Prized by the Bounty Hunter (Heroes of Whispering Pines #4)

Chapter One

BY THE TIME THE BLACK pickup climbed out of the dust behind me, I’d already memorized its grille, its cracked passenger-side headlight, and the man behind the wheel.

His name was Dex Tolliver.

Crystal had sent it two nights ago, along with the warning that had dragged me onto the backroads outside Whispering Pines in the first place.

CRYSTAL:

North Fork Bail Bonds sent him. Please don’t let him find me.

I’d deleted the message after reading it three times. Deleting it hadn’t changed a damn thing.

The man behind me was still a bail recovery agent with Crystal’s name in his paperwork. I was still the wrong woman on the right road. And every mile I kept him chasing me was a mile between him and the only person in Idaho I’d burn my life down to protect.

July heat pressed through the old sedan’s vents, thick with dust, warm vinyl, and pine resin baking off the timbered slope.

The late sun hit the windshield in hard flashes as the road dipped and twisted through the mountains.

Gravel snapped under my tires. Pine shadows cut across the hood in dark green bars.

My black tank clung between my shoulder blades, my cutoffs stuck to the backs of my thighs, and sweat slid down into the worn leather of my boots.

A yellow sign flashed past on the shoulder.

OLD QUARRY ROAD

The paved lane curved left toward Whispering Pines, where there were stoplights, storefronts, people, witnesses. The gravel road cut right into the trees, narrow and rutted, with grass growing high along both sides.

Behind me, the pickup eased closer.

Dex wasn’t rushing me. He didn’t have to. The mountain had narrowed to two choices, and one of them led straight back to town.

I hit the turn hard enough to send dust over the windshield.

The sedan fishtailed, and the rear end swung toward the ditch before my hands corrected. My tires chewed gravel. The engine screamed like it had serious objections to my life choices, which made two of us.

The black pickup followed.

He didn’t crowd my bumper. He didn’t throw rocks into my back window or give me a reason to claim later that he’d run me off the road. He kept just enough distance to stay on me and just enough restraint to prove he knew what he was doing.

That irritated me more than if he’d tried to ram me.

A reckless man could be baited. A stupid man could be misled. A man who understood patience on a mountain road was a specific kind of headache, and I’d apparently drawn the deluxe package.

The cheap phone wedged between my thigh and the seat buzzed once.

I didn’t look down.

If it was Crystal, I couldn’t answer. If it wasn’t, I didn’t care. My world had narrowed to the road ahead, the tree line pressing in on both sides, and the shape of Dex’s pickup eating the dust behind me one steady foot at a time.

Old Quarry Road climbed for a quarter mile, then dipped into shade.

The air cooled by a few degrees under the trees, but the relief didn’t touch my skin.

Sunlight strobed through the pines. The sedan’s suspension popped hard over ruts, and something under the passenger side scraped with a metallic whine that made my teeth ache.

“Come on,” I said to the dashboard. “You’re not dying on me for a man with a cracked headlight.”

The dashboard responded with a rattle.

I’d found this road yesterday morning while Crystal was still shaking too hard to hold a bottle of water.

A faded tourist map from the gas station showed Old Quarry cutting across the slope and connecting to a service road near Bearclaw Mountain Pass.

The map looked like it had been printed before half the town had cell service, but it was the best I’d had.

Yesterday, the road had looked like a possible escape route.

Today, it looked like a bad decision with trees.

A fork appeared ahead. The left branch climbed toward a rocky shoulder where orange survey tape snapped from a branch. The right dropped lower, narrower, darker, with two tire tracks worn through weeds and a line of posts where a gate had once been.

The map said right.

The map had also listed a campground that turned out to be three picnic tables and a hornet problem.

I took the right.

Grass slapped the undercarriage. The sedan lurched through a rut deep enough to throw my shoulder against the door. Pain flashed down my arm. I kept both hands on the wheel and pushed harder.

Behind me, Dex slowed at the fork.

For one glorious second, his pickup disappeared in the dust cloud I’d kicked up.

Then his grille slid back into view.

“Persistent,” I muttered. “That’s cute. I hate it.”

The service track bent around a stand of lodgepole pines and dropped into a long, slanted stretch with a washout cutting across the middle. I saw the dip too late. I braked, swore, and took it at an angle.

The front tires hit first.

The sedan bounced. My seat belt snapped tight across my chest. The phone slid off my thigh and clattered somewhere near my boot. The back end dropped with a crunch that sounded expensive, personal, and deeply final.

