by Rebecca York
Stripping down to her panties, she pulled on an oversize T-shirt. Then, finding she was swaying on her feet again, she flopped onto the bed and slipped under the covers. It was almost too much effort to turn off the lamp, but she managed.
In the darkness her thoughts turned back to Luke Pritchard, remembering the conversation between them. It had been difficult for him to tell her what he wanted, but finally he’d trusted her with the secret he must have been lugging around like a steamer trunk for three weeks. She remembered the look on his face when he’d told her about the money. A mixture of defiance and sadness and underlying fear that he was struggling to hide. But she’d seen it, and she’d understood, because something similar had happened to her a few months ago. Maybe not in the same way. But she knew what it felt like to have your identity yanked away and to find yourself struggling to figure out who you were. He was doing the same thing, only he had no background, no past experience to help him out.
She shuddered. In the privacy of her bedroom, she was willing to admit that she’d been feeling sorry for herself for months. She’d walked away from a job that had been her life. And her man had as good as slapped her in the face with her own inadequacies.
She winced, then set her jaw. Someone with worse problems than hers had ended up on her doorstep. Someone who needed her.
But she wasn’t going to be stupid about trusting him. She hadn’t agreed to take the job he was offering. There was still time to back out if she thought that working for the man was too dangerous.
LUKE WAITED in the alley outside Hannah’s apartment a full thirty minutes after he saw the bedroom light flick off. Then instead of making a direct assault on her apartment, he started several houses down where a breakfast room had been added to the kitchen. Using the fence to boost himself up, he silently and quickly transferred to the roof of the addition, then hoisted himself to the second-story room, using the drainpipe as a handhold.
Once he was on the roof, he waited for several minutes to make sure there had been no reaction to his presence. As he moved along the row of houses, he wondered if he really had been a cat burglar.
At Hannah’s he used the fancy blockwork at the side of the building as a ladder, clinging to the rectangular stones as he made his way down to the second level, where he transferred to the bathroom-window ledge, holding himself in place with one hand while he eased open the window with the other.
Again he waited to see if his presence had been noted. When Hannah didn’t charge through the door with her gun in her hand, he pushed the window as wide as it would go, freezing when it gave a squeak of protest.
But Hannah still didn’t appear. Now came the tricky part, he thought as he maneuvered first one broad shoulder and then the other through the narrow opening. Once his torso was inside, he grasped the window frame and hauled the rest of his body into the bathroom, using his arms to control his headfirst descent to the floor.
Pleased to note that the exertion hadn’t particularly winded him, he stood and closed the window. He wiped his hands on a hand towel over the sink.
After removing his shoes, he paused outside the bedroom door. It was difficult to keep himself from easing it open and making sure she was all right. But that would be pushing his luck.
So he made his way down the hall to the living room and dropped into the chair Hannah had sat in earlier.
He was immediately conscious of the scent she’d left behind. Woman and floral shampoo, because he didn’t think she was the kind who would bother with perfume. She’d felt so fragile in his arms when he’d helped her back to the apartment. But it was her inner strength that had drawn him to her in the first place.
Eyes closed, he slumped down into the feminine aura, his head cushioned by the chair back and his hands clutching the padded arms. Deliberately, he eased the pressure of his fingers, even while he questioned his own judgment for the second time that evening.
He must be crazy coming in here like this. But he wasn’t about to leave, not after all the effort he’d put out.
One thing he’d discovered about himself—he was persistent. Another was that he had the ability to sleep lightly like a cat and wake instantly when necessary. He glanced at his watch. It was almost two in the morning. He’d make sure he was out of the apartment by six at the latest. Then he’d go back to his town house, shower and shave, and come back for the appointment they’d made.
FAR TO THE WEST of Baltimore, in San Diego, a man who called himself Dallas Sedgwick sat in an easy chair contemplating his options.
For the past three weeks he’d had men out beating the bushes for a very cunning fugitive. A man who had stolen a million dollars from him and then disappeared like smoke wafting away on the wind.
There were several problems involved with finding him—the first being that with the amount of cash at his disposal, he could be anywhere in the world by now.
Then there was the question of his identity. Dallas had a picture of the man but no name that would do him any good. He thought about the stupid son of a bitch who had vouched for this viper, Rafael Concha. He would have taken Concha out to a patch of uninhabited desert wasteland, stripped him naked and staked him to the ground on top of a fire-ant hill. But Concha had already died on a godforsaken patch of real estate south of the Rio Grande, so Dallas wouldn’t have the pleasure of torturing him until he talked.
Opening the folder that rested on his lap, he got out several photographs of the man who had disappeared with the money. They were all candid shots, some full face, some profile, all snapped after the traitor had come to work for him.
There was nothing remarkable about the fugitive. He had dark hair and eyes, sharp cheekbones, narrow lips and nose, weathered skin. He’d been hired because he was ruthless, skilled with a gun and knew his way around the desert along the border.
