One Night Standoff

chapter Four



“Both?” Clayton repeated.

Lenora saw the instant concern in his eyes. Not ordinary concern, either. The kind of concern a marshal would have when facing down someone on the other side of the law.

“Explain that,” he demanded. His gaze dropped to her stomach. “And then we’ll discuss the baby.”

Lenora didn’t know which part of the intended discussion she dreaded most, but her dread was a drop in the bucket compared to her fear that Clayton’s mere presence here could get him killed.

“Are you sure no one followed you?” Lenora didn’t wait for his answer. She went to the sliver of a side window by the front door and peered out. The beveled glass distorted the view, but she saw her own car. No one else’s, and definitely no sign of a gunman. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

“I parked on the other side of the cemetery,” Clayton explained. “I didn’t see anyone following me, and I was careful.” He paused. “But there’s always the possibility that someone used the same steps I did to find you.”

True. That didn’t do much to steady her already racing heart and frazzled nerves. Lenora made a mental note to call the minister, Reverend Donaldson, to say she couldn’t finish the job. Then she could leave town and make sure Clayton didn’t find her again. However, that leaving part wasn’t going to happen unless she gave him the answers he was demanding, because there was no way he’d just let her walk out.

But where to start?

It was a tangled mess. One that Clayton definitely wasn’t going to like.

She took a deep breath, walked back toward him and sank down into a pew. “Jill and I both worked for the justice department.” There. Plain and simple. She gave him a moment to let that sink in.

It obviously didn’t sink in well. Clayton’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the first I’m hearing of this, and that’s funny since I work for the justice department, too, and I was assigned to protect you two.”

Yes, she was painfully aware of that. “You weren’t told the whole truth, and I was sworn to secrecy. Jill and I were agents on a special task force put together to bring down Adam Riggs and his cronies—”

“Any reason I wasn’t let in on this?”

“A good one.” Well, it was good in some people’s minds. It’d never felt right to her. “There were other agents planted in companies that Riggs was doing business with. The task-force supervisor didn’t want anyone knowing that Jill and I were deep cover, because it might have leaked—”

“I wouldn’t have leaked it,” he snapped, interrupting her again. He slipped his sunglasses back on and went to the front windows to look out.

The sunglasses were an odd mix with the rest of his clothes: the jeans, boots and silver rodeo belt. He used the brim of his black Stetson to help shield his eyes. It made her wonder just how bad his headaches actually were and if he was duty ready. Apparently he’d been ready enough to find her, and she’d thought she had covered her tracks well with the assumed name and the cash-only lifestyle.

“You could have trusted me,” Clayton added.

“I know that now, but we didn’t know it at the time. The task-force supervisor also wanted to make it look as if Jill and I were truly just workers who might be in danger because of a federal investigation. That’s why he asked the Marshals Service to provide protection for us. He took the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach.”

Clayton shook his head, glanced back at her, and even though she couldn’t actually see his eyes behind those shades, she was certain he was glaring. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”

No, it hadn’t. Somehow Lenora would have to learn to live with that, but she hadn’t had much luck doing it so far. The nightmares were still there. Every night. Unrelenting.

“So, you’re an agent,” Clayton said almost like a challenge.

“Former agent. I resigned shortly after Jill was murdered. But before the justice department, I worked in Dallas for a man who was a world-class money launderer. And I helped him.”

Lenora nearly choked on the confession, but it was true. She had indeed helped him, unknowingly, but she darn well should have known what he was up to. She’d played with fire and had gotten burned.

Now Lenora was trying to make sure that didn’t happen again.

Yes, Clayton was fire, all right.

Fiery trouble in a black Stetson.

All of her experience and training told her that he was off-limits. As if on cue, the baby kicked, reminding her that the hands-off rule had been broken months ago. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do something to stop more bad things from happening. She didn’t include her baby in that “bad things” department. She desperately loved and wanted this child. But the baby’s father was a different matter entirely.

She couldn’t live with another death on her hands. Especially his death.

“And you were a criminal?” he mumbled. He shook his head, put his back to the sidelight window and shucked off his glasses so his gaze could meet hers.

Yes, it was a glare, all right.

Lenora nodded. “When the feds started investigating the money-laundering scheme I was involved in, I was taken into custody and cut a deal to help them with an investigation to collar my boss.”

