Shadow Protector. Jenna Ryan
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not giving me much in the way of answers, Logan.”
His gray eyes glittered. “Should tell you something about the questions.”
Undeterred, she ran a finger around the base of her glass. “You don’t like small talk or, apparently, polite conversation. No problem. I don’t need to know your history, and you certainly don’t need to know mine.” She made a visual circle of the increasingly noisy diner. “This whole take- the-witness-with-the-faulty-memory to Wyoming deal was Sig’s idea. It had nothing to do with me. I have relatives in Phoenix, Skagway, Tulsa and yes, Bugs, even Albuquerque. I have a cousin who’s a law enforcement officer and an exmilitary aunt who flies supplies from Washington state to central Alaska. I could have gone to any number of people for help, but I went with Sig and wound up here. Why? No idea, but hey, you put your life in someone else’s hands, who knows what’ll happen.”
“Are you done?” Logan asked.
“My uncle Jeffrey says I’m never done, but as a shrink, I’m supposed to be a good listener, so the floor’s yours.”
He held her gaze. “What you’re supposed to be—what you should be, Sera—is scared.”
She summoned a faint smile, glanced away. “Believe me when I tell you, if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be anywhere near you, your outlaw horses or your town.” A shiver danced along her spine. “Nothing personal, Logan, but I get along very well with cities. Violent death, however, rattles me. I watched my partner’s ashes being entombed last week. I watched her father break down and her mother lose a hard-fought battle to a bottle of cognac. I saw Sig lose a friend he’s worked with for twenty of his thirty years on the force. I did all that with the knowledge that lurking somewhere in my head is a killer’s identity. If I can retrieve it, no one else will have to suffer at his hands. So, yes, I’m scared, but not as much as I am determined to watch the person who’s responsible—and whose face I swear I’m going to remember—fry.”
Unexpected humor glinted in Logan’s eyes. “You must have some outlaw blood yourself, Doc. I’ve never met a shrink who wanted to see anyone fry.”
Her first reaction was to defend the remark. Her second was to cover a smile with a bite of chicken. “I won’t tell you what my uncle says about my mouth. I will tell you I’m sorry I dumped all that on you when we’ve known each other for less than sixty minutes.”
He moved a shoulder. “Dumping’s what people do on cops, town, city or state. It rolls off unnoticed after a while … Nadine?” He spoke to the blonde who was balancing six main courses. “You mind wrapping these dinners up for us? “
Sera’s brows elevated. “Are we leaving?”
“Unless you want to get hit on by every guy here, yeah.”
For the first time since Sig had gone outside, she looked around the room. Not every male eye was turned in their direction, but more than half were.
She let the amusement blossom. “Because I assume they’re not staring at you, I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that you don’t get many female strangers in this town.”
Logan picked up his hat. “Oh, we get plenty of strange females, just not many you’d call witchy.”
The blonde returned with their bagged dinners. “You want the steak wrapped, too, Logan?”
He finished his beer. “No point. Give your dogs a treat, and put the dinner on my tab.”
The woman flipped a dishtowel over her shoulder. “Your friend beat you to the punch there. He paid the bill on his way out.”
Something unpleasant snaked through Sera’s stomach. Although she recognized it for the blend of dread and certainty it was, she settled for a mild, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Logan assessed her as he returned the hat to his head. “He told you he wasn’t staying, Sera.”
“And I’m just supposed to go with that? With this?” She fixed her gaze in the general vicinity of his eyes. “With you? No questions asked or really answered, and no choice in the matter?” Her control slipped a notch and she leaned forward. “Logan, Sig broke a mirror at the safe house and freaked over it for days. We were driving east within an hour of his partner’s death. ‘Gotta leave fast,’ he said. Yet, he went ten minutes out of his way because he wouldn’t go past the path lab where his partner’s body had been taken. Said he’d rather walk under a dozen ladders. He also didn’t tell anyone in the department where we were going, and I know his captain personally. He’s a forty-year man with commendations as long as my arm.”
“What’s your point, Doctor?”
Did she have one? Right then, Sera’s thoughts were too scattered to collect, let alone organize.
It had to be exhaustion combined with a touch of hysteria that made her want to laugh. “You know what?” She pushed back. “I haven’t got a clue what I’m saying or why I’m even talking. I need air, space and no more Willie Nelson for at least twelve hours.”
She also needed to be away from the man across the table. The ridiculously sexy cop who disliked cities and personal questions and quite possibly his old friend Sig at this moment.
Standing, Logan drew her to her feet. “You look overwhelmed.”
“You think?’
“If it helps, Sig left your bags behind my truck.”
“Sorry, Chief, not feeling any better here.”
The shadowed look he cast her brought a sigh coupled with a strong desire to bolt.
“Okay, fine. Message received. Sig’s trying to keep me safe, as a person and as a potential witness. What I’m still trying to process is why he brought me to you. He talked about a potential leak within the department, but please don’t tell me he suspects his own captain.”
“Twenty years in homicide, ten in vice, what can I say, he’s jaded.”
“You sure you don’t mean paranoid?”
Pressing a hand to her hip, Logan eased her behind him as he forged a path to the door. “Sig’s a cautious man, Sera. He wants to keep you alive, and this was the best place he could think of to make that happen.”
A man with no bottom teeth winked and offered her his drink.
Logan’s unruffled, “Doctor, Billy,” had the leer fading to a scowl and the man scuttling backward so fast he almost knocked the plates from Nadine’s loaded arm.
Sera tapped his back. “Care to explain that reaction?”
“Billy’s father turned ninety-eight last June. Doc Prichard said he needed a vitamin shot. The old man died that night.”
“Uh—well, hmm.” Unsure how to respond, Sera tried not to grin. “Ninety-eight, huh? Billy doesn’t really believe it was the vitamin shot—” She let an oblique hand motion finish the question. “Does he?”
“Yeah, he does, and he’s not alone. Most of the people you’ll meet around here are perfectly normal, but for every fifty, there’s a Billy or a Jessie-Lynn. Rumor has it aliens grabbed Jess twelve years ago after the Founder’s Day parade.” Logan opened the door—and closed it in the face of a large, hairy man whose hand had been mere inches from Sera’s breast.
Removing his hat, he placed it on her head and smiled just enough to momentarily steal her breath. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Dr. Hudson, but you’re not in Kansas any more. And while you might think the Emerald City is a little off the map—be warned, it has nothing on Blue Ridge, Wyoming.”
HE SHOULDN’T HAVE said that, Logan thought as he started his Explorer. But, dammit, he didn’t want the burden of a targeted witness’s safety riding on his shoulders. Add in the fact that she was a jaw-dropping female of—what had Sig told him—twenty-nine, with credentials that shouldn’t be