Roughshod Justice. Delores Fossen

scrambled around Hank and made her way to the rear of the minivan. There, she had a good angle to see Jameson. To see the glare that he tossed her, too. Obviously, he wasn’t happy that she had changed her position or that she fired that shot. Kelly wasn’t especially happy about it, either, but she saw it as a necessary choice.

      “Put down your gun,” someone shouted.

      Gabriel. He had apparently arrived with backup. Good. Kelly hoped he had brought a lot of deputies with him so they could secure the hospital.

      “He’s there,” Hank said, motioning in the direction of the far side of the building.

      There was a man carrying a handgun in the spot where Hank had indicated. However, the man didn’t drop his weapon as Gabriel had ordered. He turned and fired a shot, no doubt aiming for the sheriff.

      Jameson took care of the guy. He double-tapped the trigger, but he hadn’t gone for kill shots. The bullets went into the man’s shoulder and shooting arm. He stayed on his feet, but his gun clattered to the ground.

      Suddenly, there were the sounds of footsteps. Plenty of them. And they were all converging on the injured man. With his gaze still firing all around him, Jameson reached the guy first, but Gabriel and a deputy soon joined him. Another deputy stepped out from the back door where the gunwoman was still sprawled out. She was almost certainly dead. It gave Kelly a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach to know she’d killed someone, but if she hadn’t, Jameson, Hank and she could have been murdered.

      “Don’t kill me,” the gunman yelled, attempting to hold up his hands. Hard to do, though, with his injuries.

      Kelly had been right about the gunshot wounds. They didn’t appear life-threatening, but he was bleeding and needed medical attention. That wouldn’t be difficult to get since they were in a hospital parking lot, but Gabriel likely wouldn’t let any of the medical staff approach until he was certain it was safe.

      Even though Kelly knew Jameson wasn’t going to like it, she started to make her way toward them. She did keep low, though, crouching, and her pace wasn’t exactly fast since she was still unsteady.

      When Jameson spotted her, he didn’t curse, but she could tell that’s what he wanted to do. “Stay behind cover,” he warned her.

      She did, but that didn’t stop her from getting a better look at the gunman that the deputy was now cuffing. Just as everyone else she’d encountered, Kelly didn’t recognize him, but when the man looked in her direction, he did something strange.

      He smiled at her.

      Jameson and Gabriel noticed that smile, too, because they both shifted their attention to her. “You know him?” Jameson asked her.

      Kelly immediately shook her head. But the man just kept on smiling.

      “I know you,” the injured gunman growled, “because you’re the woman who hired me.”

       Chapter Five

      “I didn’t hire that hit man,” Kelly insisted.

      Jameson had lost count of how many times Kelly had said a variation of that denial, but it had started immediately after the gunman’s accusation. It had continued, too, even after the man had been hauled away to the ER and after she and Jameson arrived at the sheriff’s office.

      As with her other denials, no one responded. The two deputies who weren’t at the hospital working the investigation were both busy at their desks. Gabriel was in the interview room with the driver who’d first seen Kelly and the two dead guys in the pasture. That left Jameson, and even though he, too, was on the phone, waiting for an update from Cameron, he wasn’t there to give her any assurances but rather to make sure she didn’t run.

      Good thing, because she certainly looked like a woman on the verge of taking off.

      She was pacing across the squad room. Well, her version of pacing anyway, considering she was still wobbly. She would occasionally catch on to desks and chairs to steady herself.

      Thankfully, she hadn’t been so shaky that she hadn’t managed to take out the female shooter in the hospital door. If she hadn’t, the woman could have done some serious damage. It was that shot that had Jameson believing that the injured gunmen had been lying.

      He stopped, rethought that.

      Actually, he hadn’t believed it from the moment he’d heard it. And yeah, that made him stupid. It was this old fire that was between Kelly and him. She’d stolen the file from him, but it was a huge leap to go from that to murder.

      Kelly glanced down at the burner cell phone she had gripped in her hand. One of the deputies had given it to her after she said she wanted to make some calls. Of course, the calls had been related to her sister. Kelly hadn’t remembered any phone numbers—or so she’d claimed—so Jameson had given her a contact at SAPD. The detective had nothing new on Mandy but promised to call Kelly the moment he found anything.

      Jameson hoped what they didn’t find was a body.

      Kill Jameson Beckett or you’ll never see her again.

      That wasn’t exactly a reassurance that Kelly’s kid sister was okay.

      She went to the watercooler and had another drink. Her third in the past hour. Jameson had already had her doctor come to the sheriff’s office to check her and finish his exam, but Kelly had practically dismissed the man. Too bad. Because Jameson was certain that head injury needed additional treatment. Probably even a night or two in the hospital. He doubted, though, that he was going to be able to convince Kelly to go back there after what’d happened.

      They’d nearly been killed.

      It’d been pure luck that both Kelly and he had managed to nail those shots. And they’d managed that before the thugs had gotten their own brand of luck and killed all three of them and anyone else who happened to get in the path of those bullets.

      Jameson finished his call with Cameron and went closer to her. The doctor had told him to watch her for any signs of dizziness or fatigue. He didn’t see either. However, Jameson did see the troubled look on her face.

      “I didn’t hire that man,” she repeated. Except this time, there were tears in her eyes.

      Hell. The tears were his Achilles’ heel, and Jameson had to force himself not to pull her into his arms. That definitely wouldn’t be a good idea.

      She stared at him as if waiting for something. A response, maybe. Maybe that hug. But instead Jameson relayed what he’d just learned from Cameron.

      “No ID’s on either the dead man or woman,” he explained. “But Cameron took their prints and will see if they’re in the system. I called in the Rangers to assist on this. When I have the names, I’ll definitely run them past you to see if they ring any bells.”

      Kelly nodded. “Good.” She repeated both the one-word response and the nod, and she kept staring at him.

      “What about the guy you shot?” she asked. “The one who lied and said he was working for me?” She hadn’t needed to clarify that last part, but the renewed anger in her voice seemed to help with drying up those tears.

      “He lawyered up, but we do have an ID on him. He gave his name to the doctor because apparently he has some allergies to certain meds and wanted the doc to access his records. His name is Coy McGill. Know him?”

      “No.” Kelly added a heavy sigh. “But he’s trying to set me up. Please tell me you know that.” She was clearly calling him on this.

      “I do know that,” he assured her. “The shot that woman fired could have killed you. If you’d been the one who hired them, she would have kept her gun aimed at me. After all, I’m the one that someone wants dead.”

      “Yes,” she said after a long pause. Their eyes met again. “Why?”