Authors: Rebecca York
Outlaw Justice (Decorah Security Series, Book #13): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella
Outlaw Justice (Decorah Security Series, Book #13)
A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella
By Rebecca York
Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York
“Just great,” Steve Outlaw muttered as he took in the beer bottles, pizza boxes, and other debris littering the floor of his mom’s old house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Obviously, the last tenants had trashed the place.
The mess was bad enough, but something else made his senses tingle. The scent was wrong for a dwelling that had been closed up for weeks.
It smelled like someone was in here. Or maybe burglars had recently broken in, then cleared out.
He stifled a curse. If he’d still been on the job with the Baltimore PD, he would have been carrying his service revolver. But he’d quit six months ago after recovering from a nasty gunshot wound to the leg. Medical had wanted to keep him on desk duty, and he’d been too restless to sit on the sidelines.
Now he looked around the room, hoping to see something he could use as a weapon. When he spotted a broom leaning against the sagging couch, he picked it up and held it in front of him as he turned toward the closet near the door. The bad leg ached from the effort to move quietly. He ignored it and kept going.
The closet was clear and so were the dining room and the kitchen, except for a couple of folding chairs lying on their sides. But the smell of humanity was stronger near the pantry, and when he threw open the door, a figure leaped out, trying to knock him down in a frantic rush to escape. Since he wasn’t entirely steady on his feet, the tactic almost worked. Dropping the broom, he spun to the side, grabbing a slender arm and wrenching the intruder toward him.
The light was dim, but the breath froze in his lungs when he saw her face. Was he making it up? Or was the woman standing in front of him really Leah?
For a moment he was transported back to the last steamy afternoon they’d spent here, her naked body pressed to his, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her lips moving urgently over his. In his teenager’s bed, the blue of her eyes had deepened with need, and her chestnut-colored hair had been a tangle around her elegant face.
Not now. His mind snapped back to reality as he saw her breath quicken and her hand tremble—not with passion but with fear.
“Leah?” he asked, struggling with his own roiling emotions as past and present collided.
Her head bobbed in answer to the sound of her name.
Trying to cope with this out-of-kilter meeting, he asked, “What in the name of God are you doing here?”
She glanced at him, then down at the tips of her running shoes, as though she could avoid confrontation by looking away. Although he didn’t want to break the physical contact, he could feel the tension radiating through her. To give both of them a little space, he let his hand drop away from her arm, but he kept his gaze fixed on her, hoping she wasn’t going to make another run for the door.
In a voice he had to strain to hear, she answered, “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
Again his mind zinged back to the intimate weeks they’d spent together in this very house—before she’d gone off to Boston University. He’d thought they’d resume their hot and heavy sexual relationship when she came home for Thanksgiving vacation. Instead, she stayed in Boston for the holiday because she’d met a guy named Warren Pendelton.
After reading her carefully worded letter, he’d snatched a beer mug off his desk and thrown it across the room, where it shattered against the wall. As the weeks dragged on, he’d gone from anger to resignation, yet he couldn’t let go of a tiny spark of hope—until she’d married the bastard the next year and dropped out of school.
He’d known he had to get over her, and he thought he’d succeeded. But as they stood facing each other, all the unfinished business simmering between them seemed to explode inside his head.
Struggling for some perspective, he tried to focus on the immediate problem—whatever it was.
“You can’t go home?”
He wasn’t prepared for her explosive laugh—or the way she sobered immediately—as though she’d allowed herself a few seconds of emotion that she was fighting to keep under strict control.
Raising her head, she met his questioning gaze. Her voice turned edgy as she said, “Sorry to intrude. I’ll get out of your way now.”
No way was Steve going to take the brush-off, not when she’d brought the past slamming back into him like a wrecking ball. And not when she’d already aroused all his protective instincts.
In response to her sharp tone, he made his own voice gentle. “Just tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll try to help you.”
“You can’t.”
As he heard the flat statement, he felt a tearing inside his chest. At the same time, he was coping with a moral dilemma. He wouldn’t hold her here by force. But he wasn’t going to simply let her walk away when he could see she needed help.
How had she even gotten to his mother’s house? He hadn’t seen a car outside, but she could have put it in the garage out back.
“You’re making me nervous, and I need to use the bathroom,” she suddenly said, perhaps scrambling for a way to break off the close contact with him.
“Sure.”
When he stepped aside, she scuttled past him down the hall. He figured she was buying herself some breathing room, but she didn’t know about the psychic ability that was going to give him an unfair advantage in this sparring match.
He watched her hurry away. When the door closed behind her, he scanned the pantry, seeing only the crumpled junk food bags and boxes the tenant had left on the shelves. None of them was what he needed.
Striding from the room, he walked into the first bedroom on the right and glanced around. Nothing.
In the second bedroom, he found what he was looking for. She’d been sleeping here, and she’d left a small overnight bag beside the bare mattress on the floor.
