by Rachel Lee
He disconnected and blew a long breath.
“What was that about?” Haley asked. “Are you fired?”
“Not yet. They seem to be working up to it, though.”
“But why?”
“So they can discredit me if necessary. Claim I’m a disgruntled employee. And they certainly want to know if I have any information I haven’t passed to them.”
“Do you?”
“Plenty. I’m a cop, Haley, or I was. I don’t discuss investigations, especially with interested parties.”
He paused, clearly thinking about something. A minute later he said, “Let’s go get lunch on the off chance that he has someone check out what I just told him.”
Haley was struck by an idea as they headed for the City Diner. “You need to have a fight with me.”
“What?”
“A public fight. Then you can pretend to leave town and they’ll think the coast is clear. They’re probably a lot more worried about you than me, and I have to be at work tonight anyway. So if you drive off in a huff, maybe they’ll think the coast is clear again.”
He was silent for a few minutes. “First, that puts you at risk. Second...I need to be nearby.”
“I’m not saying you can’t be nearby. But there has to be some way you can hide your truck and make it look like you’ve left. And I can call you as soon as I see anything. You wanted to use my car anyway.”
He didn’t answer.
“Buck, you said it’s obvious they want you out of here. So let’s make it look like you’re on your way back. Then maybe they’ll get down to business again and we can find out who they are.”
He didn’t answer, so she left it alone. She wished she knew where she stood with him, whether he was just concerned she might get hurt or if she meant something more to him.
But even more than that, she was worried about him. Hell, he’d gone trespassing on two ranches even after her warning about how dangerous it was in a place where people had to protect their own property.
But no, he’d gone anyway, and now he was giving his boss reasons why he wouldn’t come back even if it cost him his job.
God, she’d die if anything bad happened to him, but she didn’t know how to tell him that. Letting him know how much she cared about him might only upset him, or worse, distract him. Whatever he decided to do, his mind had to be fully engaged. Now that they knew the truth of Ray’s murder, she was absolutely certain that Buck could wind up dead, as well. He was just one man, facing this mostly alone.
Just as they found a parking place, he said, “I’ll think about it, Haley, but I’m concerned about you.”
“What can they do to me at work? Nothing. And I really don’t know anything. When I talked to Jim about it, I told him I didn’t really see anything, and he seemed to believe me. So it’s you they’re worried about. That makes two phone calls now trying to pull you out of here. Think about that.”
“I am. I said I’m thinking. Give me some time. I’m rearranging the puzzle pieces. Let me see where it gets me.”
With that she supposed she had to be content. At least for now.
But she didn’t have to like it.
Chapter 14
Much as Buck hated to admit it, Haley might have a point. Two phone calls, both designed to get him out of the area. If they had ever been worried about what Haley might know, that seemed to be taking a serious backseat to what he might uncover if he hung around.
If her estimation was correct, then him appearing to leave town might get things rolling again.
But hell, even the slight chance that they might be worried about Haley worried him. There was still the possibility that White Shirt had been outside her place, but he might have been looking for Buck.
That was when he realized he was calculating ways to cover his bases. All of them, most especially Haley. Which meant he had just about accepted her idea.
Because it made sense. They seemed more eager to remove him from the area than anything. But he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her, and if it did it would be because of him and his harebrained idea to use her as cover.
Crap, he could be such an idiot sometimes.
Before they climbed out of the car, he pulled out his phone and called Gage. “If I wanted to make it look as if I’d left town, where could I hide my truck?”
He felt Haley’s gaze snap to him. “Haley had the idea that the thing these guys most want to see is me leaving. And considering I’ve had two calls from my boss about getting back to Seattle, and the last one was practically a threat to fire me if I didn’t, she might be right.”
When he closed the phone, he had some answers, but he still wasn’t feeling entirely settled.
“Let’s get lunch,” he said. “I need to think some more and Gage has some ideas he wants to work on. Then we’ll decide.”
She turned off the ignition. “You know I’m right.”
He was delighted at the exercise of authority on her part. This was the woman who’d given him a good argument when he’d first met her, but for the past few days she’d been almost subdued, as if she were a passenger on this train.
“If you have ideas, I want to hear them,” he told her. “But after lunch. We have to consider every possibility we can think of, Haley.”
“So you don’t want to fight over lunch.”
He looked at her, drinking in her lovely face and violet eyes. “Not over lunch, no. If we do that, it’ll have to be tonight at dinner. At the truck stop. Until then we’ve got time to think this through and plan. I don’t want to do anything half-cocked.”
“Do you ever?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. Like his decision to use her as cover. God, what had he been thinking?
Well, clearly he hadn’t been thinking. That simple thought of using her, common to his previous career, sickened him now.
Then another thought struck him: Bill had actually tried to call him off before. Not just these last two calls, but the first one when he’d wanted Buck to pick up Ray’s load and return to Seattle. Then the resistance to giving him LoJack information. Did they really not keep those records? Or had Bill been trying to put him off?
