Special Agent. Valerie Hansen
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he didn’t believe for a second. “You were supposed to be marrying the man. How could you possibly not have known?”
“Because he was slick and because I was naive, I guess.” Her cheeks warmed visibly and his chest constricted when he saw moisture glistening behind her lashes. But he reminded himself he had a job to do. “Look,” Katerina went on, “I’m not stupid. I actually have a pretty decent IQ. But Vern wasn’t like the other men I’d met. He said all the right things at the right times and I fell for him. How was I to know he was using my father’s horse business as a cover to distribute drugs?”
“Intuition? Didn’t Kowalski ever say or do anything that made you suspicious before he was arrested?”
“No.” She broke eye contact. “Later.”
Aha! Now they were finally making progress. “When?”
“Promise you won’t look at me like I’m a horse short of a full team?”
“Yes. Go on, Ms. Garwood.”
“When I had a scare earlier this afternoon, the nurses said I imagined everything and blamed it on my injury and pain medicine.”
Leaning closer, Max listened carefully. “Is that what you think?”
“No. Well, maybe. I know I was terrified. I was drifting in and out of consciousness when somebody clamped a hand over my mouth and told me not to struggle.”
“Here?” Every instinct in him was on alert. “They told me you’d been having nightmares but what you claim is highly unlikely.”
“I know,” Katerina agreed. “The nurses who came after I shouted for help insisted I’d been dreaming. I’ve started thinking they may be right. It’s just that my lip bled and hurt more afterward and I can’t see any other reason for that much physical change, not even my screaming when I got so scared.”
“Describe your assailant.”
She huffed. “Pick up any mystery novel and you’ll know. Ski mask, hospital clothes and gloves. No prints, no ID, no nothing. He wasn’t as tall as you are and not as muscular, but...”
“Okay. What makes you think he had anything to do with Kowalski?”
“Because he told me Vern sent him,” Katerina said haltingly. “I—I thought he was going to kidnap me. That’s when I started yelling.”
Max gave her the kind of stern, menacing look he usually reserved for perps he was grilling. “You didn’t want to go with a friend of your fiancé?”
He saw her fists clench. “No.”
“Because he scared you?”
Despite the obvious discomfort of pushing herself up with her elbows, she met his severe gaze with one of her own. “No,” she almost shouted before lowering her voice, her throat raw. “Because I am an honest person and I want nothing to do with criminals, their friends or their disgusting business. When is everybody going to get that straight?”
The glistening of her unshed tears was more convincing than her insistence. Either she was a great actress or she was truly upset.
Max stood and backed away to make a call. He arranged to have the police check recent activity on the security cameras monitoring the halls and place a guard outside Katerina’s room for the night. Then he returned to her. “When you’re released from here I’ll come back and drive you home. Then, if you’re up to it, I’d like to take you back to the ranch and walk you through exactly what you did before I arrived.” He handed her a business card after jotting his private cell number on it. “Call me when you’re ready to go.”
“What if I refuse to take orders from you and arrange my own ride?”
“I don’t advise it.”
Katerina nodded. “I’ll call, but not because you’re scowling at me. And not because I’m guilty of anything and hope to fool you. I’ll call because you believe there really was a stranger in my room when everybody else insists I’m crazy.”
In retrospect, Katerina was not keen on asking the taciturn federal agent for a ride home the following day. The problem was, she had few other options. Her poor pickup truck was probably toast after the barn blew up and except for a few friends who worked in town and maybe the ranch foreman, there was nobody she felt she could call. Heath McCabe would be in deep trouble with her dad if she asked him, so she did the sensible thing and dialed Max West’s private number.
“West.”
“Um, hi. It’s Katerina Garwood. They’ve discharged me and I need a ride if your offer is still open.”
“Of course. Did you have a quiet night?”
“As quiet as it gets in a hospital,” she said with a wry smile.
“Understood. I can be there in twenty. Does that work?”
“Yes, I think I’ll last that long. I’d walk down to the cafeteria for a latte if I wasn’t still a little dizzy.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to leave?”
It was refreshing to hear genuine concern reflected in his question. “The doctor says I am so I’m going. This is not a fun place. I want out.”
“Hang tight. I’m on my way.”
She wanted to tell him how truly thankful she was that he’d made himself available but did not. Her instinct to trust had been so ravaged by Vern’s betrayal and her father’s rejection she couldn’t rely on her instincts. Not yet. Besides, considering all she’d learned about law enforcement in the past few months, Max was probably only being nice to her in order to catch whoever had menaced her or set the bomb at the ranch. Or because he still had doubts about her innocence. Given his job and her background, she figured the agent would become even more suspicious if she acted overly friendly.
Katerina let her thoughts wander as she perched on the edge of the bed in the too-big green scrub outfit the nurses had provided. Her own clothes were ruined. The back of the shirt she’d been wearing looked as if it had been blasted with a shotgun, as her tender shoulder blades kept reminding her. Jeans were tougher but hers were so dirty she’d refused to put them on. Her leather cowboy boots were about the only thing she could still wear, although they slipped without thick socks.
“I should fix my hair,” she muttered, wondering why it mattered when she wasn’t meeting anyone but Agent West. Nevertheless, she slid off the bed, took a second to steady herself, then made her way to the bathroom mirror. Nurses had helped her shower and the hospital had provided a comb but her long, wavy hair resisted efforts to tame it. Pulling on tangles made her scalp hurt unless she carefully held each portion, so the job took a while and was less than perfect. Well, too bad. If her volunteer taxi driver didn’t approve, so what?
That hostile attitude not only struck her as wrong, it made her blush. Whatever his motives, Max was no chauffeur. He was going out of his way to be nice to her. The least she could do was try to look presentable.
A knock on the door startled her. She steadied her balance on the sink and called, “Come in.”
One look at him today, when she was fully lucid and aware, took her breath away. Not only was he tall and ruggedly handsome, his dark blue uniform shirt fit the way it should, displaying a powerful form with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, unlike many men his age. How old was he? she wondered. It was impossible to tell, although her best guess put him somewhere in his early thirties. Definitely not over-the-hill. Far from it.
Max acknowledged her with a brief nod. “Ready?”
“Absolutely.” She began to move toward him, hiking up her sagging scrubs as the pants started to slip.
He