Duty To Protect

She needed a safe haven.

After nearly a lifetime in witness protection, Emma Graves depends on the anonymity of her false identity. But when her parents die under suspicious circumstances, and Emma is framed for murder, all security is gone. There is nothing to do but run.

Cop-turned-rancher Jake Kincaid is an unlikely defender. Why would an ex-cop believe an accused killer? Still, Jake makes Emma feel safe. With his drive to protect, she knows staying on his ranch endangers them both—but now that her heart’s engaged, she’s not sure she can walk away.

The dog hopped out of the truck as soon as Jake opened the door and followed close at his heels when he went back to check on the horses. He’d just opened the back gate of the trailer when she burst into a ferocious round of barking.

“Quiet,” he shouted over the keening wind.

She barked even louder, her attention riveted on the dressing-room door at the front of the trailer.

“What, did we pick up a mouse at the last barn?” He unlocked the door and reached inside to flip on the lights, hoping it wasn’t something larger than a mouse. The last thing he needed was to find that a barn cat had hitched a ride away from that last horse farm.

But it wasn’t a barn cat staring at him from the far corner with wide hazel eyes, tousled auburn hair peeking out from beneath a knitted hat, and pale skin turning blue with cold. It was a woman huddled in a pile of horse blankets, her teeth chattering and hands trembling.

And she had his rifle pointed straight at his chest.

ROXANNE RUSTAND

lives in the country with her husband and a menagerie of pets, many of whom find their way into her books. She works part-time as a registered dietitian at a psychiatric facility, but otherwise you’ll find her writing at home in her jammies, surrounded by three dogs begging for treats, or out in the barn with the horses. Her favorite time of all is when her kids are home—though all three are now busy with college and jobs.

RT Book Reviews nominated her for a Career Achieve-ment Award in 2005, and she won the magazine’s award for Best Superromance of 2006.

She loves to hear from readers! Her snail-mail address is P.O. Box 2550, Cedar Rapids, IA 52406-2550. You can also contact her at: www.roxannerustand.com, www.shoutlife.com/roxannerustand or at her blog, where readers and writers talk about their pets at www.roxannerustand.blogspot.com.

Roxanne Rustand

Duty to Protect

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for what he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 4:6–7

In loving memory of my mom, Arline.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Ninteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

ONE

The soft blanket of new snow glittered under the streetlamp and muffled her steps as Emma strode from the city bus stop at the end of the block to the side door of her garage. Anxiety twisted her stomach into a tight knot of fear.

The snow could muffle the sound of someone else’s steps, too.

And even now, that unknown person could be watching her. Waiting. Just as he had waited for her father last week.

She’d been only a few feet away from her dad, pushing a cart of groceries in the busy Safeway parking lot. He’d suddenly faltered to a stop. “We’ve got to leave,” he’d whispered urgently. “I just saw—”

Then he’d fallen face-first, a widening pool of crimson spreading through the slushy snow beneath him. He died at her feet, and she hadn’t even heard the gunshot.

Had he seen his killer’s face? Why hadn’t the shooter taken her out, too? The melee of screaming frightened people running for cover would have given the shooter ample opportunity to pull the trigger, and he probably wouldn’t have missed. From the perfect placement of the single bullet in her father’s skull, the cops figured the killer possessed sniper experience.

Which meant the killer was someone sent by the drug cartel that had been trying to kill Emma and her adoptive family for years. Orphaned at the age of seven and taken in by an older, childless couple a year later, she’d longed for love and security in her new home but had found little of either.

And now even that connection to a family was gone.

Taking a slow breath, she willed away the horrific images of blood and panicking people, and willed her heartbeat to slow. I’m okay. I’m almost home.

She unlocked the door of the garage and slipped inside, then rounded the rear bumper of her old Blazer, thankful that the dark, smoke-tinted windows hid its contents. No one could look inside and guess at what she planned to do tomorrow—not that anyone was likely to drop by. No one ever did.

The Witness Protection Program was no place to make friends, and with luck, anyone who’d known her in her former life probably figured she was dead.

From somewhere inside the house came a thud. She paused, her hand on the door leading from the garage into the tiny entryway off the kitchen. That hadn’t been the sound of the furnace kicking in. There was no one else who had a key. A crazy longing flitted through her thoughts. It’s just Dad—

But he was dead and so was her mom, and now she was totally and forever alone. Surely she was just hearing things. She lowered her gaze to the doorknob, started to fit her key into the dead bolt.

But then she heard another thud. An anguished moan.

And were those voices inside? They came closer. Both male, both agitated.

