Guarding His Witness. Lisa Childs

like Clint Quarters with his golden-blond hair and square jaw with stubble a few shades darker than his hair. He stared down at her with those deep green eyes of his.

      And she trembled with the fury rushing through her body. That was all it was. After what he’d done to Javier, she couldn’t feel anything else for him but anger and hatred. Her first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but before she could swing it shut he caught it and no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t move the door or him. Maybe he was made of granite.

      She’d thought that before—that he couldn’t be human. That he had no heart. No soul.

      * * *

      This is a bad idea. Clint had told Parker that the minute he’d given him this assignment. But yet he hadn’t turned down his boss. Clint knew no one else would protect Rosie Mendez like he would. The only thing he’d been worried about was that she would refuse to let him protect her.

      He hadn’t been worried about himself. But maybe he should have been, since she was trying really hard to slam the door in his face.

      Then she shoved at his chest, trying to push him back from her door. But he didn’t budge. And it wasn’t just because he had an assignment to carry out.

      He’d made her brother a promise a long time ago. And if anything happened to her, he would be breaking that promise. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first promise he’d broken that he’d made to Javier.

      “Go away!” she screamed at him, and her curly brown hair tangled around her flushed face. “Get the hell out of here!”

      He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “Not without you...”

      “Have you lost your mind?” she asked, her brown eyes wide with shock. “I am not going anywhere with you. Ever!”

      “You’re going to die if you don’t,” he warned her.

      “Are you threatening me?” She stepped out of her apartment and looked around him, calling out, “Officer! Officer!”

      The hallway was empty but for him. The building felt empty—which only confirmed what Clint had heard.

      “What did you do with him?” she demanded to know. “Where is he?”

      “Who?” he asked.

      “The police officer who brought me home from the hospital,” she replied. She was wearing her scrubs still. They were a deep blue that complemented her naturally tan skin. But hell, Rosie Mendez would look beautiful in anything. She had—even in the somber black dress she’d worn for her brother’s funeral.

      “Where is he?” she asked again.

      Clint shrugged. But he felt a niggling sensation between his shoulder blades. Had something happened to the police officer? Or had Luther Mills gotten to him, paying him off to look the other way or worse?

      Parker had warned Clint and the other members of their team that they could trust no one but one another. The River City PD and the DA’s office had been compromised. Because they weren’t sure who the moles were, they couldn’t place confidence in anyone.

      That wasn’t hard. Clint trusted few people. The hard part would be getting Rosie to trust him. Hell, that wouldn’t just be hard; it would probably prove impossible.

      But he wouldn’t let that stop him from keeping his last promise to her brother. The buzz on the street and from the jail was that something was going down tonight to get rid of the witness.

      Javier hadn’t been Clint’s only informant. But he’d been his best.

      “We need to get out of here,” Clint said, and he reached for her arm.

      She jerked back. “Don’t touch me!” she said, her voice shaky with fury or maybe fear.

      He would never hurt her. At least, not physically. He couldn’t help how he’d already hurt her. It was too late to change that, though.

      Javier was gone.

      She would not be next.

      “Come on,” he said, his patience with her wearing thin.

      She had to know that she was in danger, especially since her police detail had mysteriously disappeared.

      “We need to get out of here!”

      The eerie silence had been broken by the sound of footsteps—a lot of footsteps—heading up the stairwell at the end of the hall. That niggling sensation he’d had turned to a cold sweat that chilled his skin and his blood. He didn’t need Parker Payne’s mom’s notorious sixth sense to know that something bad was about to happen.

      “I’d rather die than go anywhere with you!” she told him. And just as she said the words, gunfire began to ring out in the hallway behind Clint.

      He shoved her inside the apartment with such force that he knocked her to the floor. Then he dived in behind her, slamming the door shut.

      No matter how the hell many dead bolts she had on it, turning them wasn’t going to keep out the firepower coming after her. He turned only a couple before he dragged her up from the floor and tugged her toward the window.

      And as bullets began to strike and penetrate the old wooden door, he wrapped his arms around her and hurled them both through that open window.

      He knew it was their only hope of escape—if they could survive the fall...

       Chapter 2

      Luther Mills took the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a long moment. He couldn’t have heard what he thought he had. The phone was a drop cell one of the guards had picked up for him. Everybody had a price.

      Well, almost everybody.

      “What the hell did you say?” he asked his caller to repeat himself.

      “Clint Quarters showed up at her apartment first,” the guy replied.

      This was a new member of Luther’s crew, someone he’d hired specifically to make sure this trial never took place. But he wasn’t certain he could trust the man. But hell, Javier Mendez had proved to him that he couldn’t trust anyone. And then when he’d put bullets in the kid, Luther had proved that anyone who dared to cross him would die.

      Too bad Javier’s stubborn sister hadn’t learned that lesson yet. But she would. It would be the last thing Rosie ever learned.

      “And before we could get to her,” the guy continued, “they jumped out a window.”

      Clint Quarters.

      He was one of those damn people who had no price. Like Rosie...

      Maybe his guys had it wrong. Maybe she’d shoved Quarters out the window.

      Did it matter? All that mattered to Luther was that she not testify against him. He didn’t care why. And he certainly didn’t care if Clint Quarters had died with her. Actually he would prefer that Clint died.

      And not Rosie.

      He’d always had a soft spot for her since they’d been kids in grade school together. Rosie had always been so sweet and serious and smart. That soft spot was why he’d waited so long to put out the hit on her. But running his business from jail was getting old. That was why he’d put the plan into motion to eliminate the eyewitness. It was past time that he get out again.

      And there was no way in hell he was ever going to prison.

      * * *

      “What the hell is wrong with you!” Rosie shrieked at the crazy man driving erratically through the streets of River City. Of course, that erratic driving might have had something to do with the wound to his shoulder. Blood streaked down the leather sleeve of