Relentless Protector. Colleen Thompson

a taller figure topped with blue-streaked, unnaturally black hair, hacked unevenly to chin length. Dressed in black, too, all skintight straight-leg jeans and a tiny micro T-shirt that clung to small, pigeon’s-egg breasts.

      “What is it you want?” Lisa asked as the white door of the panel van slid open.

      When a skinny man stepped from the opening, fresh dread launched icy daggers through her system. He was slightly taller than the woman. His shaved head and the black chin-strap beard weren’t half so alarming as the wild gleam in his eyes and the way sweat plastered his wife-beater T-shirt to a wiry-thin body crawling with dark tattoos.

      Could this be about rape, then, if not robbery? Did they mean to take her somewhere in the white van, leaving her child here alone?

      Gut-churning as the thought was, Lisa knew that at least Tyler would be safe here. He would run inside the groomer’s shop as soon as she disappeared from view. Even if terror froze him in place, someone would soon find him. Then the police would call her sister, who would get here as quickly as she could. Who would raise her child if she had to.

      Because Lisa knew if she got inside that white van, she wasn’t coming back alive.

      “What we want,” the woman finally answered, shifting her thin shoulder beneath the strap of the oversize duffel bag slung over it, “is for you to take us all for a little ride in your car. We’re going to the main branch of the First National Bank of Coopersville.”

      Confusion sent Lisa’s mind spinning back to thoughts of robbery. “But my bank’s the military credit union over on-post.”

      “You damn well better do what she says!” the man roared, making Lisa jump. “ Exactly, or it’s over.”

      Hurrying to obey, she fished her keys from her purse, then opened the driver’s-side door and got in. Before she could stab the shaking key into the ignition, the woman had climbed into the passenger seat beside her.

      More horrifying still was the moment the man climbed into the rear seat, sitting right beside her son, who started wailing loudly.

      As Rowdy, on the booster seat’s opposite side, began to whine, too, the woman thrust the gun toward Lisa’s face. “Shut the brat up, or I swear I’ll do it for you.”

      Panic spiraled through Lisa’s body, a sickening physical sensation that took her back to the moment she’d learned of her husband’s death. She hadn’t been there to stop it, but she wasn’t letting this sick couple do anything to her son. Whatever she must endure, she swore she would keep him safe.

      With that vow, an eerie, disconnected calm washed over her in warm waves, giving her the strength to turn to Tyler, to reach back and touch his small leg. “Tyler, baby. You have to listen. Listen to me, soldier.”

      He responded when she called him soldier, coming to attention so sharply that she thanked God for this phase he’d been going through for months now. But red blotches stood out on his pale face, and tears trembled on his lashes. If she didn’t reach him right away, he would quickly lose it again.

      “When Daddy was in battle, he had to keep his troops safe. Rowdy and Octobuddy are your troops now. It’s up to you to set a brave example, to keep them safe and calm.”

      The anxiety in his blue eyes shifted; just like that, he slipped into the plane of childish imagination, a safe haven from this nightmare. “I can... I can be brave,” he said uncertainly.

      She looked into her only child’s face, directing every atom of love and confidence she could muster toward him. “You can be a hero, Tyler, with medals just like your dad’s and generals coming to salute you. And Daddy will be so proud, watching over you from heaven.”

      Tyler gave her a crisp salute, his moppet’s bangs falling into his eyes. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Lisa saluted back.

      “Real freakin’ touching,” said the woman, a sneer on her thin face. A face and voice that nudged a memory Lisa couldn’t place.

      Could she have met this woman before? Inadvertently done something to bring on this horror? Before she could stop herself, the question slipped out. “Who are you?”

      To her surprise, the woman’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile, and she answered, “You can call me Evie. Let’s make it Evie LeStrange. Now give me that damned purse.”

      As she yanked it away, then pulled a straw bag from her duffel and tossed it at Lisa, the backseat passenger hooted with laughter before the woman sliced her vicious blue gaze his way. He fell silent in an instant, confirming Lisa’s suspicion that “Evie” was calling the shots.

      Heart pounding, Lisa risked a second question. “Why are you doing this to us? Have I somehow—”

      A blur of motion preceded a sharp blow—the barrel of the woman’s gun striking the side of Lisa’s skull. Her vision dimmed as pain arced through her, but terrified of upsetting Tyler, she did no more than gasp.

      Beside her, her assailant snarled, “Any more questions? Good. Now let’s get movin’. Bank’s closing in a half hour, and trust me, Sweet Girl Baby, you do not want to be late.”

      Sweet Girl Baby. The familiar words sent a queasy ripple through Lisa’s midsection, but she was too occupied with keeping herself and her son alive to think about it now.

      * * *

      L ONG AND LEAN AND standing tall as Texas, Cole Sawyer strode into First National as if he owned the place. Months of doubt and worry over whether he had done the right thing mustering out of the army had all been vanquished by the letter of acceptance in the inner pocket of his jacket. The letter guaranteeing him a place in the next class of U.S. Marshal recruits two months from now in Georgia.

      The army brass had hated losing a warrior in his prime, and his fellow Rangers couldn’t understand why a trained sniper, a hawkeyed marksman who could take down a camouflaged enemy a half mile distant, would “bail” on them. Why he would allow a single incident, viewed through his scope, to instantly, irrevocably make him lose his taste for the kind of clean kills that supported his team’s mission.

      Better he should move his accounts rather than leaving his money at the military credit union, where he would continue running into his former comrades all too often. Where he would be forced to face their disappointment or, worse yet, their attempts to convince him that in wartime, people died, that he hadn’t been the one to kill them.

      He was sitting in a glassed-in booth, filling out the paperwork to open his new accounts, when he saw the brunette walking past him toward the teller’s counter. After months of self-imposed celibacy, he couldn’t help noticing her, his eyes drawn to the curvy figure that her loose raspberry-and-white scrubs could not hide and the wavy, coffee-rich hair that fell well past her shoulders. His gaze flicked to a pretty face, no older than late twenties, and his heart jerked as he was slammed with recognition, followed instantly by guilt.

      She was one of the widowed military spouses featured in last month’s article in USA This Morning—a woman widowed thirteen months before. Widowed because he’d failed her husband.

      He’d known that Lisa Meador and her son lived in town still, had made a note of where she worked and found out where their house was, when he was still thinking of going to her and explaining his role in her husband’s death. Of begging her forgiveness for that one death, one of many. Somehow, though, his C.O., Drew Woodsen, had gotten wind of it and ordered him to steer clear. Cole would have gone anyway, if Woodsen hadn’t made him understand that his appearance would only amount to a selfish—and totally unnecessary—bid for absolution that would end up causing Lisa and her son even more pain.

      Cole meant to drag his gaze away before she caught him looking, but there was something in her glazed, wide-eyed stare that brought him to his feet. Something he’d seen frozen on the features of the female terrorist in the moments before she’d self-detonated in the center of that crowded market.

      Could Devin Meador’s widow be so undone by his death, or facing such financial hardship, that