Five past midnight …

Thunder rumbled and lightning flickered, closer this time. As he searched each row in the desolate church, electricity danced along Ty’s skin, seeming ironic in the powerless city.

He glanced at his watch. Where the hell was Liam? Unless he never intended to show up.

He spun and yelled to Gabby, “It’s a trap. Get the hell out of here!”

She took two steps before thunder clapped and the building shook around them, the emergency lights going out, plunging the church into blackness.

He heard a crash up ahead, a woman’s scream, and his heart jolted in his chest.

“Gabby!” he shouted, but there was no response.

A heartbeat later, the lights flickered back to life.

She was gone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Gabriella Solaro – The shy computer science teacher protects her privacy – and her secret – by keeping her online romance strictly online… until her curiosity gets the best of her.

Tyler Jones – As a Secret Service agent and a member of the clandestine black ops group Eclipse, Ty is used to putting missions ahead of his personal agenda. But when he meets Gabby, work and play clash with potentially disastrous results.

Grant Davis – The vice-president of the United States of America.

Liam Shea – The electrical expert spent ten years in a military prison for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. Now he’s out, and he’s looking for revenge on the men who ruined his life.

Ethan Matalon, Chase Vickers and Shane Peters – The other three members of Eclipse have each fought their own battles in Liam’s mad plan.

Aidan, Finn and Colin Sullivan – Liam’s sons each play a vital role in their father’s revenge.

Leonore and Tom Wellbrooke – The proprietors of a shelter in South Boston seem like good people, but they have good reason to want the vice-president discredited…or worse.

Meet Me at Midnight

JESSICA ANDERSEN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Rebecca York, Rita Herron and

Linda Castillo, thanks for being a ton of fun to

work with on this four-book series!

Chapter One

Dear CyberGabby:

I’ve never used a service like Webmatch.com before, so I apologize in advance if I mess up. I saw your picture and read your profile, and I think we have some things in common. My name is Ty, I’m thirty-five, divorced and relatively free of baggage. Like you, I enjoy classic cars and driving fast. I work as a bodyguard because I also like traveling and staying on the move. It’s not as exciting as it might sound, though. I work for a corporate type, so it’s mostly standing outside boring meetings. Which, I suppose, is better than actually attending the meetings. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. I’ve posted my picture and profile (click here). If you’re interested, shoot me a note and we can chat.

[Sent by TyJ; March 17, 1:03:13 a.m.]

9:58 p.m., August 2 7 Hours and 40 Minutes to Dawn

Ty Jones paused in the shadows beyond a small, cobbled courtyard in Boston’s North End, breathing past the tension of battle readiness.

The light from a kerosene lantern broke the absolute darkness, casting warm shadows on the woman who waited for him in the hot, humid summer night. The lamplight should have been almost painfully romantic.

Instead, it was a necessity.

Boston had been in the grips of a widespread blackout for twenty-five hours now. Most of the city’s inhabitants thought there had been a massive failure at Boston Power & Light, but Ty and his teammates knew the blackout had been no accident. It had been a cover. Under the cloak of darkness, a man they’d once trusted had kidnapped Grant Davis, Vice President of the United States.

Now, twenty-five hours later, with Davis’s life hanging in the balance and his captor hinting that a bomb had been planted somewhere in the city, Ty and the others were out of time and options.

Which had brought him here, to a clandestine rendezvous with Internet bombshell Gabriella Solaro.

Ty’s watch chimed softly. It was ten o’clock. Time to meet the one connection he had left, the one woman who could possibly lead them to Liam Shea, the man behind the blackout.

Taking a deep breath, Ty stepped out of concealment and swung open the ornate wrought iron gate that separated the North End courtyard from the narrow street. Pitching his voice low, he called, “Gabriella?”

The woman was facing away from him. At the sound of her name, she turned and lifted the lantern. “Ty?”

Her voice was soft and feminine, just as he’d imagined it during their online conversations, first in a chat room at Webmatch.com, then one-on-one via e-mail and instant messenger. But oddly, she looked nothing like he’d expected.

Her dark eyes complemented full, red-painted lips, and her features were sharp and exotic, but in the lantern light, her hair seemed darker than the fiery chestnut she’d mentioned, and her simple sundress made her figure seem more angular than her self-described curvy-bordering-on-plump.

She was lovely, but she wasn’t anything like the picture in her profile. Then again, why should that surprise him? It was all too easy to bend the truth and become someone else on the Internet.

He should know.

Stepping forward into the circle of lantern light, Ty hesitated, wondering what she’d expect. Should he hug her? Kiss her? They’d met through an online dating service, which carried a certain expectation, and they’d e-chatted long into many nights, forming the illusion of intimacy. But none of it had been real, had it?

More important, their last few exchanges had been increasingly tense, as he’d pressed for a meeting and she’d resisted, which had solidified his suspicions even before Liam had made his move.

Now, though, Ty had a part to play. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

If he hadn’t been watching her face as he eased back, he would’ve missed the moment her eyes slid beyond him to a deeply shadowed corner where two brick-walled houses converged.

