One Night Standoff

by Delores Fossen

  “Let’s go,” Clayton told Lenora.

  They got moving again toward the gate, and even though his heartbeat was roaring in his ears, he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

  “There she is!” one of the men shouted.

  Hell. Lenora and he had been spotted. Obviously it hadn’t taken as long as Clayton had hoped for the men to search the church.

  Clayton didn’t look back, but he did position himself behind Lenora as he threw open the latch on the creaky metal gate and shoved her through it. He hated forcing her to run, but he didn’t have a choice. And besides, there was a good chance they wouldn’t even make it to his truck before these guys caught up with them.

  With his left hand on her back, Clayton moved her through the small grassy clearing just outside the cemetery fence. They were just inches from the trees when he heard the shot blast through the air.

  The sound blasted through him, too. It darn sure didn’t help with the pain in his head. Didn’t help Lenora, either, because her trembling got a heck of a lot worse.

  Clayton resisted the urge to turn and fire. Instead he kept running, kept pushing Lenora until he could shove her behind one of the trees. It wasn’t a second too soon, because another shot came their way.

  He reminded her to stay low again, but he didn’t stop except for just a brief moment. Too risky, even though the running could be a risk to the baby. They ran deeper into the clusters of trees, trying to put as much distance as possible between the men and them.

  The next bullet tore through his shirtsleeve, grazing his arm. The knife-slice of pain was instant, but it didn’t cause him to slow down. That’s because the bullet had come way too close to Lenora.

  He pushed her to the side, behind one of the larger trees, turned and saw the two men already in the cemetery. They were coming straight for Lenora and him.

  Clayton took aim.

  And fired.

  The shot smacked into the taller man’s shoulder, and even though Clayton was sure it wasn’t a fatal strike, the man dropped to the ground.

  Another shot sounded—a loud, thick blast. Not fired by one of the men, but rather by Lenora. From the corner of his eye, Clayton saw that she was leaning out from the opposite side the tree, and she still had her gun aimed.

  The second man fell to the ground, too, but Clayton didn’t think Lenora’s bullet had actually hit him. The gunman just seemed to be getting out of the way. Maybe neither of the men had thought that Lenora would actually return fire. Clayton had thought that, too, because he’d made it pretty clear he didn’t want her to take any unnecessary chances.

  He didn’t waste time warning her to stay down and quit taking chances, because they only had a few seconds before those men got back on their feet. Clayton took hold of her wrist and got her moving toward his truck.

  It wasn’t long before he heard a welcome sound. Sirens. A much faster response than Clayton had estimated, and maybe it would send the men running back to their SUV. He wanted to arrest them. Question them, too. But maybe the locals would do that while he got Lenora out of there.

  “They’re not following us,” Lenora said, looking over her shoulder.

  Good. Just a few more yards and they’d be one step closer to safety.

  Clayton shoved aside a low-hanging tree branch and they threaded their way through some underbrush to the trail. The truck was still there, thank God, and he threw open the door and practically pushed Lenora into the passenger’s seat. He crawled around her so he could start the engine and he slammed on the accelerator.

  “Put on your seat belt,” he told her, doing the same while trying to keep watch all around them.

  The trail was just that—a trail—filled with bumps and holes. That made for a bumpy ride, but it wasn’t their discomfort that concerned him most. There were plenty of trees between the cemetery and the trail, and if the gunmen decided to outrun the law, they could come through those trees and start shooting.

  Clayton wanted to figure out what they were after. And why.

  There she is.

  That was what the man had shouted when he’d spotted them in the cemetery.

  She.

  Did that mean they were looking only for Lenora and not him? It was something he needed to consider. Especially after everything Lenora had told him about her life as a criminal informant.

  That was the last thing he’d expected from her.

  Here he’d had her in his protective custody, and it’d all been a ruse for a deep-cover operation. Once he got Lenora to safety, he was going to make some calls to let his own boss and Lenora’s task-force leader know that he wasn’t happy about playing the dupe, since his life had been on the line, too.

  He hated lies.

  They were something his worthless father, Melvin Larson, had manipulated him with countless times. But Clayton pushed that old wound aside and kept maneuvering the truck through the trail.

  The trees were so close in spots that the branches scraped against the sides of his truck and the rocks battered against the undercarriage. The sound was practically deafening, but Clayton tried to pick through it so he could figure out what was going on.

  He could still make out the sirens. That was good. And he figured they were headed for the church. However, he wasn’t sure from which direction the locals would arrive. It was possible he would pass them when he made it to the road.

  “I need you to make a call,” Clayton said, handing his phone to Lenora. “Call my brother Dallas. It’s the first number in my contacts. And ask him to run the plates of that SUV.” He gave her the license-plate number and hoped knowing who owned the vehicle would also help them identify who’d just taken shots at them.

  Lenora made the call and was still in the process of trying to explain to Dallas what was going on when Clayton spotted the road just ahead. He slowed, bringing his truck almost to a stop, and he saw the other vehicle flying up the road toward them.

  Not a police cruiser.

  But the SUV that their attackers had driven.

