Badge and a Saddle (Heroes in the Saddle Book 2) (2 page)

In the closet, Mina
found a camo baseball cap and a dark jacket that looked three sizes too big for
her. When he came back out, his holstered gun hung from his belt, and he was
setting a box of bullets and a smaller pistol in the bag.

She forced her breathing
to slow and relaxed her shoulders. He would keep her safe. She’d have to lie to
him, but that was the only way to be sure she was taken seriously.

“Ready?” He walked
to the back door, glanced out the window, then opened the door and stepped out.
“Let’s go.”

She followed him
outside, the yard dark, only lit by a pole light in the alley. She reached
behind a bush next to the steps. Pulling out her backpack, she turned to find
him frowning at her.

“Ma’am, you are
either paranoid as hell, or seriously in trouble.”

“Both.” A chill
ran through her. “And in case you didn’t realize it, now you’re involved, too.”

“Yeah, thanks for involving
me in your getaway, Doctor.” Rex walked to a building at the back of the lot, his
head swiveling, as if watching for movement.

Mina followed.

Inside the garage,
a government-issue sedan sat next to a black pickup truck and a big, shiny red
American-made motorcycle.

He looked at the
dark blue sedan. “You’re probably gonna say we should leave the cop car here,
right?” With a sideways glance at her, he opened the truck’s passenger door,
then walked around the hood and got in the driver’s side.

Did he finally
believe they were in danger, or was he placating her, planning to drive around
in circles while she told her story, only to end up at a police station—or a
psych ward? “The less chance of being spotted, the better.”

He drove out of
the alley and slowly down his street, checking the sides of his house and every
car parked along the street. He circled around the area, then pulled into a
parking spot in another alley and cut the lights. No cars came down the alley,
and none passed by on the street. “Pretty sure we’re not being followed.” He
set his phone on the console between them and pressed
record
, but then
hit the
stop
button. “You have a phone?”

She shook her
head. “I broke it open in Austin, cracked the SIM card, and threw it all in the
river.” Her way of disappearing completely, and possibly forever. The thought
of never seeing her father again nearly turned her into a crying mess.

“You know, dumping
in the river is illegal.” He got them moving again. “I’m going to have to issue
a citation.”

Through her
sorrow, she laughed, just a little. “You’re funny for a cop.”

He shrugged his
eyebrows but didn’t smile. Rex pulled into a strip mall where only three stores
looked to be open. “I’m going in to get you a burner.”

“Berner? Isn’t
that an illegal substance?”

He shifted into Park
and gave her a look. “Not marijuana, although I know you college professors
enjoy a smoke now and again.”

She had to smile.
“Guilty.” Mina liked his teasing. “But only when we’re out scouting the skies
for alien spacecraft.”

This time, one
side of his mouth quirked up into an almost-smirk. “Yeah.” He released his
seatbelt. “This burner is a prepaid phone not attached to any name.” He reached
into the backseat, his face coming close to hers.

She inhaled
slowly. The scent of sandalwood hit her low in her belly, manly and enticing.

He paused a moment
and looked at her, his dark eyes moving to take in her features. Settling back
into his seat, he looked at the stack of twenty-dollar bills in his hand.

With a low
whistle, her eyes popped wide. “You rob a bank or something?”

He shook his head.
“Lady…” Rex took a breath. “I’m going into the store, you stay here. You need
anything while I’m in there?”

She shook her
head, but pulled the camo cap from under the coat on her lap. “Wear this, keep
your head down.”

He frowned, but
put on the cap. “Yes, ma’am.” He pulled a long jacket from the back seat and
slipped into it, covering his gun.

Mina heard his
sarcasm. “I’ve been running for five days, and have seen my picture on the TV, Internet,
and local newspapers. Trust me, I had to learn fast how to become invisible.”

With a nod, he
slid out of the truck and locked the doors with his fob.

Mina watched him
walk into a big, brightly lit, 24-hour drug store. Interesting guy. Very
serious, but he liked to joke around, too. What had made him become a cop?
Usually something in a person’s past steered them into a life trying to save
the world. In a good way.

A car pulled into
a spot close to them.

She pulled the
jacket up to her neck and eased her seat back a ways, watching as a mother and
two kids took forever to get out of their vehicle.

Rex left the store
with a bag in his hand and walked to another lit store a few doors down.

