In the Lawman's Protection

by Janie Crouch

  It would eat at Natalie’s very sanity. And there wouldn’t be a damned thing Ren could do about it except continuously put her in danger in hopes of luring Freihof out.

  The entire team was exhausted but on high alert as they entered the school auditorium once again to meet the press. The county had given the kids the day off due to all the hoopla, but the school was packed with media and townspeople.

  Ren kept his arm around Natalie as the mayor of Westwater introduced them. Ren stepped up to the podium, giving everyone his most charming smile. Their plan had to work this time. They needed to draw Freihof out.

  “Thank you all for coming. As you can see, Natalie and I are alive and well.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her flinch at his use of her name. She was on to the fact that he said her name as much as possible. “We appreciate you even thinking we’re newsworthy—”

  “We don’t!” someone screamed from the back of the room. “Get out of our town!”

  Then Ren threw Natalie to the ground as shots rang out in the air and people began screaming.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Natalie wasn’t sure what was happening as Ren’s weight rested on top of her, his hand keeping her head pinned protectively to the ground. She could vaguely hear panicked screams after a couple more shots were fired.

  Ren kept them behind the large podium. A few minutes later Steve Drackett crawled over to them.

  “Is it Damien?” she asked, trying to keep panic at bay.

  “Not according to the sheriff.” Steve kept low, like them. “Looks like it’s some local troublemakers. Definitely heard shots fired from multiple locations, so that would make sense.”

  “We need to get you out of here. Back to the safe house,” Ren said. “Then preferably immediately to Omega HQ. This little stunt—if it is, in fact, some local yokels—may change everything. May spook Freihof.”

  “It will definitely get a different type of media coverage now.”

  They crawled over to the side of the stage and then out the door. Ren and Steve kept her sandwiched between them, both of them with their guns in their hands, Ren with his arm wrapped firmly around her once they got off the stage, as they rushed to the side entrance.

  A police car was waiting there in the small covered alley, as well as two police officers in their tan uniforms. Ren and Steve obviously already knew them both.

  “Levell, Stutz, we need you to get Ren and Natalie back to the safe house and stay with them,” Steve instructed the two younger men before turning to Ren. “I’m going to stay here. They’ll need help with—”

  A call came through loudly over Levell’s police radio. “We’ve got a confirmed sighting of Freihof on the north side of the building. Exit that leads out to the playground!”

  Natalie felt bile rising in her throat.

  “That’s Jensen,” Stutz said. Both men looked ready to burst into action.

  “No.” Ren stopped them. “You two get her to the safe house. You don’t leave her under any circumstances, you got it?”

  He turned to Natalie. “We’re going to catch him. Right now, okay? This is all going to be over soon.” He threaded his hands into her hair and kissed her hard and fast. “And then I will find some way to make you forgive me and give us another chance.”

  Before she could say anything, he and Steve were gone. Sprinting in the direction of where Damien had been seen.

  Desperate fear clawed up her belly. What if Damien killed Ren? She knew firsthand how diabolically brilliant her ex was.

  “I can’t believe we’re this close to the action and have to be on babysitting detail instead,” Levell said as he opened the squad car door for Natalie. “No offense.”

  “I think you’re quite a bit closer to the action than you think.”

  Her whole world spun in a spiral of grayness as she heard the voice that haunted her nightmares. The one she hadn’t heard in six years.

  Damien.

  She spun in time to see him raise a gun with a silencer on it and shoot first Levell, then Stutz, in the chest. Both men fell to the ground, not even able to draw their weapons. “Allow me to take over babysitting duty of my wife.”

  He turned to Natalie, smiling. “Hi, honey.”

  She opened her mouth to scream, but he brought the gun and placed it close to her cheek. “One sound and you’ll be as dead as they are, wifey. Get in the car.”

  She stood rooted in place. If she went with Damien, she knew her life was over.

  His eyes narrowed, the promise of violence clear in them. “If you don’t get in the damn car right now, I will hunt down every single person in your beloved Omega Sector team and kill them slowly in front of you. You will do what I say, Natalie. You know what happens when you disobey.”

  She could feel the past coming back to crash over her, drowning her. His rules. His command. The knowledge that she had to be perfect like he wanted her to be or the pain would come.

  She had to avoid the pain at all costs.

  “Yes, sir.” She got in the car; he followed, snatching her phone from her and keeping his gun trained on her.

  “That’s more like my perfect beauty.”

  They drove out of Westwater, Damien providing directions, Natalie following them. Once they were a few miles outside of town he had her pull over in a parking lot and change to a car he’d parked there. He put her in the passenger seat, zip-tying her wrists together, and got in behind the wheel.

  She kept herself as far away from Damien as she could, huddled over against the door. Trying to get her mind to work through the fear that seemed to swallow her whole.

