LITMIR.BIZ

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      He shrugged his shoulders, but there was a twinge of pain. Maybe more than a twinge. He grimaced and lied, “I’m fine.”

      “You’re bleeding,” she said. Her palm smeared with his blood, she lifted it toward his face as if presenting him with evidence.

      He didn’t need to see it; he could feel it, sticking his sleeve to his skin. He glanced down then and noted the tear in the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. Oh, Mom was going to be annoyed that he’d ruined another one...

      “Are—are you hurt?” his mother asked, and unconcerned about her own safety, she began to rise from behind the monument.

      “Stay down,” he warned her.

      “The shooting stopped,” she pointed out.

      But that didn’t mean that the shooter was gone. He could have just been biding his time until he got a clear shot. And if someone really wanted to hurt Logan, he or she could do that most effectively by hurting his mother.

      “Stay down,” he told her again. “Don’t move until we get backup.” Maybe he shouldn’t have convinced Parker and Nikki and Candace that he didn’t need their protection. Maybe he should have let them stay with him like they’d wanted. Knowing them, they might have ignored his wishes—like his mother usually did.

      Sirens wailed as police cars approached, lights flashing through the tree branches.

      Stacy stiffened beneath him. Apparently, she had inherited her family’s aversion to law enforcement. “Your backup has arrived.”

      To him, backup was his family and employees. But the police would do. He doubted they would apprehend the shooter, though. His mother was right; he was gone. He’d gotten away again.

      He rolled off Stacy and stood up. Then he extended his uninjured arm to her. She stared at his hand before putting hers into it. Her hand was small and delicate inside his but not so delicate that she didn’t have calluses.

      “Maybe there will be an ambulance, too,” she said.

      “I don’t need one.”

      “You were shot.”

      “You were shot?” his mother asked, her voice shrill with alarm as she rushed over to him.

      “I was just grazed,” he assured them. “There’s no bullet in me.” This time. But every attempt got a little closer, a little more successful. The shooter wasn’t going to stop until Logan was dead.

      * * *

      STACY WAS FURIOUS and for once her anger wasn’t directed at Logan Payne. Her heels clicking against the slate floor, she stomped across the crowded pub to the knotty pine-paneled back room where her family was drinking a farewell toast to her father.

      Or was their farewell to Logan? Was one of them the shooter? Did he realize that he’d hit him? Maybe he thought he’d killed him.

      He could have killed Mrs. Payne, too. Hell, with as wildly as he’d been firing, he could have killed her. If Logan had ducked faster, the bullet that had hit him might have struck her instead. His reflexes had slowed at the wrong time for him, but the right time for her.

      She shuddered but refused to give in to the fear that had paralyzed her at the cemetery. Anger was better; it made her stronger.

      “Stacy!” Milek greeted her with a hug, his eyes bright with the sheen of inebriation. He was the lightweight of the family and could only handle a drink or two.

      She slammed her palms into his chest, shoving him back with such force that he nearly fell over. But Garek, also standing at the bar, grabbed him and kept him upright.

      “What the hell!” he protested.

      “What the hell!” she yelled back at him. She didn’t care if she hurt their feelings now. She was so pissed over getting shot at that she actually understood Logan Payne intruding on her father’s funeral. “Which one of you idiots shot up the cemetery?”

      “What?” Garek asked.

      “I nearly got shot,” she said.

      “What! Are you okay?” Milek asked, grabbing for her again.

      She jerked back. “I’m fine.”

      “It must have been Logan Payne,” Milek murmured. “He must have shot at you...” A look passed between him and his brother—a look of rage and revenge.

      “No,” she said, in response to that look as much as her brother’s statement. “Logan Payne is the one who got shot!” As if they didn’t already know that...

      “What’s going on?” Aunt Marta asked. “This is inappropriate talk for a funeral...” She sniffed her disdain of her husband’s niece and nephews. She had never approved of them because they were a convict’s children. Her own husband was a criminal but since he had never been caught, he wasn’t as unseemly as his brother and his offspring—mostly because of the lavish lifestyle his actions afforded her.

      “Is Payne dead?” Milek asked.

      Stacy’s stomach pitched as she remembered the blood on his tuxedo. She shook her head. “No.”

      His mother had forced him to go to the hospital to make certain that the bullet had only grazed him as he’d claimed. Mrs. Payne had wanted Stacy to ride along—probably so that she could propose marriage between Stacy and her son again. Even if she talked Stacy into her outrageous plan, there was no way in hell that Logan would ever agree to become her husband—even if it were only pretend.

      “That’s too bad,” Milek murmured with regret that Logan lived.

      Had Milek been the shooter? Was that why he was drinking so heavily? Or was drinking his way of mourning their father?

      Stacy wanted to mourn their father, too, but she’d hardly had the chance between Logan and the shooting. Before she could say anything else to her brothers, Aunt Marta grasped her arm and tugged her aside. Probably for another lecture on funereal etiquette.

      “Why are you so angry with your brothers?” she asked.

      Why was she so angry? Was it because if they were the shooters, they were risking prison again? Or was it because if they were the shooters, they were trying to kill Logan Payne?

      She shook her head. “I’m not...”

      “They are struggling with your father’s loss,” Aunt Marta said. “They didn’t get the chance to say goodbye that you got.”

      “They could have stayed behind at the cemetery.” She suspected at least one of them probably had...

      “At the prison,” Aunt Marta said. “The warden called you to see your father...”

      She almost wished she had been spared seeing him like that, but he had asked for her. He had wanted to talk to her. She shuddered now as she remembered seeing him as she had, in so much pain, his life slipping away from him...

      “What did he say to you?” her aunt asked.

      Stacy tilted her head in confusion, uncertain that she’d heard the older woman correctly. They had never been close—at her aunt’s choosing. She was hardly going to share any secrets with the woman now. “Why do you care?”

      “I’m just curious...”

      The woman was too self-absorbed to be curious about anyone but herself. She only wanted to know about things that might affect her. Why did she think Stacy’s father’s last words might concern her?

      Stacy had no intention of satisfying the woman’s morbid curiosity, so she turned away from her. But Aunt Marta grasped her arm in her talonlike fingers and asked again, “What did he say to you?”

      The woman was persistent, or as Uncle Iwan would admit when he had too much to drink, a nag. She wasn’t going to give up until Stacy gave her an answer. Any answer might do...

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