Page 28 of Manhunt in the Narrows (Red Rock Murders #1)

“Ow.” The park medic prodded at the contusion bubbling from Elias’s forehead with a little too much force. He tried to jerk back but didn’t get far. The back of his head hit the ambulance door and triggered a whole new headache.

“Hold still or I’ll sedate you, Agent Broyles.” Okay. There was a witch underneath the expertly done makeup, platinum-blond hair and gum snapping. Ranger Barbie was actually a sadist. His investigative skills had failed him.

“I get that a lot.” Another snap of her gum. She set piercing blue eyes made for magazine covers on him with a slow spread of her lips. Demonic. That was the word that came to mind. “Comes in handy for one-night stands. They can’t leave fast enough.”

Shock caught in his throat. Elias had to swallow to keep himself from spitting all over her pressed uniform with laughter. “I’ll warn whoever I can.” At the moment, that included Grant, who’d interrupted Elias’s physical exam twice now to ask Ranger Barbie about a mole on his back. Then his front.

Elias closed his eyes and set his head back against the ambulance bay door.

He and Sayles had somehow dragged themselves back to Mae and Javier’s tent after their face-off with the killer.

The radio hidden inside had given them direct contact with Risner and search-and-rescue.

Since the helicopter couldn’t retrieve them at night, they’d had to settle in beside a dead man and wait until the sun crested the horizon in the east. Another team had been sent up the Narrows to retrieve Mae, who was currently wrapped in a solar blanket on one of the park benches with an oxygen mask strapped over her face.

Alive. Traumatized, but alive. She and Javier had been on their honeymoon.

Married just two months ago, they’d chosen to take a road trip across the country to start their new life off with adventure.

Right around the time bodies had started turning up on the interstate.

The Hitchhiker Killer, identified as Patrick Corrl—yes, he’d actually given Sayles his real name—had been airlifted in a basket.

And right into a body bag. Now that the case was concluded, each of the victims would be returned to their families for burial or cremation, including Javier and the hiker murdered at the base of the Narrows.

“You’re good to go. Keep it clean and dry, and there will be minimal scarring.

” Ranger Barbie shucked the bright pink latex gloves she’d donned to examine and treat his injuries and tossed them into the biohazardous waste bin in the rig.

“You know, I think my mom said the same thing about the first time I had sex. She wasn’t wrong. ”

“Thank you for that visual, Ranger Jordan.” Elias shoved to stand.

Mistake. He’d made a mistake. His bones hurt.

Was that possible? Hell, how they’d managed to escape with nothing more than a few bruises and cuts—well, apart from his broken nose and Sayles’s cracked ribs—he didn’t know. Some X-rays were in order.

“I can go all night.” Was every word out of Ranger Barbie’s mouth meant to be sexual?

Elias wasn’t interested in finding out and left her to pack her supplies.

There was only one woman on his mind. Searching the parking lot, he headed for the visitors’ center.

Away from the chaos of Risner giving the media snippets of the harrowing assignment his department had taken on, Grant’s incessant attempt to get Ranger Barbie’s attention and law enforcement rangers begging to confirm his statement for the fourth time.

The tug he’d experienced while racing to find Sayles led him through the visitors’ center’s tinted glass doors and toward the theater seating set up for hikers heading out of the trails.

The exact location he’d first set eyes on her.

That intense green gaze snapped to him as he approached.

He couldn’t shut down the flinch as he took in the bruising across her face and a matching butterfly bandage on her chin.

Taking a seat next to her on the bench, Elias fought against the pain in his torso.

New dressings pulled at the skin across his side and along his inner thigh, but he’d yet to change into a fresh set of clothes.

“To think just a few days ago you were trying to get out of this assignment. Look how far we’ve come. ”

“I’m still debating if I made the right choice.” Sayles set her head against his shoulder, and the ricocheting pain vanished with her warmth. They stared at the dark theater screen, almost closed off from the rest of the world in this small corner of the building. “You owe me a turkey.”

He couldn’t contain his laugh. “I remember.” And he had every intention of following through.

“How is she?” Sayles didn’t have to specify who she meant. He could see Mae through the front doors from their position.

“Alive thanks to you.” Angling his nose against her scalp, he kissed the top of her head.

Not daring to pull away. Not wanting to be apart from her for a second longer.

Neither of them had slept during the night—too keyed up, too desperate to prove they’d survived.

He’d held her, but his brain still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t just some part of a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

“No one else with your past would’ve done what you did, putting yourself between her and her abuser. You saved her life.”

