by Leslie North
She smiled and waved a fork. “The least I can do to thank you…for everything.”
He sat up. “Hey, last night…totally my pleasure. But I don’t want it to just be one night. How about dinner tonight? Or lunch? Or breakfast tomorrow, my treat?”
She shook her head. “You really don’t waste time.”
His smile fell. “Hard to tell how much time any of us have. What do you say?”
She smiled and shook her head. “How about tomorrow? I’m contemplating a soak in the bathtub and a night of reading.”
Finishing up his omelet, he sat back with his coffee. “How about I come over and scrub your back?”
She took the plates to the sink, rinsed them and slipped them into the dishwasher. Coming back to him, she tipped her head to the side. “Okay—dinner. I should be off about five. Pick me up at the office and we’ll set a new date for another shoot? How’s that for a deal? Now—you need to scoot, and so do I or I’m going to be late for work.”
Standing, he stretched across the counter and brushed his lips across hers. “See you tonight for dinner. Sure you don’t want me to give you a ride?”
She shook her head. “I’ve leaned enough on you already.” She smiled and walked to the door. He stopped there to kiss her cheek. She turned her head so his lips found hers. The kiss deepened, and Gage slipped an arm around her waist.
Letting out a breath, Anna stepped back. “Go. Now. While I still have a brain.” She held open the door for him.
He gave her a smile and stepped outside. He’d wait for her out front—he’d already picked out a good spot where he could park and follow her. And maybe he could find out who the hell else was after Anna.
***
Anna hit her speed dial, and begged Lisa for a ride. She’d known Lisa since fourth grade—Eloise might have gone to private boarding schools, but Anna and Susan were daughters of ‘the people’s congressman’ and went to school with regular folk. Lisa and Anna bonded over a shared hatred of math and the certainty they’d been born in the wrong era. Lisa still looked more like a sixties hippie, right down to the flowing skirts and long hair. “It’s called Boho-chic now,” she insisted.
Lisa’s black VW—classic vintage ’63—was waiting for Anna when she hurried out of her building. Lisa leaned over and hugged her. She had on bangle earrings today and bracelets that clattered. Since she’d quit waitressing and had started working in an upscale boutique that specialized in second-hand designer clothing, her Boho look had taken on a more expensive air.
“Thanks, I know this is out of your way,” Anna said.
Putting the car in gear, Lisa checked over her shoulder and pulled out. “Not a problem. But what happened to Ginny?”
Anna filled her in on Ginny’s breakdown. Lisa’s eyebrows lifted high. “A Navy SEAL rescued you? Some girls get all the luck. What does he look like? All military muscle? Is he cute? Did he stay the night?” Anna could feel her face warming. Lisa glanced over and grinned. “Oh, he so did. You look about five shades of red.”
Ducking her head, Anna tried to busy herself arranging her purse. She’d thrown her tablet into the giant bag. Now she tucked it more firmly into a side pocket.
Lisa nudged her with an elbow. “Tell me more. Come on, spill. And does he have a friend?”
“What about you and that guy you met—Scotty? The one you texted me about?”
Pulling a face, Lisa shrugged. She let out a sigh. “Just not meant to be, I guess. I mean, I knew when I was working in a pub, I was going to get hit on. And the one time I break my rule about never saying yes—well, that’s what I get for taking a guy home. I should have known he’d disappear the next morning. He was military, too.” She let out another long breath.
Anna twisted the strap on her bag. Would Gage be like that? She glanced at Lisa, who grinned back. “That’s what I get for not even bothering to get his phone number. And here we are. You have time for lunch this week? You should come by the store—we got in the cutest bunch of sweaters, all in your colors. But enough about clothes—what about the guy? Where did you meet? At the rescue? Oh, that’d be too romantic.”
Anna shook her head. “Gage signed on to do some modeling.”
“Get out. Now you’re getting hunky SEALs? I always figured you’d end up with nothing but pretty boys who are so not men. Have you had sex yet?”
Anna frowned at her. “Why don’t you focus on the road and leave my love life out of it.”
“Love, is it? And I can do both. Did Romeo like the guy?”
Anna shrugged. “Romeo ate our pizza. And so far Gage still has all his fingers attached.” Pausing, Anna turned to look at her friend. “What if…if this does turn out to be like you and…and the guy you met.”
Lisa shrugged. “So what. Are you looking for a ring on your finger and a forever after?”
Anna shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe…I was once. But…well, I just don’t know anymore.”
“Well, don’t sit on your hands while you wait.” Lisa found a parking spot down the block from Anna’s building. She turned in her seat and fixed a stare on Anna. “You want to know why I broke my own rule—why I went out with that guy I met in a bar, even though I knew it was a bad idea?”
Anna shook her head, and Lisa went on, her voice intense, “He’d been at the pub, drinking to the loss of a friend, a guy who’d been killed. He told me the guy was just shot for what seemed to be no damn good reason. Dead. Just like that. This friend of his left a wife behind. He talked about life being too short to leave things undone—and, you know what, he was right.”
