person.
She was going to need every extra minute she could get. She had no doubt her accounts, like everyone else’s, had been frozen. They would be unfrozen as soon as she stepped foot in a bank and showed ID. But then the Organization would have a record of her, photographs.
They would figure out she was alive, and the hunt would truly begin.
So she was trapped with just the cash she had on her. Alone, that would’ve lasted her six months or more. More than enough time to get established somewhere and get a new job.
As if on cue one baby began crying in the back. It wasn’t long before the other was joining its sibling.
Bree definitely wasn’t alone anymore.
Tanner Dempsey didn’t spend a lot of his time in the baby aisle of Risk Peak’s lone drugstore. His sister had made him an uncle three times over in the last decade, but when he was shopping for his niece and nephews, it was in the toy department.
He didn’t spend a lot of time at the drugstore at all. He was only here now at 7:00 p.m., after working a twelve-hour shift, because if he showed up at his mother’s house tomorrow without shaving, he’d never hear the end of it from his siblings.
Since Tanner tended to have a five o’clock shadow about two hours after he shaved, Gary, the manager here, kept a couple packages of the special razor refill brand Tanner liked. Gary stuffed them in the back aisle so no one else would buy them.
Tanner meant to just grab the pack and run, but his attention was caught by a young mother—one crying baby in her arms, another in a car seat carrier on the ground—moving in odd, jerky movements in the baby aisle.
Tanner immediately knew the woman wasn’t from around here. He’d lived in Risk Peak, Colorado, his entire life, except for the four years he’d gone to college about an hour east in Denver. Risk Peak definitely wasn’t so large that he wouldn’t know an attractive brunette in her twenties who’d recently had twins.
And man, that one kid had a set of lungs on him. The fact that the mother was moving so awkwardly wasn’t helping calm the baby.
Tiredness pushed aside, Tanner stayed at the end of the aisle out of the woman’s sight, picking up a random package and pretending to read the back of it in case she looked at him. His subterfuge probably wasn’t even necessary. She was so busy with her odd movements and the crying baby, she definitely wasn’t looking his way.
It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on. The woman was taking individual packets of formula out of a larger box and stuffing them wherever she could manage. In her own pockets, in the diaper bag and even inside the onesie of the crying child.
No wonder the kid was bawling.
Tanner had seen a lot in his thirty-three years, but a mother stealing formula by stuffing it in the baby’s clothes? That was a first. Now he’d seen it all.
Then she opened a package of diapers and started stuffing those in with the second baby in the carrier, hidden under the blanket.
Correction. Now he’d seen it all.
She was watching the other end of the aisle, toward the front of the store, to make sure no one caught her. But evidently she thought the back of the store was empty, which it normally would be.
He watched her for a few more moments to make sure he understood what was going on. When she dropped the half-empty pack of diapers and was struggling to pick them up, Tanner decided he had seen enough.
“Let me get those for you.” He moved quickly toward her, ignoring her startled little shriek, and grabbed the half-open package of diapers from the floor and offered them to her.
And was met by the most brilliant green eyes he’d ever seen.
It took him a second to recover enough to even take in the rest of her features. Long brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail, pert nose covered in freckles that also covered her cheeks and full sensual lips.
Kissable lips.
This was definitely a woman he would know if she lived here, whether she’d just had twins or not. Not that anyone in Risk Peak would allow a young mother to become so desperate that she had to shoplift formula and diapers.
She didn’t show any sign of drug use or intoxication, as he’d half feared she would. Her eyes were clear, not at all bloodshot, and her skin, although pale since he’d just startled her, lacked the sunken pallor that so often accompanied substance abuse.
She was beautiful.
But surrounding her beauty was an air of desperation and weariness—much more than just a new mother’s exhaustion. This was almost like a tangible fear.
But maybe it was because she’d just gotten busted shoplifting.
“Thank you,” she muttered in a husky voice, taking the diaper package. “I was just about to pay for them, and then the package ripped open.”
Tanner gave her a nod, ignoring the lie. “I’m sure handling everything with two little ones is a hardship. Is their dad around? Your husband? Someone who can help you?”
“No. No, it’s just me. I don’t have a husband.” She looked so overwhelmed and breakable, all big eyes and crying baby. It made Tanner want to forget everything that he was, the vows he had made, and help her.
More than just help her—fight against whatever it was that was putting such fear in those green eyes. Even if that was her own bad choices.
Which was absurd, considering he’d met her thirty seconds ago and didn’t even know her name.
“Maybe I can help you.” He took a step forward but paused when she jerked back.
She began looking around frantically. “I just realized I don’t have my purse. I—I better go get that. I’ll leave the diapers here and come back for them.”
She shifted the crying baby, a boy by the look of the blue outfit, into her other arm, shushing him softly and kissing his forehead. Then hefted up the baby in the carrier with her free arm. Without another word to him, she turned and walked toward the door.
Tanner was only a step behind her as she walked toward the front of the store. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He should’ve made his official position known from the beginning. Mentioning it now was going to throw her into an even bigger panic.
But he wanted to help. Every instinct screamed that this was a woman at the end of her rope. He might have just caught her in the act of breaking the law, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was the villain in this story.
Sometimes justice and the law weren’t the same thing. Even a lawman sometimes had to break the rules if it was the right thing to do. His father had taught him that.
Of course, his father had also been killed in the line of duty.
Tanner would follow her out and make
