Bodyguard Father

He also found a plastic bag half full of what looked like homemade oatmeal cookies and a key attached to a green oval labeled Shut Eye Inn, rm. 7, the sole motel in town.

Remembering the cell phone he confiscated, he dug it from a pocket, turned it on and scrolled through the outgoing calls. None to a local number. The last one she made was to an area code he didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t surprising. There were hundreds of new area codes now thanks to the proliferation of cell phones. The call had been made an hour before he caught Anastasia Ryder behind Scio’s barn. He pushed the call button. The phone was answered by a recording.

A woman’s voice. Name of Shelby Parker. He didn’t recognize her voice but her name rang a distant bell. No, he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before. Was she connected to Rocko Klugg?

He flipped the phone closed and rubbed his jaw with cold fingers, trying to figure things out. At least Anastasia hadn’t called the police. And if her appearance was connected to Klugg, it would take hours for his henchmen to get here.

In the end, did it matter who Anastasia Ryder worked for? She carried a gun and a picture of him taken outside his ex-wife’s house. She’d taken photos of everything connected to him. Obviously, someone had employed Ms. Ryder to track him down and she had.

Driving her car, he made a U-turn on the empty road and drove back up his driveway, his leg screaming in protest as he hit every rut in the dirt road. The weather had grown even colder, the road icier. As he neared the top, his tires fell into well-worn grooves. If not for them, he’d skid all over the place. He flipped on the windshield wipers as snow started to fly.

And then he saw it. His truck, aimed right at him, barreling down the hillside, his prisoner at the wheel. He’d left the damn keys on a hook by the door!

For an instant, he met Anastasia Ryder’s green-eyed gaze as he slammed on the brakes, sending pain shooting up his right leg. He yanked the wheel to the left but she kept coming, the truck’s momentum overriding its aging brakes, sending it into a death skid aimed right at him.

The truck hit the car starting at the front right fender and grinding its way down the body, crushing the doors with a horrible metal on metal sound until it imbedded itself into what had once been the trunk. The car stopped abruptly thanks to a tree and that jarring conclusion saved him an uncomfortable trip down the hillside. It also released the air bag and he sank into it instead of slamming against the steering wheel.

Shaking inside, Garrett took inventory. Besides his leg, remarkably, everything else seemed to be in working order. He fought off the air bag, took the keys from the ignition and dumped them in Annie’s purse. After wrenching open his door, he slipped and slid his way around the car.

Ben’s truck was history. Radiator pushed inward, hood buckled, steam hissing, windshield shattered…it wasn’t going anywhere again. Damn, neither was the car. The two locked vehicles made a dandy roadblock.

How did Anastasia Ryder get untied? Stupid question, he knew how. He hadn’t tied her tight enough, he hadn’t wanted to break her soft skin. He hadn’t wanted to yank her arms behind her, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

And in payment of this gentle treatment, she crashed his getaway truck.

He pulled open the truck door, dreading what he would find. Anastasia had been thrown or had thrown herself flat onto the bench seat and she sat up slowly, her lovely face splattered with her own blood, hair tumbling across her forehead and down her shoulders. Tiny cubes of safety glass sparkled in her hair like ice crystals.

Her hands were still tied together, a cut rope dangled from the knot around one ankle. She’d apparently used his biggest kitchen knife to cut her feet free and brought it along as a possible weapon. It now stuck straight out from the dashboard, the tip imbedded in vinyl, the plastic handle still vibrating from the impact.

She bit her lip when her gaze followed his and she saw the knife.

“You’re lucky it didn’t imbed itself in something softer. Like your throat,” he said.

She nodded in a dazed kind of fashion.

“Can you move?”

She nodded again and sat perfectly still, blinking.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

More nodding. He brushed some of the glass away then reached inside and pulled on her jacket sleeve and her jeans. She slid closer to the edge of the seat until she slipped into his arms as though she belonged there. She looped her arms over his head and around his neck and for a second, he wondered if she knew how to choke a man with a rope. But instead of trying to strangle him, she looked into his eyes. The cold, miserable day receded, the pain ebbed, the clock stopped ticking.