Anna shook her head again. “Gage said something like that.”
Grabbing Anna’s hand, Lisa squeezed it tight. “Well, good. Means he’s not completely stupid. Life happens. I read someplace that how can you use your heart before it gets broke in. So go out and break a few things—just not our lunch date, okay?”
They made a date to meet up at a local coffee shop, but by noon Anna had to call and cancel. Work was more than swamped. The move—and the new, cramped quarters, had left everyone on edge. Tempers soared. No one could find the right art for the latest covers. Two editors still preferred to work in hard copies—and the print-out galleys had gone missing. Entire boxes of files seemed to be gone, and everyone’s nerves were frayed.
Anna tried to stay in her own tiny cubicle, but she had to go up to the studio to see what she could rescue from yesterday’s work. The answer was nothing. What smoke hadn’t damaged had been ruined by overhead sprinklers. She was glad she’d taken her Hasselblad with her when she’d gone, or it would have been soaked, too.
She called down to the hospital for news, and found out that Linda had been released to go home. She called there and left a message. Marcella had been released, too, but had checked herself into nursing care—Anna read between the lines on that and figured Marcella would be at the best spa in town for at least a week.
Trying to escape the chaos downstairs, Anna volunteered to help sort out Coran’s office. The elevators were working again, so she took it up and stepped out and headed into Coran’s office. The place was a total wreck. Scattered papers, furniture still overturned. Anna shook her head and started to sort out the worst of it.
By the middle of the afternoon, she was exhausted. And she remembered she was supposed to go out with Gage. She wondered if she could call him and put it off—but then she thought about Lisa and the guy she’d met. Maybe Gage would think she was cooling things between them. And she thought about what Lisa had said—it was past time that life stopped happening around her and only to other people.
Dammit, she wasn’t just going to go out with Gage, she was going to go all out.
Grabbing her purse, Anna headed outside to hail a taxi. It was only four. She’d go home, grab a bath, change into something sexy and meet up with Gage back at the office building. Smiling and thinking about the evening ahead—maybe she could talk him into taking her dancing—she headed into her building.
&nbs
p; She rode the elevator up, humming a song. The song stopped as soon as she opened her door. It had been locked—but someone had been in her place. Someone had trashed her place. It looked worse than Coran’s office. Her face numb and hands shaking, she took a step back, and then she thought about Romeo.
Pulling out her phone, she started to dial the emergency number, but she stopped. Was this an emergency? Should she just call the police instead? What if the person was still here? Where was Romeo?
Before she could decide, a hand closed over her hand and her phone.
Chapter 11
Gage put a finger to his lips so she’d stay quiet. He took Anna’s phone from her hand. She turned and stared at him, her face pale and her hands shaking.
He’d been following her all day—he didn’t know why she’d left work early since she was supposed to meet him after she got off for dinner. But now he wished he’d left Spencer or Scotty watching her place. Whatever someone had wanted from Coran Williams they hadn’t found it yesterday, and they’d pegged Anna as the person who did have it, probably because she’d been at Williams’ office yesterday.
He was going to bet this was about to escalate.
He bet right.
Two men stepped out of Anna’s bedroom. Burly guys. They hadn’t bothered with ski masks, meaning they didn’t figure on meeting up with anyone. They also wouldn’t be leaving anyone alive to identify them. One pulled a gun, and Gage moved forward—they wouldn’t expect that.
Gage grabbed a lamp on the way, swung hard and fast and caught the guy with the gun across his face. The gun went off, but Gage was still moving forward. The second guy was also going for a weapon now, so Gage took him down with a round kick to the side of his head and two hard punches—one to the throat and one to the temple. Whoever these two were, they weren’t top-of-the-line pros, just hired thugs, Gage would guess. The guy lay on the floor, rolling in pain.
He heard Anna give a small cry, saw the first guy had headed for her, was trying to wrestle Anna’s purse from her. She gave slightly, put the guy off balance and kicked him hard in the groin. Good for you, Gage thought. The guy doubled over.
Striding over to her, Gage grabbed Anna’s hand. “Time to go before reinforcements show.”
“You think there will be more?” She hung back, but Gage dragged her with him out into the hallway.
He punched the call button for the elevator and when it showed, he started it down on its own. No sense walking into anything by doing the expected. He headed to the stairs. “I think these two are hired muscle—meaning brains will be around somewhere. I also think whatever they think you have is worth killing for.” He pulled her with him into the stairwell. Their steps echoed on the metal treads.
She wrenched away. “Just who the hell are you? Have you been following me? What is this all about?”
He grabbed her wrist again. “We’ll do twenty questions later. Right now, we need to move.”
She pulled against him, but he had a good grip on her now. “I’m not going anywhere with you, not until I know what’s going on.” He could hear the fear in her voice, but she was trying to put a brave front on it.
He glanced at her, and told her, “Bad stuff, Anna. It’s all bad.”
“I’m not leaving Romeo with those…those robbers!” She grabbed the stairway banister and hung on. That stopped him.
