Dana Mentink - Cowboy Bodyguard

Call him , her gut said.

* * *

Jack Thorn replayed the voice mail, again, for the dozenth time, just to be sure he wasn’t losing it.

“Jack, it’s Shannon. I’m in trouble. I...I don’t know how to handle it. Meet me at the Park Motel, in Fairview, please, as soon as you can. I know I don’t have the right to ask, but I am. I need your help. Please.”

Jack stared at his phone again, trying to still the irrational thumping of his pulse as he contemplated the run-down motel from under the brim of his battered cowboy hat. Fairview was just an hour from his uncle’s Santa Barbara property, where they’d been negotiating the sale of a beautiful Dutch warmblood, which would fit perfectly into the jumping sessions at his family’s Gold Bar Ranch. Why had Shannon called? Why now, when he’d finally gotten things squared away in his heart, decided to make the divorce happen? Her call wasn’t because of sentimental reasons—that much was clear.

I know I don’t have the right to ask, but I am...

She’d gotten that part correct. She didn’t have the right, even if that dusty marriage license folded in his Bible said otherwise. Just a piece of paper, which he should have shredded seven years ago. Their union was born of a time when they were both vulnerable, him missing her so badly it hurt, and her overwhelmed by the ponderous weight of the medical training that stretched before her. The marriage was a mistake. That was all. They both knew it.

So why was he here? Fairview was a nowhere town, smaller even than Gold Bar, but with none of the beauty, squashed in the shadow of a warehouse district. At least it was near a small airstrip, which was where he’d landed the Cessna. Was that why she’d chosen the meeting place? Questions tumbled in his mind, along with the worry that she had not responded to any of his follow-up texts, just like she’d avoided his calls and declined to talk about the state of their farcical marriage in her first few months of medical school. He was a file she’d put away in the drawer and refused to open. She was a song that played endlessly in his ears and simply would not fade away. He’d finally driven to her med-school campus midway through her first year and waited four hours to speak with her.

“We can’t keep going like this. I know you want a divorce. We should end things, then. Legally.”

“I just can’t get into it, Jack. Not now.”

“When, then?”

Not ever, it seemed to him. So they lived in a legal limbo: married, but not. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, their last encounter being an accidental meeting when she’d come to Gold Bar to visit her mother. It was a hot-cheeked, goosefleshed, endless few minutes. She’d been talking to a man at the inn, and a flash of something had seared through him. It didn’t take any skin off his nose to live with a secret marriage, but what about when she met someone else?

His palms were sweaty as he approached Room Seven. He’d faced down wild horses, fires and floods, and recently a murderer bent on killing his twin brother Owen’s now fiancée, Ella, but he’d never had to battle his nerves so hard to get them to obey. He forced his legs into motion, wiped his clammy palms on his jeans, straightened his Stetson and rapped softly on the warped wood. The door opened, and there she stood, Shannon Livingston. Shannon Livingston Thorn , his mind amended cruelly. Her long dark hair, the heavy curtain he’d trailed his fingers through so many times, was loose and tangled, her eyes the same flecked gold of new-spun honey, but now they did not hold that gleam of cockiness, only fear.

And there he was, a six-foot tall, gangly limbed cowboy, struck completely dumb.

While he stood mute as stone, she took his hand, her fingers cold on his skin, and pulled him inside the minuscule room. As he automatically removed his hat, his mouth dropped open at the sight of a young woman, who was sitting on one of the twin beds, rocking a baby, of all things.

He swiveled his gaze back to Shannon. “Let’s hear it.”

She huffed out a breath, pacing the mud-colored carpet. Her words came out in a rush. “Jack, this is Dina Brown and her daughter, Annabell. She’s in trouble. I need to hide them for a few days. We’ve been driving in a rental car, and the men who are after her somehow caught up with us again. I lost them, I think, but I got scared and called you. I would have called home, to Gold Bar, but...”

Hide them? What happened? His eyes wandered over the faded bruises on the young woman’s arms, a shiny cigarette burn near the wrist. A stream of other questions coursed through his mind, along with the most important one. Why did you call me ? Instead, he settled on, “Who and why?”

She held up a palm, once more the in-control, unflappable Shannon. “Let me help Dina get a bottle ready for the baby, and then I’ll tell you everything. Promise.”

To give himself time to process, he looked around. A grocery bag with a loaf of bread sticking out the top, a paper map, keys to a rental car. On the run, instead of calling the police? Scared enough that she would take on the protection of a young woman and her baby? Maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe. Shannon was the most fearless person he knew, except for his younger brother Keegan, and she would face down anyone to right a wrong...unless she was the one who had inflicted it. He smothered the flicker of anger.

Shannon shook up a baby bottle and handed it to Dina. “I know this is crazy, Jack, but I need to get her somewhere safe until she finds her brother. There’s a gang after her, the Scarlet Tide. You know of them?”

“Can’t live in this state and not know of them. The cops...”

“We can’t trust them, not now. They...”

Her eyes rounded as a rumble filled the air, so loud it became a roar that shook the walls. He strode to the window and pulled the curtain aside a few inches. Two motorcycles, Harley-Davidsons, similar to the one Keegan rode in his wilder days, idled in the parking lot. The guys were big, one bearded, the other sporting a bandanna around his head, a braid poking out from underneath it.

“Cruiser,” Dina said, mouth trembling, as she peeked past his shoulder, while the baby sucked contentedly. “And Viper.” The bottle shook in her hand. “They found us again, and now they’re gonna kill me and take my baby.” The last bit came out as a whimper.

Shannon pulled Dina away from the window and folded her and the baby into an embrace. The gesture made his breath catch, for some reason. Both women looked at him.

“Hide in the bathroom,” Jack commanded. Dina ran with the baby, almost closing the door behind her except for a crack.

Shannon’s eyes were unreadable, shimmering with tension and something else. Guilt, probably, though she wouldn’t let that trouble her for more than a moment. She must have been desperate indeed to call him up.

As Jack continued to peer out, the two bikers surveyed the row of hotel rooms, considering. They weren’t sure which one was Shannon’s. They would wait, take shifts, and eventually, they’d know. There was no time to get the women out a rear exit without being detected, unless they climbed out the high bathroom window, and that would be tricky with a baby. They were trapped.

He could tell by Shannon’s quickened breaths that she’d come to the same conclusion. Her look to him was one of barely contained panic. His brain said call the cops. His gut said there was no other way, but somehow, his heart overruled them both.

He turned around and handed Shannon his cell. “Tell Dina to lock the bathroom door and call the police.”

“But...”

“Do it, Shannon.”

“Dina,” Shannon called. She pushed her way in. Her gasp told him the truth before she emerged with the baby in her arms.