“Thanks,” she said, lowering her gaze.

“If you’d stayed tied up this wouldn’t have happened,” he grumbled as he carried her away from the hissing, steaming mass of mangled metal. He set her on her feet, anxious to see just how injured she was. She swayed a little but caught herself.

“Can you walk?” he barked.

“Of course,” she said, shaking glass off her clothes, out of her hair. “I’m just a little…rattled,” she added, and proved it by trembling from the feet up.

“Stand here for a second,” he said as he handed her her handbag. “Don’t run away.”

He limped back to the truck and grabbed the rifle before pulling his duffel bag from behind the seat. He didn’t know how he was going to get out of here now that both vehicles were wrecked, but he knew he had to. Soon.

She still stood where he’d left her. What was he going to do with her? He couldn’t leave her here alone, could he? He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. The minutes kept ticking by.

As he approached, he saw the return of fear in her eyes. Why she should be afraid of him when it was she who had started this mess?

She believes you blew up Elaine Greason.

He moved a few steps toward the house and looked back at her. “Let’s go inside while I come up with plan B.”

She looked anxiously over his shoulder toward the cabin and back again, her gaze straying past the wreck. It appeared she longed to run down the hill screaming at the top of her lungs.

“The snow is beginning to stick,” he said.

“But—”

“Listen. I know you’re Anastasia Ryder, I know you have a husband named Jack, I know you came to find me and that you called someone named Shelby Parker once you followed me back to Ben’s place. I know all this. I know you’ve been stalking me and I know why. So let’s can the scared female act. Thanks to your little escape attempt, I have to figure out how I’m going to get out of here before the cops come. Or worse.”

As she walked toward him, she shrugged off her coat and shook off more glass. “Call me Annie,” she said.

THE FIRST THING Garrett Skye did was tape a square of thick cardboard over the broken pane in the door and sweep up the glass. He did this work efficiently and without fanfare as Annie stood by, still shaken up and disorientated. The stream of cold the hole had allowed to enter the cabin immediately stopped and along with it, some of Annie’s shivers.

Next, he produced a lethal-looking pocketknife and as Annie shrank away from the blade, cut the rope from around her wrists. As she rubbed the reddened skin, he disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a few moments later with a small clean towel and a bowl of steaming water. He pointed at a chair and she sat down.

“I don’t have a lot of time but I can’t leave you here like this. I’m going to wipe the blood off your face. While I do that, you’re going to talk. Your last call, made minutes before you hiked up my driveway, was to Shelby Parker. Who exactly is she?”

“You looked at my cell phone.”

“Yes.”

What was the use of lying? She said, “Shelby Parker is Elaine Greason’s daughter.”

“Elaine’s daughter? The one who lives in Arizona?”

“That’s the one. She got tired of waiting for the police to find you.”

“So she hired you?”

Annie tried to look like a force to be reckoned with. “I’m sure she’s called the police by now. They’ll be here any minute.”

“You hope,” he said, dousing the cloth with water and moving it across her forehead. “Sure seems to be taking them a long time, though, doesn’t it?” he added as he wrung out the cloth. The water in the bowl turned pink. Annie’s stomach turned over. She wasn’t good with blood, especially her own.

She cried out as he dabbed at her chin. “There’s a piece of glass in there. Stay put.”

He found tweezers in a cabinet and brought them back to the table, where he deftly removed the glass. “I wonder why the sheriff hasn’t shown up?” he mused again as he tossed the glass chip into the waste basket.

She glanced out the big window in front. Snow. Nothing but snow. No cops running to the rescue.

He leaned back and looked at her. “I’ll tell you why. The sheriff’s office doesn’t know my true identity because you didn’t tell them. The whole town of Poplar Gulch thinks my name is Pete Jordan. They believe I’m a professor friend of Ben Miller’s, using his place to recover from knee surgery. I don’t talk a lot, but I’m friendly, ride Ben’s horse on occasion, and pay my bills with cash.”

