A Stranger on Her Doorstep

by Julie Miller

  “I figured—correctly—that reminding you of that trauma would throw you off whatever game you’ve been playing with my men.” The man sank onto the cushion beside her, and she instinctively shifted away from the invisible threat. “You see, I’m very good at reading people, Ms. Baines—”

  “It’s Wallace.”

  “—and I believe you’ve been lying.”

  No more pretense. No more playing dumb. “Is there something I could help you with, Mr. Bell? It is Mr. Bell, isn’t it?”

  Brandon swore beside her. “Damn it, Ave. I can’t protect you if you know too much.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant to search my house?” she challenged.

  Brandon might be on edge, but Gregory Bell wasn’t fazed. “I’m looking for Luke Broughton.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Perhaps not. You took him to the hospital with amnesia, but he escaped. Vanished from existence, it would seem. Now, whatever name he might be using, I think you do know him.”

  “Intimately, from the look of things.” The man who’d gone upstairs returned. “There are men’s toiletries in the bathroom. The bed in her room has seen some action.”

  “You slept with him?” Brandon raged above her. “You won’t give me the time of day, and you slept with that stranger?”

  “Better him than you.”

  She never saw the hand that slapped her across the face. Tears soaked into the cloth covering her eyes and burned along her cheek as she cowered in the corner of the sofa. But it wasn’t pain that finally made her cry. It was the memories. Her skin crawled with the imprint of knives cutting into her. She anticipated the next touch, the next cut, never knowing if she would bleed or gag at the mockery of tenderness. Her fingers ached to latch on to Maxie’s familiar warmth. Her heart needed Luke to remind her that she could handle this. She could handle anything.

  She turned her head toward Brandon’s heavy steps pacing beside her. “How long have you been part of this?”

  “On and off over the years,” he answered. “They paid me a lot of money to look the other way when they conducted certain business up at the Ridgerunner. I got rid of your boyfriend’s car for them.”

  “You started that fire? What if it had spread to Mr. Harold’s trailer?”

  “What if you stop talking.” Gregory Bell didn’t care about a dishonored badge or a friendship betrayed. “Where is Broughton?”

  Ava understood that the weakest link here was Brandon. “I know him better after seventy-two hours than I know you after twenty-seven years. You’re working with these people?”

  “I’m looking for a fugitive. He’s a danger to you, Ave. Can’t you see that?”

  “You’re the danger because you won’t stand up and do the right thing. They’re a danger to our military. To our country.”

  Metal screeched against the kitchen’s tile floor as Maxie threw her weight against the side of her crate.

  “Damn it, Maxie, shut up!”

  When she heard the snap of Brandon’s holster, Ava lurched to her feet and charged at him. “Don’t you dare!”

  Another pair of hands clamped down on her arms and pulled her against a solid chest. She screamed at the startling touch. There was another grab and she screamed again.

  “Quiet,” Brandon warned, his grip cutting off the circulation above her elbow. “You keep your hands off her,” he warned the other man. Although she hadn’t heard his voice enough to be certain it was Roy Hauser, the bulk of his build and the slab of protective armor she’d slammed into made her doubt it could be anybody else. Brandon stroked her hair, no doubt trying to placate her, but simply reminding her of the blindfold knotted at the back of her head. “I’m sorry I hit you, baby. Cooperate with me now, and I’ll protect you. Can we get her out of here now?”

  “I’m not the only one who’s changed, Brandon.” As much as she had once treasured their friendship, any loyalty she’d felt to this man was done.

  “Patience, Sheriff,” Gregory Bell spoke again. “We can assume Captain Broughton is hiding nearby. A gunshot will bring him running. We’d be at the disadvantage. He has to bring me the flash drive. And I need to know anyone he’s shared that information with over the last seventy-two hours before we kill him. With your temper, I’m afraid you’ll shoot him before I get everything I need from him.”

  The door opened and Brandon dragged her outside. “You said you wouldn’t hurt Ava. That she would still be mine.”

  “Yours?” But no one was listening to her.

  Maxie was barking to raise the dead. The men had to shout to be heard.

  “What are you going to do with her?” Brandon asked.

  “Take her with us, of course. Put her in my car. I have a feeling she’ll make fine bait.”

  A vehicle door opened, and she was shoved into a back seat. “Brandon, don’t do this,” she pleaded. “I won’t come back from this trip. Neither of us will.”

  She heard a blam from somewhere in the distance and a hard thump on the ground at her feet.

  She didn’t need to see to recognize that sound. That was a blast from a Browning double-barrel shotgun. Brandon Stout was dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What the hell is going on here?” Gregory Bell shouted. “Who fired those shots?”

  She heard another vehicle door opening, feet scrabbling through the gravel.

  “Ava! Stay down!” Luke.

  Her heart surged in her chest. Luke was here.

  That brave, wonderful man hadn’t gone to Stormhaven to save himself. He’d doubled back to the cabin to save her. He’d raided her gun safe and was going to battle against the men whom she was sure intended to kill her once she’d served her purpose.

  “Side of the garage, boss.”