Instinct tightened the back of Ty’s neck.

Someone was watching.

He forced himself not to react, instead smiling easily. “I’m surprised you agreed to meet me in the middle of this godawful blackout, especially with the curfew and all. Heck, I wasn’t even sure my e-mail would get through, or that you’d have enough juice to read it.”

With Liam’s three accomplices, his sons Finn, Aidan and Colin, all out of action—one dead, one comatose, one not talking—Ty had known Gabby was perhaps their last hope for finding the mastermind. He’d broken into a stranger’s car, plugged his handheld into the cigarette lighter and stolen enough charge to send the message. Then he’d waited in the darkness, listening to the sounds of growing violence nearby as the looting continued and the National Guard moved in to enforce the mayor’s new curfew. The mob had almost reached him by the time she’d e-mailed back, arranging the meet.

As Ty had locked the car and slipped away for a quick radio convo with his boss, part of him had hoped she’d agreed to meet him out of curiosity, that the woman he’d gotten to know online was the real deal.

Now, as she glanced into the shadows a second time, conflicting emotions stirred within him—vicious satisfaction that he’d come to the right place and disappointment that she hadn’t been the real deal, after all.

“I got your message on my Blackberry,” she answered. “I was surprised you wanted to meet face-to-face, especially after that last e-mail I sent you, but I was…curious, I guess.” She glanced at him, eyes dark and a little cool with an emotion that was either nerves or calculation. “You didn’t have any problems getting here? Nobody stopped you?”

“I made it okay.” His credentials had gotten him through the first two roadblocks, but he’d ended up ditching his car near the waterfront, where the Guard’s bulldozers and tow trucks hadn’t yet cleared the roadways. Numerous cars had wrecked right after the blackout, when the traffic lights went down, and even more vehicles had been abandoned later, when rumors of a terrorist attack had sent the city’s residents fleeing in panic, only to have them wind up trapped in gridlock, frying in the hot summer sun.

Dull anger kindled in his gut at the thought of so much chaos created by a single ex-con and his sons, but he kept his voice light and friendly when he said, “How about you? No problems so far with the lights off?”

She shifted from one foot to the other, seeming uncomfortable—or was that just part of the act? After a hesitation so brief he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking, she tipped her head, fluttered her eyelashes and said, “Would you like to sit down and talk for a little bit? There’s a fountain and some benches in the next courtyard over. The neighbors won’t mind.”

She pointed to a secluded spot where the cobblestone path narrowed between two planted areas, no doubt near where her associate waited.

Keeping his weight evenly balanced on the balls of his feet, ready for a fight, Ty nodded. “The courtyard sounds perfect.”

She set the lantern on the edge of a nearby stone planter before starting down the short path. Was it a signal? Ty didn’t know, but he was tense with battle readiness as he followed in her wake.

They’d taken just three steps into the shadows when he heard a rustle and the faint indrawn breath that presaged attack.

“Freeze!” Ty palmed the revolver he wore at his hip and grabbed Gabriella in a single move, spinning her back against his body and clamping an arm across her throat.

She screamed and struggled to escape, her elbows digging into his ribs, her heels drumming against his shins. He could feel her heartbeat jackhammering beneath his forearm, mute evidence that she might be a liar, but she wasn’t a trained operative.

“Be still.” He cocked the revolver, and the click resonated on the humid air, freezing her in place.

He carried a semiautomatic with fifteen in the clip as his primary weapon, tucked into an underarm holster, but he’d long ago found that the six-shooter had the edge when it came to intimidation.

The click said he meant business. Right now his business was finding Grant Davis and locating the bomb that’d been planted somewhere in the city, and to do that, he had to get his hands on Liam Shea.

Adrenaline pounded through Ty’s veins as he leaned close and spoke into his captive’s delicate ear. “Tell him to toss his weapons and come out with his hands up.”

If he was damn lucky, it would be Shea himself. If not, he hoped it was an underling he could lean on for the bastard’s location.

Gabby whimpered in the back of her throat and jerked her head in some semblance of a nod. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she was shaking all over, almost enough to convince him she was for real.

A sliver of compassion twisted through Ty, along with snippets from the hundreds of notes they’d exchanged over the past five-plus months. She’d written about honesty, and about problems with her family, and, damn it, she’d seemed real enough that he’d responded in kind.

Maybe she really hadn’t known what she was getting into, he rationalized. Maybe it had seemed like a game to her, or perhaps she was one of those bleeding hearts who believed in rehabilitation of hardened criminals.

If so, he could’ve told her not to bother. Liam had been a traitor eleven years earlier, and he was a traitor now.

One who damn well belonged back in jail.

When there was no motion from the bushes, Ty raised his voice. “Come out here. Now!” A breath of wind disturbed the hot, humid air, unfurling a nearby flag and making it snap. “You’ve got until three. One…two…”

The bushes moved and a figure stepped out onto the path, nearly lost in the darkness.

“Back up into the courtyard,” he ordered, his pulse accelerating as he tried to assess the risks and control the scene.

