by Lisa Childs
So would anyone actually believe that he was her boyfriend? That he’d suddenly noticed her now—when he hadn’t noticed her all the years they’d worked together even after his divorce?
Her parents had been suspicious. Or they wouldn’t have fired so many questions at her.
Those questions had been hard to dodge because lying to her parents had never been easy. But in this case, it had been necessary. She didn’t want to worry them.
Like she was worried.
They would be safe, with the police watching them, with Payne Protection bodyguards watching them.
Luther wouldn’t be able to get to them now—not with so many people protecting them. But if the threats continued, she would tell them; she would urge them to leave town for their safety and hers. She would be more careful herself if she didn’t have to worry about them, as well.
She clicked the fob to unlock the car, but before she could pull open the driver’s door, a deep voice murmured, “Good morning.”
She jumped even though she instantly recognized that voice. When she turned to face him, Hart Fisher was very close. So close that their bodies brushed against each other.
Her pulse quickened with excitement, not fear, with the attraction she felt for him—that she had always felt for him. But she didn’t want him to know that she had really had a crush on him. She already felt foolish enough about it.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as she glanced nervously around.
The curtains swished at the front window of her parents’ house. Someone was watching them.
“I’m trying to do my damn job,” Hart said through gritted teeth as he very obviously faked a grin.
When he’d dropped her off last night, she had refused to let him inside the house. From the dark circles beneath his eyes, he must not have slept at all. Too bad his daughter’s babysitter had arrived at the agency before they’d left. He wouldn’t have been able to take Wendy home if he’d had to take care of Felicity.
But even though his babysitter had shown up, the little girl still needed her father—especially since he had full custody. Where was her mother?
“You need a safer job,” she told him.
“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice lowered even more to a growl of frustration. “It’s my assignment that’s a pain in the ass.”
She smiled—just as artificially as he had. “Then you need another assignment.”
He shook his head. “This is the one I have,” he said. “So I’m going to make the best of it.”
Then he did something she hadn’t expected. He lowered his head until his mouth brushed across hers.
Her pulse began to race and she gasped.
He kissed her again, lingering this time—his lips clinging to hers before he deepened the kiss even more. When he finally lifted his head, she gasped again—this time for breath.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
He arched his head toward the front window of the house. “For our audience.”
“You’re overacting,” she said because she had to remind herself that was all he was doing. Acting...
He wasn’t really her boyfriend. He wasn’t really attracted to her. He was only pretending.
Yet the kiss had felt real to her, so real that desire coursed through her. She wanted him. But he only wanted to do his job.
She had a job of her own to do, though. “You’re going to make me late,” she said. “I need to get to work.”
“Then get in my SUV,” he said. “And I will take you to work.”
She shook her head. “I need to have my own vehicle.” But her vehicle was actually in a service shop right now. Since her mother hadn’t been cleared to drive yet with her new right knee, Wendy was using her mom’s car.
With obvious skepticism, Hart narrowed his eyes. “If you have to go out to a crime scene, you use the department van to collect evidence,” he said.
“Yes, and you can’t go with me if I’m called to a crime scene,” she said.
He lifted his broad shoulders. “I can’t ride in the van,” he said. “But I have every intention of following you.”
“You’re not going to look like my boyfriend. You’re going to look like a stalker,” she said.
He grinned and leaned closer. So close that his lips brushed lightly across hers again. “Or like a man in love...who suspects a killer might be threatening his girlfriend.”
Her heart skipped a beat until he shuddered as if the idea repulsed him. The idea of being her boyfriend? Or of a killer being after her?
While she curved her lips into a smile, she glared at him and pushed him back so she could pull open the driver’s door. “Since you apparently intend to follow me to crime scenes, you can follow me to the station,” she said. “Because I’m driving myself there.”
Before he could reach for her again, she slid into the seat and jammed the key into the ignition. He cursed, or started to, but she turned the key and the engine drowned him out. He stepped back as she reversed the car into the street.
She shifted into Drive and pressed hard on the accelerator. Since he wasn’t going to make it easy for her to do her job, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him to do his. She intended to be long gone before he could even get to his SUV.
But speeding in a residential area wasn’t smart. So she reached for the brake pedal, pressing lightly on it. But the car didn’t slow. At all...
She pressed harder until the pedal went all the way to the floor. Nothing happened.
The car would not stop. The brakes had gone out. And since her father almost fanatically maintained his vehicles, Wendy knew they hadn’t gone out on their own. Someone had cut the brake line.
She could not stop.
