Dakota Marshal

by Jenna Ryan

  Swallowing, she prayed she could keep Penner talking.

  “Your wife, Amy,” she managed to say. “She was very pretty.”

  Oh, God, it was so lame, but it put a different light in his eyes.

  “She was beautiful,” he whispered. “Delicate. Like a desert rose.” The light deepened to hatred. “That piece-of-scum driver made a pass at her.”

  His fingers crunched into a ball so tight, Alessandra thought his knuckles might pop through the skin.

  “That’s why I went for him first. But it didn’t work out. Cops figured I was breaking in to steal his money. Moron driver thought so, too. Intruder has a knife and a sack, he must be a thief.”

  Penner’s snarl was a frosty finger skimming along Alessandra’s spine.

  “So be it, then,” he hissed. “I’m caught. I’ll go to prison as a thief. When I get out, I’ll be more careful. Can’t go for the driver straight off, so I’ll go for the bitch who I should have gone for in the first place. Her and the man who saved her miserable seat-changing life.”

  Alessandra struggled not to move, not to do anything that might affect the momentary trance he’d slipped into.

  “Got me a dog,” he said. “Easy enough to do that. Made sure you stayed late. I even told the floozy I’d be taking a bus from Rapid City to Phoenix, which was the name I gave the dog in case you missed that. I waited out of sight, watched the floozy leave. Perfect. But along came some pissed-off rancher, and I had to wait. Then, damn him to hell, up popped McBride with a bullet in him. I coulda done you both in the parking lot if that rancher hadn’t decided to park his truck smack in front of the clinic and have a long talk on his cell phone. He kept eyeballing the door, looked like he was gonna go in and do something to you himself. Then, wouldn’t you know it, another rancher pulled up behind him, and they started drinking and cutting up, pulling guns on each other and pretending to shoot.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Alessandra admitted in a cautious voice. She stole a glance at the windshield, saw nothing except darkness and felt her stomach muscles cinch. Apparently it hadn’t been McBride, after all.

  Penner’s upper lip curled. “Bang-bang, chug-chug, on and on and on. But finally both ranchers left. I thought, okay, here’s my chance. I was moving, already moving, when damned if another SOB didn’t muscle in. This one, though, he had the look. I moved on him to get to you—’cause by now I was good and riled and didn’t give a rat’s ass who died—it wouldn’t matter what kind of butt-kicking rifle I had. He’d have shot me first and wouldn’t have blinked doing it.”

  “Eddie,” Alessandra said quietly.

  A hideous grin split Penner’s face. “Was that his name? I never did know. Figured he died, though, because I saw him running, bent and bleeding, that night here at the motel, then I didn’t see him again. Fine, I thought to myself, that was him done. It was down to you, me and McBride now.”

  He used the tip of the blade to draw an X on Alessandra’s heart. She pressed her lips together and bit back a reaction.

  “So, here we are, Doc, you and me. No McBride for the moment, but he’ll come. We’re on a bus. Too bad I had to kill the fella who owned it, but he caught me trying to hot-wire the thing, so what else could I do? It’s serendipity. You see that, right? You’re gonna die the same way my sweet, sweet Amy did, and in a bus, to boot.”

  An image of the woman she’d crawled past flashed in Alessandra’s head, the blonde woman who’d been impaled by a shard of glass from one of the windows.

  Something in the trickle of light and shadow outside the bus shifted. As it did, Penner’s expression changed. Snapping out a hand, he trapped Alessandra’s face and squeezed hard.

  “What the hell am I doing?” he demanded in dawning disbelief. “Wasting precious time talking to you? Unless I got lucky and blew him up with that second stick of dynamite, McBride’ll be on the hunt. He’ll find us, too, he surely will. But when he does, you’ll have this knife in your chest and be as dead as my Amy. I’ll give him five seconds to look, five more to mourn, then he’ll be dead, too. Both of you gone in one night. Hallelujah, justice shall be served.”

