A Secret In Conard County. Rachel Lee
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would have been easier to slip away if you’d reached Seattle or some other big city, but it happened here, a place the state highway runs through and very little else. You can head east, you can head west out of here. If you have time you could get to a bigger city. We don’t know how much time there is, so we’ll just keep a friendly eye out.”
Erin slowly shook her head, and finally Lance spoke. “Maybe it’s better it happened here.”
She turned those brown eyes on him. “Why?”
“Because strangers stick out around here. Easy for us to keep an eye out for you.”
“And we have a fairly good department,” Gage added. “You could have wound up someplace where they couldn’t have provided the coverage we can.”
Lance felt his heart tug a bit as he watched Erin lower her head. From what little he knew, she’d been through a hell of a lot, and now she’d been sandbagged. But what she finally said surprised him.
“This isn’t fair to you guys. I should just hit the road as fast as I can and disappear again. Besides, he’s a bomber. That type usually hunkers down. Him following me across the country is so unlikely.”
Gage looked at Lance. No doubt, the sheriff was leaving it to him since he’d volunteered to be on this woman’s protection detail.
“No,” he heard himself say. “Maybe he won’t follow you. We can’t know that with any certainty. It’s enough for me that your boss is worried about it. Regardless, you need more rest, and we can make sure you get it. Providing protection is part of what we do.”
“But to a single individual? That’s expensive. Man, I should have just let them lock me in the safe house.”
“We provide as much protection as any individual needs,” Lance replied. “Sometimes that’s a whole lot. As for the safe house...”
“As for the safe house,” Gage said, “apart from going nuts, which I know I would have, I can tell you this. I was undercover DEA. Nobody was supposed to know who I was or where my family lived. We got found anyway. I personally don’t have a whole lot of faith in safe houses.”
Erin looked at the two of them, one after another, and he watched something change in her face. He tensed and waited, expecting to hear her announce she was hitting the road anyway. But then she knocked the wind from him.
“To hell with it,” she said bluntly. “I’m sick of this creep. If he’s crazy enough to follow me, if he wants a showdown at high noon, this is as good a place as any.”
* * *
Outside, she stood on the sidewalk, breathing in the warm summer air, taking in her surroundings. Lance stood beside her but said nothing. He seemed to know when not to say anything—a rare quality.
“That’s the diner?” she asked, gesturing at the sign she saw half a block away.
“Yup. City Diner, aka Maude’s diner. Wanna walk or drive?”
“I need to walk. Otherwise everything tightens up and I’ll never get my strength back.”
One stoplight. The end of the earth. Only two ways out. A kill box. But a charming one. If she had to take a stand, this was indeed as good a place as any. She just hoped there would be no collateral damage.
She stepped into the street when it was clear and began crossing. With every step, some part of her protested but she ignored it. Nor was she unaware that the man beside her measured his pace to her much slower one. No comment, he just did it.
When they reached the diner, pain had caused a little perspiration to break out on her forehead. Not bad. Better than it had been. She just wished there was some way to speed her recovery.
He opened the diner door for her and let her choose where to sit. She preferred booths and headed for one, hoping she could ease into it without too much trouble. With her back to a wall and the street visible through the big plate glass window, she felt safer.
She winced a few times and had to bite back a groan, but she slid into the booth without too much ado. Lance sat across from her.
“Don’t they give you something for that pain?” he asked.
“I’ve got enough prescription painkillers in my suitcase to raise eyebrows. I don’t want to take them.”
He nodded. “Latte?”
“Please.”
So when the Gorgon’s daughter, who looked like a younger clone of Maude, arrived to slap down the menus, he promptly ordered their coffee and asked for a few minutes. Erin barely glanced at her, just long enough to take in the name Mavis. “A whole family,” she whispered.
Lance laughed quietly. “The parts I’ve seen anyway.”
She tried to smile as she squirmed a bit, seeking that elusive position that would be more comfortable.
“Maybe,” he suggested quietly, “you could trust me just a bit and take a little pain medicine. Not enough to make you loopy, but maybe enough to give you some ease.”
She answered with the bald truth. “I’m afraid of it. When I was in the hospital they kept me pretty well doped. If I need a brain, I don’t want it stuffed with cotton and rainbows.”
He nodded understanding. “But maybe you could let us be your brains for a few hours. I doubt the guy could be here already. You can’t get much farther from anywhere than here. You could give yourself a few hours to rest some more. You need rest as much as activity, you know.”
“Speaking from experience?” she asked dubiously.
“Four gunshot wounds of experience,” he answered flatly.
She felt small. He’d already alluded to a bad confrontation and hinted that he’d been wounded, too. She had just assumed...well, what had she assumed? That nobody had ever really walked in her shoes? No, she definitely was nowhere near par. “Sorry.”
“For what? I get your worries. I also understand that part of what we’re trying to do here is take some of this off your shoulders. Gage understood why you didn’t like the idea of a safe house. I understand how much you must resent needing all this recovery time. Of course, I didn’t have to wonder if I was being stalked by a killer either.”
She met his amazing blue-green eyes just as the lattes dropped in front of them. A pulse of pure, hot desire hit her core—probably the only place that didn’t hurt, and he was making it ache.
“You look at them menus yet?” Mavis demanded.
“Still trying to decide between breakfast and lunch,” Lance answered, giving her a friendly smile. “Hey, Mavis, you’re not that busy right now. You can spare the booth.”
“Yeah, right,” the woman grumped, but she moved on.
Lance turned back to Erin. “We’d better hurry or she’ll order for us.”
“Would she?” An honest laugh trickled out of Erin and she relaxed internally as she reached for the menu.
“She would,” Lance answered. “Years ago, when the former sheriff was trying to lose some weight, it turned into an epic battle. He liked to come over here for coffee. Well, Maude was always slamming a piece of pie down in front of him. Got to be quite a thing.”
“Did the old sheriff lose the weight?”
“Twenty pounds. But I think he must have been cutting out stuff elsewhere.”
“He didn’t have to eat it.”
“He did if he wanted to keep coming in here. Never insult Maude’s pie.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She was also really starting to like this place. In a very short time, Lance had made her feel like she was an insider, not an outsider, an unusual way for her to feel. Generally speaking, Feds were