by Aimée Thurlo
As she gathered up her things, he stood waiting, restless, and eager to see this thing through. Yet, as much as he wanted to see it finished, a part of him wished that it wasn’t all coming to a close. Once Fox testified, it would be time for him to return to his Ranger unit, which was now on a training mission halfway around the world.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said.
Fox was dressed in a simple pantsuit but there was a quiet elegance about her that was hard to ignore. She was like a pale flower that continued to bloom in the desert despite the heat.
He felt the familiar tug on his senses as their eyes met. “Let’s go.”
Travis hurried out with her. He was glad that he’d be driving Fox to the courthouse today. He knew the Four Corners area well, and, in case of trouble, would be able to easily evade anyone pursuing them. Antiterrorist tactics, including those involving the operation of a vehicle, were part of the training he’d picked up as an Army Ranger.
Travis kept to the highway, moving along at a brisk pace. “I’m going to start heading in the general direction of the courthouse now. I’ll take the long way, but that’ll still put us there just about on time.”
“Good. Anything’s better than sitting around in some hallway, waiting.”
The tension in the car was palpable. He was aware of everything about her, even the soft sound of her breathing. Yet neither of them broke the silence. They both knew only too well the dangers that lay just ahead for them.
Over an hour later, as they finally approached their destination, Travis felt his gut tighten. This was it. He wondered about the predicted media circus at the Aztec courthouse. His brother Ashe was a master of understatement, so Travis was fairly sure it would be far worse than Ashe had intimated.
Ashe and Casey Feist, the beautiful U.S. Deputy Marshal who’d been Fox’s handler in the Witness Security Program, would meet them there. They’d be escorting their prisoner, ex-district attorney Prescott, into the courthouse.
“Why is it so important that I arrive at the same time as Mom and Dad’s killer?” Fox asked. “Prescott still gives me the creeps.”
“It’s easier to coordinate security that way. But don’t worry. We won’t let him near you. Besides, he’ll be shackled hand and foot,” Travis said.
Still worried about Fox, he glanced over and saw her sitting quietly, staring at her own clasped hands. He felt a strange twist in his chest. They were as different as night and day, yet desire flashed through him every time he looked at her. He stopped the thought dead in its tracks. She needed him to stay focused now, to keep his attention on outside threats, and that was just what he intended to do.
As they entered the small city of Aztec and approached the courthouse, he saw the crowd of onlookers and reporters that had gathered there. “Keep your head down, Fox,” he advised. “No sense in advertising you’re here.”
“No way. Not any longer. I’m holding my head high and sitting up straight. I’ve done nothing wrong and I’m not cowering.”
“For Pete’s sake, jettison that pride of yours and concentrate on staying alive, will you? They can’t take aim if they can’t see you. Now crouch down.”
“No. And stop giving me orders. I’m not a private in your special army.” Fox looked straight at him.
“It’s a good thing you’re not, woman. I’d have had you on report from day one.” He took a deep breath, then softened his voice. “Work with me, okay? Won’t you please scrunch down in the seat so nobody will see you until we get out?”
“It’s pointless. They already know I’m here,” she said.
Travis cursed softly as they drove quickly past the crowd of reporters, cops and curious citizens. Moving to the county courthouse’s back parking lot, he pulled into the loading zone. By the time he came to a stop, three other cars, two of them marked police cruisers, were right behind him.
His brother Ashe was in the middle car with Casey seated beside him and Prescott in the back seat. As two armed marshals came out the courthouse door, Casey and Ashe got out of the car.
“That’s our cue,” Travis said, stepping out, keeping his body between Fox and the crowd, which was less than fifty feet away.
Fox climbed out quickly. Their timing was perfect. Prescott was being unloaded at the same time.
“Can you believe a teacher is actually bringing students to see something like this?”
Fox pointed to a school bus in a visitor parking space a dozen cars away. “It’s like stories of the Old West, where people would come for miles just to see the murderer hang.”
“Wait a second. Where are the students? I didn’t see any school-age kids in the crowd out front.” Travis glanced toward the courthouse, then over at Prescott and Ashe. When he turned to take a closer look at the bus driver, his blood turned to ice.
“Gun. In the bus!” Travis yelled, warning his brother while simultaneously shoving Fox back down into the car. He dived in next, covering her with his body as the sharp crack of a rifle pinged against the metal of the car.
“Get her out of here!” Casey yelled as another shot was fired.
Travis scrambled over to the driver’s side of the car. “Stay down, Fox.” He started the engine, threw the car into reverse, and jammed his foot on the accelerator.
As he tried to maneuver the sedan between the building and a police vehicle just entering the lot, another shot rang out. The windshield of the approaching cruiser exploded into a cloud of shattered glass and the squad car veered out of control. It smashed into the rear end of their sedan on the passenger side, jolting them painfully against their seat belts.
Glass from the rear windshield flew everywhere. Although Travis held on tightly to the steering wheel, the laws of physics were in charge. Their sedan spun around, hurling them against a parked van, then slamming them into the metal rail of a stairway leading to the basement of the courthouse.