  Alessandra’s heart raced as his expression moved from contempt to triumph. His hand shifted to catch her throat and he aimed the knife right at her chest.

  Time stopped, she swore it did, but only for a moment. The windshield suddenly smashed apart. When Penner swiveled his head, Alessandra seized the only chance she knew she’d get.

  Grabbing his wrist, she knocked his arm with her elbow and aimed a foot at his crotch.

  He dodged the kick, but lost his grip on the knife. Like a link in a chain, his hold on her throat also slackened. Not by much, but enough that when she kicked him again, this time in the stomach, she was able to wrench herself free.

  She was scrambling for the door when he caught her by the hair and yanked her backward. He swore loud and long, tried to throw her to the floor and pick up his knife at the same time.

  All she could see were his legs. Rolling onto her back, she used her foot on his knee.

  He let out a howl of pain, then rearing up, bared his teeth and tried to leap over her.

  She heard feet landing and glass crunching. Penner cursed louder. There was a thud and an expulsion of air. The next thing she knew, Penner was on the floor, McBride was on top of him and dust and glass were flying in every direction.

  “Get out, Alessandra,” McBride shouted. He slammed a fist into Penner’s face. “Now.”

  Rage and adrenaline must have fused in Penner, giving him more strength than he might otherwise have possessed. He struck back, got hold of his rifle and batted the gun from McBride’s hand.

  Alessandra spied the knife in her peripheral vision. She snatched it from the floor. “McBride!”

  He caught the hilt when she tossed it to him and deflected the rifle barrel a split second before Penner squeezed off two shots.

  “Alessandra, over here!” A frantic Larry beckoned to her through the broken front window. “McBride can take him.” As another shot went off, the old man flinched. “I think.”

  “I can’t just leave…” she began, then ducked as yet another shot rang out.

  She lifted her head to look and felt her heart stutter in her chest. McBride and Penner had disappeared.

  A clunk, a thump and two more shots reached her. From the bushes? She closed her eyes for a brief moment. They’d gone out the emergency exit.

  With no idea how to unlock the main door, Alessandra crawled through the broken window and slid down the hood of the bus to the ground.

  Larry climbed off the wheel well he’d been balancing on. “Listen,” he said as the bushes far ahead of them crackled and snapped. Alessandra would have run toward the sound if a bullet hadn’t whizzed past, sending both of them to the ground.

  “No, don’t!” Larry held her down. “Let McBride do what he’s been trained to—”

  He was cut off by Penner, who leaped from the underbrush, shoved him aside and launched himself at Alessandra.

  She braced. But with very little light and the dense growth making the shadows dark, she didn’t actually see what happened next. She only knew she was suddenly lying on her stomach next to Larry, and Penner was no longer there. No more shots rang out, and the sound of fighting simply stopped.

  She got back to her knees, squinted into the black. Nothing. There was nothing now except night sounds and Larry breathing heavily behind her.

  “McBride?” she whispered.

  Still no sound.

  Half afraid to move, she called his name again, then let out a scream as a pair of hands gripped her arms from behind.

  “It’s me.” A winded McBride drew her slowly to her feet. “I’m not hurt,” he said when she swung to face him. “It’s over, darlin’.” He reached a hand down to help Larry stand. “He’s dead.”

  “But how?” She swung back. “There were no more shots.”

  McBride nodded into the darkness. “He fell on the knife. It
went right through his chest.”

  Closing her eyes again, she turned back into him and let his arms encircle her. Relief, regret and exhaustion tumbled through the layer of shock that had seized control of her brain.

  McBride was alive. The man who’d tried to kill them was dead. The man whose wife had been impaled by a piece of glass in a bus accident seven years ago had been impaled himself by the very weapon he’d planned to use on the people he’d deemed responsible for his loss. His mistake, together with his obsession, had killed him. What could she or anyone say to that?

  As baffled onlookers began to appear, Larry propelled them away.

