OUTLAW LAWMAN Read online

  Caitlyn tried to hold out hope that he wouldn’t see them. Or that someone would see him and send him running. After all, a man in a ski mask was bound to look suspicious.

  Harlan turned his head slightly to the side. “Get ready to move,” he mouthed.

  That caused panic to shoot through her again. Move where? There were only two places for them to go—right or left—and either way the man would see them.

  Even though she’d braced herself for the man to fire, it was still a hard jolt when the blast came. In the same second, Harlan used their handcuffed connection to jerk her to the side. Away from the bullet that slammed into the ground.

  The sound was deafening, and it seemed to echo through the parking lot. No way the guests would miss that, and it would certainly prompt someone to call the cops.

  She hoped.

  Still, it wouldn’t help them now.

  The sound she didn’t hear was a car alarm. Caitlyn had hoped there’d be one and that the blaring noise would send the man running back to his truck. It didn’t. No alarm, just the man coming for them.

  Harlan didn’t stay put. He shoved her behind him as far as he could. Which wasn’t far. And he dragged them to the side of the vehicle.

  Even over the roar in her ears, Caitlyn had no trouble hearing the man’s footsteps. Definitely not light. More like stomps. Of course, she already knew he was in a rage, so it was no surprise that he was coming at them like a madman.

  But why was he trying to kill them now when he’d had plenty of time to do it while they’d been unconscious inside the motel room?

  Caitlyn didn’t have time to consider an answer because there was another shot. This one tore through the hood of the car and came so close to them that she could swear she felt the heat and movement of the bullet.

  Shoving her along, Harlan hurried to the back of the car, and he dragged her behind the beat-up old station wagon next to them. She caught just a glimpse of the shooter before another bullet came their way. This one tore off a chunk of the car’s bumper.

  Still no car alarm.

  Harlan kept them moving. Away from the shooter and toward the motel check-in. That didn’t deter the man. She could still hear his stomps, but she also heard something else.

  Shouts.

  Someone was yelling out to call 911, but the shots kept away anyone who might otherwise want to help. She prayed no one inside the rooms would get hurt.

  Harlan pulled her to the far side of the station wagon. Still three vehicles away from the motel office. Way too far to make a run for it, and besides, if the clerk was smart, he would have already locked the door.

  “Hell,” she heard Harlan mumble.

  And she soon realized why. The shooter wasn’t just stomping now. He’d broken into a run.

  Heading right for them.

  Harlan levered himself up and hurled the rolled-up phone book at the guy. From the sound it made, it smacked him somewhere on the body, but she didn’t see exactly where. That was because Harlan got them moving again—this time to a small car that put them one step closer to the office.

  Another shot.

  Then another.

  The bullets tore right through the small car and slammed into the truck parked next to it. The sound was instant. A shrill blast from the truck’s security alarm. But the noise did something else that Caitlyn hadn’t counted on.

  It drowned out their attacker’s footsteps.

  She had no idea where he was, but that lasted only a few seconds. She soon saw his exact location.

  The man barreled around the back of the small car, and before he even came to a stop, he was already taking aim. Harlan was moving, too. Trying to get them out of the line of fire.

  Caitlyn scrambled as Harlan dragged her along, but she turned and tossed the handful of rocks right at the guy.

  Pay dirt.

  The rocks distracted him, and his shot was off. The bullet slammed into the ground, sending a spray of sharp chunks of concrete at them. Even with the debris, Harlan managed to get them to cover behind the next vehicle.

  Their attacker made a feral sound. A sort of outraged growl, but he didn’t speak.

  He fired another shot, but this one didn’t come anywhere near close to them. Good. Maybe he was no longer in control.

  Over the shrill car alarm Caitlyn heard another sound. A welcome one. Sirens. And they already sounded close.

  Harlan pulled her farther down to the concrete, and for a moment she thought he’d done that because he’d gotten a glimpse of the shooter, but he peered under the vehicle.

  “He’s getting away.”

  Because of the clamor of sirens and noise, Caitlyn didn’t actually hear Harlan’s words, but she saw them form on his mouth. The relief was instant, but it was quickly replaced by another feeling. Major concern. If the shooter managed to escape, they might never know who he was or why he’d launched this attack.

  Harlan made a quick peek over the hood of the car, and he cursed. She soon figured out why. The truck zipped past them, flying across the parking lot.

  That got Harlan and her to their feet, and she prayed the cops were there, in place and ready to stop this guy.

  But they weren’t.

  The truck bolted out of the parking lot and onto the street that fronted the motel.

  Still cursing, Harlan got them moving again toward the motel office. “Keep your hands up so everyone can see them,” he warned her.

  Mercy. Caitlyn hadn’t considered that someone might think they’d fired those shots, but in the chaos of a situation, anything could happen. They lifted their hands just as two police cruisers braked to a stop. Not in the parking lot but on the very street where the gunman had just escaped.

  With their guns drawn, the cops barreled out and used their cruisers for cover. They aimed their weapons at Harlan and her.

