LITMIR.BIZ

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tried to be stronger than that. For Gabby. For the hope that Gabby was still alive to be found.

      But, she was so scared she wanted to cry. Someone was following them. Ranger Cooper seemed more than capable, but that didn’t make it any less scary. It didn’t erase her house being gone, and it most certainly didn’t erase the fact someone was apparently following them.

      Ranger Cooper immediately locked the door behind them as they stepped into the women’s restroom. He was a blur, moving about the small room and the even smaller stalls, and she had no idea what he was looking for.

      So, she simply stood in the center trying to find her own center. Trying to focus on what she was doing this for. On who she was doing this for. She’d pursued details of Gabby’s case with a dogged tenacity that had alienated every friend, significant other and her own grandmother. Even Mom was close to losing any and all patience with her.

      But how could they give up? How could she give up? Maybe she’d never anticipated this kind of danger, but that didn’t mean she was going to shake apart and hide away. Gabby was somewhere out there.

      She had to be. He keeps the girls. Maybe it wasn’t Gabby’s case, but maybe it was. She needed information, which meant she needed Ranger Cooper.

      After a full sweep of the bathroom, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed something into it. Natalie simply watched him because she didn’t know what else to do. She counted each time his blunt, long finger touched the screen to keep herself from panicking.

      When he glanced up from his phone, those steely blue eyes meeting hers with a blank kind of certainty, she thought she might panic anyway.

      “We can’t waste much more time,” he said, his voice as low and gravelly as she’d ever heard it. Surely he was exhausted. Even Texas Rangers got tired. Even Texas Rangers were human and mortal.

      She’d really prefer to think of him as superhuman, and he made it almost seem possible when he flipped back his coat and pulled the weapon at his hip from its holster.

      “If it gets back to whoever sent them they’re being detained, we’ll just get another tail.”

      Natalie subdued the shaking, jittering fear in her limbs and focused on what had gotten her here. Questions. Information. “But how can we get past them? Won’t they just report back to... Do you know who it is? Is this about The Stallion? I couldn’t find any information on what exactly that is. A man? A gang?”

      Ranger Cooper took a menacing step toward her, reminding her of that moment in the interrogation room when he’d stepped between her and Mr. Herman.

      Dead Mr. Herman.

      She closed her eyes and tried to focus on how much she’d hated him then. Hated him for getting in her way.

      “Do not ask questions, Ms. Torres. The less you know, the better. For your own good. Now...” He curled those long fingers around the grips of his gun. “Listen to me carefully. Do everything I say to the letter. For your own good. Let me repeat that,” he said, as if talking to a small child.

      “For your own good, you will do as I say. Stay behind me. Listen to me and only me. Whatever you do, don’t make a sound. If we can get a little bit of a head start, we’re golden. Got it?”

      She couldn’t speak. Every muscle in her body was seized too tightly to allow her to speak, or nod.

      “Torres.” It was whispered, but it was a harsh bark. “Got it?”

      She managed a squeaky yes, and as he unlocked the door, she stayed behind him. As much as she didn’t like him, in this moment, she would have pressed herself to his back if he’d asked her to.

      He might be a jerk, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Right now, with two bulky men speaking to two decidedly not bulky local police officers in front of the cash register, she pretty much had to trust Ranger Cooper would get them out of this.

      She met gazes with one of the bulky men, and though he had his hat low on his head, she could feel the cold, black gaze.

      “Behind me, Torres,” Ranger Cooper whispered with enough authority to have her feet moving faster.

      One of the bulky men tried to sidestep one of the local officers, but the local officer didn’t back off.

      “Move again, sir, and I will pull my weapon on you.”

      “We ain’t done anything wrong, boy.”

      Ranger Cooper grabbed her arm. “Move,” he instructed, and she realized belatedly she’d all but stopped. But she was being propelled out the door, a skirmish breaking out behind them. “Get in the car. Now. Fast.”

      On shaky legs, she did as she was told, but managed to glance back in time to see Ranger Cooper shoving a broom through the handles of the door. Which caused the men inside to push against the police officers even harder, even getting past one to get to the door.

      Natalie got into the truck’s passenger seat, her breath coming in little puffs. That broom handle wouldn’t hold them in for very long. If only because there had to be another exit, and it already looked as though the officers inside were losing the battle.

      But Ranger Cooper wasn’t getting in the truck. She tried to breathe deeply, but a little whimpering sound came out instead.

      “Get it together. Get it together,” she whispered to herself, craning her neck to see where Ranger Cooper had gone.

      She watched as he casually walked over to a white sedan, weapon held to his side where only someone really paying attention could see. Then he held the muzzle of the gun to the front tire and pulled the trigger.

      Even knowing it was coming, Natalie jumped when the shot rang out. Ranger Cooper was back in the truck in the blink of an eye, and Natalie glanced at the store where the two men had disappeared from the windowed doors. No doubt looking for another exit.

      “That’ll buy us some time,” Ranger Cooper muttered, zooming out of the parking lot without so much as buckling his seat belt.

      “What about those police officers? The cashier?”

      He merely nodded into the distance. “Hear that?”

      She didn’t at first, but after a few seconds she could make out sirens.

      “Backup,” he said, his eyes focused on the road, his hands tight on the wheel. “Since the guys fought back, they can arrest them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more tails on us. We have to be vigilant. I want you to keep your eyes peeled. Anything seems suspicious, you mention it. I don’t care how silly it sounds. We can’t be too careful now.”

      Natalie gripped the handle of the door with one hand, pressed the other, in a fist, to her stomach.

      She was in so far over her head she almost laughed. She knew Ranger Cooper wouldn’t appreciate that, and she was a little afraid if she started laughing, it’d turn into crying soon enough.

      She was too tough for that. Too determined. No more crying. No more shaking. No more panic. If they had bad guys to face down, she was at least going to pull her weight.

      Because if she did, if they could get through all this, Gabby might be on the other side. Everything she’d been working for over the past eight years.

      Yeah, no more panic. She had a sister to save.

       Chapter Four

      Vaughn didn’t know if he trusted how relatively easy it had been to fool the tail. Or the fact another hadn’t taken its place. All in all, he didn’t understand what that tail had been trying to accomplish, and without knowing...

      Frustrated, he scanned the road again. The Guadalupe Mountains loomed in the distance of an arid landscape. The hardscrabble desert stretched out for miles, the craggy, spindly peaks of the Guadalupes offering the

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