A Wanted Man

Nothing like a brush with death to get your priorities straight.

Callie realised that the decade-old drama between her and Harlan was little more than trivial nonsense. Right now she had to worry about getting the killers behind bars.

Still, she had to admit that when she’d heard Harlan’s voice calling to her from beyond the rubble of the landslide, the relief she’d felt had been palpable. The sudden fear of losing him had ripped through her like a dark tide.

Did that mean she was still in love with him? So be it. But she couldn’t let that interfere with what they’d come here to do.

Harlan seemed to be feeling the same way. He’d gotten quiet again as they rode the trail. He’d taken the lead now, and his focus and determination was a comfort to her.

It was also, she realised as her heartbeat galloped, an undeniable aphrodisiac …

ALANA MATTHEWS can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer. As a child, she was a permanent fixture in her local library, and she soon turned her passion for books into writing short stories, and finally novels. A longtime fan of romantic suspense, Alana felt she had no choice but to try her hand at the genre, and she is thrilled to be writing for Mills & Boon® Intrigue. Alana makes her home in a small town near the coast of Southern California, where she spends her time writing, composing music and watching her favorite movies.

Send a message to Alana at her website, www.alanamatthews.com.

A Wanted Man

Alana Matthews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

“I gotta make a pit stop,” Billy Boy said.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Harlan Cole sighed and glanced at his prisoner in the rearview mirror. It was one thing after another with this guy, and he was tired of listening to him.

Billy Boy Lyman had spent half the drive moaning about his cuffs being too tight, the cruiser being too cold, then he started blathering on about how the courts and the Marshals Service had him all wrong. That he was an innocent man caught up in something way over his head.

When Harlan reminded him that he’d tried to rob a bank, put a gun in the teller’s face and threatened to pull the trigger, Billy said, “My partners were the ones with the guns. I didn’t even wanna be there—you know?”

“Uh-huh,” Harlan muttered, then spent the next two hours listening to Billy Boy’s tale of woe, the majority of which was little more than a sorry attempt at justifying the commission of a very serious crime.

Now, true to form, he was making noise about having to “pick a daisy,” as Aunt Maggie used to say.

“I’m serious,” Billy told him. “I really gotta go.”

“Can’t it wait until we get to Torrington?”

“Not unless you wanna be mopping up this backseat.”

Harlan sighed again and looked out at the night sky and the empty road rolling under his headlights. He had picked Lyman up at the Criminal Justice Center in Colorado Springs, after waiting the good part of an hour for the prisoner to be processed. It had been a long day and all he wanted was to get the man squared away, then head to his motel room and go to bed.

He just wished Billy Boy would shut up. A wish that was likely to go unfulfilled.

This all came with the job, of course. Harlan knew that. The U.S. Marshals Service specialized in fugitive retrieval and prisoner transport, and he’d spent a significant amount of his career chauffeuring dimwits from one jail cell to another. He figured he’d probably heard just about every lamebrained excuse a man could come up with for breaking the law, and normally he wasn’t much affected by it. Took it all in stride.

But there was something about Billy Boy that rubbed him the wrong way. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years old, but he had one of those smirky little faces you just wanted to put a fist in. It took every bit of Harlan’s impulse control to stop himself from pulling to the side of the highway to give the kid a quick tune-up.

On nights like this Harlan wondered if he should’ve taken his father’s advice and found a different line of work. His father had been a career deputy and when Harlan had decided to follow in his footsteps, the old man had groaned.

“You’ve got smarts, boy. Use that big brain of yours to make a difference in the world.”

But Harlan figured he was making a difference. There was nothing more satisfying than taking down a fugitive and helping ensure that the world was a better, safer place. It was just that he sometimes felt as if he were little more than a cattle herder. Even if the livestock he dealt with had a dangerous streak.

Not that Billy Boy was all that dangerous. Just annoying. And the sooner he delivered him to the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution, the happier he’d be.

“Are we gonna make a stop or what?” Billy asked. “And I ain’t talkin’ about the side of the road. I like my privacy, and there’s bound to be a gas station up ahead.”

Harlan glanced at his prisoner in the rearview mirror. “Only on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“After you’ve done your business, you shut your yap and keep it shut for the rest of the ride.”

THE CONVENIENCE STORE was one of those all-nighters with a couple of gas pumps out front. It stood just off the highway, the only sign of life in the vicinity, its fluorescent lights so bright you could see them from half a mile away beckoning late night travelers to stop in for a snack, a cup of coffee and a few gallons of gas.

It was close to midnight and Harlan wasn’t surprised to find only a single car parked out front—a battered gray Chevy Malibu he recognized as one that had passed them a few miles back.

