The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  Which explained how she’d known where to come. It also explained the questioning light in her eyes. She knew full well Sam hadn’t been around a few weeks earlier.

  She didn’t move from her position in the doorway, as though letting Nancy into the apartment was an agreement that she should be there. But what was the alternative? Trehern’s hired guns could have spotted her already. She could already be in danger.

  Reluctantly, Sam moved back and ushered her inside. “There’s something else going on. Something you may not know about.” In fact, she’d bet her examining tables that Nancy had no idea how much danger Logan was in.

  If she knew, she never would have come to visit. She would have known how much he worried about her.

  “I figured as much. Logan seemed pretty stressed when I talked to him last.” Nancy sank to the sofa with a grateful sigh. “So, tell me about it. And tell me about yourself, too. If I know my brother, it could be a while before he gets back.”

  Tell me about yourself. Sam suppressed a snort of hysterical laughter. What could she possibly say? I’m a vet from a tiny beachside town. I don’t like the city and I don’t like fast-moving men with careers that take them away from home. After my last bad breakup, I vowed to find myself a good man, except that man just took up with my best friend back home.

  Oh yeah, and did I mention that someone’s trying to kill me?

  But Nancy’s eyes begged for conversation. In that instant, Sam thought what it must be like for the other woman—traveling across the country, alone, pregnant, wanting to be with her brother while she waited for news of her husband’s rescue.

  Finding her brother not home. Worse, in danger.

  And in the next instant, Sam thought she understood a little of what Logan had said about not wanting to commit a woman he cared for to such a life. To such indecision.

  Then she wondered where he got off making that call for someone else. Her temper spiked, buffered by the strain in the other woman’s eyes.

  Sam worried for Logan. Nancy worried for both her husband and her brother. Where did it end?

  So they talked. Woman to woman for nearly an hour, about Sam’s clinic and Logan’s childhood, about Nancy’s missing husband and her impending motherhood. But as they chatted, tension settled over the room.

  Finally, a phone rang. Both women jumped and reached for their pockets. Sam’s stomach clenched hard when she realized it was hers.

  She pulled it out, flipped it open and locked eyes with Logan’s sister when she said, “Hello?”

  “Tell Logan to turn the volume up on his phone ringer,” Cage’s voice said, “I’ve tried him three times now. He damn well better not be ignoring me.”

  Sam’s quick relief that it wasn’t anything more dire faded to confusion. “Logan’s not back yet.”

  A light sweat broke out across Sam’s body, though she couldn’t have said why.

  “Yes, he is,” Cage countered. “The global positioning on the signal from his HFH phone puts him in the building.” Then his voice shifted to concerned. “The signal’s been there for more than fifteen minutes. What do you mean he’s not back yet?”

  “He hasn’t come upstairs,” Sam said numbly. Oh, God. What was wrong? Why was his phone in the building but not him? “His sister is here, though. She just arrived.”

  And hadn’t seen Logan on the way up.

  Cage cursed. “That’s just what I need. Put her on the phone.”

  Sam handed the phone to Nancy, hearing only the pounding of blood in her ears.

  Where was Logan? What had happened?

  She reached for the doorknob and heard his voice in her mind. Promise me you’ll stay inside the apartment.

  She stepped outside, shut the door on Nancy’s voice as she spoke to Cage, and called the elevator. Palms sweating, she pushed the button for the lobby. From there, she headed down farther to the garage. It was as though an unseen force pulled her there, to the place where William had held a gun on her and Logan not four hours earlier.

  The garage was darker than before, as though the night outside had seeped through the cracks. Shadows reached for her, and the damp air smelled dead and wanting.

  Sam shivered and reflexively rubbed her arms to soothe the goose bumps. She took a single step away from the relative safety of the elevator lobby doors and flinched when they slammed shut behind her.

  She should have propped the door open. Logan had given her the key code, but the lock would slow her down if she needed to run.

  Run, the walls seemed to whisper to her. Run.

  She took another step away from the elevators, squinting at the hulking automotive shadows, trying to see one large enough to be the four-door pickup truck. “Logan? Logan, are you there?”

  The walls threw her words back at her, but there was no response.

  “Logan, damn it. Answer me!”

  Nothing. Not even a groan.

  Sam’s stomach quivered. Maybe he wasn’t here. Maybe he’d dropped the phone. Maybe…

  Maybe she needed to be sure.

  She walked toward the street entrance, away from the well-lit elevator lobby, toward the pools of encroaching shadow. She strained her ears and heard nothing, but then again, she hadn’t heard Trehern’s approach the last time.

  She passed a VW Jetta, a rented Escort and a dark, hulking SUV. A car passed on the street outside, a man shouted.

  Something scraped nearby.

  Sam jolted and spun toward the noise but saw nothing. Heart pounding, she glanced wildly to the elevator lobby, which gleamed with far-away illumination. Safety. She took a running step in that direction…and saw Logan’s pickup.

  It was parked on the other side of the SUV, near the street entrance, in shadows so deep they leeched away the red color and left it gray.

  “Logan?” She damned the noise and sprinted to the truck, wanting him to be there, but at the same time hoping he wasn’t. “Logan?”