Mina kept watch,
noting every car that drove by, watching for anyone who came by more than once,
or eyed the truck with more than passing interest. Nothing stood out.

Rex strode across
the parking lot toward her, purposeful, but not running or doing anything to
catch attention. He was a smart man, and knew his trade.

He slid in holding
two bags and a beverage carrier with a couple of big water bottles and two
giant paper cups, one with three teabag tags on strings swinging from the side
of it.

“Oh, Rex, you’re
absolutely my hero.” She took the carrier, setting her tea in one cup holder,
his extra-jumbo coffee in the other, and the water next to her on the seat.

“We’ll see.” He
mumbled the words as he opened the package with the phone in it. “I’m putting
my number in here.” Turning to face her, he lasered his gaze onto her. “Do not
call
anyone
else. You understand?”

She swallowed,
then nodded. “Yes sir, Detective.” She’d love to call her father, let him know
she was okay.

“Listen up, Doctor.”
He moved in closer, his jaw tightening. “I know you have people you’d like to
reassure. Family, friends, boyfriend. But this is serious shit. If you really
believe the cops are involved in this, they’ll have taps on those people’s
phones, and will pick up this number and locate it in seconds.”

How the hell had
he read her thoughts? “Got it.” She would follow his rules.

He eased back and
finished setting up the phone, then handed it to her. “Call me so you know how
to use it.”

“I’ve used a phone
before.” Mina looked at the little flip phone.

“I need you to
call me…” He said the words slowly, as if talking to a child. “So I can have
your number, too.”

“I’m working on
it, just relax.” She mumbled the words so he definitely wouldn’t hear. She pressed
call. His phone rang once, twice, three times. “You’re not going to answer?” It
was meant to be a joke, but he just let out a groan.

She hung up and
Rex started the truck and drove out of the lot. He set his phone on the console
between them and pressed
record
. “Doctor Mina Cooper. Start talking
about what has been happening. We’ve got about a three-hour drive. I’ll jump in
with questions.”

As they drove, she
gave him
most
of the details. “I’m an astronomer. Well, you know that.”
A stupid, silly woman who has led a too-sheltered life, and recently made a
series of very dangerous mistakes because she was bored and needed a little
excitement in her life. She’d gotten the excitement, and a good dose of
life-altering fear, along with it. A sharp laugh escaped her.

He glanced at her,
a lock of hair falling onto his forehead.

“Sorry. Just a
little manic panic there.” She settled back, closing her eyes. “Okay, here it
is. I was on the roof of one of the buildings on the far edge of the campus.
Not much light to interfere with my…” She glanced at him. “Alien spacecraft
spotting.”

He gave a huff of
breath. Was that as close as he got to a laugh?

“I heard voices
from the street.”

“How tall was the
building?”

“Three…no, four
stories, I think.”

Rex pulled onto
the freeway, heading south toward Austin.

“Where are we
going?” She didn’t like the direction he’d chosen.

“My ex-wife’s
stepfather’s ranch outside of Wild Oak.”

The
ex-wife
part hit her like buckshot. “That’s a lot of degrees of separation.” He’d
chosen a place in a tiny town, and a ranch that would most likely never be associated
with Rex. She let out a long sigh. Ex-wife? She looked at him out of the corner
of her eye. How old was he?

His hands
tightened on the wheel, then he stopped the phone recording. “I was orphaned at
eight, went into the service at eighteen, Marines, and served one tour of duty.
I came back and married the wrong woman, we divorced a year later. Been
divorced for seven years. You can figure out my age from there.”

How did he do
that? Psychic, or just really good at reading people? “Thirty?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Oh. You’re young
to be a detective.”

He knew how old
she was from her profile. “You’re thirty-three. Isn’t that young to be a
tenured professor?”

“Not tenured. My
father is, maybe you’re mixing us up. His name is Milo.”

“Huh.” He drove
for a full minute. “Okay, we done with the introductions, now?”

She pressed the
record button on his phone. “Yes, continuing.” This was the difficult part. “I
pointed my telescope down to where a group of people stood. I couldn’t see much
because they weren’t near the streetlamp.” The horror of those moments came
back to her, and she took a few sips of her tea, holding the hot cup in her
cold hands.

“How many people?”

“Maybe ten, I
don’t know for sure. At least two women, that I could tell, and the rest were men.”
She’d been looking for one particular face, and had been saddened to see it in
the group. “Some of them wore suits, but some of them were cops. Badges
flashed, and their belts held lots of…um…gewgaws.”

