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“Why didn’t we know about them?”
“Apparently, Galloway is the only one who came forward and asked for help.” Derek flipped through a few more pages and saw a schedule of delivery dates. “Right now it looks as if Galloway was the last guy Owens collected information on, and it’s the only DVD he hasn’t yet sent to his client.”
Derek wasn’t sure what to do with the file. If Galloway was the only one being blackmailed, he’d take it, along with every other file in the safe. But now that it was clear that other congressmen were involved, he didn’t want Owens to know that somebody had broken in. Owens would alert his client in a heartbeat, which meant they wouldn’t stand a chance of locating the rest of the blackmail material that had already been delivered.
“Call Washington,” Derek told Kevin. “Get in touch with Sedgewick. Tell him the situation. We need some new marching orders.”
Derek waited impatiently as Kevin made the call, anxious to get the hell out of this apartment before something else went wrong. Only two minutes passed before he heard Kevin’s voice again, but it felt like a hundred.
“What’s the word?” Derek asked.
“We need to grab Owens and get him to Washington for interrogation. They need to find out who his client is so they can have a shot at locating the blackmail material before Monday morning. And bring everything else in the safe, too. They want to know what else this guy is up to.”
“Okay,” Derek said. “Get on the phone to Wilson and McManus and tell them to pick up Owens and deliver him to the Learjet at Love Field.”
“Gotcha.”
Derek was confident that that part of the plan would come together. His men were as proficient at kidnapping as they were at surveillance.
“Then call Lambert and tell him I need him to fly the plane,” Derek said. “Have him meet us at the airfield ASAP.”
“Will do.”
“I’m coming down now.”
Derek grabbed all the folders from the safe and stuck them into his backpack. After closing the safe, he flipped the rug back into place. Then he stopped short.
Had he just seen a shadow move beneath the closet door?
He froze, barely breathing, his gaze fixed on the shadow. Several seconds passed. It moved again.
Someone was in the closet. And whoever it was had undoubtedly heard every word he’d spoken.
ALYSSA SHIFTED nervously from one foot to the other, thinking that an hour had to have passed while she’d been in this closet. And the longer she stood there, the more she realized something was very strange about this situation. Just the fact that the burglar had gotten past the security system to enter the apartment through the back elevator astonished her. Equally amazing was the speed with which he’d broken into the safe. Pretty soon it became clear to her that his running monologue was actually one side of a conversation he was carrying on electronically with someone who was downstairs keeping watch.
And he was saying the strangest things. Blackmailed congressmen? DVDs? Learjets? What was all that about?
Right now, though, she really didn’t care. She just wanted him to grab what he’d come for and leave the building so she could get out of this apartment, call the police, then go somewhere and have a good, stiff drink.
Then all at once, the closet door flew open.
Before she could react with anything but a quick yelp of surprise, the man in the ski mask took two steps into the closet, grabbed her and spun her around. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her back to his chest. When he pressed the barrel of a gun against the side of her neck, she let out a strangled gasp.
“Not a sound,” he said. “Not one.”
She fell silent, with only the hiss of her panicked breathing breaking the stillness inside the closet.
“Everything’s under control,” he murmured. “Just sit tight.”
Alyssa knew he wasn’t talking to her, but to whomever was on the other end of whatever hands-free communication device he was using. For a long time the man stood motionless, his arm clamped tightly around her. Fear raced through her.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“My name? Why—”
“Tell me.”
“Uh, Alyssa. Ballard.”
The man’s chest expanded with a deep, silent breath. “Damn.”
For some reason her name seemed to have made him unhappy. Given that he had a gun pressed to her jugular right now, she really wished it hadn’t.
“Do you work in this building?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Even as Alyssa’s heart pounded with apprehension, a sense of sudden recognition came over her. That voice. She’d heard it before. Despite the fact that his words were threatening, the deep, melodic tone of his voice still came through.
But it couldn’t be. She was imagining it.
