Thomas went into action, tackling the man dressed in hospital scrubs in time to stop him from getting away. Another nurse immediately called security. The hospital would go on lockdown until they cleared this up.
The deputy who’d been guarding Kelly’s room didn’t miss a beat. He helped Thomas by putting a heavy, booted foot on the man’s backbone while Thomas grabbed his hands and cuffed him. Together, they lifted him up and slammed him down in a nearby chair. Thomas searched his scrubs and found a small knife.
Nina held her gun on the man until she knew he was secure. “I’ll check on the girl.”
By now, nurses and doctors were merging inside the room where Kelly Denton lay sleeping. She woke with a start, her eyes wide. “What’s going on?”
“Everything’s okay,” Nina said, thinking they should have stayed close by. But at least they had a suspect now. Only the man they’d tackled wasn’t Russo. “Just a ruckus outside. You’re safe.” Better not to upset her again so soon.
But she had to wonder if the girl needed to be moved again.
When the medical team had checked and rechecked Kelly, her parents came in. After they’d seen her and were reassured she was on the mend, Nina took them outside and explained what had happened.
“Do you know of any reason someone would want to harm your daughter?” she asked.
“No,” they both replied.
“But she’s been away for almost a year,” her mom added. “Maybe someone followed her to Helena?”
“It’s your job to find that out,” Mr. Denton said. “I thought she was being protected.”
“She is. We’ve taken the man into custody, but he’s not talking. He won’t tell us who hired him, but he’s not going anywhere, I promise.”
“They could send someone else,” Kelly’s mother whispered, tears in her eyes. “Can’t we take her home to Helena?”
Nina glanced at Thomas, who had joined them. He frowned and pondered that. “The doctors aren’t ready to release her yet, but when they do, we’ll have to send someone with her if the man who shot her is still at large. Do you have any other place you could take her for a few days?”
“My parents live about thirty miles from Helena in a gated community. We could take her there,” Mrs. Denton offered.
“I’ll call ahead when it’s time and if it comes to that,” Thomas said. “She could become a possible witness in a federal case. We can help protect her here and...we might have to put her into witness protection if this drags out too long.”
The Dentons both seemed confused and frightened by that. “You don’t mean forever, do you?” her mother asked with tears in her eyes.
Nina shot Thomas a thankful glance. “We hope it won’t come to that. For now, we’ll be in touch to coordinate things as soon as she’s clear to leave the hospital. And we’ll have someone here to escort all of you to your destination.”
“Meantime, we have the deputy and a K-9 team member here, so she’ll have two people guarding her door at all times,” Thomas added. “And if she tells either of you anything, please let us know. We can’t help her if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Kelly’s parents nodded, but they looked shell-shocked.
“We can also have her moved to another room,” Nina said, promising to talk to the hospital administrators.
She and Thomas went to take care of the details. Soon, everything was in place to move Kelly to a room near the nurses’ station, where she could be monitored more closely by both the guards and the staff.
Having assured her parents that Kelly would be safe, and telling them they’d be watched, too, Nina and the marshal went back to headquarters, hoping to question the man they’d taken into custody.
Three hours later, after questioning the noncommunicative suspect and then going over files and trying to establish leads, all they had to go on was the suspect’s rap sheet of petty crime, and the fact that he refused to give them any information. Robby Collier was a local who’d been minding his own business in a bar when he’d been offered a job paying a huge amount of money.
He regretted that decision, but said he couldn’t tell them anything more. “The man made it pretty clear if I got caught, I was on my own. I don’t know nothing except I was supposed to take down the guard at the door.”
“I guess you didn’t think that part through, either,” Nina had noted, before they left him locked up tight.
“He thinks he’s safer in lockup than out there,” Thomas said now. “This has Russo all over it. He hired someone to bring down the guard, which means he was probably in the hospital, too. I’m surprised he didn’t shoot dear Robby on the spot for failing in his mission.”
“But they locked the place down,” Nina said, regretting that she’d left Sam with the handlers here while they’d gone to the hospital. Sam could have helped chase down the assailant. “He had to get away quick. Why would he send someone so unreliable and, well, green?”
“He messed up and left a witness, something he’s never done before. And now, because of one determined K-9 officer, he wants this over and done. He has to know you’re FBI by now. You’re both still in danger.”
“So because the heat’s on, he turned to desperate measures and sent that clown to do his dirty work,” Nina said.
“Russo knows how to get away in a hurry,” Thomas pointed out. “He wouldn’t hang around since this mission got botched, too. But...he’s not going to give up. Like our Robby, he knows he’s in serious danger himself. Whoever hired him has been informed by now that things went bad.”
