Down Among the Dead Men (Entangled Ignite) by Claire Baxter Page A

now,” Dale said. “Without Caitlyn.”
    She tried to shake her arm free, but Bushy held on.
    “Not your business, McMillan,” Baldy said. “Stay out of this.”
    “You’re wrong. It is my business, because Caitlyn’s a friend of mine. I told Sergeant Peterson where I was going when I left the pub, and he’s planning to make it his business, too.”
    Baldy hesitated before nodding at his partner.
    Bushy’s hot breath oozed over her ear. “We’ll be watching you,” he muttered before giving her a forceful shove toward Dale.
    She stumbled, regained her balance, and ran to the passenger side of Dale’s truck. Wrenching open the door, she climbed in just as the other truck sped away.
    Dale put the gun behind his seat as he stepped into the vehicle. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
    “I’m fine.” Her voice wobbled and she bit down to stop her bottom lip from quivering.
    “It was lucky they stopped on this road. If they’d turned off…” He shook his head.
    “Do you know them?”
    “By sight. They’re relatively new around here. They’re working a claim over on the far side of the opal fields, I think.”
    “They knew your name.”
    He nodded. “Comes with being the only lapidary in town. What did they say to you?”
    “They asked about Wally. They said they knew he was hiding somewhere.”
    “Interesting.”
    “I know.” Her voice shook again. “But I’ve never been so freaking scared.”
    He looked at her for a moment, then put an arm around her, pulling her into his shoulder. She clutched at his shirt as if it was her only anchor to safety, while the warmth and strength of his arm soothed her nerves. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. The aroma of beer from the pub clung to the fabric of his shirt, but stronger than that was the clean, warm scent of his skin, and she pressed her face into the hollow where his neck joined his shoulder.
    “You smell so much better,” she said, wondering if she’d ever forget the stale odor of those two men.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Sorry.” Idiot. What kind of thing was that to say?
    “Don’t think about those guys any more. We’ll talk tomorrow. Calm down now. Breathe.”
    She nodded, took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to blank her mind. The scene replayed anyway, and she straightened away from him. “Why do you have a gun?”
    He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “It’s legal,” he said. “I do have a license for it.”
    “I should hope so, but why do you need one?”
    He shrugged. “Protection. Look, I have a family. I’m not going to sit here waiting for Shane’s father to find us and not have any means of protecting Ginny and Rose.”
    She exhaled. “No, I suppose not.”
    “It came in useful tonight, didn’t it?”
    “Yes, and I’m grateful, but would you actually have fired it?” She shuddered at the thought.
    “We’ll never know.” He started the engine, turned the truck around, and drove back toward the town.
    The silence between them soothed her, wrapped around her like a warm blanket.
    As they approached the pub Dale said, “You know, you’re going to have to be more careful from now on.” There was a faint tremor in his voice as if he was fighting some emotion.
    She recalled Bushy’s parting words and her breath solidified in her throat. She shuddered again. “Oh God, they might try to grab Max next time.”
    “Yes, she’ll have to take more care as well.”
    “So how did you know I needed help?”
    “I was looking for you. One minute you were with that guy, Steve, and the next you’d disappeared. Brenda said she’d heard someone leave by the back door, but your purse was still in the kitchen so she didn’t think it could be you. But then Bruce said he’d seen you leave the bar with those guys following you, so when you were nowhere to be found, we guessed they had something to do with it.” He grinned. “Bruce said they were as ugly as a box of blowflies.”
    “He’s right. Sergeant