Certainly the information Bill had eventually sent had proved to be darn near useless, no matter how he looked at it. But there was still that attempt to get him to bring Ray’s load back before he’d even started his return from Denver. Probably the first salvo to get him away from here.
When he thought about that, he felt a little better about using Haley as cover. Crap, he’d revealed her to Bill, but at the same time, they might have already known because of Claire. If that was the case, then getting him to come straight back to Seattle would have left them a clear field to take care of Haley one way or another.
So maybe he hadn’t been such an ass after all, even if his thinking hadn’t been perfectly clear. While exposing her more, he might have actually saved her.
He’d like to believe that, but right now he wasn’t sure. The grimness that began to settle over him was the worst he had felt since leaving the army. All he had were strands of suspicions and weaving them together was taking him down the rabbit hole to places where any number of possibilities might play out.
He needed, he thought, one more thing. One more useful thing. He hoped he’d get it in time.
* * *
Haley noticed something at the diner. It was amazing she noticed anything at all, considering that their lunch mostly involved Buck staring at his plate. She understood he was preoccupied, but it didn’t make her feel good, not after their lovemaking just a few short hours ago. Her head jerked a little as she realized how very little time had passed since then, yet so much had happened it seemed like ages ago.
She looked around the diner while she waged an internal struggle with her deepening feelings for Buck, which he didn’t at all seem to reciprocate, and considered all the things that might be threatening them. She caught sight of three men sitting together in a booth. Sh
e saw them looking at her and Buck. And she knew at once they weren’t local.
She looked quickly away, as if her eyes had been skimming the room absently, and focused on the sandwich in front of her. She took another nibble and let her eyes wander again.
One of the men was staring their way. The instant she looked his direction, his own eyes darted elsewhere. It was too obvious.
“Buck?” she said uneasily.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t look, but there are three strangers sitting in a booth to the right. They’re not from here and I’ve caught them staring at us.”
Buck never twitched. “Okay, concentrate on eating.” He forked some broccoli into his mouth. “What do they look like?”
Keeping her attention on her plate, she described them as best she could from memory. Ordinary, really, except one had a thin scar on his cheek. They’d done a better job of fitting in than White Shirt had.
“Exactly where are they sitting? I’m going to need to take them in fast.”
She told him the exact booth.
“Are you done?”
“I can’t eat.”
At once he looked up and around. When he saw Mavis he signaled her, but Haley noticed that he scanned the entire diner as he sought Mavis.
“Got ’em,” he said as Mavis approached. “Don’t look at them again.”
“Okay.”
Her insides fluttered as they packaged their meals. Buck threw a tip on the table, scooped up the bag and helped her from her seat. Then, never glancing at the guys, he slipped an arm around her waist and guided her to the register, where he paid.
He helped her into her car, bending to kiss her cheek before he closed the door. He was just getting in on the passenger side when the three men came out. He appeared to ignore them, but Haley, who forced herself not to even glance at them, couldn’t help gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
“Easy,” Buck said as he fastened his seat belt. “Nothing’s going to happen. Not now. Let’s go to your place.”
She couldn’t help it. She glanced at the three men again and saw them climbing into an almost-new blue pickup two parking spaces down.
Buck spoke. “Let’s see if they follow.”
As she backed out and headed toward Main Street, it seemed that they wouldn’t. But before she’d gotten three blocks along Main, the truck appeared behind them at a distance. Buck was watching in the side mirror.
“We’ve got a tail,” he said.
“I see that.” Her voice was tight.
“Just drive as you normally would. They’ll probably drop us once they see we’re going to your place.”
“Why would they?”
“Because I told my damn boss I was staying here to woo you. We stick to the story.”
The story. Yes, it was just a story, but hearing him say it out loud hit her stomach like a punch. She argued with herself yet again, telling herself there was no time or room for this right now, that more important things were happening, that it was never meant to be anyway. Buck would move on as soon as he figured out what was going on here. He’d never made her a single promise except to keep her safe. He’d never murmured those sweet nothings that might have meant he had feelings for her.
No, he’d made love to her, and she’d heard often enough that that was meaningless to men, even though it seldom was for a woman.
She tried to loosen her grip on the wheel, paying attention to following her usual pattern and speed. She glanced Buck’s way, as if she was talking to him. He did the same.
From the outside it probably looked as if nothing unusual at all was going on. Inside, though, the tension was thick and almost stifling. She could hear her own breathing, and that wasn’t normal.
God, she just wished they could tumble into bed and forget all of this! A childish wish.
She parked in her usual slot. The blue truck seemed to have disappeared. She was just beginning to relax as Buck helped her out of the car. Maybe it had been nothing at all, sheer coincidence.
