Not Without Risk

by Sarah Grimm

  “Of course it is,” Justin continued, his tone less harsh but still tight. “Most people use something familiar to them. Something easily remembered. If this guy knows you, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to figure out what that code is.”

  “He wouldn’t have enough time. The system’s too fast, it…”

  “What?”

  “Last night before I called 911 I tried my wireless remote. I hit the panic button multiple times, but the alarm never sounded. I assumed it was the remote, that it was damaged in the explosion. But if it’s the system…”

  “Then he could get in.”

  “That doesn’t play for me,” Allan stated. “He would have to know that the system had been damaged and how would he?”

  Justin kept his gaze locked on Paige. “At this point the how doesn’t matter as much as the why. He watched you, while you slept, as he pushed the button and blew up your car. And he’ll keep watching you. He’ll keep at you until he finally has what he came for.”

  “Which is?”

  “You, Paige. He wants you.”

  Her face went sheet-pale. “Dead, isn’t that what you mean? He wants me dead.”

  Justin took a deep breath into his lungs, and held it even as his recovering injuries protested. He wouldn’t let it happen. He’d do whatever it took to keep her alive. “St. John came to San Diego. He came to see you, Paige. And whoever took him out has set his sights on you.”

  “If he wants me dead, then why not just kill me?”

  Much as he hated admitting it, he had no answer to that particular question. Paige didn’t wait for him to think one up. She took a deep breath and broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “So I’m giving him exactly what he wants. This is a game to him and I’m playing right into his hands.”

  “We don’t know that,” Allan reassured.

  “I’m scared aren’t I?”

  Allan moved about the room as he spoke. “The key to all of this is to stay one step ahead of his game.”

  “How is that possible when we don’t have any idea what his next move will be?”

  “That’s why you came to us.” Although meant to encourage, Justin could tell that his words fell short of their goal as Paige lifted her gaze to meet his. He brushed his fingers over the back of her hand. “We’ll figure it out, Paige.”

  “I have to believe you or I’ll lose my mind,” she admitted softly. “I have to believe you, so I will.”

  She had great confidence in him. Confidence he wasn’t at all certain he had earned.

  “In the mean time,” Allan continued, “I suggest you get the hell out of Dodge. Do you have someone you can stay with for a while, just until this blows over?”

  “No. At least not anyone I’m willing to put in harm’s way.”

  “Go back to Boston.”

  Her spine went stiff as a rail at the firm command in Allan’s voice. Color returned to her cheeks, a spark of fire to her eyes. “That won’t do me any good. You said he knows me, that this centers around me. If that’s true, then how do you know that’s not his plan? If he knows me, he knows where I’d run to.”

  Although Justin preferred her anger over the cold fear of a few moments ago, his nerves remained fractured. Paige needed more than anger to survive this, she needed protection.

  Undaunted, Allan continued, “There has to be someone you can stay with. Anyone who would offer to help you hide out, someone this guy wouldn’t know about?”

  “She’ll be staying with me.”

  Paige’s eyes grew large as saucers. Her mouth dropped open, but no argument broke loose.

  The firm grip of his partner’s hand upon his arm drew Justin aside. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Warning, along with a note of concern colored Allan’s words but failed to pull Justin’s attention away from Paige. She messed with his head but good. To the point that things he never imagined could come out of his mouth did. Like asking her to go home with him. Twice. To his home, his sanctuary, the one place he never invited a woman.

  She crawled under his skin, swam through his bloodstream. Bullied her way past his defenses until he was left with no defenses where she was concerned. No one, not ever, got past his cop barriers, the thing that kept him alive. Yet she had.

  Thoughts of her ate at him, chased him whether awake or asleep. He hadn’t been able to push her from his mind since meeting her. It made no sense. Even now, his mind kept wandering back to the previous evening, to the mind-numbing feel of her in his arms. To how well their bodies aligned. Just the memory had his pulse racing, his blood heating in anticipation.

  “Justin?” Allan’s voice broke through the fog of his mind. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “So do I.”

  Chapter Eight

  “She’ll be staying with me.”

  Justin’s words circled round and round Paige’s head as she watched the two men converse, their voices dropped to an octave she was unable to hear. Not that she would have made sense of anything past the five words still spinning through her mind. Words spoken with enough authority as to invoke no argument.