“Go on. Easy now.” He marched Gabby along the path in front of him, using her as a shield as the shadowy figure complied, backing into the courtyard with a hitching motion, as though feeling the way. Moments later, the figure stepped into the circle of lantern light, and the illumination chased away the anonymous shadows.

Ty froze.

It wasn’t Liam Shea. It was a woman, and she sure as hell didn’t look like anyone’s hired gun.

She wore cutoff shorts over curvy legs, with a pink button-down shirt knotted beneath generous breasts. Glossy hair spilled over her shoulders, gleaming with rich chestnut highlights in the yellow lantern light. Her eyes were strangely luminous, as though backlit, bleaching from brown at the center to pale at the edges, and her full, moist lips came straight from his fantasies.

Surprise flared through him, laced with something hotter and even more unexpected. Suddenly desire existed alongside anger, all of it complicated with the pounding need to shelter the innocent and rescue the man he was sworn to protect with his life.

He tried for a dry tone, but the words came out harsh when he said, “Hello, Gabby.”

Then he noticed the red-tipped cane in her hand, and saw that she wasn’t looking directly at him with those pale, pretty eyes.

A second major shock hammered through him.

Gabriella Solaro was blind.

“LET HER GO, Ty.” Gabby knotted her hands together, hoping he wouldn’t notice how badly they shook. She couldn’t see the scene—her vision was limited to light and dark smudges on the brightest of days—but over the years she’d gotten good at interpreting sights from sounds.

She’d never before had to connect the sound of a weapon to a friend’s panicked scream, though, and the reality of it made her sick and dizzy with fear.

This was her fault. Her fault for trying to be someone she wasn’t, for thinking she was protected by Internet anonymity, for letting curiosity overrule common sense, for going against everything she’d told him up to this point and agreeing to meet. It was her fault for wimping out and asking Maria to take her place at the last minute. And most of all, it was her fault for being wooed by words on the Braille pinpad she’d designed to translate images from the computer screen to letters she could “see.”

Hadn’t her friends in the neighborhood warned her about the hazards of online dating? “He could be anybody,” they’d said. “He could be a complete jerk. A user. A criminal.”

Gabby had brushed them off, figuring she was an expert in dealing with the first two options, and refusing to entertain the third. “I know Ty,” she’d said, certain they’d made a connection during their late-night conversations. “He’s not like that.”

But she’d still refused to take the relationship any further than on-screen…until tonight, when she’d been feeling a little bit reckless, a little bit wild. As usual, the impulses had gotten her into trouble.

Deep trouble.

Heart pounding in her ears, she raised her voice and nearly shouted, “That’s right, I’m Gabby.”

She was hoping against hope that someone in one of the nearby houses would hear and come help, one of the neighbors she sometimes found overwhelming with their extended Italian-American families and endless dinners, fights and celebrations. But they had ignored curfew and trooped down Hanover Street en masse, banding together to get old Mrs. Rosetti into one of the overflowing hospitals when her oxygen tank ran low and her breathing had gotten bad.

The houses were empty. There was nobody left to hear the tremble in Gabby’s voice, or the drum of her heart in her ears. “Please,” she said quietly, desperately. “Let her go. I’ll do whatever you want.”

The offer made her nauseous, but it came from the lessons she’d learned as a teen, when she’d run the streets of Miami with a hard-partying, hard-fighting crowd. She’d fought to outgrow that rebellious, self-destructive streak in the years since, but she needed some of the brashness now, some of that brazen go-to-hell confidence.

She had to get Maria away from him first. Then she’d try to talk him down. She couldn’t believe the Ty she’d come to know—

Don’t you get it, Gabby? He isn’t that Ty. He’s… She couldn’t even complete the thought. She didn’t know what he was, or who. All she knew was that she’d brought him into her neighborhood, into her haven. Into her heart.

How she’d agonized over his last few messages, debating how much to tell him, what to tell him. In the end she’d broken up with him rather than admit the truth, that she was blind and rarely left the safe, secure confines of her home territory.

Then he’d caught her in a weak moment with his invitation, and the wild child had taken over and pushed the self-destruct button once again.

“Tell me about Liam Shea,” he ordered now, voice low and commanding.

“Let Maria go and I’ll tell you anything you want,” she countered, gripping her hands tightly in front of her in an effort to hold it together.

Moments later Maria was free. She grabbed Gabby’s arm and tried to tug her away, sobbing. “Come on. Please, let’s go!”

But Gabby didn’t need to see the threat to know Ty hadn’t uncocked the gun. He remained in control of the scene.

She pictured him as he’d described himself online—six feet tall and muscular, with blue eyes and blond hair he didn’t get trimmed often enough. Her imagination had added a shaggy lock that fell forward over his forehead, along with smile-creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth to counteract the hint of sadness she’d sometimes gotten from his words.

Now in her mind’s eye his mouth turned cruel and his eyes glittered ice-cold, sending a shiver of fear through her body.

