Last Stand Ranch (20 page)

Why was she being so cautious? He wouldn't have signed to her that they should separate if he hadn't known she could handle it.

“I'm not about to help when you're endangering both of our lives by pretending to be helpless.” They were almost nose to nose, his voice a hard whisper that sounded scary even to his own ears. But maybe she would listen. Instead, the moonlight glinted off the tears in her eyes. Seriously, now she was going to act like the terrified victim? “Give it up, Sienna.”

“Tell me why you know my name. Tell me yours. Tell me anything but that you're going to leave me here to die.”

“You know my name.”

She shook her head. “I don't know anything. I didn't even know
my
name until Aunt Karen told me.”

“You don't have an aunt Karen. You said you had an uncle Bill, but that was it. Or did you lie about that, too, along with everything else?”

Her lip trembled. “Please just tell me your name.”

Parker couldn't believe he was actually going to placate her. “Jackson Parker. Most everyone calls me Parker.”

Which she already knew. Only his dad had ever called him Jackson, and he remembered his mom calling him Jack. That was why he only ever told people his name was Parker. He wanted as much separation as possible between who he was now and that scared kid who never thought he'd get away from his lazy, drunk father still pining for a woman who hadn't wanted either of them.

She looked down at the badge on his belt. “A...US marshal?”

He nodded. “Fugitive apprehension task force.”

“Am I a criminal?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“Because I don't know who I am. I have amnesia. I don't remember anything before a year ago,
Parker
. And the year before that I was in a coma.”

Amnesia? Parker stared at her, dumbfounded.

She was looking at him like maybe he could help her sort this out.

The reality was, he probably could. He had to get them out of this first before he unraveled the loose threads in her stories. If she was lying—again—he'd find out sooner or later, and he'd know never to trust her or any other woman. Ever.

If she wasn't lying, Parker wouldn't stop until he got to the bottom of what had happened to her. Something had turned the strong, capable woman he'd known into the scared and shaking one in front of him. And he was going to find out what.

He took her hand again and started walking. The helicopter was overhead still. Parker cut right, then left, then right again, working his way back to the road. Why had he left his cell phone in the cup holder in his truck?

He needed to call this in, get his whole team here to battle these guys. Making arrests, interrogating suspects and seeing justice done was his life now.

As for Sienna, he didn't know what her life entailed. None of this made any sense, except her not being able to remember who she was. Amnesia actually fit everything he'd seen so far, but how could that have happened? A
year
in a coma? Where was the CIA now? Even harmless and unable to go on missions, surely they kept tabs on an asset like her.

Parker had a lot of questions. The first of which was where those two men had gone.

He slowed his pace and listened as Sienna quieted her breaths. Some things were still there. The way she reacted, the way she scanned the vicinity around her. Training had been ingrained in her until it was muscle memory, even as freaked out as she was and with no past.

His Sienna was still in there, and maybe she'd be able to tell him why she had left him standing by himself at the airport in Atlanta. Why she'd promised to be there and then hadn't shown. He'd been fresh off that last mission and anxious to see her—to see where their relationship might go when they were both stateside with some time off.

The timing of her no-show at the airport didn't fit the “coma” she'd been in. If it'd lasted a year, it would have begun weeks, or even a month, after she stood him up. There had to be another reason she had never showed. Once Parker knew what it was, he'd be able to walk away without this twisting thing in his chest that wouldn't let him rest. She'd torn him up inside, but he'd given her the power to do that first. No more. He wasn't going to give his heart to another woman, ever. He was done with that.

Sienna gasped, and the hot barrel end of a rifle touched Parker's neck. He had to think quickly. In one maneuver he twisted and went for the rifle.

The shot slammed into his chest.

Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Phillips

ISBN-13: 9781488008337

Last Stand Ranch

Copyright © 2016 by Virginia Niten

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