Bullseye. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ was why she’d turned away from the airport and headed into the hills, she opened her eyes. And nearly closed them again.

      He stood across the small office, shifting from foot to foot. When she’d thought of him over the years—and she’d thought of him as little as possible—her memories had been of constant motion and unflinching intensity. That hadn’t changed.

      But other parts of him had. He was bigger than she remembered. Not taller, though at five-eleven, he’d always topped her by a good four inches, but broader. More solid. More muscular—and the Jacob she remembered had been plenty muscular to begin with.

      Remembering those muscles, and the masculine skin that covered them, she twisted to put her feet on the floor, clutching the edge of the leather-covered sofa cushion for balance.

      Jacob frowned. “You should stay down. You’re pretty banged up.”

      “I’m fine.” In reality, she had a hell of a headache, but Cooper had begged her not to alert the resort’s medical staff. She glanced at Jacob. “I need your help.”

      He stilled. “What happened?”

      She fought the urge to close her eyes again, to block out the things she’d seen once she’d regained consciousness. The quiet chalet. Louis Cooper tied to a dining room chair with a message written across his naked chest in his own blood.

      Images of failure. Of danger. Of a possible national crisis in the making that she was forbidden to speak of.

      But damn it, she wasn’t going to let something like this happen. Not on her watch.

      So she kept her eyes level on his and saw his body vibrate with the need to pace, to do something. Or maybe that was her body? How could she be this near him after all these years and not feel the pull?

      She couldn’t. That was the simple answer. Just looking at him warmed her stomach and tightened her throat, and not only from the memories, but from his sheer presence. He seemed to fill the office, dominate it, possess it. If she could have turned and run, she would have. But Hope and the girls needed her help and Jacob was her only hope, damn it.

      She took a breath, swallowed and said, “Louis Cooper’s family was abducted from the Golf Resort five hours ago.”

      The sentence crushed her, as though saying it out loud made it more real. She half expected Jacob to shout at her, to panic, to tell her she was no damn good—because that was what she’d told herself, and that was the hair-trigger temper she remembered.

      But he merely nodded and watched her from across the room. “Tell me everything.”

      Something broke inside her, loosening the band around her heart. She almost told him how gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly scared she’d been when she’d seen Louis Cooper’s body tied to a chair, limp and covered with blood.

      She, who was never, ever, scared.

      But telling him that would be leaning. Leeching. All those needy, greedy things he’d accused her of when they’d broken up and she’d realized that the things she’d seen as togetherness, as love, he’d seen as her being controlling. Clinging. Unstable.

      Like her mother.

      And, blast it, where had that come from? That whole mess was ancient history.

      Isabella jammed her eyelids down, scrubbed vicious circles along her temples and shoved the memories clear out of her mind. She was a different person now. He was a different person. They couldn’t come at this from where they’d been back then. They needed to start fresh. Special Agent to local law, though he wasn’t technically the law.

      Hopefully, he was still interested in justice.

      “I was assigned to protect Secretary Cooper. He and his family have been threatened because of the Lunkinburg situation.” She glanced over and saw by Jacob’s faint nod that he followed the politics. He was standing across the room, back to the door as though he wanted to be anywhere else. The index finger of his left hand—he was ambidextrous in all ways that counted, she remembered with a faint wash of heat—twitched against his thigh. The rest of him was still, though leashed energy vibrated in the room.

      His constant need for motion used to exhaust her, annoy her. Now she found it a comfort. If she could harness all that energy—

      “If you were attacked five hours ago and Cooper’s family taken, the sooner you tell me—or the authorities—what happened, the better. The chances of finding abductees decrease exponentially with time.” His expression didn’t waver. It was locked between coolness and dismissal, both of which seemed at odds with what she remembered from that first moment their eyes had met downstairs. She’d felt the click of recognition, the hard wash of heat, and she’d seen the same flare in his expression, the same moment of hope, then memory.

      What did it mean?

      Nothing. It meant nothing. She wasn’t here to rekindle a former romance that had ended bloodily. She was here because she had no other option. Because Hope and the girls needed her.

      “You’re right.” She took a deep breath, organized her uncharacteristically scattered thoughts and made her report, pretending she was speaking to one of her bosses rather than to her ex-lover. “Not long after the press conference, maybe five-thirty this afternoon, Secretary Cooper’s chalet at the Golf Resort was attacked. A percussion bomb stunned the occupants of the chalet.” Including me, she wanted to say, but didn’t because it was easier to report things this way.

      She strove for the professional detachment she prided herself on, the lack of emotion so different from who she’d been, where she’d come from. “Three men entered the chalet wearing rubber masks resembling Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Clinton.” She pulled out the mental snapshot she’d taken of the attackers and compared them to each other, to the furniture and walls. Remembered them coming toward her. “Nixon was about five-ten and skinny as a rail. Mid-brown hair on his arms and hands. Johnson and Clinton were taller and more muscular, though still lean.”

      She paused, remembering the blow, the unconsciousness and the screaming fear of coming around and not knowing what she would find.

      Of finding three of her four protectees gone.

      When Jacob remained quiet, motionless except for his left index finger, which continued to tap a complicated beat against his leg, she continued. “They…” She swallowed, realizing she couldn’t give the report from a distance now. “I missed with my first shot, hit Nixon in the leg and got off two more rounds before they rendered me unconscious.” There, that sounded more detached than clubbed me with a gun butt, more professional than knocked me out.

      Being professional and unemotional was the key here.

      She thought Jacob muttered something, but when she looked at him, the cool expression was firmly in place. “Go on,” he said. “Time’s wasting.”

      No kidding. She could feel the minutes and hours slipping by as though they hid beneath her skin. So she plowed through the rest of the story and tried to put her mind on hold. “When I came to, the three men were gone. Secretary Cooper was tied to a chair, unconscious. They probably used chloroform, by the smell of it.” She sucked in a breath and said the rest in a rush. “His wife, Hope, and twin toddlers, Becky and Tiffany, were gone. I revived and untied him, but before I could search the premises, the Secretary directed me to play the answering СКАЧАТЬ