RENEGADE GUARDIAN

by Delores Fossen

  Plenty of opportunities to hear footsteps.

  And an equal number of opportunities to worry that he’d made an idiot of a mistake by leaving her those keys and that gun. It’d been a gamble. But it had obviously paid off. The proof of that was when Maya stepped into the open doorway of his bedroom.

  She’d changed her clothes. A loose green skirt and sweater top. Nondescript clothes provided by the U.S. Marshals Service, but on Maya no clothes were nondescript. The woman managed to make even baggy attractive.

  Something he cursed himself for noticing.

  “How’s Evan?” he asked.

  “Fine. He just finished his bottle and will probably sleep for an hour or two.” She stretched out her arms, caught onto the doorframe with both hands. “You knew I wouldn’t leave even if I could come up with my own safe house and bodyguard. You knew I wouldn’t risk taking Evan away from you. Away from the security you’ve already put in place.”

  It sounded exactly like what it was—an accusation. He moved the laptop to the bed and eased his legs off the side. He didn’t get up, because he didn’t want to give Maya any reason to back out of that doorway. This conversation was necessary, though it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Slade lifted his shoulder. “You love Evan, and I figured you’d do whatever it took to keep him safe.”

  Her mouth tightened, and she looked ready to curse him out. “I wanted to leave.”

  “Yeah,” Slade settled for saying.

  The silence came. Man, did it, and it was even more uncomfortable than the stare she was giving him.

  “There was a laptop in the bedroom, and I did an internet search on you,” she finally said. And that sounded like an accusation, too.

  “I bet there was nothing in that search about me being in reform school when I was fourteen. I was pretty much a renegade in those days. Still am.”

  She flinched. But maybe not from surprise. “No. But there was a lot of info about you and your five foster brothers being raised at the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility.”

  Slade couldn’t help it. The name of the place always made him scowl. It was too pretty of a name for a hellhole.

  “Your foster father, Kirby Granger, was a marshal, and he got custody of all six of you.”

  He nodded. “Kirby saved us.”

  And now someone had to save Kirby. His foster father was going through cancer treatments, and it wasn’t clear if the treatments or the cancer would kill him. But added to that, Kirby was suspected of murdering the Rocky Creek headmaster, Jonah Webb.

  Yet another name that always caused Slade to scowl.

  So did the fact that Kirby wasn’t the only suspect. Slade and all his brothers were, too. “I cleared up the question the Ranger had about where I was that night,” Slade volunteered. “I was with someone.” Angelica Sanchez. Angel for short. And she wasn’t nearly as spiritual as her name implied.

  “She was able to give you an alibi?”

  Even though he hadn’t said he’d been with a girl, Maya had obviously guessed. Slade nodded. “There’s still a window of opportunity where I was unaccounted for, but she managed to make that window very narrow by corroborating the time we were together.”

  He paused. “Are you going to ask me if I killed Jonah Webb?” Slade tossed out there.

  She opened her mouth, closed it and shook her head. “From everything I read about him, Webb deserved to die. I don’t have any warm fuzzy feelings for a brute of a man who would abuse children under his care.”

  No surprise there, but Slade hadn’t expected her to cut him even an inch of slack.

  He tipped his head to the laptop on his bed. “I did a search on you, too.” But he hadn’t used just the internet. He’d also gotten a thorough background using some law enforcement contacts.

  Even in the dim light, he saw the color blanch from her face. “Like Deidre, I had a thing for bad boys.”

  He shook his head. “Dominic Luker wasn’t a bad boy.”

  Slade hadn’t thought it possible, but she lost even more color with the mention of her attacker/ex-lover’s name. He heard the shivery sound her breath made.

  “He was a sociopath,” Slade clarified, and decided to end it with that dime-store diagnosis. He seriously doubted that Maya wanted to discuss the details of the attack that had nearly left her dead.

  And unable to have children.

  Several of the sixteen knife wounds Luker had given her had seen to that. But she hadn’t given up. She’d recovered, finished law school and started a nonprofit victims’ rights group.

  Except recovery maybe wasn’t the right word.

  Yes, Luker was out of her life permanently since he’d been killed in a prison shank fight. Ironic for a man who loved knifing women.

  But Luker had left his mark on Maya.

  She had no close friends. Hadn’t been in a real relationship since the attack and had basically thrown herself into work. Well, until she’d adopted Evan. According to her coworkers, she had no immediate plans to return to work but would instead live off the modest inheritance her late grandmother had left Maya when she was a toddler.

  “So we know each other’s secrets,” she concluded. She walked closer. Slow, tentative steps. But that wasn’t a tentative look on her face. “On paper I suspect neither of us looks like a parent-of-the-year candidate. But given the chance, I’ll be a good mother.”

  Her voice cracked, and there was just enough light now for him to see the shine in her eyes. From tears that were threatening to spill.

  There it was again. That punch. And this time, it wasn’t from heat between them but from that need deep inside him to comfort a damsel. Not that she was exactly the damsel type, but he’d just brought up some of the worst memories of her life and his sheer presence was a reminder that she might lose her son.

