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A funny catch lodged in Erin’s chest as she watched Alec pat the thug down, ostensibly checking for other weapons, then return to the SUV. He’d saved her life. For that, she figured she owed him the benefit of the doubt, even if the notion of not reporting this terrifying incident to the police galled her. She glanced at the letter sitting on the console between the front seats. What was so darned important about that letter that men were willing to kill for it?
Alec ducked his head in the back seat again and sawed on the strap securing the second man.
“So what am I supposed to do?” she asked. “Just go back home and pretend nothing happened?”
Alec’s hands stilled, and he glanced up at her, his mouth set in a grim line.
Erin wondered if Alec ever smiled, wondered about the life he led that kept his expression so hard and humorless. Wondered how a smile would transform his stony features.
“Once I get this guy out, I want you to dump this vehicle somewhere, then walk about a mile before you call a cab. Don’t go back to your house. They know you live there, and you’d be an easy mark.”
Erin pressed a hand to her stomach as anxiety fueled the wave of nausea that swamped her. “And why would they come back for me? I thought it was you and this Daniel LeCroix person’s letter that they were after.”
He sighed, and the muscles in his jaw jumped. “Because I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
He grunted and continued his work. “I came back for you. Rescued you from them.”
She scoffed. “You see that as a mistake?”
“Now they believe I care whether you live or die. They’ll see you as a way to get to me.”
Dread settled in her chest like a rock.
“Do you have a friend or relative you can stay with for a while?”
A hollow ache plucked at her. Loneliness. Grief. And guilt, her constant companion of late. “No. My parents are dead, and I just moved into town last week.”
He scowled. “Then go to a hotel. And be careful. Keep your door locked and don’t talk to anyone.”
“But—” Before she had a chance to voice her complaint, the scuffle of feet drew Alec’s attention to the side of the storage building. The SUV driver had regained consciousness. Hands still bound by the seat belt, the groggy man stumbled to his feet. And ran.
“Damn!” Alec snatched his gun from his waistband and foisted it toward her. “Watch this guy. If he so much as blinks, shoot him!”
Spinning away, Alec sprinted after the fleeing driver. Erin gaped at Alec’s retreating back then down at the weapon he’d shoved in her hands. Shoot Mr. Knife? Even if her own life were at stake, she wasn’t sure she could ever pull the trigger, kill another human being.
Her stomach swirled, and she wished she had some crackers to settle the queasiness. She’d moved to Colorado hoping to build a new life, to escape the turmoil and tragedy that had plagued her the past two years. To heal, to make a fresh start, and to nurture Bradley’s last gift to her. But she’d only been in her new home a week, and already bad luck and danger had found her again. She had to be jinxed.
Hands shaking, she set the gun on the passenger’s seat, terrified her trembling hands would make the gun fire accidentally.
Her gaze darted to the letter—the root of this whole fiasco, the source of the danger she was in. She lifted the missive and held it to the sunlight, trying to see what was inside. Useless. The envelope paper was too thick.
It occurred to her that, like the driver, Knife could rouse, could surprise her, could overpower her. Could steal the letter and escape.
Then all of Alec’s efforts to hold on to the letter and rescue her would have been in vain. Mind spinning, Erin turned the letter over in her hand. Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to shoot Knife if needed, but she could do something to protect Daniel’s letter.
Grumbling to himself in disgust, Alec balled his hands as he stormed back to the storage units where he’d left Erin. He’d lost his prey in the maze of alleys, small homes and parked cars. Worse than that, he’d taken off after the cretin so fast, he’d left Daniel’s letter sitting on the front console of the SUV. While mapping out a plan to keep Erin safe, he’d allowed her fearful eyes, her rebellious pout to distract him. For a man who prided himself on perfection, today’s accumulating list of mistakes chafed.
He sidled up to the back wall of the storage building and peered around the corner to survey the scene at the SUV. If Erin had lost control of the situation, he didn’t want to walk into a confrontation unaware.
Erin paced back and forth behind the rear bumper. Her attention remained glued down the driveway, in the direction he’d pursued the driver. As she marched back and forth, she gnawed a thumbnail, then frowned at the chewed finger. A bulge at the small of her back told him where she’d stashed his SIG-Sauer.
He didn’t see the other thug, but that could mean the man was still slumped in the back seat.
A shadow shifted near the front fender, and Alec tensed. He pulled out the knife he’d been using to cut the seat belts and narrowed his gaze. Grass rustled by the driver’s-side tire.
Alec moved out, skulking toward the SUV with the knife ready. He’d only made it a few steps before cretin number two sprang from behind the vehicle.
The bastard lofted a thick branch and closed in on Erin.
“Erin, look out!” Alec shouted.
Too late. The heavy branch crashed down on her skull, and she crumpled to the ground. Alec’s gut lurched with a sickening dread.