  Uncertain that her legs would hold her up any longer, she sank into one of the chairs about the table. Her gaze settled on the window across from her and the dancing dust motes. Her left hand tinkered with her sunglasses. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

  Within the course of a week, everything had changed. Her life was a puzzle she couldn’t sort out. Things she’d always known about herself, she suddenly questioned. Emotions she thought she’d reined under control years ago ran free, muddling her thoughts, confusing the issues. She felt a connection to Justin, a connection she didn’t want to feel. He was a cop, the type of man she knew she should avoid.

  Still, she knew she was out of options. She was going home with Justin. Fear of their mutual attraction aside, he seemed to be the only option available to her. He would help shoulder her burden. He would keep her safe. Common sense told her any threat he offered paled in comparison to the threat from her faceless assailant. The knowledge did nothing to ease her discomfort.

  It was only temporary, this glitch in her routine, this confusion she called her life. Soon enough things would level out. The answers would come, the case would close, and she would move on. Back to her studio and her photographs, back to evenings spent in the darkroom instead of curled in the corner of her bed. She closed her eyes and pictured it, only to be struck with one last thought. When that time finally came, how much of herself would she be able to salvage?

  With a sigh, Paige folded her arms upon the top of the table and dropped her face onto them. Her life was a puzzle all right, one of those five-thousand-piece numbers with raw, uneven edges and no picture on the box cover to guide her.

  The door to the room clicked open. At the same time, the chair on her left pulled out and someone eased into it. She didn’t need to look to identify who sat beside her. The jolts of electricity that wracked her body whenever Justin was near told her.

  “I’m not any good with puzzles. Somewhere in the middle, despite my eye for detail, those pieces become nothing more than a multitude of odd shapes and sizes that don’t fit together no matter how I turn them.” Straightening in her seat, she met his gaze. “I’ve been turning everything over in my head, but none of it makes sense.”

  Especially her overwhelming urge to ask him for comfort.

  As his hand reached out, cupping the side of her face. Paige closed her eyes then opened them. She shouldn’t feel so drawn to him. Even if she could handle his career, she knew what kind of man she wanted in her life and he wasn’t it. She wished she were different, wished she could enjoy him, his nearness, the electricity and heat they generated, the connection they shared without letting him matter. Without letting him in too far. Without the pain.

  She couldn’t.

  She wished she could forget about him. Go home to her boring life, to her staid career, and have things back the way t
hey used to be. Before one phone call turned her world around. Before she walked into that hotel room and discovered Leroy dead. Before she’d looked up into the most intense pair of brown eyes she’d ever seen.

  She couldn’t.

  Reaching up, Paige removed Justin’s hand from her face. When her fingers began to curl around his, she released his hand abruptly and stood. She needed space, needed to put distance between them and pull her reeling emotions back under control. For whenever he was near, control was the very last thing she possessed.

  As her gaze flitted about the room and the knowledge that they were alone settled in, she took a step in retreat.

  Justin’s dark brows drew together. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course.” His white shirt buttoned up the front, and tucked into his jeans. The top few buttons hung open, revealing tanned skin lightly sprinkled with dark hair. Heat licked through her veins and she was struck with the sudden desire to work the rest of his buttons free and push his shirt off his shoulders, revealing the rest of his broad chest to her gaze. “Where’s Allan gone off to?”

  “He went to see one of the techs about those photos of yours.” He watched, a curious look upon his face as she plucked her sunglasses from the table and turned them end over end in her hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She laid the glasses back down, raised her hand to the pounding in her temple. “Of course.”

  He said nothing for a moment, his eyes on hers. Finally, he motioned to her laptop case. “Most likely they’re going to want to take a look at your computer, see if they can trace who sent the photos to you. By the looks of it, you already knew that.”

  “I didn’t know for sure, so I brought it along.”

  “Any passwords or special security features they’re going to need to know about?”

  The ache behind her eyes was becoming unbearable. She pulled the aspirin bottle from the pocket of her suit jacket and struggled against the child-proof cap. “No.” Her fingers fumbled. She forced her eyes to focus and tried again, but lack of sleep made her clumsy. Frustration ground her molars together, a move she immediately regretted when her head pounded harder. ”Are you any good with these?”

