Six
Bennett grabbed her arm and yanked her back, hard enough that her feet left the ground. The force of the movement almost dragged a yelp out of her, but she swallowed it down, burning her throat. Although her brain wasn’t sure what was happening, she knew that Bennett was sprinting away from the compound, towing her behind him, and that meant there was a good reason for them to be running.
As her feet moved more intentionally rather than just in reflex to avoid being dragged, Bennett’s grip on her arm loosened, sliding down to grasp her hand instead. She fell into a fast, familiar rhythm next to him, her boots barely touching down on the rocky ground before they were lifting off again. She moved a half step in front of him, trusting her sense of direction to steer her in the general vicinity of the car.
Then her boot left the ground and came back down, but there wasn’t anything underneath it. For a frozen moment, she felt like a cartoon character after they’d walked off a cliff, suspended in midair, knowing that the long fall was coming.
Sure enough, she started dropping through the air, plummeting down until the ground appeared under her again after what felt like an eternity, her left foot hitting with a jarring wrench that twisted her ankle sideways. Bennett pulled her up just a fraction of a second too late as he stumbled on his own landing next to her.
As pain lanced through her left ankle, she realized she’d just dropped a short distance into the shallow gully they’d crossed on their way toward the compound. She didn’t let herself stop to check her ankle, knowing that any attention to it would just make it hurt worse. She knew if it’d been broken, she wouldn’t have been able to keep running like she was. Even so, the sprain still shot pain up her leg every time her left foot connected with the ground, making her gait uneven and agonizingly slow.
After losing her rhythm, every step felt endless. Bennett stayed next to her despite her hobbling pace, and she turned her head toward him.
“You okay?” she asked, breathless even more from the pain than the run.
“Yeah.” His voice was low but it was endlessly reassuring to hear. “You dropping warned me.”
“Glad to…” Her breath caught as a particularly sharp twinge bit into her ankle. “Glad to be of assistance,” she managed to get out.
“Need me to carry you?”
“No.” The thought of being slung over Bennett’s broad shoulder as he hauled her to safety was both horrifying and weirdly tempting. “No.” The second no was more for the weak part of her brain rather than for him.
“Let me know if you change your mind.” He didn’t have any doubt in his tone, which braced her. If he thought she could make it under her own power to the car, then she would make it. His belief in her lent her confidence.
Despite her bolstered faith in herself, her ankle still really hurt. The remaining trek back to the car seemed endless. When she saw the small flashes of light appear in front of her, her clenched jaw eased slightly. The fireflies distracted her a little from her pain and fear.
They were almost on top of the car before it appeared out of the darkness, and Felicity couldn’t hold back the tiniest sob of relief. Without asking, she headed for the passenger seat.
Once they were both in the car, Bennett started the engine.
“You don’t mind driving, do you?” she asked belatedly. After everything that’d just happened, she could see herself driving the pair of them right into a ditch.
“No.” He sent a quick but searching look her way. “How’s the ankle?”
“Painful.” She didn’t see any reason to lie.
In the glow of the dashboard lights, she saw Bennett wince at her answer. His face was definitely relaxing since the first time she’d met him. Maybe he was starting to feel comfortable around her. Maybe he was starting to like her. Maybe—
Reining in her stampeding thoughts, she forced herself to focus on the main issue at hand. “Did someone shoot at us?”
His nod was short and grim.
“From where? The roof?” She ran through the scene in her mind. The compound was a single-story building, and everything around it had been flat. It was dark, but the bullet had hit the ground by her feet. Her skin went clammy as she realized just how close she’d come to getting really hurt—or even killed. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
His nod was a bit stiffer than usual, and she found his awkwardness endearing. Immediately, she pushed the thought from her mind. Now was not the time—if there was a good time—for getting all mushy about her former stalker. Well, now her lifesaving stalker, but still.
He turned off the narrow gravel track onto a slightly wider county road.
“The roof wouldn’t have been high enough,” she said, answering her own question as she thought about the maps and photos of the area she’d gone over earlier. “Oh!” She blamed her still-present shock for her taking so long to make the connection. “They’ve turned that old fire lookout into a watchtower.”
