Page 36 of Westin

“But he was. He was here for you, for something he thinks you have.” Westin’s eyes were a firestorm. “What have you done?”

But she had no words for him. What could she say? And she could see that he knew it.

She’d never hated a situation as she did that one in that minute.

Chapter 7

“There!”

Westin’s finger tapped almost violently against the screen, shaking the whole monitor where it sat precariously already on the old desk. Clint shot him a look, but he didn’t say anything, more interested in what he’d pointed out. He leaned forward, squinting slightly as he moved the video footage forward a frame at a time.

“We can’t see his face,” he finally said. He turned to Lea, who’d been trying to disappear in the corner of the small office. “Do you have any idea?”

“Is it that guy from the diner?” Westin demanded. “Is it your ex?”

His words dripped with sarcasm, making it quite clear he was very much aware of the lies she’d been telling since her arrival, lies that appeared to be coming back to bite her in the ass.

Lea shook her head. Not that she could tell if it was or not.

Clint turned his attention back to the security footage, moving from one camera to the next until he finally sat back and ran his hands over the top of his head, knocking his baseball cap to the floor.

“Westin, take Remington and go to the guest bunkhouse, cover the broken window with a piece of plywood.”

“Shouldn’t we be looking for this guy?” Westin asked, clearly thinking Clint had lost his mind. “He could break into the main house, go after Miss Dulcie! Are we really going to—”

“He’s gone, Westin. It’s pretty clear from the security footage that he left the property.” Clint gestured toward the computer monitor they’d been studying for the past twenty minutes. “He doesn’t show up anywhere else. My guess is he had a car waiting for him on the east side of the property. He’s gone.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“There’s an alarm on the main house. It’s armed. If anything happens, we’ll be the first to know.”

Westin clenched his hands into fists and rubbed them against his thighs, but he didn’t seem to have anything else to say. He jumped to his feet and stormed out of the barn, not even giving Lea a glance.

Clint rubbed the top of his head again, then reached down to get his hat and set it back into place. He studied the computer screen for a few more minutes before he finally sighed.

“That number you called…”

He let it hang in the air between them. Lea shivered despite the warmth of the heated barn and the heavy jacket she still wore. The memory of Westin unzipping it was like a fantasy that had never really happened, a dream that she’d been rudely awoken from.

“You said you looked it up on the Internet.”

“It’s a private cell phone.”

She grunted. He’d called her bluff, and she’d fallen for it.

Clint turned in his office chair and studied her. “Please, tell me what the hell is going on here. This has come to my house now. I need to be able to protect my people.”

“I know.”

“I can’t do that if I don’t know what I’m protecting them from.”

Lea went to the door, looking down the long corridor that separated the horse stalls from one another. Westin was gone, but caution was deeply ingrained in her. She’d learned it the hard way when she’d first started her job. It was something she wasn’t soon to forget. She closed the door and flipped the little lock that would keep anyone from surprising them.

Clint watched her as she came to sit in the chair Westin had just vacated. She reached across him and grabbed the computer mouse to reverse the video footage on the screen so that she could get a better look at the intruder as he leapt from the window of her room.

“His name is Isai Gomez. His street name is Fang.”

Clint turned to face her, a student ready to learn everything she had to set down in front of him, silent in his interest.