“Please, Ty,” she said quietly. “Let us go. We haven’t done anything to you, and we won’t tell anyone. Just take the gun and go. I’m begging you. If our conversations meant anything to you, you’ll—”

Then she broke off, knowing the conversations hadn’t meant anything to him. Not like they had to her. His words had been lies, hadn’t they? All lies.

She was surprised, then, when moments later she heard the distinctive click of metal-on-metal, followed by a rustle of nylon cloth and catch of leather as he disarmed the gun and holstered it.

“Tell me everything you know about Liam Shea,” he said. “You might know him as Liam Sullivan.”

“I don’t know anyone by either of those names.” Gabby held on to Maria’s arm and felt the tension vibrate through her friend, through them both. “Please go. I told Maria’s brother to give us ten minutes. He’s going to call the police if we don’t check in with him by quarter past.”

The lie earned her a snort of derision. “Nice try, but we both know the local cops are busy. And besides, I outrank them.”

There was another rustle of cloth, and Maria hissed out a breath.

“What is it?” Gabby demanded, trying to ignore a bite of frustration.

“He’s with the Secret Service,” Maria said, her Sicilian accent thickening. “Special Agent Tyler Jones,” she recited, reading from his ID. “Vice presidential protection detail.”

“No he’s not,” Gabby said, going breathless with shock. “He’s a—”

She broke off, realizing that it fit, sort of. “I’m a bodyguard for a corporate type,” he’d said, and Grant Davis, a decorated military veteran-turned-golden-boy politician, certainly fit that bill in some respects. Rumor had it he was the front-runner for the next presidential election, and he’d been in Boston this past week for some glitzy affair at the Hancock Building.

Rumor also had it that he’d disappeared right after the blackout.

“Why are you here?” she nearly whispered, fear and confusion stealing her breath. “Why aren’t you looking for him?”

“I am,” he said bluntly. “I need you to tell me where I can find Liam Shea. If you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to arrest you as an accessory to the vice president’s kidnapping.”

The ground pitched beneath Gabby’s feet and the world spun invisible circles around her. “I already told you.” She swallowed hard when tears pressed at her throat. “I don’t know either Liam Shea or a Liam Sullivan. Period, end of discussion.”

“You hacked into his Web site on March fifteenth.”

“I never—” she began, then broke off, realizing that her two guilty pleasures—Internet dating and testing her hacking skills against the occasional encrypted Web site—had come to roost simultaneously. And the Secret Service was involved, which meant… Wait a second, she thought. March fifteenth?

Ty had first e-mailed her through Webmatch.com on the seventeenth. St. Patrick’s Day.

Sick humiliation poured through her, nearly dropping her to her knees. “Oh, God. You hit on me because I hacked into this guy’s Web site. You—”

She broke off, nausea building when she remembered all the things she’d told him. She might have hidden her blindness and the circumstances leading up to it, but she’d been open about everything else. She’d told him about her growing frustration with the school and the narrow confines of her life, about how she longed for adventure as much as she feared it. In return, he’d urged her to step outside her comfort zone, to embrace life and focus on the people she loved. He’d told how he’d married his high school sweetheart right after leaving the military, and how he heard his retired-colonel father’s voice in his head, calming him down when he’d been in tight situations. Or had all that been a lie?

She’d thought they had a connection. It hurt like hell to find out he’d only romanced her because she’d hacked into some guy’s Web site.

“Why me?” Her voice cracked on the word and she nearly sagged against Maria.

“Because you hacked into a Web site dedicated to defaming Grant Davis,” Ty said coolly.

“Gabby isn’t a criminal,” Maria said, her accent thickening with anger. “And besides, there must be a hundred Web sites like that.”

“Thousands of ’em,” Ty agreed. “But this is the only one the vice president asked me to monitor personally. He and Liam…let’s just say they have a history.”

Gabby’s lips trembled. “So you thought that gave you the right to pretend that you—” She broke off, unable to continue.

She might’ve ended the relationship, but that hadn’t prevented her from thinking What if. What if they did meet? What if he proved to be a better man than his predecessors, and hadn’t minded that she couldn’t drive or play golf, and that she sometimes fumbled her way around? What if?

Never once had she thought, What if it turns out he was only pretending to like me?

“I’m sworn to protect the vice president with my life,” he said. “So, yeah, I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep him safe, including joining a dating service to get close to a woman who hacks through trilevel security like it’s nothing.”

Maria tugged on her arm. “Let’s go. You’re not saying another word until you’ve got a lawyer and this guy’s got a warrant or a subpoena or whatever Secret Service agents need.”

But Gabby stood her ground, shaking her head. “I don’t need a lawyer.” She lowered her voice, willing Ty to believe her when she said, “I teach computer science at the Edmunds School. That’s a school for the visually impaired, in case your background research on me missed that little tidbit. I visit a ton of Web sites, and yes, sometimes I hack into the more challenging ones, just to prove I can. But that’s it. I’m not connected to anyone named Shea or Sullivan, and I have nothing against Vice President Davis. I swear it on my sister’s life.” She didn’t know where that had come from, but although she hadn’t seen Amy in over a decade, it was a binding vow. The love remained even though her family had cut her off.

