Carrie's Protector. Rebecca York

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For two little eagles, E12 and E14,

      who met untimely deaths in Decorah, Iowa.

      Chapter One

      Carrie Mitchell had made the biggest mistake of her life. And if she had it to do all over again, her actions would be exactly the same.

      “Ready?” the dark-haired man waiting ramrod straight at the bottom of the stairs asked.

      She dragged in a breath and let it out before speaking. “As ready as I’m going to be.”

      “Then let’s get it over with.”

      He stepped outside and motioned for her to wait as he looked around the exterior of the safe house where she’d been staying for the past week.

      Really, the visual inspection was unnecessary, she thought. Nobody could get past the electric fence and the motion detectors, or through the main gate without the proper security codes.

      Still, he made her linger inside before motioning her out the door, then led the way toward the black town car they were taking into D.C. The car was bulletproof, a precaution Carrie wished they could have done without. But her father, Douglas Mitchell, was rich enough to make his own rules when it came to his daughter’s safety—or anything else. An ordinary man would have relied on the FBI to protect his only child. Dad wanted an armored car and an elite private security team to keep her safe. The driver was already behind the wheel, a guy named Joe Collins, who was one of the guards who had been with her for the past week.

      The man who held the car door open was Wyatt Hawk, the one in charge. Carrie didn’t like him much. Maybe that wasn’t fair, because she couldn’t really say she knew him. He kept himself so closed up that she’d had little chance for an in-depth conversation with him.

      He was tall and muscular and good-looking in a kind of tough-guy way that she might have admired from a dis-tance—if she’d had the choice. You could imagine him as the bodyguard for a mob boss, although that wasn’t his background. He was supposed to have retired early from the CIA, but he never talked about his former life.

      The other security men at the safe house were much more open about their backgrounds. They were all ex-cops, and they’d been friendly, perhaps to counteract Wyatt’s aloof demeanor. Gary Blain was a black man in his fifties, with a shaved head and broad shoulders. Hank Swinton was around the same age, with a bit of gray invading his sandy hair. And Rodrigo Garcia was a little younger, with classic Hispanic features.

      They’d made her feel protected as they’d tried to lighten her isolation. In contrast, Wyatt always had an open book in front of him at the dining table, probably to discourage conversation. One of the few things she knew about him was that he liked World War II spy novels.

      She’d joined him a time or two in the basement gym. He’d stuck to his routine of weight machines and hard-driving pumping on the elliptical trainer to the sounds of classic rock.

      She never pushed herself as far. For her, exercise wasn’t a religion. It was just a way to keep in reasonable shape so she could crawl around in the woods taking pictures of wildlife.

      Which was how she’d gotten into the worst trouble of her life.

      Last Thursday she’d been practicing her profession, happily eavesdropping on an eagles’ nest in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, the sprawling wooded area that ran through the northwest section of the city. She’d been using her telephoto lens to capture the family life of the parents and their two babies, photographing them off and on since before they’d hatched.

      The photos were to illustrate a piece she was doing for Wildlife Magazine on raptors in urban areas.

      She was creeping through the underbrush out of sight of the eagles’ eighty-foot-high, thousand-pound nest when she spotted three young Midwestern-looking men in jeans and T-shirts in a nearby picnic area.

      She could see they hadn’t come for a meal. They were sitting at one of the tree-shaded wooden tables, speaking in low voices. Two of them were chain-smoking and littering the ground with the spent butts. Every so often, one of them would look around nervously.

      At first she’d paid them only minimal attention. Then, as she moved to get a different angle on the nest, she started to get the gist of their conversation, and the back of her neck began to tingle.

      She heard the words bomb, Capitol Police and best place to inflict maximum damage. Her heart was pounding as she swiveled cautiously in her hidden position, switching her camera’s focus from the eagles’ nest to the men. After taking their pictures, she wanted to flee, yet she knew that just their faces might not be enough to identify them. Her every move stealthy, she made her way back toward the road, intent on getting their license plates, as well. Her own car was parked on the other side of the picnic area, because it was a better approach to the eagles’ nest.

      Finally she was on the verge of pressing her luck too far. The men were still talking as she circled back the way she’d come, knowing she’d better get out of the woods before they spotted her.

      But she realized it was already too late when she heard a shout of alarm.

      “Hey, somebody’s spying on us.”

      Her heart in her throat, she started running flat out for her car, hearing the crack of twigs and the rustle of underbrush behind her. She fumbled in her bag for the car remote, clicking the lock as she pelted through the woods.

      She was only seconds ahead of them as she jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. As she pulled away, she heard the sound of gunfire.

      The back window and a taillight shattered as she sped away. But she made it onto Military Road and out of the park, and they didn’t pick up her trail because they’d had to double back and circle around to get to the other parking area. She’d made it to the nearest police station, and the rest was history.

      Her attention snapped back to the present when Wyatt spoke.

      “You okay?” he asked.

      “Yes.”

      “The Federal prosecutor has the pictures you took of the men. All you have to do is tell him exactly what you heard and exactly what happened.”

      “Then I suppose I’ll have to show up