Stormwalker by Allyson James
I rested my forehead on the table. “How did you get to be sheriff when you have PTSD?”
I knew I shouldn’t have asked such a dangerous question, but I didn’t have the energy to care.
“Because I do the job better than anyone else,” Nash answered. I believed him, somehow. “I haven’t had an episode in a year.”
“Not since Amy.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I’d just blown any chance of getting out of here today. I peeled open my eyes and looked up, wincing when I saw Nash’s gray ones.
“You give up this so-called investigation and go home,” he said in a hard voice, “or I’ll bust you for fraud and expose you for the con artist you are.”
I started to answer that I had the right to live in any town I wanted to, but my stomach decided just then to punish me for the night of storm magic. I pressed my arm over my abdomen, but it didn’t help.
I staggered to my feet and made it to the trash can in the corner before my morning coffee and a gob of bile came up.
“Damn it, Begay–”
Nash’s diatribe was cut off by a deputy outside saying quickly and worriedly, “You can’t go in there.”
The door banged open, and a man shouldered his way in, shoving aside the deputy who tried to get in his way. He was six-feet-six of solid muscle in jeans, a black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, had a silver earring dangling from one ear, and dragon tattoos snaking down both arms. His hair was black, the wild curls of it just contained in a ponytail. He had the blues eyes I’d ever seen, and I vividly recalled staring into them the night I lost my virginity.
My mouth formed the name, “Mick,” at the same time Nash rose to his feet and aimed his nine-millimeter right and Mick’s head.
“Stop.”
Nash might as well have tried to stop a freight train. Mick came on.
“I said, stop.”
Nash’s voice was ice-hard. He might have scared the hell out of insurgents in Iraq, but he didn’t know Mick. Mick ignored him, and Nash fired.
The sound exploded in my head. I screamed. The bullet hit Mick in the shoulder, and he grunted with the impact, but it barely slowed him down. He made it to me and scooped me up.
“Hey, baby,” he said, grinning. “Miss me?”
ONE OF THE BEST scenes in the book – LOVE it!!