One Night Standoff

by Delores Fossen

  “Not as sorry as I am. I hate being lied to, especially by people that I’m supposed to trust.” However, he immediately added a sound of dismissal. “Old baggage rearing its head. But it still comes into play here.”

  She knew a little about his old childhood baggage, from the notorious Rocky Creek Children’s Facility, which was now closed. Had been for sixteen years. She also knew his mother had died giving birth to him and that his father, Melvin Larson, had literally abandoned him at the facility when he was eleven. All of that had come out when they’d talked in bed after their fast and furious bout of sex.

  Too bad her memories of that were crystal clear.

  She could remember every last detail of that night. The raw pain from losing a friend and fellow agent. The comfort she’d found in Clayton’s arms. The pleasure, too. Pleasure should have been the last thing on her mind that night, but she’d felt plenty of it anyway. Thanks to Clayton.

  “Lies like that are usually unnecessary,” he tossed out to her.

  “You lied to the minister to find me,” Lenora tossed right back at him.

  He gave her that riled look again, like the one he’d given her in the diner. “I didn’t lie to deceive. I lied to find you so I could help. Maybe now’s a good time to ask if you were planning on telling me any of this?”

  No, it wasn’t a good time to ask, but Lenora would answer it anyway. “I was waiting for you to heal and for the danger to die down.”

  He lifted his shoulder. “How the hell was the danger going to die down? You know who was responsible for putting that bullet in my head?”

  She couldn’t deny it fast enough. “No. I assumed that Riggs hired someone to do it, but I don’t have any proof.” Lenora stopped, met his gaze. “Do you?”

  Clayton didn’t answer her for several moments, but his stare continued to stab at her. At least it did until the baby kicked her and she winced a little. It wasn’t a hard kick, but she’d only been feeling movement for a few weeks and wasn’t used to it.

  “You okay?” Clayton asked.

  “Fine. The baby moved, that’s all.”

  His mouth tightened. Then relaxed. He mumbled some profanity. “I’m having a hard time dealing with this.”

  “Of course.” She didn’t dare repeat the offer she’d made to him at the diner, that she expected nothing from him. No, best not to say it aloud, but the truth was, she couldn’t expect anything from him. Because she needed him out of her life. Maybe just temporarily.

  Maybe forever.

  And that meant she needed to get on with her explanation. Besides, it was possible Clayton could actually help. She’d been hesitant to trust anyone, and maybe she was a fool for trusting him, but without this explanation, he clearly wasn’t leaving.

  “After your shooting, I wasn’t sure whom I could trust.” She slid her hand over her stomach.

  Clayton huffed. “Any of my five foster brothers would have been a good start. They’re all marshals and all capable of protecting you.”

  “But I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone in law enforcement.”

  That eased Clayton’s glare, and he cocked his eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Because after you were shot, I tried to call my handler. My task-force leader,” Lenora corrected. She’d always hated the term handler. It made her feel like a circus animal that needed to be controlled. “His name is James Britt, and he didn’t return my call for two days.”

  Clayton stayed quiet a moment. “That’s unusual?”

  “Very, especially considering I left him a frantic message to call me immediately.” She pushed her hair from her face. “But the truth is, I was concerned about James prior to that. He’d started to question me about what I really saw the night Jill was murdered. He seemed to try to make me doubt that Riggs was the one to pull the trigger.”

  “It was Riggs,” Clayton verified. “I saw him, too.”

  Lenora nodded. “James knows that, but he kept pushing, as if he was looking for some kind of discrepancies in my report. I dismissed it, thinking he was just trying to prepare me for my testimony at the trial.”

  “That’s possible,” Clayton admitted.

  Possible, yes, but Lenora hadn’t been able to shake the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “When James finally called me back after your shooting, he asked me if I’d gone back to my old ways. If I was running laundered money again. He wanted to know if I’d done something to get you shot. I didn’t,” she quickly added.

  Clayton made a sound to indicate he was giving that some thought. “A few days before I was shot, someone broke into your place and vandalized it. I’ve been looking into any connection between that and the shooting, but I can’t find it. Did you?”

  She had to shake her head. “And I looked. The Eagle Pass police weren’t able to get any prints or trace from the break-ins, so there was no arrest.”

  He continued to stare at her. “So your solution was to go into hiding.”

  “I had the baby to think about.” And Lenora wasn’t going to apologize for that. “I didn’t want to take any more risks than I’d already taken.”

  “And I wasn’t around to help you.” He blew out a long breath, stood and stared down at her. “Well, I’m around now, and I want you to go back to Maverick Springs with me, to my family’s ranch.”

  Lenora got to her feet, too. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s too dangerous for me to come out of hiding and go with you. Obviously this person is after me, not you, because you’ve been out of the hospital for weeks now and no one has tried to kill you.”

  “Not yet. But I think we should get to the bottom of what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Maybe Riggs hasn’t sent anyone else after me because he knows it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. After all, the last person who tried to kill me is dead. Thanks to you,” he added.

  Yeah. Thanks to her.

  Too little, too late.

