This is a mistake, Krystle thought, as her body heated and she gave in to desire for the man who held her in his arms. You know it is. Damn it, stop…

But she couldn’t. It made no sense. It wasn’t like her to let go like this, not with someone she hardly knew, and yet she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t pull back.

Didn’t want to.

She didn’t understand what it was about

Zack McIntyre that fired up her attraction.

All she knew was she needed this, wanted this. Needed to feel like a woman again. The hired killer who had been pursuing her for so long had robbed her of so much, including her feelings. She hadn’t allowed herself to feel anything, all these long months. She desperately wanted something, at least one thing, back – if only for a few precious minutes.

She wanted to feel again…

Marie Ferrarella is a bestselling and RITA® Awardwinning author and has written more than one hundred and fifty books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

Protecting His Witness

by

Marie Ferrarella

MILLS & BOON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To families everywhere, and to my own small circle. What would I ever do without you?

Chapter 1

He could sense the blood leaving his body.

His hand turned sticky where he pressed it against his side and he began to feel dangerously light-headed.

With effort, Zack McIntyre forced himself to focus on his end goal: to get away and find help.

He cursed himself for letting this happen, but who would have expected to be jumped in the alley right behind an Internet café? Especially in an upscale neighborhood. When the man he’d been following had slipped out the back a minute before the owner closed down, Zack had been about a minute behind him.

Once outside, he was jumped. The confrontation—and ultimate end result—had been unavoidable.

The alleyway had been deserted. At eleven o’clock, he had no doubts that most of the people who lived around here were already home, most likely in bed. He’d fled, bleeding, before anyone else showed up.

The shop was located at the tail end of a small strip mall nestled on the corner of a not-so-frequented thoroughfare. Facing the street, it was flanked on three sides by three separate housing developments. Zack had managed to escape into the smallest one, all while doing his best not to pass out. Whimsically named Stonehenge, the development was comprised of tiny, cookie-cutter white brick houses sealed two or three to a package, their backs all turned to a common alley.

It was through this alley that he found himself weaving.

Weaving badly.

Zack strained to hear the sound of approaching sirens. All he heard were crickets searching for love and companionship. That meant no one had found the body. Yet.

His side felt as if it was on fire.

Looking down, he was surprised there weren’t any flames radiating between his fingers as he continued pressing against the wound. Blood kept seeping along his palm.

All attempts at calling this in had failed. There was a radio tower not too far off. That and the power lines crackling along the right-of-way in the damp night air played havoc with cell phone signals, imprisoning them within their phones.

Nothing was coming or going.

Just his luck.

Par for tonight. The car he was using had had two of its tires slashed. No getaway there.

Zack staggered and nearly fell, face forward. It was hard holding on to consciousness when his head was spinning so badly. It felt as if the edges were slipping through his fingers. Everything was exceedingly blurry and out of focus.

He needed help.

Arriving at one door, clutching his side with one hand, he pounded on a door with the other. When that yielded nothing, he tried another door. And another.

No one answered. No one stirred. Either he’d somehow managed to stumble into a ghost development, or people had finally learned not to open their doors after eleven at night.

Good for them, he thought. Bad for him.

“I should have arranged to get shot at noon,” Zack muttered to himself. Everything in his head became progressively jumbled.

Damn it, somebody had to be home, someone had to answer their door. He just needed one person, just one. That and a first-aid kit.

Hell, he could do without the person as long as he had the kit. He wasn’t Rambo, but he knew enough to be able to stitch up his own wound.

As long as he didn’t lose any more blood.

Somehow, he made it to yet another back door. His fist outstretched to try to rouse whoever lived inside, Zack stumbled again, the toe of his boot hitting uneven gravel. This time, he pitched forward as the darkness around him descended, moving in closer until it merged with the growing darkness within.

And then there was nothing.

Kasey eased her small car around the corner, getting off the main drag and weaving in and out of the small, honeycomb-like streets that eventually fed into the area where she lived. As far as houses went, these left a lot to be desired. The small development was filled with either young couples just starting out, or older people who’d gleefully slipped out of the rat race and had only a few basic requirements in their lives: shelter and quiet.

But beggars and their kind couldn’t be choosers.

Hers was the smallest model, with only one bedroom, one bath, a tiny living room and an even tinier kitchen. There was no sense pretending a family room or dining room existed. In a practical sense, this suited her purposes just fine. She could almost see everything in one long, sweeping glance as long as the bedroom door was open. No one could hide here. No one could surprise her.

Which was just the way she liked it.

In addition to the condo, she also had a tiny, one-car garage nestled in between two other, slightly bigger garages, each belonging to one of the houses on either side of hers. At a quick glance, it almost looked as if the other two garages were trying to squeeze hers out of existence.

A lot of that going around lately, she mused.

