Marie Ferrarella - The Coltons - Nick, Clay & Jericho

“What I should get,” Georgie retorted, gritting her teeth, “is a gun so that I could keep trespassers off my property.”

He wasn’t listening. The grinding noise had finally abated and the hourglass had faded from the screen. Sitting gingerly down on the folding chair, he began to type. Braced for resistance, Nick found he was able to logon with no trouble. No password was necessary. The woman hadn’t even taken the simplest of precautions. Go figure.

“And when you get that laptop,” he commented, “you need to think about getting it encrypted.”

Georgie watched him intently, convinced he would do something to her machine to make her look guilty. She only hoped she could stop him before he did it—not too likely because she had absolutely no idea what she was looking for him to do. “Encrypted?”

“Yes.” He glanced at her for a second. She didn’t know what he was talking about or she was pretending not to. “You know, password-access only. That way people wouldn’t be able to get onto your computer.”

She’d heard that if someone was really determined to get into your computer, they’d find a way. “But you would.”

Nick couldn’t help the tinge of satisfaction he felt from surfacing. He’d come a hell of a long way from that bully in the school yard.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I would.”

She crossed her arms before her, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard. Something was not right about a man being able to type that fast. Hands like that should be roping in a steer, not typing.

“So the people I should be protecting myself against with that password thing could still—what’s the word? Hack?—into my computer.”

“That’s the word,” he confirmed. “Hack.” Nick laughed under his breath, although there was no humor to the sound. She played the innocent well, he’d give her that. “Guess you’re right. Having a password wouldn’t help. It would be pointless.”

An uneasiness descended over her as she listened to the keys clicking on the keyboard. “So is your nosing around on my computer,” she insisted.

Bingo, he thought. He’d gotten into her online account and accessed her recent activities. It was right there in living color.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Rising from the chair, he started to turn the monitor toward her so that she could see what he knew she was already familiar with. He felt the card table begin to wobble.

Quickly bracing it, Nick muttered a few choice, ripe words under his breath. They mingled with his suppressed sigh.

Well, that hadn’t taken very long, he thought sarcastically. And he had just begun entertaining the idea that maybe, just maybe, she was telling him the truth about not having sent those e-mails. Just went to show that con artists came in all sizes and shapes. Even pleasing ones.

Especially pleasing ones, he reminded himself. People like the Grady woman capitalized on their looks.

So much for believing in fairy tales, he thought. He raised his eyes to hers. Tapping the screen, he asked, “Do you know what this is?”

Georgie narrowed her eyes into angry green slits. “A frame-up.”

Not by a long shot, he thought. “It’s the Senator’s Web site. And these,” he pointed to communication at the bottom of the screen, “are the e-mails you sent to him just in the last couple of days.”

Georgie forced herself to look at the screen. The e-mail Sheffield was pointing to was particularly venomous and it was signed “Lone Star Girl.” But that was no proof that it was her.

This was surreal, she thought, fighting off a feeling of desperation. This wasn’t happening. She was asleep, that was it. She’d fallen asleep behind the wheel of the truck and maybe even crashed into a ditch. She was having hallucinations.

This had to be a hallucination.

This was real. He was real. And he was lying. She didn’t know how he’d managed to do it while she was watching him, but somehow, he’d gotten that e-mail onto the computer.

Her jaw hardened. “No, I didn’t.” And there was no way he was going to get her to say that she did.

No more games, Nick thought. It was time to wrap this up. He pointed to the screen again. “Proof’s right here. This is your computer, your account.”

“I don’t care if that damn message is painted across the Grand Canyon,” she informed him hotly, tired of being intimidated. “I didn’t write to your precious Senator. I don’t even have an e-mail account.”

“Then what’s this?” he asked.

She threw up her hands. How the hell did she know how it got there? “A mistake. A glitch. I don’t know. Machines are prone to errors.” Her eyes blazed as she glared at him. “Nothing is foolproof and this proves it.”

She’d emphasized the word “fool.” Another dry laugh escaped his lips as he shook his head. “Calling me names isn’t going to help you.”

But strangling him might, she thought angrily. Georgie struggled to draw her patience to her and sound calm. “Look, I’m only going to say this one more time. I haven’t been home in the last five months. The computer has. Somebody—”

Georgie clamped her mouth shut as her own words and the thought behind them resonated in her head. Sheffield hadn’t planted this. Somebody had broken in. That had to be it. And if they broke in, there had to be evidence that they’d been here, right? Things would have been moved around, maybe the drawers had been ransacked. Something, anything, to show that someone had trespassed on her property, maybe even stolen her identity.

The idea took root, shaking her down to her very toes. Her throat tightened. Maybe she was overreacting. Oh, God, she hoped so.

Without another word, Georgie spun on the worn heel of her boot and hurried from the bedroom. The second she was out in the hall, she made a beeline for the kitchen.

Catching him off guard, it took Nick a second to realize that she’d bolted. He immediately hurried after her. Unable to refute him, she was making a break for it, he thought. Not on his watch. Not after he’d stood all those hours in this god-forsaken place, waiting for her.

“You can’t run!” he called after her.

The woman didn’t bother to answer him.

Expecting her to dart into the living room to grab her daughter, Nick was more than a little stunned to see Georgie run into the kitchen instead.

Was there a back door? Was she abandoning her daughter and making a run for it?

Nick strode into the kitchen after her and grabbed her by the wrist just as she’d reached the counter, spinning her around.

“Let me go!” she cried in outraged frustration. She struggled to yank her wrist out of his grasp.

For a little thing, she was pretty strong, he thought. Had to be all that rodeoing stuff she claimed to be doing. Well, it wasn’t going to do her any good. As a girl, she was strong, but she was no match for him.

“It’ll go a lot easier on you if you surrender,” he counseled.

“The hell it will.”

Ever since she was a little girl, she’d hated the word “surrender.” It meant weakness to her and she would rather die than admit to that.

Still trying to pull out of his grasp, Georgie raised her knee the way instinct and her older brother Clay had taught her, determined to award Sheffield the kind of pain that would make him set her free.

But Nick anticipated her move. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he cried.

Twisting, he jerked out of the way, throwing her off balance, then bodily pushed her against the wall. Pressed up against her, with his adrenaline running high and her breath hot against his chin, it took Nick a second to catch himself because his body was reacting to hers, taking him to places that his training did not allow for.