“But how did he know the girl wasn’t dead? We haven’t released any details to the press.”
“The crime scene,” Thomas said. “It was active and it got a lot of attention. Anyone could have seen the first responders carting Kelly away. I walked right up. A reporter or newshound could have easily done the same.”
“Russo could have still been hanging around, too,” she said, glad Sam had picked up his scent. But then, Sam did specialize in cadaver detection and he’d done that job to perfection last night. After that, a lot of people had passed through those woods.
Tired and unable to gather her thoughts, Nina stood up and stretched. “I’m going home tonight. Tim and Zeke checked my place and it’s safe. No one’s been there that we can tell.”
“That you know of,” Thomas retorted. “You’re safer here.”
“I’m safe at my house, too,” she replied. “I have security and I have Sam. And I have several weapons.”
“A woman after my own heart,” he deadpanned. “I’ll be two miles down the road, letting Penny Potter and the Wild Iris staff pamper me.”
“Good.” She kind of wished he’d offered to at least come to her house for coffee. But then, they’d both drunk enough of that dark brew...and she had to resist whatever was brewing between them, too. “I’m going to decorate the tree I brought home the other day before all the needles fall off, and make myself a big cup of hot chocolate. Maybe watch a sappy Christmas movie just for kicks.”
In reality she’d grab some popcorn and go back over this bizarre case. But he didn’t need to know that.
They walked out together, both searching the area for another sniper, Sam trotting at their feet and two armed guards set up in the parking garage. When they reached their vehicles, Thomas turned to her. “I’m kind of lonely, you know. I haven’t had a real Christmas in years. I’d enjoy helping you decorate that dying tree.”
Nina’s heart betrayed her by bouncing all around her chest. “Are you inviting yourself to dinner, Thomas?”
“Are you asking me to dinner, Nina?”
“No.”
He laughed. “Then yes, I’m inviting myself to dinner, but I really only wanted to decorate the tree. But if you insist...”
“I don’t recall insisting.”
“But you were thinking it, right?”
She wondered how he did that. No wonder bad guys tried to steer clear of him.
“No,” she said with a laugh, “I was thinking too bad I don’t cook.”
He leaned close, his whisper half a step away. “Even better. I do.”
She’d never had a man cook for her before. Should she tell him to get lost? Or should she let him follow her home so they could brainstorm this case all over again?
She glanced down at the rottweiler. “What do you think, Sam? Should Thomas cook us dinner, but only because we want to pick his brain later and try to figure out things on this investigation?”
The big dog looked from her to the marshal and let out a woof.
“I think that was a yes,” Thomas said, his handsome face full of a triumphant smugness.
“Only because it’s Christmas and you’re a stranger in a strange land.”
“I hear that,” he replied. Then he scanned the parking garage. “We sure don’t need to be standing here out in the open arguing about it, so let’s go.”
Nina turned off the security alarm and rushed inside the tiny cottage she’d lived in since she’d arrived in Iris Rock a few months ago. The drive to and from Billings could be tricky on a night such as this, when a new snowfall seemed imminent. But she’d grown up in the bitter cold of Wyoming and knew how to mount snow tires on her vehicle and how to use her head and her driving skills while braking. She was pretty capable at most things, except when it came to kitchen duty. But she wasn’t really serious about letting Thomas cook for her.
“What was I thinking?” she asked Sam. He shadowed her, hoping for his own dinner. “I don’t have food and I don’t cook. I can’t offer him your dinner, right?”
The dog shot her a doleful glance that stated “Nope.”
Knowing Thomas would be close behind her, she tidied up, clearing away the local paper and some research books and novels off the couch, then hurried to change into jeans and a blue-and-white-striped wool sweater. She was running a comb through her tousled hair and putting on pink lip gloss when the doorbell rang.
She’d never actually invited anyone here before. Especially not a man.
“Mom would be proud,” she whispered to Sam.
Sam woofed a positive approval that the person at her door came in peace.
But she checked the peephole, anyway.
Too much tall stood there.
Now she was sweating in her sweater.
“C’mon in,” she said, her words deceitfully calm. “I’m going to be honest. I’m not sure I have anything on hand to make an edible meal.”
Shrugging out of his heavy coat, Thomas took in the small living room and galley kitchen. Nina watched him for signs of disappointment or regret. But in typical lawman fashion, he seemed to be sizing up security—and taking in information on how she lived.
Heavy beige curtains covered the sliding doors to the tiny backyard that she and Sam loved to play in. The furniture came with the place, and it was mismatched and clunky.
Wishing she’d taken a little time to decorate the rooms with her own sense of style, Nina crossed her arms over her midsection and stood her ground. She worked too much to worry about making it into Architectural Digest.
