Countdown to Danger: Alive After New Year / New Year's Target. Hannah Alexander

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      He grinned over at her and was glad to see it reflected back at him. Since reading that note yesterday and seeing her reaction to it, he’d felt overwhelmed with a need to cheer her up, to ensure her safety at any cost. She didn’t realize that he could see the pain in her eyes when she thought her ex-husband might have threatened her life. To think that someone who had once vowed to love her might now be threatening to kill her...of course that would hurt.

      “There’s the first traffic signal,” she said. “You’ll want to turn left.”

      “You sure? Maybe I should ask my girlfriend.”

      She chuckled, and he felt warm all the way through. Good. He’d gotten her to laugh. Mere hours after meeting her, he’d learned about her mistrust of every GPS system known to man. Lynley preferred a good old-fashioned map. She’d even challenged his GPS system to a test, and Lynley and her map had won. In Branson, Missouri, no less, which challenged every GPS system invented.

      “Where’s Kirstie?” he asked.

      “Lunch prep at the rehab center. Nora and Carmen are guarding her, just in case. I hope Nora bakes some of her famous cookies while she’s in the kitchen. I would’ve been helping if Gerard hadn’t been called out.”

      “Now, that’s something I’d like to see.”

      “What? Me cooking? I can do that.”

      “I’ve never seen it.”

      “That’s because we’re always at Mom’s and she likes to cook.”

      “And you don’t.”

      “Not my skill set.”

      “I recall a gluten-free puff pancake you made that was one of the best things I ever tasted. Oh, and that thing you call a man-quiche.”

      “That’s right. I remember. You ate the whole thing.”

      “I have to admire a woman who knows her skill set.”

      She chuckled.

      He felt a little squeeze in the region of his chest. It was a warning sign; Lynley had begun to settle even more deeply into his heart. It alarmed him now as it did every time he thought about it.

      “Turn left again at the next road.”

      “How many times did we go over these directions before—”

      “Now turn right. Trust me, it’s a short, one-block street, and it’s hard to—”

      “Turn right here?”

      “Left, then immediately right. Maybe you weren’t listening.”

      “I could always have used the GPS.”

      “Someday she’s going to disappear and you’ll never find her.”

      “Oh, but I’ll know who did the dastardly deed.”

      “That won’t matter. You’ll need proof.”

      “How many traffic signals did you say Cassville has?”

      “Three, I believe.”

      He shook his head. “And you thought I’d get lost in a town this size?” He’d thought his hometown of Sikeston, Missouri, across the state, was small, but tiny farming communities were the norm in the Missouri Ozarks. The closest shopping mall was in Springfield, over an hour’s drive from Jolly Mill.

      The charm of a small town outclassed the convenience of the third-largest city in Missouri for Lynley, however, and since she was a country girl at heart, she came home to stay with Kirstie whenever she didn’t have back-to-back shifts at the hospital.

      John smiled when he tried to count how many of Lynley’s friends just happened to mention, with a wink, that she never used to come home so often. She’d been scheduled for two shifts this week, and neither John, Gerard nor Kirstie had been able to make her call the hospital and cancel those shifts yesterday.

      Later last night, after Kirstie had gone to bed with an old rifle under her pillow and Gerard had gone home with his wife, John tried again.

      “Lynley, I can’t believe you,” he’d said. “None of us can know when you might come under attack. It’s foolhardy to attempt to work under these circumstances.”

      “Then come with me.”

      “You think the hospital will allow you to have a bodyguard all day?”

      “No, because the hospital won’t know about this threat.”

      “And why is that?” he asked.

      “Because I won’t tell them.”

      “That, too, is foolhardy. You need to consider your patients. They could be in danger, too.”

      Lynley picked up the note and shook it in his face. “You said this was written by someone who’s greedy, not someone out for revenge. That means the hospital will be a safe place to be. So I’m going. End of argument.”

      “You know what? It’s one thing to be strong and determined. It’s dangerous to be as bullheaded and stubborn as a...an old bull.” Great way with words, Russell.

      And Lynley laughed. Which made John angry.

      He got up and paced across the living room floor. “Sandra would never have done this.”

      He didn’t realize he’d spoken the words aloud until he turned back to see Lynley’s eyes widening and her lips parting. “Done what?” she asked softly. Too softly.

      He sank into the recliner across the room from her. “Laughed at me for worrying about her safety.”

      “What would she have done?”

      “She’d have done as I asked, even if she believed it was only for my own peace of mind.”

      In the long silence afterward, John realized he’d breached a deadly boundary. A man with any sense never compared the woman he was seeing with an ex-wife, a former girlfriend, his mother and especially not his late wife, whom he’d loved with all his heart.

      “Then for your own peace of mind,” Lynley said, her voice still soft, “you should remember I’m not your wife.” She got up and went to bed.

      Early this morning he found a note slipped beneath the guest room door where he had stayed with his Glock beneath the pillow. “Just so you know,” the note said, “I’m not your wife, and you don’t have a right to tell me what to do, but I have decided to take leave until after the first of the year.”

      He’d had to smother his laughter in his pillow. He’d folded the note and placed it into his billfold.

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