скачать книгу бесплатно
A sudden fury hit him. Connors had taken more than Scott had realized on that beautiful June day. Not only had he robbed nine men of their lives, he’d also stolen away a promising career.
Scott might not have seen Chelsie in action, but he’d heard enough about her from Maggie and some of the other agents at the WFO long before he’d taken her home. Even before she’d trained as a negotiator, she’d had a reputation as someone who could see to the heart of what a perp wanted and talk him into choosing a peaceful way to get it.
It was not a talent a lot of people had. He sure didn’t. He could take out a moving target at half a mile, but talking down a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest? That was a job he’d gladly leave to someone else.
Cursing under his breath, Scott pulled up the case file from last year. Chelsie might not want anything to do with it, but there was something about this whole situation that felt off to Scott. Something about Connors’s actions that didn’t add up. And the answer had to be in the original case, or in the trial testimony.
Wherever it was, he planned to find it. And hopefully, it would lead them to Connors.
Once they put Connors back behind bars where he belonged, Scott could turn to the next problem. And suddenly that wasn’t how to get Chelsie back in his bed, but how to convince her not to throw away her career as a negotiator.
And if she happened to fall for him again in the process, he wasn’t going to put up a fight.
* * *
FEAR PUMPED THROUGH Chelsie’s veins as she crouched outside the community center, pressed as tightly to the brick wall as possible. The roar of the rifle was all she could hear. Dead men lay in the parking lot, their blood slowly streaming toward her.
Her bullhorn was discarded across her lap, useless, as somewhere out there, Connors tried to center her skull neatly in his crosshairs. Chelsie crouched lower. Everyone was dead. She was a failure, a failure, a failure...
Bang!
The sound split through the air as Chelsie jolted upright, breathing too hard. Everything was dark, except for the light streaming toward her from the left, and it took her a minute to get her bearings, for her eyes to adjust.
She was in the bedroom in the safe house. She’d been sleeping, having the dream again—the one she thought she’d quit having six months ago. She wasn’t back at the community center with Connors trying to kill her. It was over. She was safe. As long as Connors didn’t find her again.
Scott stood in the open doorway, backlit from the hall. He held a laptop in his hands and his hair was sticking up on top. He seemed exhausted, but there was a sharpness to his expression that made her drag the covers up to her chin.
Which was ridiculous, since the cop who’d been called to the break-in at her apartment had packed her a conservative T-shirt and pajama shorts to sleep in. Scott had already seen her naked, already had his hands and mouth on just about every inch of her skin.
“What are you doing in here?” she croaked, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. She’d gone to bed hours ago, after eating a silent, awkward dinner with Scott. She’d thought he was asleep, too. Andre had woken up to finish off the rest of the cold pizza and take the next watch.
“I knocked,” Scott replied. “You okay?”
“Fine.” As he stepped into her room and flicked on the light, Chelsie squinted up at him. “Did they find Connors?”
“Not yet.”
She slumped against the headboard, dropping her covers. “Then what do you want?”
His gaze slid over her, and she squirmed as he moved closer, his steps slow and sure. His jeans and T-shirt fit his lanky body just right, made him seem laid-back and approachable while doing nothing to hide the bunching muscles underneath. It reminded her of how he’d looked in Shields a year ago.
It reminded her of exactly why she’d thrown thirty-four years of caution away and gone home with a near-stranger.
In a lot of ways, he was still a stranger. They’d talked in Shields, had discovered they could make each other laugh, that they had similar outlooks on their jobs. But once they’d left the bar, they hadn’t exactly passed the hours chatting. She could describe the birthmark on his upper thigh in minute detail, but she couldn’t say if he had any siblings besides Maggie, what he’d done before he’d joined the Bureau or how he spent his free time.
As he sat on the edge of her bed, sinking down on the springs, his weight shifting her closer to him, an ache filled her chest. She wished she did know those things. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She opened her mouth, wanting to ask him...something, but he spoke first.
“I want you to check out the crime-scene images.”
Chelsie sat up straighter, moving away from him as he held his laptop toward her. “What? Why? No.”
She sounded frantic, but she didn’t care. The nightmares were already starting up again. She didn’t need to study the crime-scene photos and make it worse, regardless of how much of a coward that made her seem.
She scowled, hating that Scott would see her that way now, too. He’d picked a job where he ran into the danger everyone else ran away from. He’d already seen her run away, from her job as a negotiator, and from him.
Steeling herself, she grabbed the laptop before she could change her mind. But there were no crime-scene photos on his screen, only a drawing with the details—distances, locations of the victims and the shooter— written in. Surprised, she glanced over the top of the screen at Scott.
He moved slightly, leaning against the headboard, and stretched his long legs across her bed.
There wasn’t enough room for both of them, and she found her legs pressed against his through the thin sheet, with nowhere to go. If she turned her head, raised it a little, his face would be right there. His lips would be right there.
