Page 12 of Mountain Defender

There was no sign of the man.

She started across the parking lot, trying to control her breathing so Eric didn’t know she was rushing into the store. “Here he comes now, Eric,” she lied. “I’ll be in touch.”

She ended the call and jog-walked across the slushy pavement. Tripp couldn’t have slipped away while she was on the phone. He wasn’t the type.

Would she wager her retirement pension on that? Nope—she wasn’tthatconfident.

Ohhhh, in attempting to cover all her bases, she’d messed this up for real.

She burst into the store. Eighties music blasted from the speakers and she inwardly cringed at the tune even as she jerked her head left and right in search of what must be the tallest person in the place.

A quick glance at the checkout where most snack food was located revealed Tripp towering over the rest of the people in the lane. And he was staring right at her.

Her stomach gave a little flip at the weight of his intense gaze. According to her boss, those eyes had looked into his enemies’ right before he killed them.

But he wasn’t about to dispatch her—at least not for something so small as her hitting him with the Humvee.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He wasn’t stooped over in pain.

When he saw her taking notice, he slowly shuffled forward in line. Quickly, she bustled up to him.

“Get your snacks?” She opened her eyes wide and added a smile to it.

He held up a bag of beef jerky with jalapeno flavoring and dropped it onto the counter, along with several candy bars, some corn chips and a few bottles of water.

“Is all that for you?”

His stare landed on hers again. “The candy’s for you. Thought it might sweeten you up a bit.”

The clerk smirked. Alexia gave the guy a dead-eyed stare meant to shrivel his twenty-year-old testicles, and he rearranged his expression into a blank mask.

“I’ll be waiting at the entrance,” she told Tripp.

He arched a brow. “To escort me to the Humvee that you ran over me with?”

The clerk’s eyes flicked to her and back to Tripp.

“To walk out with you.” She emphasized each word.

“You thought I was gonna run, didn’t you? You didn’t really believe I was in here buying snacks.” With jerky movements, he extracted a black wallet from his back pocket and peeled out a couple bills. He handed them to the clerk and received his change.

A lot of people were staring at Alexia now. The clerk, a guy bagging groceries in the next lane and several customers standing in line. They’d heard every word of their conversation and now they thought she was crazy.

They weren’t wrong. At this minute, she felt like her ability to think and act rationally had blown away on the brisk mountain wind.

Or been ground to dust under Bryson Tripp’s burning glare.

Why did that glare make her feel like she was teetering on the tippy-top of a rollercoaster, about to fly down?

Alexia spun on her heel and stalked to the entrance to wait for Tripp, and found herself having a mental argument with him.

You thought I was going to run.

No, I didn’t.

Did too. Why else did you come into the store?

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