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Duty To Protect
Roxanne Rustand
After nearly a lifetime in witness protection, Emma Graves depends on the anonymity of her false identity.But when her parents die under suspicious circumstances, and Emma is framed for murder, all security is gone. There's nothing to do but run. Cop-turned-rancher Jake Kincaid is an unlikely defender. Why would an ex-cop believe an accused killer?Still, Jake makes Emma feel safe. With his drive to protect, she knows staying on his ranch endangers them both—yet now that her heart's engaged, she's not sure she can walk away.
She needed a safe haven.
After nearly a lifetime in witness protection, Emma Graves depends on the anonymity of her false identity. But when her parents die under suspicious circumstances, and Emma is framed for murder, all security is gone. There is nothing to do but run.
Cop-turned-rancher Jake Kincaid is an unlikely defender. Why would an ex-cop believe an accused killer? Still, Jake makes Emma feel safe. With his drive to protect, she knows staying on his ranch endangers them both—but now that her heart’s engaged, she’s not sure she can walk away.
The dog hopped out of the truck as soon as Jake opened the door and followed close at his heels when he went back to check on the horses. He’d just opened the back gate of the trailer when she burst into a ferocious round of barking.
“Quiet,” he shouted over the keening wind.
She barked even louder, her attention riveted on the dressing-room door at the front of the trailer.
“What, did we pick up a mouse at the last barn?” He unlocked the door and reached inside to flip on the lights, hoping it wasn’t something larger than a mouse. The last thing he needed was to find that a barn cat had hitched a ride away from that last horse farm.
But it wasn’t a barn cat staring at him from the far corner with wide hazel eyes, tousled auburn hair peeking out from beneath a knitted hat, and pale skin turning blue with cold. It was a woman huddled in a pile of horse blankets, her teeth chattering and hands trembling.
And she had his rifle pointed straight at his chest.
ROXANNE RUSTAND
lives in the country with her husband and a menagerie of pets, many of whom find their way into her books. She works part-time as a registered dietitian at a psychiatric facility, but otherwise you’ll find her writing at home in her jammies, surrounded by three dogs begging for treats, or out in the barn with the horses. Her favorite time of all is when her kids are home—though all three are now busy with college and jobs.
RT Book Reviews nominated her for a Career Achieve-ment Award in 2005, and she won the magazine’s award for Best Superromance of 2006.
She loves to hear from readers! Her snail-mail address is P.O. Box 2550, Cedar Rapids, IA 52406-2550. You can also contact her at: www.roxannerustand.com, www.shoutlife.com/roxannerustand or at her blog, where readers and writers talk about their pets at www.roxannerustand.blogspot.com.
Roxanne Rustand
Duty to Protect
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for what he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 4:6–7
In loving memory of my mom, Arline.
Contents
Chapter One (#ue39dd9b9-4ea3-5f2e-893f-24e450230c05)
Chapter Two (#ub138b826-ce20-543e-abf9-1e44ca68a698)
Chapter Three (#ue514e11c-ea22-56cb-a053-55b6b675aab7)
Chapter Four (#u7368b55a-dd3a-59db-9060-f8cff6b31b73)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ninteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE
The soft blanket of new snow glittered under the streetlamp and muffled her steps as Emma strode from the city bus stop at the end of the block to the side door of her garage. Anxiety twisted her stomach into a tight knot of fear.
The snow could muffle the sound of someone else’s steps, too.
And even now, that unknown person could be watching her. Waiting. Just as he had waited for her father last week.
She’d been only a few feet away from her dad, pushing a cart of groceries in the busy Safeway parking lot. He’d suddenly faltered to a stop. “We’ve got to leave,” he’d whispered urgently. “I just saw—”
Then he’d fallen face-first, a widening pool of crimson spreading through the slushy snow beneath him. He died at her feet, and she hadn’t even heard the gunshot.
Had he seen his killer’s face? Why hadn’t the shooter taken her out, too? The melee of screaming frightened people running for cover would have given the shooter ample opportunity to pull the trigger, and he probably wouldn’t have missed. From the perfect placement of the single bullet in her father’s skull, the cops figured the killer possessed sniper experience.
Which meant the killer was someone sent by the drug cartel that had been trying to kill Emma and her adoptive family for years. Orphaned at the age of seven and taken in by an older, childless couple a year later, she’d longed for love and security in her new home but had found little of either.
And now even that connection to a family was gone.
Taking a slow breath, she willed away the horrific images of blood and panicking people, and willed her heartbeat to slow. I’m okay. I’m almost home.
She unlocked the door of the garage and slipped inside, then rounded the rear bumper of her old Blazer, thankful that the dark, smoke-tinted windows hid its contents. No one could look inside and guess at what she planned to do tomorrow—not that anyone was likely to drop by. No one ever did.
The Witness Protection Program was no place to make friends, and with luck, anyone who’d known her in her former life probably figured she was dead.
