Protected In His Arms. Suzanne McMinn
access to the databank on the network.
He typed in Marysia O’Hurley’s name, did a search. There was nothing there. No interview outcome report file tracking ID. An ID had been in the system mere hours earlier. He’d used the number to request the file from the secure records room.
The computer screen went sharply black, then a white screen with black letters appeared: You are attempting to access an unapproved area.
The hair prickled at the nape of his neck. Network usage was tracked and his access had just been cut off from somewhere inside the building.
He scraped back his chair, headed for the empty, night-lit hallway. Someone opened fire and he heard the audible rush of a bullet past his ear. Blood pounded in his veins as he evaded and struck back. He fired in the direction of the blast in the same second he leaped for the door to the stairs, took them in flying bounds to the underground parking.
The guard at the gate reached for the phone inside his booth.
Reaching the gate, he had his window down and his gun out, and before the guard could speak or attempt to draw, Gideon pointed his GLOCK.
“Open the gate.”
He was through.
For the first time since he’d heard that shot, he felt his hands shake, reaction kicking in. No internal alarm had gone off in the building. He’d been shot at inside headquarters. He forcibly shut down the part of his brain that registered emotion, firmed his grip on the wheel as he steadied his pulse, his Impala speeding through the maze of dark streets. He braked at a light long enough to see that the cross-street was deserted, then zoomed through it and up the interstate on-ramp.
He’d gotten away clean, but there was no going home. And he had a real bad feeling whoever had shot at him inside the building had no need to follow him. All he could do now was hope he got there first—and alive. By pulling that gun on the guard, he had just become a wanted man.
Armed and dangerous. His fellow Marshals would be ordered to shoot to kill. His life had just taken on the value of dirt.
Molly’s life was on the line. His own was only important in that context. As was, now, Marysia O’Hurley’s.
When he flicked the headlamps on as he sped up I-79 North, the sign whizzing by read, Haven, 22 miles.
Chapter 2
Somebody was going to get into that Impala tonight and have sex. And that somebody was her.
For one wild, panicky breath, Marysia O’Hurley wanted the fever dream of delicious lust that hit her with the flash of perception to be real. Hot ripples scorching her skin. His fingers teasing inside her. Her muscles clenching around him. Her voice, sobbing at the shock wave of pure pleasure…
No, no, no. She blocked the sensory images assaulting her so hard that her knees nearly collapsed under her.
The man getting out of said Impala that had pulled into the parking lot next to her car was tall, built, effortlessly sexy. She’d just bet he was as good with his hands as she imagined. It was all she could do to not stare at his ropey-sinewy body and go right back to fantasyland.
And it was fantasy. Not any projection of soon-to-be reality.
First off, she was hardly Miss America, and despite the see-all way his gaze pinned her, she didn’t have a history of come-ons by rugged, sexy, impossibly erotic strangers in parking lots as if she was living out some kind of True Confessions story line.
Second, she was crazy, certifiable, wasn’t she? The cacophony of uncomfortable intuitive flashes that had taken over her life made her feel like a satellite picking up too many signals—most of which were likely products of her ridiculous imagination.
Maybe somebody was going to get lucky in that Impala tonight. But it wasn’t going to be her.
She hadn’t gotten lucky in a long time.
Not that she cared.
Marysia averted her gaze from the man now standing by the Impala. She felt the man grab her arm.
“Are you all right?”
No. Not really.
Not at all.
She refused to meet his eyes, stared down at the lean chest of the so-sexy stranger. Even his voice was sexy. Wow, he’d moved fast. Not that the parking lot was huge. Haven’s one tiny grocery store had just a row of parking in the front and another row along one side. And that this was the biggest store in town said a lot about Haven, West Virginia. It served as everything from grocery store to hardware and feed store to fast-food deli, not to mention game checking station, movie rental and community gossip hub.
“I said, are you all right?” he repeated.
“I’m fine. Thank you. Excuse me.”
An older lady and a boy came around the corner of the store, heading toward their car, packages in hand.
He let go of her arm and she ran, actually ran, around the side of the building and into the grocery store. Her heart hammered like mad.
She needed cinnamon. Not sex. Cinnamon.
Baking. She loved to bake. Baking was normal.
She just wanted things to go back to normal.
Normal was a town in Illinois. At least that was part of the pep talk she’d been trying on herself lately. There was no such thing as normal. Not for anyone, much less for her, and if she stopped telling herself that normal was something she needed, then she’d be able to relax. Deal with things. Accept life as it was. Crazy was the new black.
She was half Polish, half Italian, and she’d been married to an Irish guy. What did people expect from her anyway?
It was nearly closing time. She raced through the store, grabbed a small jar of ground cinnamon, some flour, then a bag of apples, and headed for the checkout. No. She needed ice cream. She definitely needed ice cream. She picked out a gallon of vanilla bean from the freezer case, juggling it with the other things until she got up front.
“Looks like somebody’s makin’ something good tonight,” the Foodway checker said as she rang up the items. “Yum. Wish I was going to your house.”
Mary tugged a ten out of her wallet.
“Pie,” she said.
There was nothing more normal than apple pie and vanilla ice cream. She handed the bill to the girl behind the register. She looked like she was about nineteen. Mary hadn’t seen her before, so Keely must have just hired her.
She could see her friend coming up the aisle from the back of the store. Keely had spotted her.
The girl made change. She dropped the coins in Mary’s hand. The all-too-familiar-now snap of what sometimes felt like electricity jolted her. Mary met the girl’s eyes, the coins hot in her fist now.
She was a pretty girl with big, trust-me eyes, and she was going to get fired tomorrow for stealing.
“Hey,” Keely Schiffer said, reaching the checkout. “I thought that was you I saw whizzing through the store like somebody shot you out of a cannon. Not planning to stop and say hey to your best friend tonight?”
“I was in a hurry. And you looked busy in your office, so I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Was that two excuses for the price of one?”
Mary didn’t argue the point her friend drove home all too well. Yeah, so she was a little antisocial and a lot in denial.
She looked away from her friend’s piercing eyes, her gaze landing on the stack of weekly newspapers sitting next to the register. She focused on the headlines as if she was interested. Construction was starting on a new field house at the high school. The mayor was up for reelection. A mobile home fire was under investigation. The deer population was on the rise.
“I