Tears gathered now, welling from the pain in her soul. “As for hacking into encrypted Web sites, you can be sure I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t be Web surfing anymore. You never know what kind of jerk you’ll meet.”

A tear spilled over and tracked down her cheek when she realized that even though she’d tried to end the relationship rather than meet him in person, some small, unrealistic part of her had hoped for something more when he’d e-mailed earlier, begging for a meeting.

Her voice shook when she said, “Please go.”

Ty cursed under his breath and said, “Listen, Gabby—”

But she didn’t want to hear his lame excuses, didn’t want his pity as the swirling emotions coalesced into a hard, hot ball in her chest and the tears surfaced.

Not wanting him to see her cry, she turned and fled into the darkness.

Ignoring Ty’s startled shout, Gabby ran along memorized paths. It was five long steps to the iron gate, twenty across the next courtyard over, then a sharp right-hand turn into the narrow alley between the Robinsons’ two-family and Gino Vinzetti’s house.

The sounds, smells and shapes of the neighborhood were familiar, grounding her in the realities of her life.

Then footsteps sounded behind her and Ty shouted, “Gabby, wait!”

Sobbing with anger and embarrassment, she hooked a left down Hanover Street, keeping one hand on the rough building faces and using the other to sweep her cane back and forth just in case. She tripped once and nearly fell, but regained her balance and kept going all the way to her apartment, which took up the ground floor of a three-family nestled between a seafood restaurant and a pastry shop.

She was grateful that none of the neighbors were home to see her tears and the way her hands shook when she unlatched the wrought iron gate that led to her side entrance. Hopefully, Ty wouldn’t know where she’d gone. She could trust Maria not to tell him.

But he was a federal agent. No doubt he’d known her home address all along.

She blew out a teary breath and let herself inside. She leaned the cane against the door frame, knowing every inch of the apartment without its help, and headed down the entry hall toward the living room, with its soft, embracing couch and familiar, homey smells of cinnamon-scented candles and chocolate chips.

Wanting nothing more than to throw herself onto the couch and scream, she hurried across the room.

Halfway there, she tripped and fell.

Gabby cried out as she slammed her hip into the corner of her coffee table and crashed to the floor. A wave of pain washed through her, radiating from her right hip and elbow.

Dazed, she waited a moment for her head to clear, and then struggled to her hands and knees and felt around. Within moments her fingertips connected with the familiar outline of an antique doorstop cast in the shape of a sailing ship.

A prickle of fear shimmied in her stomach.

The ship was one of a half-dozen iron doorstops she had carefully placed around the apartment. Perhaps they were a strange collector’s item for a legally blind person, but she knew where each one was, just as she knew the placement of every wall, every piece of furniture and all the other odds and ends in her space. Everything in her world had its place.

This ship belonged beside the kitchen door, not in the middle of the living room.

Heart pounding, Gabby searched the room by touching each object with trembling fingers. The sofa and coffee table were exactly where they belonged, and nothing else seemed wrong until she levered herself to her feet and felt for the desk. Out-of-place papers crunched underfoot, and there was a blank space where her computer should have been.

“Oh, God.” Her throat closed on panic, on denial. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Please no.” Her specially outfitted computer, her lifeline to the rest of the world, was gone. Worse, she realized, as she felt frantically along the tabletop, the jumble of half-assembled electronic components was missing, too. She’d been working on a new prototype, a device that could reproduce Web site graphics in three dimensions, allowing blind people to “see” them.

Someone wanted the design, she thought, her mind leaping ahead to seemingly impossible possibilities. Someone who knew what I was working on, who—

She spun when she heard the noise. It might have been a quiet cough, or the shift of a shoe on her kitchen tile, she wasn’t sure, but she suddenly knew she wasn’t alone in the apartment. “Ty?”

“Not exactly,” an unfamiliar masculine voice said from the kitchen. She heard footsteps, sensed him move to block the front hallway. “And you can’t see me, can you? That’ll make this easier than I thought.”

The next thing she knew, he was coming straight for her.

Chapter Two

Dear TyJ:

You know how you said the other day that honesty is very important to you? Well then, I’d better be honest with you. I’m not exactly the hotshot computer jockey I made it sound like in my profile, or even in some of our earlier private messages. I teach programming at a small college in the northeast, which is about as exciting as it sounds. As in ‘not.’ So trust me, the bodyguard gig has me beat by a mile in the ‘cool jobs’ department, even if you do spend most of your time standing around waiting for something to happen.

[Sent by CyberGabby; April 3, 11:32:32 p.m.]

10:21 p.m., August 2 7 Hours and 17 Minutes until Dawn

Ty stumbled to a halt in the middle of the dark, deserted street and let his flashlight sag, hopelessly lost in the mazelike passageways, courtyards and narrow streets of the North End.

Gabby had outdistanced him easily, moving ghostlike in the darkness. Without backup and an earpiece or, hell, even a functional handheld, he lacked access to the maps and information he normally had at his fingertips.

Which had no doubt been part of Liam’s plan.