  Alone for the moment McBride tipped Alessandra’s head up so he could look into her eyes. “He’s gone, we’re alive and I’m grateful for both of those things. But I have one big question for you, darlin’. Who the hell was that guy?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I brought you a present, Alessandra.” Raven, who’d surprised her by showing up at Moe’s rescheduled ninetieth birthday party, waylaid her near one of the food tables in Larry’s barn.

  Close to three hundred people had crowded in so far, and Larry predicted another fifty likely would arrive before the night ran out.

  “Hasn’t been this much excitement in Ben’s Creek since the town got its first telephone, and I’m taking my granddad’s word on how big that was,” he’d confided earlier.

  Raven perused the groaning food tables while Alessandra opened the box that had been thrust into her hands.

  “Boxing mitts?” She fought a grin, raised a skeptical brow. “I told you on the phone, Raven, I’m not interested in cage boxing.”

  “Offer stands even so. And they’re bag mitts, for practicing. You can use them to fend off creepy men who blame you for their wives’ deaths. I got the gory details from a guy with three fingers as I was coming in. Left him trying to figure out how his wife’s pooch and my Rip might make a batch of little pit bull puppies.”

  “Put them in the same room. That should do it.”

  “Works for me.” Raven sampled a bowl of chili. “Man, I wish I could cook like this. So how’s McBride, and why isn’t he here with you?”

  “He and the sheriff are in Lancer. Apparently a death like Penner’s creates quadruple the usual paperwork. Add in murder, probable insanity, destruction of private and public property, the list goes on and you’ve got yourself a supersize headache.” She let the grin appear. “On the other hand, McBride’s used to all of that, so no big deal, just lots of busywork.”

  “What about you?”

  Alessandra shrugged, sniffed the chili. “I’m good. I’m here, anyway, and unless a certain angry bull breeder or his son-in-law decide I shouldn’t be, I’m perfectly safe.”

  “Are you perfectly happy?”

  “Working on it.”

  “What about plans?”

  “I— Hmm. Maybe I want a drink. You?”

  “Beer with a whiskey chaser.” Raven shrugged at the smile Alessandra sent her. “I’m not a girlie-girl. What can I say? McBride was worried about you, you know, that day he had to take his prisoner down to Cheyenne. I’m talking big-time worried. I think he knew there might be more going on than the fugitive thing. He wanted Clover to watch you, too, but I told him we’d do fine on our own. My opinion? Pretty and polished can be camo for a wildcat. Figure I was right.”

  “I didn’t kill Penner, Raven.”

  “But you agree he deserved to die.”

  “I don’t know what he deserved. He ran on hate for a very long time. I do think the bull breeder and his son-in-law are lucky to be alive. But then again, so am I.”

  “Thanks to your husband.”

  Alessandra dodged the orange-haired woman who’d been flirting with McBride last night—seriously, only last night?—smiled at Curly over a number of heads and drew Raven to the far barn wall.

  “Now that’s a bar,” the other woman remarked. “Twenty feet of thick plank and acres of bottles behind it. Guess I’ll be spending the night in Ben’s Creek. How’s the infamous local motel for rooms?”

  “Most of them need work.” Alessandra’s eyes sparkled. “Much to the owner’s delight. Ruth gets a full reno out of it and won’t have to pay a cent.”

  “He’s crazy about you, you know,” Raven said. “McBride, I mean, not the dead guy.”

  Larry walked over, sparing Alessandra the need to respond. “Sheriff’s here,” he yelled above the newly added sound of a live band. “Means McBride is, too.”

  “Hey, don’t make her run off.” Raven pointed at one of the beer kegs and held up two fingers. “I didn’t drive all this way just to play Santa Claus and hear a good story. You did a sweet job of fixing me and Rip up after we got hit. I think you should consider opening a clinic in Loden, for people and pets.”

  “Uh, that’s not possible…” Alessandra began, but Larry cut her off, while wagging a finger at Raven.

