Delores Fossen - One Night Standoff

“I need some air,” she said. Before he could stop her, she went to the side door just a few feet away and threw it open.

The hot July sunlight speared through the tiny church.

Clayton couldn’t quite choke back a groan, and he shoved on his glasses. Too late, though. The pain came.

“What’s wrong?” Lenora immediately asked.

He turned away, fought back the throbbing in his head. Maybe it wouldn’t turn into a full-blown migraine.

“The sunlight,” he managed to say. “I get headaches.”

She jerked the door closed and hurried back to him. “From the gunshot?”

He nodded and forced out some hard breaths. Sometimes it helped.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. That wasn’t in any of the reports I read about you.”

Even through the blinding pain that got his attention, and he stared at her.

“Yes, I read reports about you,” she verified. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You could have just asked. Or stayed at the hospital until I came out of surgery. Instead, Harlan said you bolted from the ambulance the second it stopped.”

“I did.” She looked away, repeated it. Lenora turned again, as if looking for a way out, and the movement caused her coat to shift to the side.

Despite the pain, Clayton pulled off his glasses so he could make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. They weren’t. He saw her belly.

Or rather, the baby bump.

It wasn’t huge, but it was there. And even more, Lenora followed his stunned gaze and pulled the coat back over her. The little gasping sound she made didn’t help steady his nerves, either.

“You’re pregnant,” Clayton said.

She nodded.

“How far along are you?” he asked when she didn’t volunteer anything else.

Lenora didn’t jump to answer that, either. “Second trimester.”

He stared at her. “That’s what—four or five months?”

Another hesitation. “Nearly five.”

The brain injury might have robbed him of some of his memories, but he could still do basic math. Nearly five months ago put it just about the time she’d been in his protective custody.

The time frame that was a blank spot in his mind.

“How much do you remember about me?” she asked before he could say anything.

“Not much. Nothing,” he amended. “Everything I know about you I learned from the reports and surveillance videos. And from Adam Riggs.”

Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting that last part, because she sucked in a quick breath. “What did Riggs tell you about me?”

Not as much as Clayton had wanted. And while Clayton would answer her questions about Riggs, he wasn’t forgetting about that baby bump. He would get answers about that before this conversation was over.

“I went to visit Riggs in jail,” Clayton explained, “to try to figure out if he was responsible for shooting me. Of course, he said he wasn’t.”

“Of course.” She huffed. “Anything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, because he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

Clayton couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t remember Riggs gunning down Jill Lang, but he’d seen the crime-scene photos and read the reports. The man was indeed a murderer.

One behind bars.

And one that shouldn’t have had the access to hire a gun to come after Lenora and him.

“Riggs said you ‘had secrets,’ and that’s a direct quote,” Clayton finished. “Any idea what he meant by that?”

He purposely dropped his gaze to her stomach. He doubted that bump had anything to do with Riggs’s cryptic comment, but Clayton figured Lenora definitely had some secrets that needed to be spilled.

She opened her mouth, closed it and then groaned. “I did you a favor by leaving Maverick Springs. My advice—let me keep doing you that favor.”

Clayton stepped in front of her when she tried to leave. Yeah, he could restrain her, but if she opened a door, the sunlight was going to cause the pain to spike again and maybe send him to his knees. After that, he wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. Ironic that a bullet hadn’t stopped him, but now sunlight could.

“Did we have sex?” he came right out and asked. “And is that my baby you’re carrying?”

The questions came easily enough, but there was nothing easy about the emotions whipping through him. He’d come here for answers about the attack and why she’d disappeared, but Clayton hadn’t been prepared for this.

Except there was something familiar about this, too.

A sense of déjà vu, and since he’d never fathered a child, he had to think that maybe the reason Lenora had visited him three months ago was to tell him she was pregnant. That would certainly explain the stunned look on his face in the surveillance video.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lenora said, her voice like a plea. “Just go home and heal. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

Well, the woman knew how to keep him on his toes. He really wanted to know what she meant by that last remark, but first things first.

“Is that my baby?” he demanded.

Her mouth tightened. “We had a one-night stand after Jill was murdered.”

The emotions whipped harder through him. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He cursed, and it was more than several moments before he could regain enough control to speak.

“You should have told me—again,” he added. “After I came out of surgery.”

“You had enough to deal with.”

That answer didn’t help. “What were you going to do? Have the baby and not let me know?”

“I would have told you eventually. When you were better.”

He leaned in and yanked off his glasses so he could meet her eye to eye. “I’m better, and I’ve been better for a while now.”

She nodded, but there was no agreement in any part of her body language. “Knowing the truth doesn’t make this situation better or easier. But it does make it more dangerous.”

Clayton made a circling motion with his fingers for her to continue.

She did, eventually. “I can’t prove it, but Riggs might have hired the shooter to kill me, and he might have shot you by mistake. And if that’s true, then it’s not safe for you to be around me.”

“That’s a big maybe. Riggs has just as much reason to want me dead as he does you. After all, we both saw him gun down Jill. We’ll both testify against him.”

“You remember the shooting?” she asked.

Unfortunately. “Yes.” However, there were gaps both before and after the murder. Big gaps that Riggs probably didn’t know he had. Hopefully, his lawyers wouldn’t, either, because Clayton didn’t want his testimony called into question.

She groaned softly. “But why didn’t Riggs come after you before that day at the diner? Why did he wait until we were together?”

“I don’t know. But that’s something we could have worked out if you’d stayed—”

“No, it’s not,” Lenora interrupted. She waited until his gaze came back to hers. “Riggs was right. I do have secrets. I’m not who you think I am.”

Oh, man. He didn’t like that tone or the look in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It’s all lies. Not the baby. That’s the only truth in all of this.” She tipped her head to his phone, where the video of her returning fire was frozen on the screen. “You said only a criminal or someone in law enforcement would have reacted that way.”

Clayton nodded. Waited. “And which one are you?”

Lenora’s bottom lip trembled. “Both.”

Chapter Four

“Both?” Clayton repeated.

Lenora saw the instant concern in his eyes. Not ordinary concern, either. The kind of concern a marshal would have when facing down someone on the other side of the law.