Duty To Protect. Roxanne Rustand

back onto the dash. A corner of his mouth tipped up in a faint smile. “Megan did a little research. The internet is just one amazing thing, isn’t it?

       His folksy demeanor didn’t fool her for a minute. “And?”

       “She checked the NCIS, NCIC and CODIS, and you weren’t listed in any of them.”

       “What does all of that mean?”

       “That you’ve got a ride to Montana, if you want it. Apparently—at this point—you’re not a fugitive, missing person, or someone of interest in the criminal databases. I fact, your name is unusually clean. No charges, ever. No convictions, no warrants, no moving violations. Not even a traffic ticket. No record of property ownership, for that matter. It’s as if you just dropped out of the sky.”

       Throwing up her hands and shouting “Thank you, Lance!” probably wouldn’t be a good thing right now. She smiled. “I told you so.”

       His lips thinned. “There’s still something that isn’t quite right about this, but I don’t want to leave a lone woman to fend for herself at this rest stop, so I can either drop you off at the next town, or drop you off when I go through Denver. Or, you can ride with me until I get back to Montana, and I can leave you off in Deer Lodge. Your choice.”

       “Deer Lodge? Really? You’re heading that way?”

       “It’s not my destination, but I can take a detour.”

       Hope surged through her, then fizzled away. She didn’t even want to think about what he might expect in return. “I…I’d better get out at the next place there could be a bus stop.”

       “If you’re short on cash, I can loan you hotel money. With the horse sale and all, it’ll take me a couple days to get up to Deer Lodge.”

       She bit her lower lip. Did she dare trust him? Her heart said yes, but every cautious bone in her body was saying no, no, no. Yet what other option did she have? Her pursuers were probably watching the bus lines and airports. If she tried to catch a different ride, the vehicle she approached could be driven by the very people she was trying to avoid.

       Given the money behind the Rodriguez drug cartel, there could be any number of people after her, now that the location of the house she and her family had shared had been discovered. And they could be men—or women—whom she might not be able to identify until it was too late.

       “Believe me when I say that you’re safe with me. I have no designs on you at all. None,” he added, his mouth kicking up into a wry grin. “You aren’t my type.”

       No surprise, there…but what should have felt like an insult just gave her a sense of relief.

       He was tall and powerfully built, with a strong jaw and dimples that flashed when he grinned. Adding in the long dark lashes shading his melted chocolate eyes, he looked like he could be in magazine ads for Levi’s jeans or big, tough pickup trucks. His taste probably ran to curvaceous, surgically enhanced blondes with Botox lips and empty smiles.

       If such a vacuous creature existed in the wilds of Montana, anyway.

       “Then what’s in this for you?”

       He laughed at that. “Oh, I still think you’re in trouble. This’ll just give me a few days to figure it all out.”

      THREE

      After hours of heavy snow and high winds buffeting the side of his rig, the wind finally slowed and Jake heard the approaching roar of a snowplow swinging up through the rest stop.

       Wrapped in blankets and asleep for the past two hours, Emma didn’t even stir when the mammoth vehicle thundered by, its blade scraping and clattering and kicking up sparks against the asphalt. He studied the violet circles of exhaustion under her eyes and the lines of tension between her delicate eyebrows, and felt a pang of sympathy. She spelled trouble, no two ways around it.

       But even without makeup and her short hair in disarray, she was still a pretty little thing, with those big hazel eyes and the dark crescents of her lashes resting on her delicate cheeks. She was far too fragile to be out here in the middle of nowhere, alone and defenseless. What if she’d stumbled into the wrong stranger’s vehicle and had ended up a bloodied statistic in some roadside ditch?

       He had no business getting involved.

       Not after the last phone call he’d received from Uncle Oliver, about more trouble brewing of his own.

       But there was no way he could let her fend for herself, either, and Megan had promised to let him know if Emma turned up on any new warrants coming through. He’d keep a tight hold on his wallet and a watchful eye on Emma, and in just a couple of days he’d drop her off in Deer Lodge. End of story.

       He’d turned on the truck every once in a while to ward off the bitter cold outside. Now, he took Maisie for a quick trip outside, and then he ushered her into the backseat, slid behind the wheel and headed back onto the freeway.

       Patches of ice gleamed bare and dangerous between stretches of snow-packed asphalt. Intermittent gusts of snow obliterated the road ahead, threatening to fill in the swath of the snowplow, but at least he was on his way.

       He glanced at the clock on the dash and sighed heavily. “Ma’am? You’d better put on your seat belt.”

       The blankets stirred. He angled a look in Emma’s direction and saw her blink, then sit up in startled confusion. There was no mistaking that flash of fear in her eyes or the way she visibly reined in her emotions before she settled back against the seat and fastened her seat belt.

       “Nice nap?” he drawled.

       “Wh-where are we?”

       “Heading for Denver, but it’s going to be a long haul in this weather.”

       She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “How long will it take?”

       “The sales arena is west of Denver, and my GPS says it’s four hours away. But that’s on a good day. Tonight? It could easily be double that. Maybe more.”

       Her brow furrowed. “Will you get there in time for…for whatever?”

       “The sale starts at nine in the morning. Cataloged horses have to be checked onto the grounds by 7:00 a.m. sharp.”

       “If you’re late?”

       “The sale barn rules say they’ll put us at the end of the sales lineup for the day. Which is just about the time most of the buyers have loaded up and started home.”

       Her forehead furrowed. “That would be bad.”

       He shrugged. “My guess is that there’ll be a lot of trailers pulling in late, and they’ll do the best to keep everyone happy. But if not, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

       She eyed him thoughtfully. “You sound pretty philosophical. Some guys would be awfully upset.”

       “No point.”

       Her short laugh sounded bitter. “There doesn’t have to be one.”

       He’d doubted her earlier story about an avenging ex-boyfriend and his cop buddy. Now, he wasn’t so sure. “When I started for Denver this morning I left in plenty of time, and there wasn’t anything in the forecast about snow.”

       “Tell me about it,” she muttered, surreptitiously glancing at the side mirror outside her window.

       “The owner of the horses ought to know that as well as I do. No sense ending up in a ditch trying to hurry.” The snow swirled up into a white wall ahead and he eased up on the accelerator until the visibility improved. “If you’re feeling edgy, you can probably relax. Even if someone passes us, they won’t be able to see you. Not at night.”

       “I’ll just feel a lot better when there are a few hundred miles more between me and Ogallala.” She shifted uneasily. “Maybe that guy wrote