She’d locked all the doors and armed the security system when she left. Not even her WITSEC contact knew its code—yet there were intruders inside. So where were the sirens? The squadron of patrol cars that should be closing in? Had the alarm even triggered?

Warning bells sounded in her head.

An inner voice screamed at her to run.

Rising on her tiptoes, she braced her trembling fingertips on the door frame for a quick glance through the window set high in the door. A narrow gap between the loose-woven curtains on the inside revealed just a slice of the kitchen, but the bright lights inside illuminated more than enough.

Horror and disbelief swept through her as she stumbled away from the door, caught herself and swallowed hard, trying to hold back a wave of sudden nausea.

It couldn’t be.

A body was lying facedown on her kitchen floor, the hilt of her favorite carving knife rammed upright into his back. The dark, wet pool of blood spreading from beneath him was a shocking contrast to the white tile floor.

She forced herself to take another quick look.

A vaguely familiar cop hunkered down next to the body, and a tall, dark-haired stranger in a long black overcoat and dove-gray slacks moved into view, facing away from her. A detective, maybe?

A rush of relief swept through her. The cops were already here. Everything would be all right. But just as quickly, she knew this scene was all wrong.

The cop’s face was dark red with anger, and sweat beaded his forehead. “You shouldn’ta done it,” he bellowed.

The other man gestured at the body. “He was a loose cannon, you fool. I had orders.”

“Yeah. But—”

“Okay. So we’ll do the woman with his gun. Get the angle right and the investigators will think she stabbed him, then he managed to turn and fire in self-defense before he went down.”

The cop swore, low and fierce. “Opportunity. Means. But just try and give me a plausible motive.”

“Her dad’s murder. She…figured Todd blew their cover.”

“So a mousy little librarian was able to kill a guy this size? With his self-defense training? Tell me another one.”

“We’ve got time. We can fix this scene—make it look right. No one will ever know different.”

The rising argument between the two men faded away as the walls of the garage started to spin. Todd? Todd Hlavicek?

She wobbled away from the door, her heart in her throat and her knees quivering as she half fell against the front fender of the Blazer.

Todd was her only current contact in the Witness Protection Program. He was the only one in the area who should have known about her adoptive family’s involvement in the WITSEC program and their whereabouts…yet loose cannon implied that his loyalty had been bought.

Had he betrayed her family for money? Had he been coerced? Either way, the fact that he was dead reemphasized just how dangerous her family’s old enemies were. How long they could hold a grudge.

She was the only one left, and she was going to be next.

She had to get out of here. But the garage door was closed and the noise of rolling it up would rumble like thunder in this enclosed space, alerting the men inside. Trying to reach someplace safe on foot would be useless. This was a quiet neighborhood of large yards and inexpensive 1940s ramblers filled with people she didn’t know. As always, she’d carefully avoided friendships with the neighbors. Whose life could she dare risk by begging for sanctuary?

The muffled argument inside the house stopped abruptly. Had they heard her?

Oh, Lord—please, please…

She whirled around, jerked open the SUV’s door and threw herself inside, slamming her hand against the locks as she searched for the keys she’d dropped in her pocket.

Her fingers closed over them and she tried to push the key into the ignition. Fumbled. Tried again.

Please…please…please…

A scream threatened to tumble from her lips when the kitchen door flew open and flooded the garage with light. The cop stood in the open doorway, his face a mask of anger, his right hand already reaching for the service revolver at his side.

With shaking fingers she tried the key again. Felt it slide home. The engine roared when she shoved the gearshift into Reverse and floored the accelerator. Tires squealed as the vehicle launched backward, splintering the flimsy garage door.

A deafening explosion enveloped her as the front windshield shattered and something hot whistled past her ear.

Throwing her weight against the pedal, she flicked a last glance at the two men racing after her. One grabbed at her car door but fell away as the SUV shimmied, nearly out of control. She swung it into a wild arc, over a trash can. She rammed the gearshift into Drive and again floored the accelerator. The SUV crossed an edge of the lawn and shot toward the highway.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

The sounds were distant. Toylike. Surreal—until the rear windshield shattered into a glittering network of crystalline fabric. They would be on her tail the minute they reached their vehicles.

She wasn’t armed. She had no experience in high-speed driving. She had to make it two full blocks to the freeway ramp, and pray the Chicago rush hour traffic was still heavy. If she could disappear into that bumper-to-bumper mass of frustrated and impatient drivers before her pursuers caught up, she might have a chance to live until tomorrow.

God hadn’t listened to many of her prayers over the years, far as she could tell, and she’d long-ago drifted away from the silent, one-way conversations she’d had with Him as a child. Yet He must have tuned into her pleas today.