They’d all learned the theory during Special Forces training—isolate the target and then make the kill. Liam had used the blackout to isolate his former teammates, then he’d moved in for the kill.

He’d sent his sons after those former teammates—Frederick LeBron, Grant Davis, Chase Vickers, Shane Peters and Ethan Matalon. The only unaffected teammate had been Commander Tom Bradley, who’d escaped revenge by dying; the heart attack had taken him before Liam could get to him. LeBron had been in his alpine kingdom in Beau Pays, but the Sheas had gone after his precious daughter, Princess Ariana, and the LeBrons’ priceless sapphire. Thanks to Shane, the Sheas hadn’t been successful. They’d been equally unsuccessful with Ethan and Chase, whose families had been threatened but returned safely. Still. Liam remained at large, in control of the hostage, Grant Davis, and the bomb.

Ty scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to ignore the feeling that he was running out of time, that he was letting himself get sidetracked. But he couldn’t stop flashing back on the look in Gabriella’s eyes when she realized why he’d hooked up with her on Webmatch.com.

It wasn’t what you think, he’d wanted to say, but he hadn’t, because it would have been a lie, and he didn’t want to lie to her anymore.

“At least, not if she’s telling the truth about Liam,” he muttered to himself.

From behind him, a woman’s voice said, “You’re damned right she’s telling the truth.”

Even before he turned and shone his flashlight toward the approaching figure, he knew it wasn’t Gabby. The voice was too high, and it rolled with strains of Italy.

Maria scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. “She doesn’t know anything about your kidnapper, Mr. Secret Service. If she did, she would’ve told you right up-front. That’s the sort of woman she is.”

“I need to speak with her,” he said. “Please.”

She stared at him for a long minute, as though trying to interpret a motivation he couldn’t even name. Then finally she gestured with her chin, “Over there. First floor, door’s around the side.”

“Thanks.” He loped across the street, pushed through the wrought iron gate and followed a cobblestone pathway around to the side of a neat, narrow, brick-walled three-family.

His gut tightened when he touched her door and it swung inward. Adrenaline spiked alongside a jolt of concern. Then both were lost as training kicked in and he clicked over to soldier mode. Quiet. Efficient.

Deadly.

He left his revolver holstered and pulled the semiautomatic, then flicked off the flashlight. Muscles tense, senses almost painfully alert, he eased through the door, then paused and listened, not sure whether he was walking into an ambush or something else.

The pitch-black inside the apartment made him wish for a pair of night-vision goggles as he eased along, carefully testing each step. Finally he cursed and clicked on the flashlight, using his fingers to muffle the glow and let only a small beam shine through.

He uttered a low curse when he saw the condition of her apartment, and the scale tipped away from ambush ever so slightly.

A doorway to his left opened onto a small kitchen, where the refrigerator door hung open, its contents in disarray. A head of lettuce had rolled beneath a small butcher-block table; most of the cabinet doors and drawers were open; and the single counter held a jumbled mess of papers and canned goods.

The kitchen wasn’t just messy, Ty thought on a bite of rage. It’d been tossed, and by someone with a temper.

The back door off the kitchen hung open. Was it a sign that the intruder had gone, or was it set up for a quick getaway? He didn’t know, and that worried him more than it should have, making him wonder about a woman who’d hacked into a murderer’s Web site but claimed it was on a lark, a woman who just happened to live in the same city where the kidnapping had gone down, yet professed innocence. It just didn’t play, he told himself yet again. There were too many coincidences for her to be innocent.

Problem was, he was starting to think she was exactly that.

Gut tight, he checked the kitchen closet and glanced out into the alley. There was no sign of the intruder. There was also no sign of chestnut hair and feminine curves. Where the hell was she?

Refusing to consider the worst-case scenario until he’d thoroughly searched the place, he worked his way back through the kitchen and further into the small apartment.

Three more doors opened off the narrow hallway. The first led to a closet; the second opened into a sitting room.

The desk was in shambles, and an expensive-looking computer and an array of electronics lay in the corner, smashed to pieces. Oddly, though, the TV and the high-tech sound system appeared untouched.

This wasn’t a burglary, then. But what exactly was it?

And why?

Though the timing seemed coincidental—there was that word again, coincidence—Ty shoved his gathering suspicions aside and focused on the priority, which was finding Gabby and making sure she was okay.

Tension hummed through him as he eased toward the last of the three doorways. He flashed back on the moment after the blackout, when the emergency lights had come up at the John Hancock building to reveal a party in shambles, the president and vice president missing. Though President Stack had been found nearby, drugged and confused, VP Davis had not.

Had Gabby been taken hostage, as well?

There’ll be hell to pay if she has, he thought out of nowhere, as he eased through the last door into her bedroom.

There he hesitated for a half second before letting the flashlight beam play over her bed. Unlike the other rooms, which he noted, were devoid of color this room was vibrant. The king-size bed had a fluffy duvet draped with a woven afghan in the deepest of jade greens, and pillows of every shape and size formed a drift against the plush, padded headboard, all in vibrant jewel tones visible even in the wan illumination.

