His Brand of Justice
Delores Fossen
Chapter One
The moment Marshal Jack Slater brought his truck to a stop in front of the small country house, he drew his gun, threw open the door and raced up the porch steps. He’d already glanced around the road and the sprawling yard to see if there was any immediate danger. If there was, he hadn’t spotted anything.
That didn’t mean, though, that there wasn’t a threat.
And that was why Jack had gotten here as fast as he could, once he’d received the call from the live-in nurse, Lucille Booker. From the instant he’d heard Lucille say “Marshal Slater, there might be a problem” in a breathy voice, Jack had known there was nomightto it. There was trouble. Lucille had been at this job for three months, and never once had he heard that kind of concern in her voice. No, not just concern.
Fear.
Jack didn’t knock. Instead, he flipped up the top of what appeared to be an ordinary doorbell to reveal a panel for the security system beneath it. He punched in the code, which would alert the two women inside that it was him. Only when he heard the clicks that let him know the alarms and locks had been temporarily disarmed did he open the door.
Lucille was there in the foyer, and she had a gun in the white-knuckle grip of her right hand. A gun that Jack had issued to her after making sure that she knew how to use it.
There was no blood on her, thank God. No signs of any injury, and the room showed no indications of a struggle. Everything in the house was neat and tidy, as it usually was.
Lucille was what no one would call petite—another reason Jack had wanted her for this job. Her beefy build, no-fuss choppy brown hair and sharply angled face all gave her the appearance of a woman who knew how to take care of herself. And it was true. In addition to being a nurse with twenty years of experience, Lucille had been an instructor of self-defense classes for women.
“What happened?” Jack asked as he reset the security system. “Where’s Caroline?”
An answer to that second question wasn’t necessary, though, because he soon saw the blonde in the kitchen. Caroline Moser. Jack cursed, because she was standing there with a butcher knife.
Unlike Lucille, there was nothing beefy about Caroline. She was lean and tall, and the loose pale blue cotton dress she was wearing didn’t disguise her willowy body. She had an angel’s face, he’d always thought. Like some painting on a museum wall. Once, before things had gone to hell in a handbasket, there’d been a lot of toughness and street smarts beneath those soft, delicate features.
No toughness now, though.
She was way too pale, and she looked way too fragile.
“When Caroline and I were clearing up after lunch, I saw a man,” Lucille explained. “A stranger. He was by the pond.”
Not good. No one should have been within a quarter of a mile of this place, since it wasn’t anywhere on the beaten path. Of course, Jack could say that about lots of properties in the county, which was mainly made up of ranches, farms and small towns. Like Longview Ridge, the place where Jack had been born and raised and where he still lived. This safe house was only about fifteen miles from there—and from him. But it was still far enough away that someone shouldn’t have just strolled by here.
“You saw this man, too?” he asked Caroline.
“Just a glimpse.” There was plenty of worry and fear in her voice, but there was something else in her jewel-green eyes.
Suspicion.
Jack knew that particular reaction was for him.
She didn’t trust him, not completely, anyway, and he’d seen that look plenty of times over the past three months since he’d become her handler in WITSEC. Before that, when she had known who he was, there’d been other emotions...ones that he wished he couldn’t remember, either.
Jack wasn’t sure why the doubt was there now. Or all the other times he’d visited her here in this safe house over the past weeks. Her doctors had said it was because of the trauma from her injuries and her amnesia. It was hard for her to trust anyone, they’d said, when there were way too many blanks in her mind.
Still, it cut him to the bone.
Of course, there were plenty other things that he should be thinking about right now, things that didn’t involve whether she trusted him or not, and Jack went to the kitchen window. That vantage point would give him a good view of not only the pond but also the small barn and pasture.
Other than the two horses that Jack had personally delivered to the place, nothing and no one was out there. However, since Lucille wasn’t easily spooked, she must have seen someone.
“You didn’t recognize the man?” Jack pressed, glancing back at Lucille.
The nurse shook her head. She put away her gun in the slide holster at the back of her scrubs. “But he had dark hair and was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. He darted behind the big oak tree when he spotted me.”
Darting definitely wasn’t a good sign, but Jack was holding out hope that this was just someone who’d strayed onto the property, only to realize that he was trespassing. Too bad the twisting feeling in his gut let him know that wasn’t the case.
