LITMIR.BIZ

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“We can’t keep going like this. I know you want a divorce. We should end things, then. Legally.”

       “I just can’t get into it, Jack. Not now.”

       “When, then?”

      Not ever, it seemed to him. So they lived in a legal limbo: married, but not. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, their last encounter being an accidental meeting when she’d come to Gold Bar to visit her mother. It was a hot-cheeked, goosefleshed, endless few minutes. She’d been talking to a man at the inn, and a flash of something had seared through him. It didn’t take any skin off his nose to live with a secret marriage, but what about when she met someone else?

      His palms were sweaty as he approached Room Seven. He’d faced down wild horses, fires and floods, and recently a murderer bent on killing his twin brother Owen’s now fiancée, Ella, but he’d never had to battle his nerves so hard to get them to obey. He forced his legs into motion, wiped his clammy palms on his jeans, straightened his Stetson and rapped softly on the warped wood. The door opened, and there she stood, Shannon Livingston. Shannon Livingston Thorn, his mind amended cruelly. Her long dark hair, the heavy curtain he’d trailed his fingers through so many times, was loose and tangled, her eyes the same flecked gold of new-spun honey, but now they did not hold that gleam of cockiness, only fear.

      And there he was, a six-foot tall, gangly limbed cowboy, struck completely dumb.

      While he stood mute as stone, she took his hand, her fingers cold on his skin, and pulled him inside the minuscule room. As he automatically removed his hat, his mouth dropped open at the sight of a young woman, who was sitting on one of the twin beds, rocking a baby, of all things.

      He swiveled his gaze back to Shannon. “Let’s hear it.”

      She huffed out a breath, pacing the mud-colored carpet. Her words came out in a rush. “Jack, this is Dina Brown and her daughter, Annabell. She’s in trouble. I need to hide them for a few days. We’ve been driving in a rental car, and the men who are after her somehow caught up with us again. I lost them, I think, but I got scared and called you. I would have called home, to Gold Bar, but...”

      Hide them? What happened? His eyes wandered over the faded bruises on the young woman’s arms, a shiny cigarette burn near the wrist. A stream of other questions coursed through his mind, along with the most important one. Why did you call me? Instead, he settled on, “Who and why?”

      She held up a palm, once more the in-control, unflappable Shannon. “Let me help Dina get a bottle ready for the baby, and then I’ll tell you everything. Promise.”

      To give himself time to process, he looked around. A grocery bag with a loaf of bread sticking out the top, a paper map, keys to a rental car. On the run, instead of calling the police? Scared enough that she would take on the protection of a young woman and her baby? Maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe. Shannon was the most fearless person he knew, except for his younger brother Keegan, and she would face down anyone to right a wrong...unless she was the one who had inflicted it. He smothered the flicker of anger.

      Shannon shook up a baby bottle and handed it to Dina. “I know this is crazy, Jack, but I need to get her somewhere safe until she finds her brother. There’s a gang after her, the Scarlet Tide. You know of them?”

      “Can’t live in this state and not know of them. The cops...”

      “We can’t trust them, not now. They...”

      Her eyes rounded as a rumble filled the air, so loud it became a roar that shook the walls. He strode to the window and pulled the curtain aside a few inches. Two motorcycles, Harley-Davidsons, similar to the one Keegan rode in his wilder days, idled in the parking lot. The guys were big, one bearded, the other sporting a bandanna around his head, a braid poking out from underneath it.

      “Cruiser,” Dina said, mouth trembling, as she peeked past his shoulder, while the baby sucked contentedly. “And Viper.” The bottle shook in her hand. “They found us again, and now they’re gonna kill me and take my baby.” The last bit came out as a whimper.

      Shannon pulled Dina away from the window and folded her and the baby into an embrace. The gesture made his breath catch, for some reason. Both women looked at him.

      “Hide in the bathroom,” Jack commanded. Dina ran with the baby, almost closing the door behind her except for a crack.

      Shannon’s eyes were unreadable, shimmering with tension and something else. Guilt, probably, though she wouldn’t let that trouble her for more than a moment. She must have been desperate indeed to call him up.

      As Jack continued to peer out, the two bikers surveyed the row of hotel rooms, considering. They weren’t sure which one was Shannon’s. They would wait, take shifts, and eventually, they’d know. There was no time to get the women out a rear exit without being detected, unless they climbed out the high bathroom window, and that would be tricky with a baby. They were trapped.

      He could tell by Shannon’s quickened breaths that she’d come to the same conclusion. Her look to him was one of barely contained panic. His brain said call the cops. His gut said there was no other way, but somehow, his heart overruled them both.

      He turned around and handed Shannon his cell. “Tell Dina to lock the bathroom door and call the police.”

      “But...”

      “Do it, Shannon.”

      “Dina,” Shannon called. She pushed her way in. Her gasp told him the truth before she emerged with the baby in her arms.

      “She bolted. Climbed out the window and left the baby on a towel. The diaper bag is stashed under the sink.” Shannon fingered a piece of paper scribbled with a lipstick note. “‘I’ll be back in two days. Keep her safe for me. Don’t let them take her.’”

      He met Shannon’s eyes, the iridescent pools that pulled him in. “How do you want to play this?”

      “I promised to buy Dina a few days to find her brother. If we call the cops now...”

      He nodded. “Baby goes into foster care, most likely.”

      Shannon bit her lip. “If the gang takes the baby, Dina will never get her back...” She shook her head. “I promised. A few days, I promised.”

      “A promise is a promise,” he said, trying not to choke on the irony.

      She lifted her chin, voice gone hard. “I understand if you don’t want any part of this. It’s not your mess. I shouldn’t have called you.”

      He didn’t answer. Then he clapped on his Stetson, threw open the door and strode out, Shannon on his heels, still clutching the baby. That hadn’t changed, anyway. Shannon had never shied away from trouble.

      The riders approached quickly, coming up close, too close. Viper spoke first. “It’s her. The doctor.”

      “What are you doing here, Doc? Saw you beelining from the hospital,” Cruiser said. “Sudden vacation?”

      Jack straightened to his full height, a good four inches taller than either man. “Who wants to know?”

      Cruiser cocked his head. “Who are you, Cowboy?”

      “Name’s Jack Thorn. Yours?”

      “Not here for a meet and greet.”

      Jack stared him down. “Then why are you here?”

      “I want the girl and the baby.”

      Jack arched an eyebrow. “I don’t have a girl and a baby to hand over—not that I would anyway.”

      “So, who do you think you are? John Wayne?” Cruiser glared.

      Jack didn’t answer, just stared.

      Viper spoke up. “Doc treated our brother T.J. back at the hospital. We think she’s hiding somebody who pushed

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