He shifted his hand against her rib cage. She looked down at it and she couldn’t believe what she saw. A ring. Sterling silver. Alpha and omega symbols intertwined.
She glanced at his arm wrapped around her, his bicep bulging beneath his black T-shirt, and saw a long, irregular scar that extended the length of his forearm, faded to white but still distinct. The ring she was just now remembering, but his body she’d never forgotten. She’d memorized every inch of it, up to and including that scar.
For a moment she was too stunned to speak. Every second seemed sluggish and protracted as the reality of who he was slowly bared itself. She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice.
“Derek?”
His body stiffened, an involuntary reaction that told her just how right she was. Good Lord. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but…
It was Derek. He was here. In this building, two thousand miles from the last place she’d seen him. And he was robbing this apartment.
“It’s you,” she said. “I know it is. Your voice. Your ring. The scar on your arm.”
He was silent.
“So this is why you left me in Seattle?” she said, her voice escalating. “Because you’re a burglar?”
He said nothing. She squirmed in his arms. “Let me go!”
When he continued to hold her tightly, suddenly all the pain and frustration he’d caused her, both here and in Seattle, welled up inside her in a hot mass of anger. The man she’d been so crazy about, the man who’d intrigued her to no end, the man with whom she’d spent one wonderful week and had imagined a thousand more to come…
He was a criminal. And he wasn’t going to get away with this.
She lifted her knee, then slammed her heel down hard on his instep. He grunted in pain, loosening his grip on her just enough that she wrenched herself from his arms and shoved him aside to head out of the closet. But before she cleared the doorway, he snaked his arm around her and yanked her back. Only this time he didn’t stop there. He pulled a tie off a nearby rack and bound her hands behind her.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, yanking hard against the tie, unable to believe he’d done it. Unable to believe how fast he’d done it.
Ignoring her, he grabbed another tie and gagged her with it, then led her out of the closet and over to the bed, where he sat her down, bound her ankles and tethered her to the bedpost. She fought him every step of the way, but he was bigger than she was and infinitely stronger, and within a few minutes, he had her completely subdued.
He walked away and stood near the wall, his back to her, his shoulders heaving with a few deep breaths. She could almost feel the tension radiating from him. Was it from anger? Indecision? She couldn’t tell. When he turned back around, though, he seemed to sigh with resignation.
Then he reached up and pulled off the ski mask.
Alyssa had already known beyond all doubt that it was Derek, but seeing him again like this made emotions swirl wildly inside her. Fear. Surprise. Anger. All of those made sense. But mingling with them was something that made no sense at all—an unwanted rush of the elemental desire she’d felt the first time she’d laid eyes on him. But he was a burglar and a kidnapper. How could she have any feelings of attraction toward him at all?
He came back to the bed and sat beside her, tossing the mask aside. To her surprise, he also disconnected the tiny microphone clipped to his collar. He regarded her silently for a moment, then lifted his hand to brush a wayward strand of her hair gently back over her shoulder. His fingertips grazed her neck, sending shivers all the way down her spine.
No. He had no right to touch her. None at all. She turned away sharply, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Alyssa,” he said, “listen to me. I’m in a tight spot here. No matter what this looks like, I’m not a burglar. Not the kind you think I am, anyway. And as far as tying you up like this, I have no choice. I can’t risk you telling anyone what you just overheard. I’ll explain everything to you later, including what happened in Seattle, but I have to take care of a few things first.”
He lifted his hand and rested his palm along the side of her neck, trailing his thumb in soft strokes just beneath her jaw. In spite of the situation, her mind flashed back to those scorching nights they’d spent together in a tangle of bedsheets, making love far into the night. Just the memory made her want to believe everything he was telling her.
No. She had to stay focused. No matter what he said, he was a burglar, and a hell of a good liar. God only knew what he really intended to do with her.
When she jerked her face away from him again, he let out a soft sigh, trailing his hand down her arm before finally pulling it away altogether.
