Meet Me at Midnight. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ away and loosened his grip on her body. “You done screaming?”

      She nodded against the hand that still covered her mouth. When he released her, she said, “Sorry, I thought you were…whoever that was.”

      “I know. Lock yourself in here while I search the house.”

      “Wait.” She put out a hand and touched his forearm, which was warm and solid beneath a layer of cotton shirt. “Does this mean you believe that I’m not involved with the man you’re looking for?”

      There was a long pause before he said, “I haven’t decided yet.” Then he exhaled. “The mess out there certainly strengthens your case, except for two things.”

      “What things?”

      He turned away from her, distance muffling his voice. “For one, I don’t get how he’d know to toss your place while we met, unless he knew about the meeting.”

      “Maybe he was following you,” she said, but that wouldn’t have worked with the timing. “Even better, maybe he’s monitoring your e-mail.” She shrugged. “I could do it.” Right about now she was wishing she’d back-hacked his account and taken a look. It would’ve saved her a little bit of heartache and a whole lot of embarrassment.

      It might’ve saved her computer, too. If she’d told him to take a hike when he first started e-mailing her…she would’ve missed some very good times, she admitted, and hated him for the truth of it.

      Why couldn’t he have been the man he’d pretended to be?

      “We can talk about it later,” he said, and for a moment she thought he meant they could talk about the so-called romance they’d conducted. Then she realized he was talking about whether she was involved in the vice president’s kidnapping, and reality returned with a vengeance.

      Her house had been ransacked. She’d been chased into her own bathroom. Ty had been attacked in her bedroom. For all they knew, their attacker was still out there.

       “Take this.” She pressed her bludgeon into his hand.

      There was a short pause, then a snort. He returned the weapon, and there was a thread of laughter in his voice when he said, “I’ve got a gun. You keep the toilet plunger.”

      TY’S AMUSEMENT was short-lived, though. Once he was back out in Gabby’s bedroom, sweeping the flashlight to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he was all business. He wasn’t thinking about the blazing fury that’d pounded in his chest as he’d struggled with the intruder, or the way Gabby’s curves had felt nestled against him.

      Or if he was thinking those things, he shoved them deep inside, where the emotions couldn’t distract him from the most important things, couldn’t deflect him from the job.

      “Where are you, Liam?” he said quietly as he worked his way out of the bedroom and back down the hall, retracing the path he’d taken only minutes earlier, though it felt like he’d aged a year in that brief space of time when he’d thought Gabby was gone.

      Focus, Tyler, his father’s voice said in Ty’s head. Keep your mind in the game.

      And though Colonel Jones had been speaking about high school sports, and the words had come long before Ty had followed family tradition by enlisting, the advice held true now.

      It was past time for Ty to focus on his priorities—finding Liam, liberating Grant Davis and neutralizing the bomb threat. It wasn’t about the woman. It had, quite possibly, never been about her.

      Ty searched the house, flashlight and gun both held at the ready, but there was no sign of the intruder, and the streets outside were dark and deserted.

      Convinced the place was clear, he returned to the ransacked bedroom and knocked quietly on the bathroom door. “Gabby? It’s okay. You can come on out. I need to ask you a few questions.” Like what was missing. Who she thought had been in her house.

      And why the break-in had coincided with their rendezvous in a courtyard down the street.

      The door opened and Gabby stood at the threshold for a moment, lit by the warm yellow beam of his flashlight. Her chin was up and defiant, her pale eyes clear. That, coupled with her lovely hair, which gleamed even in the feeble light, combined to make her seem ethereal. Magical. More, somehow, than the woman he’d imagined during their late-night conversations, when the line between lies and reality had begun to blur.

       Focus!

      Ty scowled. “Look, I think we need to get something straight here. I never—”

      The digital ring of his handheld interrupted, surprising him. He’d thought the battery too low to grab a signal, not to mention the lack of cell coverage twenty-five hours into the blackout.

      Figuring it was Chase, Shane or Ethan with new information, he flipped the phone open, welcoming the faint blue glow. The four of them comprised Eclipse, an under-the-radar black ops group that had grown out of their military service. Work with Eclipse had taken them to every hellhole on the globe and made them the best of friends. The kind you trust with your life.

      It took Ty a moment to realize it wasn’t a call, then another moment to read the text message in the fading glow of the dying battery.

      “Nice punch. You got lucky, but your luck is about to change. If you want to see Grant Davis alive, bring your girlfriend and at the O—”

      That was all he got before the battery quit.

      GABBY HEARD his hiss of indrawn breath, and immediately tensed. “What is it?”

      “It is, or rather was, a text message.” He repeated it aloud, not bothering to hide his irritation, or the way his voice went dry on the word girlfriend.

      Hey, she wanted to tell him, this isn’t my fault. Which made her realize that the reverse was true. Anger flared in her chest and she snapped, “That guy broke in because of you, didn’t he? Because he saw us together.”

      “Maybe,” he said neutrally. “Or maybe you and he were working together and something backfired.”

      “Don’t be stupid.” Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I didn’t ask you to come here. In fact, I’m pretty sure I tried to end it between us. I would have been perfectly happy never meeting you in person.” Or if not happy, at least content. Safe and secure in her little world, which no longer seemed quite so safe. “This man—Liam was it? He came here because of you. He wrecked my things. He took my computer, for God’s sake. Do you know how much that thing cost me, and how long it’s going to take me to rebuild the Braille translation hardware? I’d finally gotten the peripherals exactly where I wanted them.” She broke off, aware of his silence and nearly palpable tension. “And you don’t care about that, do you?”

      He exhaled. “Your stuff isn’t stolen, but it’s busted up pretty good. And it’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I have bigger things to worry about right now.”

      “Vice President Davis,” she said, remembering the text message and trying not to linger on the word girlfriend or think about how long it’d been since that word had applied to her for real. “Do you know where you’re supposed to meet this guy?”

      She СКАЧАТЬ