“Gew…gaws.”

She almost laughed
at his treatment of the word. “Yeah, you know. Cop paraphernalia.” Her thoughts
went back to that night. “I tried to make out the patches on their sleeves, but
with the bad lighting, I could only see that there were at least two different
patches, maybe three.”

He grunted.
“That’s why you’re thinking there may have been more than one police force
involved.”

“Yes.” She sipped
tea for a few moments. “Their voices grew loud, shouting, then one man pulled
out a pistol and everything went silent.”

Rex glanced at
her, his eyes looking anxious.

“They shot one of
the men.” She revisited the panic that had slammed into her that night.

“Shot with the
pistol? One shot?”

“Yes. Silencer, I
guess, because it wasn’t loud. To the…head.” Another dose of nausea swirled in
her stomach. The sight of the man’s head shoved backward by the bullet, his
slow fall to the ground, and the sickening thud as his head landed on the
concrete.

“Damn.” He checked
to be sure his phone was still recording, then squeezed her shoulder for a
quick second. “What made you run?”

She appreciated
his show of concern for her. A hug would have been nicer, but she didn’t expect
that, by any means. “I’m afraid I went a little horror-movie heroine, and
screamed.”

His brows went up.
“I’m assuming it wasn’t a silent scream?”

“No.” She’d wanted
to slap herself after she’d done it. She’d immediately looked through her
telescope to see if they’d heard. Every eye in the group was trained on her,
and a man pointed right at her. “Three of the officers ran toward my building,
and I knew I had only seconds to get away. I’d been recording everything on a
camera attached to the telescope, and grabbed that. I left my telescope and ran
down the back stairwell, the one furthest from the front door and the cops.”

“You have the
camera? You were on foot?”

He seemed to be
very interested now. “Yes to the camera. No to walking. I’d parked my bike in
the stairwell. I grabbed it and ran a block before I had the clarity to jump on
it and ride.”

“I’m guessing by
‘bike’ you’re not referring to a motorcycle.”

“No, just a pedal
bike with three speeds, for getting around the campus.” It had probably saved
her life. The men chasing her had to have been watching and listening for a
car.

“You left your telescope?”
He slowed and took the next exit.

“I did. It’s
college equipment, and had my department name on the case.”

“And you believed
they would track you down using that information?” He didn’t sound convinced
about that, but he didn’t know the whole story. He took a right on the highway,
then a quick left behind a closed restaurant where he parked. They waited,
watching for cars following, and after a few minutes, Rex shifted in his seat.
“Let me take a look at the footage. And tell me why you think they could
identify you from just that? Couldn’t you have been another teacher, or a
student?”

She liked how
thorough he was about their safety, and especially how he appeared to believe
her now. She pulled out the camera, a little digital thing with a two-inch
display, and started the video playing. “It’s dark.” Handing the camera to him,
she watched as he squinted at the screen.

“And small.” He watched
the video, shaking his head at the part where she’d jerked the telescope when
the shooter had lifted his gun. As her gasp and scream came from the speaker,
Rex opened his eyes wide.

The video ended
and she knew, from the dozen times she’d watched it, the telescope wasn’t
focused in the right place to show the shot or the man falling dead. She’d
messed that up damn well perfectly. Would he still believe she’d witnessed a
murder?

 “We’ve got to get
this video to someone who can analyze it.” Rex handed the camera back to her.
“I didn’t see the gun or the aftermath, but maybe a sound tech could pick up
the shot.”

“I’ve taken care
of that.”

His head turned so
fast to look at her, she heard a snap in his neck.

She’d respond to
the easy question first. “About the telescope, we’re a small department with few
women professors, and my photo is online. I don’t look like any of the other
female teachers.” She closed her eyes. Now would be the time for her to admit
she knew one of the men, but if Rex knew why she’d been there that night, he
would not be going to these extremes to save her. She needed to be safe first,
then honest.

“What about
students? There have to be a lot of students who—”

“I thought of that
too, on my way home that night.” She’d thrown her bike in the back of her
pickup and had raced to her apartment just off campus, knowing
he
would
have recognized her immediately. “I grabbed a few things and left, just in
case, hid out at a friend’s place. The next morning, my landlord called, saying
my apartment had been broken into, then the head of my department called and
requested a meeting with me in his office.”