Justice Reborn (Cowboy Justice Association Book 8) (11 page)

J
osie lay in bed and listened for any movement from Evan. After her bath and tea, he’d insisted that she take his bedroom while he slept on an air mattress in the living room. No amount of argument would budge him so eventually she’d given in, mostly out of sheer exhaustion. Her mind and body were shutting down and she wasn’t thinking clearly. If she had been, she’d be hiding in a closet or already on the road out of town. The men who wanted her dead had found her and her fragile sense of security had been ripped to shreds.

A fire was a stupid way to kill someone.

She didn’t know much about assassinating another human being but there had to be more efficient methods than setting a fire and crossing your fingers. Not to mention the collateral damage, which just showed these people were heartless bastards who didn’t care who they hurt along the way. Stone cold killers and she was their target.

But she was pretty sure they wouldn’t try twice in the same night. They might not even yet know if she’d been a casualty unless they were hanging around the scene – which once again – would have been stupid. Strangers stuck out like a sore thumb in this little town. She should know.

Yet she couldn’t be sorry that she was alone in Evan’s bedroom. There was something in this room she hadn’t had access to since she’d left D.C.

A laptop.

She hadn’t had time to grab hers when she’d run and Cypress Corner didn’t even have a library where she could go to borrow one. If Evan was asleep…

Sliding out of bed, she tiptoed across the room and carefully opened the door so she could sneak a peek over the banister. Evan was lying on the air mattress, one arm thrown over his eyes and the other tucked under a blanket. Dead to the world and softly snoring. It was her lucky day. Something she hadn’t had much of in the last week.

Sneaking back into the bedroom she softly closed the door, praying her host and employer was a heavy sleeper. She needed privacy for this little escapade, at least for a few minutes. She didn’t know what she was going to find but it had to be something worth killing for.

Settling herself at Evan’s desk, she opened his laptop and breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t password protected. The thumb drive she’d retrieved from a hidden compartment in her backpack felt unnaturally heavy in her palm but it wasn’t because of its size, which was actually quite small. It was because of what might be on it. Amy had pressed this into Josie’s hand as she lay on the pavement dying, begging her not to trust anyone and to keep it safe. It was time to find out what “it” was.

She slipped the drive into the USB slot and waited for the laptop to recognize the external device before double clicking the lone file that appeared. A video.

Casting a glance over her shoulder as her heart pounded in her ears, she held her breath as the screen flickered and a couple in bed came into view. Scantily clad, they were obviously about to do some very intimate things. The man currently had his back to the camera but the girl wasn’t anyone Josie recognized.

Josie didn’t have to wait or wonder long as to why Amy had this video in her possession or why someone else wanted it. The man turned toward the camera and revealed his identity, shattering what little peace of mind she had left.

It was former Senator Steve Lydell – a retired attorney and rumored candidate to be appointed to Secretary of Defense – in living color and doing all sorts of kinky shit with someone who wasn’t his wife and the mother of his four children.

Sucking in a breath, Josie rubbed her temples where a headache had begun to bloom. She’d known politics was dog eat dog but she hadn’t realized that power was something to murder over. Then again, she’d never craved power and prestige. And be willing to do whatever it took to get there.

“Oh Amy,” Josie whispered, an ache in her heart as she thought of her best friend. She’d barely allowed herself to mourn this last week but everything was beginning to catch up with her. Amy was gone and she wasn’t coming back, and that reality was beginning to settle into Josie’s brain. Her friend was gone and the hole in her heart wouldn’t be healed for a long time, if ever. “What did you get yourself into? Why do you have this and how did they find out about it? You told me not to trust anyone but I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

Her voice broke as a sob rose up in her choked throat. Her body shook with a mixture of terror and sadness as she slid to the floor, her back against the desk. Rocking herself back and forth, she silently allowed herself the catharsis of tears until she didn’t have any left, her tear ducts drained and sore. All cried out, her eyes swollen and red, she ejected the thumb drive and placed it safely into the small compartment in her backpack. For a moment she’d contemplated hiding it somewhere in the house, but if she needed to make a quick getaway she didn’t want to be scrambling to retrieve it. The backpack wasn’t perfect, but for now it was the best she could do.

She wasn’t some spy or double agent. Amy said not to trust anyone but she couldn’t stay on the run the rest of her life. Perhaps sending the evidence to a news outlet might help but there was no guarantee she still wouldn’t be accused of Amy’s murder. News organizations were owned by large multinational conglomerates and they had political agendas of their own.

Just because the video might become public didn’t mean Josie herself was off the hook. It only meant Lydell’s political future was in peril. He probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that and she was sure it was his men coming after her. It was the only thing that made sense.

Except that nothing really made sense at all.

She’d avoided thinking about her situation or making any decisions but the sand had run out of the hourglass. It was time to put on her big girl panties and figure out what the hell she was going to do.

And whom she was going to trust. Because she had to trust someone. She couldn’t do this alone.

