Protected In His Arms

She gave Keely a quick hug. “I’m sorry. I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

“No, you won’t!” Keely called after her.

No, she probably wouldn’t.

The man was still there, now leaning against the Impala and watching her.

She walked between their cars to her driver’s-side door, juggling packages along with her oversized purse.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

She dropped the bag of apples.

“What?” She stared at him over the top of his car. It had been nine months since Danny had died. She was used to sympathetic platitudes, even from strangers. But how this stranger knew who she was…She’d never seen him before, she was certain of that.

“I know how it feels to lose someone. I know you know how it feels, too.”

“How did you—” She broke off, stared at him again. A floodlight on the building revealed his features. Square jaw, intensely jade eyes, planed cheeks, a full, straight lean mouth. Dark, thick, almost military-short hair.

How could she forget him if she’d met him before today?

He was the epitome of hot, his mile-long legs clad in worn blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt, untucked yet stretching over impressive pecs, revealing forearms tightly muscled. His pose was lazy like a coiled cat. He wore the bearing of a man who did nothing while he looked as if he could do anything.

Leap tall buildings in single bounds, for example. Action hero material. Definitely.

He belonged on a movie poster with curling flames as his backdrop.

Any woman who got into that Impala with him would be a very lucky woman, indeed.

She felt jittery, sweaty.

It took everything in her to block the sensory assault again. Could she be more lame? Fantasizing about sex with a stranger in a parking lot. Stranger danger, that’s what he was.

And he certainly looked dangerous. Intelligent, street-tough, almost ridiculously gorgeous—but gorgeous like a long, sharp knife. Nope, she didn’t need any of that.

She struggled to get her breathing and her nerves under control.

“How do you know me?” she asked, repeating the question she’d only half managed to get out before.

“I lost a friend on Flight 498.”

Could they have crossed paths at the airport that day? She’d gone there, too, just as had all the other passengers’ family members. They’d stood around, waiting for official information as if some miracle was going to be announced.

She’d known everyone. In her mind.

Lots of people were scared of flying, especially smaller planes. But just because she’d had a severe and highly imaginative panic attack the day her husband had gotten on one, and just because his plane had ended up actually blowing up, didn’t mean she was a real psychic. It just meant she was an hysterical wife.

Coincidence. Nothing more.

It was safer to think that way.

She’d been scared to read anything about the crash victims later. Crazy, that’s what she was. No need to confirm it. And if the victims had matched up to those whose lives had flashed before her eyes that day…She didn’t want to know that either.

She tried to speak to the stranger, to tell him she was sorry for his loss, to speak those empty platitudes of sympathy she knew so well. But her throat felt too tight because suddenly he was right there, in front of her.

He picked up the bag of apples, held them toward her. She stared at him. She didn’t want to take the apples from him. She didn’t want to touch his hand as he handed them to her. Hot instinct ripped through her, even stronger than her so-called psychic flashes. This was women’s instinct.

She just wanted to get out of there. Why did the parking lot feel so empty suddenly?

There was no one else outside the store. The air carried the scent of a coming storm. Wind rustled in the trees behind the building. The occasional car moved down the two-lane highway that led to the restored town square with its beautiful courthouse, cobbled sidewalks and quaint shops and restaurants. Haven, West Virginia, one letter short of Heaven, the cheerful welcome sign coming into town boasted. Surrounded by thick woods of oak, maple and walnut, and the sloped pastures and Gothic-style farmhouses of the Appalachian Mountains, the simple, sleepy scenery backed up the town’s claim.

The pace was no different. Simple. Sleepy. It was a typical early summer night. Time for businesses to put up Closed signs, kids to be tucked into bed, Mary to go home to another lonely evening.

Action-movie-poster man didn’t belong here.

“How do you know me?” she repeated warily.

“I went to your house, but you were leaving. I followed you here. We need to talk.”

Her throat completely closed up.

Screw the apples. Get in the car, drive away. Her pulse thumped and she had trouble thinking.

