LITMIR.BIZ

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the motel. Trace’s car was still there, but probably wouldn’t be for long. Then she got a jolt as she saw Ryker exit the room with the guy. What was going on?

      Down the street a way, she pulled over to the curb and watched her rearview mirror. For some reason Ryker dashed across the state highway into the truck stop parking lot. A few minutes later he dashed back. She saw him wave toward the center of the town, then jog up the street to where his car was parked.

      What the heck? It was like a scene out of some spy movie, she thought, almost laughing at herself. Why in the world would Ryker park up the street instead of in the motel lot? Shaking her head as questions percolated in her mind, she started to put her car in gear. As she looked to the side she found Ryker pulling up beside her. He was lowering his window, so she touched the button to lower hers.

      “Julie,” he said.

      “Ryker. What...”

      He interrupted her. “Whatever you just saw, forget it. Completely. Curiosity and the cat. You read me?”

      Astonished, she gaped at him, feeling her head bob agreement. “I never saw a thing,” she said when she could find her voice.

      He smiled. “Good. Just keep Marisa in mind.”

      Then he pulled away, leaving her with more questions than ever. Eventually she pulled out, remembering that twenty-two children would be piling into her classroom very soon. But she didn’t want to think about those kids.

      She wanted to think about what had just happened and what it might mean, and why he was concerned about Marisa.

      No matter how many times she told herself to just forget it, as Ryker had warned her, the questions kept percolating in her mind. Somehow she had to find out what was going on.

      Determined that she would, she entered her classroom smiling.

      * * *

      Ryker had told Trace just last night to lie low. Walking into a busy sheriff’s office hardly struck Trace as staying low. It actually seemed quite high-profile. His nerves began to crawl.

      No names were exchanged. The wizened woman at the dispatcher’s desk, who squinted at them through a cloud of smoke that issued from the illicit cigarette dangling from one corner of her mouth, merely jerked her head toward the back.

      Trace followed Ryker down a hallway to an open door that had the word Sheriff stenciled on the frosted glass top. Inside a man with a burn-scarred face sat behind the desk, his khaki uniform neatly pressed. He spoke without rising.

      “Hey, Ryker. Close the door.” Then his gaze settled on Trace, taking him in. “Sit down,” he said to both of them, “and tell me what all the cloak-and-dagger stuff is about.”

      Trace tensed. Some things were not to be revealed under any circumstances, and certainly nothing about the situation he was in. Operational security could be compromised inadvertently. “Maybe I should just go,” he said.

      Ryker clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Maybe you should, but we’re going to discuss other options here. Sheriff Dalton worked undercover for years with the DEA. I think he might have some understanding of what we could be dealing with here, and I’m sure he doesn’t expect either of us to reveal anything we’re not allowed to.” Then Ryker returned his attention to the sheriff. “Gage, you know I worked for the State Department. So did my friend here.”

      Trace watched in amazement as understanding dawned in the sheriff’s gaze. “Yeah, I know all about that,” the man said, and somehow Trace believed he did. Reading between the lines.

      “Well,” Ryker continued, “Trace was badly hurt, and he’s been cut loose. Our main concern is that he may have a tiger on his tail.”

      Gage’s sharp gaze flashed back to Trace. “Well, and here I was starting to get bored with domestic disputes and traffic accidents. Winter’s a bad time for accidents.”

      Trace said nothing, but his nerves stopped crawling. The sheriff had figured it out and knew not to say too much. Ryker had been right. And was that a possible solution Gage had just mentioned?

      Trace decided to take over. After what Ryker had told him, there was no longer any doubt in his mind. “I need to get out of town. I need to be gone. I don’t want to put Ryker and his family at risk. Then there’s this Julie Ardlow. She asked me to sit with her at the diner last night for coffee, after I met her at Ryker’s house.”

      “And she knows something is going on,” Ryker said heavily. “I warned her off.”

      “You’re new around here, Ryker,” Dalton said. “Let me assure you that Julie takes no as a challenge. She’s not going to leave it alone.”

      “Unless I leave,” said Trace, standing. The buzz of the drugs made him a little light-headed. “My phone’s on its way to...where?” he said to Ryker.

      “A semi that was going to Denver.”

      “Okay. Then I’ll ditch my car somewhere between here and there, get another and take a different direction.”

      “You can’t keep running,” Ryker argued.

      Trace simply shook his head. “I’ll get what’s coming to me, whatever it is, but it’s not going to land on someone else’s head. I never should have come here.”

      “Sit a moment,” Dalton said mildly. “While I do admire your scruples, fact is, you’re in my town and that makes you my headache, at least briefly. So what do you know about this tiger?”

      Trace sat slowly, ignoring the pounding in his arm, taking care not to let the meds make him clumsy. “Until this morning, I wasn’t even sure there was one. Vague...gossip, if you will. Ryker made a call and it appears trouble is stalking me, but that’s all either of us knows. Not who, why or anything. Which makes this a nearly unsolvable problem.”

      Gage nodded slowly, rocking back in his desk chair. It squealed a protest. The only sound in the room. “Many years ago,” he said slowly, “I had a problem like that and I didn’t know it. A car bomb intended for me killed my entire family. I survived. Only one itch saved me from cutting my own throat. I wanted to find the SOB who’d ratted me out.”

      Trace nodded. Gage’s experience didn’t shock him, because he’d seen it in his own unsavory world. “I get it. But for me it’s not too late to protect everyone else.”

      “Maybe not. No way to know, but I was driving at something else. You need to start thinking real hard. You’d be surprised how different some things can look in light of new information.”

      Trace knew he was right. It could. It might. Something might reveal itself. But he wasn’t about to sit here while the guy closed in on him and his friend. He needed to clear out. “I can think on the road.”

      “Or maybe we can make it seem you’re on the road.”

      Trace shook his head. “I appreciate it, but I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time in situations like this. I can take care of myself now, without endangering anyone else.” That was the most important thing. It always had been.

      “You can’t possibly know that,” Ryker said. “You’re assuming a sniper’s bullet at fifteen hundred yards. What if it’s a bomb? What if other people get unavoidably involved?”

      “Like what happened to my family,” Gage remarked. “Best you stay around people who know what’s going on. Who might be able to help. Like I said, I admire your scruples, but they don’t necessarily protect anyone. And not everyone has them.”

      Trace sat in silence, staring down at his still-gloved, destroyed hand. They were right. He didn’t want to admit it—he wished he’d never set foot in this town—but they were right.

      He’d been a damned fool to ever come here, but he hadn’t really believed he was in trouble. Not when he arrived here, simply because a colleague he knew lived here. The threat had been so vague that it seemed improbable

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