From somewhere inside the house came a thud. She paused, her hand on the door leading from the garage into the tiny entryway off the kitchen. That hadn’t been the sound of the furnace kicking in. There was no one else who had a key. A crazy longing flitted through her thoughts. It’s just Dad—
But he was dead and so was her mom, and now she was totally and forever alone. Surely she was just hearing things. She lowered her gaze to the doorknob, started to fit her key into the dead bolt.
But then she heard another thud. An anguished moan.
And were those voices inside? They came closer. Both male, both agitated.
She’d locked all the doors and armed the security system when she left. Not even her WITSEC contact knew its code—yet there were intruders inside. So where were the sirens? The squadron of patrol cars that should be closing in? Had the alarm even triggered?
Warning bells sounded in her head.
An inner voice screamed at her to run.
Rising on her tiptoes, she braced her trembling fingertips on the door frame for a quick glance through the window set high in the door. A narrow gap between the loose-woven curtains on the inside revealed just a slice of the kitchen, but the bright lights inside illuminated more than enough.
Horror and disbelief swept through her as she stumbled away from the door, caught herself and swallowed hard, trying to hold back a wave of sudden nausea.
It couldn’t be.
A body was lying facedown on her kitchen floor, the hilt of her favorite carving knife rammed upright into his back. The dark, wet pool of blood spreading from beneath him was a shocking contrast to the white tile floor.
She forced herself to take another quick look.
A vaguely familiar cop hunkered down next to the body, and a tall, dark-haired stranger in a long black overcoat and dove-gray slacks moved into view, facing away from her. A detective, maybe?
A rush of relief swept through her. The cops were already here. Everything would be all right. But just as quickly, she knew this scene was all wrong.
The cop’s face was dark red with anger, and sweat beaded his forehead. “You shouldn’ta done it,” he bellowed.
The other man gestured at the body. “He was a loose cannon, you fool. I had orders.”
“Yeah. But—”
“Okay. So we’ll do the woman with his gun. Get the angle right and the investigators will think she stabbed him, then he managed to turn and fire in self-defense before he went down.”
The cop swore, low and fierce. “Opportunity. Means. But just try and give me a plausible motive.”
“Her dad’s murder. She…figured Todd blew their cover.”
“So a mousy little librarian was able to kill a guy this size? With his self-defense training? Tell me another one.”
“We’ve got time. We can fix this scene—make it look right. No one will ever know different.”
The rising argument between the two men faded away as the walls of the garage started to spin. Todd? Todd Hlavicek?
She wobbled away from the door, her heart in her throat and her knees quivering as she half fell against the front fender of the Blazer.
Todd was her only current contact in the Witness Protection Program. He was the only one in the area who should have known about her adoptive family’s involvement in the WITSEC program and their whereabouts…yet loose cannon implied that his loyalty had been bought.
Had he betrayed her family for money? Had he been coerced? Either way, the fact that he was dead reemphasized just how dangerous her family’s old enemies were. How long they could hold a grudge.
She was the only one left, and she was going to be next.
She had to get out of here. But the garage door was closed and the noise of rolling it up would rumble like thunder in this enclosed space, alerting the men inside. Trying to reach someplace safe on foot would be useless. This was a quiet neighborhood of large yards and inexpensive 1940s ramblers filled with people she didn’t know. As always, she’d carefully avoided friendships with the neighbors. Whose life could she dare risk by begging for sanctuary?
The muffled argument inside the house stopped abruptly. Had they heard her?
Oh, Lord—please, please…
She whirled around, jerked open the SUV’s door and threw herself inside, slamming her hand against the locks as she searched for the keys she’d dropped in her pocket.
Her fingers closed over them and she tried to push the key into the ignition. Fumbled. Tried again.
Please…please…please…
A scream threatened to tumble from her lips when the kitchen door flew open and flooded the garage with light. The cop stood in the open doorway, his face a mask of anger, his right hand already reaching for the service revolver at his side.
With shaking fingers she tried the key again. Felt it slide home. The engine roared when she shoved the gearshift into Reverse and floored the accelerator. Tires squealed as the vehicle launched backward, splintering the flimsy garage door.
A deafening explosion enveloped her as the front windshield shattered and something hot whistled past her ear.
Throwing her weight against the pedal, she flicked a last glance at the two men racing after her. One grabbed at her car door but fell away as the SUV shimmied, nearly out of control. She swung it into a wild arc, over a trash can. She rammed the gearshift into Drive and again floored the accelerator. The SUV crossed an edge of the lawn and shot toward the highway.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
The sounds were distant. Toylike. Surreal—until the rear windshield shattered into a glittering network of crystalline fabric. They would be on her tail the minute they reached their vehicles.
She wasn’t armed. She had no experience in high-speed driving. She had to make it two full blocks to the freeway ramp, and pray the Chicago rush hour traffic was still heavy. If she could disappear into that bumper-to-bumper mass of frustrated and impatient drivers before her pursuers caught up, she might have a chance to live until tomorrow.