  Slade went to her, but when he reached for her, she batted his hands away. “Don’t. If you touch me, I’ll fall apart.”

  He had his own reasons why he shouldn’t touch, but Slade touched her anyway. He pulled Maya into his arms and braced himself for the tears.

  But she didn’t break into a sob.

  Nor did she move.

  She stood there, seemingly frozen in place with her arms down by her side while he held her. It took him a couple of seconds for the oh, hell to dance through his head. For her, being held by a man might bring back the memories of her attack, and Slade would have jerked away from her.

  If she hadn’t lifted her hands.

  First one, then the other. And she put them on his waist. Definitely not pushing him away.

  Just the opposite.

  She inched closer to him until they were body-to-body.

  “I hate the danger,” she said. “It’s broken down a barrier that I’ve spent years putting up.”

  He knew all about barriers. Knew that sometimes, like now, they were a good thing. But danger, especially shared danger, could indeed bring down walls and forge bonds that could get them in all sorts of trouble.

  And maybe even save them.

  The best way to keep Evan safe was for them to work together.

  “This has nothing to do with Evan.” Her voice was a breathy whisper, so soft. Like the rest of her body. And that scent of hers that dulled his mind just enough that it took a second or two for that to sink in.

  “I never thought it did.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get close to you,” she clarified.

  But no clarification was needed. That wasn’t the grip of a woman planning to seduce a man to get him to back off. Or even to soften him up. Her touch was tentative, but the tentativeness didn’t make it to her eyes.

  Her grip tightened slightly. She inched even closer. “And this has nothing to do with you being a bad boy.”

&nbs
p; “Good thing. Because I lost my bad-boy status years ago.” Yeah, it was a poor attempt to lighten things up, but since she looked ready to shatter into a thousand little pieces, he thought she could use the levity.

  It worked.

  The corner of her mouth lifted just a fraction. “I don’t think it’s a status you can lose. It comes with the looks and the attitude.”

  Her gaze combed over his face. Lingered on the dark stubble that was there. Before her attention went lower, to his chest. Only then did he remember his shirt was wide open.

  Oh, man.

  He was in trouble here. Yeah, she might not be trying to seduce him, but she was doing it anyway. And for multiple reasons he wanted to keep his hands off her. After all, they might end up in a custody battle.

  Or together on the receiving end of another attack.

  But that didn’t stop him.

  Hell, maybe she was right. Once bad, always bad. That was the only explanation Slade could come up with as to why he lowered his head and brushed his mouth over hers.

  Maya made a sound of startled surprise. Now she’d pull back. Maybe even slap him into the next county.

  She didn’t do that, either.

  She stared at him as if trying to decide what to do, and while she was deciding, Slade took a nosedive off a cliff. He snapped her to him and kissed her the way his body was begging for him to kiss her.

  The taste of her slammed right through him, and it evaporated what little common sense he had left. But it wasn’t the taste that made things escalate. It was that little sound she made. A little catch in her throat. The sound not of surprise or protest.

  But of pleasure.

  She slid her arms around his waist and upped the already bad situation when her breasts landed against his chest. Yeah, she had on that skirt and top, but since his chest was bare and also since she seemed to be wearing the thinnest bra ever, he could feel parts of her that he shouldn’t have been feeling.

  That didn’t stop him from feeling anyway.

  It’d been a while since the slow burn had turned into an ache. He generally liked to dive right into sex so he could, well, find relief and then leave. Of course, the leaving didn’t happen right away, and despite his badass reputation, he didn’t fall into bed with many women.

  But there’d be no leaving with Maya.

  Nope. He had to stay with her until the danger was finished. Until they had the results of the DNA test.

  And maybe even after that, if Evan was his son.

  That finally sank into his hard head—his quickly hardening body, too—and Slade moved away from her.

  “I don’t do things like this,” she mumbled, and she made his body beg when she flicked her tongue over her bottom lip.

  “Ditto.”

  She gave him a flat stare that was somewhat diminished because she was flushed with arousal.

  “Ditto,” he repeated.

  “Not with those looks,” she added, also in a mumble.

  He took her by the arm and put her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself. You’re a knockout.”

  Maya laughed, but it wasn’t from humor. She pulled up her sweater top, and the first thing that caught his attention was her barely there bra and her breasts that seemed ready to spill right out of it.

  But then he saw the scars.

  They were thin white lines, barely visible in the thready morning light. But he figured this was a case of more than skin-deep. Those scars had cut her to the core.

  There was nothing he could say or do to lessen the pain she’d always feel, but Slade wished Luker were alive so he could hurt him for what he’d done to Maya.

  Slade reached out and ran his index finger over one of the scars. He barely touched Maya, but she shivered. Not from heat this time.

  “It’s not exactly a ditto, but since you’ve shown me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He pushed back the side of his shirt, unzipped his jeans and lowered them and his boxers.