It was, he realized, as unexpected heat burned through his veins, almost exactly as he’d imagined it during their online “dates.” He let his gun hand sag—

And the moment of hesitation nearly cost him everything.

A blur came at Ty from the side. He turned and ducked in a single motion, and the blow glanced off his shoulder. His attacker cursed and kicked out, sending Ty’s gun and flashlight spinning away.

The light smashed into the wall, plunging them into darkness. The gun clattered somewhere off to their left, momentarily lost.

Ty lunged for the other man and they went down on the floor beside Gabby’s bed. “Where is she?” he grated, landing a gut punch that had the other guy wheezing. “Where is Grant Davis? If you’ve hurt either of them, I’ll kill you.”

A blow caught Ty at the temple. His head snapped back, and he saw stars where there weren’t any. Fury spiked. Roaring, he grabbed for the bastard, got a fistful of his shirt and punched him hard in the face. The impact bruised his knuckles and sang up his arm.

“You want to get back to basics?” he grated. “How’s this for basic?” He landed a second punch and thought he felt bone give.

The other man went limp. An atavistic thrill ran through Ty, a surge of victory, of rage. He shifted his grip and reached for the handcuffs he wore on his belt.

With a roar, his opponent exploded into action beneath him, reversing their position and driving his fist into Ty’s jaw.

He saw stars again.

Then blackness.

BREATH SOBBING in her lungs, Gabby tugged at the bars on her bathroom window. When she’d first rented the place, she’d considered them a necessary security measure.

Now they were a trap.

She heard another crash in the bedroom, followed by a pained shout from a second man. She thought it was Ty’s voice, but how could she be sure? She’d barely met him.

“Come on,” she hissed, and yanked at the unyielding bars again, knowing it was futile but unable to make herself stop trying. “Come on!”

Behind her, beyond the bathroom door, the fighting sounds abruptly cut off.

Gabby froze. She strained to hear what was happening out there, needing to know who’d won.

She heard only silence, followed by the sound of footsteps in the bedroom.

Ty would’ve called her name, right? He would’ve said something to let her know he was okay.

Unless he wasn’t okay.

No, Gabby thought as the footsteps paused and she heard the sound of her closet door opening and clothes hangers being slid aside on their metal bar. Oh, no. Her fingers fell away from the window grate and her throat clenched until only a trickle of oxygen got through.

The footsteps resumed, drawing nearer.

A weapon. She needed a weapon.

Nearly wheezing with fear, she groped near the wall until her fingers found a smooth plastic shaft, like a length of pipe. She closed her fingers and tested its weight, then decided it would have to do.

A click of metal on metal signaled the turn of the bathroom knob. Gabby braced herself and raised her weapon.

The door opened. She screamed as loud as she could, and attacked. She lunged toward the sound and swung, yelling, “Get out of my house, you bastard!”

Her first blow missed the intruder and slammed into the wall. The impact sang up her arms and numbed her fingertips, but she couldn’t stop now. When she heard a rustle of cloth and felt motion nearby, she yelled again and swung.

This time she connected with flesh. She felt the blow land, heard a man curse.

Then he grabbed her, banding one strong arm around her torso and clapping the other across her mouth. “Shh! Quiet. Knock it off!”

She swung and connected with the back of his head. He swore and shook her. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you see—” Then he broke off. “It’s Ty, Gabby. It’s Ty. You’re okay.”

He repeated the reassurance a few more times, but she’d already stopped struggling, letting herself go limp in his grasp as his words played through her mind. Can’t you see?

No, I can’t, damn it. Anger spurted—at him, at whoever had broken into her house, her sanctuary. But beneath the heat of rage was another warmth—the feeling of being held in a man’s arms. In Ty’s arms.

That last thought shouldn’t have mattered. He’d lied to her, damn it. He’d used her emotions to pursue a lead. It hadn’t been about romance for him. It’d been the job.

Trouble was, her body didn’t seem to care.

“Shh,” he whispered against her temple, his breath ruffling her hair. “I think he’s gone, but I’m not positive. I needed to make sure you were okay before I went after him.”

They were pressed back to front, with the solid wall of his chest braced against her shoulders, the strong columns of his thighs touching intimately against the backs of hers.

Seeming to realize it, he shifted 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 could feel him weighing his answer. Finally she heard him shift and give heard a low curse. “No, I don’t. And it’s nearly midnight, damn it.”

That surprised her. Hadn’t it just been ten o’clock? Hadn’t she just been hiding in the corner of the courtyard, unable to bypass the opportunity to meet Ty, even if only through Maria’s eyes?

Apparently not. Apparently nearly two hours had passed in a blink.

“Let’s work this through logically,” she said, thinking fast. “He was just here and he knows you and I are here. That suggests the meeting place is somewhere nearby.”

He didn’t speak for a minute, and she’d just about decided he wasn’t going to answer her at all when he suddenly said, “How many places within, say, a five-minute walk have names that begin with the letter O?”