“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” she chirped, motioning to the big doors and several windows. “On good days, I can see the Pryor Mountains, which is kind of cool since I could also see them from my bedroom in Wyoming, growing up.”
His stormy eyes widened. “What, you circled the mountain and settled on the other side?”
“Something like that.” Looking at her sad little home through the eyes of someone else made Nina self-conscious and almost embarrassed. But she shook that off the way she shook off everything she couldn’t deal with. “Let’s see what we can round up.”
She headed to the refrigerator and stared at the barren shelves. “I see a few carrots and two potatoes.” Then she checked the freezer. “And a bag of chicken breasts that might have come with the house.”
Thomas snorted and gently moved her aside. “The date on the chicken is still within the safe zone. We’ll hope the same with the potatoes and carrots. Do you stock any canned goods?”
She nodded and opened an overhead cabinet by the refrigerator. “Oh, look, chicken noodle soup and tomato soup. If only we had some crackers.”
“We don’t need crackers,” he stated, already rolling up his sleeves. “You get the decorations ready and I’ll get dinner going.”
“What exactly do you plan to cook?” she asked, wondering how she’d managed to get in this predicament in the first place.
“The Thomas Grant special, ma’am,” he said in his best Texas drawl. “You’re gonna love it.”
She doubted that, but she’d give it a shot since she couldn’t kick him out now. Sam’s head moved in ping-pong style back and forth between them. Obviously, he smelled something in the air. Something distinctive and different.
Another human in the kitchen. Or a tad too much of some new and exciting undercurrent.
Soon, Thomas had the chicken and potatoes browning in a big pot, along with some onions and peppers he’d discovered in a crisper drawer with all the joy of a kid opening a present. He hummed while he cooked.
Nina pretended to be unraveling Christmas lights, but she couldn’t help glancing over at him. A giant wearing boots had taken over her home. And it was beginning to smell good, which caused her stomach to make strange noises and her heart to do funny jumps and bumps.
Finally, after he’d dismantled cans and rummaged for spices and splashed this and that into the pot, he turned it to simmer and came to sit beside her on the now-too-small floral love seat in front of the tiny electric fireplace. “Chicken noodle soup and biscuits coming up in about a half hour.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “We could have just opened a can for the soup. And I’m not sure how you managed biscuits.”
“Really, I opened two cans for my special soup. And added a few special ingredients.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Then don’t.”
“And the biscuits?”
“You had flour, milk, eggs and baking powder.”
“My mom restocks every time she comes to visit.”
“Well, that turned out to be a good thing.”
His eyes were so amazing. They’d turned as blue-gray as the storm she’d seen over the big sky at dusk and just as mysterious.
Nina laughed and inhaled. “Well, I have to admit that smells better than the soggy pizza I usually bring home.”
“You’re almost out of protein bars,” he replied. “I didn’t throw your last two into the pot.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t.”
They bantered back and forth while they got the lights straightened out and wrapped around the sad little evergreen.
“I think this tree is going to be lost in a burst of color,” Thomas stated. “Where did you buy it? ’Cause I think you need a refund.”
“Ha, funny.” She shrugged. “A kid was selling them to make money to buy a bicycle. I felt sorry for him. He’d obviously scoured the back forty and...found the best of the lot.”
“We could find you a prettier tree,” Thomas pointed out. “But this one is kind of tugging at my heartstrings in that Charlie Brown kind of way.”
“I wish you could see the tree my mom and dad put up each year,” she replied, not even thinking about her words. “It’s fresh and has to be at least nine feet tall and covers one corner of the den in our log house. Dad fusses every year, but he loves hanging the lights on the tree and along the staircase. We all gather on Christmas Eve and sing carols and hymns, and then we eat a big meal of barbecue and all the trimmings. My brothers and their families all live nearby and I usually show up at the last minute and then...it’s Christmas.”
“That is Christmas,” Thomas said, his eyes dark with a longing that tore at Nina’s heart. “Sounds wonderful.”
“You’ll see, Thomas,” she said. “My family has a steadfast rule that we can bring anyone we want home for Christmas.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look so sure about that invitation.
Did he think she was pushing him in the wrong way? Nina wondered. Because she’d done it again. Invited him to go home with her for Christmas. She wouldn’t ask anymore.
Or was he too afraid to stop being alone to enjoy being with someone during the holidays?
She was about to ask him that when the buzzer on the stove dinged and caused her to step back.
“Dinner is ready,” he said, that distant longing still in his eyes, his smile beautiful but full of resolve and regret. “We’d better eat so we can finish making this tree as special as the one you just described.”