  Since those men would definitely see his truck and maybe attempt to block their escape, Clayton had to do something fast. He damn sure didn’t want to have to drive in Reverse on the trail. Not with a pair of assassins bearing down on them. Besides, even if he could manage to outrun them, eventually the trail would end and Lenora and he would be trapped.

  Clayton slammed on the accelerator and bolted out onto the road. The SUV hit its brakes. Not for long, though. It only took a few moments before the driver readjusted and came right after them.

  “Get down,” Clayton told Lenora, but he didn’t wait for her to do that. He pushed her down onto the seat. “Tell Dallas we’re traveling east on the farm road outside of Sadler’s Falls. We have two men in pursuit, and I need the locals out here now. These men are armed and dangerous.”

  He hadn’t thought it possible, but her voice was even shakier now. She managed to tell Dallas what he needed to know and then pressed the end button.

  “Dallas says he’s on it,” she relayed to Clayton.

  Clayton didn’t doubt it. Dallas would immediately call the locals and send them in this direction. He only hoped it’d be soon and that their attackers wouldn’t start shooting again. It was hard to be accurate shooting from a moving vehicle, but he didn’t want one of these SOBs getting off a lucky shot.

  “Hang on,” Clayton warned her, a split second before he went into a sharp curve.

  He had to fight to keep control of the truck, and the right tires dug into the dirt and gravel shoulder. Another round of rocks battered against his truck, and it sounded like gunfire.

  “Oh, God,” Lenora said, and she started to lift her head.

  “Stay down,” he warned her. “They’re not shooting.”

  That obviously didn’t steady her nerves, and while still repeating oh, God, she put her hands over her belly. Protecting the baby. From what Lenora had told him she was a trained agent, but there wasn’t enough training in the world to
stay unrattled while your unborn baby was in danger. Even though he’d only learned about his fatherhood just minutes earlier, he was feeling the same thing.

  Clayton went into another sharp turn just as the SUV accelerated, and it slammed into the back of his truck. The jolt caused a whiplash effect, with his body jolting forward, then back, and Clayton tossed his gun on the seat so he could use both hands on the steering wheel.

  “I’ll keep watch,” Lenora insisted.

  And even though he didn’t want her to do it, she levered herself up a little and fastened her attention on the side window. She also lifted her gun, getting it ready. There was no way Clayton would let her lean out the window and return fire, and that meant he had to do something now to defuse this mess of a situation.

  He saw the sign for Sadler’s Falls ahead, and without slowing as much as he should have, he took the turn on what had to be two tires at most. The truck wobbled, but he immediately corrected and got control.

  Behind them, the SUV squealed to a stop.

  Clayton didn’t take the time to figure out why the driver had done that. He put the pedal to the metal and got Lenora out of there.

  Chapter Six

  Lenora kept her attention plastered to the side mirror. It’d been nearly an hour and a half since she’d last seen the two gunmen in the SUV, but she wasn’t taking any more chances. She’d already made enough stupid mistakes, and she couldn’t afford to make more.

  Even though that might be exactly what she was doing now.

  That’s because Clayton had insisted on driving them to his family’s ranch, which she estimated was now only a few miles away. She figured with six marshals living there the place was safe enough, but she hadn’t wanted to bring the danger to Clayton’s doorstep.

  Soon, very soon, she’d need to make arrangements to leave Maverick County. The state. Heck, maybe even the country.

  “Dead end,” Clayton mumbled when he finished his latest call to his brother.

  Lenora had lost count of how many phone conversations there had been, all with his marshal brothers, but so far none of the calls had given Clayton and her any good news. This one didn’t sound any better.

  From one of the calls, they’d learned that by the time the cops from Sadler’s Falls had made it to the farm road, the gunmen in the SUV had been nowhere in sight, and even a makeshift roadblock had failed to rein them in. Worse, recovering their spent shell casings from the woods and cemetery would probably turn out to be a needle-in-a-haystack search.

  “The license plates on the SUV didn’t pan out,” Clayton relayed to her. “They were fake.”

  Of course they were. Every indication was that these guys were pros, and they wouldn’t have made the mistake of using a vehicle that could be traced back to them or the person who’d hired them. Still, she’d hoped Clayton and she would get lucky.

  “Dallas thinks he’s figured out how these guys found you,” Clayton added. “Apparently, the Sadler’s Falls newspaper ran a front-page article about the restoration of the stained-glass windows at the church. In addition to being printed and circulated, the story was posted on the newspaper’s online site.”

  “But I used a fake name.” However, Lenora immediately realized that didn’t matter. “These guys had probably scoured the web, looking for anything to do with stained-glass restoration.” And the article had led them to her.

  Yet another mistake on her part.

  She shouldn’t have taken work doing any restoration, especially not in such a small town, where she couldn’t just blend in.

  “These gunmen obviously used the same approach I did to find you,” Clayton reminded her. “That’s why you need to be someplace where I can keep you safe.”

  In his mind, that someplace safe was the ranch.

  “I really don’t like the idea of coming here,” she said again.