As her assailant bolted down the driveway, he snatched something from the front pocket of her jeans. An envelope.
Alec cursed. Racing to Erin, he fished the SIG-Sauer out from under her shirt and darted down the drive after the escaping thief. He fired a shot as the man dashed around the corner of a clapboard house. Training told Alec to go after the fleeing suspect, but the woman lying, unmoving, in the dirt spoke to something deeper in Alec’s soul.
You left Daniel.
He stared at the spot where Erin’s assailant had disappeared another moment, a razor pain slicing through him when he thought of the lost letter, the danger Daniel could be in with his missive in the wrong hands.
Yet seeing Daniel’s handwriting had fired new hope in him that his partner was alive. Guilt and regret fueled his determination to get his search back on track.
As soon as he was certain Erin was safe.
He’d be damned if he knew why this woman compelled him to break with procedure, to jeopardize his mission, to act counter to everything he’d been trained to do. The inconsistency needled him.
Rushing back down the driveway, he dropped to his knees beside the unconscious woman and felt for a pulse. He released a deep breath when he found a strong throbbing beat in her neck.
Pulling her into his lap, he carefully examined her head for the goose egg sure to be swelling on her scalp. Her feminine scent teased him, and her silky curls coiled seductively around his fingers. Her limp body, her slack face, her vulnerability speared to his core. He’d been trained to steel himself against softer emotions, sympathies that could jeopardize a mission and blur his professional focus. But something about this woman slipped under his defenses and burrowed deep inside him.
Wincing, Erin jerked and raised a hand to the spot on her head where he probed. “Ow.”
Her eyelids fluttered open. With a gasp, she tried to sit up, but he caught her shoulders and eased her back to his lap. “Easy. You took a nasty blow. Go slow.”
Her puppy-dog eyes turned up to his face. “Alec?”
So she could talk and her short-term memory was intact. Both good signs. He focused on her pupils rather than the sexy sweetness of her mahogany eyes. Even. No abnormal dilation.
“Are you dizzy? Numb anywhere?” he asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her head. “I … No. My head hurts like fire, though. What happened?”
“Your charge cracked a limb over your head.” He was prepared to chastise her for her inattention to her prisoner, but she moaned in misery as she sat up.
“Knife! Where’d he—” She whipped her head around, apparently looking for the thug, then yelped and cradled her head again.
“I said go slow.” He slid a hand under her elbow to steady her. “And your man got away after he whacked you.”
“Sorry.” She grimaced, and her face paled as she clapped a hand to her jeans pocket. “It’s gone. The envelope—”
Alec gritted his teeth as renewed frustration wrenched inside him. “He took it.”
Next, Erin patted her chest, and a corner of her mouth curled up. When she unfastened the top button of her shirt and jammed her hand inside her bra, Alec arched an eyebrow, undeniably intrigued. A flash of heat spun through his blood as his attention was drawn to the curve of breast that peeked from her open neckline.
Erin chuckled and drew something out of her clothes. A folded paper.
He sent her a dubious frown. “What’s that?”
Her answering smile beamed, its wattage hitting him like a punch in the solar plexus. “Your letter.”
Alec stilled. “What?”
She extended the folded sheet to him, smug satisfaction glowing in her eyes. “I figured Knife might try to steal the letter again, so I hid the contents of the envelope. Just in case. I put the envelope in my pocket, so it’d look like I was at least trying to protect it. I figured if I left it completely unguarded Knife might get suspicious. I made the slit in the side as small and inconspicuous as I could.”
As Erin prattled on, explaining her reasoning, Alec slipped the letter from her fingers and heaved a mental sigh of relief. Amazing. Erin’s forethought and creativity, the fact that she’d bothered at all to protect Daniel’s letter, stunned him. Impressed the hell out of him.
When she stopped chattering about her ingenuity, she met his gaze with an expectant expression. “Pretty good, huh?”
“Smart thinking. I could kiss you.”
She sent him a startled look, and he realized belatedly what he’d said.
When her gaze shifted to his mouth, adrenaline kicked his pulse up a notch. As if he’d just spotted a tango in the jungle. As if he’d just blown a hole in a building with a chunk of C4. As if … he had the opportunity to taste the lips of a gorgeous woman.
He dropped his gaze to her mouth, and the air around him charged with a crackling energy. Acting purely on impulse, Alec leaned toward Erin, zeroing in on his target. But before he reached his goal, Erin drew a sharp breath, moaned softly and clutched her gut. “Oh, geez. I—I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Alec shook off the fog that had momentarily muddled his mind. Another lapse in his thinking, another failure to let his training guide his actions.
He clenched his teeth, shoved to his feet and turned his attention back to the pale-faced woman who held her stomach. “What kind of pain are you having? Any dizziness or ringing ears?”