Kasey shook her head as she hit the automatic garage-door opener. That was just her paranoia speaking up. Being tired did that to her. There was no reason to feel paranoid here. She was safe. At least as safe as she could be under the circumstances.

The second she didn’t feel that way, she’d move. Again. And God knew, she didn’t like the prospect of having to move yet one more time. She’d already moved three times since the incident.

Three times, to three different towns, desperately trying to feel safe again. This last time she’d finally come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as safe, not for her. At least, not completely. This was as good as it got.

She’d been here in Aurora for eight months. So far, so good.

Lining up her vehicle before the opened garage, she was about to pull in, but then something at the last moment stopped her. She didn’t want the car inaccessible, even for a moment. What made tonight different from last night and the nights before, she didn’t know. Maybe she was more tired tonight, but she’d learned to go with her instincts. It had saved her from a bullet last time.

So, rather than park her car inside the barren garage, she left the vehicle several feet away, sitting beside the curb that bordered the development. It wasn’t that far from her back door—if she needed it in a hurry.

Still sitting inside the vehicle, she sighed. “You’ve got to stop this,” she murmured under her breath. “It’s been over eight months and no one’s come after you.”

The fact that no one had—to her knowledge—was a relief, but not enough to put her at ease. There were days that she sincerely doubted she would ever be at ease again, ever allow herself to reclaim the easygoing person she’d once been. Reclaim the life she’d once had. The life she’d worked so hard to achieve.

It could be worse, she thought ruefully, annoyed at the wave of self-pity that had claimed her. She could be dead.

Like Jim.

“No,” she upbraided herself. “Not tonight.”

She couldn’t think about Jim tonight. Couldn’t think about what happened that awful day her life changed forever. Tonight she just wanted to get out of her clothes and fall into bed. And with any luck, not dream about anything until it was time to get up again.

She wasn’t feeling all that lucky.

The next moment, she had good reason not to. As she was about to head toward the back door that faced the alley, the chief feature that sold her on renting the tiny condo, Kasey caught her breath.

There was a form slumped across the single concrete step in front of her back door. She stood frozen, trying to make out the shape even as she tried to convince herself that it was just the moonlight playing tricks on her. That it wasn’t what it looked like.

But it was.

It was a man.

Her first instinct was to run back to the car, get inside and lock all the doors. Had she not been who she was, from the shelter of her locked automobile she would have called the police and had them come out to deal with the man on her doorstep.

But she only took a few steps back and she didn’t call the police. The police held more terror for her than the man who was slumped across the back entrance to her home.

Holding her breath, Kasey took a tentative step back. Then another. All the while her eyes never left the man on her doorstep. She watched for movement, for any sign of life.

The man didn’t move a muscle.

Was he sleeping? Was this some poor, homeless creature who’d just given up the ghost, dying at her back door?

No, he was breathing, she could just barely see that. Staring at him, she noted the barest indication of his shoulders rising and falling.

He didn’t look like a homeless man.

Even though the streetlamp lighting was far from the best, she could see that her uninvited guest was clean. Looking closer, she saw that his skin wasn’t leathery. If he lived outdoors, it was a relatively new development.

“Hey, mister,” she called out, doing her best not to allow her voice to tremble, “are you all right?”

There was no answer. As far as she could see, there wasn’t even any indication that he had heard her. But she didn’t relax.

He could be one of them. Could be playing “possum” just to get her to come in closer. If she knew what was good for her, she’d make a beeline for her car and head back to the bookstore that she’d just locked up.

Making up her mind, she was about to do exactly that when something on the ground caught her eye. There was a dark pool of liquid forming beside him. Beneath him. Kasey didn’t have to guess what it was. She’d been part of this kind of scenario before.

Nerves came to attention as her heart leaped to her throat. Kasey scanned the area, trying to peer into the shadows. Was there someone else out there? Someone who had done this? Someone who was waiting for her?

But there appeared to be nothing to disturb the tranquility of the evening. Not even her neighbor’s orange cat was out tonight. Ordinarily, Cymbeline was out, inspecting the area, looking for the occasional mouse that strayed from the right-of-way into the development.

It was almost too quiet.

Kasey wasn’t sure if her training or just plain stupidity was to blame for her advancing several steps toward the man. She held her breath as she did so, as if that could somehow give her courage.

“Mister, you have to get up and go.” When there was no response from the man, not even a change in his breathing, she tried again. This time, she spoke more authoritatively. And lied. “I’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute. So if you don’t want to do your explaining to them, I suggest you stop playing around and get out of here.”

Still nothing.

He was really unconscious. And bleeding.

So now what? she wondered, nervously chewing on her lower lip. She couldn’t just circle around to the front entrance and forget about him. Pretend he wasn’t there. No matter how much she felt she’d lost of herself these last two years, that compassionate part was still there. She wasn’t cold-blooded.

