Shadow Hawk. Jill Shalvis

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СКАЧАТЬ never taken. Ranch dressing on silk. Nicely done.

      Those melting chocolate eyes had met hers, filled with that cynical amusement he was so good at. He hadn’t said a word as he’d yanked a fresh, clean shirt over his head, the muscles in his biceps and quads flexing, his ridged abdomen rippling as he’d pulled the material down. His eyes, even heavy-lidded from exhaustion, had still managed to convey a heat that had exhilarated her in a way she hadn’t wanted to think about.

      After that, he’d never quite accepted her icy silence for what it was—a desperate cry for him to stay away, because she needed her distance.

      Oh, boy, had she needed her distance. And she couldn’t blame him for not really buying it. Hell, she’d definitely, at least for that one moment, given him the wrong impression. She’d given herself the wrong impression, because she’d wanted him—wanted his arms to come around her, wanted him to dip his head and kiss her, long and deep and wet as he slid his hands over her body, giving it the pleasure she’d denied herself all year.

      But she’d come to her senses and hadn’t let herself lapse again.

      At least not publicly.

      As the newcomer to the division, she’d made a big effort to fit in, to get to know all her co-workers, while definitely staying clear of Hawk. She’d been aloof and stand-offish with him and him alone because she’d thought it best for her to keep far away until she was ready for the feelings he evoked. Which she still wasn’t.

      That didn’t mean she didn’t care, because she did. Too much. Therein lay her problem.

      From that salad-in-the-lap moment, Abby had taken one look at him, past the bad boy physique, past the knowing grin, and had known.

      She could care too much for this man.

      Now she sat in the van, with the night whipping around them, desperately visualizing Hawk checking in because she had to believe he was okay.

      Please be okay.

      “Someone’s down,” came Watkins’s voice. “Repeat, agent down.”

      Oh, God. Once upon a time, she’d been the agent down, and just the words brought back the stark terror.

      Dark room.

      Chained to a wall.

      Cold, then hot, then fear like nothing she’d ever known when she’d realized her captors wanted information she didn’t have, and that they were going to torture her anyway….

      But this wasn’t then. And what had happened to her wasn’t happening now. Concentrate, damn it. Focus. “Where is he?”

      The men behind her, Ken and Wayne, already in high alert from the equipment failure, worked more frantically, trying to get feed on him.

      “Watkins,” she said. “Clarify.”

      Nothing.

      “Thomas, are you with Watkins?”

      More of that horrifying nothing. Whipping around, she looked at the two men in disbelief. “Are we down again?”

      Wayne’s fingers tapped across his keyboard. “Fuck. Yes.”

      Was it possible for a heart to completely stop and yet pound at the same time? “They need backup.” She stood to yank off her blazer.

      “What are you doing?” Ken demanded.

      “Getting ready.” Abby tossed her useless headset aside.

      “No. We’re not supposed to—”

      “We have at least one man down and no radio.” She slapped a vest over her shirt, and then grabbed a gun, emotion sitting heavy in her voice. No cool, calm and collected now. No, all that had gone right out the window with her last ounce of common sense, apparently. “We’re going in.”

      There was some scrambling, whether to join her or stop her she didn’t know because she didn’t look back as she opened the door to the van.

      LOGAN BOLTED ACROSS THE ROOF of the barn, dodging the icy spots and the shadow he’d seen. Not Gaines, but one of his paid goons, coming back from where he’d last spotted Hawk.

      He sped up, high-tailing his way toward Hawk, because that’s what they did, they backed each other up. They’d been doing so for years in far tighter jams than this one. And in all that time, he’d never once felt anything but utterly invincible.

      But at this moment, all he felt was terror.

      Hawk was down.

      Rounding a corner of the roof, Logan headed toward a vent. As he crouched down behind it to survey the situation, the air stirred, and he felt a blinding pain in the back of his neck. As he whipped around to fight, he was hit again, by a two-by-four, or so it felt, and then he was flying off the roof toward the ground.

      Shit. Now both he and Hawk were down….

      THIS WAS RIDICULOUS, ABBY TOLD herself as the cold, icy night slapped her face. She’d taken herself out of the field. She’d vowed that nothing could get her back to it. And yet here she was, off and running at the first sign of trouble because she couldn’t stand the thought of an agent down.

      Ken caught up with her, both of them gasping in the shockingly bitter wind. They took the long, winding dirt path up toward the ranch. The place sat on a set of rolling hills that looked deceptively mild and beautiful by day. But by night the area turned almost sinister, steep, rugged and dangerously isolated. Fallen pine needles crunched beneath their feet. The patches of ice were lethal spots of menace that could send them flying, but still they ran.

      The wind didn’t help. It was picking up, if that was possible, slicing through to the very bone, kicking up a dusty haze that nothing could cut through, not even the night vision goggles.

      When they reached the dark farmhouse, they stopped to draw air into their burning lungs.

      “Around the back,” Ken said. “The barn’s around the back.”

      She was already moving that way but came to a stop at the corner of the farmhouse, where she had the vantage point of what should have been a woodsy clearing, but with the dark and the driving winds, seemed more like the wilds of Siberia.

      She knew the barn lay beyond the trees, but in between there were no lights, no sign of human life. Abby went left, Ken right, both skirting the edges of the clearing, using the trees as cover.

       Where was everyone?

      As she came through the woods, the barn loomed up ahead, nothing but a black outline against a black sky. And then she saw him.

      Hawk.

      He was standing, holding his gun pointed at someone standing in the door of the barn.

      Abby watched in horror as the gun flashed, and she caught a glimpse of the man he’d aimed at flying backward like a rag doll.

      Gaines? Elliot Gaines? What the СКАЧАТЬ