* * *
Hart shook his head, disgusted with himself that he’d just let her drive off. But with her parents watching, there was little more he could have done to stop her, especially since he knew her father was armed. Even now he had to force himself not to run to his SUV. He had to keep the smile on his face until he turned away from the house. But then he glanced down at the driveway and his heart slammed against his ribs as he noticed fluid pooled on the asphalt where her car had been parked.
He didn’t have to dip his finger in it to know where the fluid had come from. Her brake line.
He could hear the squeal of tires against asphalt.
A horn blew.
He knew she was already unable to stop.
He ran, jumping into his SUV. His hand shook as he turned the key, fired the engine to life and roared out of the driveway after her.
But she already had quite a head start on him. And she couldn’t slow down.
Fortunately, it was so early that there wasn’t much traffic yet, and the SUV had a bigger engine than her little sedan. He was able to speed enough that he caught up with her.
Despite not having brakes, she managed to steer around a corner. The street onto which she’d turned had fewer houses. But it went downhill, so she was gaining speed.
And she had no way to stop.
Hart would have to stop her before the car went even faster. Or she would die for certain.
He pressed harder on his accelerator and crossed over the center line so that he was next to her. She glanced out her window at him. Her eyes were wide with fear, her face so pale that her freckles stood out even more than usual.
She gripped the wheel tightly.
He gestured at the gearshift. If she could get the vehicle into Neutral...
He clicked the power button to lower his passenger-side window.
She lowered her window. “I have no brakes!” she yelled.
“Neutral,” he yelled back at her.
But the loud blare of a horn might have drowned out his command. Just a short distance ahead of them, a semitruc
k had backed out of a driveway and was blocking the street. If she hit it head-on, she was certain to die.
So he jerked his wheel and smashed into the side of her car. Metal ground against metal, screeching as it scraped together.
Maybe it wasn’t just the screeching metal he heard. Maybe it was Wendy screaming because her mouth was open as she stared at him in shock.
He’d had no choice, though. He had to get her off the road and out of the path of that truck. He wrenched the wheel even harder, crunching the side of her car as he pushed it off the road.
Her tires hit the curb before the car jumped the sidewalk. He breathed a sigh of relief that she was off the street, until he saw where she was heading—straight toward a tree.
A massive oak with a trunk wider than her little car. He swerved over the curb, too, trying to get between her and the tree. But he was too late.
Her car struck the trunk of the oak, wrapping itself around it. Another horn blared—this one was hers as her body slumped against the airbag that had exploded from her steering wheel.
Had he saved her?
Or killed her?
* * *
“What the hell did you say?” Parker exclaimed. Then he pulled his cell phone away from his ear and stared at it.
He could not have heard his sister correctly. Nikki was one of the guards he’d posted outside Wendy Thompson’s parents’ house; he’d borrowed her from his brother Cooper’s team. Maybe their cell connection was faulty.
“What happened?” he asked, seeking clarification.
“I don’t know,” Nikki replied. “First they were kissing...”
Parker groaned. “No...”
Hart was only supposed to pretend to be her boyfriend. They weren’t supposed to really become involved. Of all his bodyguards, Parker had thought Hart, who’d barely survived his short marriage, was immune to the temptation of mixing pleasure with business.
Sure, he was aware that Wendy Thompson had had a crush on Hart when he’d worked for River City PD, and while that was useful for their cover, Parker had never expected either of them to actually act on it.
“The kissing might have been for her parents’ benefit,” Nikki speculated. “They were not very discreetly watching them through the front window.”
His heart thudded heavily with dread. “So did they see what you just told me happened?” He was still hoping that he’d misunderstood. That she couldn’t have said what she had...
But then Nikki repeated it. “Him running her off the road?”
Parker groaned again. So he had heard his sister correctly the first time.
“They couldn’t have seen it,” Nikki said. “It happened a couple of miles from their house. Lars is still sitting on their place and the Thompsons haven’t made any attempt to leave. They must have not even heard the crash.”
Crash. Parker flinched.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How did they get from kissing to separate vehicles and...?”
What? A road rage incident?
“After the kissing, she jumped in her car and took off,” Nikki told him.
To do what? Report Hart to him or to the chief? This was bad. Very bad.
“It didn’t take long to figure out, from the way she was driving, that her brakes must have gone out,” Nikki said. “Hart was right there. I think he tried to force her off the road so she wouldn’t hit the truck. But...”
“But what?” Parker asked.
“She hit a tree instead.”
Parker shot up from his desk and cursed. “Oh, my God. Is she okay?”
“I don’t know,” Nikki said. “I radioed Hart and he claims he’s got it handled.” But she obviously doubted his abilities. She didn’t know Hart Fisher like Parker did, though.
“If Hart says he’s got it handled, he does.” Parker wasn’t sure if he backed his friend out of loyalty, though, or because he actually believed what he was saying. Hart Fisher had been a good cop—so good that he’d made detective right before he’d quit the force.
