One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,44

shootings, especially the one at the diner. More than anything she wanted to help Clayton, but she couldn’t risk going out there. After all, there was a second gunman, and if he made his way into the house, Kirby, Stella and the nurse were sitting ducks.

So Lenora prayed. Waited. Watched.

Clayton levered himself up from the ground, and in the same motion, he took aim. So did the gunman, who moved out from the cover of the tree.

Both men fired.

She couldn’t tell who got off a shot first, but Lenora soon saw the results. Their attacker crumpled into a heap on the ground.

Lenora didn’t release the breath she’d been holding, didn’t stop praying. Until Clayton got to his feet. He was all right, thank God. The gunman had missed him.

“The other one took off,” Cutter shouted. “He’s already hightailed it over the fence.”

Clayton looked around and spotted Dallas and Wyatt hurrying on foot toward them. “Go after him,” he instructed his brothers.

He didn’t follow the two. Instead, Clayton ran to the fallen man and touched his fingers to his neck.

“We need to get him to the hospital now,” she heard him tell Cutter. “I want to keep him alive so he can tell us why the hell this just happened.”

Chapter Twelve

While he paced in the marshals’ office, Clayton went through his mental checklist and made sure he’d done everything to keep everyone safe.

Well, as safe as he could.

Considering Kirby was refusing to leave the ranch, that meant even his best measures still weren’t very safe. Clayton had tried and failed multiple times to convince his foster father to go to the hospital, so that meant formulating a backup plan.

Step one was to beef up security. Arm the ranch hands and have them keep watch to make sure another intruder didn’t make it onto the grounds. He’d also need all the suspects questioned again. Information was the key to finding out who was behind these attacks.

The second part of the plan wasn’t nearly as easy, because it involved finding the gunman who’d escaped. So far, there hadn’t even been a sighting for them to follow. Still, they’d keep looking and might get lucky. Might get lucky, too, with the wounded gunman, who was still in surgery. If he made it out alive, and that was a big if, Clayton would be able to question him and maybe get answers about who was behind these attempts to kill Lenora and him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lenora asked him—again.

“Yeah,” Clayton answered again.

Lenora had echoed the same response each of the times he’d put that particular question to her, and he was thinking it was a lie for both of them.

It was true—she hadn’t been physically hurt—but the adrenaline and stress of being under fire couldn’t be good for her or the baby. That was why he’d insisted she have a physical, and even though the doctor had given her the okay, it was on Clayton’s mental list to figure out a way to make things better for her.

“You could delay this interview,” Lenora reminded him.

He could, but it would just put off the inevitable. Clayton didn’t especially want to see Melvin. He’d written the man out of his life a long time ago. Seeing him would no doubt bring back memories that no longer mattered in the grand scheme of things. But what Melvin’s impending arrival had done was force Clayton to bring Lenora out into the open.

Despite all the beefed-up security, Clayton hadn’t wanted to leave her at the ranch, even though Dallas had offered to keep an eye on her. He trusted Dallas with his life, but Dallas’s hands were full, since Kirby, Stella, the nurse and the housekeeper were all there at the house.

And besides, Clayton wasn’t sure that Lenora wouldn’t try to run.

She had that look in her eyes—the fear that she was somehow putting him in even more danger by staying nearby. But Clayton figured this visit with Melvin could dispel that notion. Because if Melvin was the person behind the attacks, then Clayton himself, not Lenora, was the primary target.

He’d been careful on the drive from the ranch to the Marshals building, and had made sure they weren’t followed, but that didn’t mean she was safe even though they were surrounded by lawmen. Maybe she wasn’t safe anywhere.

“Cheer up,” his brother Declan said. “Maybe Melvin will resist coming in and the lieutenant will have to arrest him or something.”

“Maybe,” Clayton mumbled, though he didn’t want that happening with