Page 24 of Colton First Responder (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Since they had eaten everything she had prepared as their small lunch, she just checked to ensure that she had encased the remaining meat and salad fixings as well as possible in the plastic wrap Grayson had brought. She put them back with the rest of the food, knowing they wouldn’t last long with no power in the refrigerator, then turned back to him—only to find him right behind her.

Or maybe she wasn’t so surprised after all. He certainly hadn’t startled her.

“Are we ready to go?” she asked.

“Absolutely.” He held out his right elbow, as if inviting her to latch onto it with her own arm, which she did—for the few seconds it took them to reach the front door.

She opened it, but Grayson stepped in front of her. “Me first,” he said. Which she appreciated, especially when he began looking around, his head raised as if he was listening, too.

He was undoubtedly checking for intruders to the area.

“Okay,” he said after a few seconds. “No obvious problems, but we’ll stay alert.”

“Of course,” she agreed. Without even thinking about it, she, too, stopped for a moment to listen for anything that didn’t belong there. But other than the breeze flowing through the leaves and branches of the fir trees around them, she heard nothing except for an occasional bird call, mostly crows.

Nothing that sounded like people stalking her. No cops on her trail...but she knew she had better expect the worst eventually.

Still, she also might as well enjoy her freedom for the moment and attempt to figure out a way to guarantee it in the future.

Grayson didn’t offer to take her arm again as he walked slowly around the cabin on the narrow, uneven path. “Have you walked around this way before?” he asked.

She nodded, staying at his side as they strolled along. “Yes, partly just to get out of the cabin, partly for a touch of exercise—and mostly just to think as I walked.”

“I can guess what you were thinking about. Did you reach any conclusions?”

She sucked in her lips as she considered the circumstances—as if she wasn’t thinking about them all the time anyway. “I want to get out of here. But as much as I’d like to find a way to flee the area, what would I do then? I’d need a new identity, and I’d always be looking over my shoulder for someone to recognize me and drag me back here to stand trial.”

“Not if you could prove that the only crime committed was your ex framing you for his murder.”

Savannah stopped abruptly and looked at Grayson. He’d described what she really wanted. And of course he knew that, since she hadn’t exactly kept it to herself.

But his mentioning it here and now felt—well, as if he had somehow handed her a key to the future she really craved.

Not that he’d offered any guidance about finding that proof.

Still, she had an urge to hug him for his understanding.

Heck, she had an urge to hug this kind man again for more than that.

This amazingly handsome, sexy man who could have just obeyed the law and turned her over to the authorities.

And as she looked straight into his intense blue eyes, even more striking beneath his thick, sculpted brows, she had an urge to do even more with him—like drag him back into the cabin and seduce him.

Possibly the last passionate encounter she would ever experience if she was, in fact, recaptured and thrown back into prison.

Instead, she turned and restarted their walk. She inhaled the fresh, April-cool air of the woodlands. “Yes, that’s the current goal of my life. I really want to dig up the truth. Find my ex and show the world what a horrible man he is. And find out for sure why he decided to frame me, although I think it’s just because I refused to stay married to him while he did what he wanted, like seeing other women.”

“Okay, let’s start trying to figure out how to do that.”

“How?” Savannah blurted. Since escaping and hiding in this place, she had been racking her brain for ideas—and hadn’t come up with any good ones.

“Good question.” This time Grayson stopped, and Savannah immediately halted again, too. He looked down at her with an expression that suggested he was attempting to see into her mind.

To judge whether she was actually innocent?

She wasn’t about to ask.

“I want to hear it all,” he said. “From the moment your ex disappeared and the world started to believe he was dead—but you didn’t. What happened? Maybe, if we brainstorm after we discuss it, we can come up with an idea or two.”

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