Harlan wasn’t fond of making unscheduled stops, but he understood how merciless the call of nature could sometimes be. When he worked long transports like this one, he tended to cut back on his liquid intake, but there wasn’t much he could do about his passenger. It was up to the previous custodian to make sure the prisoner had been properly “fed and bled” before the trip. Yet despite the long processing time, someone back in Colorado Springs had neglected to do his job.

Harlan parked two slots over from the Chevy, then killed the engine and turned, staring at Billy Boy through the grille that separated the front and backseats.

“You’ll wanna watch your step in there. Even a hint of trouble and I will shoot you. You understand?”

Lyman smirked. “You ever shot a prisoner before?”

“Once,” Harlan said. “And he looked a lot like you.”

The smirk disappeared. “You got nothing to worry about with me, Marshal. Like I told you, I’m an innocent man.”

“Uh-huh.”

Harlan popped his door open and climbed out. Resting the palm of his right hand on the butt of the Glock holstered at his hip, he moved to the back and pulled open the passenger door.

With his own hands cuffed behind him, Billy Boy had to struggle a bit to climb out of the cruiser, but he managed to do it without too much of a fuss. Then Harlan took hold of his arm and guided him toward the convenience store entrance.

When they got inside, Harlan was surprised to find a woman—a girl, really—behind the counter. Places like this tended to hire males for the late shift on the belief that a lone female offered any potential troublemakers a more vulnerable target.

But this particular female didn’t look even remotely vulnerable. In fact, despite her youth and obvious beauty, there was a defiance in her expression that was a little off-putting. A look that said, mess with me and find out. She probably had a loaded piece resting somewhere under that counter, just in case the class got unruly.

Harlan saw her hackles rise as a buzzer announced their arrival and they came through the door, her gaze immediately shifting to Billy Boy’s cuffed hands.

He didn’t bother explaining the obvious, and didn’t waste any time with chitchat, either. “Restroom?”

A guy in the potato chip aisle at the back of the store—the driver of the Malibu, no doubt—looked up at the sound of Harlan’s voice. He glanced curiously at the man wearing cuffs, then went back to minding his own business.

Harlan waited as the girl reached under the counter and brought out a key attached to a wooden paddle. He’d always thought that the necessity for such things was a pretty sad commentary on the state of the world, but he took it from her without comment, then moved in the direction of her pointed finger toward a hallway just to her left.

The hallway was small and cramped with a single door marked Toilet. Harlan shoved the key into the lock, then pushed the door open and gestured Billy Boy inside.

Billy frowned. “Ain’t you gonna take these cuffs off?”

“Once we’re inside,” Harlan said.

Billy looked surprised. “We? You’re gonna watch me do my business? I told you, I like my privacy.”

“My mandate is to keep you in sight at all times, whether I like it or not. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I should trust you.”

“What do you think I’m gonna do? Whack you with my—”

“Just get inside, Billy. I’ve had about all I can tolerate of you. The sooner we’re done here, the better off we’ll both be.”

“You ain’t exactly Officer Friendly, are you?”

“Sorry to disappoint. Now let’s get this over with.”

Billy Boy scowled but did as he was told, stepping into a room about the size of a broom closet that sported a single toilet and sink. There wasn’t enough room inside for both of them, so Harlan moved forward and uncuffed his prisoner, then stepped back and waited in the open doorway.

“You ain’t gonna close the door?”

“I’m gonna close your mouth with my fist if you don’t hurry it up.”

“All right, all right,” Billy said, stepping up to the toilet. “Don’t get your panties in a wad.” He turned his head slightly. “Speaking of which, what do you think of that counter girl? Kinda cute, huh?”

“I think she’s way out of your league.”

“Yeah? I bet if I treated her right, she’d do anything I told her.”

Harlan almost laughed. “Dream on, Billy. Now will you please get to it already? I’d really like to—”

Harlan froze as something cold and metallic touched the back of his head.

“Hands behind your neck,” a voice said.

A female voice.

Damn.

Harlan didn’t have to see her face to know it was the aforementioned counter girl. He also didn’t have to use that big brain of his to figure out that she wasn’t a counter girl at all. She’d no doubt been riding in the battered Chevy Malibu parked outside, along with the potato chip lover. And chances were pretty good that the real counter girl—or more likely man—was either dead or tied up in a closet somewhere.

Harlan inwardly cursed himself. He’d been at this job for nearly ten years now and he’d just pulled a rookie move. Let the prisoner lull him—or, in this case, annoy him—into lowering his guard.

How could he be so stupid?

“Hands,” the girl said again. “Now.”

As Harlan sighed and laced his fingers behind his neck, Billy Boy Lyman turned around, that infuriating smirk once again adorning his face. He reached forward and removed Harlan’s Glock from its holster.

“You were right not to trust me,” he said.

Then he brought the gun up fast, slamming it into the side of Harlan’s head.

Chapter Two

They found the burned-out shell of the pickup truck parked on the side of the highway about forty miles south of Williamson. It was still smoldering when a highway patrol officer pulled off the road behind it, thinking it was just another abandoned vehicle whose owner had gotten a little carried away.

