The Lawman's Last Stand

by Vickie Taylor

  He stood. “I guess you don’t need me any longer. I’m sure Fitz’s boys are still outside. They’ll keep an eye on her until you can get rid of her.” He headed for the door.

  Margo followed him out. “Shane.” She stopped him in the hallway with her no-nonsense voice. Struggling to hold back the rising red tide inside him, he turned.

  Margo touched his arm lightly. “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He shuffled from one foot to the other. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Margo’s expression was enough to tell him she wasn’t buying it, but she let it go. “She told the truth about one thing, at least. Someone on the inside is leaking information about this case to the wrong people. Paul Branson is concerned about it, too. He’s asked me to arrange protective custody for her here to limit the involvement of any of the New York offices. I’m going to put her at Shelton House.”

  “Shelton House?” Shane couldn’t quite keep the surprise, or the worry, out of his voice. “That place is the DOJ’s equivalent to Fort Knox. Do you really think that’s necessary?”

  “Remember the two men you had Fitz pick up in the hospital parking lot?”

  “Yeah. They might have been the ones who shot Bill.”

  “One of them was the chief of security for Ferrar Industries. The other was a P.I. who admitted he was on John Ferrar’s payroll.”

  Shane rolled his head back on his neck. “Daddy’s looking for her.”

  “The question is, what will he do when he finds her?”

  Shane shook his head. At this point, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

  “There’s more,” Margo continued. At this point, he didn’t know how much more he could take. That didn’t stop Margo. “According to his office in New York, Mr. Ferrar was called out of town unexpectedly three days ago.” She looked grim, and Shane knew she was thinking that was the day Bill had been shot. “The secretary wouldn’t say. But we think he’s here, in Phoenix.”

  “Have you checked airline records? Hotels?”

  “We’re working on it now.” Margo touched his arm. “Shane, I want you to go to Shelton House, too.”

  He stiffened. “No way.”

  “Someone wants her very bad—maybe her father, maybe not. But whoever it is, he’s already proven that he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get her.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” Margo said gently. “But I know you. You’re too close to this to just walk away.”

  Damn, she really did know him well. One look at him and he might as well have put on a slide show for her, demon strating how he and Gigi had entertained themselves the last few days.

  “I’d worry about you, if I thought you were out there working this thing on your own.” She gave his forearm a gentle squeeze. “And I’ve got enough to worry about right now, don’t you think?”

  The sudden image of Bill, lying still and pale against stark white sheets flashed through his mind. Using his guilt over Bill’s injury against him was a dirty trick. “That’s not playing fair, Margo,” he grumbled.

  “All’s fair in love, my boy. If a little trickery is what it takes to keep you safe, then I’m not above it.”

  He knew what he was getting into. His already stretched control would have to give a lot further. Every minute in captivity with Gigi would feel like an aeon in hell. But he would do it, because Margo had asked him. Besides, it might be a good idea to stick close to Gigi, no matter how much it hurt. The last time he’d gotten between a woman and her family, a good agent had died. He needed to make sure that didn’t happen again.

  He nodded curtly. “I’m not sure why you’re even bothering with me, after all that’s happened. But I’ll go. For now.”

  “Good. While you’re there, think about this—we don’t have all the facts in this case yet.”

  He jerked his head to one side negatively. “Don’t make excuses for me, Margo. We both know she’s guilty, and I’m an idiot for ever believing in her. But then, I’ve always been an easy mark for conniving women, haven’t I?”

  Margo rocked back on her heels, a disapproving frown creasing her forehead. “It’s way too early for you to be handing down judgments, Shane. On yourself—” She looked past him toward the den. He angled his head enough to see Gigi standing in the open doorway, looking ravaged. Damn. How long had she been listening? “—or anyone else.”

  Margo walked away, leaving him to face Gigi alone.

  He turned in time to see a fresh, fat tear slip off her thick eyelashes. She yanked the back of her hand across her face, swiping it away as if she loathed showing him that one small weakness.

