Fierce Wanderer by Liza Street Page B

skin soft. She smelled like wildflowers.
    She cleared her throat. “I think I’m safe now.”
    “What? Oh.” He let her go and stood up, sorry to lose contact. “Look, my phone’s in my truck. Let’s call someone for you. Highway patrol? A family member? Boyfriend?”
    Her scent changed immediately, from flowers to panic. She was afraid of something. What? Highway patrol? Maybe there was a warrant out for her arrest. Her boyfriend? Maybe he was abusive. The woman was a puzzle and damned if he didn’t want to figure her out.
    He held out a hand to help her up, but she ignored him.
    “I can make my own phone calls,” she said, shortly. “I’ve got my phone right here and I think you’ve done quite enough. Thanks.”
    Blake sensed a lie, but if she was crazy, he wanted no part of it, no matter how prettily that crazy was packaged. “Fine,” he said. “Good luck.”
    He stalked back to his truck, feeling her eyes on him the whole way. He watched her reflection from his truck window, but she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t searching in her bag for a phone, she wasn’t kicking her car, she wasn’t doing anything. What was her plan?
    He spun around and rushed back across the highway. “Show me.”
    “What?” she squeaked.
    She reminded him of a rabbit. A soft, sexy rabbit… stop it, Blake. Don’t go there . “Show me your phone.”
    She immediately got defensive. “I don’t need to show you my phone. What are you, my dad?”
    “If I was, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight for a minute. You’ve got trouble written all over you.”
    “Get away,” she said, “or I’ll pepper spray you.”
    He laughed. “You don’t have any pepper spray.” But he backed up anyway. He might like dominating his women, but he didn’t like scaring them.
    Another vehicle was coming up the hill, a mid-sized truck from the sound of its engine. Blake stepped toward her, his hands up to show he wasn’t hiding anything. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
    A red truck rounded the corner, and the bullets started flying.

Chapter Three
    Hera froze. She knew she was supposed to do something when being shot at, but what? She could only remember stop, drop, and roll for fires, and duck under something big like a table for earthquakes.
    The man leaped on her, pulling her to the ground for the second time in five minutes. Hera hoped it wasn’t going to become a pattern.
    Then again, terrifying as this was, he felt kind of good pressed against her.
    But the bullets were whizzing past them, striking her Mustang, her beautiful girl. The truck gunned its engine and sped past.
    She looked up at the man. His brown eyes looked strange, too dilated.
    “Are you okay?” she asked. “Were you hit?”
    “No,” he said. “But you were.”
    “What? I—”
    His gaze went to her arm, and she looked down. Blood pumped sluggishly from a wound near her elbow.
    “Oh. Um.” She wondered why she wasn’t screaming and crying. It hurt like a hundred devils were branding her skin, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
    “You’re in shock. Let’s call the police. I’ll drive you to a hospital, there’s no time to wait for an ambulance.” He ripped a strip of fabric from the bottom of his Star Wars t-shirt and wrapped it around her arm.
    “No. No hospitals,” she said. Last thing she needed was some APB put out on her and for Tobin to have them handcuff her to a gurney.
    “You have to get treated for that.”
    “You offered to help me, didn’t you?”
    His eyes got wide, making the dilated pupils look even larger. “Well, yeah, but—”
    “But nothing. Then help me. Take me to a friend’s house, anything. No hospitals.”
    He cocked his head. “They’re coming back. We’ve got three minutes. Who are they and what did you do to them?”
    What could she tell him? She opened her mouth, ready to spew whatever lie popped into her head first, but he said, “Forget it, there’s no time. We have to hustle.”
    The world