“But—”

“Your cuts are minor.” He took the bowl and cloth back to the kitchen and returned with a box of bandages and a tube of ointment which he applied with a cotton-tipped stick. The bandages went on next. One near her temple and another on her left cheek. Two over the gash on her chin.

She looked at his face as he worked. He needed a shave. The dark stubble made him look raw, sexy, male. On second thought, perhaps he didn’t need a shave.

She took a steadying breath but all that accomplished was filling her nostrils with his woodsy scent. She was way too aware of him as a man, considering the fact he was a murderer. She’d read about those women who get all emotionally attached to vicious fiends and spend their life trotting back and forth to prison cells for conjugal visits. No, thanks.

“Why didn’t Parker tell you to contact the police when you found me?” he said. “Why contact her?”

Because that’s the way my dad organized it. She wasn’t going to tell him that. Let this guy think she had connections and experience. And a husband if he wanted. The bigger, the better.

He sat on his heels and directed a flashlight into her eyes. Wasn’t it obvious by now her eyes were fine?

“Don’t blink,” he said. “Anything hurt?”

“No.” She stared into his bottomless brown orbs, intrigued by the swirls of burnt sienna until she blinked rapidly and pushed his hand away. Had she really just sat there meekly and let him attend to her wounds, gazing into his eyes like a goof? Maybe she’d been in shock. If so, she was better now and she wanted a little elbow room. She said, “I’m good. Thanks.”

He switched off the flashlight and stood. Perching on the edge of the table, he said, “If Parker wants her mother’s alleged killer brought to justice, why direct her private eye to call her instead of the cops?”

“Alleged?” she said, sitting forward. “Didn’t you kill Elaine Greason?”

He stared at her. “Does it matter? You don’t care if I’m guilty or innocent, right? Just as long as you collect your money. You can’t be a bounty hunter because I was never bonded. Why don’t you have some kind of license or permit? You were carrying concealed. Is that lawful between Nevada and California?”

She ignored his questions because she didn’t really know what he was talking about. Was there a law against a concerned citizen tracking down a wanted killer? Her intention had never been to confront him.

He frowned at her, narrowing those rich, dark eyes in the process.

He said, “You took that picture of me in the truck when I went to see my daughter.”

She nodded as though she knew this was a fact. In truth, she had no idea when or where her father took the picture. But she did know Skye had left a little girl in Reno. In fact, that knowledge had tipped the scales in her mind when it came to looking for him. She had no patience for men who abandoned their children.

“So you know about Megan. You didn’t mention her to the Parker woman, did you?”

“Why would it matter?” she said. “The cops don’t want your daughter.”

“If it’s the cops she has in mind, no,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you or didn’t you mention Megan on the phone?”

“I don’t remember,” Annie said. Had she?

His gaze turned introspective for a second. Then he took a heavy-looking gold watch from his pocket. He’d looked at the watch in the parking lot of the store. She hadn’t noticed the cover design before, but she did now. The heavy embossing depicted a bridge arcing over a river. He popped it open, checked the time and repocketed the watch.

“Why is it so important?” she asked.

He stood abruptly and walked into the kitchen. His limp was better. When he returned, he carried a length of rope.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, standing. “You are not going to tie me up again. I refuse.”

He spared her a cursory glance. “I’m going to bank the fire,” he said. “It should stay warm until morning. I’d leave you free to move around the cabin, but you’d just follow me.”

“What—”

He picked up the rifle from where it sat against the wall. It had been sitting there when he went to the kitchen and she hadn’t grabbed it and turned it on him. Merciful heavens, she had zero survival instincts. He pointed it at her. “Don’t let my friendly smile fool you, Annie. The last time I escaped I shot a man.”

“Randy Larson.”

“Right. And I liked Randy.” He gestured toward the big heavy chair by the fireplace. “Sit down.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll shoot you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He strode toward her, any semblance of a smile gone, grim determination settling in his eyes. She scrambled back until she more or less fell into the big chair. For a second she thought of fighting him but abandoned that thought as she caught another glimpse of the rifle. He stooped over her, pinning her to the chair with the sheer volume of his body.

“It’s for your own good,” he said, staring down into her eyes.

