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.
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 only respite to endless flat.
The cabin was still forty-five minutes away, and they were the only car on this old desert highway. If he had a tail, it was a much better one.
He flicked a glance at Torres. Thinking about her as a last name helped things. He could think of her as a partner, as just a person he had to work with. Not a complicated mystery of a woman.
The only problem was, he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, and that was the key to any partnership.
She sat in the passenger seat, her eyes still too big, her hands still clenched too tight. Her olive skin tone had paled considerably, but she’d gotten control of her shaking.
“You did good,” he found himself saying, out of nowhere. She had done good for a civilian, but he had no idea why he was praising her. What the hell was the point of that?
“I just did what you told me to do.”
“Exactly.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You really are a piece of work, Ranger Cooper.”
“Not everyone could have gotten through that, Ms. Torres. Some people freeze, some people cry, some people...” Why was he explaining this to her? If she didn’t want to believe she’d done a good thing, what did he care? But his mouth just kept going. “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re under a threat, and the smartest thing you can do is listen to the person who has the coolest head. You did that. You made good choices and had good instincts.”
“Well, thank you.” She blew out a breath, and he noted that the hands she’d had in fists loosened incrementally.
“I wish I didn’t know just how much I can stand up in the face of a threat,” she muttered.
“Unfortunately, that was only the beginning.”
“You’re a constant comfort, Ranger Cooper.”
She fell silent for a few moments, and he thought maybe they could make it all the way to the cabin without having
