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“He was advised not to say anything, but the LLA put his son on the line and then struck the child. When Vilyas heard his son scream, he disregarded our instructions.”
Flynn felt a surge of adrenaline. The LLA had abused a helpless child. They would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. They wouldn’t care how many innocent people were hurt or how much collateral damage they did in the process.
Miss Abigail Locke, who turned thirty today, with her three library books and her little beige car was a sitting duck. He had to get the money away from her—or get her away from the ransom—as soon as possible.
“Is the kid okay?” Flynn asked.
“We have no way of knowing,” Redinger replied. “All we know is that he was alive and conscious ten minutes ago.”
“How long do you estimate I have before the LLA gets here?”
“We’re keeping our units in place to gridlock the traffic in the immediate area, so best-case scenario, you’ll have thirty minutes.”
He didn’t need to ask what the worst-case scenario was, Flynn thought, hearing footsteps in the stairwell below him. He waited until he could be sure the footsteps were retreating—probably one of the building’s tenants, nervous about the power failure. He placed his hand on the door to the seventeenth floor. “What’s the latest from the electronics in the pack?”
“The pack is stationary, somewhere in her apartment.”
“Has she opened it?”
“Unlikely. The mike didn’t pick up any sound to indicate the buckle was being unfastened.”
“Did it pick up anything?”
“Only a phone call from her mother. They’re expecting her for dinner.”
“Maybe I should wait until she goes out.”
“The LLA won’t wait if they find her first.”
“Right. What’s she doing now?”
“Nothing on the mike except some shuffling sounds. Probably trying to find her way around in the dark.”
“Okay. Keep me posted. I’m going in.”
Abbie balanced on one foot to put on her shoe as she peered through the peephole in the door. She tried to make out the features of the man who stood there, but the beam from the emergency light at the end of the corridor didn’t reach this far. All she could see was a tall, broad-shouldered figure with some kind of tool belt strapped around his hips.
“Who is it?” she called through the door.
“I’m with the power company, ma’am.”
She buttoned her blouse and tucked it into her skirt, thankful that she’d finished her shower before the lights had gone out. The bathroom had no window, so it had been pitch-black, but at least there had been enough light from the dusk filtering through the other windows for her to find some clothes. “That was fast,” she said.
“There’s a problem with the wiring in the building. We’ve traced it to a circuit in your apartment. I need to check it out.”
Water dripped from the ends of her hair onto her shoulders. “What?”
“Do you mind letting me in?”
She opened the door to the limit of the security bar. “Do you have any identification?”
There was a rustle of fabric as he reached for something on his chest. “Here’s my I.D. card.”
She squinted at the card, but all she could make out was a pale rectangular blur. “Sorry, I can’t—”
“Hang on.” He took a flashlight from his belt, clicked it on and directed it toward the card. “This should help.”
The suddenly bright beam made her blink. She looked at the printing on the card. Flynn O’Toole. Sure enough, he was an employee of the power company. She glanced at the small color photo in the corner. Her grip on the door tightened.
Who had ID photos that turned out like that? Even the stark head-on flash couldn’t hurt that square jaw and those high cheekbones. A picture like that should be gracing an ad for designer cologne, not an identification card for the electric company. She raised her gaze to his face.
The photo wasn’t that good after all. He looked far better in the flesh.
Good Lord, but he was gorgeous. Not in a pretty, cover-boy way, but like a man. All man. Those deep-set, thick-lashed blue eyes gleamed with quiet male confidence. His nose was bold and straight, his lips framed by twin lines that etched their way down from the hollows of his cheeks. His hair was black, curling over the tips of his ears and the back of his collar in a way that invited a tousling. In his plaid flannel shirt and his snug-fitting jeans, he looked rugged but approachable, a natural-born heartbreaker.
Abbie wanted to slam the door in his face.
“Ma’am? Would you like to call my supervisor? He’ll verify my ID for you.”
