Seduced by the Sniper. Elizabeth Heiter

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      Instead, he pointed to the spot on the drawing marked Suspect. “Connors was here.” He moved his finger to the spot right outside the community-center front door. Next to an X, it read FBI Special Agent Russell. “You were here?”

      There was a tension in his voice she didn’t understand. “Yeah.” She glanced at him, and this close, she could see the individual whiskers on his chin, the tense lines between his eyes that she wanted to smooth.

      “Not here?” He moved his finger from the left side of the U outside the community-center front door to the right side.

      “No. Why?”

      “Chelsie.” The worry in his voice deepened, and there was concern in the depths of his deep brown eyes. “Connors not firing at you wasn’t because he couldn’t.”

      Chelsie’s pulse picked up. “What are you talking about?”

      “Look where he is.” He pointed to the X marked Suspect again.

      “So?”

      “So, I ran the numbers. If they’re right, he did have a shot at you. He chose to let you live. He chose to let only you live.”

Chapter Four

      Chelsie stared up at Scott, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, he let me live?”

      “He had a shot, Chelsie,” Scott said quietly. “We found his shell casings. He was high enough on those bleachers. He could have hit you.”

      “If that’s true, then why didn’t he?” Chelsie demanded, not wanting to believe it. “If he could have gotten me in his crosshairs, he would have killed me. He snapped. He was taking out anyone he could hit that day.”

      “Apparently not,” Scott said.

      She stared at him, noticing the deep circles underneath his eyes. Andre had said they’d been up for eighteen hours before they’d brought her to the safe house. And yet, instead of getting some sleep, Scott had reviewed the case file.

      Chelsie felt something suspiciously like affection, and tried to ignore it. “Maybe you did the geometry wrong.”

      Scott shook his head, but instead of being insulted, he just appeared exhausted. “It’s the same kind of calculations I do in my head every time I fire my rifle, Chelsie. I mess those up and I shoot a hostage instead of the perp. I could do them in my sleep. Trust me. I’m not wrong.”

      “Then why didn’t they figure this out before?” she demanded.

      “If you look at the building from ground level, you’d assume he didn’t have an angle on you. Even if you look at it from the bleachers, if you’d been on the other side of that enclosed area, he wouldn’t have been able to hit you. It was an oversight. And it made sense that he didn’t hit you because he couldn’t. But that’s not what happened.”

      “Then what was he really after?” she whispered, moving away from him on her bed. But the mattress offered no support and she just slid back toward him until her body was pressed against his again.

      It didn’t make any sense. Clayton Connors had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching the rest of his unit die when an IED exploded under their vehicle. He’d gotten out of the military and gotten help—mostly in the form of very strong painkillers. Then, one day, he’d snapped and gone after military recruiters.

      But the prosecution at his trial had made an airtight argument that Connors would have killed anyone he could have hit that day, that he’d actually planned on moving to a new location and killing again, until he’d been pulled over. It had been simple self-preservation that had kept him from raising a gun on the officers. A sudden fear of dying himself had landed him in jail instead of the morgue.

      Chelsie threw her covers off and walked to the far side of the room. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling strangely exposed in her T-shirt and shorts as she stared down at Scott, who was way too tempting stretched out in her bed. “The guy was crazy. Does it really matter why he didn’t shoot me?”

      Even as she asked the question, she knew she was avoiding dealing with it. Connors letting her live on purpose didn’t fit with anything they knew about what had happened that day. And it didn’t track with the idea of him coming after her for a second chance, not if he’d never taken that first chance.

      So what did he want with her? A shiver ran through her and she tensed, hoping Scott wouldn’t notice.

      He put the laptop on her bed and walked over to her, stopping so close that she could’ve leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. “You’re the one who gets into people’s minds,” he argued. “You tell me if it matters.”

      “That would be Ella. She’s the profiler.”

      Scott gave her a look of disbelief. “Oh, come on. You were a good negotiator because you understand what people want. How did you do that without getting into their minds?”

      “In case you forgot, I failed as a negotiator.”

      “That’s not true,” Scott said. “Connors was a nutbag. You couldn’t have talked him down if you had thirty days, let alone the thirty seconds you probably got.”

      She put her hands on her hips. “You just came in here to say that Connors wasn’t a nutbag. That he’d made the conscious choice not to shoot me, instead of being driven by some blind rage.”

      Scott paused. It was a fraction of a second, but it was long enough.

      “I don’t want to talk about my old job,” she said. “You’re the one who’s so sure he could have shot me. You must have far more experience with that kind of scene than I do. What’s your assessment?”

      Scott frowned back at her. “Remind me not to wake you without a full night’s sleep again. You’re seriously cranky without your coffee.”

      Chelsie’s shoulders slumped, her anger deflating. He’d stayed up reviewing the case when she’d refused to study it, and he’d taken on her protective custody when he probably could have passed it off to someone else. It wasn’t his fault talking about that day got her hackles up.

      When she’d officially become an FBI negotiator, she thought she’d finally found her calling. Now, any reminder of her short-lived role in the specialty made every ounce of insecurity rise up. Including Scott. She’d probably never think about him without remembering the massacre, without remembering how she’d failed to prevent it.

      She’d spent the past year trying to leave that memory in her past, and Scott with it.

      Realizing that Scott was staring at her as though trying to read what was going through her head, she evened out her expression. “Sorry. Let’s talk about this in the morning then, after I get that coffee.”

      He gaped at her. “The Chelsie I remember would want to jump right in.”

      There was only one thing he would remember her jumping right into, and that was his bed. She scowled to hide her embarrassment, and snapped, СКАЧАТЬ