The Fugitive

by Nichole Severn

  No. Not the only person. Beckett forced himself back into the moment. If it hadn’t been for Emily Cline and whoever else was involved in embezzling that money from the foundation, Raleigh wouldn’t have been arrested, wouldn’t have left him. He hadn’t been able to help his mom then. It’d been too late for her, but it wasn’t too late for Raleigh. Beckett raised his gaze to the woman merely hired to take everything that he cared about from him. “You don’t know a damn thing about me or what I’m capable of.”

  “The problem isn’t me knowing what you’re capable of, Marshal. It’s how little you know about me.” The cuffs rattled as Emily leaned forward, stretching her arms straight behind her. She wound her legs beneath her and brought her cuffed wrists to the front. In less time than it’d taken to put her in the cuffs, she was suddenly standing. She moved fast, diving forward for the gun he’d set down a few feet away while trying to take care of Raleigh’s injury.

  Beckett lunged, but he wasn’t fast enough. Hand gripped around steel, he bit back the scream of pain as Emily’s boot crushed down hard on the wound in his shoulder. In less than a few seconds, he found himself at the wrong end of the gun.

  “I’m sure you can understand the kind of pressure I’m under to finish this job, Marshal Foster. So forgive me if I’m not willing to let you save her life first.” The shooter increased the pressure on his shoulder. “You’re unarmed. You don’t have a vehicle or any way to contact your team out here. You can chase me if you want. I might even enjoy it, but that means arresting your suspect or leaving Raleigh here to bleed out. What’s it going to be? Uphold the oath you made as a deputy or break that legendary moral code of yours to save a fugitive?”

  Blood pooled beneath one side of Raleigh’s body. She was running out of time, but bringing Emily Cline in would clear her name of the embezzlement charges and give their baby the future he and Raleigh both wanted. Beckett tried pulling his arm out from under the weight of the shooter’s foot, but the pain limited the use of the muscles across his back and down his arm. Twisting his head up, he locked his attention on his attacker. If he went after Emily, he wouldn’t have a future. Period. But if he let Emily slip away, Raleigh would spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. And so would their daughter.

  Not happening.

  Beckett rolled out from under her boot and swung a hard right toward her jaw. Emily dodged the hit, and his momentum pulled him forward. Agony tore down his spine as the shooter cracked the butt of her weapon at the base of his skull. He went down beside Raleigh, dirt filling his mouth and lungs. His hand pressed against hers as Emily stood above him. His body wouldn’t obey his commands. Raleigh. He had to get up. “Stay away from her.”

  The shooter’s weak smile broke through the darkness as she crouched next to him, dark hair sliding into her face, but her brown eyes didn’t reflect the coldness visible a few minutes ago any longer. “We all have our roles to play, Marshal. This is mine.”

  * * *

  UNCONSCIOUSNESS RIPPED OUT from under her as throbbing tore through her side. Sunlight speared her retinas, blinding her until the outline of someone in front of her took shape. She pressed her feet into the floor to stand, but something kept her pinned in the chair she’d been set into. Rope? Raleigh tugged at her wrists, the bark scratches along her forearms still stinging. Not rope. The edges of the material were too sharp. Zip ties. She blinked against the wide spread of blood across her T-shirt. The piece of shrapnel had been removed, but she was still bleeding. Her throat burned as she cleared a coat of dirt layering her mouth and raised her head from her chest. “Beckett?”

  “I’m afraid he won’t be able to save you this time.” The dark shape in front of her shifted. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but she didn’t need to see who’d tied her to the chair against one of the horse stalls to recognize that voice. “Unfortunately for him, he won’t be saving anyone when this is over.”

