The Sheriff's Daughter Read online

  Then she realized it wasn’t denial she was hearing. It was a renewed spate of wagering.

  She set her jaw and turned on Mann, who stood at the end of the ring nearest the curtained barn doors. “You’re even sicker than I’ve always thought.”

  “Compliments won’t get you anywhere, Dr. Blackwell,” he said with a mocking smile. In a casual gesture, he tossed her the control stick. “Let’s see how well you use this in a real fight.”

  She caught the stick on the fly. She’d never before realized how flimsy the damn thing was.

  “Sam.”

  Logan’s urgent call spun her around just as Mann gestured grandly and said, “Release the dogs.”

  Willing hands yanked the doors up. The mottled beasts, one black, one a grayish-blue merle, leaped forward, then stood, quivering. Huge growls resonated in their chests as they ignored each other to focus on the humans.

  “Get behind me,” Logan ordered, “and be ready to hit Mann with that tranq.”

  Sam adjusted suddenly sweaty palms on the stick. “Do you want the control rod?”

  He kept his eyes fixed on the dogs. “No. You keep it. Or better yet, drop it. Be ready to move on the count of three. One, two—”

  The dogs lunged on two and a half. The crowd roared its approval. Men and women leaned close to the ring, shouting and screaming, their eyes glazed with bloodlust and fury. Sam’s brain took a horrible snapshot of the image.

  Then there wasn’t time to think. Only to react.

  Logan rushed the black dog and kicked it in the snout. The creature squealed and fell back, then came at him again.

  Sam made a lucky grab with the control stick and managed to slide the cable loop over the merle’s head. She yanked it tight, hoping to cut off the animal’s wind, but the dog was too strong for her. With a snarl, it sat back on its haunches and ripped the stick out of her hand.

  The dog shook itself, trying to rid itself of the stick, and succeeded only in swinging it from side to side, creating another hazard for her and Logan.

  “Look out!” she screamed when the black dog made a running grab for Logan’s hand.

  The flailing control stick cracked the black dog across the face and it turned on the blue merle with a snarl.

  “The tranq!” he yelled. Then he turned his back on both dogs, leaving himself horribly vulnerable. But the animals fought each other for a few seconds, snapping and growling, drawing first blood.

  Sam yanked two of the single-use injectables out of her pocket. She’d brought six, but must have lost the others outside. Two would be enough to bring down Mann, she thought.

  They’d have to be.

  But once Mann was out, how did Logan expect them to get through the others? There had to be a hundred bodies crammed into the barn. There was no way out, unless—

  Logan grabbed one of the plywood sheets. His face contorted with the agony of what must be cracked or broken ribs, and he ripped the wood from the metal frame.

  Leaving the pit with a gaping hole at the end nearest the door.

  Screams erupted and the bettors nearest the curtained door bolted for the exit. The noise and motion alerted the dogs, who stopped snapping at each other and zeroed in on the opening in the pit wall.

  Freedom.

  The black dog lunged for the gap and charged into the crowd, biting and snarling and seeming to revel in the panic as people scrambled over each other to get away.

  Not all of them made it.

  The blue merle set his sights on Logan, as he stood to heave the broken plywood into the crowd.

  “Don’t you dare!” Sam grabbed the dangling control stick and hauled onto it with all her strength. With it, she redirected the merle toward the gap and shoved it into the crowd.

  Then she let go.

  The merle cleared a path almost straight to Mann, who stood frozen in horror as his grand fight went to hell around him. Sam followed nearly on the dog’s heels. At the sight of the approaching dog, or maybe the sight of her, Mann broke. He spun and ran for the exit.

  The merle bit him in the calf and he went down. Sam landed beside him on her knees, grabbed the pole and shoved the merle away, into the crowd. The dog caught sight of the other caged animals, snarled and lunged in that direction, dragging the pole with him.

  Sam jabbed the single injectors into the muscle of Mann’s shoulder, one after the other.

