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Jake’s heart was pounding. He wanted to believe it was anger ricocheting through his body. But he could feel the fear pumping through him with every frenzied beat of his heart. He didn’t want to ask about Kelsey. He didn’t want to think about her or feel anything for her. But he did, and those emotions were tearing him up. He had to know if she was okay. Every agent who’d been in that room knew Rasmussen was going to go after her. He couldn’t bring himself to think about what would happen if he found her.
“Is she all right?” he asked.
“As far as we know.”
“What the hell do you mean as far as you know?”
The other man’s jaw flexed and Jake got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “This is bigger than just Kelsey James,” Cutter said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone hacked into the Witness Security Program database.”
Disbelief and a deeper, darker fear reared inside him. “No way.”
“This hacker has names and addresses. Every agent I’ve got is scrambling. Every witness who’s ever gone into the Witness Security Program is in danger. We’re trying to prioritize, but how the hell do you prioritize when you have more witnesses than agents?”
Jake felt as if he’d been punched. “Rasmussen?”
“I don’t know, but the timing of it points to him. He certainly has the resources.”
He stared at his superior, his mind reeling as the repercussions of what he was being told hit home. “Where’s Kelsey James?”
Cutter looked away.
“For God’s sake, you don’t know, do you?”
“I had an agent check her apartment as soon as we heard. CNN just broke the news. She must have heard about Rasmussen and left before we could make contact.”
Jake swore. That sounded like Kelsey. Head-strong. Stubborn. Willing to take on the world all by herself if she had to. But she had to be running scared, and with good reason. If Rasmussen got his hands on her…
The thought made Jake break into a cold sweat. His protective instincts kicked in with a vengeance. “At this point it’s probably safe to assume he has her name and address.”
“This is not your case, Jake. I need you here. There are administrative—”
“Screw administrative!” Another curse burned through the air. “I’m not going to let him get her, Sean.”
“I’ve got another agent en route.”
“Come on! You’ve got two hundred federal witnesses to protect and twenty agents! Do the math!”
“We’re working with the U.S. Marshals Service to contain all the witnesses.”
Jake cursed.
“I need you here, Jake. But I need your head screwed on straight. If you can’t keep it together you need to walk away.”
“I’m not going to let him kill that young woman,” Jake ground out.
“She knew what she was getting into six years ago.”
“She knew. But so did we, didn’t we, Sean?”
“Don’t go there, Jake. You did your job, and so did I.”
“Yeah. Maybe a little too well.” Jake scrubbed a hand over his face, a harsh sound breaking from his throat. “Where is she?”
Cutter stared at him, his face as hard as a piece of granite. “Don’t make the wrong decision, Vanderpol. I covered for you last time this woman got under your skin. I won’t do it again.”
“Is that the way this is going to go down?” Jake asked.
“That’s the only way this can go down.”
Never taking his eyes from the other man’s, Jake removed his MIDNIGHT identification from his wallet and laid it on the conference table. Reaching beneath his jacket, he withdrew his government-issue service revolver and laid it next to the badge.
“Now you don’t have to cover for me,” he said, and then walked out the door.
A SLATE-GRAY PREDAWN SKY spat sleet as Leigh Michaels lugged her suitcase into the second-floor motel room and locked the door behind her. Fear had been her constant companion since fleeing her apartment in Denver.
She’d always known this terrible moment would come. Rasmussen was too powerful a man, his resources too far-reaching for any prison to contain him permanently.
Shaking, Leigh pulled the sleek H&K semiautomatic pistol from her waistband and set it on the night table, within easy reach. She didn’t bother unpacking, because there was always the chance she would be leaving quickly. She didn’t want to have to leave behind what few clothes and toiletries she owned.
She walked to the television and turned it to a cable news channel, hoping to hear that Rasmussen had been captured. The anchor immediately dashed her hopes. “An unidentified source has informed us that the database of the Witness Security Program was hacked into over the weekend. Over two hundred names of high-level federal witnesses have been stolen….”
Leigh felt each word like a vicious punch. For an instant she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t think. She could feel the terror building inside her.
Ian Rasmussen had to be behind the theft of the database records. Even if the television wasn’t reporting the connection.