  As if that were important, compared to the other weaknesses he knew of her, like the way she liked to be kissed on the soles of her feet. The way she liked to be touched, exactly, between her legs. The way her left breast was more sensitive than the right.

  God, even hating her as he did, he wanted to make her weak again, right then, right there. He bit his tongue to stop the surge of blood to his groin.

  She spread her legs shoulder width—a fighting stance. “Since you’ve already tried and convicted me—” she said, angling her chin up in an admirable display of false bravado. God help him, her moxie only made him want her more. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me exactly what I’m supposed to be guilty of.”

  He’d been wrong earlier, he realized then, about the bubble he and Gigi had been living in bursting. It hadn’t burst. It had exploded in a nuclear-force blast.

  And at the moment, he wasn’t sure either of them would survive the fallout.

  Chapter 10

  Gigi drew on a reserve of strength that had dwindled during the past few years of living in constant fear. She leaned against the door frame in a pose she hoped looked casual when in reality, the solid wall was the only thing keeping her on her feet. Her knees wanted to fold under the maelstrom in Shane’s eyes.

  “Well, are you going to run down my crimes, or just send me to the gallows guessing?” She shoved off the wall and strode down the hallway on rubber legs.

  His eyes were darker, more dangerous than she’d ever seen them. Feral and hungry.

  “How about murder? Is that a good enough crime for you?”

  Gigi stopped, stunned. “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Then why did you leave New York?”

  “I told you—I ran for my life.”

  He advanced, looming over her until she could smell his borrowed aftershave. Feel the warm wave of his tea sweetened breath. “Did you, Gigi? Or did Daddy send you away so you couldn’t testify against him?”

  Her heart twisted. “I don’t understand.”

  “Come on. You’re a bright girl. Surely you can figure it out.”

  Desperately she reached for his logic. “You think my father raided the safe house in New York and sent me to Utah to keep me from talking?”

  His satisfied scowl told her he did. “A federal marshal was killed in that raid. If we can prove you knew about it or participated in any way, that makes you as guilty as your father. You know what the penalty is for killing a federal agent?”

  “I didn’t—” Arguing about what had or hadn’t happened in New York seemed useless. He’d made up his mind. “Someone tried to kill me in Utah, too. You saw it!”

  “I’m the one who got shot, not you. Maybe Daddy was looking out for you again. Didn’t like you cozying up with a lawman.”

  “If I knew my father was behind this all along, why would I have gone with you?”

  “I didn’t give you much choice, did I?” Though he covered it quickly, she heard his breath catch. “You know, I can understand why you lied to me, strung me along until Daddy could catch up and spring you loose again. But what I can’t figure out is why you slept with me. What did you hope to gain?”

  She flinched. “What makes you think it was about gaining anything?”

  “Everything is about getting something, sweetheart. Even if it’s only a few days of good sex
before you have to go on the run again.”

  A few days of good sex. That was how he defined what they’d had. In a way, she guessed he was right. They’d never made any commitment to each other. Never talked about staying together after all this was over.

  Now they never would.

  “Or maybe it was more than sex?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Maybe you figured if you stuck with me, you could find out exactly how much the D.A. in New York knew about what you and dear old Dad were up to.” A twisted smile coiled on his face. “As long as you were pumping me, why not pump for information, too?”

  Gigi bit her tongue to hold her anger back. He could make what they’d shared sound like some triple-X video if he wanted to. She knew better.

  “So that’s it? Four—no, three hours ago—you made love to me like I’ve never been made love to before. And now you’ve decided it was all some trick, and you’re just going to turn your back on me?”

  His nostrils flared and his pupils dilated. He slapped his palm on the wall over her shoulder and leaned closer over her.

  “No,” he said, seething. “I’m not ever turning my back on you again. At least not without patting you down for weapons first.”