She thought fast, partly to help, partly to make him go away, make it all go away so she could lock her doors and crawl back into her familiar, comfortable patterns. “There are a couple of restaurants that begin with O—Orsini’s and Only Seafood. But they’re closed because of the blackout.”

“Not a restaurant,” Ty said. “He thinks bigger than that. Something important. A monument, or an historical building, maybe?”

“Let me think.” She frowned, reviewing her mental map of the area. She imagined herself walking up one street and down the next, counting the steps, tapping with her cane. At the edges of her brain, a faint sensory memory lingered. It was the smell of old wood and candle wax, overlain with the fragrance of summer flowers. It could’ve come from a hundred places in the historical city, but this impression brought a sense of peace. Of reverence. “There’s a big church nearby, but it’s called Christ Church.”

“Which doesn’t start with an O,” he said.

“No, but that’s not its only name.” Excitement built as the connection clicked in her brain. “They used to call it the Old North Church.”

“As in ‘one if by land, two if by sea’?” he quoted. “That Old North Church? I thought it was near the water.”

“We are,” she countered. Realizing he didn’t know the city well, she led him to the front door. It hung open, letting in the night air, which was heavy with summer humidity and the hint of an incoming squall. She gestured beyond the neighborhood, nearly due east. “The New England Aquarium is that way, right on the harbor.” She turned and pointed northwest. “The church is that way, overlooking the mouth of the river. Two blocks over, one up. You’ll make it if you run.”

“We’ll make it,” he corrected. “Come on.”

“Not on your life.” Heart picking up a beat, Gabby backpedaled up a step and reached for her front door, for safety. “I’ve had more than enough excitement for tonight. You’re on your own.”

But when she swung the panel shut, he blocked it halfway. “The message said to bring my girlfriend.”

“I am not your girlfriend,” she snapped.

“He doesn’t know that. If you’re innocent, then you’re right—he either followed me and backtracked you to your place somehow, or he already knew about you from my e-mails. Now he’s wondering exactly how much you know, or how important you are to me.” He paused. “Either way, you’ll be safer with me than staying here.” His words sounded logical, but there was an undercurrent in his tone that she didn’t like.

Swallowing past the growing knot of panic in her throat, Gabby shoved on the door, trying to force it closed. When he resisted, they engaged in a brief tussle that brought tears of frustration to her eyes. “Would you just go!” she shouted. “Go away and leave me alone! I’m not the person you’re looking for!”

Her words echoed, gaining new meaning.

Ty’s voice went soft. “Listen, Gabby—”

“No, you listen,” she said, her temper spiking. “I joined Webmatch because I was looking for a friend. Someone who doesn’t need much sleep, like me. Someone I could talk to.” Her voice broke on the memory of the things they’d said to each other during their nighttime exchanges, things she’d never told anyone else. Things that made her feel stripped bare now. “I wasn’t looking to become part of some shoot-’em-up that belongs in an action movie, not real life!”

But even as she said that, a small part of her wondered whether she might not have been looking for adventure, after all. Something new and different. A way out of her rut. A hint of danger amidst the peace. Why else had she discouraged all the other respondents and homed in on a divorced bodyguard who, by his own admission, rarely stayed in one place too long and dated online because his lifestyle didn’t leave room for a more traditional relationship?

Typical, she thought with a burst of self-directed anger. Just typical. Whenever she had things running smoothly in her life, that same little destructive part of her had to step out and mix things up by goading her into doing things she knew she shouldn’t.

“I know this situation really, really stinks,” Ty said. “But I need your help. Hell, it may sound corny, but your country needs your help. This guy is serious, Gabby. If I don’t follow his instructions to the letter, he could kill the vice president. He’s made that clear before, with my partners. Are you willing to risk Grant Davis’s life?”

She sucked in a breath. “That’s not fair.”

“Nothing about this is fair.” His flat tone warned her that there was more to the story than he was letting on. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I need you to come with me.” His voice dropped, turning persuasive. “Come on, take my hand. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

She could hear the lie in his voice. He was afraid for her, maybe a tiny bit afraid of her, afraid that she’d turn the tables on him. But he was also a Secret Service agent sworn to protect the vice president. Just how far would he go to follow that oath?

Close the door, said the logical, practical self she’d worked so hard to cultivate, even as the rebellious, frustrated part of her said, Go with him, he needs your help.

A sinking pit opened up in the bottom of her stomach as she made the decision. “Okay. I’ll go.”

“Thank you.” She could feel him shift toward her, as though he was going to touch her, then he hesitated and drew away. “We’re going to need to move fast and keep out of sight,” he warned. “Curfew started at dusk, and I don’t want to attract any more attention than necessary. Stay close to me and be ready to move if I say to.”

Again his words held an undercurrent that made her long to see his face, so she could tell what was real and what was a lie.

She thought about changing her mind. Instead she grabbed her cane, stepped outside and closed and locked the door to her ransacked apartment. “Let’s go.” When he moved to take her hand, she shook him off. “I’m fine.”

It wasn’t until he’d stumbled for the third time that she realized his flashlight batteries must be dying or already dead. Without a word she reached over, took his hand and led him into the darkness.

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