Chapter One #2
I weighed my choices.
I could stay in the car until he reached in and took me out, which would end with me cuffed and embarrassed. I could get out and wait for a better opening. I could make my own opening and hope he needed half a second longer than I did.
The tree line sat twenty feet past his left shoulder. Thick undergrowth, a narrow animal trail, rocks, shade. My car was dead, but my legs weren’t. Dex was big, and big men sometimes took one extra second to pivot.
I opened the door slowly.
He stepped back.
I swung my boots into the dust, stood, and let one hand brace on the roof as if the heat had made me dizzy.
My pale hair stuck to the side of my neck.
Sweat ran between my shoulder blades. The strap of my tank had slipped just enough for the upper curve of the anchor-and-compass piece on my right shoulder to show.
Dex saw that too.
I saw the recognition move across his face without changing it much.
The file had the left leg and right shoulder, a blonde woman, and a blue-eyed face if he had a photo. It had Crystal’s name in his packet.
The paperwork wasn’t the lie.
I was.
“Turn around and put your hands on the roof,” he said.
“I’m not really a hands-on-the-roof kind of girl.”
“That changes today.”
“You say that like you know me.”
“I know enough.”
“No,” I said, and smiled because letting him see fear would’ve cost too much. “You really don’t.”
Then I threw the door wider and ran.
I made it eight steps.
Eight respectable steps, honestly. Nine if anyone generous counted the stumble over the first rock.
The underbrush rushed toward me. Branches scratched my shin. My left boot hit loose gravel, slid, and caught. I heard Dex move behind me, not cursing, not shouting, just moving.
A hand closed around my upper arm.
I twisted hard, dropped my weight, and drove my elbow back. He shifted before it landed clean. My elbow caught his ribs, but not hard enough. His breath left him in a short burst, and then his other arm came around my waist.
The world turned.
My back hit the side of his pickup, hard enough to stop me but not hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
Dust puffed from the black paint. Dex pinned me there with his body angled against mine and one forearm braced beside my shoulder, giving me just enough space to breathe and not enough to pretend I was free.
He smelled like hot cotton, dust, leather, and sun-warmed metal.
A warm pull tightened low in my belly before I could kill it. His thigh had blocked mine. His hand was still on my arm. His thumb pressed over my pulse, steady and careful and impossible to ignore.
I lifted my chin. “If this is your idea of a first date, I have notes.”
Dex’s jaw flexed. “You always this helpful when you’re caught?”
“You always chase women into abandoned quarries and then ask about their attitude?”
“Only when they make me work for it.”
That should not have sounded like anything but professional irritation.
It did.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, quick enough that I might’ve imagined it if his fingers hadn’t tightened once around my arm. Then his attention came back to my eyes.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I blinked. “What?”
“You hit the truck. Are you hurt?”
The question was inconveniently decent.
“No,” I said. “My pride might be in critical condition.”
“Your pride can ride in the back.”
“You put me in the back, and I’ll kick out a window.”
“I believe you.”
His answer came too fast.
I stared at him.
Dex shifted his weight, still keeping me trapped. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
“It absolutely was.”
“It was an assessment.”
“You assess a lot of women against your truck?”
“Only the ones who run.”
“Again, narrow dating pool.”
That almost-smile threatened his mouth again. He shut it down faster this time, which was rude. If a man was going to be inconveniently attractive while ending my freedom, the least he could do was suffer visibly.
He reached behind him with one hand and pulled cuffs from his belt.
The metal glinted in the late sun.
Every joke in my throat dried up.
I could handle chase. I could handle bluff. I could handle Dex’s forearm beside my face and the heat of him crowding me against the truck.
The cuffs were different.
Cuffs meant the road was over. Cuffs meant North Fork. Cuffs meant Crystal losing the few hours I’d bought her. Cuffs meant the people behind all this got another chance to make sure no one listened.
I moved before fear could set.
I drove my knee up.
Dex turned his hip, took the impact on his thigh, and made a sound under his breath that carried more patience than pain. His hand slid from my arm to my wrist. He turned me with one clean motion, my chest facing the truck, my cheek inches from sun-hot metal.
He didn’t slam me. He didn’t grind my face into the door. He didn’t grin or linger. He simply ended the argument.
That might’ve been worse.
“Do not do that again,” he said close to my ear.
His voice had dropped.
The sound moved down my spine before I could stop it.
I stared at the reflection in the pickup’s tinted window.
Dust streaked my hair. Sweat shone on my throat.