“Sure it is,” she said.

Setting the rifle aside, he once again tied a rope around her wrists. The knot wasn’t very tight. Then he knelt and secured her ankles. He used additional knots to secure her to the chair. The effort seemed halfhearted.

He stood when he was finished. “Maybe you should find a new line of work. Something a little less violent.”

“You wish,” she said.

He cracked a smile. Shaking his head, he took the duffel bag into the kitchen. She heard him opening and closing drawers before reappearing. He held a bottle of water.

“It’s too late to untie you and give you something to eat. I’ll help you take a drink.”

“So I’ll have to sit here without a bathroom? Thanks anyway.”

“You’ll get thirsty.”

“I’ll live. I got away once, I can do it again.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he banked the fire by adjusting the flue and closing the glass door.

Damn. The rest of Shelby Parker’s money was about to saunter down the hill and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

Annie mentally apologized to her dead father and his living widow. Sorry about the loan sharks, sorry about being a failure, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Garrett snagged a thick jacket off a hook by the front door and shrugged it on over the leather jacket he still wore. Opening the duffel once again, he dropped in her wallet and cell phone, the camera and her father’s gun.

“Wait a second,” she protested. “Those things are mine.”

“There’s no phone in this cabin. I’ll borrow yours so I can call someone to come get Scio. I didn’t tie you very tight. You should be able to get out of the ropes in an hour or so. All I need is a head start.”

“There’s no need for ropes—”

“Sure there is. You have dollar signs in your eyes. If you’re still tied up in the morning when someone comes to get Scio, try hollering.”

“And the rest?”

“I’m doing you and the world a favor by disarming you.”

“You’re a thief as well as a killer,” she said.

A smile tipped his face from handsome to roguish. He once again knelt by the chair. This time he ran his fingers along her jaw. His touch did something to her, enflamed something inside she’d kept buried. She tried to twist her head away, but couldn’t and it wasn’t because ropes restrained her.

“Goodbye, Anastasia Ryder,” he whispered. His face came close to hers, his warm breath wafted over her skin. The next thing she knew, his lips had connected with hers. For a second she forgot where she was, who he was. Caught up in sensation, she became oblivious to reality.

The man was quite a kisser. Open mouth, warm and wet, gathering her into his passion against her will. Okay, not against her will. A dizzying pulse of sensations went straight to her head, and to her groin.

And then he was standing.

“I suggest you spend the night considering other things you could do with your life,” he said softly, firelight glowing on his skin.

“Because you’ve been so damn successful with yours?”

“Touché.” With a few backward steps he was at the door. He switched on a table lamp. “Do you want me to turn on the radio or the TV?”

“I want you to come over here and untie me, that’s what I want,” she said, struggling against the ropes.

“No can do,” he said, grabbing the rifle again. He opened the door and stepped out into the gathering dark. The door closed quietly behind him.

Watching his retreating form through the big window, she screamed his name as he disappeared into the snow.

Chapter Three

Why hadn’t Shelby Parker called the sheriff? Why wasn’t the place surrounded by floodlights and barking dogs and a SWAT team?

Thirty minutes of struggling accomplished nothing but rope burns. After forty-five minutes, not only had night stolen over the hillside and flooded the house with shadows but Annie’s wrists had finally slipped free of the ropes.

She quickly untied her ankles and, standing, began walking around the room trying to get the feeling back in her feet.

Despite the cold, dark night and the possibility of wildlife, she planned to walk down to the main road and hitch a ride to the sheriff’s station, where she would tell anyone who would listen about Garrett Skye. They could put out an APB. He’d be in jail by morning. He could try sweet-talking the deputies. Try kissing one of them. See how far it got him.

And then she was going to call Shelby Parker and demand the rest of her father’s money. After all, Skye’s location had been verified. It wasn’t her fault he got away.

Okay, it was her fault.

After that, she was going back to her quiet life and the little kids and polite parents who made up ninety-nine percent of the people she came into contact with. And judging from the flood of sexual energy Garrett Skye’s kiss had provoked, it was also time to find a new boyfriend.