“Oh, God.” Standing abruptly, she put her hand to her stomach and choked back a sound of pure terror.
Ian Rasmussen knew her new identity. He knew her name. Her address.
For an instant she considered calling her old contact at the U.S. Marshals Service office in Boulder. Then she remembered what had happened the last time she’d put her trust in a government agency and nixed the idea.
The image of Jake Vanderpol flashed in her mind. She saw dark, intelligent eyes. Military-short hair. A lean face and chiseled mouth. A body as hard and breathtaking as the Rocky Mountains themselves.
She’d trusted him with her life. She’d given him her heart. Her body. A piece of her soul. He’d taken all of those things with a ravenousness that had left her half-crazy with the need for more. She’d fallen hard for the brooding agent. But the intimacies they’d shared hadn’t been enough to keep him from using her as a means to an end.
Shoving the memory back into its deep, dark hole, Leigh sat down hard on the bed and put her face in her hands. “Calm down,” she whispered into the silence of the room.
There was no way Rasmussen could have tracked her here. She’d been too cautious, watching out for cars traveling too close. She would have remembered seeing the same vehicle twice. No one had followed her.
Still, she knew it was best if she didn’t stay too long. She needed to keep moving. Once she’d put enough distance between her and Denver, she would stop in a new city, create a new identity, start a new life. It was her only hope of staying alive.
All she had to do was stay one step ahead of Rasmussen.
Glancing at the alarm clock on the night table next to the bed, she sighed. It was almost 7:00 a.m. She’d been driving most of the night. She needed a shower. Food. A few hours of sleep. Then she would hit the road again. If all went as planned, by tomorrow she would be in Kansas City. A place where she had no ties. No one had any reason to look for her there. All she had to do was stay alert and be cautious.
Feeling the hard tug of exhaustion, Leigh lay back on the bed, not bothering to take off her clothes or boots. The H&K was within easy reach, and she had a knife in her boot as backup in case she was caught unaware. But she didn’t think anything would happen. No one knew she was here.
But as sleep overtook her, it occurred to her that she’d underestimated Ian Rasmussen once before, and it had cost her more than she ever could have imagined.
LEIGH JOLTED AWAKE. Lying on her side, she remained perfectly still, listening, her heart pounding. The room around her was cold and silent and dimly lit. The clock on the night table told her she’d been asleep just over an hour. What the hell had wakened her?
In the past six years Leigh had learned to trust her instincts. Right now those instincts were telling her something was wrong. She could feel gooseflesh racing along her arms.
The doorknob squeaked. She sat up, her heart hammering like a piston in her chest.
A second later the door flew open and banged against the wall. A man looking to be as large as a mountain in the semidarkness of the room rushed in. She scrambled across the bed, her hand groping for the H&K on the night table. A dozen scenarios rushed through her mind as her hand closed around the grip. No time to think. Aim and fire, just like at the shooting range where she’d practiced so many hours in preparation of this terrible moment.
She brought up the gun, swung the weapon around. An instant later, a strong hand clamped around her wrist. “Drop it,” came a growled command.
But Leigh knew if she let go of the gun she was as good as dead. She screamed when he squeezed her wrist. “No!”
A gunshot exploded. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. She fought for control of the weapon with all her might, but even with all the self-defense classes she’d taken in the past six years she wasn’t prepared for the strength and speed of her attacker.
A final, painful squeeze to her wrist and the gun clattered to the floor. The last of her hope fled as she heard the intruder kick it away.
He’s going to kill me, she thought.
Knowing she had to act quickly if she wanted to live, Leigh used her free hand to reach for the knife in her boot. She’d barely gotten her fingers around the rubber grip when he locked both her wrists in his hands and shoved her back onto the bed. She tried to knee him, but he twisted aside just in time then came down on top of her.
She lashed out with her feet. But he was heavy and strong and overpowered her with ease.
“Calm down, Kelsey. Damn it, it’s me. Jake.”
Everything inside her froze at the sound of the all-too-familiar voice. Leigh stopped struggling, her body suddenly recognizing his on some primal, instinctive level. Every hard angle of his muscular body fit against hers with the perfection of a well-worn glove.
Breathing hard, she stared at him, unable to move, a confusion of emotions descending in a rush.
