Safety Breach. Delores Fossen

      “You need to put some distance between us,” she told Kellan.

      It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, either. She’d repeated variations their entire time at the Austin Police Department. However, Kellan was doing the opposite of distancing himself, because he and Owen were taking her to Longview Ridge. Something she’d been opposed to the moment Kellan had told the Austin cops what he had planned for her.

      Gemma agreed with him about her needing protective custody while the Justice Department figured out how her WITSEC identity had been breached, but going “home” had enormous risks. Still, here they were on the interstate, heading to the very place Eric would expect them to go.

      Owen was behind the wheel of the unmarked cruiser, and Kellan was next to her on the back seat. Both were keeping watch while they got updates on the investigation. There was also an Austin patrol car with two cops behind them just in case things turned ugly. Eric likely wouldn’t be able to set explosives along this route, but he could perhaps cause a car accident.

      “Eric will keep coming after me,” Gemma repeated when Kellan finished his latest call.

      Just saying that caused the sound of the blast to echo through her head. And she could feel the effects of it, too, since the debris flying off the explosion had given Kellan and her plenty of nicks and cuts. None serious, but they stung, giving her a fresh memory of how close they’d come to dying.

      Everything she owned was gone, of course. Not that she’d had anything of value. The place had felt, well, sterile. A lot like her life had for the past year. The only real loss of her personal things was her purse and phone. Now she had no cash or credit cards—which meant she had to rely on Kellan to help her. At least for a little while. But once the marshals were cleared of having any part in the WITSEC leak, Gemma needed to call Amanda to see about arranging a safe place she could go.

      If there was such a place, that is.

      Since Kellan didn’t even react to her reminder about Eric not stopping, she gave him another one. “You could get caught in crossfire, or worse, the way you did at my house.”

      That got a reaction. He gave her a look that could have frozen El Paso in August, and he tapped the badge he had clipped to his belt.

      “That badge didn’t save your father,” she snapped, but she instantly regretted the mini outburst. There were enough bad memories floating around them without her adding that one. “I’m sorry.”

      He was back in no-reaction mode and turned his lawman’s gaze to keep watch out the window. Gemma watched, too. Not out the window but at Kellan.

      Mercy, that face. It still got to her. Still tugged and pulled at her in all the wrong places. Sculptured with so many angles and tinted with just a hint of amber from his long-ago Comanche bloodline. Those bloodlines had blessed him with that thick black hair that he’d probably never had to comb. It just fell into a rumpled mane that he hid beneath his cowboy hat.

      There was nothing rumpled about his body. It was toned from the endless work he put in on his family’s ranch and the rodeo competitions he still did. Once, she’d seen him take down an angry bull that he’d roped. All those muscles—both the bull’s and Kellan’s—locked in a fierce battle. Dust flying. Hooves and feet digging and chopping into the ground. The snorts from the bull, the grunts of exertion from Kellan.

      Kellan had won.

      He had literally taken the bull by the horns, brought it down and then calmly walked away. Gemma thought that was the way he handled lots of things in his life. Not women, of course. He did take what he wanted from them. But never forced or even coerced. He took simply because it was offered to him.

      Gemma knew plenty about that because once she’d offered herself to him. And he’d taken.

      He glanced at her again, maybe sensing that she was playing with memory lane, and she got a flash of those incredible eyes. That had been the first thing she’d ever noticed about him. Sizzling blue or stormy gray, depending on his mood. Right now, his mood was dark and so were his eyes, but she’d seen them heat up not from anger but from the need that came with arousal.

      Arousal that she had caused.

      It hadn’t been one-sided back when they’d been eighteen, and she’d willingly surrendered her virginity to him on the seat of his pickup truck. She had no idea who’d been on the receiving end of his virginity, but she’d been thankful for whomever had given him enough practice to make that night incredible for her. One that had become her benchmark. She was still looking for someone who could live up to him.

      His eyebrow came up, and for one humming moment, they stared at each other until his mouth tightened. It was as if he’d gotten ESP issued with that badge, and he was giving her a silent warning to knock off the sex thoughts. He was right, too, as he usually was. But it had been much easier to slip into those memories than the things she needed to face.

      Things she needed to piece together.

      Like why Eric had waited a year to come after her? But that could be as Kellan had suggested—because it had taken him that long to find her. However, there were the other things that Eric had said.

      You need to take a second look at the details of your father’s case. The devil is in those details. That’s what this warning is all about.

      “Do you believe you could have missed something in your father’s murder investigation?” she asked, knowing it could earn her another of those frosty glares.

      It didn’t though. Instead, Kellan took a deep breath. “Maybe.”

      There was doubt, but that could have nothing to do with the way Kellan had handled the case. It could be the guilt over not being able to save his father.

      “Eric’s never said anything like that before,” she went on.

      Kellan shifted his position, their gazes colliding. “You’ve had other contact with him over the past year?”

      “No.” And she was thankful she hadn’t, either. Not just because she hadn’t wanted to deal with Eric, but also because she was betting Kellan would have been riled to the core if her answer had been yes. He would have wanted to know why he hadn’t been told everything that pertained to Eric since he was looking for the killer.

      “Eric left messages for me when I was still in the hospital, remember?” she continued. Gemma hadn’t actually spoken to him since she’d been first in surgery and then recovering from her injuries. But the hospital staff had recorded the calls and turned them over to Kellan.

      “Yeah, I remember.” The muscles in his jaw went tight again. “He threatened you.”

      She nodded, hoping that he didn’t repeat the actual words. Gemma didn’t need to hear them again to recall that Eric had been enraged that she’d lived and could therefore testify that he’d been the one to shoot her.

      Except she couldn’t.

      Gemma had some memories of that horrible night, but because of the storm and the darkness, she hadn’t seen much. About the only thing she could say for sure was that Eric had taken Caroline and her from Gemma’s house in Longview Ridge, and that later there’d been a gunfight.

      “I’ll take another look at the investigation,” Kellan assured her, though it wasn’t necessary for him to say that. From the moment she’d heard Eric toss that out there, she’d known that Kellan would dig back into the files despite the fact that he likely knew every single detail in them.

      “The Austin cops weren’t able to trace the call Eric made to you, and there’s been no sign of the shooter,” Owen relayed to them when he got off the phone.

      Neither piece of information was a surprise. Eric had no doubt used a burner or disposable phone. And as for the shooter, the guy hadn’t been in the house when Austin PD had searched it. The home owners hadn’t been there when the shooter had broken in, so they hadn’t seen him, either.

      Now