  She hissed in a breath, shocked at the venom in his words, his tone. Her palm cracked against his cheek. The echo resounded in her ears as she drew her stinging hand back to cover her own lips, which she’d pursed in disbelief.

  She’d never hit another human being in her life, not counting soft punches in the mock battles of her jujitsu class. The feeling of delivering a real blow was at once empowering and humiliating. Only he could have made her react out of sheer instinct like that.

  “You really are a bastard, you know that?”

  Oliver trotted down the hall and sat beside Shane, looking from him to Gigi and whining pitifully.

  The corners of Shane’s mouth curled in a sickly, dangerous smile. He put his hand on Oliver’s head and quieted the dog. “I’d rather be an honest mutt than a lying blue blood any day.”

  “I was talking about your behavior, not your parentage, and you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged with practiced indifference, but the sharp, white crevasses at the corners of his eyes gave away his true concern. “You’re right either way.”

  Gigi blanched. Shane, she realized, had little tolerance for imperfection. In himself, or anyone else. “Then what does that make me?” she asked quietly.

  A whore, she supposed, if he really believed she’d traded herself for information.

  “Don’t worry,” he said ruefully. “You’re not the first woman to use sex to get what she wants from a man. Hell, you’re not even the first woman to do it to me.”

  With a sick certainty, she understood why he’d been so quick to judge her. “You think I’m just like her, don’t you? Like Lucia—betraying you to protect my family.”

  She expected to see hurt, fear and frustration swirling close to the surface when she looked deep into the blue pools that were his eyes. Instead, she saw only calm. Dead calm. A lifelessness like she’d never seen in him before.

  “In a way I don’t blame either one of you,” he said. “Family loyalty is an admirable trait.” His wan smile reappeared briefly. “Not quite as admirable in crime families as it is in good families, but still commendable.”

  She would have told him what she really felt toward her father—and it wasn’t loyalty—but he wouldn’t listen. He was too distant. Too hurt.

  “I can’t go back to New York,” she said desperately. “They’ll kill me.”

  “So what will you do, run again?”

  His dispassion exploded her temper. This was her life they were talking about! She struck again, intending to hurt, but this time with words, not a physical blow. “What will you do? Crawl in a hole and lick your wounds again?”

  “Is that what you think I did while I was on leave?” His head tipped back and he let out a raucous laugh, then leveled a serious stare on her. “Honey, I don’t run away from my problems. I hunt them down.”

  Understanding spread through her like a fever.

  “I spent my eighteen months of leave turning over every rock and examining every bug until I found Lucia and her brother. They won’t be selling drugs—or murdering federal agents—ever again.”

  “You—you killed them?” Angry as she was at him, a part of her still withered to think he could take a life in revenge. Even the life of a drug dealer.

  “No, I managed to stay within the limits of the law. Just barely,” he added dryly. “Although I guess you could say I’m responsible for ending their lives. Lucia’s brother is on death row—I didn’t have to kill him. The state of Arizona will do it for me. As for Lucia, she’s doing life without parole in maximum security. And I don’t guess that’s really much of a life at all, is it?”

  My God, what it must be like to see someone you loved go to prison for life. To be the one who put her there. She could only imagine what that had done to him.

  He had protested that he hadn’t loved Lucia. Just like he’d claimed her time with him at Lake Pleasant was just a few days of good sex.

  She knew better.

  She touched his jaw, a feathery, uncertain stroke. “I’m sorry. That must have been very difficult—”

  He swatted her hand away. Pressed closer, her sympathy seeming to incense him. “Don’t even think about running, Gigi. Inside Shelton House, Margo will make sure you’re protected, even from me. Outside of it, you take your chances.”

  A spark was back in his eyes. Had she woken a sign of life, somehow?

  “Maybe I like to gamble,” she said, hoping to fan the flames. She’d learned to play the odds pretty well from her Uncle Ben. And she was willing to bet Shane didn’t have it in him to do her any real harm.

