were pretty quiet. A trio of twenty-something men sporting beards, large frame packs, and snap-back Patagonia hats passed them with friendly nods.
In the road, several men and a woman wearing maintenance uniforms stood around a hole in the asphalt, talking and laughing. The woman’s blond ponytail swung wildly as she did a double take at Todd. Who could blame her?
Lindsey licked her lips. They still tingled. She’d been lucky enough to kiss him today. Maybe she’d have more good luck and Megan would be back with her by nightfall.
Grabbing Lindsey’s hand, he tugged her to the end of the street where it dead-ended into a park about the size of two football fields. A white gazebo sat in the middle of the grassy expanse, like something out of a Hallmark movie.
“This way,” he said, heading left with her in tow. Was he so eager to get rid of her that he could no longer hide his impatience?
“How do you know where it is?”
“I don’t. I’m following the flag pole.” He pointed to the US and Montana flags snapping loudly above the brick buildings.
Sure enough, they rounded the corner and found a complex that housed a town hall, the sheriff’s office, a post office, and an elementary school that proclaimed itself “Home of the Foxes.”
Todd reached for the door handle and froze. Lindsey nearly crashed into his back, stepping aside just in time.
But the sign on the door nearly made her legs give out.
CHAPTER FIVE
TODD STARED AT the “WANTED” poster that had stopped him in his tracks. Mother fuckity fuck.
A sketch of him and a captioned photo of Lindsey dominated the top half. The bottom half explained that they were wanted for an attack on county Sheriff John Joseph Decker and deputy Kendall Harris the day before that had left Harris dead.
Todd went cold. What the hell? That stocky motherfucker had been alive when they’d left him on the trail, and his injuries had hardly been fatal.
Lindsey gripped his arm. “JJ is the sheriff?” Horror filled her eyes. “Megan and I were kidnapped by the sheriff?”
“Looks like it.” Todd released the door handle and guided her away from the building as casually as possible. “I’m assuming the picture and info are from your driver’s license. It won’t be long before they find one of the hotels where I stayed and get all of my info too.”
She nodded. “JJ’s guys took my backpack at the compound, but he can explain it by saying I dropped it during our ‘altercation’ on the trail.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m confused, though,” she said. “We didn’t kill Harris.”
“I have no idea.” They were in some deep shit. “Maybe he fell…”
“Or we’re being framed.” Her grip on his hand tightened.
They walked to the end of town in silence. He tried to pretend he wasn’t eyeballing every person within his field of vision. Not the other backpackers and disheveled hiker types, not the group of workers in reflective vests digging a hole along the shoulder of Center Street, and not the family of four whose pre-teen boy wore a Seattle Seahawks hat and stared at his phone while he shuffled behind his parents and little sister.
Harris was dead and JJ was the goddamned sheriff.
Todd could hardly wrap his mind around it. Not that law enforcement officers were never corrupt, but damn. This did more than put a wrench in his plan to get Lindsey to the cops and be on his merry way, it ran a fleet of armored vehicles right through it.
He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think. He couldn’t drag her along on his quest to run down Pete, but if he waited too long, the man could be in the wind again. And who knew how long it would take to find him next time?
But he couldn’t very well leave Lindsey either. Just the idea of it made him twitchy. Their fates were now linked.
When they reached the highway, she stopped and looked at him, face ashen. “What do we do now?”
Todd shook his head. “I don’t know, but my hair color just became a serious liability. We need to get the hell out of town.”
“Where to?”
He dug a knit cap from his bag and snugged it down around his ears. “Let’s find someplace to lay low and figure out our next step.” He routed them across Center Street and along the back side of town, zigzagging through the residential section until they came to a tree-shrouded stream running parallel to the highway. “Did you