Dallas had been considering giving him a raise. Then he’d gone out with a team and never come back. In fact, nobody had come back. Most of the others were confirmed dead. But no one with the height and weight and coloring of the man in question was among them.
Which meant he and some accomplice had killed the rest of the guys with him. Or he’d been damn lucky to get away from an ambush.
Dallas didn’t care which it was. All he wanted was his money back and the man in custody.
Long ago he’d learned what was important in life. Power. Money. Respect. He had absorbed those lessons at his father’s knee. Dad had held his sons to a high standard, then pitted them against the one person he might have loved. Another man might have cursed his father for isolating him from his family. Dallas appreciated the values he’d learned. Dad’s training had been harsh, but it had made him tough and ruthless, prepared him for the real world. Dallas knew how to make money, how to keep it and how to ensure the loyalty of the men under him. Which meant the man who’d stolen from him and disappeared must be found and punished appropriately.
A tap on the door made him look up, then call out, “Come in.”
Chad Crosby, one of his lieutenants, stepped into the room. Despite the early hour of the morning, Crosby was dressed in a crisp blue shirt and navy trousers. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said.
“I take it there’s been a development.”
Crosby held up a cassette box. “This is a tape from a bank surveillance camera in Baltimore. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
THE LIGHT OUTSIDE had turned gray when a noise from the bedroom woke Luke. A muffled scream. Or perhaps a loud gasp.
His reaction was swift and primal. Propelling himself out of the chair and cursing his lack of a weapon, he sprinted down the hall. As he burst through the bedroom door, he expected to see an assailant attacking Hannah. But she was alone, thrashing around in her double bed. She’d kicked the covers off, and he got a good view of long legs, shapely hips and bikini panties below a white T-shirt that had tangled itself around her waist.
The view was mesmerizing and unsettling at the same time because he knew she
was caught in the grip of a nightmare. He also knew how she’d react if she caught him standing there looking at her half-naked body. He should get the hell out of her bedroom. But when she moaned again, he felt as if a giant blade had pierced his chest.
“Hannah.”
As he took an uncertain step forward and then another, her eyes snapped open and zeroed in on him.
He was trapped like a bull in a box canyon. And it was his own damn arrogant fault.
He saw her blink, saw her lunge for the gun on the bedside table. This time he knew that letting her get to the weapon first might be a death sentence—for both of them. So he beat her to it, swept the gun out of her grasp and set it down on the dresser behind him.
When she tried to throw herself from the bed, he came down beside her, wrapping his arms around her to keep her from mauling him.
“Get off me, you son of a bitch,” she panted, flailing at him with her feet, so that he had to shift his leg on top of hers to thwart her efforts to emasculate him.
“Hannah, don’t. Stop it. I’m not going to hurt you. I swear.”
The assurance did nothing to ease her tense muscles. “What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?” she demanded.
“You cried out. I thought the guy who tried to strangle you on the sidewalk had gotten in.” He repeated the explanation, sighing in relief when she stopped trying to maul him. But he was still hesitant to turn her loose for fear that she was just waiting for her chance to turn the tables. Her head tipped up, and her eyes bored into his. “What exactly are you doing in my apartment after I asked you to leave?”
“Under the circumstances, I thought you shouldn’t be left alone.”
“So you took it upon yourself to break in?”
He kept his gaze steady. “Yes.”
She muttered something that didn’t sound very ladylike. “Get off of me.”
“If you promise not to knee me in the cojones.”
She thought about it for several seconds before nodding her agreement.
Flopping to his back, he lay with his shoulder touching hers, emotions roiling inside him. He felt like a damn fool for having gotten into this situation, and at the same time he knew he was perfectly justified in having decided to protect her.
“Get out of here,” she whispered, and he suspected that she wasn’t capable of talking louder.
His own voice was none too steady as he answered, “Not while you’re thinkin’ of me like a skunk in the woodpile.”
“A skunk in the woodpile. That’s a pretty good description. And it’s your own damn fault. What in the heck do you think you were doing?”
He ignored her words and the hot, sharp tightness in his chest. “I came down the hall because I thought you were in trouble. Then I saw you were thrashing around on the bed, having a bad dream.”
“Oh!” The syllable came out high and choked.
He literally felt her control snap. When he turned toward her, he saw her shoulders begin to shake, and her eyes fill with tears.
“Darlin’, don’t.”
The only effect of his words was to make the tears come harder and faster.
Instinctively he reached for her, gathered her close, amazed once again at how fragile she felt in his arms. For several heartbeats she struggled to free herself as he held her tightly, not the way he had before but with all the tenderness he was feeling.
She gave up the fight, leaning in to him, her shoulders heaving as the misery seized her.
Overwhelmed, he felt her give herself into his care, at least for the moment. He crooned low reassuring words that were as much for himself as for the woman in his arms. Dipping his head, he skimmed his lips against her hair, then pressed his cheek to the top of her head as his own vision blurred, because the feeling of being needed was almost too much for him to cope with.
