Page 44 of Westin

“Not from another car.”

She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“If he’d driven up behind you, we would have seen another car. But there wasn’t one.”

“There must have been.”

Clint shook his head. “Milsap is a small town, Lea. Everyone either owns a farm or ranch, or works on a farm or ranch around here. And everyone knows everyone else. We know each other so well, we know each other’s vehicles. I don’t remember there being a strange car in that parking lot that day. And none of the boys do, either.”

“If he didn’t drive there, how did he get there?”

“That’s a good question.”

A silence fell between them for a long moment, a tense silence that was filled with too many unanswered questions. Lea knew what Clint must be thinking, knew he was making connections she didn’t want to make. And he confirmed it with the next thing he had to say.

“Will told you to lure him out of town. Then Will told you to keep going when you reached Denver even though there’s an office of the DEA in Denver, which seems like the best place to go if this guy is following you.”

“Will thought we should get Fang to Seattle because that’s the office we’re based out of; that’s where our bosses know about Fang and Razor and the whole case.”

“Whose idea was it for you to drive up through Colorado?”

Lea pushed away from the fence. “How else am I supposed to get to Seattle from New Orleans?”

“Oh, I don’t know—a plane? Or a straight path that would just barely touch the corner of Colorado and take you through Utah. Why go through Denver and then up here? I mean, hell, you took a bit of a wild turn coming northwest. Even if you were to go through Denver, you should have continued on the 287 to Wyoming, not cut this way.”

“I was trying to stay off the major interstates.”

“Why?”

“What do you want me to say, Clint?” She threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I trust my partner, and my partner was sending me information he was getting from someone he trusted. That’s what this job is all about—relying on people we trust to take out the bad guys.”

“But what if you can’t trust your partner?”

“Will would not burn me!” Her whole body vibrated even as she clamped her fists at her sides, her jaw clenching so hard that it hurt to speak. “He’s my friend!”

“I can see you believe that.” Clint crossed to her, snow dusting the tops of his boots with every step. He rested his hands on her shoulders, bending a little so he could look her in the eye. “But why would he send you here? Why would he plant you in the middle of ranch country when you have this psychotic criminal chasing after you? Why not go to the Denver DEA office and give them the memory card? Why not arrange for you to fly from New Orleans to Seattle and be met by an agent? Why not do half a million things that would have been a hell of a lot safer for you?”

“Because I’m not supposed to be a DEA agent. I’m supposed to be a frightened bartender who stumbled onto something she thought she could handle, but got in too deep. I’m supposed to be playing a role for Fang, to draw him out and force him to hang himself.”

“Then why lure him to Seattle? Why not just set up a sting in Phoenix or Denver or any of the other major cities you passed through on your way here?”

“Stop!”

She jerked away from him and rushed to the horses, dragging Gray Lady’s reins down from the tree branch. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t go down that road—because if she did, she’d have to admit that it didn’t add up, and this wasn’t the first time she’d questioned Will’s decisions in the past few days. Hell, it wasn’t the first time she’d questioned his actions in the past few months. But they were both under a lot of pressure to identify Razor, and the undercover stuff was taking a toll on Will’s marriage. He had two kids at home, two small kids, one of whom was a daughter with special needs. His wife needed him at home, and he kept promising that, after the next assignment, he’d talk to the bosses about a desk job. But there was always something that came up, always another case, always something that he couldn’t just turn his back on.

But that didn’t mean he would turn to the dark side, burn Lea so that he could…what? What was he getting out of it? Was he working for the Southern Bloods? Was he protecting Fang and his gang? How could that be possible? Will had been by her side dozens of times when they took down people like that. Hell, worse than Fang and his band of idiots! Who put that kind of information on a damn computer, anyway?

She climbed on the horse and took off, pushing her into a gallop the second they were in the open field. She leaned forward, holding tight to the horse’s reins, welcoming the freezing cold of the wind burning across her unprotected skin. She didn’t know where she was going; she just needed to go. She needed to get back to that feeling that had settled her thoughts before, the memory of being that little ten-year-old girl on the back of a pony on her grandfather’s farm. She needed to be that free and that innocent again.

She needed to forget that sometimes bad people could fool you into thinking they’re good, to serve their purpose. And sometimes good people were too stupid to see what was right in front of their face.

Chapter 8

Westin hesitated before he touched the intercom button, a part of him convinced they were never going to let him into this house. Rocking D was the biggest ranch in Colorado, one of the most respected ranches in the country. The Mollohan family had been such a huge part of this state, of this industry, that just the name itself opened doors. It was like visiting the home of Michelangelo or the Pope. Yet it wasn’t that reverence that was making Westin hesitate.

He’d waited nearly ten years for this moment. He’d known it would happen, knew that he would one day sit here, ready to confront a past that begged to be confronted. He was savoring the moment, wanted to take a few seconds to drink it all in.

“This is it,” he said as much to himself as to the world around him. “This is the moment.”

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