The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  He pushed the memory aside and found the sheriff watching him with knowing eyes. Because of it, and because guilt pricked his conscience, Logan bristled. “Consider me warned off, Sheriff. I’ll be gone before you know it, leaving the field clear.”

  Jimmy merely inclined his head. “All right, then. Come by my office on your way out of town.”

  He couldn’t have been any clearer if he’d said, Wave, so I know you’re really gone. But Logan couldn’t fault him, either as a sheriff or a man.

  He’d do the same if Samantha were his.

  SAM PAUSED AT THE TOP of the stairs and heard the low rumble of male voices. The sound brought her back to the days of living with each of her exes, of not being alone in the evenings. The stinging throb of her hip echoed the pounding in her head and she impatiently brushed away a tear, blaming it on shock and delayed reaction.

  She’d been shot at. She deserved to have the shakes. Worse, as she’d changed clothes and bandaged the shallow slice herself with gauze and ointment from the bathroom cabinet, she’d realized they had overlooked something important.

  The shots might not have been aimed at Logan.

  She limped down the stairs. The voices grew louder then stopped abruptly as the men became aware of her. The tension in the air suggested their conversation had not been entirely friendly. Jimmy’s guilty look told Sam that she’d been the subject, but she had more important things to worry about. So she crossed her arms and focused on Logan, who regarded her with cool, hooded eyes.

  “Remember when I opened the door and accused you of knocking? Well, if it wasn’t you, then someone knocked on the clinic door three separate times before you arrived. If that was meant to get me to open the door, then…”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud, but the darkening of Logan’s expression was answer enough.

  She could have been the target.

  Outside, the sun had set. Though the late summer evening was warm, a chill cut through her long-sleeved shirt and the loose drawstring pants she’d pulled over the neat four-by-four bandage she’d slapped over the stinging cut on her hip. Goose bumps rose at Logan’s quiet curse and she rubbed her arms to smooth the fine hairs.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Jimmy looked from one to the other of them. “Sam doesn’t have any enemies. Nobody would want to shoot her!”

  His words seemed to come from far away. She was trapped in Logan’s eyes, focused entirely on a man she’d met only three weeks earlier. Her hormones reacted to him like he was one of the he-men she’d vowed to avoid, but his actions so far marked him as a good guy. Still, he wasn’t the sort to stick around—he’d said so himself.

  He was on his way out of town, never to return.

  “Is that true, Samantha?” His voice spanned the gap between them and seemed to brush her lips with a feathery caress. “You have no enemies? What about your exes?”

  Ouch. She shot Jimmy a glare, knowing exactly how and why Logan had learned about Travis and Brent. “The partings were amicable.” Both of them. “There’s no reason they would want me dead. No shared property, no continuing financial connections. Nada.”

  If her love hadn’t been enough to keep the men in town, it sure as hell wasn’t enough to incite murderous jealousy.

  Besides, she and Louie had split two years earlier. The most action she’d gotten since was when eighty-year-old Art Furnace winked at her in the grocery store over a rack of melons.

  Small-town living was hell on a social life. But she loved just about everything else about it, especially the differences she could make on her own level.

  Jimmy’s radio squawked on his belt as Treece’s voice was distorted by the signal strength and tinny speakers. The sheriff held up a hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  He answered his dispatcher on the way out the door and stood on the front porch for her report, perhaps for privacy, perhaps for a better signal.

  But the upshot was that he left Sam alone with Logan. The walls seemed to press closer, the air to thicken. His eyes were intent on her, and she sensed that he wanted to ask about her exes. But instead, he said, “What about your father? A former sheriff must have some enemies.”

  For someone who’d seemed to avoid her almost as carefully as she’d avoided him for the past few weeks, Logan sure seemed to know a whole lot about her, whereas she knew nearly nothing about him.