He glared down at her with dark eyes. His thin nose looked as if it had been broken and never properly set. His chiseled mouth was pulled into a grimace. But she knew from experience that his mouth could be gentle, too. That it could kiss a woman senseless if she wasn’t careful….
“Get off me!” she cried.
His nostrils flared with every labored breath. He was staring at her as if she were a ghost and he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing her. “Just be still,” he said. “Don’t fight me. You know I won’t hurt you.”
But Leigh knew that was the one thing Jake Vanderpol did exceptionally well. Something she would not let him do again. “You have no right to be here. To break into my room—”
“I’m here to save your life,” he cut in. “If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll let me do it.”
Chapter Two
Jake knew better than to think of how good she felt beneath him. She was a witness desperately needing protection. At least, until Rasmussen was captured or the U.S. Marshals Service could take over. But when it came to Kelsey James, the logic and the good sense he’d always prided himself on never so much as entered the picture: not six years ago when he’d crossed too many lines to count; not now because he had a pretty good idea that he was going to be crossing even more.
Staring into her vivid blue eyes with her body warm and soft against his, he prayed he could keep a handle on things this time.
Not bloody likely.
Feeling his body harden the way it did every time he so much as thought of her, he shifted, then pushed away, rose and offered his hand. Ignoring him, she scrambled across the bed and jumped to her feet.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I make a living finding people,” he said. “Give me a break.”
Her gaze flicked toward the door, and he realized for the first time how badly he must have frightened her. But he hadn’t had a choice. He’d known that if he’d taken the time to knock, she would have gone straight out the window.
“Do you have any idea how close you came to getting shot?” she asked.
“The day you can get the drop on me is the day I deserve a bullet.” He crossed to the door, looked both ways, then closed it and locked it. “Why didn’t you call your coordinator at the U.S. Marshals Office? Let them relocate you, protect you until that son of a bitch is caught?”
“In case you missed the news, it was a deputy marshal who helped him escape. Someone inside the U.S. Marshals Office gave it up, Jake. How can you expect me to trust them with my life?”
Wishing he could dispute that, he strode to the window, parted the curtains and surveyed the parking lot.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He turned to her. “I’m going to take you to a safe house.”
“I don’t want to go to a safe house. I sure as hell don’t want to go with you.”
“You don’t stand a chance of surviving on your own. It’s only a matter of time before Rasmussen finds you. We both know what will happen when he does.”
A tremor went through her. “He won’t find me.”
“Don’t bet your life on it. If he can hack into the Witness Security Program database, finding you will be a walk in the park.”
“I know how to disappear. A new name. A new city. I can do it and I don’t need your help.”
Pulling the Glock from the shoulder holster beneath his coat, he checked the clip, then shoved it back into its leather sheath. “You were in the database. He’s got your new name. Your latest address. As far as we know he could have had you under surveillance for quite some time.”
“I know how to take care of myself.”
“Not when it comes to Rasmussen.”
She walked around the bed and got in his face. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you. I don’t need your help. I can sure as hell do without your brand of protection.”
The words stung, but Jake didn’t let himself react. He figured he’d had that one coming after what happened six years ago. He’d never forgiven himself for not getting to her in time to keep her from going back into the lion’s den…
He may not have seen her for six years, but he’d kept track. She might think she was prepared, with her brown belt in karate and handgun training, but there was no way she was equipped to handle this on her own. She might talk tough; she might even look tough. But he saw the fear in her eyes. He doubted she had a clue what six years in a cage could do to a man like Rasmussen.
“I just want to help you,” he said. “Let me take you to the safe house.”
She stuck out her chin. “Or maybe you think I’m your ticket to Rasmussen. Maybe you want a repeat performance of how things went down the last time. You got that promotion after you nabbed him, didn’t you? Isn’t that what this is all about? Your ego? Your job? Get your man at any cost, including your own soul? Or in that case, it was my soul, wasn’t it?”
Jake just stared at her. He wondered if she really believed what she was saying. If she really hated him that much after everything they’d been through. If she remembered as keenly as he did that not everything that happened between them six years ago had been bad.
“All I want is to keep you safe,” he said. “I figure I owe you that much.”
