The Sheriff's Surrender. Marilyn Pappano

fool.

      “You know he didn’t mean that.”

      She wished she did, wished she could be certain of that, if nothing else. But she couldn’t convince herself and made no effort to lie to Jace. “Take me to Tulsa or Oklahoma City. There are places I can go, people who will help me, people who wouldn’t rather see me dead.”

      “What people? Your sisters? Your mother? Your old friends? Those are the first places Forbes is going to look for you. Do you want to put their lives in danger as well as your own?”

      She felt the blood drain from her face. She already had Judy Miller’s death on her conscience. She couldn’t bear to be responsible for one more person’s suffering. At least Reese was a cop. He knew the dangers and was prepared for them.

      “I can stay to myself,” she said hopefully. “I can dye my hair, change my name, dress differently, talk differently and take a leisurely tour of all the places I’ve never been. I can keep moving, never spend two nights in the same place, switch identities every time I cross a state line.”

      Jace shook his head as he pulled her away from the car and toward Reese’s truck. “It’s too risky. Hell, I don’t even like you standing here in the parking lot this long. C’mon. It’s just for a couple of days. You can endure anything for two days.”

      Maybe so. She’d survived the last nine years. But she’d still rather take her chances alone.

      Before he could open the pickup door, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “In case I don’t see you again, thanks for everything.”

      “You’ll see me again. This is just for a few days. We’ll get you someplace safe, make our case against Forbes and put the bastard away again—for good this time. Then you can go back to life as normal.”

      She wished she believed him, wished she was that optimistic, but the sick feeling in her stomach suggested otherwise.

      He kissed her forehead, then pushed her back and opened the truck door. Swallowing hard, she climbed inside, fastened her seat belt, then raised her hand in a forlorn wave as Reese put the truck in motion.

      The temperature inside the vehicle was frigid enough to raise goose bumps on her bare arms, but she suspected it had more to do with the driver than the air-conditioning. She didn’t look at him and couldn’t speak to him—couldn’t do anything but sit stiffly in her seat, head turned to stare out the side window. They left Killdeer soon enough, leaving her nothing to look at but trees, pasture and an occasional house, but that was hands-down better than the hatred she knew she would see if she looked at him.

      The miles passed in strained silence, and the muscles in her neck grew taut from holding her unnatural position so long. Gradually, an inch or two at a time, she turned to face forward, then risked the quickest of glances at Reese from the corner of her eye. He was gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to make his knuckles turn white, and his posture was rigid and unyielding. Just like his attitude.

      Of course the past nine years that had been so difficult for her hadn’t left a mark on him. He was older, handsomer, tougher. In denim and chambray, with the cream-colored cowboy hat, he looked like every woman’s dream of a gorgeous, sexy cowboy. Put him astride a horse, and hearts would swoon all over the place. Even without the horse, he was more than capable of stirring wicked fantasies.

      The first time she’d ever seen him, she’d swooned. He’d just recovered from the shoulder injury that had ended his pitching career with the Kansas City Royals, and had gone to work for the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department. She’d been practicing law in the county seat of Thomasville. She couldn’t have cared less that he was a former hot-shot baseball player. Sports didn’t interest her much. But she’d been damned impressed with the man himself.

      Too bad he’d never thought much of her.

      Not even when he was claiming to love her.

      With a shiver, she adjusted the vents so they blew away from her, then folded her arms across her chest. Feeling incredibly awkward, she locked her gaze on the road ahead and said, “I take it you’re still a cop.”

      The silence that met her remark was oppressive. So this was what she had to look forward to for the next two days. Not a problem. She was experienced at being ignored by him—when she’d been shot, when she’d lain alone in the hospital, when she’d been harassed and threatened every single day until finally her tormentors had run her out of town. She could handle a couple of days of not being spoken to.

      But as soon as she’d completed the thought, he did speak, in a voice as scornful and unforgiving as any she’d ever heard. “What did Jace tell you?”

      “Nothing.” It was an adequate answer that needed no elaboration, but that didn’t stop her from adding it. “If he’d mentioned your name, I wouldn’t have come.”

      “If he’d mentioned your name, I wouldn’t have let you.”

      Fine. So they were agreed that neither wanted to spend even a moment together. The only problem was that the potential cost to him was merely a few days’ discomfort, while the cost she paid might well be her life.

      She returned to staring at the scenery. Jace had refused to tell her where she was going, presumably so he could hide who she was going with. All he’d said was that it was a quiet place where she would be safe.

      Safe. With the one person who hated her most providing her only security. Gee, why didn’t she feel safe?

      Last night had been far from restful. She tried to doze along the way, but every time she was close to actually falling asleep, something brought her fully alert—some bump in the road, a honk from a passing vehicle, some little bit of fear deep inside her. She gave up her effort as they approached a sign that read Welcome to Heartbreak—Reese’s hometown and, no doubt, their destination.

      She smiled thinly. It seemed appropriate that she should wind up in a place whose name described her life so perfectly.

      The real, physical Heartbreak didn’t seem a much better place to spend her time than the intangible, emotional heartbreak where she’d spent much of her life. The businesses were on the shabby side, the houses nothing special, the town dusty and worn. They passed one grocery store, two gas stations and three restaurants, one hardware store, one five-and-dime, and a handful of other businesses before Reese turned off the main street into a tree-lined neighborhood.

      Maybe the houses weren’t big or fancy, she amended, but some of them, at least, had a certain charm. The trees in these yards were decades old, unlike her own neighborhood where every house had the same variety of very young saplings planted in the same location in the identical handkerchief-size yards. Additionally, there was nothing cookie-cutter about the houses—no identical plans for every fourth or fifth house, no homeowners association decreeing what to plant, when to mow and what colors to paint. There was a sidewalk on either side of the street for skating and playing jacks, front porches attached to every house for watching life pass by and mailboxes ranging from the purely functional to the eccentric to the just plain silly.

      They were more like homes than her house could ever be.

      After a half dozen blocks, the street ended in a driveway that ran long and straight through a stand of trees to a house some distance back. There were pastures on all four sides, a large yard in need of mowing and a barn out back that looked about a hundred years old with what must surely be its original paint. In contrast, the house gave every appearance of being brand-new. Its log walls, sandstone foundation and brick-red tin roof hadn’t even collected a thorough coating of Oklahoma dust yet.

      The garage was on the north end of the house. Reese pulled inside next to a black-and-white Blazer that said Sheriff on the driver’s door beneath the department seal. Was that a general proclamation that all the sheriff’s department vehicles carried, or did it signify that this particular truck belonged to the sheriff? Neely wondered, but she wasn’t about to ask. He’d made it uncomfortably clear that he had no desire to talk to her, and she intended to make it