Bennett dipped his chin in a nod.
“I figured that thing would be halfway to falling down.” She was a little disgruntled that she hadn’t thought of the fire tower immediately. Of course the militia would have someone standing watch. “It hasn’t been used in fifty years.”
She took his grunt as agreement.
With a sigh, she accepted that she’d been careless and moved on. “My phone lit up right before that first shot. I had it silenced, but they must’ve spotted the light from the screen. Sorry for almost getting us killed.”
“Not your fault.” He seemed to be taking their brush with death quite calmly. “Could’ve just as easily been my phone.”
She wondered who’d be calling him. His client wanting an update on his hunt for the necklace? A friend wondering where he’d disappeared to? A girlfriend? A wife? She swallowed through a suddenly tight throat and once again forced her thoughts into a different direction. Pulling out the culprit of her almost death, she saw she’d missed a call from Charlie.
Needing a bit of normalcy—well, as much normalcy as Charlie could offer—she called her sister back.
“How’re the mountains?” Charlie answered in her usual way, diving right in as if they were just continuing a conversation from another day.
Felicity tried to think of a concise way to describe the utterly wild day she’d just had. “Interesting.”
“Hmm…” Charlie hummed. “Interesting in a near-death kind of way?”
With a blink, Felicity glanced at her phone screen before returning it to her ear. “Are you psychic?”
“No, but I am glad you’re alive. Any injuries?”
“Twisted ankle, but otherwise I’m fine.” Felicity tentatively flexed her foot, grimacing when the movement brought a fresh bolt of pain with it. “Bennett yanked me out of there in time.”
The whole close call with death hadn’t given Charlie pause, but obviously something Felicity just said had.
“Who’s Bennett?” Charlie finally asked.
“Oh, that’s right.” Their time at the coffee shop felt so long ago, although it hadn’t even been a full day. “You missed the big reveal. The B in PI B. Green stands for Bennett.”
For some reason, her answer caused an even longer pause. “So…Bennett Green, as in your stalker?”
“Yes, but he’s been promoted.”
“Promoted? From stalker to…?”
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant.” Charlie seemed incapable of doing anything other than repeating what she said, and Felicity took a gleeful pleasure in her sister’s befuddlement. Normally, Felicity was the practical one, while Charlie was the wild card. It was fun to swap roles—at least temporarily.
“That’s right.” Felicity let her smile spread across her face, and she knew her amusement was obvious in her voice. “Lieutenant in my bounty-hunting army.”
“You had to replace me with an entire army?” Charlie asked. “I’m flattered.”
“Pretty much.”
Bennett cleared his throat. “I’d like to apply for another promotion.”
Felicity raised an eyebrow at him.
“General,” he said.
“You can’t just go from a lieutenant to a general.”
Charlie made a sound of agreement. “That’s a big leap.”
Although Bennett got that sulky look that Felicity found so stupidly attractive, he blew out a breath and said, “Fine. Colonel.”
“Captain, and that’s my final offer.”
After another deep sigh, he gave a resigned nod.
“I know he saved your life,” Charlie said. “But don’t forget he’s still a PI with his own agenda. If you need help, Moo or Cara could be there in three hours to watch your back.”
“Thanks, Charlie, but I’ll be fine.” Felicity knew she needed to change the subject before it turned into an argument she really didn’t want to have in front of Captain Bennett himself. “How are things? You get your hands on them yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m so close, Fifi.” A note of excitement lifted Charlie’s voice. “Mom and Zach are camped out in a Springs neighborhood, and Norah’s watching the State Patrol camera feeds to make sure they don’t sneak out. I’m looking forward to taking both of them down.”
Felicity felt a wash of the same mix of guilt, anticipation, and bone-deep weariness that dealing with their mom had brought on since she’d stolen the necklace and then disappeared. No, it was earlier than that—maybe since Felicity was a child and first understood that her mom wasn’t much of a mother at all.
“Fifi?”
Realizing she’d gone silent for too long, Felicity cleared her throat. “Sorry, Charlie. I was thinking about something.”
“Something like, oh, I don’t know, the fact that your stalker is suddenly a high-ranking officer in your bounty-hunting army?”