Buck took her hand, carrying the bag of food as they walked toward the building door. Just as they were about to step inside, she heard the rumble of an engine and glanced toward the street.
The blue pickup eased by. None of the three men inside it looked at them.
“No coincidence,” Buck muttered as they walked inside and began to climb the stairs.
“No,” she agreed, her insides twisting nervously. “No, it wasn’t. But what does it mean?”
“That they’ve either called in reinforcements or I underestimated the size of the gang.”
“Why would they call for reinforcements?”
“Because I haven’t left.”
That didn’t ease her mind any to think that she wasn’t the one they were after. For the first time she faced the fact that she cared more about what happened to Buck than to herself. She looked at him after they entered her apartment and felt her heart squeeze with a longing and a fear for him unlike anything she had felt since her mother died. This was different somehow, though, and she didn’t quite know why. Perhaps because she’d anticipated her mother’s passing for so long?
All she knew was that looking at Buck made her ache so painfully she could hardly stand it.
He quickly dealt with the mess they had left from breakfast, then put the lunch bag in her fridge. He grabbed the garbage sack from her waste can and tied it off.
“I’m taking this out to the bin. I’ll be right back.”
She doubted his purpose was that innocent. He wanted a look around. Fingernails driving painfully into her palms, she merely nodded and watched him go.
What could she do? Not a thing. Not until they decided how they were going to handle this. Not until they had some kind of plan.
She sank slowly onto her desk chair, drew a steadying breath and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. When had this become so freaking real? When had she gotten her heart all tangled up with a drifter to the extent that fear for him had her stretched as tightly as if she were on a rack?
She could no longer fool herself. Death waited, just as it had waited for Ray. She only hoped it wouldn’t be for Buck.
* * *
Taking out the trash was such an ordinary task it wouldn’t draw a second look, but it gave Buck a chance to scope things out. He already pretty much knew the layout of the immediate area—he always made sure he had a good mental map—but it also gave him a chance to find out if the guys in the blue truck might be watching from somewhere.
His question was answered as he tossed the bag over the edge of the large commercial bin. Three blocks up, the pickup had parked along the curb. No one was visible inside it, but that meant nothing. If he was the one on the stakeout, he’d have abandoned the truck for now, too.
It would be odd for three men to just sit in a truck like that for too long. Plus, they’d have a better view of whether Haley’s car pulled out from other vantage points. All they had to do was keep someone near enough the truck to move it fast.
Yup, he thought as he closed the bin and headed back inside. They had a tail. There was no other alternative to Haley’s plan: a big fight and him storming out and pretending to leave town. The two of them were trapped in dangerous treacle, and any attempt to escape it would let the bad guys know how much they knew.
Back inside Haley’s apartment, he took one look at her sitting in her desk chair, and some shell inside him really began to crack. She appeared pale, frightened and pinched, and her violet eyes seemed to have almost doubled in size.
He crossed to her immediately and knelt before her, drawing her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. As God is my witness, I’ll keep you safe.”
“I’m not worried about me,” she said, her voice as tight as wire. “Buck, they’re after you. That’s obvious now. You’ve got to at least pretend to leave. Please!”
“I will,” he said, lifting a hand to stroke her
silky hair. “Tonight. I’ll work out the details, you can give me a hard slap at the diner and everybody on the planet can watch me rumble out of this town. But I’m not leaving. You’ve got to understand that. I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s not your job to solve this. Gage and his deputies can take over now. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
He caught her face between his hands and kissed her, at first hard, then sipping gently from her lips. “I can’t leave now. Not until I’m sure it’s rolled up and you’re safe.”
“They don’t care about me anymore.” But her arms crept up, twining around his neck. “Buck, I’m scared to death for you.”
“I can take care of myself. But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. Then she buried her face in the side of his neck, and the gesture touched him deeply. Her warm breath on his neck made him shudder with longing. At what point had he moved past doing a job to having a personal stake in this?
He didn’t know. Such moments could rarely be defined, he supposed. He just knew that nothing had ever felt as good as holding this woman, feeling her face pressed to his neck, feeling her concern and caring for him in every muscle of her body.
One kind of tension eased out of his body, to be replaced by another. He needed her. Not just wanting, but needing. Once this was over, she probably would want to get on with her life, but that was a wound he’d have to live with. Too late to prevent it now.
He sighed. “I want you,” he murmured into her ear. “But we could get interrupted if someone calls.”
Her arms tightened around him. “I don’t care.”
At that moment neither did he.
He lifted her, carrying her, loving the way her body curled into his, the way she clung to him and softened, giving him the ultimate trust. She made him feel like a very different man from the hardened one his past career had forced him to become. She made him feel as if it was okay to be other things, too. Tender things. Kind things. Good things.
In a way it was easier this time. They knew one another, shyness was gone. They undressed themselves quickly, then slid beneath the coverlet to embrace. Twining together, skin against skin, had never felt so good to him.