  “I’m Marshal Harlan McKinney,” he shouted over the alarm. “You need to go after the driver of a blue truck.” And he rattled off the license plate.

  The cops didn’t move, and she couldn’t blame them. Harlan and she were handcuffed together, disheveled and probably didn’t look like victims of a kidnapping, even if that was exactly what they were.

  Now Caitlyn cursed. It would take precious minutes, maybe longer, for the cops to sort all of this out, and the shooter could be long gone by then.

  The door to the motel office opened just a fraction, and a lanky man poked his head out a few inches. “The guy that drove out of here fired shots at them,” he confirmed.

  But that still didn’t get the cops moving. The four officers said something to each other. Something she couldn’t catch because of the alarms, but Harlan started lowering himself to his knees. Caitlyn did the same, and soon she found herself facedown on the concrete.

  Finally the cops came out from cover and made their way toward them. Also, the alarm stopped so she could actually hear what they were saying.

  “Marshal McKinney?” one of the uniforms called out.

  “Yeah,” Harlan verified. “There’s probably a missing persons report on me.”

  “There is,” the cop verified. He looked at his phone and then at Harlan, probably comparing a photo to his face.

  She hadn’t even considered that Harlan’s brothers would be looking for him and would have alerted the authorities, but Caitlyn was thankful they had.

  “No missing report on you,” the cop said to her. “But you look familiar. Are you that reporter?”

  She settled for mumbling a yes, since she and the cops were rarely in the same corner. This was one exception, though. She was thankful beyond words to have been rescued.

  The cop reached down and helped them back to their feet, but Harlan didn’t stay put. He immediately started toward the cruisers.

  “
We need to go in pursuit now,” Harlan insisted, and it sounded like an order. “And get us out of these damn cuffs.”

  The cop didn’t argue, and as they approached the other officers, she heard one of them phoning in the shooter’s license plate. Maybe they’d get lucky and catch him, but Caitlyn’s heart dropped when she saw they were on an access road. The ramp to the interstate was literally just yards away.

  One look at Harlan, and she saw the frustration and anger in his eyes, too.

  “What happened to you two?” the lanky officer asked them. His name tag identified him as Sergeant Eric Tinsley.

  Harlan threw open the side door of the cruiser and jumped in, pulling her practically into his lap, since there wasn’t much room in the passenger seat.

  “I can’t let you do this,” Tinsley said.

  Harlan met the cop’s gaze. “This guy kidnapped us and tried to kill us. He’s not getting away.”

  And while Harlan’s tone left no room for doubt about that, they both knew the shooter was doing just that—getting away.

  “When the motel clerk called 911, he gave a description of the vehicle,” Tinsley said. “Law enforcement will be on the lookout for it.”

  “That’s not enough,” Harlan insisted. “I need to find this guy.”

  Tinsley looked around as if figuring out what to do, but then he tipped his head to the backseat of the cruiser. “Get in and buckle up so my partner can ride with us. Can’t do this without backup, and you’re not exactly in any position to assist.”

  Harlan made an even more frustrated sound of agreement and got her moving into the backseat. There was a metal mesh divider between the front and back. Clearly for prisoner transport, but she didn’t care about that. Caitlyn only wanted to go after the shooter.

  Thankfully, that didn’t take long.

  Tinsley’s partner tossed Harlan a key that he took from the glove compartment, and he jumped in. “It’s a universal key,” he explained as they sped away from the motel.

  Harlan didn’t waste any time unlocking the cuffs, and Caitlyn’s hand dropped like a stone. The muscles in her hand and arm were knotted. Her head was still pounding, too, but those were minor things. At the moment no one was shooting at them, and maybe they could get a lot of answers as to why this had happened, if they could just catch up with that blue truck.

  A truck she didn’t see.

  Tinsley drove up the ramp and onto the interstate, and while there were a few other trucks on the road, the blue one was nowhere in sight.

  Mercy.

  They had to find him.

  “Who’s this shooter?” Tinsley asked.

  Harlan didn’t have time to answer because Tinsley’s phone rang. A few moments later he hung up and shook his head. “You’re sure that was the right license plate for the blue truck?”

  “Positive.” Harlan didn’t look at the man when he answered. He was literally on the edge of the seat, checking out the traffic while he shoved his arm through the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Then it’s bogus,” Tinsley informed them.

  She didn’t know who groaned louder—Harlan or her. Now there was no way to know who owned the vehicle unless they found it, and with each passing mile, her hopes were getting lower and lower in that department.

  “He’s not working alone,” Harlan said, glancing first at her and then briefly meeting Tinsley’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Someone hit us with a Taser, drugged us and put us in that motel room.”

  “You saw more than one person?” Tinsley asked.

  “No, but if the shooter had been the one to put us there, he wouldn’t have had to look for the room.”

  Caitlyn thought back to those terrifying moments before the shooting. The man hadn’t gone directly to the room, and he’d spent some time inside looking around. He probably wouldn’t have had to do that if he’d known all along they were there.

  That tightened the knot in her stomach.

  God, how many were in on this?