  She peered through the window and gasped.

  A dark, man-sized shape lay across the bench seat, unmoving. She pressed closer and identified him by his jeans and shoes, though his upper body and head were obscured by the angle and the darkness.

  “Can you hear me? Logan!” Panicked, she banged on the window. Her heart clutched when there was no response. No movement.

  Nothing.

  Off to one side, she heard a stealthy slide of movement. Or was that her imagination?

  Focus. She needed to focus, though her pulse pounded in her ears. The truck doors were locked. Was there a set of keys upstairs? She didn’t know, didn’t care. She needed to get him out of there.

  She scanned the cracked, stained cement floor looking for something, anything that would help. She dismissed a piece of tailpipe as being too light to do any damage, then saw that the cement pylon nearby was broken, as though someone had hit it with a sloppy parking job. Several fist-sized chunks of cement lay nearby.

  “It’ll have to do.” The hairs on the back of her neck feathered to attention as she scrambled over and grabbed the largest chunk.

  She stood and spun, half expecting to find someone behind her. But she was alone. At least for the moment.

  Not stopping to think, she yanked off her light over- blouse, wrapped it around her hand and slammed the cement against the driver’s side window.

  The impact sang up her arm and numbed her fingertips. The glass spiderwebbed, but didn’t give.

  There was no response from the unconscious figure sprawled limply across the bench seat. Please let him be unconscious, she prayed, nearly sick with nerves and the need to hurry. Hurry!

  She drove her makeshift weapon into the window again, and this time it broke, showering the interior of the vehicle with chips of glass, though the bulk of it fell in as one fractured slab.

  Heedless of her hands or arms, Sam reached inside, unlocked the door and yanked it open. “Logan!”

  Her heart stopped.

  He looked dead.

  Chapter Nine
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br />   “Logan! Can you hear me? Logan?”

  He registered Sam’s voice first, and a spurt of relief nearly knocked him back under. She was alive. William hadn’t gotten her.

  He tried to reach for her.

  Bad idea.

  First, the pain hit. Then the rest of the memories came. William cold-cocking him in the shadows of an overpass. The sensation of being driven, the fear of not knowing where, not being conscious enough to ask, or to stop whatever would come next.

  He tried to crack his eyes to see where they were. He saw only darkness, then a faint light when her silhouette shifted.

  He groaned aloud. At the sound, she let out a rush of breath. “Thank God! Can you sit up? How badly are you hurt?”

  Not badly at all, he discovered when he let her lever him up. His head hurt like hell, but even that receded after he took a few deep breaths. And there didn’t seem to be any other injuries. He supposed he should be grateful to William for that, and for the fact that the enforcer had apparently only hit him hard enough the second time to put him out a few minutes.

  He knew the right places to hit a man. He could have killed Logan twenty times over, yet he’d driven him back to the apartment complex and carefully locked him in the cab.

  Why?

  “Come on. Let’s get you inside. I’m sure Cage is on his way, and I’ll bet—” She broke off as she got a shoulder beneath his arm and helped him climb to his remarkably steady feet. “Never mind. You’ll find out about her soon enough.”

  The tone of her voice told him there was a story behind the cryptic statement, but he didn’t ask, because the words had triggered another memory, that of William’s voice as he’d faded into unconsciousness.

  You’ll know I’m telling the truth soon enough.

  But which truth? That Viggo hadn’t ordered the shooters, or another truth? Damn it. Logan cursed under his breath as Sam helped him to the elevators. He didn’t need the help, but a piece of him needed the human contact.

  Hell, never mind the human contact, he needed the Sam contact. She was warm and soft and concerned, and though it normally made him uneasy and faintly guilty to know someone was worried about him, the faint crease between her eyebrows made him feel…

  Cared for.

  The thought brought an insidious warmth. He drew breath to speak, then heard a noise from the deep shadows behind the elevator shaft. His instincts shouted danger!

  He pulled away from Sam and shoved her behind the shelter of his body, stronger now that William’s pressure-point paralysis had fully worn off. “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer. But there was someone out there. He could feel it.

  He herded Sam to the elevator. “Get those doors open. Hurry.”

  There was no further noise from the darkness, but he didn’t breathe again until they were in the elevators, on their way up to the lobby. Then he rounded on Sam. “What the hell were you thinking? You promised to stay upstairs! Do you have any idea what could have happened to you in that garage?”

  Her expression underwent an amazing transformation, from concerned to surprised, and from there to irked, and then downright annoyed. She shot out her chin. “Would you have preferred that I had stayed upstairs and you had bled to death?”

  He loomed over her, stared down at her, tried to lose the warmth of caring amid the anger and didn’t quite manage it. “I’m not bleeding. I was out for a few minutes, nothing more. I would have come to eventually and made it upstairs.”

  “And how were we supposed to know that? Cage said the phone GPS signal had been stationary for fifteen minutes!” She shouted the last word, then brushed past him to storm across the lobby.

  He followed with a half wave to the security guard, who looked startled to see him. When the doors closed on them for the longer trip up to the penthouse, he crowded her with his body, though they could just as easily talk from opposite sides of the car. “Then you should have waited for him to come find me. What were you thinking?”