“You’ll be here alone,” Derek told her. “Owens won’t be coming back.”
When her eyes widened, he shook his head. “Take it easy, Alyssa. We don’t kill people. Owens is just being…diverted.”
Diverted? What did that mean? And who the hell was “we”?
Derek rose from the bed and disconnected the phone cord from the wall. He picked up his gun from where he’d tossed it on the bed and stuck it into his jeans, then took a lightweight jacket from his backpack and put it on, pulling it down over the weapon. He grabbed the ski mask and stuffed it into the pocket of the jacket. Slinging the backpack over his shoulder, he turned to Alyssa one last time.
“I should be back within the hour.”
He left the room. Alyssa heard his footsteps as he walked to the elevator and the faint sound of the doors opening and closing.
And then he was gone.
3
DEREK STEPPED OFF the elevator and walked through the parking garage, moving quickly and decisively even as his mind was spinning in a dozen different directions.
When he’d grabbed Alyssa in that closet, for a few seconds he hadn’t been able to move. To think. To believe who he had his arms around. But there was no mistaking that mass of blond hair, those green eyes and that slight, willowy figure he remembered as clearly as if he’d seen her yesterday. He’d known she worked in a building that was identical to this one in Seattle, but he’d never imagined that he’d find her here. He’d asked her what her name was just to ensure that the concept most people believed in—that everybody has a double somewhere—hadn’t come into play.
It hadn’t. It was Alyssa.
And then she’d said his name. Softly. Tentatively. Even after six months, she’d still recognized tiny details she never should have remembered. His ring. His scar.
His voice, for God’s sake.
He’d hated like hell having to manhandle her the way he had, not to mention having to tie her up and leave her there. But he had to make sure Owens got to the airport ASAP, and she clearly hadn’t been in the mood to listen to anything he’d had to say. Until he had the chance to calm her down and find out just how inclined she was to tell the world what she’d overheard, restraining her had been his only option.
He exited the parking garage and walked to the van waiting on the street outside the building. After climbing into the driver’s seat, he tossed his backpack down and shut the door.
Kevin emerged from the back of the van and flopped into the passenger seat. “What the hell was going on up there? I lost communication with you for a few minutes.”
“Somebody was in the apartment. She heard everything.”
“She said your name. She knows who you are.”
“Yes. She’s…” The last thing Derek wanted was to delve into his history with Alyssa. “She’s an acquaintance.”
“Oh, boy. So where is she now?”
“Tied up in the bedroom.”
Kevin stared at him, dumbfounded. “What?”
“I left her tied up in the bedroom.”
“So what are you going to do with her?”
Derek paused. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. Once we get Owens on the plane, I’ll come back and deal with her. By that time I’ll have something figured out.”
“And if you let her go and she talks?”
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”
“But how—”
“I said I’d handle it.”
Kevin looked at him skeptically, but he’d never been one to overstep his bounds. Finally he simply nodded.
“Did you get in touch with the team?” Derek asked.
“Wilson and McManus say they’ll have no trouble grabbing Owens. But there’s a problem with Lambert.”
“A problem?”
“He’s got the flu. Woke up with it this morning. A hundred and three fever. Can’t stop puking. Says he couldn’t possibly get a plane off the ground.”
Derek just stared at Kevin, unable to believe that not a damned thing was going right with this job. First, the blackmailing problem he’d set out to solve was far bigger than he’d realized. Then he’d had to take a woman hostage to keep her from talking—a woman he never would have considered tying up in bed unless she’d smiled pretty, got naked and asked him to. And now he had a pilot who couldn’t stop hugging the toilet long enough to fly to Washington.
Derek hated this. Hated it. His team’s reputation was built on jobs going off cleanly without a hitch, and now he was on the verge of having to phone Washington and admit he couldn’t pull this one off because he had no pilot.
No. He wasn’t going to do that. Failure was not an option.
Derek started the van.
“Where are you going?” Kevin asked.
“St. Andrews.”