  Maya’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Not that,” he assured her. Though with the taste of her still in his mouth, getting naked with her held plenty of appeal. Thankfully, he did have some shred of common sense and control left.

  Some.

  “My scar.” He stopped lowering his clothes at about the midhip-bone point so she could see the healed wound.

  She leaned down for a closer look. “You were shot?”

  “Yep. By a meth-head federal fugitive I was trying to arrest. She said she was aiming for my...family jewels,” Slade settled for saying.

  “She nearly succeeded.” Maya reached out as if to touch the scar but jerked back her hand. No doubt because she realized it was indeed just inches away from a still-very-aroused part of him.

  “My injury was paltry compared to yours,” he went on, “and it didn’t come at the hands of someone I thought I could trust. I just wanted you to see that scars are just that. Scars. They don’t lessen the rest of you.”

  She swallowed hard, and the moment turned to something else. Probably because he was standing there with his jeans and boxers hiked down to R-rated level, and the air and his body were still sizzling.

  “Slade?” The voice whipped through the room and sent Maya and him flying even farther apart.

  He fixed his jeans and pressed the button on the intercom mounted near the light switch so it would allow Declan to hear him.

  “I’m here,” Slade told his brother. “What’s wrong?” And he figured something had to be wrong for Declan to contact him at this hour.

  “A vehicle just triggered the motion detector at the end of the road. No one should be out there.”

  That was not what Slade wanted to hear. He grabbed his gun and hurried to the window. The sun was up, barely, but he couldn’t see the end of the road because of the wide curve and some trees.

  “I need to get Evan,” Maya said on a rise of breath, and she rushed out and back into the other bedroom.

  “Stay down and away from the windows,” Slade reminded her, but he figured it was unnecessary.

  “Backup’s been alerted,” Declan added. But Slade heard what his brother didn’t add. That backup wouldn’t be nearly fast enough. “My advice? You’ve got a couple of minutes before that vehicle reaches you, so you should get the heck out of there.”

  Slade had already decided the same thing. “We’re leaving,” he shouted to Maya, and he hurried out of the room, nearly running right into her.

  She had Evan in her arms, his bottle, too, and she reached down to grab the diaper bag.

  But Slade stopped her.

  Even though his mind was racing with the need to escape, he had to consider all angles. The location of the safe house was secret, only known to his brothers, and they wouldn’t have told anyone.

  “Leave the bag. The plastic one with the formula, too,” Slade insisted when she shook her head.

  Thankfully, she didn’t ask why. Maya just ran with him, first to get the keys and his backup weapon from the coffee table and then to the back door. Slade got them into the truck as fast as possible and drove away.

  Even in the dim light he could see that Maya’s hands were shaking as she strapped Evan into the car seat. “How did he find us?”

  Slade didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to answer. He saw the blur of movement in his side mirror. And the glint of sunlight on metal.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  Just as the sound of the shot cracked through the air.

  Chapter Nine

  Maya threw herself over Evan, and praying, she tried to brace herself for the worst, for the bullet to rip through the truck and into one of them. Thank God that didn’t happen. The gunman must have missed.

  But he immediately fired off another shot.<
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  Slade cursed but didn’t return fire. He kept his gun ready in his right hand, but he slammed his foot on the accelerator.

  The road was little more than a dirt path, uneven and littered with potholes. The truck bobbled over the surface, slinging them back and forth. Except for Evan. Somehow, she’d managed to get him buckled in. Maya didn’t want to think how bad this could be if she hadn’t done that.

  Another shot came.

  Then another.

  She put her hands over Evan’s ears to shut out the noise. “Who’s trying to kill us?” she asked, not really expecting an answer from Slade.

  “He’s not shooting at us. He’s trying to shoot out the tires.”

  Mercy, that couldn’t happen. Because if the gunman managed to disable the vehicle, he could kidnap Evan. Or at least try. Slade and she would do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen, but they couldn’t risk getting into a gunfight with this man.

  Or men.

  It hit her then. There was no way the driver of the vehicle on the other road could have made it back here ahead of them. So there were two attackers.

  Maybe more.

  And that sent another jolt of terror through her.

  The gunman got off two more shots, but the truck didn’t jerk or move as if the tires had been hit. Maya said another prayer of thanks for that and yet another prayer when Slade turned off the trail and onto a road.

  “Keep low but try to keep watch,” Slade told her. “There could be someone out here waiting for us.”

  Oh, God. He was right. Whoever was behind these kidnappings was determined to get his or her hands on Evan, but Maya was equally determined to keep her baby safe.

  Slade kept watch, too, his gaze slashing back and forth from the side and rearview mirrors. Maya did the same, but she didn’t see anyone, only the empty country road. She hoped it stayed that way.

  “Any chance someone could have broken into your car and planted a tracking device on Evan’s car seat?” Slade asked.

  That sent yet another slam of fear through her, and Maya’s first reaction was to say no, that there wasn’t a chance of something like that happening in Spring Hill. But the first kidnapping attempt had happened there, so she couldn’t be sure.