Was he stalking her? What if he followed her home? Wild possibilities tumbled through her mind. Maybe she was being hysterical.

Maybe she should go back in the store, get Keely. Keely could call the police and—

“I need your help,” he continued. “And you don’t know it, but you need mine. We don’t have much time.”

What?

“I can’t help you.” And the only way he could help her was to go away.

“I think you can. And I think you’re in danger.”

Yes, yes, so did she. From him. He was gorgeous, but a lunatic.

Very, very sad for the women of the world.

She had to get around him to get back to the store. How was she going to do that? Her mind ran jagged, panicky laps, trying to figure out the best way out of the spot she was in.

“I forgot something I meant to get. I have to go back into the store.”

“No.”

No? Her heart jumped with both feet into her throat when he set the apples down on the top of her car.

Relief socked her hard when another car pulled into the parking lot.

She was saved. Thank God.

The dark car screeched to a stop and a window rolled down. Bullets sprayed as the world rocked into slow motion and she screamed.

Chapter 3

Horror gripped Marysia but there was no time for that. The stranger pushed her, and her knees hit the asphalt as she slammed to the ground, her shopping bag flying. Panic roared through her veins and she could barely think, just crawl, desperately.

Run! She wanted to run. More gunshots cracked over her head and her heart boomed in her ears.

She heard tires screeching and a distant shout from the direction of the front of the store, the jangle of the store’s bell over the door. She whipped her head around, saw the dark car gone as quickly as it had come, scrambled up from her hands and knees.

Run! But before she could, he was there, the stranger, ripping open the door of his Impala, pushing her inside as from the corner of her eye she saw the dark car screeching back.

It hadn’t gone away. It had merely turned around in the parking lot, was coming back for more.

Diving, she took cover inside the car as more shots blasted the air. She heard a crash, then nothing. Desperate breaths clawed her lungs. Before she could do anything, breathe, think, move, the stranger was inside, shoving her over to the driver’s seat.

He had a gun. Oh, God.

He had a gun!

“Drive,” he grated.

She blinked, panic and shock drumming wildly inside her. She saw the attacker’s car in the rearview, crashed into a building at the side of the parking lot where Keely kept propane and tanks for sale.

“Drive!” He shouted this time. His hot jade eyes seared her. “Get out of here before he gets out of that car and comes back!”

“The store—My friend—”

“He doesn’t want your friend. He wants you.”

His words registered, but she couldn’t process them. Why would anyone want to kill her?

And yet…Those bullets had been nothing if not incredibly real.

The Impala sprang to life as she turned the key, tires screaming backward. The shoulder strap of her purse tangled across her chest, the bag heavy in her lap, wedging between her body and the wheel. She saw Keely and the checkout girl run back into the store, saw the attacker’s car door push open, a shadow escape, then the world behind her turned bright orange. The Impala hit the highway and she floored the gas, raw horror tearing through her.

Hardly in control of the car, she swerved to miss an oncoming vehicle. The car spun on gravel at the shoulder, and she braked to a skidding stop.

Breath backed up, harsh and cold, in her lungs.

Huge billows of black smoke filled the air behind them. Flames—

“We’ve got to go back! It exploded!” What exploded, she wasn’t sure—the attacker’s car, the propane. The store! Oh, God, the store. “We’ve got to make sure everyone is okay!”

Keely was back there! A killer was back there, too. But he was gone, he’d run away….

And there was a crazy stranger right here in the car with her.

A crazy stranger with a gun.

He’d protected her back there, though. Protected her from the attacker, protected her by forcing her to drive the car away from the blast.

“They went back in the store. They’re fine. And we’re not. Not yet. I need to talk to you. I’ll explain everything. But not here! Drive!”

Her head reeled. He was, she realized, pointing the gun at her.

“Don’t hurt me,” she breathed harshly.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to save your life. Dammit, drive!”

She hit the gas. The car slammed forward, back on the road. They were driving with no lights. She didn’t know where the lights were. She fumbled madly for a switch, not finding it, following the road in the lights from roadside buildings, from memory.