As soon as he took a closer look, however, he discovered it hadn’t been abandoned after all.

There was a body inside.

The medical examiner on scene had warned Callie that what she was about to see would not be pleasant—what people in the trade referred to as a crispy critter. And true enough, the sight of that blackened lump on the front seat was one she knew she’d be spending the next couple weeks trying to bleach from her brain.

Despite the damage, the truck’s rear license tag had been spared—an oasis amidst a desolate landscape—and when she called it in, she found out the pickup belonged to none other than Jim Farber, a local rancher.

Considering the fact that Farber hadn’t been seen since yesterday morning, the logical conclusion was that he was the lump on the front seat.

Callie wouldn’t know for certain until forensics did its thing, but she was a strong believer in Occam’s razor—that the simplest explanation was the most likely one. After seven years with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department, working crimes a lot more complicated than this, she’d come to rely on that dictum as if it were gospel.

The question, as always, was who had done this and why? Williamson, Wyoming, wasn’t exactly known for its violent crime, and the handful of murders Callie had investigated in the course of her career usually led her straight to a member of the victim’s family.

That, however, didn’t seem to be the case here. Only careful examination would determine the actual cause of death, but whatever it might be, Callie couldn’t imagine Farber’s wife or either of their two kids pouring gasoline over the family truck and setting it on fire. This was a dispassionate crime, and the Farbers were anything but. It was certainly possible that Callie was wrong about that, but she didn’t think so.

A groan pulled her out of her thoughts. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rusty said, clutching his stomach, his face a couple shades whiter than it had been when they’d pulled up in their SUV a few moments ago.

Rusty Wilcox was a good number of years younger than Callie and hadn’t been on the job long enough to build immunity against sights like this. Even Callie was finding it more difficult than usual to shut her mind off to the horror of it all.

But she couldn’t let Rusty know this. She was his training deputy, breaking him into the cold, cruel reality of the sheriff’s Major Crimes Squad, and it was important to maintain her professionalism at all times.

This wasn’t much of a struggle for her, however. Over the years she’d learned to bottle up her emotions, a trait that had soured quite a few relationships.

The truth was, she was the dispassionate one. And at thirty-four, she had come to the conclusion that she was destined to spend the rest of her life flying solo. She no longer embraced the dream of a husband and kids and a white picket fence.

She looked at Rusty and could see that he was struggling to hold back the blueberry muffin he’d gobbled up on the ride over, despite her warning that what he was about to see wouldn’t be pretty.

“Do it on the other side of the road,” she said tersely. “You don’t want to contaminate the crime scene.”

As Rusty stumbled across the blacktop, Callie went back to her thoughts only to have them interrupted again by a shout from the far side of the pickup truck.

“Deputy Glass! I think I’ve found something.”

She glanced at Rusty, then moved around toward the source of the shout and found one of her crime scene techs crouched next to the passenger door—a grinning, gap-toothed kid named Tucker Davies.

Why did everyone around Callie seem to be getting younger these days?

“Check this out,” he said, excitement lighting his eyes as he pointed to a spot just under the truck.

Callie hunkered down and looked. Saw a lump of half-melted polymer that roughly formed the shape of a handgun. A forty caliber Glock from the looks of it. Just like the one she carried.

Callie immediately understood Tucker’s excitement. “Let’s just pray the serial number is intact.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Tucker reached a gloved hand under the truck and carefully picked up the weapon. He pulled it out, studied it, then showed Callie the trigger guard which looked relatively unscathed. “Only a partial, but it might be enough.”

This was turning out to be a good day for numbers. First the license tag, now this. And maybe the question of who and why would be answered much more quickly than Callie had dared hope.

“Let’s get it into the system as soon as possible. Hit every database you can think of. I want to know who owns that weapon.”

“Might take a while,” Tucker told her.

“Then I guess you’d better get started.”

WILLIAMSON COUNTY Sheriff’s Deputy Callie Glass was a Wyoming native, born and bred. She’d drawn her first breath on a cold Thursday morning in her mother’s bedroom. Her mother was eighteen years old and barely out of high school, screaming in agony as she pushed her first and only child into the world, then promptly passed on.

Some said that Callie’s mom might have survived if she’d been in a proper hospital and hadn’t been victim to an inexperienced midwife. But there was no way to know that for sure. The hemorrhaging had come on swift and without warning, and the poor girl was dead within minutes of the delivery. Besides, Mary Glass was a free spirit who had never trusted hospitals, and wouldn’t have poked so much as a toe inside one—even if her life had depended on it.

Callie’s father was a kid named Riley Pritchard, who had enlisted in the army a week after he’d found out young Mary was pregnant. The Pritchards were one of the richest families in Williamson, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Riley’s father, Jonah, had nudged the boy into action, hoping to avoid the possibility of a bastard child claiming heir to their precious family fortune.