  “Looking at you last night, I thought all our training, our attempt to make you into the perfect wife we always knew you could be, had gone to waste.” He reached over and stroked a finger down her arm. “But now I’m thinking maybe with some correction you can once again be trained to be perfect.”

  He hadn’t touched her up to this point. The feel of his skin on hers tore something open in her.

  “Do. Not. Touch. Me.” She spat the words, dragging her arm away from his fingers.

  He didn’t even stop driving as he backhanded her. Natalie’s face slammed into the window and she tasted blood.

  “Evidently it will take a good deal more training to get you back to where you were. The perfect wife. I daresay I am up for the challenge.”

  “I was never your perfect wife. I left you. I ran away.”

  He shook his head. “You became confused. I’m willing to overlook that. You’ll have to be punished for it, of course, but I am willing to give you another chance.”

  Something inside Natalie snapped further. No. She would not go with him. Ren and the rest of the team would’ve figured out she was gone soon if not already. She had to slow Damien down.

  “I pretended I was dead for six years rather than live one more minute with you, Damien. I wasn’t confused.”

  That earned her another slap on her abused face. “You’d been shot by those careless bastards at Omega Sector. I saw all the blood. You couldn’t have known what you were doing.”

  She reached up and wiped blood from her split lip. “Oh, but I did, Damien. I took the opportunity to run as far and as fast as I could from you. I knew exactly what I was doing when I made sure you would think I was dead and I hoped I would never see you again.”

  She saw his fists tighten on the steering wheel but she didn’t care.

  “I pretended to die to get away from you, Damien. I’d rather die for real than go back to being married to you. Omega Sector is going to find you and they’re going to stop you.”

  Damien pulled over to the side of the back road and slammed on the brakes. He grabbed her hair and yanked her over until she was just inches from his face.

  “Your precious Omega agents are going to have way too much on their hands to be wor
ried about you. They’re going to be busy dealing with the fallout from their own ineptitude.”

  “With your biological warfare canisters? Yeah, they know all about that.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I would hope so. If I’d made it any more obvious that it was me who had them, it would’ve had to be with engraved letterhead. But they don’t know when and they don’t know where, do they?”

  He yanked her hair again, before letting go and starting the car once more. She reached up to touch her tender scalp and felt it. The tracker Ren had put at the back of her ear. She’d forgotten about it.

  And Damien had no idea it was on her. All she needed to do was keep near him and it would lead the team right to them.

  But Damien was never going to let them have her. She knew that. He would kill her before he would let her go, even if he was going to die, too. But at least they would stop him from whatever mad destruction he’d planned.

  “The canisters are in the car even as we speak. I hadn’t planned to use them all at one time in one location, but you helped me realize there’s a blot in my past that needs to be erased. From now on, when I think of this place, it won’t be because it was where you legally became mine, but because of what I did here today.”

  Natalie looked around more closely. “We’re going back to Grand Junction?”

  “Yes, to city hall, where we were married. To love and to honor. A vow you’ve decided to forget.”

  Just like he’d somehow forgotten cherish and protect when he’d broken all her fingers.

  But as much as she wanted to stand up to Damien—and for the first time in her life she really did—she needed to lie. To remain docile. To distract him until Ren and his team could get here and stop him.

  They drove in silence, Natalie struggling to figure out what to say, what to do, in order to stop Damien. Cry? Beg? He would love that. Could she do it? Maybe to save lives.

  As they passed the city limits sign for Grand Junction, she knew she had to do something.

  “Part of me missed you,” she whispered, trying not to choke on the words.

  “Is that so? Evidently not enough to return to me where you belong, even though you were my wife.”

  “You married someone else.” Dissolving their marriage. Thank God.

  “She looked like you. I thought she would be a better model, more easily trained. But when she decided to betray me, she had to be eliminated.”

  Natalie didn’t even know how to respond to that. To the fact that he’d killed another woman who couldn’t live up to his sick standards.

  Damien drove in silence for many minutes.

  “Tell me, Natalie. That man you were with out in the woods, the man you were hiking with, Warren Thompson. Were you intimate with him? Did you allow him to touch your body, which should’ve only ever belonged to me?”

  “Damien...” Telling him the truth would only bring pain.

  He shook his head as if overwhelmed by sadness. “You are not the person I’d hoped you’d be, Natalie.”

  “Can we go somewhere and talk? I don’t want to go to city hall.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “Yes, we can go somewhere. And I have no intention of taking you to city hall.”

  Good. That at least bought her—bought Ren—more time.

  They drove to the other side of town and out of the most populated area. He turned into what looked like a field, driving through a gate, and down a paved road of some sort of park.

  Then she realized what it was. A very high-end, private cemetery. “Damien, what is this place? Why are we here?”

  “I want you to see your final resting place, my dear. The place where I buried an empty casket. The place I came to grieve my dead, perfect wife. I realize now that my wife did die six years ago. My wife would’ve never let another man touch her. I have no wife. And soon that casket won’t be empty.”