Stay calm. He just wanted to talk, that had to be it. He wanted to talk. He was crazy, maybe, and he wanted to talk. She’d talk to him, then he’d let her go. Or kill her.

But she couldn’t let herself think that way. She had to think of ways to escape. She’d drive to the police station.

She was in control of the car, wasn’t she? Except for that gun thing.

“Turn there.”

She didn’t want to turn there. That was a back road. A country back road twisting out into the boonies. He wanted to explain. Fine, she’d love an explanation. But she wanted to talk somewhere safe, like the police station.

He grabbed the wheel when she didn’t slow down and they careened while she nearly had a heart attack, grappling for control, hitting the brake, barely missing a guardrail as they swerved over a bridge that spanned the river.

Dark woods whizzed past as she regained control of the car. There was no regaining control of her wildly pounding pulse.

She was getting out of this car!

She screeched to a stop, tried to grab open the door. His grip held her fast. She slapped at him with her other hand, not caring, let him shoot her. God, what would he do if she didn’t get out of this car?

He had her with both arms, both of them half falling out of the open door of the car, him on top of her. Her harsh breaths seared her lungs and his fiery eyes slammed her.

“I’m not going to drive anywhere else! I’m not going anywhere with you!” she spat out breathlessly. She was going to die anyway.

Was that fear or one of her nutso psychic flashes? She didn’t know anymore. She struggled again and must have caught him in a weak moment because she managed to kick at him sideways, scrambling to her feet as she pushed out the door.

She was off and running.

For about two seconds and he was on top of her and she was down, the asphalt biting into her knees again, tearing through her denim capris, then she slammed face down. She barely registered the physical pain.

“Just let me go. Please. Let me go home.” She was begging and she didn’t care. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Rape her. He was going to rape her. That was the deal about sex and his Impala! She’d just misread her impressions, probably because she was sex-starved.

Oh, God. This was no pleasure fantasy. Panic flooded her.

“Stop it!” he demanded roughly, holding her down, her arms pinned, his hard body making her attempts to kick backward at him useless. Exhausted, sobbing, she realized she was out of control, so far out of control.

She tried to get her breathing in order, tried to think. She had to use her brain. That was the only hope she had.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

He’d said that before. She didn’t believe him. She couldn’t see more than a half view of him from her position, cheek down on the hard road.

“Yes, you are!” she cried wildly. “You kidnapped me. You held a gun to me. You’re pinning me down. You forced me down this deserted road. You’re hurting me right now!”

“I’m trying to save your life! Listen to me!”

Out of control. She was still out of control.

She swallowed hard. Stop panicking! The order to herself was all but useless, but she faked it.

Calm.

Act calm. “Okay. I’m listening.”

Use your brain, she reminded herself. Find out what he wanted. She tried to breathe, in, out, calm. Not calm at all. And her brain…

Fried.

“What—What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Her voice came out ragged, a sob choking her throat. He wanted to save her life? She hadn’t needed any lifesaving until he’d shown up, him and whoever was after him.

There was no reason, no reason at all, anyone would be after her.

“There’s a little girl. Six years old. She’s missing.”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to say, and she couldn’t think straight.

“I’m sorry. You should call the police. They have people who do that, find missing children.”

“They can’t help me. You can. You knew about that plane bombing, didn’t you?”

She went dead still. Stunned. Again.

He suddenly moved off her, twisted her around, pulling her up to face him. He held her shoulders with both hands. He wasn’t letting go of her and she was scared to try to run again. She shook like a leaf.

The night closed in dark around them, seeming to swirl with shadows. Thunder banged. She felt sick, afraid of dying, and he—

He looked fearsomely in control. Action hero on the set.

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. Maybe you know more than you think you know. Maybe someone else thinks so, too.”

Pain, palpable pain, seemed to radiate off him in waves, wrap around her, and she struggled to push it back from suffocating her.

She was in pain. She was in danger—from him. She didn’t know anything about any little girl.

