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“Forgive me for not believing you, but that’s the same thing you told me last time. Right before you used me.”
That she could believe that about him made him feel like a son of a bitch. Six years ago his decision to use her as bait and set a trap for Rasmussen had occurred before he’d spent a week in that safe house with her. Before he’d touched her. Before he’d kissed her. Before he’d slept with her. Long before his heart had gotten involved….
In the end she had been the one to carry out the plan—without his blessing. To this day he didn’t know what she’d had to do to get the goods on Rasmussen. That burning question had been tormenting him for six years.
Jake scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You went behind my back—”
“Sending me to Rasmussen was your idea,” she said.
That much was true. “I tried to abort the sting.”
Her smile was cool. “You were too late, though, weren’t you?”
“You were angry when you found out about the plan,” he said. “You get reckless when you’re angry.”
“We both got reckless, wouldn’t you say?”
He didn’t know what she’d had to do to get Rasmussen to fess up on tape. He didn’t know if she’d had to compromise herself…or worse. The only thing that was crystal clear about any of this was that she blamed him.
Jake bore that blame like a lead weight.
“Damn it, Kelsey—”
“Don’t call me that. Kelsey James no longer exists. My name is Leigh.” She glanced over at her suitcase. “I have to go.”
Jake clamped his jaws together and struggled for patience. “Let me take you to the safe house.” He stepped toward her. “I mean it. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I’ll take my chances with Rasmussen. At least with him I know where I stand. He might be brutal, but he’s a straight shooter.”
The words slashed like a knife. Leigh Michaels was no longer the twenty-one-year-old farm girl she’d been six years ago. She’d blossomed into a stunning beauty with the street smarts of an undercover cop. The hard knocks she’d taken showed in her shadowed eyes. In the mouth that no longer smiled so readily. But she was still so beautiful it hurt just to look at her, and Jake felt the pain of it all the way to his bones.
Rounding the bed, she picked up the H&K he’d taken away from her earlier. With the ease of a woman who knew how to handle a firearm, Leigh checked the clip, then sheathed the weapon in her waistband. She walked over to her single suitcase, picked it up and started toward the door.
Before opening it, she turned and looked at him. Her eyes slid down his body. She hadn’t meant the slow perusal in a sexual way, but he felt her gaze like the soft caress of fingertips over sensitive skin and his body jumped in response.
“Don’t try to come after me, Jake. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“It’s not the first one, is it?”
“Could be your last.” He watched her, wondering if any shred of what she’d felt for him six years ago was left inside her. “Don’t do this, Leigh. You’re going to get hurt.”
“I’ve already been hurt.” She smiled, and for a moment looked very much like the lovely young woman he’d fallen for six years ago. “See you around, Jake.”
She slipped through the door.
For several eternal seconds Jake stood next to the bed, his heart heavy with dread. There was no way he could let her walk away. No matter how careful she was, Rasmussen would find her, and Jake knew what would happen when he did. The thought sickened him.
Leigh might not want to be protected, but there was no way he could stand by and let her do this. Even if he had to use physical force. It was a route he hadn’t wanted to take, but the alternative was infinitely worse.
“Go get her, you damn fool,” he muttered, and started for the door.
CLUTCHING HER SUITCASE, Leigh started down the hall at a fast clip. Her heart was still wildly pounding from the shock of seeing Jake again. She couldn’t believe he’d found her. Couldn’t believe the old feelings were still there, when she’d spent so many years trying to exorcise them from her system.
The doors on either side of her blurred as she broke into a run. She wasn’t sure why she was running. Away from Jake and all the memories and feelings she’d struggled for so long to leave behind. But she knew that no matter how fast she ran she would never be able to outrun them.
She was midway to the stairs when a man rushed out of the alcove where the ice machine was. Leigh darted left, but he plowed into her with the force of a Mack truck. The impact sent her reeling. Her suitcase flew from her grip. Then his strong arms locked around her and spun her around.