  Natalie blanched as the truth hit her. There was no more time. He’d brought her here to kill her. She had to get away from him right now. Not even thinking about the consequence, Natalie reached over, yanked open the door and threw herself out of the car.

  She cracked the ground with a bone-rattling thud and struggled through the pain to get up, her restrained hands hindering her. She heard Damien stop the car and forced herself to begin running toward the trees. As soon as she was off the road her feet became bogged down in snow.

  She knew there wasn’t any use. Damien was bigger. Stronger. Faster. But she pushed herself as fast as she could go. He still had her phone, so she’d have to pray the tracker would work.

  And that she was buying Ren enough time to get to her.

  She screamed as a hand grabbed her shoulder, jerking her down into the snow. The icy whiteness permeated everything.

  “Thank you for at least running in the right direction,” Damien said. He reached down and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her forward. She stumbled to keep up with him, since it was either that or be dragged.

  “The minute you let someone touch your body you should’ve known you would never be worthy of me again. Now I’m grateful I had the foresight to buy such a private burial plot for you six years ago. Nobody ever comes out here.”

  He continued marching forward. She threw her hands up to his wrist to ease the pressure of the pull on her scalp. Finally, he stopped and threw her down and into the snow.

  Right in front of a casket that had obviously just been dug out of the ground.

  “Ironically, Omega Sector were the ones who dug it up. I guess it confirmed that you were alive. I can’t believe you would choose them over me. I gave you a home. A life. Everything.”

  His foot came up and crashed against her midsection in a vicious kick. The shock hit her first—she couldn’t inhale—and then the pain exploded. She curled herself in a ball, the cold seeping in everywhere.

  “Remember how you used to beg me to let you out of the snow during your punishments, Natalie? I shouldn’t have. I should’ve let you suffer and die out there. But now I’m going to let you suffer and die out here. You’re going to be inside that casket, knowing that no one is ever coming for you.”

  “Damien, please...” She finally got words out. Her begging now wasn’t to buy more time. It was in a desperate attempt to save her own life.

  Could Ren possibly get here in time?

  “I would love to stay here and watch you suffer, but I have a limited window of opportunity at city hall. I’ve got to give your Omega friends something to do with their time. A few thousand dead bodies ought to do it.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “But don’t worry, darling. I’ll come by and visit your grave site often. Especially now that there will be a dead body to mourn.”

  Natalie closed her eyes, facing the facts. If Ren used the tracker to find her and she was already dead, they’d never be able to find Damien and stop him.

  Thousands would die.

  If she put the tracker on Damien now, the team would go straight to him. Maybe they would be able to stop him.

  But Natalie would die.

  Silently, she wished she’d had the strength to tell Ren last night that she would’ve forgiven him. That she wished they’d had more time.

  But now she would never have a chance.

  She opened her eyes, reaching behind her ear and picking off the tracker. The wetness from her fingers immediately made it sticky again.

  “One kiss?” she whispered to Damien.

  She leaned in close and placed the tracker on the back of his neck as she touched him. She prayed it would be enough.

  His lips touched hers and for once she was thankful the snow had numbed her and she couldn’t feel a thing, especially his touch on her lips.

  “The kiss of death,” Damien said, smiling.

  He picked her up and put her in the casket in the hole in the ground. She tried to
keep her composure, her strength, her pride. Tried not to let Damien know the depths of her terror. But as the lid closed and she heard the thumping of earth being poured over her, she began to scream in terror.

  She could hear Damien’s laugh over it all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ren and Steve sprinted toward the north side of the school. Getting through the auditorium was nearly impossible with the pandemonium from the gunfire a few minutes ago. Chairs had been thrown everywhere. A few people had been hurt in their desperate need to evacuate.

  They didn’t stop. Unless someone was dying, they would have to wait for other assistance.

  “Sheriff, tell your man not to engage Freihof,” Steve was shouting into his walkie-talkie as he ran. “He is to be considered extremely dangerous whether he looks armed or not.”

  They burst through the door on the other side of the building, bringing them outside. Jensen, the deputy who’d called in the Freihof sighting, was waiting there, walkie-talkie in one hand, his phone in the other.

  “Freihof ran off toward the trees.” He looked down at his phone again. “Hurry, maybe we can still catch him.”

  He and Steve bolted toward the trees, the deputy right behind them.

  “Lillian—” Steve got on the walkie again “—Freihof’s headed into the woods from the north side of the building.”

  Ren heard her curse. “Okay, Ashton and I are switching directions and heading straight into the woods from the east side. We’ll try to cut him off.”

  “Do these woods lead anywhere? To a road? Another town?” Ren asked Jensen.

  He shook his head. “Just more woods. It’s all part of the McInnis Canyon National Park.”

  “He could be waiting to pick us off, Steve,” Ren said as they slowed down, taking cover in the trees. Shooting from long range would be a little anticlimactic for Freihof, but Ren wouldn’t put it past him.