  “Emily. What are you...?” Dizziness flooded through her, blurring the fine lines around the woman’s wide brown eyes. Nausea churned in her stomach. The baby. She hadn’t eaten in a few hours and her blood sugar had dipped. Raleigh shook her head to clear the tension working down her spine. “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing a surgeon can’t fix, and as long as you’re straight with me, I can get him to a hospital in time.” Emily gripped a pair of rounded pliers typically used in shoeing horses and clenched between the teeth a jagged piece of shrapnel. The same piece of shrapnel that’d been embedded in Raleigh’s side. Her former assistant had removed the sliver, and the blood trickling down Raleigh’s side flowed more freely. She discarded the pliers and the jagged metal onto the floor. “But you don’t have long at all.”

  She was bleeding out.

  “What do you want?” She pulled her inner wrists apart, but there wasn’t any room to maneuver. Emily had made sure of that.

  “Who else aside from Marshal Foster and Calvin Dailey did you tell about what you found during your little off-the-books investigation?” Sunlight reflected off a long piece of steel as Emily pulled a blade from her back.

  What she’d found? She hadn’t found anything in the four months she’d been looking for whoever’d set her up to take the fall for the embezzlement charges. All she had was a theory with no proof to back it up. What she had found, she was sure the feds had already combed through. The offshore accounts and wire transfers, it all pointed to her. That was the entire point of Emily’s and her partner’s operation, wasn’t it? “I’m not telling you anything until I know Beckett is safe.”

  A low-pitched laugh blustered from between the shooter’s lips. Raleigh eyed the heavy metal pliers her former assistant had forgotten about.

  “Every second you waste here is another second your marshal doesn’t have, and I’m starting to lose my patience with you, Raleigh.” Emily stood, the blade gripped tight in one hand. She shifted her weight between both feet as though forcing herself not to end this interrogation prematurely. Which, if she were being honest with herself, Raleigh appreciated. “Who else knows about the secondary account, the one the feds haven’t linked to the missing donations? I recovered the hidden file on your laptop you stashed in the safe at the cabin. I know you found it, and Marshal Foster is running out of time.”

  Raleigh had threatened to expose the account in an attempt to make Emily reconsider spilling more blood, but it’d been mostly bravado at the time. She’d taken a shot in the dark after calculating how much money had been taken from the accounts she’d overseen for the foundation and the amount the FBI had reported missing during their investigation. The numbers didn’t match up, which meant Emily and whoever else she was working for hadn’t funneled everything into one account. There had to be another or maybe several, and the feds had no idea they existed.

  “Either I see Beckett or you risk going back to your boss empty-handed with a whole lot of blood leading back to you.” She was taking a risk making demands. The back of her neck prickled, and she stretched her hands to work out a cramp along one tendon. A sharp, slightly rounded edge caught on her heated skin. The head of a nail? She slipped her thumb around the metal. If she could get her wrists closer to the stall door, she might be able to break the zip tie without Emily noticing. She just had to keep her former assistant distracted long enough to come up with a plan to get Beckett out of here. “I don’t think you want that. You’ve accounted for everything in your operation. You’ve been planning this for a long time, and there’s a lot of money at stake. How is it going to look to your employer when you fail? Do you think they’ll let you walk away?”

  “If I were you, I’d worry about yourself. Because when this is over, I’m going to enjoy watching the life drain from your eyes.” Emily closed the distance between them and pressed cold steel against her throat.

  The tip of the knife cut into the oversensitized skin below Raleigh’s jaw, but she refused to flinch. Refused to give up an ounce of con
fidence.

  “Funny, here I was thinking the exact same thing.” Raleigh tried to relax the muscles down her back, but the pain in her side stole the air from her lungs. Unsticking her hair from her face with one shoulder, she followed Emily’s path into one of the other stalls.

  Her former assistant slid the stall door back on its rails, exposing the man unconscious in the hay. Emily locked dark brown eyes on her from less than ten feet away, and Raleigh’s gut clenched. Beckett. “You know, I started watching you—studying you—long before I walked into your office that first day, Raleigh. I know you. I know what drives you, what scares you, even how far you’re willing to go to protect the people you care about.”

