaned in and yanked off his glasses so he could meet her eye to eye. “I’m better, and I’ve been better for a while now.”

She nodded, but there was no agreement in any part of her body language. “Knowing the truth doesn’t make this situation better or easier. But it does make it more dangerous.”

Clayton made a circling motion with his fingers for her to continue.

She did, eventually. “I can’t prove it, but Riggs might have hired the shooter to kill me, and he might have shot you by mistake. And if that’s true, then it’s not safe for you to be around me.”

“That’s a big maybe. Riggs has just as much reason to want me dead as he does you. After all, we both saw him gun down Jill. We’ll both testify against him.”

“You remember the shooting?” she asked.

Unfortunately. “Yes.” However, there were gaps both before and after the murder. Big gaps that Riggs probably didn’t know he had. Hopefully, his lawyers wouldn’t, either, because Clayton didn’t want his testimony called into question.

She groaned softly. “But why didn’t Riggs come after you before that day at the diner? Why did he wait until we were together?”

“I don’t know. But that’s something we could have worked out if you’d stayed—”

“No, it’s not,” Lenora interrupted. She waited until his gaze came back to hers. “Riggs was right. I do have secrets. I’m not who you think I am.”

Oh, man. He didn’t like that tone or the look in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It’s all lies. Not the baby. That’s the only truth in all of this.” She tipped her head to his phone, where the video of her returning fire was frozen on the screen. “You said only a criminal or someone in law enforcement would have reacted that way.”

Clayton nodded. Waited. “And which one are you?”

Lenora’s bottom lip trembled. “Both.”