Instead, she stared resolutely at the screen. “What am I looking at?” Her voice sounded too high-pitched, but if Scott noticed, he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he pointed to the spot on the drawing marked Suspect. “Connors was here.” He moved his finger to the spot right outside the community-center front door. Next to an X, it read FBI Special Agent Russell. “You were here?”
There was a tension in his voice she didn’t understand. “Yeah.” She glanced at him, and this close, she could see the individual whiskers on his chin, the tense lines between his eyes that she wanted to smooth.
“Not here?” He moved his finger from the left side of the U outside the community-center front door to the right side.
“No. Why?”
“Chelsie.” The worry in his voice deepened, and there was concern in the depths of his deep brown eyes. “Connors not firing at you wasn’t because he couldn’t.”
Chelsie’s pulse picked up. “What are you talking about?”
“Look where he is.” He pointed to the X marked Suspect again.
“So?”
“So, I ran the numbers. If they’re right, he did have a shot at you. He chose to let you live. He chose to let only you live.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_13057057-839d-5890-a6d1-ebf69097fa57)
Chelsie stared up at Scott, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, he let me live?”
“He had a shot, Chelsie,” Scott said quietly. “We found his shell casings. He was high enough on those bleachers. He could have hit you.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t he?” Chelsie demanded, not wanting to believe it. “If he could have gotten me in his crosshairs, he would have killed me. He snapped. He was taking out anyone he could hit that day.”
“Apparently not,” Scott said.
She stared at him, noticing the deep circles underneath his eyes. Andre had said they’d been up for eighteen hours before they’d brought her to the safe house. And yet, instead of getting some sleep, Scott had reviewed the case file.
Chelsie felt something suspiciously like affection, and tried to ignore it. “Maybe you did the geometry wrong.”
Scott shook his head, but instead of being insulted, he just appeared exhausted. “It’s the same kind of calculations I do in my head every time I fire my rifle, Chelsie. I mess those up and I shoot a hostage instead of the perp. I could do them in my sleep. Trust me. I’m not wrong.”
“Then why didn’t they figure this out before?” she demanded.
“If you look at the building from ground level, you’d assume he didn’t have an angle on you. Even if you look at it from the bleachers, if you’d been on the other side of that enclosed area, he wouldn’t have been able to hit you. It was an oversight. And it made sense that he didn’t hit you because he couldn’t. But that’s not what happened.”
“Then what was he really after?” she whispered, moving away from him on her bed. But the mattress offered no support and she just slid back toward him until her body was pressed against his again.
It didn’t make any sense. Clayton Connors had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching the rest of his unit die when an IED exploded under their vehicle. He’d gotten out of the military and gotten help—mostly in the form of very strong painkillers. Then, one day, he’d snapped and gone after military recruiters.
But the prosecution at his trial had made an airtight argument that Connors would have killed anyone he could have hit that day, that he’d actually planned on moving to a new location and killing again, until he’d been pulled over. It had been simple self-preservation that had kept him from raising a gun on the officers. A sudden fear of dying himself had landed him in jail instead of the morgue.
Chelsie threw her covers off and walked to the far side of the room. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling strangely exposed in her T-shirt and shorts as she stared down at Scott, who was way too tempting stretched out in her bed. “The guy was crazy. Does it really matter why he didn’t shoot me?”
Even as she asked the question, she knew she was avoiding dealing with it. Connors letting her live on purpose didn’t fit with anything they knew about what had happened that day. And it didn’t track with the idea of him coming after her for a second chance, not if he’d never taken that first chance.
So what did he want with her? A shiver ran through her and she tensed, hoping Scott wouldn’t notice.
He put the laptop on her bed and walked over to her, stopping so close that she could’ve leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. “You’re the one who gets into people’s minds,” he argued. “You tell me if it matters.”
“That would be Ella. She’s the profiler.”
Scott gave her a look of disbelief. “Oh, come on. You were a good negotiator because you understand what people want. How did you do that without getting into their minds?”
“In case you forgot, I failed as a negotiator.”
“That’s not true,” Scott said. “Connors was a nutbag. You couldn’t have talked him down if you had thirty days, let alone the thirty seconds you probably got.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You just came in here to say that Connors wasn’t a nutbag. That he’d made the conscious choice not to shoot me, instead of being driven by some blind rage.”
Scott paused. It was a fraction of a second, but it was long enough.
“I don’t want to talk about my old job,” she said. “You’re the one who’s so sure he could have shot me. You must have far more experience with that kind of scene than I do. What’s your assessment?”
Scott frowned back at her. “Remind me not to wake you without a full night’s sleep again. You’re seriously cranky without your coffee.”