“Sounds dangerous,” he pointed out.

She settled for a shrug. “My boss and his business partners were bigger fish that they wanted. So, because the situation could have turned, well, more than dangerous, they trained me like a regular agent. But I was technically just a criminal informant assigned to the deep-cover task force. Then, after my boss was arrested and convicted, they asked me to stay on in the department and work on the Riggs case.”

Clayton made a sound of displeasure. “And as a dupe, my own people assigned me to two women that I was told needed protection.”

“Obviously, we did need it, because one of us was murdered,” she reminded him, then paused. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I hate being lied to, especially by people that I’m supposed to trust.” However, he immediately added a sound of dismissal. “Old baggage rearing its head. But it still comes into play here.”

She knew a little about his old childhood baggage, from the notorious Rocky Creek Children’s Facility, which was now closed. Had been for sixteen years. She also knew his mother had died giving birth to him and that his father, Melvin Larson, had literally abandoned him at the facility when he was eleven. All of that had come out when they’d talked in bed after their fast and furious bout of sex.

Too bad her memories of that were crystal clear.

She could remember every last detail of that night. The raw pain from losing a friend and fellow agent. The comfort she’d found in Clayton’s arms. The pleasure, too. Pleasure should have been the last thing on her mind that night, but she’d felt plenty of it anyway. Thanks to Clayton.

“Lies like that are usually unnecessary,” he tossed out to her.

“You lied to the minister to find me,” Lenora tossed right back at him.

He gave her that riled look again, like the one he’d given her in the diner. “I didn’t lie to deceive. I lied to find you so I could help. Maybe now’s a good time to ask if you were planning on telling me any of this?”

No, it wasn’t a good time to ask, but Lenora would answer it anyway. “I was waiting for you to heal and for the danger to die down.”

He lifted his shoulder. “How the hell was the danger going to die down? You know who was responsible for putting that bullet in my head?”

She couldn’t deny it fast enough. “No. I assumed that Riggs hired someone to do it, but I don’t have any proof.” Lenora stopped, met his gaze. “Do you?”

Clayton didn’t answer her for several moments, but his stare continued to stab at her. At least it did until the baby kicked her and she winced a little. It wasn’t a hard kick, but she’d only been feeling movement for a few weeks and wasn’t used to it.

“You okay?” Clayton asked.

“Fine. The baby moved, that’s all.”

His mouth tightened. Then relaxed. He mumbled some profanity. “I’m having a hard time dealing with this.”

“Of course.” She didn’t dare repeat the offer she’d made to him at the diner, that she expected nothing from him. No, best not to say it aloud, but the truth was, she couldn’t expect anything from him. Because she needed him out of her life. Maybe just temporarily.

Maybe forever.

And that meant she needed to get on with her explanation. Besides, it was possible Clayton could actually help. She’d been hesitant to trust anyone, and maybe she was a fool for trusting him, but without this explanation, he clearly wasn’t leaving.

“After your shooting, I wasn’t sure whom I could trust.” She slid her hand over her stomach.

Clayton huffed. “Any of my five foster brothers would have been a good start. They’re all marshals and all capable of protecting you.”

“But I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone in law enforcement.”

That eased Clayton’s glare, and he cocked his eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because after you were shot, I tried to call my handler. My task-force leader,” Lenora corrected. She’d always hated the term handler. It made her feel like a circus animal that needed to be controlled. “His name is James Britt, and he didn’t return my call for two days.”

Clayton stayed quiet a moment. “That’s unusual?”

“Very, especially considering I left him a frantic message to call me immediately.” She pushed her hair from her face. “But the truth is, I was concerned about James prior to that. He’d started to question me about what I really saw the night Jill was murdered. He seemed to try to make me doubt that Riggs was the one to pull the trigger.”

“It was Riggs,” Clayton verified. “I saw him, too.”

Lenora nodded. “James knows that, but he kept pushing, as if he was looking for some kind of discrepancies in my report. I dismissed it, thinking he was just trying to prepare me for my testimony at the trial.”

“That’s possible,” Clayton admitted.

Possible, yes, but Lenora hadn’t been able to shake the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“When James finally called me back after your shooting, he asked me if I’d gone back to my old ways. If I was running laundered money again. He wanted to know if I’d done something to get you shot. I didn’t,” she quickly added.