  By the time she’d put a bullet in their attacker, Clayton had already been shot.

  “I shouldn’t have come there that day to tell you about the baby.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “But you’re not the only one dealing with old baggage here. It played into my decision to tell you.”

  “Old baggage or not, you should have told me,” he confirmed.

  “But you don’t even remember me, do you? You don’t remember sleeping with me.”

  His gaze slid down her face to her body. Something different went through his eyes this time. Something she had no trouble recognizing.

  Attraction.

  Yes, she’d felt it, too, the first time she’d ever looked at him. And every time since.

  She huffed, stood and would have gone to the window if it wouldn’t have put them so close. “It hardly seemed fair to go waltzing into your hospital room to tell you that your one-night stand had led to an unexpected pregnancy. I wanted you to focus on your recovery.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have been fair, but it would have been the right thing to do for the baby.” The sunglasses went back on so he could have another look outside.

  The right thing. In other words, turn over her safety—and the baby’s—to him. Under normal circumstances she might have considered it, but it was crystal clear that Clayton was in no shape to be offering her protection.

  Not yet anyway.

  Her best bet was to regroup, go back into hiding under a different name. And a different job. One that couldn’t be traced to anything in her past. Then, once things had settled down and his shooter was in custody, she could go to him and have him be part of their baby’s life.

  It seemed like a logical plan. But one look at Clayton’s firm expression and she knew this would be a hard sell, if she could convince him at all. However, before she got a chance to sell anything, she saw Clayton shift his position. He leaned in closer to the glass.

  “A dark blue SUV just parked at the end of the road,” he relayed to her as he locked the front do
or. “Anyone you know?”

  No one that immediately came to mind. These days she had no friends and only a very few acquaintances. Lenora hurried to the window and spotted the SUV.

  “The minister, maybe?” Clayton asked.

  “No. He’s out of town all this week and gave me the keys to the church so I could let myself in.”

  Clayton glanced at her. Again, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she figured there was displeasure lurking behind those dark shades. “Not wise. You’re out here alone all by yourself.”

  That scolding put some starch in her posture. “I prefer working in solitude. Plus, I have a gun with me, and you know I can shoot.” Then there was the whole part about her not trusting anyone. She figured trust would get her killed faster than going it alone.

  “Good,” Clayton mumbled, as if he hadn’t actually heard what she said. Probably because his attention was fastened to the SUV.

  No one got out of the vehicle. It just sat there with the front of it aimed right at them. It seemed menacing, but Lenora tried to assure herself that it could all be nothing. She’d gone three months without any contact with someone who wanted to hurt her. Of course, that was before Clayton had found her.

  Had someone else found her, too?

  Someone who’d hired another triggerman to finish the job that been started at the diner in Maverick Springs? Or maybe it’d even started before that, with Jill’s murder.

  Mercy, she needed answers.

  “There’s a back exit.” She let him know in case they needed another way out.

  “Yeah. It’s locked from the inside. We might have to use it.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew about the locked exit. Clayton had no doubt scoped out the church before he’d come inside and surprised the heck out of her. So much for all her training. She hadn’t even heard him skulking around the place.

  “Neither lock will hold if someone wants to get inside,” Clayton added. “Hand me the keys.”

  She riffled through her pocket and came up with them, and he jammed the key inside the internal deadbolt so the door was now double-locked. It was a good precaution to take, but the door was made of wood. Old wood at that. She doubted it would stand up to some hard kicks. There hadn’t been a lot of need for security in this little country church.

  Well, not before now, anyway.

  The driver’s side door of the SUV eased open, and in the same motion, Clayton drew his Glock. That put her heart right in her throat, and Lenora took out the small Smith & Wesson from the slide holster at the back waist of her jeans. It wasn’t a comfortable fit anymore with her growing belly, but she was thankful that she’d decided to wear it anyway.

  Clayton’s mouth tightened. “If things go wrong here, I don’t want you using that. I want you as far away from bullets as possible.”

  Lenora wanted that, too, along with wanting Clayton to be safe, but she had to be ready, too. She also had to keep hoping that this was just a false alarm, because the alternative was for her to accept that there was some kind of grand-scale conspiracy to murder her.

  She held her breath and saw the man step from the driver’s side of the SUV. Tall and lanky, he wore jeans and a dark shirt, common clothes for this part of the country, but it was the brown leather jacket that snagged her attention. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, hardly jacket weather, which meant he was probably wearing it to conceal a weapon.

  “I don’t recognize him,” she said before Clayton could ask. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  That revved up her heart even more. She’d held out hope that their visitor was a lawman, maybe even the local sheriff. He sure had the lawman’s look down pat—he glanced around, studying the entire grounds before his attention settled on the front of the church. However, Lenora saw no signs of a badge, but the guy was holding something.

  A newspaper.

  The man looked at the paper, then the church, as if comparing something. After a few moments, he tossed the newspaper back into the SUV.

  Clayton took her by her left wrist and gently moved her behind him. No doubt trying to protect her. But he didn’t move from the window.

