ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE by Cindi Myers Page A

terms.”
    “They might have patched up their differences and been in touch recently. Maybe that’s why Sam decided to vacation in Colorado.”
    “Maybe.” She sounded doubtful. “What if Abel doesn’t know anything?”
    “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
    * * *
    S TACY WAS WORN out with worry by the time Patrick located a motel he thought suitable for their purposes. Set back from the road on a side street, the collection of 1950s-era cabins strung together in a row offered rooms for rent by the week and free local phone calls. “There’s a light in the office, so we should be able to get a room,” Patrick said as he cruised past the place. “I’ll park the car a few blocks away and we’ll walk back.”
    “Why do we have to do that?” she protested. The thought of walking even a few hundred yards in the dark and cold made her want to sink down into the seat and refuse to move.
    “If the police spot the car, I don’t want to make it easy for them to find us.”
    In the end, she made the walk leaning on Patrick. When he’d offered his support her first instinct had been to refuse, but she was so tired she was almost dizzy, and his arm around her was the only thing that felt safe and solid in the world.
    Their room was cold and musty, with two double beds covered with green chenille spreads, and the kind of maple furniture Stacy remembered from visits to her grandmother’s house when she was a little girl. She stretched out on the bed farthest from the door while Patrick made phone calls.
    Though she would have sworn she was too worried to sleep, she was unconscious within seconds, despite the glare of the overhead light and the low murmur of Patrick’s voice across the room. She woke some time later to darkness, and the sensation of someone slipping her boots from her feet, then tucking a blanket around her. She opened her eyes and stared up at Patrick. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, and settled the blanket around her shoulders.
    She struggled back to consciousness. “What did your office say? Do they know anything about Nathan Forest?”
    “Nothing yet. They’re going to send someone with a new car for us. In the meantime, go back to sleep.”
    “You won’t leave, will you?” Where had that question come from? She’d never wanted this lawman in her life, but now, with Carlo missing and after being attacked twice in one night by strangers, the thought of being left alone terrified her.
    “No, I won’t leave.” He patted her shoulder. “I’m going to lie down in the other bed and try to get some sleep. You do the same.”
    “All right.” But welcome oblivion didn’t return easily. She lay in the darkness, listening to the hum and tick of the heater, and the creak of bedsprings as Patrick shifted on his own mattress. He definitely wasn’t like any lawman she’d ever encountered—not that she’d known many. Along with the rest of the family, she’d attended Sam Giardino’s trial a year and a half ago and seen the officers who surrounded him—cool, expressionless men and women in uniform who never glanced her way. She’d never bothered to differentiate one from the other. They were all simply “the law.” The enemies of the Giardino family, and thus her enemies, too.
    Patrick had that same erect bearing and devotion to duty. He’d regarded her with suspicion from the moment he found her hiding in the basement, and he’d followed her to Durango because he suspected her of some wrongdoing, she was sure.
    But he’d also risked his own life to protect her, and he’d ignored at least some of the law to help search for Carlo without involving the local police. She was a stranger to him, yet he acted like he cared. Did he think she was such a valuable witness for his mysterious case, or was something else at work here?
    Sleep finally overtook her, though she slept fitfully, haunted by dreams of shadowy figures who pursued her and glimpses of Carlo reaching for