Chapter Twelve

J
osie opened her lids a mere slit before closing them tightly again. Sun was streaming through the curtains, telling her that without a doubt that it was past the early morning she’d hoped for and well on its way to midday. Groaning with effort, she opened her eyes again and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Eleven-oh-six.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” she chanted, realizing she’d screwed up. Again.

Flying out of bed, she stumbled over her backpack that she’d placed close to the bed so it would be within arm’s length. Her knees hit the hardwood as her legs gave way, not completely awake yet, and she let fly a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush. She’d planned to be on the eleven-fifteen bus out of Cypress Corner and that meant she had nine minutes to dress, pack her few belongings, and convince Evan to drive her to the bus station. It would be a miracle but she wanted to believe it could be done.

Despite sore and protesting muscles, she was scrambling through her backpack for a pair of semi-clean jeans when the door flew open, banging against the wall. Evan stood there, his chest rising and falling rapidly as if he’d charged up the stairs two at a time.

“Are you okay?” he asked urgently, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe and then back up again. She must look quite a sight with her bedhead and creases on her face from the sheets but she was too frantic to care.

“I’m fine. Just in a hurry. I have a bus to catch in nine minutes.”

Yanking pants and a t-shirt out of her backpack along with a clean pair of panties and socks, she gave him a look that she hoped said something like
thank you for the concern but go away while I dress.

He didn’t get the message.

“I heard something crash.”

She sighed and got to her feet, time ticking away. “That was me getting out of bed. I think I mentioned that I was kind of accident prone, plus I’m still kind of sore. Now if you don’t mind…”

He just stood there. Scowling.

“I need to get dressed,” she prompted, sighing in exasperation and not bothering to hide it any longer. “Right away. They won’t let me on the bus in just your t-shirt no matter how much they love AC/DC. So if you could…”

She made a shooing motion with her hands and that seemed to get his attention.

“You’ll never make it so you might as well relax.”

She shook her head and glanced back at the clock. “I have nine–wait, make that seven minutes. I can do it but I need to get dressed.”

Instead of leaving he stepped into the room, a smile tugging at his lips. “You have two minutes and it’s a ten minute drive into town anyway. You won’t make it, honey. Just relax and we’ll go into town for some lunch.”

He wasn’t making the whole leaving thing easy for her.

“I have seven–”

“Two,” Evan interrupted. “That clock runs five minutes slow. At least. Even when I reset it the darn thing loses time. Trust me, at most you have two minutes. If I had a rocket ship I couldn’t get you there on time.”

“Fuck,” Josie muttered, her entire body sagging with disappointment. She fell back onto the mattress with a groan and buried her face in her hands. She was stuck here another day and there were men out there who were willing to burn down a motel to make sure she was dead. “Dammit, I needed to be on that bus.”

Evan leaned against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. “There will be another bus tomorrow—what does it matter?”

“It matters. I need to leave.”

A part of her desperately wanted to trust Evan with the burden she was carrying but another part, the part that was trying to keep her alive, stayed silent. He was a good man and he sure as hell didn’t deserve to be dragged into this…mess. It might make her feel better not to be in danger all alone but it wouldn’t help Evan in the least. She’d keep her mouth shut and move along. Maybe when this was all over, she could write him a letter and tell him the truth. She was so grateful for everything he’d done so far. He didn’t have any idea how much he’d helped her already.

She was shoving her pajamas into her backpack when he shocked her.

“What if I don’t want you to leave? What if I want you to stay?”

Evan wasn’t smiling anymore and his expression was intensely…intense. She watched as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat and his jaw growing tight at the silence that followed his question. The last thing she wanted was to have this conversation.

Sitting down on the bed, she abandoned packing. This had to be dealt with first. “We don’t always get what we want. I sure don’t, anyway. I like you. A lot. But I have to go.”

More heavy silence and her nerves screamed for relief. Josie had to make him understand.

“From where I’m standing I’m not seeing why you have to go. Unless, of course, you just want to. I’m going to take a chance here, Lisa. It’s one of the things I said I was going to do when I left the Marshals. I was going to do what I wanted and stop doing what people expected. Seems to me that you expect me to smile politely and drive you to the bus station. Fuck that. I like you too, honey. A hell of a lot. I’d like to see where that takes us. There. I said it. But maybe you already knew that. Maybe that’s why you want to leave. Am I running you off? Am I being too forward?”

Shit and hell, she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with this. At any other moment in her life, his words would be pure heaven and she would have thrown herself into his arms and kissed him until they both fainted from pleasure. But she was in deep shit and didn’t have the luxury. How did one let down the man of their dreams? Had any woman ever been that stupid before?

She opened her mouth to reply but the words kept getting stuck in her throat. “I–It’s just–You don’t understand.”

He pulled the desk chair out and lowered himself into it, stretching out his long legs as if settling in for the duration. He wasn’t going anywhere until he was satisfied with her answer. “You’re right, I don’t. Help me understand. I want to.”

Defeated, Josie hung her head and stared at her bare feet. “I can’t stay. I wish I could.”

“Honey, you don’t sound happy about it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say you sound mighty sad to be leaving. What can I do to fix things so you can stay?”