  Ava heard an exchange of gunfire. Smaller caliber weaponry this time. Handguns.

  She huddled down in the seat.

  “Call off your goon, Bell!” Luke shouted once the bullets stopped flying. “I’ve got what you came for. I’m putting down my gun and coming out. Let Ava go.”

  Ava stiffened. This wasn’t the plan. This was so not the plan. What happened to Option B?

  “Luke! Don’t do it!” she yelled. “They’ll kill you!”

  “Hands where I can see them, Captain.” Roy Hauser gave the order she prayed Luke wouldn’t obey. “Show me the flash drive.”

  Luke chuckled. “Do you want me to reach into my pocket or hold my hands up?”

  Gregory Bell wasn’t waiting to see who won this duel of wills. “On the ground, Broughton. Hands on your head. Roy, you search his pockets.”

  “He has a gun hidden on him, sir. I know how he thinks.”

  “I gave you an order.”

  Hauser capitulated to his CEO’s command. “On the ground, Captain. And don’t try anything funny.”

  “What? Like pretend to be my friend? Act all concerned when I bring you evidence that someone inside BDS is selling company technology to Chinese insurgents? That kind of funny?”

  “He’s baiting you, Roy. Search him!”

  Then he heard Hauser curse. Something heavy hit the ground and there was a scuffle. The horrid thud of fist hitting bone. A moan of pain.

  “Luke!”

  Gravel flying. A breathless curse.

  Then the fighting stopped. Ava held her breath until she heard Luke’s stern voice. “Don’t do it, Roy. Things look a little different when you’re staring down the barrel end of a gun, don’t they?”

  “You and what army are going to take us down?” Hauser taunted.

  Something small hit the rocks. “Put those on,” Luke ordered. “Chain yourself to the bumper. By order of the United States Marine Corps, I’m placing you under arrest for attempted murder and a whole bunch of other treasonous crimes that my buddies at JAG and the state pol
ice are putting together right now.”

  Hauser muttered a curse, but judging by the clank of metal on metal, he was securing himself to the bumper of one of the SUVs. “I was carrying out orders. You understand that. You weren’t the first problem I was told to eliminate, and you won’t be the last. It wasn’t anything personal.”

  “Funny how getting run off the road, shot and being forced to dive over the edge of a cliff feel personal.”

  She heard someone breathing erratically and feared that Luke had taken a blow to the head or reopened the wound on his shoulder.

  “Luke? Are you all right?”

  But Luke Broughton was a Marine on a mission. “You’re next, Bell. You’ve got nobody left to do your dirty work for you. It’s you and me.”

  “Stop all this pointless prattle.” Bell’s voice was right beside Ava. She curled up her legs and pushed across the seat. How had she missed his approach? She jumped at the hand that clamped around her ankle and dragged her from the SUV. The moment her feet hit the ground, she stumbled over Brandon’s inert body. But an arm locked around her neck and shoulder and pulled her upright. She felt Gregory Bell’s hot breath against her ear and the cold steel of a gun press into her temple. “I still have the upper hand, Broughton. Hand over the flash drive. Now!”

  Luke cursed. For the first time in this whole showdown, he sounded like he was losing it. “You put a blindfold on her? You’re lucky I don’t shoot you like I did Stout. You want this flash drive? You let her go first.”

  She felt Bell shake his head as the tip of the gun ground against her skull. “The flash drive first. Then your girlfriend and I are driving out of here. I’ll drop her off at one of the scenic overlooks and you can pick her up there.”

  “And trust that you’re not going to push her off the side of the mountain so she can’t testify against you, either? You hired me to be smarter than that.”

  “Fine. You’ve got no shot, Marine. Keep your evidence against me. I’m keeping her.”

  “No! I’m not your victim!” Ava stomped on Bell’s foot, and threw her hips back against him.

  “Don’t struggle, Ava.”

  “I’m not going with him. If he doesn’t care whether you live or die, he certainly doesn’t care about me.”

  “Summon the dragon, Ava.”

  She froze at the odd request. “What?”

  “Summon the dragon.”

  And then she understood. Sometimes, the only way to win a battle is to avoid it until you’re ready to fight.

  Larkin and Willow were ready to fight.

  Ava pulled her teeth to her lips and gave a shrill whistle. “Maxie! Come!”

  “What the...?”

  Gregory Bell must have seen the pony-size dog charging toward him a second too late. Maxie leaped and her great, muscular paws hit Bell, knocking the gun from his hand, loosing his grip on Ava and sending all three of them tumbling to the ground.

  Luke was there before Ava got to her feet. “It’s me, sweetheart,” he announced a split second before he unknotted the blindfold and whisked it off. “I’m so sorry they did that to you.”

  She blinked against the overly bright sunshine. “I’m okay. I kept it together.” It took a moment to bring Luke into focus. Oh, no. He was bleeding. A spot of red stained the front of his T-shirt. “You’re hurt. Your wound opened up.”

  “The stitches split when Hauser punched me there. I’ll live.” She could also see that his stance was strong and unwavering, just like the Hellcat he had trained on Gregory Bell. The CEO looked a lot less powerful lying in his dusty suit on the ground with an unhappy guard dog standing over him. “Where is the key to the cuffs?” he asked.