Travis’s head struck the side window hard, but he didn’t have time to think about the sudden pain. Switching off the ignition, he turned toward Fox, who lay scrunched up on the floor mat beneath the dash. Her head was tucked down, covered by her arms.
Travis’s heart pumped like a steam engine as fear pried into him. He’d failed her. In the end, his training hadn’t mattered. Had she been struck by a bullet or injured in the crash?
Then he saw her move and, finally, he breathed again. She was alive.
Fox rose up slowly and climbed back onto the seat. “That was some wild ride. Where did you get your driver’s license—at the rodeo?”
“A thank-you would have been nice,” he muttered. “Get out of the car fast and go down that stairwell. Stay out of sight.”
“I can’t get out,” Fox replied, grunting as she pushed the door. “It’s jammed. I can’t even roll down the window.”
Travis tried his door. “It’s no better here. The collision pushed in the sides of the car like a stomped-on soda can.”
“I have an idea,” she said.
“What’s new?”
“Will you just listen?” She never stopped to wait for an answer. “I’ll climb into the back seat and give you some legroom. Maybe you can get enough leverage to kick open one of these doors.”
As Fox crawled into the rear, Travis put his back against the hump in the floorboard and kicked at the passenger door. It squealed loudly and sprang open about ten inches before striking the wall of the building.
“Good going!” Fox said.
Ashe jogged over to them just as Travis sat up.
“Paramedics are on the way,” Ashe told them. “Are you two okay?”
“We don’t need medical help, if that’s what you mean,” Fox said, sitting up.
Travis slid over to the passenger side. “Is it secure out there?” Although Travis suspected that Fox hadn’t been the sniper’s intended target—no one could have been that bad a shot—it was dangerous to keep her here one second longer than was necessary.
“Except for the general chaos, it’s clear.
The shooter took off. You two need help getting out?” Ashe glanced back at the totaled patrol car, where others were helping an injured officer out of his vehicle.
“We can squeeze out,” Fox said. “Go. Others are in trouble, and you have a gunman to track down. Be careful.”
As Ashe ran off, Travis squeezed through the narrow opening, then leaned in to help Fox out of the car.
She’d just started to climb back into the front seat when the police cruiser alongside them exploded into flames. As the blast rocked their sedan, Travis was blown sideways down the stairwell. In a desperate maneuver, he grabbed the bottom rung of the rail, breaking his fall at the last second. When he pulled himself back up, he was greeted by a vision straight from hell.
Their sedan had been shoved against the building, and the door he’d kicked open was now shut again, jammed against the iron stair-rail. Fox had been thrown diagonally across the interior of the car, and now lay on the back seat on the driver’s side. She was covered in glass from the shattered rear window. Oily flames from the cruiser were already blistering the paint on the trunk of their car, and black smoke billowed up in a swelling cloud. Unless he got Fox out fast, she wouldn’t have a chance. Their car had nearly a full tank of gas; he’d pumped it himself last night. It wouldn’t take much more heat to make it blow.
He looked down through the opening where the rear window had been. “Fox, I’ll help you out Hang on.”
“How? There’s no way out. The back end is burning already. The doors are jammed on both sides and I still can’t roll down any of the windows. Find something to break the glass—or maybe a fire extinguisher will help. Otherwise there’s nothing more you can do here.”
“Hang tight.” She was right. He had to smash through the glass on the driver’s side and pull her out the window. Travis wrapped his jacket around his arm, then slammed his elbow into the back-seat window. It hurt like hell, but the window didn’t even crack.
Hearing someone shout his name, Travis turned his head and saw Ashe running up. “Give this a try!” Ashe yelled, tossing him a police baton.
Travis caught it in one hand. “Fox, cover your face.” With one vicious backhand, he smashed the nightstick against the glass, shattering it. Ignoring the flames less than four feet away, he cleared the loose fragments of glass with the police baton and reached through for Fox’s hand.
Travis pulled her through the opening, gathered her in his arms and carried her over to Ashe’s truck.
“You’d better get her inside the building where she’ll be safe!” Ashe shouted, joining them.
Fox squirmed, forcing Travis to set her down. Standing straight between them, she gestured around her. Smoke covered the parking lot like black fog. “Are you kidding? There’s no safe place around here.”
“I have to agree with her on this one, brother,” Travis said. “That’s why I carried her over here. We need to borrow your truck for a while.”
Ashe handed Travis the keys without hesitation. “Casey will want to know where you’re going.”
“I don’t know yet. Somewhere safer, I hope.” Travis unlocked the passenger door and Fox climbed inside quickly. “We’ll let you know as soon as we get there.”
Before Ashe could argue, Travis started up the engine and raced out of the parking lot
“Slow down, Ranger,” Fox said with a wry smile. “We made it through that,” she said, gesturing back toward the courthouse. “I don’t want to end up wrapped around a light pole now.”
Travis gave her an exasperated look. “Quiet. No one appreciates a backseat driver.” As he looked over at her, he saw that her hands were shaking. “Don’t worry, Fox,” he added, his tone gentling. “We’re out of it now. Did you get cut anywhere?”