  “Sorry, but we have dibs on that idea. Doc Dyer’s about ready to retire. His replacement lives in Lancer and wakes up to his alarm clock playing reveille. Sheriff’s getting ready to call it quits, too, so we’ve got a better than decent job for McBride if he’s looking.”

  “He’s not.” A pair of familiar arms came down on Alessandra’s shoulders. “Was, but he found her, so the looking’s done for now. He’s also got a departmental leak to expose in Chicago before he does anything that involves change… With one beautiful exception.”

  “I think that’s our cue to scram, Larry.” Raven picked up the beer she’d ordered, handed the second one to him. “Fifty bucks says I can take the toughest female—or man under one-eighty—in an arm-wrestling match.”

  “You really do have to love small towns,” Alessandra remarked in their wake. She swung on her heel to smile at McBride. “So.” Her arms hooked loosely around his neck. “Here we are—you, me and a bunch of people we didn’t even know existed last week at this time.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s, well…you, really. Your life, your world. Danger’s an integral part of your makeup, McBride. You wouldn’t be complete without it hovering around you like a vulture.”

  “I’d rather see it as circling me like a hawk, but go on.”

  “You wouldn’t be complete,” she repeated, “and wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with seven years ago.” She ran her fingers over the bullet wound healing beneath his shirt. “I’ll admit, I’m not as driven as you are to live and work on that fine line between life and death, but I think I see the difference now between living on the edge and having a death wish.”

  “I don’t have a death wish, darlin’.” His eyes glittered. “At least, I haven’t for the past seven years.”

  “Penner used the word serendipity a lot while he was holding me on that bus.”

  “I’m not sure I want to think about that right now.”

  “Neither do I,” she agreed. “But the serendipity part, the concept of a happy accident, does fit. It applies. To us. To how we met. I’m being metaphorical, because the actual bus crash was a horrible accident and people died, but us accidentally meeting that night was a good thing, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “And me.”

  “There you go, then.” She bumped him with her hips. “I want to adopt a dog.”

  “What?”

  “A German shepherd with a white arrow on his back.”

  McBride stared at her. “You want to adopt Penner’s dog.”

  “He wasn’t Penner’s dog, he was Penner’s patsy. I want to call him Rio, because after you’ve exposed the leak in your department, I think we should take a vacation.”

  “We, as in you and me?”

  “Joan’ll dog sit.”

  “While we’re in Rio. Together.”

  She fingered the delicate chain that held her wedding rings. “We are still married, McBride. We’ll see where these—and yours—end up when we get back.”

  “From Rio.”

  “
My mother loved it there. Pretty sure you told me you loved it there, too.” Moving all the way in, she shimmied her lower body temptingly against his. “Choice is yours. I can always go alone.”

  “Don’t think so, darlin’.” He pulled her hips against his. “Give me a week, two tops, and we’re on that plane.”

  “Well, then.” Kissing him slowly on the mouth, she twined her fingers in his hair, then let her eyes sparkle into his. “I’m half-afraid to say it, but I really do love you, Marshal McBride. I don’t love all the secrets you keep, but you’re improving there. I also don’t love every aspect of your work, but it occurs to me that you wouldn’t like euthanizing someone’s pet, either. Not that I enjoy euthanizing any living creature, but you know what I mean. Everything’s relative, in love and work.”

  A smile appeared on his face, lighting his eyes. “That was a pretty convoluted statement, but the fact of it is, I love you right back. A lot. Even if you did kill some of the romance with the pet thing.”

  “You think?” The tease inside her smile blossomed. With her fingers still curled in his hair, she pulled his head down until his mouth was less than an inch from hers. “In that case, what say we forget about work altogether and give our full attention to the romance side of things? Let serendipity take over and see where we wind up.”

  “Long as we wind up there together,” McBride agreed.

  And covering her mouth with his, he took her on a ride more wild than the one that had brought them together seven years ago.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0963-3

  DAKOTA MARSHAL

  Copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline Goff

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.