“Did I?” The words were almost too soft for him to pick up, and if he hadn’t been totally and completely tuned into every minor shift in this woman, he might’ve missed it.

“Because from where I’m sitting, she’s leaving this place a lot more traumatized than when she arrived.

Not only did her ex try to kill her. but her new husband is dead. Shot right in front of her.”

“You saved her life, Sayles. You gave her the gift of slaying her demons and moving on, of never having to look over her shoulder again.” Securing his arm around her back, he hauled her against him.

Putting them flush against each other shoulder to hip.

Right where she belonged. “How many women in her position can say that? You made that happen. She owes you her life.”

“She doesn’t owe me anything. She’s free. That’s all I ever wanted for her. And for me.” She straightened, notching her chin higher to look him dead in the eye. “And I got it. Thanks to you.”

He didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“These past few days, I was so determined to hate you. Not you specifically, but what you represented. I’d convinced myself all federal agents had to be like my ex-husband because why else wouldn’t have anyone seen what was going on in my marriage?

Why wouldn’t they have said something unless there was this unspoken code to always have another agent’s back?

” Shrugging, she relaxed into him further.

“I made you the enemy, and I’m sorry. When you asked what our future held, I got scared.

I was afraid if I gave you a chance to show me that you weren’t anything like him, I would be handing over my freedom to live life how I wanted all over again.

I never meant for you to feel you weren’t enough like I was made to feel, and I hate that your heart was the casualty.

But more, I hated the fact that I didn’t hate you.

In a way, I was holding myself prisoner. You showed me how to free myself.”

His heart shuddered in his very sore chest. “Does that mean you like me?”

“I’m saving my conclusions until after our first date.

” Slipping her palm against his chest, she smacked him lightly.

That breathtaking smile lit up her whole face.

“No, Agent Broyles, it means I’m falling for you.

Of course, I didn’t realize it until you went over the side of a cliff, and by then it was too late to tell you. ”

“Good thing I’m a lot harder to kill than I look.

” Elias tilted her head back with an index finger under her chin and pressed his mouth to hers.

He kissed her until his mouth was swollen and his body tingled.

Until every second of fear and desperation leaked from his nervous system and dissipated between them.

“Will it make you feel better for almost letting me die without knowing how you felt if I tell you I’m falling for you, too? ”

“Maybe.” She traced a finger along his jaw, prickling the scruff on his face. Three days without shaving or a shower, but she didn’t seem to mind. “But will you be taking those feelings back with you to Las Vegas now that the case is closed?”

Silence settled between them. Just for a moment as he considered the risk in admitting this thing between them had somehow grown to overshadow anything else in his life.

“After I told you about my dad’s death, you said it sounded as though I’d accepted my fate and that there was nothing I could do to change it.

You weren’t wrong. I’ve spent so long trying to live up to his legacy, to prove I could be good enough to catch the people who killed him, that it gradually became everything I am, and I let it. But I don’t want that anymore.”

Sayles pulled away. Not out of reach—because he wasn’t sure either of them could handle that after everything they’d been through—but to get a better look at him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” He took a deep breath. Took the leap. “I’m saying I don’t want my career to be all I am anymore. I want more out of life, and I want you in it. As much as possible. If that means quitting the FBI and signing on with Springdale’s police department, I will. Because you’re worth it.”

Her mouth parted on a soft exhale. “Okay.”

“Okay?” His laugh vibrated through him, and he rocked back in his seat, taking her with him. “I spill my guts, almost literally after losing that fight with a damn twig, and all you have to say is okay?”

“Am I supposed to put up more of a fight?” She smoothed her fingers along the collar of his T-shirt with an answering smile of her own. “The truth is, I was thinking of making some changes, too.”

Damn, he couldn’t get enough of this woman. Would never let her go. “What kind of changes?”

“The moving on kind.” She traced the length of his throat with one finger, and her smile slipped. “I can’t forget what my ex did to me, but I think it’s time to stop living in the past. To start making choices full of joy instead of fear. On my terms rather than out of a sense of survival.”

Elias couldn’t stop staring at this magnificent creature who’d been thrown in his path a mere three days ago. “Am I one of those choices?”

“That depends.” Her smile was back in place, spreading slowly and revealing a playfulness he’d only glimpsed during their times in the Narrows. And, hell, he couldn’t be more grateful she trusted him with the real her.

She had him hook, line and sinker. Or rather flash floods, death-defying falls and one-person tents. “On what?”

Her stomach growled, and Sayles kissed the corner of his mouth. “On how fast you can get me that turkey you promised.”

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