One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,11
to it.
“You okay?” Clayton asked.
“Fine. The baby moved, that’s all.”
His mouth tightened. Then relaxed. He mumbled some profanity. “I’m having a hard time dealing with this.”
“Of course.” She didn’t dare repeat the offer she’d made to him at the diner, that she expected nothing from him. No, best not to say it aloud, but the truth was, she couldn’t expect anything from him. Because she needed him out of her life. Maybe just temporarily.
Maybe forever.
And that meant she needed to get on with her explanation. Besides, it was possible Clayton could actually help. She’d been hesitant to trust anyone, and maybe she was a fool for trusting him, but without this explanation, he clearly wasn’t leaving.
“After your shooting, I wasn’t sure whom I could trust.” She slid her hand over her stomach.
Clayton huffed. “Any of my five foster brothers would have been a good start. They’re all marshals and all capable of protecting you.”
“But I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone in law enforcement.”
That eased Clayton’s glare, and he cocked his eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because after you were shot, I tried to call my handler. My task-force leader,” Lenora corrected. She’d always hated the term handler. It made her feel like a circus animal that needed to be controlled. “His name is James Britt, and he didn’t return my call for two days.”
Clayton stayed quiet a moment. “That’s unusual?”
“Very, especially considering I left him a frantic message to call me immediately.” She pushed her hair from her face. “But the truth is, I was concerned about James prior to that. He’d started to question me about what I really saw the night Jill was murdered. He seemed to try to make me doubt that Riggs was the one to pull the trigger.”
“It was Riggs,” Clayton verified. “I saw him, too.”
Lenora nodded. “James knows that, but he kept pushing, as if he was looking for some kind of discrepancies in my report. I dismissed it, thinking he was just trying to prepare me for my testimony at the trial.”
“That’s possible,” Clayton admitted.
Possible, yes, but Lenora hadn’t been able to shake the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“When James finally called me back after your shooting, he asked me if I’d gone back to my old ways. If I was running laundered money again. He wanted to know if I’d done something to get you shot. I didn’t,” she quickly added.
Clayton made a sound to indicate he was giving that some thought. “A few days before I was shot, someone broke into your place and vandalized it. I’ve been looking into any connection between that and the shooting, but I can’t find it. Did you?”
She had to shake her head. “And I looked. The Eagle Pass police weren’t able to get any prints or trace from the break-ins, so there was no arrest.”
He continued to stare at her. “So your solution was to go into hiding.”
“I had the baby to think about.” And Lenora wasn’t going to apologize for that. “I didn’t want to take any more risks than I’d already taken.”
“And I wasn’t around to help you.” He blew out a long breath, stood and stared down at her. “Well, I’m around now, and I want you to go back to Maverick Springs with me, to my family’s ranch.”
Lenora got to her feet, too. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s too dangerous for me to come out of hiding and go with you. Obviously this person is after me, not you, because you’ve been out of the hospital for weeks now and no one has tried to kill you.”
“Not yet. But I think we should get to the bottom of what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Maybe Riggs hasn’t sent anyone else after me because he knows it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. After all, the last person who tried to kill me is dead. Thanks to you,” he added.
Yeah. Thanks to her.
Too little, too late.
By the time she’d put a bullet in their attacker, Clayton had already been shot.
“I shouldn’t have come there that day to tell you about the baby.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “But you’re not the only one dealing with old baggage here. It played into my decision to tell you.”
“Old baggage or not, you should have told me,” he confirmed.
“But you don’t even remember me, do you? You don’t remember sleeping with me.”
His gaze slid down her face to her body. Something