Lonesome Lawmen

Three-3

Dani had been in hiding long enough to feel strange merging with the stream of people moving along the sidewalks between the sheltering rise of skyscrapers. It didn’t keep her from walking, because she didn’t know how to stop, afraid if she did stop, the things she had seen would breach shock’s cushion and overwhelm her.

It was an odd sort of panic that spun her forward. A tornado of mixed emotion she was in no shape to sort through. She half expected to look back and find people and buildings tossed and tumbled in her wake. So she didn’t look back.

A “Don’t Walk” flashed from across the street. Habit stopped her on the edge of the curb. The need to keep moving shuddered through her. She could end the replay of what happened at the safe house before it started. End the one of her baby’s dead body in a miniature casket. End it all against the hard metal of moving objects out in the street. No more fear. No more empty arms. No more guilt—

She turned from temptation toward a department store window, seeing without really seeing, the bikini clad figures frolicking in stiff poses.

Dead. They’re dead because of me. Knowledge scalded her insides. Worse than that was the relief at not being one of them. Her throat wasn’t gaping wide. Flames hadn’t licked at her blood and flesh—

The sun eased up a notch, stabbing light down the canyon between the buildings, turning the window into a mirror that reflected back her own surprisingly normal image. She had been sure trauma would show on her face like neon. Course, she’d never been that good at angst.

I bend, not break. It had been her mantra for a long time, but she still had her doubts about whether stubborn survival was a good thing or a bad thing. The oblivion of a nervous breakdown had some appeal.

…all dead…the rumors of my death…

They thought she was dead. They had to. The other Marshals, Dark Lord for sure. He’d called Peg by Dani’s name in a husky, chilling whisper as he knelt and played in her pooling blood with his long, white fingers. The scream she couldn’t let out then, tried to crowd out her throat. Again she fought it back, not out of fear, she realized with shame. She just didn’t want to cause a scene. A scene.

She closed her eyes. How pathetic.

How—infuriating. For six months other people had pulled her strings, run her life. She’d let them and it had almost cost her life, her liberty, not to mention her pursuit of happiness. When had she forgotten the first rule of writing: never let plot drive characters?

Instead of her reflection she saw two choices.

She could go back to the Marshals. Or not.

She couldn’t think of one good reason to go back.

That left “or not.”

It didn’t take much imagination to figure her window of opportunity to self determine was small. The Feds and Dark Lord would soon know they had made a mistake. She had to get a little privacy so she could work out a plan—no. She needed a plot.

She would plot her own survival.

The beauty of it was, no one believed romance writers could plot anything but sizzling s*x scenes. With a bit of luck, by the time they realized she was more than her s*x scenes, it would be too late.