Chelsie’s shoulders slumped, her anger deflating. He’d stayed up reviewing the case when she’d refused to study it, and he’d taken on her protective custody when he probably could have passed it off to someone else. It wasn’t his fault talking about that day got her hackles up.
When she’d officially become an FBI negotiator, she thought she’d finally found her calling. Now, any reminder of her short-lived role in the specialty made every ounce of insecurity rise up. Including Scott. She’d probably never think about him without remembering the massacre, without remembering how she’d failed to prevent it.
She’d spent the past year trying to leave that memory in her past, and Scott with it.
Realizing that Scott was staring at her as though trying to read what was going through her head, she evened out her expression. “Sorry. Let’s talk about this in the morning then, after I get that coffee.”
He gaped at her. “The Chelsie I remember would want to jump right in.”
There was only one thing he would remember her jumping right into, and that was his bed. She scowled to hide her embarrassment, and snapped, “Don’t fool yourself, Scott. You never knew me.”
His eyes locked on hers, studying her too long, until she felt the need to fidget. “Maybe not,” he finally said, “but I don’t think I’m the one fooling myself right now.” Before she could respond, he turned and walked out of the room.
When the door shut quietly behind him, Chelsie sank back onto the bed, feeling angry and sad and vaguely ashamed of herself. What was that supposed to mean? She was somehow fooling herself?
The laptop he’d left behind had slid toward her as the mattress sank under her weight. She glanced at the screen, still lit up with the drawing of the community center’s front parking lot.
If Scott was right—and as an HRT sniper, chances were, he was—then why hadn’t she died with everyone else at that community center a year ago? And if Connors had let her live back then, why was he after her now?
* * *
“I’M SORRY.”
Scott blinked at the light streaming in from the hallway, even though he’d been awake from the second Chelsie had started tiptoeing down the hall. She stood in the doorway of his bedroom, holding his laptop. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt—this time, unfortunately, with a bra underneath. She did seem contrite. She also looked uncomfortable. Because she didn’t like to apologize or because he slept in nothing but boxer shorts, he wasn’t sure.
After he’d left her room, he’d asked Andre to take over the watch, deciding to get some much-needed sleep. He’d figured by the morning, she’d have come to grips with what he’d shared. And hopefully she’d be less defensive.
Scott rubbed his eyes and yawned, making her apologize again. But not before she glanced at his bare chest and then quickly back up.
“It’s okay.”
He expected her to turn and go back the way she’d come, but instead she stepped farther into his room. She settled on the very edge of his bed, setting his laptop between them, like some kind of barrier.
“It’s been a year. Why would he be after me? It’s not like it was my testimony that put him away.”
Scott pushed himself to a sitting position. Apparently they were talking about this now, after all. “You were the only eyewitness to the shootings, but—”
“But I never saw him! It wasn’t like I could identify Connors as the shooter.”
“What I was going to say,” Scott cut in, “was that I agree. You didn’t do the most damage at his trial. With or without you, he was going down.”
After Connors had been pulled over in a Taurus with a license plate matching the one HRT had called in from the scene of the shooting, the rifle on his lap had been tied to the shell casings at the scene. The physical evidence alone would have taken him down.
Add to it an incompetent public defender, Connors refusing to say a word in his own defense plus the families of the victims speaking at the sentencing, and Connors was going to jail. With or without the testimony of the one woman he’d let walk away from that massacre.
Chelsie crossed her arms over her chest, holding on to herself as if that could protect her from Connors, from what had happened that day.
And it made him wonder what had happened to her. To the strong, determined negotiator he’d brought home from Shields Tavern. He couldn’t believe she’d let Clayton Connors take so much away from her.
But confronting her about it was guaranteed to get her guard up, so instead he said, “I think if we can figure out what he’s after, it’ll help us track him down.”
“What does killing me now accomplish?”
“I don’t know, Chelsie.” Scott put his hand on her arm, and she flinched away. Trying not to let it bother him, he said, “But you’re safe here.”
She shook her head. “I’m not worried.”
When she met his eyes again, he saw the truth of her statement on her face. She trusted him and Andre to keep her safe. It was better than nothing, but he wanted more. He wanted a heck of a lot more.
“Why do you think he never said a word in his own defense at his trial?” Chelsie asked, just when Scott was trying to figure out how to broach what had happened between them.
He forced himself to put his mind back on track. It didn’t matter that the woman he’d been fantasizing about for the past year was finally back in his bed—though not in the way he wanted. He had a job to do here. And he couldn’t let himself get distracted.
“What defense could he have possibly have given? I think he was banking on people feeling sorry for him because of the PTSD, and figured the insanity plea would work,” Scott replied.
“I don’t know,” Chelsie argued. “Wouldn’t he at least want to explain where he was coming from? He could’ve drummed up some sympathy. He was a war hero, after all. And he watched his entire unit die. The defense attorney talked about his PTSD, but Connors never spoke at all.”
