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He moved in close again, so close that she feared he’d once more touch her. But only his gaze did, caressing her in a way that made her—heaven help her—long for more.
“Take it from someone who’s been there,” he said, his voice somber. “Once you start running, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. That’s not the life you deserve.”
“Ace,” she said, her throat tightening as the hour, their situation and the insanity of the attraction she was feeling to a man she barely knew but couldn’t deny rushed in on her from all sides. Or maybe it was the fact that he truly understood the secret she had been afraid to share with anyone—understood it as only a man currently locked in his own life-changing struggle could.
More likely, her judgment was impaired, too, along with her balance and coordination, for before she understood what she was doing, she pushed herself into his arms. But instead of feeling wrong or off, she felt nothing but relief, her body singing when his strong arms wrapped around her. He held her, cradling her protectively against him, as she hadn’t been held in so very long.
“Why couldn’t I have met you before?” he whispered, planting a chaste kiss atop her head. “Back when life was simple and I could’ve brought you home to the ranch?”
She chuckled. “Oh, yeah. I can just imagine your family’s reaction to your slumming with a female bounty hunter who likes to punch people for sport. You should’ve seen Selina, side-eyeing my outfit and talking down to me as if I were the help. Which I suppose I kind of am, but still...”
He snorted. “Believe me, if Selina didn’t like you, the rest of the family would have considered that a huge plus.” Giving her one last squeeze, he continued, “But Sierra, as things stand, there’s no way I can possibly—”
“Shh.” Breath hitching, she jerked her gaze toward the window as a soft clunking sound carried on the nighttime stillness. “Was that a car door shutting?”
Ace was first to reach the blinds. Carefully lifting a slat, he cursed and warned her, “We need to get out now! Ice Veins’s men’ve found your car—and it looks like they’ve brought reinforcements.”
He grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door.
“They must’ve gotten a GPS tracker on my car somehow,” she said. “I should’ve known! I should’ve—”
“Never mind that right now,” he urged. “Just move, before we end up boxed in! There are at least three of them out there.”
But Sierra was still so wobbly, she knew there was no way she could escape—especially not with armed men in pursuit. No way she could do anything except get Ace caught, too.
So with her pounding heart in her throat, she told him, “Head off to the right now. Stick to the shadows.”
When he tried to pull her, she jerked her hand away and pushed him forward, “Move! I’m just behind you!”
Except when she exited in his wake, Sierra made a sharp turn, heading to the left with her hands raised.
* * *
“Hands up and on your knees, bounty hunter!”
The bellowed words, coming some forty yards behind him, stopped Ace dead in his tracks. As he stood panting in a deep band of shadow, he recognized that voice, that of the bald ox she had pepper sprayed earlier. Recognized, too, that the men must have been closer to the room than he’d imagined when he had emerged.
And that Sierra Madden had made the choice, before she’d pushed him out the door, to give herself up instead of running for it. That she’d made that decision to give him a shot at escape and a reunion with his family, knowing that, without his money to appease them, she had almost zero chance to avoid a gruesome injury—and that was if they didn’t blow her brains out on the spot.
Stomach pitching as he overheard her assurances that she was unarmed and alone, he knew he couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t leave such a beautiful, brave woman to a gruesome fate, no matter what it cost him.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone first, powered it on and prayed it would connect before they hauled her off somewhere to maim or kill her. His stomach pitched at the sight of Sierra kneeling with her fingers laced behind her neck as two men shouted down at her. Meanwhile, a smaller, slighter figure cried, “I’m sorry, miss! I’m sorry! I didn’t want to tell them where your room was, but they barged into the office and stuck that big gun in my face!”
“Shut your mouth, you,” warned the bald man before he began pistol-whipping the young clerk.
Bleating with pain, the kid raised his arms in an attempt to protect his head as Sierra called, “Please don’t! He’s just a boy. He doesn’t know anything about this.”
A blow to the side of the teen’s head dropped him like a stone. If he was lucky, he might wake up with a headache. If he wasn’t, they might pump him full of lead, too, leaving him unable to identify the men who’d been here.
Unable to risk being overheard making a voice call, Ace fumbled through the act of tapping out a text, his heart pounding like a war drum. Adding the motel’s name and location, he hit Send, and prayed that Sergeant Spencer Colton would jump at this opportunity to bring him in. And that his relationship with his distant cousin, as strained as it was by this time, would ensure that the officer would arrive with the backup—sans sirens—that Ace had requested to deal with the dangerous armed men on the scene.
A smaller man wearing a calf-length coat with an extravagant fur collar, short-cropped hair and a full, but neatly trimmed red beard was gesturing angrily as he stood over and lectured Sierra. Ace could make out only a few words from this distance, chief among them my money. But a quiet menace carried on the chill breeze and something—perhaps a diamond—glinted coldly as a distant star
at his ear.
The loan shark in the flesh, Ace thought. Just as he suspected, the notorious Ice Veins’s personal involvement in this matter meant that Sierra and the clerk both might be long dead before Mustang Valley PD made it here.
“Please,” he heard her saying, “don’t do this. You know I’ve always made good on my dad’s notes, and I’ll keep paying. This is bad business, and I always thought you were a man who put his financial interests first.”