She couldn’t just decide to know something. The things she knew, they hit her, like wild shots in the dark. Images, impressions, sometimes smells and sounds. Truths and lies. It was nothing she could control. Nothing she wanted to control.

And she was wrong, mostly wrong, she was sure of it, and even if she was right, it was too little, too late. And she couldn’t handle her own pain much less anyone else’s.

Maybe you know more than you think you know. Maybe someone else thinks so, too.

What was he saying? That the attack at the store had been someone after her? Because she knew something? And what did that have to do with a missing girl? The plane bombing had been nine months ago.

“I can’t help you. I’m sorry. Please let me go!”

“I can’t do that,” he persisted. “And trust me, you don’t want me to. That shooting back at the store? That was about you.”

No, no, no. That wasn’t possible. Until he spoke, she didn’t realize she’d said those words out loud.

“It is very possible. In fact,” he went on grimly, “it’s probable.”

“Why?”

“There is a little girl who is going to die in less than three days if we don’t find her. And there is a very good chance the person holding her is the same man who killed your husband and thirty-three other people on Flight 498.”

Information overload. She couldn’t put it all together.

His eyes on her were bright, sharp, searing her in the thick night. She suddenly felt almost disembodied. None of this could be happening. None of this made sense.

What could that bombing have to do with a little girl’s kidnapping?

“I don’t understand.”

“You can’t go home. If you go home, you’re going to die.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Yes,” he said quite seriously. “It is crazy.”

The increasing humidity of the night seemed to close in on her, suffocating her. Crazy. The whole world had gone crazy.

“Are you—Are you some kind of police or something?” she demanded.

Suddenly the deadly capable way he had of handling himself, handling gunfire, hit her. She’d have been killed back there if not for his quick actions and reactions. He’d gotten her out of the way before the explosion, too. He was like a well-trained machine.

But he’d also held a gun to her head and forced her down this lonely road, nearly killing them both. He claimed that was to save her life, too.

“Who are you?” she repeated thinly when he didn’t respond.

“My name is Gideon Brand. Until a few hours ago, I was a U.S. Marshal investigating threats to a federal judge that we believe started with that plane bombing. The latest threat came to life with the kidnapping of that judge’s granddaughter. A six-year-old girl I was sworn to protect. I failed her. I won’t rest until I find her, and I’m going to find her alive if I have to move heaven and earth to do it. And right now, that means moving you, whether you like it or not, whether you believe me or not. Whoever blew up that plane and kidnapped Molly thinks you know something.

“They want you dead now,” he went on. “I want to know why. And they want me dead now, too, because I asked the wrong questions. Questions about you.”

She swallowed hard.

“I don’t know anything about a little girl! I don’t know anything about the bombing!” She didn’t. Truly, she didn’t.

“Someone thinks you do. Something you said when you were interviewed after the bombing made someone think you do. But as long as nobody took you seriously, that was fine.”

She could barely even remember the interview after the bombing. Officials had talked to her, yes. They’d blown off her initial call to the airport, to the police, and hadn’t taken her seriously afterward either. She was glad. She’d been in shock and the craziness of her sensory projections hadn’t done anything to help. They hadn’t saved Danny anyway, so what good were they?

That someone actually thought she knew something, something that could point to a killer—

Terror wrapped her tight and she had the intense urge to run right into those woods behind her and never stop. But the wilds around Haven were home to bears and wolves, not just pretty deer. And tonight, maybe a murderous madman, too.

The madman who’d run out of that car in Haven right before it exploded. They hadn’t driven that far away.

Her nerves felt like they were going to blow up. What had happened to apple pie and ice cream? Another quiet evening in almost Heaven?

“Nobody should take me seriously!” she raged at the stranger, anger suddenly boiling up inside her. “I’m a fake! I’m hysterical! I’m crazy! Haven’t you heard? I am not a psychic!”

