In the Lawman's Protection

by Janie Crouch

  “You just need to come with us,” Lillian said, taking another moment to glare at Ren. “Don’t say anything, okay? Just let Ren do the talking.”

  “Do the talking to who?”

  Neither Lillian nor Ren answered. Lillian just wrapped an arm around Natalie’s waist and led her toward the town.

  Just before they made it onto the streets, Lillian grabbed a walkie-talkie from her waist and spoke into it. “Sheriff, I found them! They’re here on the west side of town near Mill Road! Going to need medical, but they’re both alive and relatively unharmed!”

  The excitement in her voice was in direct opposition to the anger in her eyes for Ren.

  “Damn it, I told everyone to use the private channel if we learned anything.” The sheriff came back on the walkie-talkie a moment later. “The press is on this channel.”

  “Oopsies,” Lillian said. “Sorry, Sheriff. I forgot.”

  She most definitely had not forgotten.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Natalie whispered. Every second her heart sank lower in her chest.

  “Congratulations. You and Ren are hikers who have been lost for nearly a week and have somehow miraculously survived.”

  Natalie shook her head. “But we weren’t hiking. We were on the train. The train you sold me a ticket to.”

  “Natalie...” Ren reached for her, but she took a step back.

  She could see people rushing toward them now. A lot of people. People with lights and cameras.

  “What have you done?” she whispered. Not wanting to believe what she was finally beginning to understand. Ren had been using her.

  “I’ve got to go,” Lillian said. “I can’t be in any of the press footage. Freihof knows me.”

  Lillian knew Damien.

  Ren knew Damien.

  Natalie fought to hold on as the whole world spun around her, the snow seeming to rise up and swallow her whole. She couldn’t fall. Couldn’t allow it to bury her.

  Because this time no amount of begging was going to get her out.

  * * *

  THE NEXT HOUR passed in a blur for Natalie. Just before the press had completely descended on them, Ren had ripped his jacket open just a little farther so his wound was more noticeable.

  They’d been led to the high school auditorium, quickly checked out by a medic, then sent in front of the cameras. Ren kept Natalie plastered to his side. When it became obvious she wasn’t interested in—or capable of—much response, the reporters had turned all their questions to Ren.

  He answered them with practiced ease.

  They were two hikers whose GPS had failed and then they had gotten caught in a freak storm. No mention of a train crash at all. When Natalie glanced over to the side and saw the young man with the sandwich who had hit on her on the train, still very much alive, she realized the extent of what was going on.

  It had all been a setup. From the very beginning. The moment she’d set foot in the bus station. She couldn’t even fathom the resources it had taken to fool her to such a degree.

  Ren answered more questions as Natalie glanced the other way and saw Brandon and Andrea, the Omega Sector agents who’d come to her house, standing in a darkened corner. Andrea smiled gently at Natalie, an obvious attempt at some sort of apology for what was happening, but Natalie just ignored it. They were all working together. Every single event and action of the past week had been in careful deliberation to get them right here in front of dozens of news cameras.

  Where Damien would be sure to see her.

  Ren, or Warren Thompson, as he’d been introduced, was great with the reporters. Charming. Handsome. So photogenic that every producer in the country probably couldn’t wait to get this happy-ending story in front of as many viewers as possible. Ratings through the roof.

  “A mountain lion, not behaving normally because it had been injured, became aggressive and attacked me. If it hadn’t been for Natalie...”

  The reporters launched into more questions that he answered.

  “Natalie pulled me out of the river.

  “Natalie amazingly managed to get my unconscious half-frozen carcass to the hunter’s cabin.

  “Natalie was able to stitch me up.

  “Natalie is very definitely the reason I’m still alive and we’re both here.”

  She realized he was saying her name over and over for a reason: to draw attention to it. So that any soundbites that were used had a better chance of including her name.

  “Natalie and I are truly touched by the onslaught of support and thankful to be alive. But I’m sure you can appreciate how tired we are and our need to be more thoroughly checked out by medical professionals, but we will definitely be here for at least three or four more days, until we’re cleared to travel. On behalf of both Natalie and me, thank you.”

  Her name again. They were throwing her in Damien’s face.

  She was bait.

  And she had no doubt at all that Ren had just signed her death warrant.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Natalie was alive.

  After talking to the people who’d owned the Santa Barbara house had proved to be a dead end, Damien had been forced to wait, wondering if it was all true. Until he could see her with his own eyes, he wouldn’t be able to believe it.

  Waiting for another call to come in concerning her on the tapped phone had been agonizing. And even when it had come, the information hadn’t quite made sense. But it had gotten him the information he needed: something was happening in Riverton and it concerned Natalie.

  He’d had to keep a very low profile since this tiny little town had been crawling with Omega agents for the last day and a half. He’d seen Brandon and Andrea Han, not to mention SWAT team members Lillian Muir and Ashton Fitzgerald. All people he’d battled in the past.

