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“I know what you mean.” She sighed and moved toward him. “You’ll never find what you’re looking for in this jungle. Better let me help you.”
The flashlight was still aimed high, so when Abigail walked into the beam, it shone directly on her wet blouse. Flynn tried not to look, but it was impossible not to notice how the patches of wetness from her dripping hair had spread. The fabric wasn’t white as he’d first thought, it was the color of ripe melons. Or maybe the fabric’s color was due more to the lush curves it was plastered to, particularly since it turned dark where it clung to her nipples.
And Flynn suddenly realized that the innocent, house-plant-loving, visit-her-folks-on-her-birthday Abigail Locke wasn’t wearing a bra.
He turned the light aside and scowled. She hadn’t provided the peep show deliberately—she must have been in a hurry to get dressed when the lights had gone out.
But he was supposed to be the one distracting her, not the other way around.
Find what you’re looking for, she’d said.
Well, he sure wasn’t here to look for a pair of breasts, however lush and temptingly displayed they might be. He had to find that backpack, he reminded himself. A green backpack. In a jungle of green houseplants.
She touched his arm. “You might as well start in the kitchen. The outlets are easiest to get to there.”
Her touch was soft, hesitant. It was meant impersonally, a practical way of getting his attention in the dark. He felt her warmth through his sleeve, through his skin, right to his bones.
He couldn’t afford to feel anything. He had a job to do. A kid’s life and the political stability of an entire region was resting on the success of this mission. He had to stay focused.
The outlets, she’d said. Right. He took a screwdriver from his tool belt, turned around and followed her to the kitchen.
The receiver in his ear crackled. “O’Toole.”
Flynn was careful to betray no reaction to Redinger’s voice. The radio had been silent since he’d made face-to-face contact with Abigail. The major had been monitoring everything, of course, but for him to risk direct contact, it had to be important.
“A car passed one of the roadblocks one minute ago,” Redinger said. “They flagged it as suspicious so we ran the plates. It was reported stolen this morning.”
Okay. Redinger had to let him know about anything suspicious. This could be coincidence, nothing to do with them.
“Three male occupants.”
Three. The LLA operated in cells of three.
“Sarah turned the parabolic mike on the car. It picked up a snatch of foreign language conversation. She identified it as Ladavian.”
That clinched it. They were about to have company.
“The stairwell is getting busy with tenants making their way downstairs,” the major said. “We’ll run interference there when our visitors arrive, but we still can’t risk a confrontation. I estimate you’ve got five minutes tops.”
So much for the half hour he’d hoped for.
“Better wrap things up, Flynn.”
Sure, find the ransom, get it and Abigail out of this apartment before the terrorists dropped in without compromising the mission by blowing his cover.
Why had he thought he didn’t like things easy?
Chapter 3
Abbie pointed out the electric sockets over her postage-stamp-size counter and in the corner above the baseboard, then stepped to the side as Flynn squeezed past her. His sleeve brushed her arm, and she inhaled a scent that reminded her of an April sunrise. Sharp and earthy, restless, filled with the promise of warmth. The fine hairs on her arm tingled.
She pressed her hands to her stomach, trying to calm the butterflies that were dancing around there. No, they were probably moths. With crusty brown singe marks on the edges of their wings.
She wished she could blame the tickle of excitement on hunger—she was growing later by the minute for dinner and her surprise party—but if it was hunger, it was a kind that couldn’t be satisfied with food.
This was a superficial physical attraction, that’s all, a natural reaction to a physically appealing man. After all, she was a woman in her sexual prime, right? But she’d taken a detour down that road and knew better than to trust it. She didn’t want to acknowledge the bump of her pulse each time she looked at him. She should be ignoring his appearance and regarding him with the same polite, professional distance with which she treated the building superintendent or the cable guy or the men who had delivered her new sofa.
Then why couldn’t she? Was it the sense of intimacy from the semidarkness? Or was it the way Flynn moved? It wasn’t only his appearance that drew her. For a large man, he was light on his feet. He had the total body control of a dancer, making each movement a smoothly coordinated sequence of toned muscles working in harmony. She could easily imagine the way he would be flexing and bulging under that soft flannel shirt and those snug jeans….
But she shouldn’t. No, she wasn’t going to picture his muscles or anything else. She wasn’t going to watch as he hitched up his tool belt and leaned over to look in the corner under the table…even if he did have the firmest, most perfectly formed set of buns Abbie had ever seen.