She had no illusions about her odds of evading a determined cop with any number of high-speed chases under his belt. But she hadn’t noticed a cruiser parked near her house and there hadn’t been a civilian’s car parked nearby, either, other than Todd’s black Taurus sedan. If the other two had left their cars far enough away to avoid the curious eyes of neighbors, she could be in luck.

A patrol car still hadn’t shown up in her rearview mirror when she slipped into traffic on I-90 and changed lanes until she was flanked by one semi to the right and another at her rear bumper for cover. Please, God, be with me. Please.

At the Elgin exit she white-knuckled the steering wheel. Held her breath. Then veered off at the last second and wound through the residential areas for twenty minutes, making sure no one had followed, before she headed for the far edge of the Metra commuter train parking lot and pulled in next to the battered Ford Focus she’d left there earlier, for the disappearance she’d planned for tomorrow.

Then, she waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Waited, her hands trembling and heart pounding, until the last train of the night left at 10:15, and no one was in sight. Each endless minute had ratcheted up her tension—but she couldn’t risk the curiosity of anyone who might still be lingering in some unseen corner of the station. One misstep, and someone might remember her.

And then she would be as good as dead.

Finally, she pulled her hat low over her newly dyed auburn hair and quickly transferred her duffel bag and suitcases from the SUV into the trunk of the Focus.

After plugging in her GPS, she began her new route on quiet backcountry two-lane roads.

She had no doubt that her Blazer would be discovered in the morning. The shattered front and back windows would ensure a great deal of interest by the local police. The license plates would be easily traced to her latest identity.

But the Focus would buy her time.

Bought with cash from a sleazy little car lot in a bad part of town, she’d given the seller a false name she fabricated on the spot, stashed the car at the commuter train station. Then she’d taken the Metra downtown and used the city bus system for the final leg of the trip home.

Maybe her pursuers would expect she’d decided to lose herself among the eight million people of the Chicago area. With luck, that’s exactly where they’d search, and eventually they would give up.

Now she just had to make it to the Greyhound bus station in Moline, on the Iowa-Illinois border, pay cash for a ticket to Deer Lodge, Montana, and catch the midnight departure.

And then finally she’d be free.

The Greyhound pulled off the freeway near Ogallala, Nebraska, and stopped at a truck stop with a well-lit mom-and-pop café. Next to it lay a parking lot overflowing with cars and trucks, and beyond that, a Travelodge hotel with Welcome to the Western States Regional Bowling Championship Contestants and No Vacancy lit on its sign.

Through the café’s large front windows Emma could see a long lunch counter and a half-dozen booths, already populated by a crowd of trucker types hunched over large coffee mugs and massive servings of heart-attack-on-a-plate trucker specials.

The bus driver and the dozen other passengers piled out and made a beeline for the café and restrooms. Emma wavered. The darkness in the bus throughout the night had been reassuring, the passengers dozing and otherwise keeping to themselves. But bright lights and the intimacy of the limited seating in the café could provoke conversation and curiosity, something she’d worked hard to avoid.

The granola bars and cans of Coke in her duffel would just have to do, along with the tiny restroom at the back of the bus.

She watched people come and go. A mom heading for the door to the café, gripping the hands of two toddlers bundled into heavy blue snowsuits. A gray-haired couple hanging on to each other for support as they came out and bent into the bitter wind, heading for the hotel with scarves wrapped around their faces.

A tall cowboy sauntered toward the gas station from his truck and horse trailer at the last gas pump, the brim of his Western hat pulled down low over his forehead.

One of the toddlers broke free as his mother opened the door, and made a beeline for the gas pumps just as a rattletrap of a pickup pulled off the highway into the lot, swung wide and started skidding sideways. The mother screamed and threw herself toward her child. Pedestrians swung around. The scene played out in slow motion.

The crushing weight of the truck sluiced sideways, the side of its front wheel aimed straight for the child and coming too, too fast.

And suddenly the cowboy was there—diving for the child. Rolling in the snow, protecting him with his body. Even through the thick, well-insulated walls of the bus Emma heard an uproar of excited shouts as the young mother fell to her knees at the cowboy’s side and opened her arms when he handed over her unharmed child.

The crowd grew around them, slapping the cowboy on the back, then some broke away and loudly confronted the driver of the pickup who staggered out of his truck and leaned against the front fender, pale and shaken and quite possibly drunk.

Emma leaned back, her own fear subsiding as she watched the mother wrap her arms around the cowboy in heartfelt thanks, then hold his hand for a moment. He touched the brim of his hat, then headed into the gas station, while she shepherded her children into the café.

A true hero, Emma thought, the one person among the many who had thought fast and acted in time. Why had she never run into someone like that when she’d needed him most?