“I don’t know that captain is that high-ranking,” Felicity grumbled, but Charlie was already off on another tangent.
“Moo’s calling me,” Charlie said. “Better see what she wants. Cara and Nor didn’t find anything in their first search of the closet, but they were going to dig through it again. There has to be something in there for Mom to risk breaking in. Have fun but don’t die in the mountains, ’kay?”
“I won’t.” Although she said it with conviction, cold washed through Felicity at the thought of the close call they’d just survived. Staying alive in Simpson just got a lot more complicated.
***
By the time Bennett turned the car into the Black Bear Inn’s parking lot, the adrenaline had worn off, and Felicity was exhausted.
“All I want is a hot shower and my mediocre motel bed.” She stretched her sore muscles as well as she could in the passenger seat of her car.
Bennett gave her a strangely intense look but then hummed what she took as his agreement, so she decided not to ask what that glance meant. Instead, she unbuckled her seat belt in preparation of hobbling to her door as she glanced at the dashboard clock.
“It’s not even midnight,” she said, swallowing a yawn. “This day feels like it’s lasted a thousand years already.”
When Bennett stiffened, it was so tiny a movement that Felicity was surprised she’d caught the motion. It was just more evidence that she was focused on him in a way that was probably a bad idea, not to mention how much teasing she was going to get from her sisters when this whole story came out.
Following his gaze through the windshield to the sidewalk in front of her room, she groaned. “What now?”
The elderly woman who’d checked her in was waiting outside her room. As Bennett pulled into the parking space right in front of Felicity’s room, she got a better look at the motel owner and groaned again. From the top of her bluish white curls to her white New Balance shoes, the woman was positively vibrating with righteous indignation.
Biting back a few choice words that wanted to escape, Felicity forced herself to get out of the passenger-side door. Plastering on as much of a smile as she could manage, she walked toward the motel owner, trying not to limp too much. The last thing she wanted was questions about how she’d hurt herself. “Hello. Did you need something?”
“I need you to get your things, hand over your keys, and leave,” the woman snapped, her arms crossing over her skinny chest.
Felicity felt her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “You’re kicking us out?”
“I am.” The woman’s nod held a grim satisfaction. “With pleasure.”
Felicity gave herself a few seconds to try to understand the reasoning behind this unexpected ejection, but she honestly couldn’t. They’d only been in their rooms for fifteen minutes, and as far as she knew, they hadn’t created any loud noises or especially noxious fumes. “Why? We’ve barely spent any time here.”
“I know why you’re here.” The motel owner’s mouth screwed up even tighter than it had been.
Felicity glanced over at Bennett, but he looked as confused as she felt. “To work?”
“Work,” scoffed the woman with such disgust that Felicity shifted back a step, a little worried the owner was going to spit on her shoes. “That’s what you call hounding an innocent boy until he has to go into hiding?”
“Innocent boy?” Even though she knew it wouldn’t help the situation, she couldn’t prevent her incredulous tone. “Are you talking about Dino? Because he’s about as far from an innocent boy as you can get. He’s a meth dealer.”
“ Douglas is my grandnephew, and he doesn’t mess with any drugs. He told me himself. He was framed by his no-good ex-girlfriend, poor boy, and you’re here to harass him some more.”
Figuring it was futile to continue to argue about Dino’s innocence, Felicity bit back the words and focused on the important part of what the woman was telling her. “Who told you this?”
“I have my sources,” she said smugly before her expression went flat again. “Now get your things and go.”
After another speaking glance at Bennett, Felicity let herself into her room. She quickly repacked and scanned it for anything she’d forgotten. Her body—especially her ankle—protested her rapid movements, but she didn’t dare slow down. If she did, she didn’t think she could get moving again.
Once she’d cleared the room, she left, handing off the old-fashioned key to the owner.
“I want our money back.” It wasn’t much, but Felicity was feeling helpless and frustrated, tired and sore, and she wanted to win a point in the confrontation, even if it was a small one.
The motel owner looked affronted, as if Felicity had demanded a huge concession, but she pulled out a wad of cash, peeled off some bills, and held it out to Felicity, who accepted it. She made a show of counting it, using the petty activity as a way to hold off her exhaustion.