“No luck in here, ma’am,” he said, straightening up. “Where’s your bedroom?”
The kitchen seemed to shrink as he moved past her. Considering his height and the breadth of his shoulders, she should have felt uncomfortable to be alone in the dark with him, regardless of her personal prejudice against handsome men. Why wasn’t she?
It must have been the way he had mentioned his nephews. Any man who willingly claimed he liked children couldn’t be all bad. He was a history buff, too, which meant they had something else in common. He took his job seriously, so he was a hard worker and would be a good provider. He was hurrying because he didn’t want to disappoint his parents. Everything he’d said would lead an unbiased, unprejudiced observer to assume he was a nice, stable, family-oriented guy. Exactly the kind of man she’d hoped to marry someday….
Abbie grimaced, chagrined by the direction of her thoughts. Marriage was on her brain because of today’s date, but she wasn’t pathetic enough to think he really could be a karmic birthday gift, was she?
He spent even less time checking the outlets in her bedroom than he had in the kitchen. It couldn’t have been two minutes before he moved on to her bathroom. He had to duck his head to get past the spider plant that she’d hung from the ceiling. “Nothing here, either,” he said. “Must be in the living room after all.”
His pace was increasing—it seemed that he had barely touched those plugs in the bathroom. He must be anxious to finish up here so he could go home, as he’d said. He muttered something under his breath as he ran into the avocado plant again.
“I’ll have to move the fig tree if you want to check the outlet beside the balcony door,” she said. “The pot would be in the way.”
“No, I can get it.”
“Better let me. It’s a bit finicky. It’s been dropping leaves lately, so I have to be careful how I handle it.” She went to his side and leaned down to grab the edge of the pot. It had just started to slide across the carpet when she heard him make a sudden exclamation.
“Got it.”
She turned her head. He was crouched beside her, his face level with hers, so she had a close-up view of the smile that flickered over his face. It wasn’t charming or friendly like the other ones she’d seen. It was…hard.
He caught her gaze, and his smile instantly eased.
It had been a trick of the lighting, she decided. Anyone’s face could look hard when it was lit by a flashlight from below, as all kids who had ever told a ghost story around a campfire knew.
“Okay, I’m almost done.” He pushed aside her purse and the stray backpack that she’d dropped beside the plant, then slid his screwdriver back into a slot in his tool belt. “I’ll need to open up the electric box here, so for your own safety, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the apartment now.”
She sat back on her heels. A fig leaf wafted downward and settled on her lap. “What do you mean?”
“It’s routine, in case something goes wrong. The power company would be held liable if you got accidentally injured while I was doing repairs.”
“I can’t see why I need to leave. That seems excessive. I’ll just stand out of the way and—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to have to leave.”
“If it’s that dangerous, shouldn’t you be wearing protective clothing or something?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’m a trained professional.” He placed his hand under her elbow and gently but firmly helped her stand up.
She looked at the place where he held her arm…although, she didn’t really need to look because she felt what he was doing with every other one of her senses.
“It will only take a few minutes,” he said. “I know you’re in as much of a hurry as I am, so I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
Before she could form a reply, there was a sudden commotion from the corridor outside her apartment. Men’s voices raised in anger.
“Hey, take it easy,” someone shouted. “Watch where you’re going.”
“Get out of my way, idiot,” a heavily accented voice said.
“You could have broken my nose, slamming through the doorway like that.”
There was a spurt of muttered words that Abbie couldn’t make out. They sounded foreign.
Flynn tightened his grip on her elbow and pulled her toward the door. “Please, ma’am. You’re going to have to get out,” he said. “Right now.”
“But I can’t just—”
Something heavy slammed into her apartment door.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “They’re fighting out there. The blackout must be making them panic.”
Flynn switched direction, pulling her back toward the balcony door. “They’re coming in. We’re going to have to use the balcony.”
“What?” She tried to tug her arm free, but his fingers couldn’t be budged. “Who’s coming in? What do you mean we have to use—”
Something hit her door again. There was a sharp, splintering sound.
Flynn shoved the fig tree to one side with his foot and lunged for the balcony door. It slid open only a few inches before it was stopped dead by the broom handle Abbie kept for security in the sliding door’s track.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
The apartment door burst inward and slammed against the wall. Three men rushed in.