  “Not for the stakes I have in mind.” He leaned against her farther, just a fraction more weight than he had been plying against her, and she felt his arousal at her hip.

  “You think I’d let you touch me again?”

  He inhaled a deep breath, shifting his chest against her breasts. She didn’t have to look down to know that her nipples had peaked in response. He smiled in satisfaction.

  “Purely a physiological reaction,” she explained.

  “Mm-hm,” he murmured, a grinding, sexy hum near her ear. “Our minds may hate each other, but our bodies are still very much in lust.”

  His step back seemed to require more effort than it should have. The sudden rush of conditioned air against her fevered skin made her shiver.

  “If you leave Shelton House,” he said. “I will find you. And then we’ll both find out just how physiological a reaction can be.”

  This time, she believed him. When it came to his ability to get a reaction out of her, she wouldn’t bet against Shane Hightower. All the odds were in his favor.

  Shelton House wasn’t bad for a prison, she decided later that night, ducking guards as she headed into the kitchen for a midnight snack. Margo’s safe house turned out to be a century-old ranch surrounded by a vine-covered wall broken only by rusted wrought-iron gates. The house itself was a two-story stucco affair with a red-tiled roof and two huge, rambling wings that veered back from the main living area to surround a courtyard full of wild roses. Narrow hallways twisted and turned through the wings like a maze, opening to dozens of bedrooms and twice that many nooks and crannies perfect for sitting. And brooding, which was what she’d been doing until the rumbling in her stomach grew too loud to ignore.

  She hadn’t eaten much at dinner. Wonderful as Bald Billy’s three-layer lasagna had smelled, her stomach had rebelled at the thought of a heavy meal. Maybe she could find some fruit or a bagel left over from breakfast.

  At an intersection of passageways, she paused, picturing the house’s floor plan and mapping out her route, not taking the most direct path. She preferred to wind around the old place, exploring and studying antiquated furnishings and artwork as she passed.

  Th
e place must have belonged to someone with money, she thought, pausing to look at a handmade vase signed on the bottom by the artist. Probably a drug dealer’s house, she realized with a grimace, seized by the DOJ.

  Two more left turns and the hardwood floor gave way to glazed tile. Gigi slowed her pace, her stomach fluttering until she wondered if her persnickety digestive system would tolerate even a bagel tonight. A light shone from the breakfast nook at the end of the kitchen, another through the half-open door to the walk-in pantry, but no one was in sight. She listened a moment for sounds of life, then let out a slow breath. She was worrying about nothing. No one was around. Shane was off hiding somewhere, as he had been since they’d arrived, and Billy and the other agent, Jeff something, were in the den, playing cards.

  Slowly she turned the corner into the kitchen. She was perfectly safe—

  She jumped so suddenly she slipped and almost fell on the polished tile. Her heart leaped to her throat and her hand automatically covered her mouth, as if to hold in the scream rising in her breast. It took her a full second to recover enough to speak. “Margo.” Her heart thumped uncomfortably. “You startled me.”

  Margo closed the cabinet door she’d been leaning behind and stepped from the shadows into the circle of light in the breakfast area. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. I guess I’m just a little jumpy tonight. Did you come here…alone?”

  “Don’t worry. I take precautions. No killers followed me down to the pantry.” Margo sat down in the breakfast booth, unwrapping a block of cheese and slicing off a piece. “Or is it Shane you’re worried about bumping into tonight?”

  “I’m not sure which would be worse at this point.” Gigi looked up quickly, a new possibility taking root in her thoughts. “He is still here, isn’t he? He hasn’t left?”

  “Oh he’s here all right.” Margo looked toward the pantry. “He’s just…laying low, I suspect.”

  “You mean he’s avoiding me.”

  “Avoiding a confrontation, perhaps. Shane’s always been a master of self-control. I don’t think he likes it that his feelings run so close to the surface around you.”