She pushed to her feet and he let her go. She saw her purse, lying in a heap on the road where it had slung off her shoulder in her escape from the car. She reached down, picked it up, scooping back into it the items that had fallen out—the cell phone that only got a signal when she was in the city, the flavored lip gloss that was just about all she ever wore for makeup, a pen from the bank. Her mother had given her mace a couple of years ago. Why, oh why, had she decided when she’d cleaned out her overweight purse the last time that the mace was what had to go?

She backed a step at a time from the stranger.

He stood, and even from several feet away, she felt as if he towered over her. Six feet of scary male. She was not a small woman, but she was no match for him. The woods behind her felt thick and ominous. The attacker was out there, somewhere.

Not that this stranger should be any less frightening to her and yet—

The world around her, the world gone mad, was scaring her even more than he was.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said.

“If you don’t think I’m crazy, then you’re the crazy one.” Her voice broke. God, don’t start crying. She willed herself not to let a tear fall. “I want to go home.”

She wanted her little two-bedroom house wrapped with perennial gardens and just enough space from neighbors to feel secluded on its small acreage. Home.

She felt a sob filling her throat, but crying wasn’t going to fix anything.

“You can’t go home. You’ll end up dead. And so will Molly.”

And she heard it in his voice again, the pain. Whatever was or wasn’t true here, that was real. He cared about this missing girl. His energy was strong and the signals bouncing off him now nearly knocked her down.

“Then I want to go to the police.”

“You can’t do that either. It’s not safe.”

Going to the police wasn’t safe?

“How do I know anything you’re saying is the truth? How do I even know you’re a U.S. Marshal?”

He reached into his pocket, flashed open his credentials. She had to take a step toward him to see them in the last bit of light streaking through the dark clouds. There was an identification card with a badge that looked like a star within a circular ring.

Very Wild West-looking.

She lifted her gaze to his hard, deadly one, and shivered. Oh, God. That had really looked like an official badge, but she was scared to believe it. For all she knew, he’d bought it on the Internet. Or at a Western wear store.

“If you’re a U.S. Marshal, then why were you taking me down this back road instead of to the authorities?”

The storm that had been coming hit and hit hard. Her clothes instantly soaked to her skin. Droplets of water rained down the stranger’s face.

Gideon’s face.

He had a name: Gideon Brand. His face shadowed hard and uncompromising in the wild night. Long, sharp knife, that’s what he was. He was like a walking lean, mean, killing machine. And yet he said he was one of the good guys.

Her heart clanged in her chest, fear returning full force. He looked scarily intimidating, but his energy kept slamming her with the opposite impression, that he was one of the good guys. That he was telling her the truth.

And when he spoke, she’d never more in her life wished she could think someone was lying.

“Because,” he said, “I have reason to believe the person who blew up that plane, the person who’s holding Molly, the person who wants you and me dead tonight is also a U.S. Marshal.”

Chapter 4

“I tried to get the record of your interview,” Gideon told her. “Then I was put on forced leave and somebody tried to kill me. And now someone wants you dead, too. I don’t think this sequence of events is a coincidence.”

Marysia O’Hurley watched him with frightened, dilated eyes. Blue eyes. Startling blue that the black-and-white newspaper photograph hadn’t done justice. Rain soaked her clothes to her slender body, revealing every fragile tremor and sway, but she’d already shown him she was strong. She was scared, too, and he wished to God he could take that horror out of her eyes, but it was there because she was starting to believe him.

He had to hold on to that tenuous faith or even now, she’d cut and run. He’d catch her again. He had no doubt of that, but in the process he might hurt her again. And for some reason he didn’t want to hurt this woman.

“I need you to believe in me,” he said, afraid to take a step toward her, still afraid she’d run. “And I need to believe in you. We need each other, or Molly’s going to die.” He couldn’t let himself forget that this was all about Molly. “I don’t think you’re hysterical. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you do know things and I think you’re afraid it’s true. I think it’s true. And that is a huge leap of faith I’m taking here because I am believing the unbelievable, and I’m doing it for Molly because you’re the only hope I’ve got. I need you to take that leap with me because I think I’m your only hope, too. If you go to the cops, if you go to the Marshals, you’re going to end up dead.”