She caught a glimpse of long hair pulled into a ponytail. Eyes full of violence. She reached for the H&K in her waistband but wasn’t fast enough. His hand shot out like a snake. Viselike fingers closed around her wrist and Leigh dropped the pistol.
“Try something stupid again and I’ll kill you.”
Leigh tried to twist away, but he slammed her against the wall. Pain radiated up her spine. Her scream was cut short when he slapped his hand over her mouth.
“Don’t make a sound or I’ll put a hole in you so big it’ll take the cops a week to find all the pieces.” He backed up the threat by jamming a pistol against her ribs. “You got that, pretty lady?”
Leigh jerked her head once. She just knew he had to be one of Rasmussen’s thugs.
Setting his forearm against her throat, the man glanced both ways. “You alone?”
She nodded, wondering where Jake was. “What do you want?”
“There’s a hefty pricetag on that pretty head of yours. Nothing personal, but I’m going to cash in.”
She cringed as he ran his hands swiftly and impersonally over her body. She prayed he wouldn’t find the knife in her boot.
Relief surged through her when he stepped back without patting down her calves. “We’re going to take the elevator down. Nice and easy and quiet. You got it?”
He stepped into the dim light of a wall sconce, and she got her first good look at him. He was the size of a woolly mammoth with eyes so pale they looked white. His face was pocked and angular. He wore an expensive trench coat. And he held a deadly looking semiautomatic pistol aimed at her heart.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He jabbed her ribs with the gun. “Start walking.”
Leigh glanced down the hall, but the door to her room remained shut. Jake was nowhere in sight. It suddenly occurred to her he might not have heard the commotion. That he could have been on the phone with his superiors. Or maybe he was going to let this man take her and lead him to Rasmussen….
She knew it was stupid considering this man could kill her at any moment, but the thought hurt the same way it had hurt her six years ago. Damn Jake to hell. She didn’t need him or his protection. She still had the knife, after all. All she had to do was wait….
The man motioned toward the elevator at the other end of the hall. “He wants you healthy, so don’t try anything stupid.”
Leigh’s legs were shaking so violently she could barely put one foot in front of the other. Dizzy with fear, she started toward the elevator.
Rot in hell, Vanderpol, she thought as she passed by the door to her room.
But as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she’d been secretly hoping Jake would burst from the room and save her. That hope dwindled as they neared the elevator. Leigh could take care of herself, but she was smart enough to know when she was out of her depth. The men who worked for Ian Rasmussen were in an entirely different league altogether. One that was vicious and deadly.
She was ten feet from the elevator when the sound of steel against steel stopped her. Jake, she thought, and spun. Her legs went weak when she saw him standing just twenty feet away, his weapon trained on the thug.
Snarling a profanity, the thug jerked her close and jammed the muzzle against her temple. “Make a move and I’ll splatter her brains all over you.”
“Drop the weapon and let her go,” Jake said with icy calm.
The thug backed toward the elevator, dragging Leigh with him. “I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands.”
Jake stepped toward him. “You hurt your precious cargo and Rasmussen will make you wish you’d never been born. I’ve seen what he does to people who cross him and it’s not pretty.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Your worst nightmare.”
The thug laughed. Leigh’s heart leapt into a wild staccato. The man had his left arm locked around her waist. His right held the gun against her temple. She could hear the rush of his ragged breath in her ear. She could smell the fear coming off him to mingle with her own.
“Let her go and I’ll let you walk away,” Jake said. “I have no quarrel with you.”
“Walk away from a big payoff?” The thug traced the gun down the side of her face. “I don’t think you want to mess up this pretty face any more than I do.”
“Or maybe this is a losing proposition for both of us,” Jake said, edging closer.
They reached the elevator. The thug loosened his grip on her to press the down button. The gun wavered. Knowing this could be her only chance, that she had only an instant to act, Leigh grasped his gun wrist with both hands. Simultaneously, she brought her boot down on his instep.
The weapon exploded inches from her ear. The thug jerked the gun in Jake’s direction. In her peripheral vision she saw Jake charge, his weapon leveled on the thug.
