Jenna Ryan - Shadow Protector

“What’s your point, Doctor?”

Did she have one? Right then, Sera’s thoughts were too scattered to collect, let alone organize.

It had to be exhaustion combined with a touch of hysteria that made her want to laugh. “You know what?” She pushed back. “I haven’t got a clue what I’m saying or why I’m even talking. I need air, space and no more Willie Nelson for at least twelve hours.”

She also needed to be away from the man across the table. The ridiculously sexy cop who disliked cities and personal questions and quite possibly his old friend Sig at this moment.

Standing, Logan drew her to her feet. “You look overwhelmed.”

“You think?’

“If it helps, Sig left your bags behind my truck.”

“Sorry, Chief, not feeling any better here.”

The shadowed look he cast her brought a sigh coupled with a strong desire to bolt.

“Okay, fine. Message received. Sig’s trying to keep me safe, as a person and as a potential witness. What I’m still trying to process is why he brought me to you. He talked about a potential leak within the department, but please don’t tell me he suspects his own captain.”

“Twenty years in homicide, ten in vice, what can I say, he’s jaded.”

“You sure you don’t mean paranoid?”

Pressing a hand to her hip, Logan eased her behind him as he forged a path to the door. “Sig’s a cautious man, Sera. He wants to keep you alive, and this was the best place he could think of to make that happen.”

A man with no bottom teeth winked and offered her his drink.

Logan’s unruffled, “Doctor, Billy,” had the leer fading to a scowl and the man scuttling backward so fast he almost knocked the plates from Nadine’s loaded arm.

Sera tapped his back. “Care to explain that reaction?”

“Billy’s father turned ninety-eight last June. Doc Prichard said he needed a vitamin shot. The old man died that night.”

“Uh—well, hmm.” Unsure how to respond, Sera tried not to grin. “Ninety-eight, huh? Billy doesn’t really believe it was the vitamin shot—” She let an oblique hand motion finish the question. “Does he?”

“Yeah, he does, and he’s not alone. Most of the people you’ll meet around here are perfectly normal, but for every fifty, there’s a Billy or a Jessie-Lynn. Rumor has it aliens grabbed Jess twelve years ago after the Founder’s Day parade.” Logan opened the door—and closed it in the face of a large, hairy man whose hand had been mere inches from Sera’s breast.

Removing his hat, he placed it on her head and smiled just enough to momentarily steal her breath. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Dr. Hudson, but you’re not in Kansas any more. And while you might think the Emerald City is a little off the map—be warned, it has nothing on Blue Ridge, Wyoming.”

HE SHOULDN’T HAVE said that, Logan thought as he started his Explorer. But, dammit, he didn’t want the burden of a targeted witness’s safety riding on his shoulders. Add in the fact that she was a jaw-dropping female of—what had Sig told him—twenty-nine, with credentials that shouldn’t be possible for someone her age and a body just made for trouble, and yeah, you could say he was pissed off. Mostly at himself for reacting the way he was, but partly at Sig for putting him in this position.

He knew she didn’t remember him. Why would she? They’d never met face to face. Their one and only patch of common ground involved the age-old cop versus shrink battle. Was the suspect the police had arrested for a brutal crime fit to stand trial or not? On their particular patch, a trio of shrinks, whose number had included Sera, said no.

Now, the way Logan saw it, he could let old resentments fester or, for Sig’s sake, put the past in its place and deal with the current situation.

One glance at her face in profile, and he knew where he’d be going with that.

Although she had to know his thoughts weren’t running along pleasant lines, she opted to keep their conversation relevant and, for the most part, impersonal.

“The suspect was under surveillance when he disappeared, wasn’t he?” she asked.

Logan shoved the Explorer in gear and his emotions in line. “His name’s Hugh Paxton, and yes, he was. He dropped out of sight a few months after I came to Blue Ridge.”

She regarded him from under the brim of his hat. “Did you hear about that from Sig, or did your alien abductee return from the mother ship a gifted clairvoyant? “

Humor stirred. “Jessie-Lynn has her moments, but the answer’s no on both counts. Remote as this town is, we have a local newspaper, and believe it or not, Internet access.”

Pushing the hat back, she lowered her sunglasses. “I’m not a snob, Logan, whatever you might think—and God knows it probably isn’t flattering. I’m just a little—no make that a lot—out of my element here. I don’t usually see horses grazing outside San Francisco diners, and unless we wander into the wrong area of the city, big, hairy men seldom make a habit of grabbing women’s breasts.”

“So, no conquest for Charlie, then. He’ll be bummed.”

She laughed, and the sound of it sparked a sensation Logan didn’t need to feel in his groin. Keeping his eyes on the road, he returned to topic. “Paxton walked because the arresting officer screwed up, but he was the Blindfold Killer. Every cop on the coast knew it.”

Sera regarded the dying orange glow in the western sky. “He’d have known the police were watching him, ergo, for a while at least, his desire for freedom must have outweighed his need to kill. Either that or he’d achieved his initial goal of eleven people dead. It’s possible his more recent victims are unconnected to the first group.”

“No one ever established a connection between the first eleven victims.” Logan chose to ignore the out-of-town driver who whizzed past in a mud-spattered four by four. “Any thoughts on that, Doc?”

“Without getting inside his head, no.” But as he’d expected, after a moment she ventured to ask, “Were the victims primarily female or male?”

“Eight female, three male.”

“Ages?”

“The youngest was twenty, the oldest forty-seven.”

“And Paxton’s age at the time of his arrest was?”

A smile touched the corners of Logan’s mouth. “That’s the sticking point. No one knows. He has no official record of birth and the kind of appearance every cop hates.”

“Changeable?”

“Big time.”

“Which explains why Sig showed me multiple versions of ten different men, more than a hundred shots in total. I figured there were disguises involved—but, big surprise—Sig refused to explain. He said the less he told me, the less chance that my memories, when they did return, would be colored. All he really needed to say was that the suspect took his cue from Lon Chaney.”

Logan sent her a brief smile. “It’s not a bad comparison. Twenty pounds more or less, from dreadlocks to buzz cuts, stubble to mustache to beard, tooth caps on or off, contact lenses in or out—Paxton knows how to alter his appearance. It’s one of the reasons he was so difficult to nail in the first place. The other was the obvious lack of credible witnesses.”

“I assume that’s how he slipped under the radar. In disguise.”

When the radio squawked, Logan reached down. “Probably, but I was gone by then, and Sig was so disgusted that they’d lost him, he wouldn’t talk about it.”

Her eyes slid to his, but she said nothing, and he pressed the Receive button. “Problem, Fred?”

“The Bulley boys are at it again, Chief.”

“Home or town?”

“Home now, but they came through town on a big old tear. Near as I can tell, they’re riled up over the workers who are camped out—quite legally, I might add—on their farm. Did some pushing and shoving on Main, went into Tommy Gray Wolf’s bar, had a shouting match, punched someone, then took off for home when Tommy threatened to call it in. Which he did anyway ten minutes before Edgar Bulley did the same. Old Edgar says there’s no point sending deputies. The boys’ll just threaten to gore them and carry on ‘til you show up.”