A Secret In Conard County. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ try to help. He sensed a huge independence in this woman and figured he wouldn’t be wise to offend it any more than he already had. She had clearly not been thrilled to find out the Bureau had requested protection.

      When she walked into the front office, he watched heads turn. A woman dressed like this would get attention anywhere in this town, but everything about her suggested that she was federal. Even so, as lovely as she was, she’d draw male attention anywhere.

      Elderly Velma, at the dispatcher’s desk, quickly stubbed out her illicit cigarette. A first. Lance could have laughed.

      “Agent Sanders for the sheriff,” Lance announced.

      “He’s waiting,” Velma answered in her smoke-roughened voice. “Coffee?”

      “No, thanks,” Lance said swiftly. Velma’s coffee was legendarily bad. He gestured to the hallway leading to the back offices and let Erin precede him. He could almost feel the air going out of the front office as deputies relaxed.

      Interesting effect, he thought as he rapped two knuckles on Gage’s closed door.

      “Come,” Gage called.

      Gage Dalton, a dark-eyed man with dark hair dashed with gray and a face marred by a burn scar on one side, rose with a wince. As Lance made the introductions, he shook Erin’s hand. “Have a seat, Agent. Thanks for stopping by.”

      “I had a choice?” she asked wryly as she eased herself into a wooden chair. Once certain she was settled, Lance sat nearby. “Did Tom bother to tell you why he’s so all-fired worried about me?”

      “Actually yes. You got a call just before you were attacked. The guy knows who you are. He may be afraid that you could identify him. Your ASAC said he knows the risk is small, but it’s not one he wants to take.” Then he changed direction, surprising Lance. “A bomb got me, too,” he said, touching the scar on his face.

      Erin had survived a bombing? Lance looked at her, shocked. Her face seemed to have frozen.

      “I was DEA,” Gage continued. “It was a car bomb. Unfortunately my family was in the vehicle and I had run back into the house to get a diaper bag. I survived, they didn’t.”

      Erin paled and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

      “A long time ago. We can make peace with almost anything, it seems. But I want you to understand why this department isn’t going to take the Bureau’s request lightly. I once ignored an instinct that my family was in danger, to my everlasting sorrow. Your office has a feeling and I’m not going to ignore it. Lance has volunteered for protection duty, and we can get another few on board before the day is out. Good ones. Men with the kind of experience that often took them to undisclosed locations overseas. That protection will continue until you decide to leave. All I ask is that you put up with it. We’ll be as unobtrusive as possible.”

      “Isn’t this overkill?” Erin asked after a moment. “No one knows where I am.”

      “Supposedly no one knew where I lived either. But the Bureau knows, and apparently someone had loose enough lips to let it be known you were working the case against the bomber.”

      She drew an audible breath. “They told you that? They believe it was someone on the inside?”

      “Yes. Which gives me cause for concern. How many people at your field office now know where you are?”

      Lance felt his gut tighten. He’d never imagined this. Never.

      “I’ll leave right away, then,” Erin said immediately.

      “If you want, you can. But I suggest you hang around here for at least a few days. Take a breather and know we’ll be watching out for you. Looks to me like you need rest more than anything else right now.”

      She looked down at her hands, resting on her lap. “I don’t get why they told you all this.”

      “I do,” Gage answered. “They apparently feel that if anyone knows where you are, the wrong person might know. And moving on won’t necessarily help.”

      At that she raised her head. “Why not?”

      “Because from here there are only a few directions to go. Because your whereabouts have been known to the Bureau since midafternoon yesterday. That’s a long time if someone is hunting you.”

      “You’re telling me I drove myself into a kill box.”

      Lance drew a sharp breath. When he’d helped Erin, he’d never anticipated the possibility that he could be causing her bigger problems. Nor, apparently, had she.

      “Well...” Gage drawled the word slowly. “Truth is, Agent, that there are a whole lot of little bottlenecks in these mountains. Any one of them could have been a bad place to stop if you let someone know where you were. Lance here verified your ID, normal precaution. Then I guess from what he said that you talked to a friend and told her exactly where you are.”

      Erin didn’t respond for several long seconds. “In short, I was an idiot.”

      “Didn’t say that,” Gage answered. “Sooner or later, your ID would have been checked simply because you’re carrying a concealed weapon. Sooner or later you’d have told a concerned friend where you were. Just a matter of time. Going off the grid isn’t easy for someone with a lot of connections. It would have been easier to slip away if you’d reached Seattle or some other big city, but it happened here, a place the state highway runs through and very little else. You can head east, you can head west out of here. If you have time you could get to a bigger city. We don’t know how much time there is, so we’ll just keep a friendly eye out.”

      Erin slowly shook her head, and finally Lance spoke. “Maybe it’s better it happened here.”

      She turned those brown eyes on him. “Why?”

      “Because strangers stick out around here. Easy for us to keep an eye out for you.”

      “And we have a fairly good department,” Gage added. “You could have wound up someplace where they couldn’t have provided the coverage we can.”

      Lance felt his heart tug a bit as he watched Erin lower her head. From what little he knew, she’d been through a hell of a lot, and now she’d been sandbagged. But what she finally said surprised him.

      “This isn’t fair to you guys. I should just hit the road as fast as I can and disappear again. Besides, he’s a bomber. That type usually hunkers down. Him following me across the country is so unlikely.”

      Gage looked at Lance. No doubt, the sheriff was leaving it to him since he’d volunteered to be on this woman’s protection detail.

      “No,” he heard himself say. “Maybe he won’t follow you. We can’t know that with any certainty. It’s enough for me that your boss is worried about it. Regardless, you need more rest, and we can make sure you get it. Providing protection is part of what we do.”

      “But to a single individual? That’s expensive. Man, I should have just let them lock me in the safe house.”

      “We provide as much protection as any individual needs,” Lance replied. “Sometimes that’s a whole lot. СКАЧАТЬ