  “Bitch!” Mann rolled over, grabbed her by the throat and scissored his legs around her. His grip abruptly cut off her breath.

  How long would the tranq take? Sam kicked and flailed wildly as feet pounded around her and human screams and canine snarls ripped through the air.

  As she slid toward unconsciousness, she thought she heard her name.

  “Let go of her, you bastard!” And then Logan was there, glorious in his rage. He ripped Mann’s fingers from her throat and pulled her away from the rapidly failing dogfighter.

  A white blur flashed past, snarling, and Sam was dimly aware that the other dogs were loose, wreaking havoc on the crowd still trapped within the barn. She heard shouts from outside, abnormally loud shouts that were distorted as though they’d come from a bullhorn.

  “Jimmy’s here!” she gasped, wincing when the words stung her throat. At Logan’s sharp look, she said, “Just before they grabbed us, I’d speed-dialed him. The line was open.”

  His expression cleared, then colored with approval. “That’s why you were talking so loud back there.”

  A vicious snarl brought them whipping around. The black dog stood not six feet away. Its throat vibrated with a horrible growl and its lips rippled back to reveal filed-sharp canines stained pink with blood.

  “When I say the word, you run.” Logan’s quiet command brought fear and denial to Sam’s throat, but she didn’t have time to argue before he shoved her and shouted, “Run!”

  She stumbled aside, a scream building in her chest. The black dog dodged Logan’s kick, reared up and leaped for his throat.

  A yellow blur passed between them, knocking the black dog aside.

  Maverick.

  It wasn’t until Sam saw him face off against the black dog that she realized the truth. Even his plastered leg and stitched ear couldn’t disguise the stray’s resemblance to the black fighting dog.

  Maverick hadn’t been hit by a car. He’d been one of Mann’s rejects.

  When the black dog feinted toward Sam, Maverick snarled and charged. Perhaps he was listening to his bone-deep instincts to kill, or to the call of the bloodstained pit. Perhaps he was defending the woman who’d spoken kindly to him and scratched behind his ear.

  Whatever the reason, he lit into the black dog and drove the creature away from Sam and Logan just as a human voice split the air.

  “Freeze! Police!” At the shout, the light-blocking curtain was ripped down and bodies poured into the barn. Sam recognized the local deputies, along with some of the staties who’d come down to help with the truck sabotage and the cottage bombing. Armed, they fanned out and quickly subdued the twenty or thirty people still inside the barn.

  Silence reigned with almost brutal quickness.

  A lone dog remained caged. The others were gone, and Sam winced to think of the job she and Jimmy were going to have tracking them down. But the dogs couldn’t be left loose. It wasn’t fair to the animals, or the local pets.

  Though the humans were the criminals here, the animals they’d taught to kill would lose out, in the end.

  Then Jimmy was there, facing Sam and Logan across the motionless body of Horace Mann.

  “He dead?” The sheriff nudged Mann’s motionless form with a toe.

  “He’ll live,” Sam replied. “But it’ll take him the rest of the night to sleep it off.” She stepped away from Logan’s half embrace and wrapped her arms across her chest. “It was him, Jimmy. He tried to kill me.” He nearly succeeded.

  She shivered, then shivered again when Logan put his arm around her. She wanted so much to lean on him, to let him comfor
t her.

  Then, like a flash of acceptance, or maybe resignation, she thought, Why not lean? Why not take what you want? It wouldn’t be forever, or even for a while, but it would be for the night, and maybe that would be enough.

  It would have to be enough.

  So when Jimmy moved away to speak with one of the state investigators, she glanced up at Logan. “When we’re cleared to leave, I’d like you to come back to the clinic with me.”

  His eyes sharpened on hers. “Well, it only makes sense. The cottage is going to need some redecorating.”

  But the tightening of his fingers on her flesh let her know he understood and was wholly in favor of her idea.

  They deserved one last night together before they said goodbye. And if the ending was easier for him than her, Sam thought, it was her own fault for breaking her vow to avoid dangerous men.