Gage let out a breath and pulled out a burner phone. “Fine.” He dialed nine-one-one. “Hello? Yes? I want to report shots fired at the apartment next to mine. I’m in six-twelve and it was next door. I don’t know—I think it’s a robbery. Yeah, I’ll wait.” He started down again, and Anna went with him. Reaching the lobby, he pulled open the door, stepped in and glanced around. The lobby had potted plants and a fish tank. Gage tossed the phone into the tank and kept pulling Anna with him. “There—cops will be here in no time, meaning we need to be gone. They’ll look after Romeo, but if that cat’s got any sense he’s hiding and going to stay hidden.”
He stepped out the front door. He heard a hiss. Next to him something cracked off the brick of the building. Grabbing Anna, he pulled her back inside.
She stared at him eyes wide. “What was…?”
“Sniper fire. Trying to keep us here.”
Her face paled even more, making the freckles across her nose stand out. “Sniper? Someone’s trying to kill me? Or you?”
“No, we’d be dead already if that was the case. They had a clear shot and used it to push us back inside.” He pulled out another phone. Anna slanted him a look, but he called the emergency number they’d set up when this ride had begun. Scotty answered. “Need some help,” Gage said. He gave a fast sit-rep.
Scotty’s voice came over the line, all business now, none of the usual humor in his tone. “Hang tight. Kyle just showed his face, so we’re on our way over. Is there a back door?”
Gage glanced at Anna. She bit her lower lip, and then nodded. Gage spoke into the phone again. “Yeah, but my bet is it’ll be covered, too. We’re going to have a small window to move.”
“Give us ten.”
“Make it five. I hear sirens.” Gage tucked the phone away and pulled Anna over to a corner of the lobby. He took her shoulders in her hands and made her face him. “I’ll explain later, but right now my focus is on saving my ass, your skin, and whatever the hell someone wants from you. Do you trust me?”
She lifted her chin. “I barely know you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I asked.”
She stared at him, eyes wide still and scared. He saw her throat work as she swallowed. “What do we do?”
“We need the cops to ignore us, and they’re going to be a distraction for us. Just follow my lead. And if I say run, you run like you’ve got the hounds of hell on your heels.”
She nodded. The scream of sirens grew louder. Gage ruffled Anna’s hair, pulled his shirt out of his jeans, so half of it seemed rumpled, then he pulled Anna into his arms and kissed her.
For a second, he lost track of the world. She parted her lips and let him dive into her, and the world faded. Then the front doors burst open. Gage had no problem looking startled, or acting like he didn’t welcome the interruption.
One of the cops fixed him with a glare. “You call about shots fired?”
Gage put on a blank face. He swayed a little, as if he’d been up all night. “What? Shots?”
The cop’s partner batted his arm and nodded to the elevator. The two left them. Gage grabbed Anna’s hand and headed for the back exit. Opening the door set off another alarm, but Gage wanted noise and confusion just now. Cops were showing up in back, too, and Gage waved at the lobby. “Two other guys in blue just headed upstairs. What’s going on? Did someone get shot? They said there were shots? Dammit, I thought this was a safe neighborhood. What’s going on?”
One of the uniformed officers stepped out of his car. Something wasn’t right. Gage didn’t know what was wrong, but the tingling on the back of his neck said he’d seen something that didn’t fit. The two cops swapped a look, and one of them was going for his gun—and that’s when it hit Gage. One of the cops had a hint of a tattoo peeking out from under the collar of his uniform—and no cop could have a visible tat and still be on the force.
Gage moved fast, but the cop moved faster, drew his weapon. Gage caught the guy’s arm, pushed aside, and he yelled at Anna, “Run!”
She turned instead, tried to hit one of the cops over the head with her purse. The other fake cop ducked, grabbed her, and slapped a cloth over her face. Vision misting with red, Gage lunged for her, but something came down on his head—hard.
He fell with a grunt, tried to push up. He saw Anna go limp, saw her scooped up and shoved into the back of the squad car. One of the fake cops lifted his weapon, and Gage stared down the black hole of a .45. The squeal of tires interrupted.
The guy looked up, and that gave Gage an opening. He grabbed the guy’s weapon and hand, and pulled. The fake cop tumbled forward, and Gage rolled with him,
wrapped an arm around the guy’s throat and kept choking. He heard the squeal of tires, glanced up to see the cop car taking off—taking Anna with it. He tightened his choke hold. The man gasped for breath but failed.
And then Scotty was there, pulling at Gage’s arm, telling him they needed the guy. “We need intel, man. You want your girl back, then we need him.” That got through to Gage. He loosened his hold.
Scotty and Spencer had zip ties ready, stuffed a rag in the guy’s mouth. Kyle was driving a town car with room enough in the trunk for a body—the fake cop went into the trunk. Scotty scooped up Anna’s purse, and Spencer reached out a hand to Gage. “Time to go. Come on. We’ve got your bug-out bag with us.”
Sore and shaking inside, Gage glanced after the car that had taken Anna—dammit, he’d promised her he’d look after her.