Dex stood behind me, dark and solid, his shoulders blocking the clearing.
The crucifix had swung forward on its leather cord when he moved and rested against his shirt, old silver dull in the sun.
My breathing wasn’t as steady as I wanted it to be.
“Do all bounty hunters come with the judgmental silence package,” I asked, “or did I get upgraded?”
“Bail recovery agent.”
“That’s a lot of syllables for man with cuffs.”
“Put your hands behind your back.”
I almost told him no. I almost made him fight me for every inch of it. Then his hand tightened once around my wrist, and I saw Crystal at the edge of my mind, pale and hollow-eyed, gripping a plastic water bottle hard enough to dent it.
Crystal needed time.
I needed to be smart.
“Crystal,” Dex said.
Her name cut through the air.
I stopped moving for one stupid second.
Dex felt it. I knew he did because his hand paused on my wrist.
Dust drifted past us. Somewhere in the trees, a bird gave one sharp call and went quiet.
“Hands,” he said.
That was all.
He didn’t sound suspicious. He sounded like a man reading defiance in a pause because defiance made more sense than the truth.
I put my hands behind my back.
The cuffs closed around my wrists. Metal kissed skin, cool for a breath, then warming fast. He checked the fit with two fingers between steel and bone, careful enough not to pinch. The care irritated me because it didn’t give me anywhere clean to put my anger.
“You done running?” he asked.
“I’m currently accessorized by the state of Idaho’s least romantic bracelet. What do you think?”
“I think you’re deciding whether you can make the tree line before I catch you again.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Can I?”
“No.”
The confidence in that word hit somewhere it shouldn’t have.
I smiled anyway. “You’d be amazed what I can do when properly motivated.”
“I’ve seen enough to be concerned.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
Dex guided me away from the truck, his hand firm around my upper arm. He walked me back to my sedan, opened the driver’s door wider, and leaned in without turning his back on me. Smart man. Very unfortunate.
He took my keys from the ignition, then reached for the purse on the passenger seat.
“Hey,” I said. “At least ask before you go through a woman’s bag.”
“You got anything sharp in here?”
“My personality.”
He gave me a look over his shoulder.
“What?” I asked. “You asked.”
He searched quickly and without making a production of it. Wallet. Lip balm. Gas receipts. A half-melted protein bar. A roll of electrical tape. A tiny sketchbook with three pages of old tattoo design ideas and two pages of notes I didn’t want him reading.
He flipped the sketchbook open.
I stepped forward before the cuffs stopped me short. “That’s personal.”
Dex glanced at the first page, then closed it and put it back in the bag.
I hadn’t expected that.
“Thank you,” I said before I could stop myself.
His gaze flicked up.
That small courtesy sat between us, awkward and hot and dangerous.
Then he found the phone in the cup holder.
Not the one in my boot.
The one I wanted him to find.
He held it up. “Password?”
“Zero, zero, zero, zero.”
He looked at me.
“I’m kidding,” I said. “It’s my birthday.”
“What’s your birthday?”
“I guess that’s a problem for you.”
He slid the phone into his jacket pocket. “I’ll live.”
“People say that before they die of curiosity.”
“I’m comfortable with risk.”
Dex stepped back from the car and looked over the tire, the locked gate, and the narrow road behind his pickup. He took out his own phone, snapped a photo of my car, the plate, and the nearest trail marker. Then he opened the back door of the sedan and pulled out my light overshirt.
He draped it over my cuffed hands.
I stared at the faded charcoal fabric hanging over my wrists. “Are you worried the trees will judge your restraint technique?”
“I’m worried the cuffs will heat up in the sun.”
The words landed softer than I wanted them to.
I looked away toward the gate before his careful hands could matter too much. Crystal needed me suspicious, not grateful.
“You’re very considerate for a man about to ruin my life,” I said.
“If bringing you in ruins your life, you should’ve shown up for court.”
“I didn’t do what they said.”
Dex moved to the sedan’s hood and pressed two fingers against the edge to check the heat before leaning there. “Then you tell your attorney that.”
“Brilliant. No woman in trouble has ever thought of hiring an attorney. You should put that on a mug.”
His mouth tightened, and for the first time, something like irritation cut through the calm. “You had a court date.”
“I had bigger problems.”
“Everybody who runs says that.”
The words hit a nerve that had already been scraped raw.
I stepped closer despite the cuffs. “And everybody who gets paid to drag them back says that like it proves something.”
“It proves I’ve heard it before.”
“You haven’t heard me.”