  “On Brandon.”

  Keeping his gun trained on his former boss, Luke knelt beside Brandon’s still body and checked his pockets until he found the key to unlock Ava. Then he handed her the cuffs. “Put them on him.”

  Ava handcuffed Gregory Bell’s wrists behind his back and came back to stand at Luke’s side. She brought Maxie with her, smoothing her fingers on the dog’s head and praising her as she leaned against Ava’s thigh.

  “I’m a good man, Mr. Bell.” Luke kept glancing down the road, as if he expected to see more company on her doorstep. “I did the right thing. And you tried to kill me and the woman I love for it. This time, the good guys win.”

  The woman he loved? Ava glanced up at Luke’s rugged profile. Earlier, when he’d said he loved her, she thought he’d been caught up in the heat of the moment, riding the emotional catharsis of their lovemaking. But now he was telling the bad guy that he loved her? Oh, man, did they have a lot to talk about. And she needed to get back to her computer. She’d conquered the love scene. She’d just figured out that Larkin and Willow would exchange those three little words on the battlefield.

  “Uh-oh. I know that look.” Luke reached over to capture her hand in his, startling her from her thoughts. “Sorry.”

  Ava squeezed his hand and held on tight when he would have pulled away. “Before anything else happens, I love you, too.”

  Luke leaned in and claimed her lips in a hard kiss that spoke volumes about all that had passed between them, and all that might yet come to pass. By the time he pulled away, there was a trio of state police cars racing up the gravel road.

  A cloud of dust settled over them as the cars pulled to a sudden stop and several armed men and women streamed out, splitting up and going to each of the three men Luke and Maxie had taken down. A stocky, black-haired man in a tan uniform emblazoned with several ribbons and captain’s bars headed straight to them.

  Luke returned his weapon to his ankle holster and reached out to shake the Marine’s hand. “Joe Soldati. I never thought I’d be this happy to see your ugly face.” Joe pulled Luke in for a back-slapping hug that made him wince before pulling away. “This is Ava Wallace.”

  “Ma’am.” Joe touched the brim of his cap in a polite greeting before turning his attention back to Luke. “You do understand the concept of civilian life, don’t you, Cap? You’re supposed to take it easy. Not risk life and limb for your country anymore.”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  “Leave it to you, Cap. Having all the fun without us. I would have been here sooner except we took a wrong turn at some Podunk town about twenty miles down the road.”

  Ava and Luke answered the uniformed MP at the same time. “Pole Axe.”

  “When you said you wanted a change of scenery, I had no idea. You okay, ma’am?”

  Luke slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her to his side. “I’ve got her, Joe.”

  “Would you at least let me arrest some of these people?”

  “Gladly.”

  Several hours later, the sun was a red-orange fireball sinking behind the western ridge of the mountains when Ava and Maxie strolled onto the porch to join Luke where he’d stretched out in a rocking chair to reread her first book. He slipped a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the bench beside him. “Did you get your chapter written?”

  Ava nodded. She was glad to see he’d changed into a clean shirt after another trip to the clinic to get his stitches resewn, fill out the forms with his proper name and take care of his bill. “Did Joe get all the bad guys off my property?”

  “Uh-huh.” Luke spread his knees apart and invited her to take a seat on his lap. “Joe’s got a ton of paperwork that will keep him in Cheyenne for a few days. When he’s done with that, he’d like to come back and spend some time here. Get to know you. See if I’m good enough for you.”

  “A true friend of yours would always be welcome here. Did I hear you say he was the one who got you interested in The Bonecrusher Chronicles?”

  Luke nodded. “I’m afraid if he finds out you’re A. L. Baines, we’ll never get rid of him.”

  “We? Are you staying?”

  “I’d
like to. You said I could stay until I got the flash drive or regained my memory. I handed the flash drive over to Joe so, technically, I don’t have it. And...I can’t seem to remember where I put my car keys.”

  “They’re in your pocket. Neither excuse holds water.” She stroked her fingers across his lips and watched his eyes narrow to silvery-green slits as she ran her palms across all the interesting textures of his face. “Is there any other reason you want to stay? I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but now that your quest has ended, what’s to keep you here?”

  His hands settled at her waist and he pulled her closer, tucking the crown of her hair beneath his chin. “I’m the one who’s grateful. You saved my life. You love me. I’m finally getting to read a new Bonecrusher novel.” She swatted him on the arm for that last one and he laughed. “You and I make an even better team than Larkin and Willow, and I’d like to stay. Besides, our quest to get all the bad guys isn’t over yet. I intend to go with you to Chicago to confront your attacker and help the police nail that guy.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “I’ll move to Chicago to be with you if that’s what you want once everything is settled.”

  Ava tilted her face to his. “What if I want to stay in Wyoming?”

  He lowered his lips to hers. “Well, Pole Axe is going to need a new sheriff.”

  * * *

  Look for a brand-new series from

  USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Miller

  coming later in 2021!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Searching for Evidence by Tyler Anne Snell.

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