Free Manhunt in the Wild West by Jessica Andersen Page A

lights, and the nonessential machines. When she set the security system, though, she deliberately took the back door off-line, so her reentry later wouldn’t alert the officer on duty at the main desk of the PD, which had a hardwired feed from the security system at the ME’s office.
    Deliberately rigging the security system gave Chelsea serious queasiness. If—or rather when— IA figured out that someone had been inside the morgue after hours, it would be ridiculously easy for the investigators to figure out that she’d been the inside woman. But that didn’t stop her. She had to believe she was doing the right thing, even if it might not look that way to the people who knew her best.
    If everything went right, she’d be a hero. If not, she’d be unemployed and unemployable. It was her call, her choice.
    Stifling the little voice that said she should go straight to Seth and Tucker and tell them about Fax’s visit to her house, she collected her police escort and headed home. After the two cops checked out her house and refused her offer of coffee, they left her and went across the street to their cruiser, considering her tucked in safely for the night.
    In reality, she was waiting. And jittering.
    Amped up, both by the risk she was about to take and by the promise of seeing Fax again, knowing now how he tasted and how his body felt against hers, she moved from one room to the next, unable to settle. Having seen him do it the night before, she avoided the windows, not wanting the cops to see her pacing one minute, gone the next. She tried to copy his movements, too—the way his footsteps had been almost silent, and how he had seemed perfectly balanced, ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice.
    Or rather, ready to fight, not flee. He wasn’t the sort to back down from any challenge.
    Stop it, she told herself. He’s not a character from some book or movie that you’re free to have a crush on. He’s a real guy, and he’s not yours. Which was true, she knew. Fax might have asked for her help because he had nowhere else to turn, and he might want her physically, but he’d never stick around or ask her to come away with him. She knew that like she knew her own name, her own weaknesses.
    That didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge for the duration, though, she thought, imagining him naked, remembering the taste and feel of him, the—
    “Chelsea.”
    She gasped and spun, and there he was, standing in her darkened kitchen doorway with the night at his back. He was wearing dark jeans that fit like they’d been made for him, along with heavy hiking boots and a sweater the same blue as his eyes. He wore the lined leather jacket he’d had on the night before, along with black gloves because the night was crisp, the air hinting at more rain, or maybe wet snow.
    She imagined he had his gun tucked at the small of his back, and found that dangerous detail to be staggeringly sexual.
    His eyes locked on her and went hot for a second, flaring with the same heat that slammed through her, warning that the rest of it was all rationalization, that her first and best reason for doing what she was about to do was because he’d asked. Because she wanted him.
    The kiss they’d shared the night before resonated in the air between them, almost a tangible thing. Electricity sparked, sizzling a wordless question of what they were going to do about it, where they would go from there.
    Then his eyes blanked back to icy cool, and he said only, “You ready to go?”
    She took a deep breath and nodded, and when he turned and glided out into the night, she followed him into the forest behind her house and didn’t look back.

Chapter Five
    Fax cursed himself inwardly as he led Chelsea along a short loop through the woods to where he’d stashed the nonstolen, properly registered car that al-Jihad had procured through his network of area contacts, none of whom Fax had met yet.
    This is a really bad idea, he thought. He should’ve stayed