  It would’ve been so easy to take them out one by one. But that would’ve cost him his chance to see Natalie. To see if it was really Natalie they were so convinced was alive.

  He had no doubts now.

  He could feel rage crashing through his system. It was all he could do to remain behind the large video camera in the high school auditorium, careful to keep his face hidden, rather than run up onto the stage, grab her and escape.

  Natalie was alive.

  Not only that, she was fully aware of who she was and what she was doing. Which meant only one thing: she had deliberately run from him six years ago. Deceived him.

  Defied him.

  His fingers clenched around the edge of the camera until he felt pieces of plastic break off in his hands. He forced himself to breathe in and out deeply, to get his rage under control.

  There would be plenty of time to correct Natalie’s behavior. To punish her. To teach her that her conduct was unacceptable.

  He looked at her tucked up against the man who was speaking. This Warren Thompson fellow who seemed to have the press eating out of his hand. Was he a member of Omega Sector? Damien didn’t know, had never seen him or heard his name, although he’d spent extensive time studying the organization.

  It didn’t matter. He would have to die, of course. He dared to touch the perfect Natalie? The man must die.

  Sadly, it was probably time for Natalie to die, as well. If she was willing to deceive Damien in this way, to throw away their perfect marriage, then she obviously was broken beyond repair.

  Maybe with enough correction, enough punishment, she could be fixed. Probably not, but he wouldn’t know until he tried.

  Omega Sector once again was putting themselves between Damien and what belonged to him. And Natalie did belong to him whether she wanted to accept it or not.

  No matter. Omega would soon be so busy trying to clean up the mess he’d made with his handy-dandy biological canisters that Natalie would be the last of their worries.

  Couldn’
t she feel it? The pull between them? The connection even from across the room? Not once did she even look up, so he had to assume she’d lost touch with what had been so special between them.

  It was a shame Natalie would have to die, but it couldn’t be helped. As a matter of fact, his lovely wife had just helped him make the decision about where to release the biological contaminants.

  His perfect wife was gone. He would punish her, then bury her.

  And this time when she died, she would truly be dead.

  Chapter Nineteen

  An hour later Ren was calling himself every foul name he could think of. He’d expected Natalie’s anger. For her to fume, scream, throw a few punches at him.

  He would’ve gladly taken them over her blankness.

  He hadn’t been making it up when he’d told the press they’d needed a thorough examination by the medics. The doctor had winced at the ugly sight of the stitches in his shoulder, but had declared that they would do the job. It would just mean that Ren would always have a scar there, much more pronounced than it would’ve been if he’d been stitched by a professional in the hospital.

  Ren had a feeling he was going to have much more than just this one scar by the time this mission was over.

  The doctor had given him an antibiotic shot to help fight off any remaining infection and declared him in fairly good health, all things considered.

  Ren had demanded to see Natalie immediately. He needed to talk to her. To explain.

  As if she hadn’t figured it out already by herself.

  Panic had him entering the room where she was being examined immediately after knocking. Like him, Natalie had been given a new set of clothes. She was facing the opposite direction, pulling a sweater down over her back.

  A back covered in bruises.

  “What the hell is wrong with your back?” he growled.

  Natalie pulled the sweater the rest of the way down, spinning toward him.

  “I realize you’re in charge of this operation, Agent McClement,” the Omega medic said. “But please wait for permission to enter an examination room in the future.”

  Ren ignored the doctor. “What’s wrong with your back?” he asked Natalie.

  Her eyes just stared at him. No anger. Just blankness. Totally withdrawn. She sat down in a chair and began putting on tennis shoes that had been provided for her.

  She obviously wasn’t going to answer so he turned to the medic. “What happened?”

  He didn’t look like he was going to answer, either, so Ren took a quiet step forward. “You can either tell me now, or I can read your report in an hour, which will be your last here before you start looking for a new job. If she’s injured I need to know about it for this operation.”

  And because how the hell had he not known she was hurt?

  “Ms. Anderson has extensive bruising on her back, shoulders and hips from repeated contact with the ground. Painful, but nothing that won’t heal in the next few days.”

  Ren turned to Natalie. “How did you come in constant contact with the ground enough to bruise that much?”

  She didn’t answer, just kept messing with her shoelaces like they contained the answer to every mystery in the universe, although she still hadn’t tied them.

  He turned back to the medic.

  “Evidently it took concerted effort to get you from the frozen river, back to the cabin. Ms. Anderson didn’t have the strength to get you there on her own, so she used momentum and gravity to move you forward. Unfortunately that meant throwing herself onto the ground over and over. So...extensive bruising.”

  Ren ran a hand over his face. “Thank you.”

  He moved to crouch down in front of Natalie, who was still messing with her shoelaces. Gently brushing her fingers aside, he tied her shoes for her, then placed his hands on her ankles until she finally looked at him.

  What rested behind those blue eyes was just as bruised as her back and hips, if not more so. He had known it wouldn’t be easy to explain what he’d done, why they needed her help to catch her ex.