Clayton made a sound to indicate he was giving that some thought. “A few days before I was shot, someone broke into your place and vandalized it. I’ve been looking into any connection between that and the shooting, but I can’t find it. Did you?”

She had to shake her head. “And I looked. The Eagle Pass police weren’t able to get any prints or trace from the break-ins, so there was no arrest.”

He continued to stare at her. “So your solution was to go into hiding.”

“I had the baby to think about.” And Lenora wasn’t going to apologize for that. “I didn’t want to take any more risks than I’d already taken.”

“And I wasn’t around to help you.” He blew out a long breath, stood and stared down at her. “Well, I’m around now, and I want you to go back to Maverick Springs with me, to my family’s ranch.”

Lenora got to her feet, too. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s too dangerous for me to come out of hiding and go with you. Obviously this person is after me, not you, because you’ve been out of the hospital for weeks now and no one has tried to kill you.”

“Not yet. But I think we should get to the bottom of what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Maybe Riggs hasn’t sent anyone else after me because he knows it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. After all, the last person who tried to kill me is dead. Thanks to you,” he added.

Yeah. Thanks to her.

Too little, too late.

By the time she’d put a bullet in their attacker, Clayton had already been shot.

“I shouldn’t have come there that day to tell you about the baby.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “But you’re not the only one dealing with old baggage here. It played into my decision to tell you.”

“Old baggage or not, you should have told me,” he confirmed.

“But you don’t even remember me, do you? You don’t remember sleeping with me.”

His gaze slid down her face to her body. Something different went through his eyes this time. Something she had no trouble recognizing.

Attraction.

Yes, she’d felt it, too, the first time she’d ever looked at him. And every time since.

She huffed, stood and would have gone to the window if it wouldn’t have put them so close. “It hardly seemed fair to go waltzing into your hospital room to tell you that your one-night stand had led to an unexpected pregnancy. I wanted you to focus on your recovery.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been fair, but it would have been the right thing to do for the baby.” The sunglasses went back on so he could have another look outside.

The right thing. In other words, turn over her safety—and the baby’s—to him. Under normal circumstances she might have considered it, but it was crystal clear that Clayton was in no shape to be offering her protection.

Not yet anyway.

Her best bet was to regroup, go back into hiding under a different name. And a different job. One that couldn’t be traced to anything in her past. Then, once things had settled down and his shooter was in custody, she could go to him and have him be part of their baby’s life.

It seemed like a logical plan. But one look at Clayton’s firm expression and she knew this would be a hard sell, if she could convince him at all. However, before she got a chance to sell anything, she saw Clayton shift his position. He leaned in closer to the glass.

“A dark blue SUV just parked at the end of the road,” he relayed to her as he locked the front door. “Anyone you know?”

No one that immediately came to mind. These days she had no friends and only a very few acquaintances. Lenora hurried to the window and spotted the SUV.

“The minister, maybe?” Clayton asked.

“No. He’s out of town all this week and gave me the keys to the church so I could let myself in.”

Clayton glanced at her. Again, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she figured there was displeasure lurking behind those dark shades. “Not wise. You’re out here alone all by yourself.”

That scolding put some starch in her posture. “I prefer working in solitude. Plus, I have a gun with me, and you know I can shoot.” Then there was the whole part about her not trusting anyone. She figured trust would get her killed faster than going it alone.

“Good,” Clayton mumbled, as if he hadn’t actually heard what she said. Probably because his attention was fastened to the SUV.

No one got out of the vehicle. It just sat there with the front of it aimed right at them. It seemed menacing, but Lenora tried to assure herself that it could all be nothing. She’d gone three months without any contact with someone who wanted to hurt her. Of course, that was before Clayton had found her.

Had someone else found her, too?

Someone who’d hired another triggerman to finish the job that been started at the diner in Maverick Springs? Or maybe it’d even started before that, with Jill’s murder.

Mercy, she needed answers.

“There’s a back exit.” She let him know in case they needed another way out.

“Yeah. It’s locked from the inside. We might have to use it.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew about the locked exit. Clayton had no doubt scoped out the church before he’d come inside and surprised the heck out of her. So much for all her training. She hadn’t even heard him skulking around the place.