By the time Callie was born, Riley had been killed when a base supply struck overturned and crushed him, so the only parent she’d ever known was the woman she called Nana Jean.

Despite being widowed and borderline destitute, Nana had stepped up to the challenge of raising an infant and had done it without complaint.

Most of the time.

What few complaints Nana did have, came much later in Callie’s life, after a string of romantic disasters had made it clear that her granddaughter’s spirit wasn’t easily tamed, a trait she had inherited from her mother.

“I just wish you’d settle down,” the old woman often told Callie. “Find yourself somebody to share your life with. I won’t be around to hold your hand forever.”

But Callie was defiant. “Who says it needs holding?”

“Listen, child, you can be the most independent woman on the face of earth, but you still need a little romance in your life. It’s been far too long.”

“So why didn’t you ever get married again?”

“Your grandfather was one of a kind. Any man tried to replace him would only wind up heartbroken, and I’m not about to do that to someone.”

“He must’ve been pretty special.”

Nana nodded, a wistful look in her eyes. She’d never been a sentimental woman, so Callie knew that what she was about to say was sincere. “This’ll sound like a lie, but I swear to you that up until the day he died, my heart would flutter every time Walter walked into the room.”

Callie smiled. “That’s sweet.”

“Yes, it is, and I keep hoping you’ll find someone who does that to you. I thought you had it, once, but you’re too stubborn to—”

“All right, Nana. I think we’re done here.”

This conversation was just a rehash of a dozen others they’d had over the past few years, Nana worried about Callie’s ever-ticking clock. Such exchanges usually ended with Callie politely but firmly suggesting that Nana let her worry about her own love life. That she had more important things to think about, like putting bad guys in jail.

And that, she insisted, was about all the testosterone she was interested in dealing with these days.

“You go on, keep lying to yourself,” Nana would always say—a handful of words for which Callie had yet to find a suitable response.

NO MATTER WHAT CASE she might be working on, Callie tried her best to go home for lunch every day, and today was no exception.

Once the crime scene was squared away and the evidence had been tagged and bagged, she dropped Rusty off at the station house with instructions to make sure Tucker Davies called her just as soon as he got a hit on the Glock.

Then she drove the mile and a half home, where she knew Nana would be waiting for her with a sandwich and a glass of iced tea.

Their usual routine was to sit and watch Nana’s favorite soap. And as the melodrama played out on screen, Callie would invariably start thinking about how old and frail Nana was looking and worry that she might not be around long enough to see how the stories ended.

Today, however, as Callie pulled up to the curb, she was surprised to find a plumber’s truck parked in their driveway. Which didn’t make sense. They’d had the entire house repiped less than six months ago, and for the money they’d spent, there shouldn’t be any need for an emergency visit. Besides, Callie herself usually handled such arrangements, and if there was a problem Nana would have called her.

But when she went inside, she found Nana and the plumber sitting in the front parlor, sharing a pitcher of tea, as if this were nothing more than a social visit.

Although he looked vaguely familiar—about Callie’s age and marginally handsome, if you liked the type—she had no idea who this man might be.

Nana took care of that straightaway. “Cal, this is Judith’s grandnephew Henry. He just moved to town and I thought it might be nice for him to drop by for a little refreshment.”

The lightbulb suddenly went on and Callie remembered where she’d seen him before: in a photograph on Judith’s mantel. Judith had been Nana’s best friend since childhood.

Callie knew immediately what was going on here and forced a smile. “Hello, Henry, nice to meet you.”

Henry got to his feet and shook her hand as Callie shifted her gaze to her grandmother. “Nana, can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Why don’t you have a seat, dear? I’ll pour you some tea.”

“I think we need to talk alone.”

Nana reluctantly rose from her chair and followed Callie into the kitchen. Callie could see that the old woman was bracing for a scolding, and she was all too happy to give her one.

As they passed through the doorway, she felt heat rising in her chest and struggled to keep her voice low. “What in God’s name are you thinking?”

“He’s a nice boy, dear. What’s the harm in having him stop by for a glass of tea?”

“Is Judith in on this, too?”

Nana smiled. “Well, I guess she’d have to be, wouldn’t she?”

“How many times have I told you, I can handle my own love life. I don’t need you and Judith interfering.”

“With what? You haven’t had a date in six months.”

Callie glared at her. “I mean it, Nana.”

“Listen, hon, those pipes of yours must be just about frozen solid. Wouldn’t hurt to have a handsome young plumber check ‘em out. Who knows where it might lead?”

Callie felt her face grow red. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“What—you think because I’m old I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a little—”

“Stop,” Callie said, her voice louder and more shrill than she’d intended it to be. She did her best to calm herself. “Nana, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but please, stop trying to force the issue.”