She sighed. No, that wasn’t what she was like, even though there were times that she felt that everything she’d ever been had died that day with Jim. Gunned down just like him.

Hesitantly, she stretched out her fingers and felt for a pulse at the man’s throat. The moment she touched him, his eyes opened and he grabbed her wrist.

Kasey swallowed a scream as she jerked her hand out of his grasp. The fact that she could do so easily told her that the man was definitely weak. Someone that big, that strong-looking would have easily held on to her if he wanted to no matter how hard she pulled—if he wasn’t being impeded by a debilitating wound.

“Help me.”

The entreaty, hardly above a whisper, slipped from his lips and seemed to fade almost immediately into the dark night. But she’d definitely heard it. Heard, too, the desperate note behind the words.

His eyes had closed again.

Kasey blew out a breath, torn. Again she thought about calling the police. But what if he was running from the police? If she got them to come here, she definitely wouldn’t be doing this man any favors.

So now you’re helping out felons?

The question ricocheted in her head, taunting her. But what if he wasn’t a felon? And what if circumstances were such that he didn’t want the police? After all, wasn’t she in essence running from the police—from certain members of the police force? And she certainly wasn’t a felon. If anything, she was a victim. Just someone who wanted to live to see another Christmas.

C’mon, make up your mind. Do something. Doing nothing was not an option. If she just turned her back and left him here, this man could very well bleed to death and she would be as guilty of his murder as if she’d pulled a trigger.

There were only two options. She either called the police, or did something for the stranger herself.

Kasey ventured a glance at the stranger’s face. He didn’t look like a bad guy, she thought. And if he did turn out to be one, well, it wasn’t as if she was completely defenseless. There was a gun inside the largest canister on her kitchen counter, right beside the ones containing flour, sugar and tea.

She’d actually practiced getting the weapon out under adverse conditions—just in case. Jim would have laughed at her if he could have seen her.

But then, she thought ruefully, as sadness strummed through her again, if he could have seen her, there would have been no reason to have a loaded gun hidden in the largest canister on her counter.

The stranger’s eyes were still closed.

And he was still bleeding.

Kasey made up her mind. She had the training and she could help him, the way she couldn’t help Jim.

Unlocking her door, she gingerly stepped over him to enter her house. Once inside, she turned around. She was going to bring him in.

“Okay, mister, this is your lucky night. But I promise you, if you try anything—anything at all—it’ll also be your last night.”

The stranger opened his eyes again and looked at her. She couldn’t begin to fathom what he was thinking. The next moment, he tried to struggle to his feet. Kasey had the feeling that if she blew on him, he’d fall backward like a stack of cards.

“Hold it,” she cautioned before he could do any damage to himself. “This is going to be a team effort.” Tossing aside her purse, Kasey squatted down beside him. “Give me your arm.”

Not waiting for him to comply, she draped his arm around the back of her neck herself. Holding tightly on to it, she placed her other arm around his waist as best she could. To gain a better grasp, she slid her fingers through the belt loop of his jeans. She hoped the loop would hold when she needed it.

Kasey took another deep breath, bracing herself. “Okay, on the count of three, I want you to try to get up, understand?”

He made some kind of noise in response. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Ready to push off, she counted, “One, two, three.”

She only managed to get a couple of inches off the ground before the stranger threw her off balance. Caught off guard, she fell over on him.

Instantly, Kasey drew back. Had he done that on purpose? She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but trusting no longer came easily to her.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she told him.

There was no answer. She realized that the stranger was unconscious again and deadweight. She sighed. “Not going to make this easy for either of us, are you?”

She needed another approach. Rising to her feet, she got behind him and put her arms around his chest. She laced her hands together and pulled him across the threshold and along the floor.

Progress was made by inches but she had always prided herself on her strength and even in these dire times—or maybe because of them—she worked out religiously, concentrating on weight training and building up her upper body strength.

Finally getting all of him inside her small house, Kasey felt like collapsing. Not only was the man deadweight, he was rock solid. But rather than take a breather, she straightened up and turned on the closest light. No way would she voluntarily stay in the dark with this man. Closing the door, she turned around to face her uninvited guest. There was a very disconcerting trail of blood leading from the threshold to the living room.

She was going to have to clean that up before the bloodstains set in permanently. But first, she had to stop the blood at its source.

Kasey glanced over her shoulder. Her sofa was only a few feet away from the back door, but it might as well have been in the next county. Even if she managed to pull him the distance, she wouldn’t be able to get him onto the sofa. At least, not without going through extraordinary contortions and she was much too tired for that.

Which meant she had to treat him on the floor. Everything in her training balked at that, but you couldn’t always pick your settings.