He held her, caressed her, soothed her, feeling the storm of her emotions build, then begin to ebb. When he sensed that the tears had all been shed, he reached for a tissue on the nightstand and handed it to her.
Ducking her head, she blew her nose.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the dream?” he asked softly.
She remained huddled into herself. Without raising her head, she answered, “I don’t want to talk about it. Not to you.”
Or anyone else, he suspected.
“You’ll feel better if you do.”
“How do you know?”
He gave her as much honesty as he could—enough to make his stomach clench. “Because I know how bad it feels to bottle everything up inside yourself when there’s no one you can trust.”
“You’re saying I can trust you?”
“I hope you can.”
She kept her face averted, and he felt himself holding his breath, wondering how she was going to respond. Outside, the gray light had brightened, and he could hear birds waking up in the trees.
Finally she said, “The nightmares are the same. It’s always about Sean Naylor.” She swallowed. “He’s the reason I left the Baltimore P.D. Last night was the four-month anniversary of his death.”
She paused, and he reached around her, rubbing at the knot of tension at the base of her neck.
When she began to speak again, her voice was flat and dead. “I was assigned to the Turner investigation. They’re an organization in Baltimore distributing drugs. We had a tip that a big deal was going down—but we’d been given the wrong time. So we got there just as the participants were arriving. Some of them fled. One of them was killed. Sean Naylor. An eighteen-year-old kid, for Lord’s sake.”
“You didn’t kill him,” he said with absolute conviction.
“I could have, although the bullet wasn’t from my gun, as it turned out. But I was the one who knelt there on the sidewalk waiting for the paramedics, watching the life ebb out of him.”
“You couldn’t have done anything.”
“I still don’t even know if he was in on the deal. It looks like he was with the guys who were, but I can’t even be sure of that.”
“So you blamed your own judgment and quit the force. But it wasn’t simply your judgment. There were other cops involved, one of whom shot the kid.”
“I as good as pulled the trigger! Knowing that, I couldn’t stay. Not when I realized I was going to hesitate every time I had to pull my weapon. Out on the street, I’d be endangering my own life and that of every cop who worked with me.”
He suspected she was putting the trauma into practical terms and skirting the guilt she still felt. But he wasn’t going to call her on it.
“So now you know that if you get into a tight spot with me, I may let you down,” she said.
“I’m willing to take a chance on you.”
“What if I’m not willing to do the same?”
He was instantly sizzling with tension. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her jaw firmed. “It means that you can climb out of my bed and go out through the front door and find yourself another detective. Because I’m not going to be working with you.”
CHAPTER THREE
“No.”
“What do you mean no?” Hannah echoed.
“I mean I’m not letting you show me the door. I need you.”
Hannah stared at him, and the haunted expression in his dark eyes said that he was telling the truth. He had the desperate look of a man clinging to a rope over a canyon—and the rope was breaking strand by strand.
She saw him swallow. “I was fixin’ to leave before you woke up, but I heard you cry out, and I came charging down the hall. Breaking in was a mistake in judgment, and I apologize for that. But I was too worried about you to leave you alone.”
His voice had turned stiff, and she wondered how many apologies he’d made in his life. The knowledge that neither one of them had the answer was enough to sway her judgment.
“Okay, you can tell me everything you know about your situation over breakfast. Then I’ll decide whether
I’m a damn fool to take you on.”
She saw him let out the breath he’d been holding.
“Deal. I’ll cook while you take a shower.” Without giving her a chance to argue, he climbed out of her bed and strode toward the door.
She watched his broad shoulders disappear, wondering how she could possibly work with a man who made her feel so vulnerable. She hadn’t let anyone see her cry over Sean Naylor—not since Gary had told her to get her butt back in gear. But the man who called himself Luke Pritchard had gotten her to open up with very little effort.
Grabbing clean underwear along with a fresh T-shirt and jeans, she ducked into the bathroom and locked the door—and the window. It wasn’t until she’d turned on the water that she remembered that her unwanted guest had taped up her scalp the night before. Gingerly she touched the bandage. Probably it wasn’t a good idea to get it wet, she thought as she pulled a shower cap from the shelf over the toilet.
While she stood under the hot spray, she thought about everything that had happened over the past few months—and everything that had happened since Luke had come to her aid the night before. Once she’d thought she was a good judge of men. That confidence had been shaken, and now here she was, faced with the decision of trusting another guy.
Well, she’d try to be smart this time. She’d ask him some hard questions. And she wouldn’t take the job unless he seemed to be playing it straight with her about his problem.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she was immediately enveloped by the delicious aromas drifting toward her. Following her nose down the hall, she found Luke towering over the stove, looking too large for her small kitchen. Yet he seemed thoroughly at home stirring a skillet with frying onions, peppers and small pieces of bacon.
When she stepped through the doorway he gave her a long inspection. Too long.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
