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from his fingers and clattered against the pavement.
    He stood transfixed, staring at the beautiful hellcat lying unconscious at his feet. Her dark blond hair shimmered in the smoky, yellowed light streaming through the back door. The light created an eerie halo around the bounty hunter.
    Tommy towered over her, the baseball bat from the wall resting against his shoulder. “She wouldn’t have stopped fighting you,” he said, giving his head a shake.
    Grayson reluctantly agreed. He’d seen how that glazed look, a look of unrelenting determination, had turned her beautiful cornflower blue eyes wild. She’d crossed over the line and made the decision to fight him to the death.
    “I shot a woman,” he whispered.
    “Never mind her,” Tommy said. “There’s something wrong with a woman who looks like that and chooses to do a dirty job like this. You’d done her a favor, if’n you ask me.”
    Tommy was probably right. But still, he didn’t like shooting women. Killing a man felt different, like he was a warrior championing some cause. Hurting women just made his stomach roil.
    He knelt down beside her and peeled open her leather jacket. Blood oozed steadily from the gaping wound. He applied the weight of his hand to the nearest pressure point while fumbling around in her coat.
    Tommy gave him a queer look. “Now are you gonna tell me what happened between you and Greg or do I have to keep guessin’?”
    Grayson grunted. He wasn’t ready to talk about the angry words, the deep red blood, and the overwhelming guilt…
    “Your decision.” Tommy sounded wary. Perhaps nervous even. “You go on, get out of here. I’ll take care of this and talk nice and sweet to the cops too.”
    In no mood to let anyone clean up after him, Grayson ignored the offer. He found a tiny, silver cell phone in an interior pocket in the bounty hunter’s jacket and dialed 9-1-1.
    “Fetch me a dish rag or something I can use to slow the bleeding. The bullet blew its way through her shoulder,” he said to Tommy while waiting for confirmation that an ambulance was indeed on its way.
    His friend shrugged and disappeared back into the bar.
    Grayson stared at the bounty hunter’s too beautiful face, darkened and frighteningly motionless. “Don’t you go and make me feel guilty about you, too. You picked this fight with me.”
    She was lifeless, her breathing too shallow. She was going to die—just like that last one. How many women would he have to kill before he dropped straight into hell?
    “Go on with you now. Get.” Tommy startled Grayson. He’d returned with a pile of relatively clean dishrags in his meaty hand. Sirens echoed through the dark swamp, only adding urgency to Tommy’s warning.
    He couldn’t stay any longer, not unless he wanted to be taken back into police custody.
    He plucked the bounty hunter’s wallet from her pocket. “This should buy me some time,” he said. He opened the supple leather wallet. Vega Brookes, her driver’s license read. “They won’t figure out my identity until they figure out hers.”
    Tommy nodded.
    There were several hundred dollars in the wallet. Good. That should help him, too. He slipped the wallet into his pocket.
    “I’ll make this up to you somehow,” he said as he tucked her gun into his pants and trotted toward a path that led directly into the swamp, the handcuffs still dangling from his wrist. “Well, maybe not…”

Chapter Four
    “Vega,” a shadowy voice called to her.
    “Dad?” Vega struggled through the darkness. It’d been ages since she’d seen him. Why had they lost touch? “Dad?”
    Someone was pushing on her shoulders, keeping her pinned to the ground.
    “Vega!” the voice said sharply.
    She blinked. The room was dim. The early morning light was pushing its way around a drawn shade.
    “Oh…Jack,” she said as soon as her uncle’s lean face eased into focus.
    “Don’t sound so eager to see me.” A big, fat smile slid across his lips. He leaned in