She settled back in her seat and read a page of the book in her lap, then idly drew a circle in the frost that had already formed on her window. Rubbing out a bigger porthole, she drew in a sharp breath.

Impossible. She’d been so incredibly careful.

The chill from touching the icy glass rushed through her. Outside the door of the gas station, she could see the bus driver and the cowboy both holding foam to-go cups, listening to a tall man in a dark overcoat and gray dress slacks who was facing away from the bus. All three were hunched against the wind, their collars turned up.

From his rigid stance and forceful gestures it was apparent that the newcomer was agitated and demanding some sort of action. He pivoted and stood in front of the big plate glass window to stare at the people inside. Then he turned back to the bus driver and the cowboy and pointed toward the bus.

She stared at him, too horrified to move.

It was too far away to see his face, but he was tall, with the same kind of coat and gray slacks as the man she’d seen in her kitchen. It had to be a coincidence. How was it even possible that he could find her this far from Chicago? Unless…

The truth hit her like a punch to her stomach.

Had Todd planted a tracking device on her? Who would have ordered it—the good guys or bad? Either way, she was in trouble.

The man in the overcoat was already striding toward the bus, clearly planning to search inside.

There was no time to hunt for her luggage stowed in the belly of the bus, and even grabbing her duffel could spell danger if it held the tracking device. Grabbing only her purse, she crouched low and hurried to the exit, shoved the door open and bolted for the nearby row of semis along the edge of the parking lot, thankful that the bus had been parked with its exit door facing away from the café.

The semi tractors were idling to keep their diesel fuel warm and all were dark, so the drivers were either asleep inside with their doors locked or were over at the café. There was no time to search out someone in a sleeper cab and beg for shelter.

The wind sent sleet and cold down the collar of her coat as she hurried behind the trucks for cover, then hesitated. The hotel parking lot ahead was packed with cars and pickups, but few people left their vehicles open these days and only a fool left keys in an ignition. There’d be a slim chance of finding refuge there. The hotel itself was too far away—with a swath of open lawn between its front doors and the parking area. She would be spotted in an instant. Please, God, help me find someone, someplace…

Her frantic gaze landed on the rig at the farthest gas pump.

The pickup lights were off, but inside the back of the trailer, a horse whinnied. That cowboy would surely be back soon. Would he help her? Would he give her a ride? Or would he first demand answers that would take far too long?

Already, she could hear a male voice over by the bus. If the bus driver had told that guy about her being a passenger, she was in deep trouble.

Bending low, she crept to the horse trailer and nearly cried out in relief when she read its Montana plates. “Please, please be heading back home,” she whispered to herself.

But the cab of the truck was still empty, save for a big dog that surged toward the window from the shadows of the interior, its teeth bared.

The voice approached the other side of the horse trailer, apparently talking into a cell phone. So close that she could hear him breathing.

“I told you, I couldn’t—not when I took out her old man. Too many witnesses. But when I get my hands on her, she ain’t gonna die easy.”

A wave of dizziness rushed through her and her heart threatened to batter its way out of her rib cage as she glanced wildly at her surroundings.

There was no other place to hide but here—unless she dared step out into the lights illuminating the truck stop parking area.

Her hands shaking, she tried the dressing room door at the front of the trailer. The handle turned easily and the door swung open, revealing a dark, cavernous space redolent of good leather and saddle soap and horse. Thank you, God.

Footsteps crunched in the snow, rounding the back of the trailer. A man cursed.

Her knees threatened to buckle as she slipped up into the dressing room compartment of the trailer and eased the door shut behind her. She took a quiet step back and tried to calm her rapid breathing. The jackhammer rate of her heartbeat echoed in her head—surely loud enough to be heard from outside.

In the dim light coming through the window in the door, she could make out a three-tier saddle rack. Bridles and other leather equipment hanging from hooks. A gun rack cradling a rifle, bolted high on the wall. On the floor were a tire rim and jack, a bag of Purina dog food and several bags of horse feed rich with the warm, sweet smell of molasses.

In the corner—thank you, Lord—was a big pile of winter horse blankets and a crumpled tarp.

She crawled under the blankets, thankful for the wind outside and praying that it masked the sounds of her movements, and wiggled as far back into the corner as she could. The smell of the horse blankets enveloped her…strong and pungent, but somehow the heavy weight of them felt comforting, secure.

A second later, the door hinges squealed as the compartment door was jerked open. The horse in the back whinnied, the noise reverberating through the trailer.

“Hey, what are you doing?” The new voice was deeper. Angry. “Get away from my trailer.”

So this was the cowboy, then—the one who had saved the little boy.

“I already told you—I’m looking for a woman on the run. Cold-blooded killer.”