  “I didn’t realize this was a therapy session.” Raleigh straightened her arms a bit more, then set the edge of the zip tie around her wrists on top of the partially exposed nail head behind her. Interlocking her fingers together, she applied as much pressure as she dared without giving away her attempt to escape. “Is this where you tell me all the reasons I keep people at arm’s length or what my dreams really mean?”

  “Not at all. It means I can pretty much do anything to you physically, mentally, emotionally, and nothing will get beneath that guarded exterior of yours. I could threaten and torture you all day, and I might get lucky, but neither of us has the time for that, do we? Quite admirable, in fact. Some of the best operators I’ve known can’t withstand pain as long as you can, but Marshal Foster, on the other hand?” Emily sidestepped out from in front of the stall door where Beckett lay and unholstered the gun from beneath the black jacket she wore. She took aim at Beckett, and ice flooded through Raleigh’s veins, straight to her heart. “Do you think he’ll last long? I mean, I’ve already shot him and stabbed him, but how long do you think he’ll hold on if I put another bullet in him? Should we see?”

  The zip tie slipped from the nail behind her back as Raleigh turned her attention to the man who’d risked his life to protect her and their baby. “He has nothing to do with this. You know that.”

  “You brought him into this when you reached out to him after your arrest. You made him part of this.” Emily raised her voice and slipped her finger over the trigger of the gun. “Now you have five seconds to tell me who else knows about that account before I put another bullet in him and make you watch him die before I kill you for good measure. Five...”

  Raleigh increased the pressure against the zip tie around her wrists. “The second account is yours, isn’t it? The one whoever hired you promised you’d walk away with after this was all over?”

  “Four...” Emily readjusted her grip on the weapon.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Please.”

  Her former assistant turned to Beckett. “Three, Raleigh. You’re running out of time.”

  Raleigh lifted her wrists above the nail before slamming her hands down onto the nail. The zip tie snapped, and she rushed forward. Catching Emily around the middle, she tackled the shooter to the floor. A gunshot exploded loud in her ears, but she couldn’t focus on that right now. Pure adrenaline and desperation burned through her. Fisting Emily’s jacket by the collar, she slammed the gunwoman back into the cement as hard as she could.

  Her attacker stopped fighting, Emily’s brown eyes wide. The lines around her mouth and eyes softened with unconsciousness. The air rushed from Raleigh’s lungs as she loosened her grip on the woman beneath her. Her fingers ached with the amount of force she’d used, just as they had all those years ago. She could still feel the edges of the rock digging into her hand as she’d brought it down against her aunt’s head that day. Staring at the blood crusted in her palms, she pushed away from Emily. Raleigh fell back, barely able to keep herself upright. Whether from the blood loss or the rush of memories clouding her focus now, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t wait for Emily to come around. Her former assistant had been right. There wasn’t anything she wasn’t willing to do to protect the people she cared about.

  They had to get out of here. She had to get Beckett help.

  “Beckett.” Her hands shook as she got to her feet and reached for him. “Come on. You have to get up. We need to get out of here.”

  A groan rumbled through his chest, and Raleigh couldn’t stop the burst of relief escaping as she battled the burn of tears. Because if she didn’t have this small release, she feared she might shatter right here on the floor. He was going to make it. She had to believe that, but first, she had to get him on his feet. “I’m going to help you stand, okay? We can do this.”

  She collected Emily’s gun from where her former assistant had dropped it. Maneuvering his uninjured arm across her back, she ducked her shoulder beneath his side and forced his upper body up. Panicked seconds ticked by as she used the last of her remaining strength to get him to his feet and wedged him against her side. Her pain receptors caught fire as they headed for the main door. Emily hadn’t moved. Hadn’t given any sign she’d be regaining consciousness, but Raleigh wasn’t willing to wait around for that to happen. The shooter wouldn’t have walked here in case she had to make a quick getaway. Emily had to have a vehicle nearby, possibly hidden. She and Beckett just had to find it.

