Jessica Andersen - Bear Claw Bodyguard

“You’re right.” And the fact that she recognized it argued for some basic proficiency with a gun. He hoped. “Take this.” He yanked his pistol, thumbed off the safety and handed it over. “When I say the word, put four bullets into those rocks up there. Space them out a little and don’t worry about aiming, it’s just cover fire. Just don’t point it at me, okay?”

She took the weapon, surprised the hell out of him by checking it with practiced ease, though her hands shook, and looked back up at him. “Only four?”

“Save the others in case I’m not the one who comes back for you.” He didn’t have time to sugarcoat it, punctuated by the crack-crack of two more shots.

The last of the color drained from her face, but she nodded and tightened her grip on the pistol. “Make sure you are, okay?”

He slid his hand up her arm to the back of her neck and squeezed in a gesture that suddenly felt more intimate than he’d intended it to. “Will do.”

Then, before he could think about all the ways this could go very wrong very fast, he popped his head around the stone, pounded two more shots into the rocks where the bastard was hiding, and then took off, staying low, moving fast, and keeping as much cover between him and the shooter as he could.

A bullet slammed into a nearby tree trunk with a fleshy, splintering noise. He ducked, dodged, snapped off a shot, saw that he was about to hit open ground and shouted, “Tori, now!”

The first shot rang out almost immediately from behind him and kicked up the gravel below the gunman’s position. He didn’t look to see where the second and third hit, just took off running in a jackrabbit zigzag across the open ground. His feet skidded on the loose, sandy gravel, his body burned with the anticipation of the next shot, and the rocky cover up ahead looked farther away with every step he took. But Tori’s third shot came when he was halfway across, her fourth at the three-quarter’s mark, and then he was there!

Breath rattling in his lungs, he dived behind the bigger boulders that led the way up to where the bastard was hiding, slammed back against the cool stone surface and made himself take the time to reload, even though his heart was slamming with the rhythm of get him, get him, get him!

Determination gripped him—anger, even. It wasn’t coming just from the drive for justice that was part of the Williams DNA either, wasn’t because of the troubles that had been hammering at Bear Claw and its overworked, understaffed P.D. either. It was bubbling straight up from deep inside him: a raw and atavistic need to make sure nothing happened to Tori.

Growling low in his throat, he charged up the hill, staying low and moving fast, sacrificing some stealth and cover for speed because he was all too aware that the gunman hadn’t gotten off a shot in nearly a minute.

He led with his shotgun, swung around the last outcropping—and stopped dead at the sight of an empty, scuffed-up spot where the shooter had been.

Tori! He shouted the word in his skull but didn’t let it out as he spun in a quick three-sixty, not sure if the guy had gone after her or taken off. Please, let him have taken off .

There was no sign of the gunman save for the scuff marks leading down, a single line where the guy had retraced his trail and then branched off—straight onto a wide, rocky ledge that didn’t hold any tracks and was headed straight for Tori.

Pulse thudding in ears that strained for the sound of gunfire, Jack charged along the ridge of stone, and then crept to within a few boulders of where he’d left Tori, hoping to hell that the silence meant she was hiding, not taken hostage. The last few seconds were the worst, as he got to within a single stone of her position, straining to see if he could detect the sounds of one or two people on the other side. Then, knowing it was better to risk his position than take friendly fire, he called softly, “Tori, it’s Jack. I—”

A blur came at him from the side. He wheeled with his gun up and ready, then jerked it to the side as his brain registered petite curves and huge brown eyes. There wasn’t time to notice much else before she flung herself against him and hung on tight, all warmth and curves and slight-ness against him.

Even as he told himself to detach and go after the guy, his arms closed around her with equal force.

“You’re okay!” Her words were muffled in his shirt and her body vibrated with tension. “I thought …” As if suddenly realizing what she’d done, she pushed away from him, blushing. “Here, take this.” She shoved the pistol into his free hand, leaving him standing there with a gun in each hand and the imprint of her body on his as she took a couple more steps back, holding her hands out to her sides as if to say “Sorry, don’t know what got into me.”

And even though he knew the moment had come from fear and relief, part of him was dying to close the gap between them and touch her for real.

Bad timing , he told himself. And a really, really bad idea . So instead of reaching for her, he safetied and holstered the pistol, then turned away from her to scan the scene. “Did you see him?”

“He’s gone?”

“Looks like it.” And sure enough, a quick but thorough search of the immediate area said that the gunman had left. Jack wasn’t willing to bet on how far he’d gone, though, or that he wasn’t coming back with reinforcements, so he turned them back the way they had come, feeling the prickle of unseen—maybe imagined, maybe not—eyes on the back of his neck. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hang on.” Tori dug in. “I need my bag.”

He might have argued—his gut said they had to get out of there fast—but the sudden gleam in her eyes told him that he’d be wasting his time. Besides, it wasn’t much of a detour over to where her knapsack had fallen … and he wasn’t sure how much of his disquiet came from the gunman and how much from feeling that he and Tori were skirting the edge of dangerous territory … especially given that her stay in Bear Claw had a guaranteed expiration date, and he wasn’t wired for “casual.”

Still, though, as he led her back to the SUV using a different track than the one they’d taken before, just in case, he was acutely aware not just of their surroundings and the unusually quiet tension in the air, but also of her. The practiced moves of her body said she was used to moving silently through the woods, but the slight hitch in her breathing said she was terrified and doing her best to hold it together.

On the drive earlier, he had been thinking that she was too slight to handle the Forgotten, skilled or not. Now, his respect notched up—she could handle herself and then some. Still, he wished like hell that he’d talked her out of the trip. She shouldn’t have been in the line of fire, period.

That was fixable, though. He would get her back down to civilization, load her onto a plane, and get back to work. There was no way Tucker could keep him off this investigation now, not when—

“Oh, hell.” He stopped dead at the sight of the SUV. It was still sitting where he’d parked it, but the hood was popped. “Stay put,” he ordered grimly, “and get ready with that pistol.”

“Shouldn’t we stick together?”

“Not if … Not right now.” If the damn thing was wired to blow, he didn’t want her anywhere near it—and the militia had done worse. Without taking his eyes off their surroundings, he dug into his jacket for a canteen and his pocketknife. “Hold on to these for me, will you? If we get separated, I want you to head back down. Stay off the road but keep it in sight.”

“You …” She trailed off, then caught his hand for a moment, squeezed it. “Don’t do that to me, okay?”