One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,9

the diner? Why did he wait until we were together?”

“I don’t know. But that’s something we could have worked out if you’d stayed—”

“No, it’s not,” Lenora interrupted. She waited until his gaze came back to hers. “Riggs was right. I do have secrets. I’m not who you think I am.”

Oh, man. He didn’t like that tone or the look in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It’s all lies. Not the baby. That’s the only truth in all of this.” She tipped her head to his phone, where the video of her returning fire was frozen on the screen. “You said only a criminal or someone in law enforcement would have reacted that way.”

Clayton nodded. Waited. “And which one are you?”

Lenora’s bottom lip trembled. “Both.”

Chapter Four

“Both?” Clayton repeated.

Lenora saw the instant concern in his eyes. Not ordinary concern, either. The kind of concern a marshal would have when facing down someone on the other side of the law.

“Explain that,” he demanded. His gaze dropped to her stomach. “And then we’ll discuss the baby.”

Lenora didn’t know which part of the intended discussion she dreaded most, but her dread was a drop in the bucket compared to her fear that Clayton’s mere presence here could get him killed.

“Are you sure no one followed you?” Lenora didn’t wait for his answer. She went to the sliver of a side window by the front door and peered out. The beveled glass distorted the view, but she saw her own car. No one else’s, and definitely no sign of a gunman. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

“I parked on the other side of the cemetery,” Clayton explained. “I didn’t see anyone following me, and I was careful.” He paused. “But there’s always the possibility that someone used the same steps I did to find you.”

True. That didn’t do much to steady her already racing heart and frazzled nerves. Lenora made a mental note to call the minister, Reverend Donaldson, to say she couldn’t finish the job. Then she could leave town and make sure Clayton didn’t find her again. However, that leaving part wasn’t going to happen unless she gave him the answers he was demanding, because there was no way he’d just let her walk out.

But where to start?

It was a tangled mess. One that Clayton definitely wasn’t going to like.

She took a deep breath, walked back toward him and sank down into a pew. “Jill and I both worked for the justice department.” There. Plain and simple. She gave him a moment to let that sink in.

It obviously didn’t sink in well. Clayton’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the first I’m hearing of this, and that’s funny since I work for the justice department, too, and I was assigned to protect you two.”

Yes, she was painfully aware of that. “You weren’t told the whole truth, and I was sworn to secrecy. Jill and I were agents on a special task force put together to bring down Adam Riggs and his cronies—”

“Any reason I wasn’t let in on this?”

“A good one.” Well, it was good in some people’s minds. It’d never felt right to her. “There were other agents planted in companies that Riggs was doing business with. The task-force supervisor didn’t want anyone knowing that Jill and I were deep cover, because it might have leaked—”

“I wouldn’t have leaked it,” he snapped, interrupting her again. He slipped his sunglasses back on and went to the front windows to look out.

The sunglasses were an odd mix with the rest of his clothes: the jeans, boots and silver rodeo belt. He used the brim of his black Stetson to help shield his eyes. It made her wonder just how bad his headaches actually were and if he was duty ready. Apparently he’d been ready enough to find her, and she’d thought she had covered her tracks well with the assumed name and the cash-only lifestyle.

“You could have trusted me,” Clayton added.

“I know that now, but we didn’t know it at the time. The task-force supervisor also wanted to make it look as if Jill and I were truly just workers who might be in danger because of a federal investigation. That’s why he asked the Marshals Service to provide protection for us. He took the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach.”

Clayton shook his head, glanced back at her, and even though she couldn’t actually see his eyes behind those shades, she was certain he was glaring. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”

No, it hadn’t. Somehow Lenora