  Before either of them collapsed from blood loss.

  Chapter Eight

  “Raleigh.” Her name slipped past his lips as they stumbled from the stall into the main part of the barn together. His head hurt. Hell, his whole body hurt, but it was nothing compared to the sight of so much blood spreading across her shirt. “Stop. You need—”

  “We need to keep moving.” Her fingers fisted tight in his shirt as she struggled to take most of his weight. How she was able to keep walking and drag his injured butt at the same time, he had no idea. Seemed no matter the circumstance, she was determined to prove how strong she could be, but Raleigh didn’t need to prove anything to him. She never had. Well, other than her innocence. “She’s not going to be out for long.”

  Emily Cline. Damn it. She was right. They had to get out of here. The woman had been sent to tie up loose ends, to make sure Raleigh never got the chance to clear her name, and she wouldn’t stop until the job was done. As much as Raleigh’s former assistant had researched him, he knew her kind, too, and he wasn’t going to wait around to see how far the shooter would go to complete her mission. They’d lost this battle, but he sure as hell would find out who was behind this war. He’d do whatever it took, for however long it took, to take them down.

  “I’ve got you. Keep your weight on me.” Raleigh led them through the main barn door and out into the open. The toe of his boot dragged behind him as the stab wound weakened his right leg, but she didn’t show any signs of slowing despite her uneven exhalations. Keeping her gaze dead ahead, she directed them toward the nearest spread of pines to the west. “We’re going to make it. I promise. We just need to retrace Emily’s footprints back to her vehicle, okay?”

  He’d been an idiot. Even if Emily hadn’t caught up with their trail, how the hell had he ever convinced himself Raleigh had taken that money? Every sacrifice she’d made was for the people she cared about. She hadn’t reached for his backup weapon at her aunt’s cabin to make another run for freedom but to give them a chance of survival during the shoot-out. She could’ve disappeared in the middle of the night when they’d made camp, but instead she’d soothed him when the nightmares came for him. Then she’d offered to turn herself in to keep him and their baby safe. Criminals didn’t do that.

  The evidence had been all right there, perfectly staged and easily accessible to anyone who’d come to investigate the missing donation funds, made it look like she’d turned into the kind of criminal he hated the most, the kind that hurt others to gain for themselves. The kind of criminal like his father, a man who didn’t give a damn about the consequences of his selfishness. But that wasn’t Raleigh. Never had been. Everything she’d done had been for the benefit of others, especially their unborn baby. “I trust
you.”

  He meant it, too. They were going to make it. Because Raleigh Wilde never looked a challenge in the face and backed down, and he couldn’t help but admire her for that. When it’d come right down to it, he’d been a coward when he’d cut her out of his life after her arrest. He hadn’t wanted to feel the pain of losing another person he’d given a damn about to the wrong side of the law, so he’d convinced himself he hadn’t known her at all, hadn’t loved her. Hadn’t been compromised in any way, but it’d all been a lie.

  Her grip strengthened around his arm draped along her shoulders. “Is it too soon to remind you I suggested we make a run for the trees when the first bullet went through the window?”

  “You can say I-told-you-so as much as you want after we get the hell out of here.” He set his back teeth against the throbbing ripping through his shoulder with each swing of his arm. There was only twenty feet left between them and the tree line. As soon as they reached cover, he’d take a look at her wound. From the amount of blood plastering her sweater to the shirt beneath, he figured she had maybe ten—fifteen—minutes at the most before she collapsed. She was one of the most ambitious, driven and impressive women he’d ever known, and that included the chief deputy of his division. Then again, she could only push herself while pregnant for so long before all that fire ran out. This woman was nothing like he’d come across before, but that didn’t make her immune to the things the rest of the mere mortals on earth physically succumbed to. Infection, blood loss, exhaustion. “We need to get you to the hospital.”