“I haven’t checked yet.” Fox carefully brushed chunks of glass from her sleeves, then closed her eyes and shook more grains out of her hair onto the floorboards. “Do you know if Prescott was hurt?”
“No. But my guess is that he was the intended target, not you.”
She lapsed into a thoughtful silence, then finally continued. “Have you noticed that whenever there’s trouble, I always seem to be right in the middle of it. And, what’s worse, a lot of people connected to me are dying, and I can’t seem to stop it.” Her voice broke, but she swallowed back her tears.
“I’m still here, and so’s my brother,” he said, his voice even. “There’s Casey now, too.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? The only people around me who’ve managed to stay alive are the ones trained to fight. If I don’t find a way to turn the tables on whoever’s after me, I’ll be dead soon enough, too.” She raised a hand, stemming his protests. “It’s time I went after these people and found my own answers. It’s my only chance. The U.S. Marshals’ work on this case has been plagued with setbacks. I need to know, once and for all, how I fit into this mess I’ve inherited.”
“If you take the offensive, the road ahead of you won’t be easy. The Marshals Service will do their best to stop you.”
“They can’t. It’s my fight now. But I don’t want you to worry about me. I can take care of myself. What’s needed now is brains, not brawn.”
He glowered at her. “Meaning what?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, with an apologetic look. “Just that I know you have to report back to your unit soon, and I want you to know I can handle this on my own.”
There was no way he could leave her now. There was no telling how much trouble she’d be in without him. “I have plenty of leave, so let me worry about that. There’s work we both need to do here now.”
Travis glanced over at Fox. He’d loved the girl she’d been, but the woman she’d become drew him even more. She stirred his blood until anger and desire warred inside him in equal parts. Her will was more than a match for his own.
Yet there was a gentle side to her that spoke to him, as well. Her courage took its strength from her loyalty to those she cared about. He didn’t believe for one minute that she fully understood just how hard the fight ahead of her would be. But, no matter what happened, he’d be there to equalize the odds.
Chapter Two
Fox studied the people getting in and out of their vehicles at businesses and along the streets, and the drivers of the cars they passed. Any one of them could be her enemy. The facelessness of the killer, or killers, on her trail scared her more than anything else, but she was through hiding. From this point on, she would become a hunter, too.
She glanced over at Travis, glad he was here, yet wishing he hadn’t become involved. She knew that he would do his best to protect her, but the fact remained that this was her battle. She alone held the key that would lead them all out of danger, though it was buried deep within her memory, in a place not even she could find.
The loneliness that engulfed her now as she faced her situation squarely was nearly overpowering. Yet, it shouldn’t have had that effect on her. Being alone was nothing new to her. After all, despite the love her foster parents had given her, she’d grown up as a white child among the Navajos. Her blond hair and fair skin had always marked her as different—an Anglo, as most fair-skinned people were called in the area. Although she’d been accepted, and in her own way had carved out a place for herself here, it was not the same as that feeling of belonging that came easily to those who were part of the majority. Standing out in a crowd could be flattering, but it could be frightening, too.
As Travis drove back toward the Rez, she felt none of the comfort that traveling over familiar ground usually brought her. With her mom and dad gone—at least, the only mom and dad she really remembered—she felt empty inside. The bridges to her past were slowly disintegrating, but to find herself, she’d have to work her way back across them. Only then would she be able to find peace.
“What’s wrong? You’re too quiet,” Travis said softly as they reached Farmington.
She shook her head, not answering his question.
“You’ve never kept secrets from me before,
Fox. Why start now?”
He gave her that heart-stopping half smile that always sent a special thrill right up her spine. “We all have secrets, Travis,” she said sadly. Then, after a moment, she added, “But, you know, I really think the worst ones are the ones we try to keep from ourselves.”
“You will remember all the details of your past someday, Fox. Just keep believing in yourself.”
“You don’t understand what this is like. You know who you are, Travis. You always have. Even when you and your brother left Rock Ridge to live with Mom and Dad, you had your own identity. From that came your confidence, and your ability to do just about anything.”
“You’re no different. You’ve always achieved whatever you set out to do, too.” He paused, then continued. “In the Rangers we’re taught to set an objective and do whatever it takes to achieve it. You can be your own best friend or your worst enemy. If you refuse to admit the possibility of failure, you will win.”
Travis reached for her hand, cradling it inside his own. His palm felt rough and strong, and incredibly masculine. “No matter what the battle, I give you my word that you won’t face it alone. I’ll be right by your side.”
His touch enticed her to surrender to the glorious feelings that contact produced. Only with effort did Fox force herself to impose caution and control on her thoughts. “Trouble comes in many guises, Travis. Help me keep watch for all of them.”
Their eyes met and, for one wild instant, she felt the power of that indefatigable force that drew them together despite their efforts to resist. She turned away, disciplining her emotions, and brushed a few stray shards of glass from her blouse. She had to stop looking at him through the eyes of the girl she’d once been. He wasn’t an illusion based on girlish dreams. He was simply a man—one who was undeniably attractive. She looked back at him again and, this time, saw only shadows of a fire that never was—and never could be.