over the top of a cluster of sweet gum trees on the opposite side of the street.
There were a couple of other businesses on the block—a machine shop and a tree-trimming business. Both were closed with no sign of life around the buildings, except a black cat, crouched near a trash bin, cautiously watching Shelly.
A welcome gust of wind caught an empty bag and blew it across the parking lot depositing it under Shelly’s banged-up vehicle. Thankfully it was not actually her car, but one the agency had purchased specifically for this assignment.
A pickup truck turned the corner onto Birch, the beam from its headlights fanning her for an instant before returning to the street. The driver slowed, and in spite of her mental reassurances of safety, her nerves skittered nervously.
It’s a small town, she told herself as the driver pulled into the parking lot a few feet away. He was probably just curious why a woman would be out here all alone. Still, she’d feel a lot safer with her weapon in hand. Today’s close call had been an excellent reminder that she wasn’t invincible.
The car stopped, and she got her first good luck at the driver. Her muscles clenched. This wasn’t a curious passerby.
He was here to find her.
Chapter Four
Matt slid from behind the wheel and stood by the side of his truck, his gaze fixed on Shelly. Her face and eyes were shadowed, her features blurred in the early-evening darkness. She looked pale, but her shoulders were squared and her mouth was set in hard lines as if she was determined not to let the situation get the better of her.
An unexpected protective urge surged inside him as his focus moved to her bandaged arm and then to the bullet-battered car.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she quipped, but her attempt at humor lost its effect to the eerie screech of an owl hidden in the branches of a nearby tree.
Matt looked around, expecting to see Hank standing nearby. He didn’t. The place was completely deserted except for Shelly.
“What are you doing here after hours?” he asked.
Shelly brushed her bangs to one side and propped her right hand on her hip almost defiantly. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I was looking for you,” he admitted. “I tried your motel. When you weren’t there, I drove here to see if Hank had heard from you.”
“How did you know I’d left the hospital?”
“The sheriff called me. Apparently you told the nursing staff you were going to Jack’s Bluff tonight.”
She shrugged and looked backed to the car as he stepped closer. “I didn’t exactly tell them that. They just surmised it and I didn’t set them straight. It seemed the easiest way to walk out of the hospital without causing a major ruckus.”
“Why not just wait until the doctor released you?”
“I hate hospitals and I didn’t see any point in running up a big hospital bill when I didn’t need to be there in the first place.”
Matt scanned the quiet parking lot. “How did you get here?”
“I walked. It’s not that far.” She slapped at a mosquito that was buzzing around her ear. “I’m fine, Matt. And I don’t hold your family responsible for any of this, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried at all.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly true. Pretty much everything about Shelly Lane worried him—and puzzled him—especially the fact that she was standing on a deserted street alone at night after being shot at just hours ago.
He didn’t trust this whole situation, wasn’t at all convinced that Shelly didn’t know who’d tried to kill her. Yet if she did, that would give her all the more reason not to put herself at risk like this.
He stepped between her and the car. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Shelly?”
“No. Why would you ask that? You were there when some crackpot roared in from nowhere and used my car for target practice.”
“The other possibility is that he’d come to town looking for you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t even know anyone around this part of the country.”
“Maybe someone followed you from Atlanta. Maybe a jealous boyfriend? A jilted lover?”
“The last boyfriend is engaged to be married to a fashion model. He forgot me at the first sight of my replacement—who I introduced him to, no less.”
Matt doubted that any man had found Shelly that easy to forget, but he wasn’t going there now. He pressed a hand on the top of the car and leaned into it. “Do you always carry a loaded gun in your glove compartment?”
She turned to look at his truck and the shotgun riding the rack behind his seat. “Obviously there’s no local law against carrying weapons in a vehicle.”
“Touché.”
“Actually, one of my friends insisted I buy it before leaving Atlanta. She kept stressing how it wasn’t safe for a woman to drive so far by herself, said I might have car trouble and get stranded in a dangerous area. Who knew the danger would be in Colts Run Cross?”
Which is what made this so difficult to buy into. He watched as the breeze teased her bangs, blowing wispy strands of hair about her forehead.
“I’m shaken, Matt. I won’t deny it. My first instinct was to go running back to Atlanta. But running from random violence is like trying to get out of the path of a tornado. It can strike anywhere.”
“But both are more likely in some places than others.” The owl screeched again and mosquitoes were starting to treat the back of his neck like a buffet. Whatever was going on with Shelly Lane, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it tonight.
Matt rocked back on the heels of his boots. “No point in hanging around out here,” he said. “I can give you a ride back to your motel.”
“Thanks.”
And on the way he’d tell her that her plan to move to the ranch tomorrow had been put on hold.
They walked back to his truck in silence and he opened the door for her. He circled the vehicle, climbed behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine. The beams of his headlights illuminated the damaged side of Shelly’s car as he backed from the lot.
His hands tightened on the wheel as the reality of the situation settled into a grim knot in his stomach. If the attack on her was personal, the guy wouldn’t just give up because the first try didn’t work. The shooter might even be a hired hit man biding his time until he could get to her again. Maybe waiting for dark, when she was alone in a motel at the edge of town.
A spray of gravel shot from the back wheels of his pickup truck as he sped away from Hank’s. He couldn’t take her to the ranch when no one knew for certain she was on the up and up. But he couldn’t just dump her to fend for herself if she was in real danger.
So