  She stood on her tiptoes to get up in his face, eyebrows drawn together, eyes dark with an emotion he didn’t dare name. “I was thinking that you were down there alone. Hurt. And I couldn’t wait for Cage. I just couldn’t. I had to know.”

  Sam’s voice broke on the last word. Her eyes filled with tears that he had to believe came as much from exhaustion and stress as from worry for him.

  Then again, he thought when her eyes darkened further and her breath hitched as though she had only just realized how close together they’d gotten, maybe the tears were for him, after all.

  God knew his thoughts were all tangled around the image of her. What if she felt the same way?

  The doors dinged merrily and slid open. They had arrived. He eased away from her, startled and not a little uncomfortable at the realization that two seconds longer in that elevator and he would have kissed her. Taken her. Loved her and not given a second thought to the consequences.

  Until afterward, when there would be nothing but consequences for both of them.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly, turning away. “Let’s call Cage. I’ve got something I need to—”

  He froze just inside the penthouse.

  “Logan! You’re okay!” His sister lurched to her feet, her face reflecting shock, joy, relief and disbelief all at once.

  “Nancy! What the hell are you doing here?”

  His first thought was that it had gone all wrong with Stephen, that Cage had flown her in for the bad news. But there was neither devastation nor joy in her flushed face. Just quiet worry.

  “Sam, I just got here. Where did you find him?” The question came from Cage, who looked similarly relieved.

  “Downstairs in his truck,” Sam answered, closing the penthouse door behind her. “He was unconscious. Locked in.” A tremor on the last two words was Logan’s only clue to what she must have felt on seeing him.

  He reached for her. “Hey, it’s okay. William knows how to put a man out for exactly as long as he needs him out.” Including permanently.

  She dodged his arm. “I didn’t know that.”

  Of course she didn’t, which was why she’d put her fist through his driver’s side window in an effort to get to him. Vaguely remembering the crash and her curse, he ignored her efforts to push him away and gathered her close. “Let me see your arm.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  At Cage’s raised eyebrow, Logan said, “She put her fist through the truck window to get to me.” When he found a long, shallow slice along the soft skin of her forearm, he cursed. “We need to take care of this. You sit down and I’ll go get my kit.”

  The scene reminded him eerily of just a few days earlier, when he’d sent her to her own bathroom to tend a bullet scrape. Only this time, he wasn’t planning on letting her wave him aside with a quiet it’s fine. He intended to be sure it was fine.

  He turned to follow, and was brought up short by the sight of Cage and his sister.

  And it struck him that he’d nearly forgotten Nancy was there. Sam had become his priority.

  No, that wasn’t right. He was simply paying attention to her because she was hurt. He hadn’t chosen her over Nancy. He wouldn’t.

  But deep inside, part of him questioned that confidence.

  Jerked back to the present situation, he said, “Stephen?”

  Nancy shook her head, eyes filling, but it was Cage who answered, “Nothing yet. They’ve been delayed by weather. It could be another day or two before they can even go in.”

  Another day or two. God. He reached for her and hugged her tight, part fascinated, part frightened by the hard bump of her belly between them. Stephen’s child. A little girl, the sonograms said.

  God, Steve, you should be here, Logan thought fiercely, wishing he were in Tehru waiting out the weather, yet knowing he was needed here more.

  “I’m sorry, Nance,” he said into her hair, “But you can’t stay here. I’m…I’ve got something going on right now. It’s too dangerous. I ca
n’t wait with you.”

  “I know.” She pushed away, her strength, as always, surprising him. “Cage explained everything. Although—” she poked him in the arm like she used to when they were kids and he was being a brat “—he wouldn’t have had to if you’d been square with me.” Her eyes darkened with worry, with censure. “You could have told me, you know. I would have stayed on base if I’d known about what was happening to you and Sam.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” he said as the words you and Sam shivered through him like a promise. Like a threat. He squeezed his sister’s arm and stopped himself from touching her stomach, which he knew she hated, because she said even complete strangers thought it was okay to touch a pregnant woman’s stomach. “You’ve got enough on your mind waiting for Steve to come home.”

  When he said it like that, it sounded like a foregone conclusion more than a far-fetched wish.

  She snorted. “Idiot. Next time, tell me. It’s my job to worry about you.” She pulled away. “And since by the same token it’s your job to worry about me, you can set your mind at ease. I’m going home with Cage. His place is as safe as this one, and unlike some people I’ve just met—and quite like, by the way—I’ll stay put when I promise.” She lifted a hand and touched his cheek. “Don’t worry about me. Or when you do, because I know you can’t help it, worry about Stephen for me. Don’t worry for my safety—I’ll be fine. Just keep yourself safe, and Samantha.”

  Logan caught her close, stuck between guilt and a bark of laughter that this brave, proud woman—almost a mother—had grown up from a rotten little girl who’d stolen his army guys and dressed them in lacy doll clothes right before all his friends arrived for an afternoon of play.

  The two of them were polar opposites, he thought. Over time, she had grown better. He hadn’t. The thought brought a renewed stab of guilt.