Trouble was, she wasn’t good with men. Two boyfriends before, she’d had a fling with a divorced man who, as it turned out, wasn’t actually divorced, a revelation that had left her spoiled for men for a good year. The last boyfriend had had a gambling addiction he hid very well until Annie discovered him using her ATM card without permission.

And now an attraction to a felon. What was wrong with her?

What she needed to find was a nice man, not a dangerous one. Not a man who blew up women, not a man whose destiny seemed to be on a collision course with a life sentence in Nevada State Prison.

After a fruitless search for something sugary to eat, she settled on cold leftover spaghetti and meatballs out of Skye’s refrigerator. Then she searched the cabin for a warm coat. Hers was outside and covered with glass. As a bonus, she also found insulated gloves that almost fit. She took another big knife out of the kitchen drawer. Maybe there were coyotes out there. Maybe even more dangerous beasts roamed the hillside, the two-legged variety.

One more search to find a flashlight and new batteries, strap her small purse across her chest under her coat and she was ready to go. She opened the door. Cold wind slapped her in the face. Looking out at the two inches of new snow covering the rocky, unpredictable hillside and her determination drained. Her flashlight and warm coat were no match for that miserable driveway. She’d have to think of something else.

The horse. She’d take Scio. This time she’d have time to saddle him properly and talk to him in a soothing voice. He wouldn’t be afraid of her this time.

It had stopped snowing but only the faintest of moonlight made its way through the heavy cloud cover. Picking her way carefully, she made her way to the barn.

Scio wasn’t in his stall. He wasn’t in any of the stalls. Apparently, Garrett had taken him, which meant he wasn’t going to call someone to come get the horse. What if she hadn’t been able to get out of the ropes? How long would she have had to stay tied to that chair before someone came looking for her?

Another thought, even more uncomfortable. Why did it come as a surprise that Garrett Skye was untrustworthy? What in the world had she expected from a man like him?

She’d barely had a moment to consider her next move when she heard the sound of a motor. She ran to the barn door in time to see headlights sweep the tops of the trees.

At last! Shelby Parker must have finally retrieved her voice mail and called the sheriff. A car stopped on the other side of the wrecked vehicles still plugging the top of the driveway. Though giddy with relief, Annie waited for a moment to see who emerged from around the wreck. She wasn’t about to get herself into another out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire scenario.

Car doors closed. The silhouette of two men backlit by headlights circled the wreck and met again on Annie’s side. She lifted a foot to step outside the barn.

And then one of them spoke. It wasn’t his words that halted her forward progress, it was the hushed, guttural sound of his voice.

“Looks like Skye had an accident.”

“Maybe he already bought the farm.”

A flashlight briefly flicked over the wreckage and then went out. “I don’t see a body, but the car has Nevada plates. I wonder where Ryder’s daughter is?”

“She’s no match for Skye,” the other said. “By now she’s probably dead and buried under a bush.”

Both of them chuckled.

Annie’s feet froze to the ground. Their chuckles were dry and sarcastic and cut through her like a polar wind. Plus, they knew about her. That meant they knew Shelby Parker, as Annie had told no one else she was coming here. But why weren’t they also looking for her dad? She’d tried to make her message sound like he was with her.

“Go around back, I’ll take the front,” one of the men said. “Remember, don’t shoot to kill, we want Skye alive.”

“What if the girl shows up?”

“If she gets in the way—”

Annie’s feet did an instant thaw as she shrank back inside the barn. Those men were not with the sheriff’s department. What in the world was going on?

She watched from her hidden position as one man slunk past her, stray shafts of moonlight clearly revealing the gun held down by his leg. Unsure what to do next, she all but stopped breathing.

Should she risk leaving the barn?

She couldn’t bring herself to step out into the open so she moved farther into the barn instead. All bravado abandoned her. What she wanted to do was find a dark corner and hunker down like a scared child. She should try to make a run for it. But the night sky was fickle, overcast one minute, moonlit the next. She kept seeing that gun and could almost feel the burning trail of a bullet piercing her spine, the sudden lack of feeling in her legs….