Once Felicity pocketed the cash, they waited a couple of minutes in stiff silence that made it feel like an hour. Bennett finally emerged from his room with a bag slung over his shoulder and handed over his key.
“I have our money,” Felicity said, tiredness dragging at her, making her desperate for the confrontation to be over. “Let’s go.”
“Good riddance,” the motel owner spat, turning toward the office with both keys clutched in her fist. “Pair of jackals, chasing after my sweet Douglas.”
“Don’t think you’re getting a good Tripadvisor review from us.” Felicity cringed at her pathetic threat, but then amusement sparked off her irritation as she turned back to Bennett. “Jackal is actually one of the nicer things I’ve been called.”
He made an agreeing sound before turning to escort her to his SUV with a huge hand warming her lower back.
“I really don’t want to be driving around the mountains at midnight, trying to find a motel with an available room,” she said, fighting the urge to lean into his supportive hand as she limped along. “Want to just sleep in our cars?”
“No.”
Glancing back at him, she raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“We’re not sleeping in our cars,” he said, opening the passenger door of his SUV for her. “We’re sleeping in my car.”
“We’re squashing two full-grown adults into one vehicle?” she asked, sinking into the seat with a low groan as her muscles protested, although it was a relief to get off her sore ankle. “Why not use both? We’ll have to move my car out of here anyway. I have a feeling Ms. Crabby Pants will be out here with a can of paint, tagging it with creative swears, if we leave it here.”
Bennett looked over at her car. From his sigh and the way he held out his hand, he knew Felicity was right. “Keys.”
She dug them out and handed them over, too tired to do anything except follow direct commands. Good thing she’d promoted him to captain.
The thought almost made her giggle as he strode over to her car. She watched from her perch on his passenger seat as he moved the car out of the lot and parked it on the street close to the coffee shop. He walked the block back, and her gaze stayed on him. Apparently she was exhausted enough that all her willpower was completely gone. She couldn’t resist the urge to watch him—or think about him as someone more than just her stalker.
By the time he climbed into the driver’s seat of his SUV, she was half-asleep. He didn’t say anything. He just started the engine and eased the SUV out of the lot. Feeling strangely secure and cared for, she allowed herself to doze until the vehicle rocked to a stop and Bennett cut the engine.
“Where are we?” she asked without opening her eyes. In fact, she wasn’t sure if it was possible to open them at that moment. Her eyes—and the rest of her—were done for the day.
“Trailhead parking lot.”
With a yawn, she opened her eyes a crack with extreme effort. “Aren’t those usually closed for the night?”
“Not this one.”
She squinted, glancing around, and saw a handful of other vehicles, although the others appeared empty and dark. There was a single sodium light at the back of the lot, but the darkness was thick everywhere the light didn’t touch.
“Stay there,” he ordered, getting out of the SUV.
Although her eyebrows shot up at his high-handedness, she was honestly too exhausted to move, so she decided to wait until morning to remind him that he wasn’t the boss of her. Turning her head to the side, she watched idly, too tired even for curiosity, as he rummaged through a duffel in the back.
Once he’d apparently found what he was looking for, he returned to the driver’s seat. “Let me see your ankle.”
With a yawn, she rotated until she was sitting sideways, her knees on the center console and her feet in his lap. Gently, he removed her shoe and sock before pushing up her pant leg a little. Almost not wanting to see how bad it was, she forced herself to look at her ankle.
“Oh!” she said, surprised and relieved. “It’s not swollen as badly as I thought it’d be.”
He made a displeased grumble as he began wrapping her ankle with the ACE bandage. “Bad enough,” he muttered.
Warmth flowed from where his careful hands touched her foot and calf all the way up to her face, making her blush. Mentally thanking the universe for the dim lighting, she rested her temple against the seat back and ignored the fact that she was being ridiculous. She just enjoyed the contact and attention as her weighted eyelids fought to close.
Once he finished putting her sock and shoe back on over the bandage, she forced her eyes open and yawned, reluctantly swinging her legs back to her side of the car. Her ankle felt so much better now that it was immobilized, and she gave a sleepy smile as she looked down at the neat wrapping. “Thank you.”