  For all that Logan was one of the good guys, he was the most dangerous sort of all. The sort she could fall for.

  In fact, she feared she already had.

  IT WAS FULL NIGHT before things wound down at Mann’s barn, before the last of the bettors were shipped off to county lockup and the E.R. docs confirmed that Mann would live, albeit with a hell of a hangover from the canine tranquilizer Sam had sent into his bloodstream.

  The bastard deserved that and worse, Logan thought, and locked his teeth against the rage. But the anger and the upset roiled in his stomach just the same, along with self-recrimination. If he hadn’t brought Sam along to Mann’s place, if he’d turned back the moment they saw there was a fight underway, if he’d…

  If.

  But he hadn’t. He’d charged ahead and put her in danger, exactly where he’d sworn not to put her. She’d nearly been killed, probably would have been if it hadn’t been for her quick thinking with the cell phone.

  He hated to think of her hurt. Couldn’t think of the other option, the more permanent one.

  “I’m fine.” Her touch startled him, as did her words and the calm connection when she took his hand. “Jimmy says we can go now. The dogs they’ve caught so far will go to the county animal control office for treatment. He’s taking Maverick back to Jen, and William is on his way to the city for the trial.”

  Logan was rattled to realize he’d forgotten all about the Trehern trial. It was set to resume the next day, and he was scheduled to take the stand.

  But Sam seemed all too aware of it. She gripped his hand tighter. “You can drive back in the morning. You should rest those ribs.”

  The paramedics had poked the sore spots hard enough to assure themselves—and Logan, who’d been a doctor longer than either of them had been riding in ambulances—that he was bruised, not broken. But the injuries still hurt like hell.

  However, he didn’t think that was Sam’s main motivation. He sensed a quiet desperation around her, as though she were grasping at one last night for them before he went back to the city.

  He almost told her he’d come back to visit, but what was the point? He wasn’t in this for the long term.

  Aren’t you?

  He flinched at the pointed mental question that seemed to come in his sister’s voice, but Sam left him no opportunity to consider what it meant. She tugged at his hand, leading him toward the truck, which was still concealed on the fire access road. “Come on. We can go home—go back to the clinic now,” she corrected herself, reminding him that he’d been right the first time.

  The clinic was her home, not his.

  But when he opened his mouth to tell her this, she silenced him with a kiss that burned its way to his toes and brought all the roaring adrenaline back to fight mode. To explosion mode.

  “Hush,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  But he knew that on some level, it did matter. He just couldn’t find the words, or the truth. Not yet.

  She reached up and tugged him down for another kiss. The flames roared up between them, their tawdry surroundings faded to background, along with his aches and pains. He leaned into her, opened his mouth to her tongue and surged into her kiss, proving to himself that she was alive. They were both alive.

  The danger was past.

  That last thought set a small hint of warning bell through his mind, but that was obliterated in the next moment, when she slid her lips across his jaw to his ear, where she whispered a hot, naughty promise.

  And he was lost. Whatever needed to be said between them—and he didn’t yet know what that might be—could be said in the morning.

  Tonight was for them. For their bodies. For being alive.

  They stumbled to the truck together and collapsed across the bench seat in a tangle of arms and legs and clothing. Lack of a condom drove them to the clinic and upstairs to her bedroom where a pile waited in a little-used drawer.

  There, in the light provided by a cut-glass lamp, he undressed her, following each motion, each piece of clothing with his mouth and hands until they both panted with need, with certainty.

  They fell back on the bed together, and he was unsure where he left off and she began until the moment he reared above her, poised for the joining they both so desperately desired.

  Then he knew exactly who he was. Who she was.

  And who they were together.

  He thrust into her on a cry and they rose together on a tide of passion that poured over them, tumbled them together and robbed them of breath as though they’d been too long beneath the waves. But it didn’t matter. Breathing was unimportant as they clung together and rode the thundering crest down to completion.

  And back up again.

  And again.