  “None that I know of.” Suddenly needing to do something, anything, Sam turned away blindly and limped toward the back room. The stray dog’s injuries and recovery from anesthesia gave her an excuse to leave the waiting room, a reason not to stand opposite Logan and wonder what he was thinking.

  He caught her arm. “Your hip. I’m sorry, I forgot. Let me look at it.”

  “It’s fine. I slapped some Betadine and a bandage on it, and took a few aspirin.” She pulled away, hating that her body buzzed in reaction at his touch. Though he might technically work on the side of justice, his closed demeanor and dark broodiness screamed trouble, and she was avoiding trouble these days. “It’ll be sore for a few days, but there was more blood than real damage. Just a scratch. Don’t worry about it.”

  He followed her into the recovery area, where three of the twelve cages were occupied by patients, the rest by rescued strays. “I do worry about it, damn it. You wouldn’t have been hurt if it wasn’t for me. Whether or not someone knocked first, I was the target, period.”

  “Then why did they knock?” She opened Maverick’s cage door and touched the stray dog’s sunken yellow flank. She half hoped for a tail wag or a lick of appreciation. Instead, she got a vicious growl.

  Maverick would need time and love before he believed that things were different now. His life was different now.

  Or it could be, if he learned to trust her.

  “I don’t know.” Logan turned away from her and pulled a hand through his short brown hair. “It makes no sense, unless—”

  He broke off as Jimmy rejoined them. The sheriff’s expression was moody, nearly matching Logan’s threatening scowl. A shiver crawled across Sam’s skin. “Unless what?”

  “Unless they’ve targeted you because of your association with me.” Logan cursed and strode back out into the waiting room. He opened the front door and glared out, though the moonless night was impenetrably black.

  She followed, unsettled by the tension in his powerful frame and the idea that a Boston crime boss would want to kill her. “What association? I rented you a cottage, nothing more.”

  Viggo Trehern had no way of knowing she’d entertained more than a few fantasies about her handsome tenant.

  “That’s the way he works.” Logan stared out into the night, one hand pressed against the door frame, inches above a raw wood scar where a bullet had gouged through the molding. “I was undercover in his operation for more than a year and a half. Trust me. I know how he works. Even the slightest association, the slightest sign of interest is enough for him to take notice. We’ve seen to it that my parents and sister are safe, so he might have gone looking for another target. You.”

  The hollow guilt in Logan’s voice sent Sam forward a step, but Jimmy’s hand on her arm held her back. “There’s more,” the sheriff said in a low, urgent tone that focused her attention instantly.

  “What?” Sam said, “Did someone find the shooter?” Against all logic, she felt a spurt of hope that it had been nothing more than a poacher with rotten aim.

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, but Edna’s grandson found a rifle on the beach below Third Cliff. It looks like someone threw it off the top figuring to hit the water, but misjudged the tide. Or maybe it washed up. I need to go take a look.”

  Logan frowned. “You can’t send someone else?”

  “No.” The sheriff shrugged uncomfortably. “This is a small community. I’ve got two part-timers, but they’re both off at a conference until the day after tomorrow. I’m it until then.”

  The men traded a look and Sam was unsurprised when Logan said, “I’l
l stay here and keep watch.”

  “I thought you were leaving.” She crossed her arms and ignored the goose bumps that threatened to rise again, though she glanced at the shotgun Logan had leaned beside the door, gaining an obscure comfort from its nearness.

  “Not if they’re trying to get to me through you.” He returned his attention to the dark night. “If that’s the case, my leaving won’t protect you.”

  The flat pronouncement sent a quiver through her stomach, and she suddenly wished someone would hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay. She wasn’t usually shaky or squeamish, but this had been anything but a normal day.

  She could use a hug.

  But Jimmy was already halfway out the door and she knew for a fact that touching Logan was like tweaking a live wire. A moment of electric shock and a lingering moment of sizzle.

  She’d learned her lesson about shock and sizzle. It didn’t last. So she turned away. “I’m going to bed my patients down for the night. When you’re ready, lock the front door and come upstairs. I’ll make us some dinner.”

