Page 58 of Montana Freedom

She handed me a small card with the time of my next appointment and her phone number. “Thank you.” Even this was good. I felt a comfortable certainty, knowing I had somewhere to be.

“I’ll walk you out,” she said. “I want to see if your FBI friend is still outside.”

“I’m sure he is,” I grumbled. “Waiting to try to force me to do what he wants.”

“He won’t if I have anything to say about it.” There was a fire in Rayne’s eyes as she held the door open for me.

And there he was, leaning against the outside wall, eyes closed. “You seriously waited out here the whole time?” I asked him. “You know where I live, Agent Phillips. You could have called me instead.”

He looked over. “Your friend, Mr. Clark, didn’t seem too interested in having us back on the ranch property, so I’m trying to respect his wishes.”

“So you stalked me in town.”

“Stalking is harsh. I saw you walking down the sidewalk by chance.” His eyes flicked behind me to where Rayne stood in the doorway and back again. Immediately, he looked at her again, in a full double take.

Rayne stepped outside. “Emma told me there was an FBI agent lurking outside my office. I needed to see for myself.”

He held out his hand. “Agent—”

“Phillips. Yes, I heard. I’ll thank you not to stand outside my door like the angel of doom, intimidating my clients. Please and thank you.”

Phillips’s jaw tightened. “Of course. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Rayne touched my shoulder briefly. “I’ll see you next week.”

I looked at Agent Phillips, evaluating exactly how much he wanted to talk to me against how much I wanted to go back to the ranch and relax after word-vomiting my whole life story. “I’m meeting Daniel at Deja Brew. You have exactly that long to talk to me about whatever you want to talk to me about, and then I expect you to walk away.”

It felt like strength, but the way my hand was shaking told me otherwise. This was borrowed strength from the force of Rayne’s dismissal and the knowledge Daniel was waiting for me. The real me wanted to curl up into a ball on the sidewalk to make myself completely fucking invisible.

He sighed like I was the one puttinghimout. “Fine.”

We began to walk.

“What I’m going to say isn’t new,” he admitted. “I’m here to get you to help us. I know you don’t want to, and I know your…unique perspective on Simon’s network makes you skeptical about whether we can protect you. But we can.”

I snorted but said nothing. We were already a block from the office. One block to go.

“You don’t have many options here, Miss Derine. Like it or not, you’re one of the only people who can draw out a monster like Simon. You need to think about that before you dismiss us entirely. People aredyingbecause of that man, and you would have been one of them. Can you really live with yourself if you do nothing while he keeps murdering people? And believe me, he doesn’t have to touch them himself for it to be murder. Every gun and every batch of drugs he ships contributes.

“You could be the one who stops it, or you could be the person who stands by and does nothing. It’s your choice, but in my opinion, it’s your moral obligation to help stop him. But if you still say no, we’ve already petitioned a judge to use your name without you present. Simon Derine will be stopped, one way or another.”

We now stood in front of the coffee shop, and I looked at him. “I guess what I said to Dr. Rayne was true.”

He waited, expectant.

“You’re an asshole, and, more than that, you have a stick up your ass.” My entire body was shaking like a leaf. So much that what was left of my coffee was spilling out of the hole in the lid. “Only someone like you could put the entire responsibility of catching someone like Simon on me. You said it yourself. He wants me dead. And I’m not going to hand myself over to be slaughtered because the FBI hasn’t been able to do their job with the mountain of information I’ve already given you.”

The door opened, and Daniel was suddenly by my side, arm around my shoulders. He was steady while I wasn’t. “There’s a wedding in a couple of days,” I told Agent Phillips. “If the judge says yes, be a decent person foronceand wait to start using me as bait until after it’s over. I’d like one normal night.”

He flinched at the implication he wasn’t a decent person, but he could disappear and I wouldn’t care at this moment.

Daniel guided me away from Agent Phillips and toward his truck. He pressed me up against the door and lined his body up with mine, holding me upright. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” I said. “I think.God, he sucks.”

A laugh burst out of Daniel, loud and free. “Yes, he does. What did he want?”

“The same. With a healthy dose of blaming everything Simon’s ever done on me because I’m not helping to stop him.”

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