  He took the tiny bottle she offered him, fisted his free hand, propped the lip of the bottle lid against the edge of the table and brought his fist down atop it. The lid snapped free, flipped into the air and landed unceremoniously in the center of her laptop case. “Two?”

  She held up three fingers.

  A frown furrowed his brow even as he dropped the caplets into her waiting hand. “When did you last eat?”

  “What day is it?”

  “Shit.” Justin pushed to his feet. He crossed the room to the water cooler on the opposite wall and filled a paper cup, waiting until she swallowed the caplets to comment further. “I can be at your place by six. I’ll pick up something to eat on the way. Anything particular you want?”

  “My life back.”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I know you don’t want to come home with me. But Allan’s right, you need to get out of your place.”

  She did want to go home with him. More than he understood. He would make her forget, quite easily in fact. Worse, he made her want…much more than he was offering. “What if you never find this guy? I can’t hide forever.”

  “How about we focus on today and leave tomorrow for tomorrow?”

  “Like a puzzle? One piece at a time?”

  “Exactly.”

  He would be very good at puzzles. Patient, competent, willing to do whatever it took to arrange the pieces into order, slowly building one on another until the complete picture came into focus. After all, wasn’t that what investigative work was like?

  Paige looked up into those amazing dark-brown eyes of his. Circled in thick, black lashes, they were creased at the corners in a way that told her those few wicked grins he’d sent her way were far more normal for him than the sober look of contemplation that colored his features now. Swamped by the urge to smooth those frown lines from his brow with the tips of her fingers, to ease the grim line of his mouth and work the corners up into a dimpled smile, she shoved her hands toward her rear pockets. They slid over the smooth fabric of her pocket-less slacks, leaving her fumbling.

  His frown deepened. “I know what you’re thinking, you know. And you’re wrong.”

  The lump in her throat made swallowing difficult. “What am I thinking?”

  “Making choices that keep you alive does not make you weak. It would be much simpler to just give up and let this bastard win.”

  “I could stay where I am, refuse to run and face him.”

  “You could die in the process.”

  The thought sent a ripple of alarm through Justin. What if she refused? He couldn’t hog-tie her, couldn’t make her come with him. He understood her ill-ease, for he felt the same stirrings of discomfort as she at the low hum of sensual awareness that circled about them like a hungry shark. Even right now, he had to fight against the urge to haul her into his arms. And not to ease the clawing panic clearly visible in her eyes. No, his motives were not that heroic.

  Against his better judgment, he allowed his gaze to drop, to caress the shape of her body outlined by her suit. He knew just what that suit of hers covered for he’d had his hands all over her just the night before. A high, tight rear-end, slim hips, endlessly long legs that would pull him deep into her warmth. Desire shot straight to his stomach, swirled there. The palms of his hands began to itch.

  Paige wore her clothing like armor, each piece carefully chosen to broadcast an image, a strength she alone believed she lacked. She’d have chosen this one to disguise the fear he knew filled her. To tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she could handle anything thrown her way.

  Anything.

  Even the need to turn to him for help.

  God, she impressed him. Aroused him, challenged him as no other before her had done. He scrubbed a frustrated hand across his face and focused on the cool green gaze of the woman before him, the woman his brain told him to stay away from. He’d yet to fully recover from his injury. The last thing he needed was to get involved with a woman who screamed commitment. He was a loner. He didn’t do commitment.

  His body wasn’t listening. He wanted Paige. Above him, below him, it didn’t matter. He knew it was bad timing, but he wanted her just the same. And he would have her, sooner or later. If he had to keep his hands in his pockets, pants zipped until the threat that chased her was destroyed, he would. He could.

  “Suppose I promised not to do anything you don’t ask me to do?”

  She eased out a breath. “What if I said, it isn’t you I worry about?”

  Shock and awareness filled him, stole his ability to reply. Heat surged through his limbs, tingled in his side. A groan slid past his clenched lips.

  He curled his fingers around her upper arm and urged her closer. Drew the scent of her greedily into his lungs. “How do you expect me to ignore a comment like that?”

  Enough color flashed into her face to tell him she hadn’t meant to reveal that bit of information to him. “I don’t.”

  “Flanders said he’d see what he could do about tracing the origin of that e-mail.”

  Allan’s voice brought Justin’s head up. He discovered his partner, just inside the door, eyebrow raised in silent question.

  “He needs Ms. Conroy’s computer.”