  SOME TIME LATER, when dawn stained the sky with pink glory, he felt the mattress dip and shift, and he reached for her.

  “Go back to sleep.” She touched her lips to his bare shoulder. “I’m going to check on the animals, and maybe watch the sun rise. I’ll wake you before you need to leave.”

  His sleepy, sated brain grasped that he needed to return to the city, needed to testify against Trehern, and then…

  Then what? He didn’t know, but he was quite certain the answer wasn’t exactly what it had been a week earlier. Something fundamental had changed.

  He knew who he was. Perhaps he wasn’t the same person he’d been before going undercover, and he certainly wasn’t the brash young doctor who’d risen to the assistant directorship at BoGen, then become bored with the position. He was someone else now. Older, and he hoped wiser.

  Wise enough to make the right decision now?

  He sure as hell hoped so.

  It was with that thought, and with the imprint of Sam’s lips on his shoulder that Logan fell back asleep.

  The phone woke him some time later.

  He was wide awake with a doctor’s reflexes, out of the bed and scrambling amid the fallen clothes for the unit before he was quite aware he’d moved. He snapped it open before his brain fully processed the yellow light of morning or the fact that the other side of the bed remained empty. “Hello?”

  “Where’s Sam?” Jimmy barked.

  “Downstairs feeding the animals,” Logan answered automatically, though that had been hours ago. His instincts flared to life at the dire tone in the sheriff’s voice. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Horace Mann finally came around and he’s talking like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Logan paused in the act of pulling on his pants and shirt, sudden foreboding icing his heart. “So?”

  “He says it wasn’t his idea to kill Sam. He was willing enough to do it, because he hates her guts, but it wasn’t a rash decision. He was paid.”

  Jimmy hadn’t even finished naming the villain before Logan hit the stairs. He charged down into the clinic and froze.

  She wasn’t there.

  He scanned the note and lifted the phone to his suddenly numb lips. “She’s on her way to the farm. Meet me there.”

  He tore outside to the truck without waiting for an answer, praying only that he’d be in time.

  If he wasn�
��t, Sam was dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam hadn’t stopped to think, hadn’t stopped to listen to the little voice that said, This is what got you in trouble the last time.

  She’d been desperate to get away from the clinic before Logan awoke, before he climbed into his red pickup truck and waved as he pulled out of the driveway headed for the city. He might be kind and say he would come back. He might even visit once or twice, but she knew full well the goodbye was inevitable.

  So she’d taken the coward’s way out and bailed before the goodbye. She’d been halfway out the door to Jen’s house, where she’d planned to drown her sorrows in chocolate-chip pancakes, when the clinic phone had rung. Not the cell. The land line her clients used.

  Now she was on the road headed toward a narrow spit of land that shoved itself into the Atlantic, surrounded by water on three sides. The phone call had been Bellamy. Not the farm manager. Not a stud groom. Not a muffled stranger. It had been Thomas Bellamy himself. The owner.

  “I want to talk to you about replacing Sears as my on-staff vet,” he’d said, and she’d closed her eyes against a burst of relief, muted excitement and fatalism.

  If she signed herself on as Bellamy’s head vet, she would have no time for trips into the city. She’d need to be on-site as much as possible.

  In a way, it might be a good thing, because it would remove any temptation to attempt a long-distance relationship, such as it was, with Logan. Even if he were open to such a thing, which she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be.

  He was too committed to being alone, to protecting the people around him from worry and pain. But he didn’t seem to realize that the people who cared about him would worry regardless and pushing them away only caused more pain.

  So she’d agreed to meet with Bellamy at the farm.

  But as she drove out there in the little hatchback she kept at the clinic for use when she didn’t want to drive the vet’s van, Sam had second thoughts.

  Then third ones.

  “I’ve done this all wrong,” she muttered aloud, realizing for the first time that she didn’t have any right to resent Logan for not offering to stay, not offering to try a relationship when she’d never once told him she wanted him to stay. She’d been letting him off easy by not asking him to make the choice.