Dakota Marshal. Jenna Ryan
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elderly storeowner lay facedown on the floor. She was searching for a pulse when the stockroom door burst open.
Alessandra glimpsed torn jeans and heard a snarling curse. Then her eyes snapped up, and she saw the gun.
ACTUALLY, IT WAS a rifle, and the thief nearly dropped it in his rush to escape.
Packs of cigarettes spilled from the inside of his zipped jacket. He hurdled Alessandra and the store owner, scrambled under the pass-through and took a swing at McBride.
She would have jumped up, but the owner’s bony fingers snared her wrist and held fast.
“Boy got hold of some funny mushrooms,” he whispered hoarsely. “His ma called me right before he barged in. She reckons he’s seeing pink elephants about now.”
Hearing a thwack, Alessandra raised her head. No surprise, the thief hadn’t gotten past McBride. “Don’t think so. Stars, maybe.” She returned her attention to the fallen man. “Are you hurt?”
“Winded.” With her help, he got slowly to his feet. “Thought it best to take a dive when the boy barreled in and knocked me aside… Oh, there we go, neat as you please.” He beamed at McBride, who was crouched next to the dazed youth. “Now, you put those smokes back where they belong, young man. I’ll take the rifle,” he said to McBride, who was currently holding it. “It’s just a BB, but that’s plenty dangerous when your bones are as brittle as mine.” Repositioning his glasses, he hobbled over to the counter. “These your baskets?”
The man’s store-bought smile widened when he realized how much merchandise he was looking at. “Seems this is my lucky night, after all.” He squinted at Alessandra. “You and your man fixing to camp a spell?”
“Yes—I mean, no.” She glanced at McBride but couldn’t read his expression in the dusky light. “Yes, we’re going to camp. But not here.” Inspiration struck. “We’re on our way to Canada.”
The old man sighed his disappointment. After he’d totaled the items, she understood why. “Nothing on special this week, huh?”
“Got a good price on hip waders.”
“We’ll pass.” McBride handed over the necessary cash.
“Stick to portabello mushrooms,” Alessandra advised the youth, who was slumped in a chair by the door waiting for his mother to arrive.
McBride practically airlifted her through the door and into his truck.
“I have a feeling you’re not happy.”
“Two people can identify us, Alessandra. That wasn’t the scenario I was going for.”
They bounced through a large dip and back onto the road. “Relax, McBride. The old man couldn’t begin to describe us, and all that kid saw was two— Damn.” She hissed out a frustrated breath. “I called you McBride back there, didn’t I?”
“That you did, darlin’.”
A 4x4 pulled out of a hidden road ahead of them. The driver wove from side to side for half a mile before finally veering into the parking lot of a ramshackle bar and grill.
“Wanna risk it?” McBride surprised her by asking.
She suspected he knew how she’d respond. “All those rusted-out pickups in the lot make the place look very Eddielike. Still, if he did follow us, maybe we’ll get lucky, and he’ll stop in, drink himself under the table and never make it to the general store.”
“Always a possibility.”
Out of nowhere, an indescribable sensation swept over her skin, as if a cold breeze had just passed over her grave.
Puzzled, she looked back toward the bar. No one was in the vicinity, only the rusty pickups and a tired-looking motorcycle. So why did she suddenly feel as if some evil entity was tracking their every move?
Chapter Four
One hot shower, one makeshift meal and one weird feeling later, Alessandra found herself pacing the cabin’s interior like a caged tiger. Time alone to think wasn’t necessarily a good thing, and she’d thought a lot in the five minutes it had taken McBride to shower.
He hadn’t shaved, though, she noticed when he emerged bare-chested and with his jeans only half-fastened.
“What?” Her unintentional stare had him looking down at himself. “Did I forget something?
No, but she needed to. It shouldn’t be legal for a man to be so sexy. Since she shouldn’t be thinking that way, she drew a deep breath and resumed her pacing. “You’re not bleeding.”
A smile played on his mouth. “You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“You should wear a bandage.”
Towel in hand, he held his arms out to the sides. “Say the word, Alessandra. I’ll even let you slip your poultice under the gauze just to show how much I trust you.”
Drumming up her own smile, she met his eyes. “You’re very brave, given the circumstances.”
“And your deteriorating mood,” he added.
“More like strained. It’s only been one day and, to this point, our separation’s been fairly amicable.”
He moved closer, his gaze fixed on hers with a smoky intensity that would have unnerved her if she hadn’t been prepared for the sexual punch.
“You won’t get around me with smoldering looks, McBride. After four years of marriage and eighteen months apart, I’ve developed an immunity.”
“You make me sound like measles.”
“You’re a different kind of danger, but still not something I need in my life right now.”
He continued his unswerving advance. “What is it you want, Alessandra?”
She opted to take the loaded question at face value. “To go home.”
“That’s not possible. What else?”
“Stability.”
“If you wanted that, you’d have stayed in Indiana and married the boy next door.”
He was getting very close. Wisdom dictated she move away. She didn’t.
“Trying to skew my thoughts won’t work, either, McBride.”
Another faint smile appeared. “It’s not your thoughts I want to skew.”
Okay, this was getting out of hand. She had every right to be annoyed at him for sucking her into the crazed vortex of his life. Her friends and his insisted he had a death wish, and while Alessandra didn’t disagree, she saw it more as a burning need to prove that he was the antithesis of his father. Wherever the truth resided, however, now wasn’t the time to delve into it.
Hooking a wistful finger in the chain around her neck, she toyed with the delicate links. “You didn’t have to change your lifestyle or your goals for me. I told you that before we separated. I’m not a cop or a U.S. marshal, though I do applaud both professions. I used the wrong word when I said I was looking for stability. What I should have said was ‘sanity.’ You know the deal, McBride, a halfway normal life where I’d be met at the door after work by my pet, not by a homicidal junkie who’s been hiding out behind our trash cans for the better part of the day, looking for a way to extract his revenge on the person who offered his girlfriend a deal in exchange for information.”
“That was one incident.”
“What about the guy who jumped out at us in a restaurant parking lot? Or the nut case who called our home and told me not to try starting my car? What about the candies that arrived courtesy of a drug lord you’d helped to expose?”
“There was nothing but candies in that box.”