Hero Under Cover. Suzanne Brockmann

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СКАЧАТЬ Pete said in unison.

      “Laughed again and said—” Annie imitated Marshall’s heavy Texan accent “—‘It’s typical of a woman to try to break a written, binding contract.’ Then he suggested we talk again when it was a better time of month! I wanted to reach through the phone, grab his nose and twist it—hard!”

      “So?” Cara asked.

      “So nothing. I’ve still got a contract and a bodyguard,” Annie muttered, with a black look in Pete’s direction.

      “You know—” Pete started to say.

      “You might not want to be talking right now,” Annie interrupted him. “I’m starting to feel the urge to vent some of my hostilities, and you’re looking like an extremely attractive target.”

      “Extremely attractive, eh?” Cara smiled, leaning back in her chair and putting her feet up on the desk.

      “That’s not what I meant,” Annie said dangerously. “You’re fired, MacLeish. Go make some copies or do whatever else it is that I pay you to do.”

      The phone rang, and Annie swooped toward it.

      “Maybe it’s Marshall,” she said. “Maybe he changed his mind….” She picked up the receiver hopefully. “Hello?”

      She’d pulled her headband out while she was pacing, and now she pushed her hair back from her face with one hand as she used the other to hold the receiver to her ear. As Pete watched, she stared into the distance, her eyes temporarily unfocused as she concentrated on the call. He saw surprise, then shock flash across her face. Then her blue eyes narrowed.

      “Who is this?” she demanded. “You want to do those things to me? I dare you to try. Why don’t you show yourself? Come here in person, instead of hiding behind threatening phone calls and rocks thrown through windows—”

      Pete leapt toward her, grabbing the telephone out of her hand, trying to activate the tape recorder the FBI had left behind. But the connection had been broken, and the line buzzed with a dial tone.

      “Damn it,” he swore, hanging up the phone. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you record that call? And what the hell possessed you to say those things? You really want this guy to come out here?”

      She was shaking. “Don’t you shout at me!” she said, her eyes blazing. “I just listened to some crackpot describe some incredibly sick fantasy of his in detail, and I happened to have a major role. You can’t expect me not to tell him off—”

      “I expect you not to goad him on,” Pete said, his own eyes glittering chips of obsidian. He stood with his hands on his hips, effectively pinning Annie in against her desk.

      She wanted to move, but in order to do that she’d have to push past him, or climb over her desk. So she stayed where she was and tried to hide her shaking hands by sticking them into the back pockets of her jeans.

      Pete picked up a pad and a pen from her desk. “You have to tell me what he said to you,” he said brusquely. “Word for word.”

      Annie shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t.”

      “If you don’t remember exactly—”

      “That’s not it,” she said. “I can remember. I just…can’t repeat what he said. It was too awful.”

      She tried to meet his gaze challengingly, but her eyes suddenly welled with tears. She swore softly and blinked them back. “I’m having a really bad day,” she said.

      Pete turned away, shocked at his emotional response to the tears in her eyes. He wanted to pull her into his arms, tell her everything was going to be okay and kiss her until her hands shook for an entirely different reason. He wanted to tell her he’d take care of her, protect her.

      But he couldn’t tell her that, and he certainly couldn’t protect her without her cooperation.

      Annie took the opportunity to move around to the other side of her desk and sit down. She wished that Taylor would leave her alone. God, wasn’t it bad enough that she’d been subjected to that obscene phone call? She wanted to forget about it. The thought of having to tell him exactly what that creep had said to her made her cheeks burn.

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Taylor pull up a chair across from her desk. He sat down, then looked over her head, across the room to where Cara sat. Annie glanced at her friend, who was watching them both with unabashed interest.

      “Would you mind…?” Pete said to Cara.

      Cara stood up uncertainly.

      “Set up the final test for that copper bowl, please, MacLeish,” Annie said. “I’ll be out in the lab in a minute.”

      Cara hated being left out of anything, but she went out of the office. Pete stood up and closed the office door behind her.

      Annie looked up at him as he sat back down across from her. To her surprise, his eyes were soft, kind even.

      “The reason I wanted to record this call,” he said quietly, “was to help us track the caller. And I’m not just talking about locating him—most of these people call from public telephones, so that doesn’t do much good. But the FBI can use their computers and try to match phrasing or word choice or even sentence structure, in the event that this is a repeat pattern offender.” He pushed the pad and pen toward her. “And that’s why I need to know what he said to you. As exactly as you can remember. Maybe it would be easier for you to write it down.”

      For a long time she didn’t move. She just stared at him. Then, suddenly, she picked up the pen and paper and began to write.

      Pete sat back in his chair, watching her.

      Sunlight was streaming in the window, and it lit her from behind, creating an auralike glow around her. Pete remembered the words he had overheard her saying to Cara. He distracted her. He distracted her? Not half as much as she distracted him, he was willing to bet.

      He was carrying around this tight feeling of need all the time now, Pete realized. It no longer was triggered only by her quick smile, or her walk, or her low, sexy laugh. All he had to do was see her…. Man, all he had to do was think about her and, whammo, he wanted her. And when he wasn’t with her, he sure as hell was thinking about her…. This could turn out to be one hell of an uncomfortable two months.

      Annie finished writing, put the pen down on top of the paper and stood up. “I’ll be in the lab,” she said shortly and left the room.

      “Thanks,” Pete called after her.

      She didn’t respond.

      He reached across the desk and picked up the pad she’d written on. As he read the words that the phone caller had said to her, his jaw tightened. The threats had a horrific, nightmarish quality to them. They were all violently sexual and graphically explicit.

      He read it over and over, each time his sense of uneasiness growing. It was entirely possible that these were not idle threats meant only to frighten Annie. It was entirely possible that her life really was in danger.

      He reached for the telephone and dialed СКАЧАТЬ