Before he could change his mind, he crossed to the bag, knelt down, and pulled it closer to the wall. He had a special talent that could give him the information he needed. But at the same time, it would make himself vulnerable as hell now. After sparing a quick glance toward the hallway, he reaching inside the bag and shuffled through the tee shirts and jeans she’d brought—searching for something that was important to her. He had no idea what that might be, but he’d know it when he found it. The moment his hands touched the cold metal of a small heart-shaped locket Leah had worn back in high school, he felt a jolt of electricity zing through his body. At the same time his vision blurred. In a swirl of mist, reality around him faded. Physically, he stayed where he was, but his consciousness traveled somewhere else.
He might have fought the feeling of disorientation that swept over him, but he’d learned that it was best to simply go with the flow and see where the current carried him. This time it was to another bedroom, far different from the one at his mom’s modest house. Leah was there, with a sandy-haired man—probably her husband. And the scene between them must have taken place in the recent past because she looked pretty much the way she did now, only she was a little better dressed—in cream-colored slacks and a pale blue knit top instead of scruffy jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt.
The bedroom where they stood was probably twenty feet long and almost as wide, with dark wood furniture and a king-sized bed adorned with a brocade sea-green spread. Elaborate valances and curtains framed the windows. It was a beautiful room, but the action taking place was far from pretty. The man’s expression was fierce as he stepped menacingly toward Leah who backed up quickly. But he closed the distance between them and raised his large hands to push her against a carved chest of drawers.
Steve heard her make a whimpering sound as he raised his hand and slapped her across the face. She screamed and tried to duck around him, the way she’d tried to duck around Steve. But the guy’s arm snaked out and caught her, slamming her backwards.
He was speaking, but Steve couldn’t hear what the guy was saying above the roaring in his ears. And Leah’s answer was lost in the same wash of sound. As often happened, Steve withdrew abruptly from the scene. He was suddenly back in his mom’s house, feeling sick and shaky. Eyes closed, he leaned his head against the wall, struggling for breath and fighting to ground himself in reality.
A sound made his head jerk up. Leah was in front of him, staring from his face to the place where his hand disappeared inside her bag.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I had to find out why you were in trouble.”
“If I’d wanted you to know, I would have told you.”
Yeah, that was obvious.
Feeling at a disadvantage with her looming over him, hands on her denim-clad hips, he let go of the locket and heaved in a breath before pushing himself up to a standing position and pressing his back to the wall. At least he had some height on her now, but with his bad leg, he didn’t trust himself to take a step forward.
She stood glaring at him, her arms folded across her chest, which pulled up the sleeves of her shirt, exposing a nasty looking bruise on her left arm. When he saw it, he drew in a quick breath.
Ignoring his reaction, she demanded, “How does pawing through my things tell you anything about me?”
“I thought I might find something.”
“Like what? Were you looking for drugs—or anything else illegal?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
When he didn’t answer, she snatched up the bag. “I’m leaving.”
“Your husband hurt you,” he heard himself say. “That’s why you left home. That’s why you can’t go back.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What—did he hire you to find me, and I made the stupid mistake of coming here?”
“No, of course not.”
“You think because I have a bruise that he did it?”
“No,” he said again.
His words had no effect. As she headed for the door, he wanted to reach out and grab her arm, but he knew that was the worst thing he could do after what he’d seen.
“Wait!”
“Why should I?” she demanded.
At least she was willing to listen.
He swallowed hard, knowing he’d trapped himself into going down a road he’d rather not travel. But now he had to do it if he wanted her to trust him.
“You know I was a cop?”
She nodded.
“Last year, I left the Baltimore PD and joined a detective agency—Decorah Security.”
“And what does that have to do with . . . this situation?
“They wanted me for a reason. They hire agents with unusual talents.”
She waited for him to elaborate. Only desperation made him willing to reveal the secret he’d kept from her and everyone else in town when he’d still lived here.
“You remember how the kids accused me of spying on them—because I knew stuff?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t exactly spy.” He dragged in a breath and let it out before saying, “Since I was ten, I’ve been able to touch things that are important to other people, and I see scenes from their lives.”
She laughed again. “Nice try.”
“It’s true.”
“Oh come on. You expect me to believe a fairy tale like that?”
“Not without evidence.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “I’ve never been to your house, but when I wrapped my finger around the locket in the bag—I saw you in a bedroom—with dark furniture, a green spread on the bed and matching drapes.” He swallowed hard. “I watched . . . a guy slam you against a chest of drawers and slap you.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Then how do I know about it?”
The words hung in the air between them. Then her shoulders sagged, and he figured she’d caved. When the impossible is the only explanation, you gotta go with it.
“Nobody was supposed to know about that.”
“It was your husband, right?”
She answered with a small nod.
A mixture of emotions flared inside him. He wanted to help her, but it had been a devastating blow when she’d walked away from him eight years ago. Now he couldn’t stop himself from grabbing at the confirmation that she’d married the wrong man.
He pushed that self-serving thought away. Whatever happened between them from this moment forward, the first order of business was to make sure the bastard never got another crack at her.