Before Abbie could draw breath to scream, Flynn spun her behind him. “Get down,” he ordered.
She hadn’t meant to obey him—she hadn’t even registered what he had said—but she stumbled over the fig tree pot and lost her footing, going down to her knees, anyway. More leaves rained down around her.
The intruders were silhouetted against the emergency lighting from the corridor. There were two short men and one tall, and the tall one appeared to be holding a…
“Oh, my God, he’s got a gun,” Abbie said.
The words had barely left her mouth when Flynn made a sudden movement. The flashlight he’d been holding hurtled across the room and struck the armed man in the wrist. His gun fell into the avocado plant.
They must be looters, Abbie thought, groping on the floor for her purse. She’d heard of looting in prolonged power failures, but she’d never dreamed it could happen so fast, and in her building.
The two short men babbled something incomprehensible and took out more guns. Abbie saw the metal gleam in the light from the hall and screamed a warning to Flynn.
Instead of retreating, Flynn advanced on the intruders. He unbuckled his tool belt, hung on to one end and whirled it through the air. The heavy, tool-laden, hard leather pouch was suddenly a weapon. It made a clinking thud as it connected with the closest man’s head.
The man crumpled and fell to the floor. Flynn swung the tool belt again, dispatching a second man with the same brutal speed.
Abbie clutched her purse to her chest and scooted backward, her shoes sliding through the leaves that now littered the carpet. What had happened to the nice, stable guy who liked children and had dinner with his parents? He was fighting off three armed looters all by himself, as if he did that kind of thing every day.
The tall man, the one Flynn had hit with the flashlight, was clawing at the avocado plant, likely looking for the gun he’d dropped.
In a move that Abbie had only seen in movies, Flynn spun around on one foot, swinging his other foot in an arc that connected with the tall man’s jaw. The looter flew sideways into the bookshelf. A geranium that had been on the top shelf wobbled and crashed on his head. He didn’t move again.
“Oh, my God.” Abbie struggled to draw a breath. Her pulse was pounding so hard, her lungs didn’t work. “Oh, my God.”
“They’re down,” Flynn said.
He stated that as if he were making a report, she thought. She ran a hand over her face, her fingers shaking. “Oh, my God!” she repeated. “What…who…?”
“Throw the switch. We’re getting out now.” Flynn rebuckled his tool belt over his hips and strode over to where she was crouching.
Switch? What switch? “But…” She shook her head, still trying to absorb what had happened. “Police. We have to call the police.”
“Later.” He leaned down and reached past her to pick something up from the floor.
It was the backpack she’d brought home from the class trip, she realized. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He slung the strap of the pack over one shoulder and reached down to grasp her arm. “Damage control,” he said.
“What? I don’t understand. Why—”
“Later,” he interrupted. He pulled her to her feet with a strength that would have surprised her two minutes ago, before she had seen him in action. “Right now we’ve got to get you out before more of them show up.”
“More? Do you mean more looters? But that’s why we have to call the police.”
He shifted his grip from her arm to her wrist and started for the door. “We’ll call them from somewhere safe.”
Abbie stumbled after him, stepping over the unconscious men who lay sprawled on her floor. Pot shards crunched under her feet. “All right, maybe we should call the police from somewhere else, but—”
Her words cut off as the lights came on. She squinted at the sudden brilliance, then gasped at the scene the light revealed.
Her neat, orderly apartment was in shambles. Leaves, potting soil and bright-red geranium petals were scattered everywhere. The men she had stepped over weren’t merely unconscious, they were bleeding. She felt her stomach roll as she saw the damage the tool belt and Flynn’s foot had done to their battered faces.
Yes, Flynn had done that, she thought, her gaze snapping to the broad back that moved in front of her. He’d done it to defend her, but still, what kind of man was capable of fighting that viciously? He was an electrician, for God’s sake.
And why had the power come back on when he hadn’t done any repairs?
And why on earth did he want that green backpack?
The caution she should have felt ten minutes ago when he’d first talked his way into her apartment finally asserted itself. She braced her feet and hung on to the broken door frame with her free hand before he could drag her through. “Let go of my wrist,” she said.
He turned toward her. This was the first time she had seen his face clearly. She saw details now that she hadn’t seen before: laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, the hint of a cleft in the center of his chin, the shadow of a dark beard along the sharp edge of his jaw.
