again.
The shooter had to be dodging Levi’s bullets because the idiot managed to keep firing, too.
In the distance Levi heard the sirens. Jericho, no doubt. His brother would be there in a matter of seconds, but Levi was hoping to contain this situation before backup arrived. Each shot meant the possibility of things going from bad to worse.
“Stay down!” Levi shouted to Alexa when from the corner of his eye he saw her raise her head. She looked ready to help him return fire.
Something he didn’t want.
He wanted her in as safe a position as she could be considering they were sitting ducks for a shooter. Thank God there only appeared to be one person returning fire, but in this case, one was more than enough.
Levi saw the slashes of the cruiser lights reflected in the shop’s windows across the street, and a few seconds later Jericho pulled to a stop behind him. Apparently, the shooter had no trouble seeing it, either, because almost immediately the driver threw the SUV into gear and started to speed away in reverse.
Hell.
Levi didn’t want him getting away. He wanted this moron in the interrogation room or else dead so that he couldn’t return and launch another attack.
“I’ll go after him,” Jericho shouted, and he jumped back into the cruiser after glancing into the car. “Get her to the station.”
Jericho probably hadn’t gotten a good look at Alexa, but it was likely he’d recognized her voice when she had called him for backup. His big brother wasn’t going to like having Alexa back in Appaloosa Pass, especially not with a killer on her trail.
Well, Levi didn’t like it much, either.
Just having her here was going to reopen a lot of old wounds about Paige’s murder.
Levi fired another shot into the SUV, hoping it would stop the driver one way or another. It didn’t. The guy just kept on speeding away.
Even though Levi wanted to go after this killer himself, he knew it was best to get Alexa and the baby to safety. Then he could leave her with one of the night deputies and go help Jericho haul this guy in.
“I’m so sorry,” Alexa said the moment Levi got back in the car.
“Don’t,” he warned her. It wasn’t exactly the comforting tone that she needed right now, but it was the best Levi could manage. Adrenaline was firing through him, and his body was still primed and ready for a fight with the gunman.
“How’s the baby?” he asked. Since the newborn was crying at the top of her lungs, he hoped that didn’t mean she was hurt.
“She’s okay. I think the noise scared her, though.”
Probably. Those blasts had certainly scared him. Not fear for himself. But Levi hadn’t wanted an innocent little baby hurt because he wasn’t able to stop an attack. What he needed to do now was make sure another attack didn’t happen, and that started with getting some info from Alexa.
Levi said a quick prayer of thanks when he managed to drive the car off the sidewalk and get it back on the road. The collision with the building front hadn’t been a serious one, but it still could have disabled the engine. He didn’t want to have to sit there a moment longer, just in case the shooter circled back and returned for round two.
Or rather round three.
According to Alexa, this clown had already killed the baby’s mother.
“Did you happen to get a look at the shooter’s face?” Levi asked her as he drove toward the station. He didn’t speed because the baby wasn’t in an infant seat, but he didn’t dawdle, either.
“Just a glimpse. It didn’t look like the man who attacked us at the gas station or the man I hit with the flashlight.”
So, this could be a backup team of gunmen, because it seemed too much of a coincidence for two separate attacks to happen on the same night.
Levi pulled the car to a stop directly in front of the sheriff’s office. “Move fast,” he warned Alexa. Just in case someone had managed to follow them. With everything else going on, anything was possible.
Alexa did hurry. She draped the blanket over the baby, and holding the newborn against her body, they rushed inside the building.
The night deputy, Mack Parkman, was at the reception desk, and despite the fact he was talking to someone on the phone, he immediately got to his feet and shut the door behind them.
“You okay?” he asked after he ended his call, but the question seemed to freeze on his lips when his gaze landed on Alexa.
Since Mack had been a deputy at the time of Paige’s murder, he knew Alexa. He also knew all the dirty little details about what Alexa had done.
“What the hell happened?” Mack pressed. But then his attention went to the baby. “Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“Not just yet,” Levi answered. “But go ahead and call a medic to get down here to check out the baby. We’ll also need some temporary supplies—formula, diapers, whatever else a baby needs.”
“Don’t tell anyone I’m here,” Alexa insisted in a whisper. Probably because she believed the threat those gunmen had told her about local law enforcement offices being bugged. “Not the hospital. And definitely no other lawmen.”
“Marshal Lockwood called a few minutes ago, right after Jericho left,” Mack explained to them. “He wanted to know if we’d seen Alexa because she’d ditched WITSEC.”
Alexa sucked in her breath. “Don’t tell him I’m here,” she said and frantically repeated that to Levi. “And I didn’t ditch WITSEC. I think my identity might have been compromised.”
“Is that why Dexter Conway’s out at the old gas station on Shaw Road?” Mack wanted to know.
Levi nodded. Dexter was another night deputy. “Any word back on that?”
“Nothing, but Dexter probably hasn’t had much time to look around yet.”
True. That gas station was a good thirty minutes from the sheriff’s office and on the opposite side of town from the Outlaw Bar. Still, Dexter should have been able to spot a pair of dead bodies right off.
Mack took out his phone, but it was an uneasy look he gave Levi. A look with questions attached to it when his gaze slid from Alexa to the baby and then back to Levi.
“That’s, uh, not your baby is it?” Mack asked.
“Yes,” Alexa volunteered quickly. “She’s Levi’s.”
Levi mumbled some profanity and was about to correct that lie, but he made the mistake of looking at Alexa again. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes begged him to cooperate.
Damn.
He would. For now. But he’d soon put a stop to all of this, lie included.
Levi