  But he never dreamed it would put this look in her eyes. Haunted. Empty.

  Bruised.

  “Peaches...”

  She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was hoarse as if she’d screamed until it had broken. “Don’t you dare call me that.”

  Ren turned back to look at the medic. “Are you done here? Can she and I talk alone?”

  The man nodded and walked out. Ren stepped back and leaned against the table.

  “I work for—”

  “Omega Sector. Yeah, I figured that part out already.”

  “How?”

  She looked at him before turning to study the wall. “I saw that couple, Brandon and Andrea, who were at the Santa Barbara house last week, during the press conference. I saw the guy who hit on me on the train there, too, so I’m assuming it was all a setup. No real train accident.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “I suppose I should be glad nobody died. Although I’ve been so caught up getting laid that it wasn’t like I really cared, anyway.”

  Ren gripped the table forcefully. “Don’t you dare talk about yourself—what we shared—that way. You thought you were surviving. There was no shame in what you did or how you reacted.”

  “I’m sure you see it that way,” she whispered, looking away.

  “I mean it. You want to be mad at me for what I did, how I deceived you, that’s fine. You have every right. But you did nothing wrong.”

  He wished she would get mad at him. Anything would be better than this blankness. A shell of the woman he knew.

  I completely lost myself. I was the perfect shell.

  Tendrils of memories flowed through his mind. Words she’d said while he was in and out of the fever.

  “Natalie, Omega Sector is a powerful law enforcement agency. The best of the very best. We’re going to protect you.”

  She just shook her head.

  “Three weeks ago your ex-husband was part of a plan that would’ve killed tens of thousands of people if Omega hadn’t stopped him. Freihof has also been responsible for the killing or wounding of multiple agents and civilians over the last few months. When we discovered you were alive we thought we might be able to obtain a clue about his whereabouts.”

  Now she looked at him. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve spent the last six years hiding from him in case he figured out I was alive.”

  “I know that now, but I didn’t at the time. You were staying in a million-dollar beach house, going to work in fancy office buildings each day. It looked like maybe you were either working with Freihof or providing for him in some way.”

  “I wasn’t,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Ren repeated. He could feel his heart ripping in two. “And we were going to follow you, talk to you, see what happened and how you might possibly help us catch him. Then we discovered that Damien had obtained biological weapons. We were out of time. We needed to use any and all means necessary to find him.”

  “Including this elaborate plan involving me.”

  “Especially you. He’s always been obsessed with you. His attacks on Omega Sector, killing agents and their loved ones, were in direct retaliation for what he thought Omega SWAT did to you at that bank six years ago. They were the ones who came in to fight against the robbers.”

  Her fingers covered her eyes. “That SWAT team saved my life by nicking me in the head. I have no doubt I’d be dead right now at Damien’s hand if not for what happened.”

  It was time to tell her everything.

  “Andrea and Brandon came to see you, to ascertain if you knew anything, or if you’d be willing to help. They still weren’t sure if you had ties to your ex when they left. But mostly we put them in play to get you to run. To shake you up.”

 
; She laughed, the sound hollow. “You certainly did that.”

  “We set up the crash to see if you would call Freihof when there was an emergency. When you were sure there wasn’t anybody following.”

  “Except you.”

  He nodded. “Except me. I was hoping I’d come across as a nice enough guy that you wouldn’t worry that I was law enforcement.”

  “That I would accept that you were just a Montana sheep farmer.” She laughed again, hysteria lacing the sound. “God, I’m the biggest idiot on the planet.”

  Ren crouched down at her feet again. “No. My parents do have a sheep farm in Montana. I don’t work there, but—”

  “Is your name even Ren?”

  “Ren McClement. Just Ren, not Warren. Although many people assume it’s a shortened name. Thompson is my mother’s maiden name.” He touched her ankles again, then let them go when she flinched. “It didn’t take me long to figure out that you had nothing to do with Freihof or his actions.”

  “And once you did that? Then what was your grand plan?”

  He strung his fingers through his hair. “First, I wanted to make sure you didn’t know anything—details—subconsciously. So I just tried to talk to you.”

  “While I was painting.”

  “Yes. Then—I swear, Natalie—I was taking you out to show you that river so you could see something beautiful, a place I would always remember and wanted you to remember, too. Wanted you to paint, before I told you what we needed you to do back here with the press. But then that damned mountain lion and the fever...”

  “You should’ve told me, Ren,” she whispered. “Once you woke up. You should’ve told me.”

  “I know. I wanted to. But we were out of time. I had been unconscious much longer than I’d thought. Homeland Security was sending agents out to detain you as a hostile subject. They would’ve thrown you in a cell.”

  “But I have nothing to do with Damien!”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, not to them—they would’ve detained you indefinitely. There were three agents already at the cabin when we left. They should be getting rescued from the woodshed where I tied them up right about now. I couldn’t let them take you. And then I had to get you here in front of the cameras so they couldn’t arrest you, because now the plan is already in play.”