Dangerous Christmas Memories. Sarah Hamaker

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       THREE

      Luc’s eyes popped open. “How could you have known someone would start shooting into the hair salon?”

      Priscilla didn’t answer, but exchanged a look with the driver. Something wasn’t right here. Even his pain-dulled brain picked up on the undercurrent of concern—no, fear—that hummed around Priscilla. Why would she still be afraid when they’d escaped the shooter?

      He hadn’t realized he’d voiced that last question aloud until the driver responded. “I’m asking the questions. Who are you? Why were you following Priscilla?”

      Luc frowned. Priscilla had asked the same thing, but he hadn’t had time to answer her fully. He wasn’t sure he wanted to blurt out the entire story in front of a man with whom Priscilla was acquainted but of whom he knew nothing. “I could ask you the same question—who are you?”

      The man executed a sharp right turn onto a business street that ran parallel with the main road. “I’m US Marshal James MacIntire.”

      A US marshal? Luc blinked. He might have guessed law enforcement from the way MacIntire carried himself, but he wouldn’t have pegged him as a marshal. “I thought marshals hunted fugitives.”

      “They do.” MacIntire cut his eyes to the rearview mirror, then the two side mirrors. He punched something on the middle console that Luc couldn’t see from his vantage point behind the passenger’s seat. “We’ve got company. A silver Ford Explorer with North Carolina plates Charlie, zebra, delta, one, three, five.” He repeated the plate number, listened for a moment, then disconnected the call.

      “I was followed?” Priscilla sounded scared and angry at the same time. “I’m sorry, Mac.”

      Mac. The person she’d been talking to on the trail. Then he remembered the other job marshals had—witness protection.

      As Mac whipped the car into the parking lot of an apartment complex and exited on the back end into a residential neighborhood, Luc turned to Priscilla, who gripped the grab bar with one hand while the other remained fisted on her lap. Her fear, the certainty with which she knew the shooting at the salon had been because of her, Priscilla’s reluctance to share anything with him, and her observation of his presence on the fringes of her life instantly made perfect sense to him. She was in the US Federal Witness Protection Program.

      That knowledge didn’t alleviate his concern that she didn’t recognize him. Luc would puzzle that out later, but he could clarify what was happening right now. That knowledge brought a fierce need to protect her from whatever danger she was in, despite the fact that she had deserted him directly after marrying him. As Mac executed an illegal rolling stop at a deserted intersection, Luc quietly said to Priscilla, “You’re in witness protection, aren’t you?”

      Priscilla gaped at Luc. “What did you say?”

      Luc patiently repeated the question, relieved that the ibuprofen had indeed dulled the pain and given him back some of his mind.

      Her expression shuttered, giving him no clue as to her thoughts. “Who are you, Mr. Long?”

      Luc gave her a pass on not answering his question. Maybe hearing his name would jingle a bell in her memory. “For starters, my name isn’t Mr. Long. It’s Lucas Benedict Langsdale the third.” Saying his full name always sounded pompous to his ears. Blast his father for naming him after his paternal grandfather, who had been named for an ancestor who had died in the mid-1800s.

      She raised her eyebrows, a slight smile playing across her lips. “The third, hmm? The second must be your father, then?”

      “The second is my grandfather, still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of eighty-five. I go by Luc, while my grandfather’s Lucas.” He neatly steered the conversation back to Priscilla. “But my name is not important. Why are you hiding out in witness protection?”

      Mac turned right onto Annandale Road as a newscaster on the radio read the top-of-the-hour news at 3:00 p.m. “Priscilla isn’t at liberty to discuss the matter.”

      “Let me guess—that information is on a need-to-know basis, and I don’t need to know.” Luc would have to be content with having his suspicions nearly one hundred percent confirmed.

      Mac frowned, his head swiveling to look over his left shoulder.

      “What’s wrong?” Priscilla craned her neck to look in the same direction.

      Luc started to look as well, but the movement jostled his arm, so he stayed put.

      “I thought a truck was getting too close, but it eased back.” Mac shifted in his seat and directed his attention to the traffic in front of him.

      Priscilla resettled in her seat, but kept her hand braced against the door. “Is it the Explorer again?”

      “No, a beat-up Toyota pickup without a front license plate.” Mac made a right turn onto Arlington Boulevard, then accelerated into the left lane of the divided four-lane highway.

      Priscilla gulped beside him as the vehicle wove in and out of traffic. “What’s happening?”

      As they approached the Wilson Boulevard intersection, Mac whipped the SUV into the right-hand lane as the traffic light at the intersection flicked from green to yellow. Luc leaned slightly to see the view in the driver’s-side mirror. A dirt-caked truck mimicked their SUV’s every move, staying right on their bumper.

      Luc shifted to see out the windshield as the traffic light turned red, sending up a prayer for safety as Mac hit the gas. Then the truck slammed into the rear of the car, sending it spinning into oncoming traffic.