  “One man probably couldn’t have carried me,” Harlan muttered, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  Yeah. Harlan was a big guy, and that meant there had probably been at least two who’d carried them from his house and to the motel. Caitlyn didn’t want to think of what else those men had done, but she was positive she hadn’t been raped. That was something, at least. A big something.

  “This has to be connected to Rocky Creek,” she said to Harlan. All those threats couldn’t be coincidence.

  But then she had to shake her head.

  Time’s up, Caitlyn. Tomorrow you die. That had been the last threat she’d received, and it hadn’t happened. The guy with the Taser hadn’t killed her, though he would have had ample opportunity to do just that. Plus, it would have been a heck of a lot easier than drugging them and dragging them to that motel.

  Almost as if they’d been bait.

  Or something.

  “What’s the date?” she asked.

  The officers seemed surprised, but Tinsley checked his watch. “The fourteenth.”

  “It’s still tomorrow,” Harlan verified. “And I’m pretty sure the shooter was supposed to make that threat come true.”

  Yes. And he nearly had. She’d lost count of how many shots he’d fired, but any one of them could have hit Harlan and her.

  “He wasn’t an expert shot,” Harlan continued. “And it was personal.”

  Caitlyn couldn’t argue with either of those points. “That leads us back to Farris.”

  She was about to ask for a phone so she could make some calls to find out if Farris was indeed still in the institution, but she stopped when she spotted the truck just ahead. Not speeding away. Not even on the interstate.

  But rather at a standstill in the emergency lane.

  “That’s it,” Harlan told the officers.

  Tinsley turned on the lights and siren, called for backup and eased to a stop behind the truck. Caitlyn tried to look inside the vehicle, but Harlan didn’t give her a chance. He caught the back of her neck and pushed her down on the seat.

  “Stay put,” Harlan insisted.

  Tinsley looked back at Harlan as if he might tell him the same thing, but he didn’t stop Harlan from getting out with him and his partner. Both cops drew their weapons, and they stayed behind the cover of their doors while they kept their attention fastened on the truck.

  Caitlyn lifted her head just a little so she could look, too, but the back window on the truck had a heavy tint, and she couldn’t see inside the truck cab.

  Tinsley called out for the driver to exit the vehicle. No response, though. Ditto for his second attempt.

  The seconds dragged by, and even though Caitlyn tried to keep her heartbeat and breathing steady, she failed big-time. She’d known she was in danger before she even went to Harlan’s place, but she hadn’t considered that she could be bringing the danger to him.

  He could be killed.

  Right here, if the gunman started shooting.

  Even though there was bad blood between them, the last thing she wanted was him to be hurt. Or involved in this. But then she rethought that, too.

  Harlan was involved.

  One of the threats had even mentioned what he’d said to her that night they’d had sex. So maybe the person behind all of this had written that knowing it would make her suspect Harlan. Knowing that she would go running to him.

  If so, this was all her fault.

  Her breath stalled again when the cops began to inch toward the truck door, and Harlan stayed right with them despite the fact that he wasn’t armed. Each step they took put her heart higher in her throat, but she could only sit there, watch and pray that this was all about to end. If they had the shooter, then they would know who was behind this.

  And w
hy.

  Tinsley approached the driver’s side. His partner, the other. But Harlan moved even closer to Tinsley when the officer peered into the window. He said something to Harlan. Something she couldn’t hear, but Caitlyn didn’t need to hear the words to see the frustration in Tinsley’s body language.

  It was Harlan who threw open the driver’s door, and again she didn’t need to hear what he said to know he was cursing a blue streak. That was the last straw.

  Nothing could have held Caitlyn back at that point.

  She bolted from the cruiser to see what had caused the profanity and frustration. And she soon saw.

  The truck was empty.

  She looked back to the interstate, hoping she’d catch a glimpse of the shooter—maybe on foot, maybe driving away in another vehicle. It was possible he was doing just that, but if so, he was nowhere in sight.

  “He left something,” Harlan said.

  Caitlyn followed his gaze and soon saw what had captured Harlan’s attention. A folded piece of paper was on the steering wheel.

  “I want it processed for prints.” But Harlan didn’t touch it. No doubt because he didn’t want to disturb any evidence that the shooter might have left, not just on the paper but in the truck itself.

  “Something’s written on it,” Tinsley pointed out.

  “Yeah.” Harlan shook his head, repeated it. “It’s a message,” he said, looking at Caitlyn. “For you.”

  Chapter Five

  Harlan cursed the bad phone reception at the Maverick Springs Hospital, and everything else he could think of.

  There was a lot on that particular list.

  He could make out only half of what his brother Slade Becker was saying, but even so, Harlan wasn’t hearing anything good.

  His other brother Declan had brought Harlan his phone from the house because it had all his contact numbers, but what he needed was to hear some good news.

  According to Slade, there was no sign of the shooter and no security cameras at the motel in Cross Creek where he and Caitlyn had been taken, cuffed and left for a killer to finish them off. If the crappy news had ended there, it might not have been so bad.