Since Parker had hired him, he’d proved to be a damn good bodyguard, too.
Until today.
Today, instead of protecting his principal, he might have put her in more danger.
Chapter 5
The metal was so twisted and bent, Wendy had to move carefully beneath it so that no sharp edges cut her. Fluids dripped onto the grass and her face and clothes. She suspected it was antifreeze and transmission fluid. The brake fluid was gone. When she located the line, she saw why; it had been neatly sliced straight through.
She sucked in some air, happy that she could breathe again after the airbag had knocked the breath out of her. It had also saved her life, though. Once the rush of adrenaline left her, she would be sore and have some bumps and bruises, but other than that, she was going to be fine.
She needed to get the car into the police garage and up on a hoist, so she could take pictures of the damage. After she’d done that, she would be able to remove the line to see if she could figure out what kind of tool had cut it so cleanly. A knife? Switchblade? Razor?
She peered closer, trying to figure it out. But before she could discern what might have been used to cut it, strong fingers wrapped tightly around her ankles and dragged her out from beneath the wreckage.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as she stared up at Hart’s face.
His chiseled features twisted into a grimace while his skin flushed with anger. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Processing evidence,” she replied matter-of-factly even as her heart continued to pound so quickly and heavily. “Someone deliberately cut the brake line.”
“You could have been killed,” he said, his deep voice cracking with anger.
She was angry, too, but she found herself turning that anger on him. “Yes, thanks to you, I nearly was.”
“Thanks to me?” he sputtered.
“You ran me off the road!” She gestured at the tree and was surprised to see how badly her hand was shaking now.
Why was she shaking so? It was all over. She was fine. It must have just been the adrenaline that continued to rush through her.
He shook his head in denial.
“Was it someone else? It sure as hell looked like you behind the wheel,” she said.
“I didn’t want you to hit that semitruck,” he said.
She knew that; knew that he had probably saved her life and that she should be thanking him. But she feared that if she let the anger go, she would fall apart. And because she didn’t know yet who had cut her brake line, she vented her anger on Hart.
“That tree is nearly as big as the truck!” she said.
He flinched. “I didn’t see the tree.”
Neither had she. But she hadn’t hit it head-on like she would have the truck. The passenger’s side and front corner of her mother’s car had taken the brunt of the impact. The airbag had protected her from any serious harm.
She was going to be a little sore from the force of the collision. But she was only alive because of Hart. If not for Hart...
She shuddered as she realized that she had nearly died. And she started shaking even more than she had been.
“I told you to put it in Neutral,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“I did,” she said. “And I did. But there was just too much momentum.” The car wouldn’t have stopped until it had hit something or someone.
Hart hadn’t just saved her life but probably other lives, as well. She had yet to thank him. Shame heated her face. She opened her mouth to apologize, but before she could say anything, he interrupted her.
“I’m sorry,” Hart said, offering the apology first. “Are you okay?”
He’d asked that the minute he’d run up to her car. But instead of answering him, she’d pushed op
en the driver’s door and scrambled under the wreckage.
Emotions overwhelmed her, nearly choking her, so all she could manage was a brief nod. Since becoming an evidence tech, she had investigated many crime scenes where a murder had taken place. But she had never considered before that her life might one day become a crime scene—and the murder hers.
Luther Mills wasn’t just threatening her anymore. He was making good on those threats. He intended to kill her.
What about her parents?
“Oh, my God,” she murmured when what had really just happened finally sank in. She began to tremble even more as fear rushed over her.
* * *
Hart reached out for Wendy, grasping her shoulders so that she didn’t fall over. Her face had gone so pale, her brilliant green eyes so wide with horror. She must have gone into shock. Maybe she’d been in shock since her car had crashed into the tree, and she hadn’t even noticed how injured she actually was. She could have internal bleeding, a concussion...
“We need to get you to the hospital,” he said. He should have taken her to the ER the moment she’d extricated herself from the wreckage. But she hadn’t given him the chance before she’d tried collecting evidence. “You need to have X-rays and find out the extent of your injuries.”
She shook her head again and pulled free of his loose grasp. “I need to call for a tow truck to get this car into the police garage.”
“You can’t process your own car for evidence,” Hart told her, especially not when she was hurt.
“It’s not my car,” Wendy said, and her voice cracked with fear. “It’s my mom’s car.”
Hart sucked in a sharp breath. Though his mother had passed away a couple of years ago, he still missed her every day. So he understood her emotional reaction. “We’ll get that truck here ASAP,” he assured her, pulling out his cell phone. “We’ll figure out who cut that brake line.”