  She didn’t bother trying to convince him she was fine on her own. For one, she didn’t think it would work. And for another, she didn’t want to be alone.

  But she wasn’t sure he was the best choice of company, either. She was too aware of him standing silent sentinel as she medicated Maverick and the other patients, then fed the shelter residents. When she went upstairs, he locked up and followed silently, carrying her father’s shotgun like an extension of his body. All the while, she knew where he was at every moment, as though she could hear him breathe, feel the pulse of blood through his veins.

  “Burgers okay?” she asked once she gained the relative safety of her small kitchen.

  “Fine.” He leaned the shotgun against the wall. “Can I help?”

  “No, you sit. This kitchen is barely big enough for me, never mind for two.” She busied herself in the fridge and heard him step toward the kitchen door.

  “I’m going to make a few calls,” he said, and slipped out into the hall as though he was equally unsettled by the tension that buzzed in the air between them.

  It wasn’t until she came close to cutting her thumb off that Sam realized her fingers were shaking. She put down the knife and the wedge of cheese and held up her hands. At the sight of their trembles, tears pressed against her eyelids and the slice on her hip stung a protest, pushing the tears harder.

  What was the matter with her? She’d been in danger before. As an animal-control officer, she’d had dogs sicced on her and guns waved in her face. Horace Mann, the head of the local illegal dogfighting community, had even attacked her once. She’d beaten him off with her control stick, a lightweight aluminum pole with a retractable cable at one end. Normally used to control feral dogs and cats, it had been barely enough to fend off Horace, who’d blasted at her with his shotgun as she’d peeled away from his deceptively neat home.

  So why was she so shaken now?

  Because, she realized, this wasn’t Horace, and it wasn’t part of Black Horse Beach. This was a danger from outside, something bigger than their little area was used to.

  And then there was Logan Hart. It would be dishonest of her to pretend the shakes were all from shock or fear. There was a good dose of excitement mixed through the nerves, courtesy of the big man whose very presence overwhelmed her small set of rooms.

  Damning the part of her that wanted to be a fool all over again, she resolutely picked up the cheese and the knife.

  She just had to get through the next day and a half safely, then Jimmy’s part-timers would be back from their convention and Logan would be free to take himself out of Black Horse Beach and back to the city, where his people could convict Trehern and he could get back to his life.

  Because that was what men like Logan did. They went on with their lives.

  OUT IN SAMANTHA’S LIVING ROOM, Logan paced the small space with his cell to his ear while Zach Cage’s voice gave him the bad news.

  Or not bad news, precisely. Confusing news. Information that didn’t fit into his hypothesis.

  Logan frowned. “So if William, Martin Gross and the others are all accounted for, then who did Viggo send down here?” He could almost say the names now without flinching, without immediately picturing the things he’d seen the evil men do. The things he’d been unable to stop because he’d needed to establish a seamless cover.

  “Beats me,” Cage answered, and Logan heard frustration in the words. HFH was worried about the trial, about the delays and about the shooting in Black Horse Beach. “Would Trehern hire outside help?”

  “Not Viggo,” Logan answered. “He likes to keep his dirty work close.”

  “But if he’s not running the operation anymore, if someone else is calling the shots…” Cage trailed off, not needing to finish the thought, which chilled Logan’s guts instantly with its logic.

  If Trehern’s operation was being run by one of his lieutenants—either cold-blooded William Caine, or his son Viggo Jr.—then all bets were off. In fact, that made it far more likely that the hit had been contracted outside the organization.

  To professional killers.

  After a moment, Logan’s boss exhaled noisily. “I don’t like this. I want you back in the city, pronto, locked down in the apartment building with guards and guns, at least for the next three days, until the trial resumes.”

  “I can’t do that, boss.” Though a large part of him wished he could, not because he was afraid for himself, but because he longed to draw the killers into the city, away from Black Horse Beach. Away from Samantha.