She flashed a chagrined smile. “Nausea. Sorry, this won’t be pretty.”
With that, she rolled to her hands and knees and retched. Not good. Vomiting was indication she could have a concussion. He crouched beside her and helped her trap her long hair inside the collar of her shirt. A loose curl escaped, and he held it away from her face as she heaved again. “You need to see a doctor.”
She shook her head and several hanks of hair fell loose again. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Like he had room to talk. He’d almost kissed her. Stupid, stupid …
Slipups like that in the field could get you killed. Falling for a pair of seductive brown eyes or the temptation of a kiss was just the kind of mistake his enemies banked on. If he was going to find Daniel, he had to pull himself together.
Erin glared at him over her shoulder.
He gentled his voice. “You’ve had a serious head trauma, and you’re throwing up. You could have a concussion. You need a CT scan.” He gathered her loose hair again and re-tucked it in her shirt, painfully aware of the silky texture against his skin.
She rocked back on her heels and swiped her mouth with her sleeve. “All I need is some crackers or something to settle my stomach. I’ll be fine.”
He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. He didn’t have time to argue with her. “You’re going to see a doctor.”
Erin twisted her lips in a frown of disagreement. Pushing to her feet, she dusted the seat of her jeans and, with a wobble, stepped toward the SUV. “Just take me home. Please?”
He shadowed her, ready to catch the stubborn woman if she toppled over. “I already told you why you can’t go back to your house. Especially now with your buddy Knife, as you called him, and his cohort on the loose again.”
“You really think they’ll come after me again?” She furrowed her brow and held a hand to the knot rising on her scalp.
An external knot. A good sign.
“You really think they’ll give up?” he returned.
Fear flickered across her face, and her shoulders drooped. “Great.”
Alec calculated which emergency room was closest and internally groaned at the three- to four-hour wait they’d likely have on a Saturday afternoon. He toyed with, then nixed, the idea of leaving Erin at the hospital. She was in no condition to take care of herself. Hell.
More delays. More time for the people on his trail to track him. More opportunity for Erin to be found, caught, used against him, perhaps killed when Knife figured out she’d duped him and he didn’t have Daniel’s letter. He’d have to stay with her. Rather, she’d have to stay with him….
His gut tightened at the thought. Could he risk taking her with him to the safe house in the mountains? And did he really have any other options if he was going to keep her safe?
Maybe if she weren’t in danger because of him, he could justify leaving her at the E.R. The staff at the hospital would take care of her injuries. But the staff couldn’t guard her from knife-wielding thugs the way he could. And Alec was certain the men who’d kidnapped her to force his hand would try again.
“Look, I appreciate your concern, Alec.” Erin’s face had more color, but she still visibly trembled. “But my head already feels better. It’s only a sharp throb now.” She tossed him a wry grin. “And I’m only sick to my stomach because I’m—” Her eyes slid closed, and she staggered. “Whoa, why is the ground moving?”
Alec caught her as she toppled. “That settles it, sweetcakes. You’re coming with me.”
“I don’t—”
“Stop arguing and get in the truck.”
While he helped her to the front seat of the SUV, Alec mentally ran down his list of contacts in the area, wishing he hadn’t tossed his cell phone quite so soon. He stopped at a small insurance office, parking the damaged SUV out of sight, and convinced the receptionist to let him borrow the office phone and call in a few favors.
Within minutes he was escorting Erin into a private, outpatient radiology lab. The facility’s owner was the brother of a former black ops teammate Alec had once rescued from a Honduran prison. Though the private lab was typically closed on Saturdays, the owner/radiologist met Alec to repay his brother’s debt. While Erin was in the back getting her scan, Alec took a seat in the waiting area and recalculated his plans, adding Erin into the mix. Inconvenient, but doable.
He pulled Daniel’s letter out and stared at the folded sheet. Erin had been lucky as hell the letter hadn’t been a bomb. He’d been waiting until he could dust the envelope for fingerprints, x-ray it and check for explosives before he opened the letter. Now there seemed no reason not to take his first close look at his only clue to Daniel’s whereabouts.
Carefully, Alec unfolded the stiff paper. Colorful artwork and old-fashioned script decorated the page. Dotted lines connected one small drawing to another, superimposed on a map of a fictional Caribbean isle. In the top corner, the skull and crossbones of a pirate’s flag smirked at Alec.
He frowned. Why would Daniel send him this child’s souvenir? Was his partner simply telling him he was alive or did the map mean something else?
“Good news.”
Drawn from his perusal of the pirate map by the radiologist’s voice, Alec hastily refolded the sheet and shoved it in his pocket.
“Your friend has only a minor concussion,” the radiologist said with a grin. “Chances are she’ll have a whopping headache for a few days, but I see no other damage, nothing that concerns me. She should be just fine.”
Alec nodded. “Can she travel?”