I got the car moving again, but the wheel shook under my palms.

Dex crossed the washout behind me without the truck even breathing hard.

“Great,” I said. “Captured by a man with ground clearance.”

The road narrowed again. Branches clawed along the passenger side. A chip of old paint flaked off the hood and flew backward. I kept my eyes on the strip ahead, searching for anything useful. I needed a clearing, a wider spot, a trail, or a miracle with decent traction.

The trees opened.

For half a heartbeat, I thought the map had been right.

Then I saw the gate.

Heavy steel bars crossed the road ahead, orange rust eating along the hinges. A Forest Service sign hung crooked from one post. A chain thick enough to tow a house looped through the center and disappeared under a padlock the size of my fist.

Beyond it, the track continued toward sunlight like a cruel joke.

I slammed the brakes.

The sedan skidded sideways. Gravel sprayed. The front passenger tire hit a pointed chunk of shale, and a sharp pop cut through the engine noise.

The steering wheel jerked.

I fought it, but the car dragged right and stopped with its nose angled toward the weeds, steam hissing lightly from under the hood and one front tire sagging into the dirt.

For two seconds, the engine ticked and my blood beat hard behind my ears.

Then the black pickup rolled into the clearing behind me and stopped across the only way out.

Dex killed the engine.

The sudden quiet landed harder than the chase.

Cicadas rasped in the trees. Heat shimmered off both hoods. Dust drifted through the clearing in slow gold sheets, coating the windshield, the weeds, my arms.

I grabbed the phone off the floorboard and shoved it deep into my right boot before his door opened.

The pickup door gave a low metal groan.

I looked up.

Dex stepped down into the dust.

He was bigger outside the truck.

That was my first clear thought, and I resented every cell in my body for having it.

He wore dark jeans, worn boots, and a black T-shirt stretched over shoulders that had no business being attached to the man ruining my afternoon.

A work jacket hung open despite the heat.

He had dark hair, dark stubble, a strong jaw, and tattooed forearms. A leather cord at his throat held an old crucifix that rested against his shirt when he moved, the kind with weight and wear and a history that wasn’t any of my business.

He didn’t swagger.

That would’ve been easier. Swagger gave a woman something to laugh at.

Dex walked toward my car like the road, the heat, the dust, and my dead tire were only parts of a problem he’d already solved.

He stopped beside the driver’s door, far enough back that I couldn’t swing it into his knees. His gaze moved over my hands, the wheel, the console, the cracked windshield, then back to my face.

“Turn off the engine and put both hands where I can see them, Crystal.”

My fingers tightened around the wheel.

He said her name like it belonged to me.

The engine coughed again. I turned the key because the car was done pretending to be useful, not because he’d told me to. Then I lifted my hands.

“Do I get a survey after this?” I asked. “I have feedback about the customer experience.”

Dex’s expression didn’t change, but something moved in his eyes. Not amusement. More like he’d noticed the shape of the knife before deciding how to take it away.

“North Fork Bail Bonds,” he said. “You know why I’m here.”

“Because you were lonely and wanted to meet women in scenic locations?”

“Because you skipped bond and missed court.”

“I’ve missed a lot of things. Hair appointments. Oil changes. A dentist appointment in Boise that I still feel morally complicated about.”

His gaze dipped to the flowers curling around my left lower leg above the boot, then lifted again. The linework was dusty and half-hidden by sweat, but the ink was there. Vines, petals, tiny leaves wrapped my ankle and climbed toward my calf, a match on paper and a problem in real life.

“Step out of the car,” he said.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to ask if you’re a cop?”

“You can ask.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“At least one thing about today is going my way.”

“I’m authorized by North Fork to recover you on the forfeited bond.”

“That sounds very official for a man blocking a woman in the woods.”

“You chose the woods.”

“I chose a road. The road betrayed me.”

Dex glanced at the flat tire, then at the locked gate. “The road gave you several warnings.”

Being right was bad enough. His voice was worse. Low, steady, and rough around the edges, like gravel under tires. The kind of voice that should’ve belonged to someone ordering whiskey in a bad decision bar, not explaining my ruined exit strategy.

He opened his jacket enough to show me the ID clipped inside, then let the fabric fall back. North Fork Bail Bonds. His photo. His name.

Dex wasn’t a deputy, sheriff, or marshal. He was just the man Crystal had begged me to avoid.

“Open the door from the outside handle,” he said. “Move slowly.”