When a routine trip to the local discount store erupts in gunfire, Kendra Driscoll finds herself rescued by a stern-faced federal marshall. When he whisks her away in a government van, she must face the fact that her witness protection cover is blown. Now she'll have to deal with being in Marshall Timothy Campbell's custody until further arrangements can be made. Timothy takes her to a safe house tucked away in rural southern Arkansas and she reverts to being Deborah Kincaid. As she gets to know Tim, Kendra realizes he isn't as stern as he looks. Underneath his gruff exterior she finds a kind, sensitive man and soon, despite the danger from the Bianco family, she also finds herself falling in love. Worse, so does Tim. He falls hard for his witness and that's something that isn't supposed to happen.
But when events turn ugly and Tim suffers a life-threatening rattlesnake bite, it's up to Deborah herself to face her enemies and deal with the danger for the last time.
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~Excerpt~
“Don’t scream,” a male voice whispered in her ear. Whoever he might be, he was behind her and she couldn't see him at all. However, he smelled of Irish Spring soap and peppermints. “Take my hand.”
She tried to ask why but with his hand blocking her mouth, she couldn't speak so she shook her head to refuse. He snatched her left hand with his free one and jerked hard enough she had to move with him or be drug behind. He took his hand off her mouth but she didn't dare make a sound or speak. In a crouched position, he maneuvered her past three more open freezer cases and then went wide to the left through a door that led back into the storerooms. Once that door swung closed behind them, he stood upright and faced her.
He loomed tall above her, six feet or better, lean and lithe. His blue jeans fit his chiseled body like an outer skin and his plaid flannel shirt looked cozy. On his hip, a Smith and Wesson .40 caliber pistol fit into a nylon holster attached to his wide leather belt. His black eyes bored into hers, vital and filled with strength. The solemn expression on his face seemed carved from solid granite. He looked capable and very dangerous. In fact, he reminded Kendra of a leopard she watched once at the zoo, graceful and somehow beautiful yet deadly.
Out in the store somewhere, more gunfire roared and screams followed but he didn't flinch or react. She cringed with each blast, fighting the desire to drop to the floor. If he hadn’t held her in his grasp, she’d dropped, too. His height and lethal manner intimidated her but not enough that she didn't attempt to break free.
“Let me go!” She twisted her hand, struggling to work loose.
He snorted and gripped harder.
“Relax. I'll get you out of here safe and sound. Just stay calm and be quiet.”
Her anger kindled, his bossy ways made her old-fashioned mad and without thought, she spoke, her voice louder than it should be.
“I’m not going with you. I won't be a hostage,” Kendra told him, her voice high-pitched and nasal. “Leave me alone and go turn yourself into the authorities!”
He laughed aloud as he reached into his front jeans pocket pulling out something he thrust in her direction; a gold badge formed with an outer circle around a five-pointed star. “United States Marshall” was etched around the rim.
“Maybe I should've introduced myself,” he said with what might've been a smile on a less serious face. “I’m Timothy Campbell, United States Marshall.”
The reality sank in with speed. He wasn't one of the shooters but a law enforcement officer and Kendra wondered why he wasn’t out there, taking down the suspect and saving lives in plural instead of just saving her own. Questions flooded her brain so fast she didn’t know where to begin or what to ask. He must've read the curiosity in her eyes because he pulled her forward toward a back exit off the storeroom.
“Ask me whatever you want later,” Timothy Campbell said. “Right now, we need to move. Let’s go.”
He towed her outside with speed and into a waiting black Humvee where he opened the rear passenger door, shoved her inside and followed her onto the seat. Before Kendra could assimilate anything more, the vehicle pulled out and reached the busy highway within seconds. With the discount store fast vanishing behind them, she realized her car remained in the parking lot but at least her purse still dangled from her shoulder. Numerous emergency vehicles raced past them headed for the scene. She counted three ambulances, two fire trucks, multiple squad cars and more.
“Wait!” she said, fumbling for the seat belts. “Where are we going? I need to cover this breaking story. Shouldn’t you be back there, helping people or something?”
He turned to her, his face still impassive.
“We're going somewhere safe and the only place I need to be is here with you.”
Anger flared, stronger than fear. Her routine grocery-shopping trip halted with violence forced her to take cover, and now Kendra found herself in the back of an SUV hurling down the highway at breakneck speed. She'd rather be anywhere else, even still crouched behind the freezer case in fact. Where she should be was outside the store with a press pass and a microphone in her hand.
“I don’t want to be here,” Kendra snapped. “Take me back to the store, please. I'm the news director for the local radio station. I need to cover this story.”
The Marshall shook his head.
"No you don’t. Do you know why the shooter was at that location?”
She had no clue.
“Let me guess. Did they overcharge him? Not have what he wanted in stock? Or was it just the first place he found where he could go postal?”
Her sarcastic tone failed to get a rise but his reply struck her like a slap across the face.
“He wanted you, Deborah. You’re the target.”
She caught her breath and held it, fear snaking through her body like live electricity. Her first response to hearing her name, the name her mother picked out for her twenty-seven years earlier, was to run. If she could've leaped from the fast moving vehicle, she’d done it but since she couldn't, she tried to bluff it out instead.
“Who’s Deborah? My name is Kendra Lou Driskell.”
He focused his full-strength stare on her and made eye contact.
“That might get you brownie points but it won’t cut ice with me. If you say it to the wrong individual, you might end up in the county morgue. You and I both know you're Deborah Kay Kincaid and that you’ve been in the federal witness protection program for two and a half years.”
His harsh tone cut through her feeble bravado like a steak knife through a tender T-bone steak. His voice had a no-nonsense quality that refuted any possible argument but she heard a kindness beneath the gruff words that steadied her long enough she was able to sit back and exhale.
“How do you know they were after me?” Kendra asked, wondering if she could just be Deborah again since her cover was now transparent.
“You're watched, of course. We had a tip that proved to be correct,” his voice remained even. “Everyone in the program is monitored. Didn’t you realize that?”
“No, I didn't.”
A chill crept up her spine as comprehension that someone kept track of her every day, maybe each hour sank in, and her notion of hard-won privacy was just an illusion. So was any real safety, she mused, if someone tracked her to Bargain Mart and started shooting. She wasn’t safe. Worse yet, she never had been.
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