“Um.”
The single syllable caught her attention with its sheer discomfort, and Felicity turned her tired eyes to Bennett, who was staring hard through the windshield. “What?” she asked, her curiosity pushing back her exhaustion.
“The best way to…” He cleared his throat, darted a quick glance her way, and then continued glaring through the windshield as if he were still driving. “There’s only the one…”
Fully intrigued and a little amused now, Felicity sat up from her sleepy slump. “Just say it. I promise not to be offended. After all, I grew up with Norah. You don’t have to be tactful with me.”
“It’s just that we only have one blanket.” He stopped again, but at least he managed to get a full sentence out.
At first Felicity wasn’t sure why he was so uncomfortable. But then she shivered as the chill from the mountain night air started to invade the interior of the SUV, and she understood. “Oh. One blanket means we have to share.”
He made a strangled-sounding grunt that sounded like an affirmative, and Felicity grinned. He was just so adorably awkward that any discomfort she might have felt melted away, replaced by humor. Turning around in her seat, she grabbed the blanket off the back seat of the SUV. When she unfolded it, she saw what was making Bennett so uncomfortable—the blanket was small, much too narrow to stretch between the two front seats.
Looking at the back of the SUV again, she absently bundled the blanket into her lap as she thought. The back bench seat wouldn’t fit two sleeping people, especially with as squirrelly as Bennett seemed to be with the idea of sharing a blanket with her. “I know it won’t be as comfortable,” she finally concluded, “but I think folding the seat down and sleeping on the floor is our best bet.”
His only response was another wordless grunt, but when he got out and opened the back passenger door, Felicity concluded he agreed with her plan. Bennett had the seat folded down in seconds, and her tiredness started to overtake her again. Crawling into the back, she settled onto her side, spreading half of the blanket over her and using her arm as a pillow. Bennett locked the doors but then hovered as far as he could get from her.
“C’mon, B,” she said on a yawn that stretched his initial into four syllables. “I haven’t killed anyone in their sleep in months.”
She heard a choked sound that could’ve been a cut-off laugh, but she was too tired to do more than half smile in return. Her eyes closed, and she instantly fell into a deep sleep.
***
When she woke up, it was too dark to see anything, but she was warm. The bed was hard, though, and her pillow wasn’t much better, plus someone who wasn’t her was breathing in regular deep almost snores.
After a few blinks, she remembered where she was—the back of Bennett’s SUV—and she realized that her pillow wasn’t actually a pillow. Instead, she was pretty sure it was Bennett’s muscled biceps supporting her head, and the rest of him was draped over her back and side like an extra-heavy, breathing, weighted blanket.
She went still, not wanting to move and wake him. If he’d been awkward about just the idea of sharing a blanket, the reality of their full-on cuddling was sure to make his head explode.
As if he’d read her mind and wanted to make everything worse, Bennett rolled even closer, plastering his muscled body against her back and side, as close as he could get without stripping out of their clothes. Tossing the arm not under her head over her hip, he pulled her tightly against him, snuggling her as if she were a beloved teddy bear. With a silent sigh, he tucked his face against her neck so his heavy sleeping breaths flowed over her collarbone. She shivered for reasons completely unrelated to the chilly air surrounding them. Despite the stern mental voice telling her that she shouldn’t be snuggling with a near-stranger, especially in a public parking lot, Felicity just couldn’t bring herself to move. They needed the body heat, she reasoned, and moving away from him would serve no purpose except to make them both cold.
Besides, being snuggled by Bennett Green was really nice.
Feeling warm and completely safe, she started dozing off again when a whisper brought her back to full wakefulness. It came from outside the SUV, and although it could’ve been from another car camper, there was a menace to the sound that made her tense.
“Which…he…be in?”
Felicity strained to hear the muttered words, but she could only pick up every third or fourth. She tried to push up to sitting, but Bennett’s arms tightened around her, pulling her even more firmly against his chest. Trapped, she stayed in place while another person spoke in hushed tones.
“…don’t…can’t be…just start shooting.”