“No, I—” She cleared her throat, thankful for the lack of lighting so he might not notice how she was staring. On the other hand, a man who looked like that would be accustomed to attracting plenty of female attention. Yes, he probably reveled in it, drawing women like mindless, doomed moths to a flame.
It was a good thing she was immune to men like that. That was the advantage of being infected before—it served as a vaccination against future bouts of the same affliction. “Are you sure the problem is in my apartment? I haven’t had any trouble with the electricity until now.”
He took a slim, rectangular device from the pocket of his jeans and held it toward her. “The readings I’m getting on this gauge pinpoint your place.”
She made a show of studying the numbers that were flickering across the screen of the instrument, but it could have been a pocket calculator for all she knew. “I see.”
He hesitated for a moment, then lowered his voice and bent his head toward her. “Please, ma’am. I’d like to get this job finished and get home. You see, it’s my birthday.”
The door wobbled as she jerked. More water dripped from her hair to her shoulders and trickled down her blouse. “Your birthday?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re not serious.”
“’Fraid so. I hit the big three-oh today.”
“That’s…odd.”
“Sure is, according to my folks. They claimed I’d never make it this far.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“They’re expecting me for dinner tonight, but I have to finish this job before I can leave, so if you don’t mind…”
She gritted her teeth and forced herself to return her gaze to his face. He was smiling. A hopeful tilt at the corners of his lips. She could almost hear moth wings sizzling. “I meant I can’t believe it’s your birthday today. It’s mine, too.”
His eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Now that’s a coincidence.” The lines beside his mouth curved as two dimples appeared in his cheeks. “What are the odds?”
Yes, indeed. What were the odds? Having a man who looked like Flynn O’Toole show up on her doorstep was unlikely enough, but sharing something as personal as a birthday with him was beyond strange. It bordered on bizarre.
Was this some kind of cosmic joke? she wondered. Was this fate’s way of pointing out the road she’d almost taken, the very thing she used her schedules and her timetables to guard against? Just as she was about to adjust the best-before dates on the plans for her life, instead of Mr. Right, Mr. Flynn O’Toole shows up at her door with his blue eyes and his dimples like some karmic birthday present….
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought sternly. He was only here to do his job. He couldn’t help how he looked.
Abbie tucked her hair behind her ears, then wiped her wet fingers on her skirt. “Did you say your parents were expecting you for dinner?”
His budding smile disappeared. “Hey, just because I’m thirty and spending my birthday with my parents is no big deal.”
Her conscience twinged. He couldn’t help how he looked, she repeated to herself. She had learned the hard way not to trust handsome men—or to put it more accurately, not to trust her reaction to handsome men—but she really shouldn’t be letting her personal prejudices color her judgment. Who knew? If he actually did plan to visit his parents, maybe there were a few ounces of human decency behind that pretty face, after all.
Not that she would be willing to bet money on it.
Not that his character had any bearing whatsoever on the current situation, she reminded herself firmly. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with that. I was getting ready to go over to my parents’ place for dinner myself when the power went off.”
He was silent for a moment, then shook his head and chuckled. “Go figure. Guess you’re in as much a hurry as I am, then.”
“Yes, I believe I am.”
He clipped his ID back on his shirt pocket and gestured toward the door. “Well, the sooner I get started, the sooner both of us can leave.”
She hesitated. The logical side of her brain waged a brief battle with the dark little corner where she kept her instincts. As usual, though, logic won. She had to get organized and get out of here within the next thirty minutes or she was going to disappoint her family. She eased the door shut to unlatch the security bar, then stepped aside to let him come in.
It would be all right. She was just letting him into her apartment, not her life.
Flynn kept his light aimed at the floor as he walked into Abigail’s apartment. She pressed herself against the wall, giving him as much room as possible, then closed the door behind him.
Miss Abigail Locke was a cautious lady, he thought. It was a good thing he’d hit on the idea of making up that story about today being his birthday. That seemed to have smoothed his way inside.