  Again, he just seemed to ignore her, and he glanced at her stomach. “Are you okay?”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that, and Lenora nodded as she’d done before. To say she was okay would be a lie, but that was only because her nerves were frazzled and she was exhausted. She hadn’t been hurt, and she knew the baby was fine because he or she was kicking like crazy.

  She considered plopping Clayton’s hands on her belly so he could feel those kicks as proof that the baby was truly okay, but that seemed almost intimate. Strange, considering they’d had sex, but he didn’t remember that one-night stand, and reminding him of it probably wasn’t a good idea. Not when she was trying to keep some emotional and physical distance between them.

  “I guess it’s occurred to you that both attacks have come when we’ve been together,” she tossed out there. “And that’s a good reason for me not to be at the ranch. I don’t want anyone in your family hurt because of me.”

  He turned off the main highway and onto a two-lane road. “That baby is part of my family.”

  Oh, mercy. That sounded territorial, and while it was true that the baby was his, Clayton was in no shape for fatherhood. He’d been sharp and efficient when making the wrap-up calls about this latest shooting, but his bunched-up forehead let her know that he was in pain. Probably a heck of a lot more pain than he’d ever be willing to admit.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, repeating his question.

  That caused him to scowl, but then he winced at making the simple facial gesture. The pain was obviously getting worse.

  He reached over, threw open the glove compartment and took out a prescription bottle. He shoved two pills into his mouth, gulped some water from the bottle on the console between them and threw the meds back in the glove compartment.

  “I can drive,” she offered.

  When he didn’t answer her, she grabbed some tissues from beneath his meds, wet them with water and pressed it to the back of his neck. At first he flinched as if he might push her hand away, but then he mumbled a thanks.

  “My mother had migraines,” she explained. “She said a cool cloth helped sometimes.”

  “It does,” he agreed a moment later. “But what’ll help more is to find the person responsible for these attacks.”

  She had to agree with that, but so far they had zero leads. Well, except the most obvious one—Clayton and her.

  “There’s only one motive I can think of as to why we’ve been attacked twice. Someone wants to eliminate us as witnesses to Jill’s murder. Without us, maybe Riggs’s lawyers might feel they can manipulate the evidence to get the charges reduced or dismissed.”

  He made a sound of agreement. “So, Riggs maybe hired someone, but he would have needed help to orchestrate an attack like this. And I don’t mean just money kind of help. He’d need someone he could trust on the outside to do the legwork.”

  Clayton took another turn onto an even narrower road, and she saw the sign for the Blue Creek Ranch. Clayton’s home.

  Lenora shifted the wet tissues a little, and her fingers grazed the back of his neck. Clayton didn’t move, but he made another sound that might have been a grunt of pain.

  But she rethought that.

  Even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind those shades, the breath that left his mouth wasn’t of pain, but of discomfort.

  Maybe it was this blasted attraction that still seemed to be between them. He probably wasn’t any more comfortable with it than she was. However, that didn’t make it go away.

  “Any ideas who Riggs could have hired?” she asked, forcing her thoughts back on the only subject that she should be thinking about—this investigation.

  “No one immediately comes to mind. What about you? Any ideas?”

  “Yes,” she had to answer. “The task-force leader, James Britt. I told you that his behavior after your shooting was suspicious.”

  “You didn’t talk to him about it?” Clayton immediately wanted to know. The concern was in his voice now, probably because he was worried that she’d tipped her hand and let James think she believed he was doing something illegal.

/>   “No. In fact, I haven’t spoken to him since your shooting. He thinks I left the justice department because I was shaken by Jill’s murder. I was,” she added in a mumble.

  “Yeah.” That’s all he said, but it was obvious from his expression he was thinking about it. She’d also slept with Clayton because she’d been shaken.

  Lenora quickly moved on to something else that didn’t involve memories of sex with Clayton. “What about Corey Dayton, the gunman I shot at the diner? Did anything turn up on who might have hired him?” Because that could lead them back to Riggs.

  “Nothing so far, but I need to take a harder look at everything. That includes a chat with the prison officials where Riggs is being held. I want to know who he’s had communications with. I need to check out his lawyers, too.”

  Yes, a lot of work ahead, but first she had to deal with what else lay ahead. Literally. She looked out at the sprawling pastures and equally sprawling ranch house at the end of the road. In addition to hundreds of Angus cows, there were also about a half dozen ranch hands milling around and doing various chores.

  “My foster father came from money,” Clayton offered, maybe because she seemed so shocked by the sheer size of the place. “But he was first and foremost a lawman.”

  A marshal, she recalled from the background check she’d read on Clayton. Now retired, Kirby Granger had rescued not only Clayton but five other boys from the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility.

  Clayton tipped his head to an older wood frame house near the front of the pasture. “My brother Harlan lives there. You remember meeting him.”

  Yes, he’d given her the third degree about why she was visiting Clayton while they rode in the ambulance to the hospital. Lenora was pretty sure that Harlan didn’t like her much.

  He pointed to another place, not nearly as large as the main ranch house. A one-story that looked to be recently built. “My brother Dallas and his fiancée, Joelle, live there. You probably won’t see much of Joelle while you’re here. She’s finishing up her job in Austin, but she’ll move here for good in a month or two and work for the D.A.”