“No!” she screamed.
Jake took down the thug in a flying tackle. They hit the floor and rolled in a tangle of arms and legs. Hands grappled for guns.
A second gunshot blew a hole in the wall. Jake’s hand circled the thug’s wrist, but the other man’s finger was on the trigger.
Run.
The word echoed inside her head, a primal instinct born of six years of living on the edge. But Leigh didn’t run. Even though she knew Jake was more than capable of taking care of himself, there was no way she could leave him struggling with an armed killer twice his size.
Not giving herself time to debate, she bent and slid the knife from her boot. Gripping the dull side of the blade in a five-finger grip, she waited for a clean shot. She drew back and let the weapon fly in a short range, half spin throw, exactly the way they’d taught her at the knife-throwing classes she’d taken two years ago.
The knife spun as if in slow motion, the blade glinting in a perfect downward arc. An instant later the razor sharp point found its mark at the back of the man’s left calf and went in deep.
The thug’s body went rigid. An animalistic bellow tore from this throat. He turned murderous eyes on her. “You bitch!”
Jake grabbed the man’s wrist, and the gun flew from his grip and skittered away. “That’s no way to speak to a lady.”
But the thug was more focused on the knife sticking out of his calf than he was on fighting. His features were contorted in pain. “I’m bleeding! She stabbed me!”
“You had it coming.” Jake pulled a set of cuffs from his belt and secured the man’s hands behind his back.
Leigh saw blood coming through his trousers, and for the first time it struck her what she’d done. She’d never hurt another human being in her life. Even though she hadn’t had a choice, the realization made her feel a little sick. The room dipped and began to spin.
“Leigh.”
She looked up to see Jake striding toward her, his expression taut. “Easy,” he said. “Don’t look at it.”
She barely heard him over the rapid-fire beat of her heart. She could hear her breaths coming short and fast, her arms and legs trembling violently. Shock, she thought dully and was surprised, because she’d always thought she was tougher than that.
“I’m okay,” she heard herself say.
“You’re going to be real sorry you cut me,” the thug snarled, his face twisted in rage and pain.
When Jake reached her, Leigh couldn’t find her voice. All she could think was that they’d had a very close brush with death.
She jolted when Jake’s hands closed around her arms and squeezed them. “It’s okay,” he said.
“I stabbed him.”
“You saved my life. He didn’t give you a choice.”
Intellectually Leigh knew he was right. But on a more emotional level, nothing had felt right about sinking a knife into a man’s flesh. Even if the man had had it coming.
“Where did you learn to throw a knife like that?”
“I…took a class. A couple of years ago.”
“Must have been one hell of a class.” He was running his hands up and down her arms. Talking to her. Trying to bring her back from the brink of shock.
Both of them jumped when the elevator chimed. Jake spun. As if in slow motion she saw him slide the gun from its sheath. With his other hand, he took hers.
“Run!” he shouted.
The next thing she knew she was being dragged down the hall toward the stairwell. But it was the sight of the two men stepping off the elevator that snapped her back to reality. At first glance she thought they were deputy marshals from the Witness Security Program. Then she noticed their guns and knew the situation was about to take a hard turn for the worse.
The first shot snapped through the air with the violence of a lightning strike. Sheetrock exploded off the wall two feet to her right. A hot whiz ignited the air just inches from her ear.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
The stairwell at the end of the hall seemed a mile away. There was no cover. No place to run. All Leigh could think was that they were sitting ducks.
“I said run, damn it!”
She looked over at Jake and saw fear in his eyes, felt that same fear rampaging through her. She didn’t think they were going to get out of this alive.
Then she caught a glimpse of red coming through his coat. Blood, she thought, and the fear ratcheted into terror. “Jake! Oh my God! You’ve been hit!”
The only response she got was the frenzied pound of her heart.
Chapter Three
“If I go down, you keep running!” Jake shouted. “You got that?”
“Don’t go down,” she panted.