  “Why not? Because of the woman?”

  The woman in question stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Burgers are ready. You want to eat in here?” Her expression was the same mix of hope and dread he felt in his own chest.

  He wanted to share a meal with her. But at the same time, he knew it was a bad idea. So he held up the phone, aware that Cage still waited on the line. “I’ve got more calls to make. Can you fix me a plate to take downstairs?”

  Let her think the calls were private, though it was more that he couldn’t afford to spend time with her. He didn’t dare, because already the sexual tension hummed in the air between them, unseen and unacknowledged, but impossible to ignore.

  When she nodded with a flash of something like relief in her eyes, then disappeared into the kitchen, he held the phone back up to his ear.

  “That her?” Cage asked.

  “Yeah. That’s her.” The words rang truer than he liked.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Tomorrow, I’m going to do my best to find the shooter,” Logan vowed. “It’d help if you sent me a couple of bodies.”

  “I’ll do my best, though we’re short-handed at the moment. We’ve got something big going on overseas.” Before Logan could ask for clarification, because he knew damn well HFH had nothing big planned just then, Cage hurried on. “What’s your plan for tonight?”

  In other words, the boss didn’t want to talk about the big op.

  What was his plan tonight? From anyone else, Logan would have considered the question prying, but Cage was a friend. He knew part of what had happened during the Trehern assignment, knew something of Sharilee’s death. So Logan said simply, “I’m going to keep a sharp eye out. Nobody’s going to hurt her, not on my watch.”

  He ended the call and stood for a moment in silence. Then he crossed to a window that overlooked the dark street and looked down on nothing.

  They were out there, waiting. He could sense them.

  Chapter Three

  Sam spent a dark, uneasy night in her bedroom. When she slept, she dreamed a dizzying melange of dark-rimmed hazel eyes and gunshots, of sex and fear. And each time she awoke tangled in her sheets and gasping for air, she heard hints of motion from the floor below, an occasional footstep or low murmur of one-sided conversation.

  She wasn’t sure which was worse—dreaming about Logan or knowing he
was downstairs.

  Finally, toward dawn she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was broken too early by the raucous ring of her bedside phone.

  She grabbed the receiver before the second ring, brain mostly awake though her body was far behind. “This is Dr. Blackwell.”

  Only then did she realize that the sun shone between her heavy bedroom drapes. She’d overslept.

  “Sam, it’s Izzy. That horrible man is at it again, and I can’t find Jimmy anywhere. You’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Which man? Deal with what?” Spurred the rest of the way awake by the excitement in her neighbor’s voice, Sam sat up in bed and smothered a curse when her hip howled in pain.

  The bandaged cut burned like fire and the whole joint ached. She nearly whimpered for aspirin.

  “Horace Mann,” Izzy answered as though it should have been obvious. “He’s fighting dogs in his barn, I’m sure of it. I went by there on my way to the transfer station and saw twenty trucks as sure as I’m breathing!”

  A surge of adrenaline launched Sam the rest of the way out of her badly mussed bed. “Izzy, you’re a goddess. I’ll get over there right away and let you know how it goes.”

  She disconnected and immediately called Treece, but the dispatcher didn’t know where Jimmy was, either. “Tell him I’m over at Mann’s place,” Sam said. “The bastard’s pitting a dogfight.”

  She downed a strong dose of aspirin and pulled on clothes, hissing when her jeans pressed the bandage against her hip. If it wasn’t for that pointed reminder, she might have convinced herself that the day before had been one of her restless dreams, that she hadn’t been shot, that Logan Hart hadn’t insisted on staying downstairs in her clinic all night, keeping watch.

  But she had been shot, and he had stayed—a fact that became apparent the moment she limped down the stairs and into the waiting room. Though she’d expected him to be there, the foreknowledge didn’t stop her stomach from doing a weird little shimmy number when she saw him fast asleep, stretched across some half-dozen padded chairs.