Free Lone Defender (Love Inspired Suspense) by Shirlee McCoy Page B

purple ridge.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be. I’m alive, and I’ve learned from the experience.” She limped to the empty nurse’s station, her wet shoes squeaking with every step. “Looks like the nurse isstill searching for a wheelchair. We may as well go.” She punched the elevator button.
    “There’s no hurry. Our ride isn’t here yet, and I don’t want to stand outside waiting for it. No sense giving a sniper the chance to take a shot.”
    “I’m not planning to give anyone a chance to do anything. I need to sit down somewhere quiet, think things through. Try to figure out why searching for a guy like Daniel Redmond would put me on someone’s hit list.”
    “That’s the guy you were hunting?”
    “Yes.” The elevator doors opened, and she stepped in, turning to face him. Her eyes were chocolate brown, her lashes thick and black. Even without makeup, even with her skin red and raw, even drowning in Jonas’s old clothes, she was striking. Average height. Average weight. But there was absolutely nothing average about her.
    The thought surprised him as much as his visceral reaction to her smile had.
    “Did anyone in Cave Creek have any idea of his whereabouts?”
    “No one who would admit it. Someone knows, though. Someone who either told Redmond I was closing in, leading him to attack me, or who doesn’t want me to find him.” She leaned against the wall, her face pallid, her eyes deeply shadowed.
    “Either that or the people who are after you have nothing to do with Redmond.” He pressed a hand to her lower back, urging her into the lobby.
    “There’s no other option, Jonas.”
    “Seems like a private investigator would have plenty of other options.”
    “True, but my most recent cases have involved tracking runaways or finding estranged family members. Nothing that would put me on someone’s hit list. Even if I did manage toannoy someone enough to become a target, it would have been easier and cheaper to kill me off in New York. Why follow me here?”
    “To put the police off the trail?”
    “I’d say that was a reasonable assumption if there hadn’t been a dozen or so people chasing after me last night. I don’t have any clients with big money. None of the people I’ve tracked are rich. It takes plenty of resources to hire a small army.”
    “You’ve got a point.” He led her to a chair, planning to insist she sit, but the double entrance doors opened, and two people walked into the lobby.
    Two very familiar people.
    Jonas braced for the onslaught as one broke away from the other, racing toward him as fast as her high-heeled feet would allow.

EIGHT
    “J onas! Thank goodness you’re all right. We’ve been worried sick.” A short, plump blonde raced across the lobby and straight into Jonas’s arms. She offered him a tight hug, then turned to Skylar. A few years past fifty, the corners of her eyes lined from years of smiling, she had the kind of effortless, natural beauty that would last far into the next decades of life.
    Jonas’s mother? Before she could decide, the woman grabbed her hand, patted her knuckles. “You poor thing. You’ve been through a horrible experience. We need to get you home and tucked into bed.”
    “I—” Skylar tried to protest, but the woman wrapped an arm around her waist and led her toward the exit. It felt odd, the closeness. Shoulder to shoulder. Arm to arm. As if they were family rather than strangers.
    “Debby, if you keep smothering the girl, she won’t make it to the car, much less to Jonas’s place,” a tall lanky man said. Closing in on sixty, his hair more gray than brown, he had the same blue-green eyes as Jonas.
    “I’m not smothering. I’m supporting.”
    “In case you haven’t figured it out, these are my father Richard and his wife, Debby.” Jonas offered a wry smile, hanging back as if he felt as uncomfortable as Skylar.

    Maybe he did.
    Families weren’t always what they should be. Skylar knew that as well as anyone.