“Neither lock will hold if someone wants to get inside,” Clayton added. “Hand me the keys.”

She riffled through her pocket and came up with them, and he jammed the key inside the internal deadbolt so the door was now double-locked. It was a good precaution to take, but the door was made of wood. Old wood at that. She doubted it would stand up to some hard kicks. There hadn’t been a lot of need for security in this little country church.

Well, not before now, anyway.

The driver’s side door of the SUV eased open, and in the same motion, Clayton drew his Glock. That put her heart right in her throat, and Lenora took out the small Smith & Wesson from the slide holster at the back waist of her jeans. It wasn’t a comfortable fit anymore with her growing belly, but she was thankful that she’d decided to wear it anyway.

Clayton’s mouth tightened. “If things go wrong here, I don’t want you using that. I want you as far away from bullets as possible.”

Lenora wanted that, too, along with wanting Clayton to be safe, but she had to be ready, too. She also had to keep hoping that this was just a false alarm, because the alternative was for her to accept that there was some kind of grand-scale conspiracy to murder her.

She held her breath and saw the man step from the driver’s side of the SUV. Tall and lanky, he wore jeans and a dark shirt, common clothes for this part of the country, but it was the brown leather jacket that snagged her attention. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, hardly jacket weather, which meant he was probably wearing it to conceal a weapon.

“I don’t recognize him,” she said before Clayton could ask. “Do you?”

“No.”

That revved up her heart even more. She’d held out hope that their visitor was a lawman, maybe even the local sheriff. He sure had the lawman’s look down pat—he glanced around, studying the entire grounds before his attention settled on the front of the church. However, Lenora saw no signs of a badge, but the guy was holding something.

A newspaper.

The man looked at the paper, then the church, as if comparing something. After a few moments, he tossed the newspaper back into the SUV.

Clayton took her by her left wrist and gently moved her behind him. No doubt trying to protect her. But he didn’t move from the window.

Lenora stood there, watching the SUV driver from over Clayton’s shoulder. Very close to him. So close that it stirred memories of him, and this was not a good time to be remembering anything about that night they’d slept together.

Some more movement got her mind back on the right track. The passenger’s side door opened. A second man stepped out, and like the driver, he was also wearing a jacket.

Oh, mercy. Two of them and both likely armed. There was no way she could explain away this.

“Come on,” Clayton said.

His grip on her wrist tightened, and with her in tow, he hurried through the rows of pews, past the pulpit and into the back entry. He didn’t stop until they made it to the door.

There were no side windows next to the door, only one on the west side of the building, facing the cemetery. Lenora did a quick look out, but didn’t see Clayton’s vehicle or anyone else on the grounds.

“Stay close and stay quiet,” Clayton warned her.

Lenora would, as well as keep watch. But she also prayed that all of this was overkill.

He unlocked the door and stepped out ahead of her. Lenora didn’t miss the grunt that he tried to muffle. Pained from the sun, no doubt. Still, he didn’t let the pain or the sun slow him down. He eased her out behind him, shut the door, and they hurried toward the cemetery.

Clayton kept watch, too, his gaze firing all around them. There was a chain-link fence that surrounded the quarter acre or so of graves, and it was obviously meant to keep out deer rather than people, because there were no locks on the gate. He opened it and immediately pushed her behind a large angel headstone.

It wasn’t her first choice of hiding place. In fact, the whole cemetery gave her the creeps. It reminded her of her father’s grave, which she’d visited once—and only once—on the day she’d found out that he was dead. Lenora hoped they didn’t have to stay crouched here for long.

She peered out and saw the men make their way toward the front of the church. They stopped by her car first, looked inside the windows and then continued to the front door. Because of the angle of the building, they disappeared from view. Maybe they would just knock and when no one answered, they’d leave.

But the thought had no sooner crossed her mind than Lenora heard something she didn’t want to hear.

No knock.

There was a loud bashing sound, quickly followed by a shot. Not in their direction, but the bullet made an unusual metallic sound.

Lenora knew exactly what it meant.

The men had shot through the lock on the front door and were no doubt already inside the church. It wouldn’t take them but a minute or two to realize she wasn’t there.

And they’d come looking for her.

“Let’s move,” Clayton ordered in a rough whisper. “Now!”