  Lenora stood there, watching the SUV driver from over Clayton’s shoulder. Very close to him. So close that it stirred memories of him, and this was not a good time to be remembering anything about that night they’d slept together.

  Some more movement got her mind back on the right track. The passenger’s side door opened. A second man stepped out, and like the driver, he was also wearing a jacket.

  Oh, mercy. Two of them and both likely armed. There was no way she could explain away this.

  “Come on,” Clayton said.

  His grip on her wrist tightened, and with her in tow, he hurried through the rows of pews, past the pulpit and into the back entry. He didn’t stop until they made it to the door.

  There were no side windows next to the door, only one on the west side of the building, facing the cemetery. Lenora did a quick look out, but didn’t see Clayton’s vehicle or anyone else on the grounds.

  “Stay close and stay quiet,” Clayton warned her.

  Lenora would, as well as keep watch. But she also prayed that all of this was overkill.

  He unlocked the door and stepped out ahead of her. Lenora didn’t miss the grunt that he tried to muffle. Pained from the sun, no doubt. Still, he didn’t let the pain or the sun slow him down. He eased her out behind him, shut the door, and they hurried toward the cemetery.

  Clayton kept watch, too, his gaze firing all around them. There was a chain-link fence that surrounded the quarter acre or so of graves, and it was obviously meant to keep out deer rather than people, because there were no locks on the gate. He opened it and immediately pushed her behind a large angel headstone.

  It wasn’t her first choice of hiding place. In fact, the whole cemetery gave her the creeps. It reminded her of her father’s grave, which she’d visited once—and only once—on the day she’d found out that he was dead. Lenora hoped they didn’t have to stay crouched here for long.

  She peered out and saw the men make their way toward the front of the church. They stopped by her car first, looked inside the windows and then continued to the front door. Because of the angle of the building, they disappeared from view. Maybe they would just knock and when no one answered, they’d leave.

  But the thought had no sooner crossed her mind than Lenora heard something she didn’t want to hear.

  No knock.

  There was a loud bashing sound, quickly followed by a shot. Not in their direction, but the bullet made an unusual metallic sound.

  Lenora knew exactly what it meant.

  The men had shot through the lock on the front door and were no doubt already inside the church. It wouldn’t take them but a minute or two to realize she wasn’t there.

  And they’d come looking for her.

  “Let’s move,” Clayton ordered in a rough whisper. “Now!”

  Chapter Five

  Clayton waited a split second, until he was sure the two men were actually inside the church, and with his hand still gripping Lenora’s wrist, he hurried across the cemetery.

  “Stay low,” he warned her.

  She did, and he kept ducking them behind the larger tombstones, hoping that they’d become good cover if necessary. Most were marble, which should stop a bullet or two, but he didn’t want to take the risk of a shot ricocheting and hitting Lenora.

  Or him.

  Because if he was out of the picture, it would leave her a sitting duck for whoever was inside the church. Yeah, she had a gun, and Clayton knew from the surveillance tapes of his own shooting that she was a good shot. However, those guys could be better.

  Clayton took out his phone, and he made a whispered 9-1-1 call and gave the dispatcher their location. Maybe it wouldn’t take long for the local authorities to respond, and even if it did, he had plans to get Lenora out of there anyway.

  He cursed, not just over
the fact that there were probably assassins mere yards away from them, but also that Lenora and his baby were right in the middle of the danger.

  Again.

  And worse, there was the possibility that he’d brought the danger right to Lenora. He hadn’t been followed, he was sure of that, but obviously these men had found her, maybe the same way he had. He should have anticipated that would happen and gotten her away from the church the minute he showed up.

  Of course, Lenora hadn’t exactly cooperated with his demand that she leave with him. But Clayton was betting she’d cooperate now.

  If they got out of this alive, that was.

  He dragged her behind another tombstone that was closer to the far side fence and gate, and he listened and watched for any signs of the men. He also drew in some hard breaths, trying to fight off the pain that was stabbing through his head. The sunglasses helped, but nothing would help if he had to stay out in this blaring light too long. Not good. Because there was no way he could focus if the pain closed in on him.

  Ironic, that a migraine could get them killed.

  The pain and his plans to get her out of there did a short mental stutter, however, when he felt the movement against his back. He glanced over his shoulder at her to see what was going on.

  “The baby” was all she said.

  Oh.

  He hadn’t forgotten that she was pregnant, no way, but it was a jolt to feel his child moving around inside her. Once they were out of here, he really had to take some time to deal with everything he’d just learned.

  “Where’d you park?” Her voice was shaky. She was shaking, too, and her breathing was so fast that she might hyperventilate.

  Clayton tipped his head to the other side of the cemetery, where the trees were thick. She wouldn’t be able to see his truck, but it was there on an old ranch road about a fourth of a mile away.

  He heard some bashing around in the church and figured the guys were tearing apart the place, looking for Lenora, but as long as they did that, they’d be inside. And they wouldn’t be able to see Lenora and him. That was the cue he’d been waiting for. He hadn’t wanted to run with her in the open, in case the men had plans to make a hasty exit from the church.