Flynn was good at saying what people wanted to hear. It was a useful talent to have in his business—talking his way out of a situation was often preferable to using force. In spots like this, people called it quick thinking. When he was off duty, people called it charm.
The technical word for it was lying.
But it wouldn’t have accomplished his objective if he’d told Abigail that he’d celebrated his thirtieth birthday more than two years ago. And it sure as hell hadn’t been with his parents. He’d been six years old the last time he’d seen his mother, and as far as he knew, his father was somewhere in Brazil with wife number four.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Abigail asked.
He glanced over his shoulder. Rather than staying by the door, she had followed him into the living room. There was more light here than in the hall, but still, the place was too dim to see more than dark shapes and outlines.
Her outline was worth seeing. Compact, feminine and rounded in all the right places. She must have been fresh from the shower when she’d answered the door. He’d caught a whiff of fruit-scented soap—apple or cranberry, he’d guess. Her hair was wet, plastered flat to her head until just below her ears, where it coiled into heavy curls. She probably hadn’t realized that the drips from her wet hair had been turning her white blouse transparent.
Flynn kept his flashlight aimed at the floor. “Like I said, I traced the short to your apartment, but that’s about as specific as the gauge gets. I need to test each one of your electrical outlets until I find the source of the problem.”
“But wouldn’t each apartment be on a separate circuit? I still don’t understand how a problem here could black out the entire building.”
“Seems the wiring in this building wasn’t done to the standards specified in the electrical code,” he improvised. He had to distract her before she realized how flimsy his story was. “Wow, I still can’t believe we share a birthday.”
“Me, neither.”
“And that we’ll both be spending it with our parents.”
“Mmm. Yes.”
“Are you close to your folks, then?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
He heard the caution in her voice go down another notch. He decided to play up on the family angle. “So am I. A lot of people would call it old-fashioned, but there’s nothing like family.”
“Especially on birthdays.”
“You got that right.” He paused, trying to think of the most likely spot for her to have dropped that backpack. “Kids make it the most fun, though. I’ve got two nephews who can’t wait to blow out my candles.”
“Do you like children?”
“Love them,” he said, figuring that would be what a schoolteacher would want to hear.
A sigh whispered through the darkness. “So do I.”
He used the flashlight to scratch his elbow as he moved toward the outline of the living room window.
“Oh, watch out for the—”
Something stiff and dry hit his face. He automatically brought his forearm up to block the next blow and jumped backward.
“—avocado plant,” she finished.
Flynn directed his flashlight upward. A branch thick with long, wavy leaves hung at head level. He traced the branch to an enormous plant that grew from a pot beside one wall. “What the…”
“It’s an avocado plant,” she repeated. “I started it from a pit. I know it’s in the way but it does best in that spot. Are you all right?”
“Sure. I managed to fight it off.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not carnivorous.”
Flynn heard a smile in her voice. It reminded him of the private smile that had so intrigued him before. He swept his flashlight around the room, this time aiming the beam higher. A pair of monster plants hulked under the window. No, it was a glass door, not a window. Probably led to a balcony, but he hadn’t been able to see it before because of the plants. More pots of foliage clustered on the top of a low bookshelf. “I see you’re good at growing things.”
“It’s my hobby.”
“I’m a civil war buff myself,” he said, remembering what Sarah had said about Abigail’s library books. Maybe he was piling it on a bit too thick, but he’d do whatever it took to keep her off guard.
“I enjoy studying history, too,” she said. “I believe there are worthwhile lessons to be learned from the past. As long as a person is smart enough to remember them,” she added under her breath.
Not a good topic, he decided, hearing the note of thoughtfulness in her voice. He didn’t want her thoughtful. He wanted her off balance. He chuckled. “Let’s not mention history on our birthday, okay? After the day I’ve had, I feel ancient enough already.”