“Not exactly the ideal conditions,” she murmured to herself. She laid him flat on his back. “Who are you and why are you here?” she couldn’t help wondering aloud.

Well, there was time enough to learn that later, once she stopped the bleeding and sewed up his wound. Despite the situation, a small thrill raced through her. It had been much too long since she’d done anything close to her profession—and she missed it. Missed her life. Missed a lot of things.

She hurried off to the bathroom to wash her hands and to get what she needed in order to take care of this man that fate, with its sardonic sense of humor, had deposited on her doorstep.

She couldn’t help the dry laugh that rose to her lips. The way her luck had been going this last year and a half, the man on her floor would probably turn out to be a serial killer. Wouldn’t take much for her to be his next victim.

Drying her hands, she started throwing things she was going to need into the small, pink rubber basin she kept under the sink: alcohol, swabs, a scalpel and sutures she kept in a small blue container on the top shelf of her medicine cabinet.

Being his next victim might not be so bad, she mused. It might even be a blessing in disguise. She was weary of hiding, weary of looking over her shoulder so often. Maybe, if he repaid her act of kindness by killing her, at least this awful game of hide-and-seek would be over and she’d finally know some peace. Know what it was like not to have her heart leap up, hammering wildly with anxiety every time the door to the bookstore opened, or she looked up to see someone looking her way. She was tired of all the paranoia. If she couldn’t have her life back, she didn’t want any life at all.

You’re just tired and not making any sense, she chided herself ruefully.

If she meant any of that, she wouldn’t be doublelocking her door, or taking all those precautions every day. Maybe this life she led wasn’t so great, but it certainly did beat the alternative. At bottom, she wanted to live. And live long enough to get the person who had killed Jim and tried to kill her.

After checking to make sure she had everything she needed, for now she focused on her patient. Kasey didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that, as uneasy as she was, she was still smiling.

The smile faded the moment she stepped out into the living room again.

There was no one lying on the floor by the back entrance.

Chapter 2

For one frantic moment, Kasey thought the stranger had either left, or, worse, lay in wait for her somewhere in the house.

But then she saw him. It took a second for her heart to stop pounding as she realized that the stranger had just moved. He was still on the floor, but now closer to the kitchen. She guessed that he must have come to, tried to get up and collapsed when he found that the effort was too much for him.

But why the kitchen? Why hadn’t he tried to go out the door?

“You were probably disoriented,” she said under her breath as she crossed to him. She knelt down, setting the basin with its supplies next to her. “I can certainly relate to that.”

Every day, when she first woke up, she had to take stock of where she was and who she was. There were times when it all felt so jumbled up in her brain, she wanted to give up running, give up hiding and just return to her old life.

Which, she guessed, she’d probably be allowed to live for a total of ten minutes before word got around that she was back and among the living. And someone decided to do something about the latter.

Was that who this man was on her floor? Someone running from something?

Or was this an elaborate plan to flush her out, she wondered, her fingertips growing icy. Someone sent to get her, once and for all. She knew there was always a chance of that, but getting shot just to lull her into a false sense of security seemed like quite a stretch.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. It was one of the mantras she’d been taught in medical school and it applied not just to the field, but to life. The unconscious man in her living room was probably a horse, not a zebra. Some poor victim, not a hit man.

And if he was to continue being a horse, she had to help him live. And pretty damn quick.

She raised his blood-soaked shirt away from his body. It was a bullet wound all right. Right there just under his arm. She’d seen worse, but there was no such thing as a good bullet wound. Slipping on a pair of plastic gloves she’d picked up at the local drugstore, she took a sterile swab, soaked it in peroxide and proceeded to clean the wound.

With each stroke, Kasey raised her eyes and watched the unconscious stranger’s face with apprehension. But there was no reaction, no indication that he was only pretending to be unconscious. No involuntary wincing. He was out cold.

“Lucky for both of us,” she murmured. “I’m probably a little rusty at this.”

The wound cleaned, she reached for the scalpel she’d scrubbed less than five minutes ago.

Poising the blade over the bullet’s point of entry, she told him, “This is going to be the hard part.” Still nothing.

Which was good. But she still wished she had something to knock the man out in case he woke up and began to struggle. But things like that, other than 101 proof whiskey, couldn’t be purchased in the local pharmacy. Besides, she honestly never thought she’d need something in the way of an anesthetic ever again. She’d left that life behind, not willingly, but of necessity. It all boiled down to the same thing. She wasn’t a practicing doctor anymore.

Very carefully, she began to probe the wound. Glancing up at the stranger’s face, she saw him tense even though he was in another realm where hard-core pain didn’t exist. Her patient continued sleeping. Satisfied that, at least for the time being, he was unaware of what was happening, she probed deeper. Just where had this bullet gone?

After a couple more minutes, she was finally rewarded with the feel of metal against metal.

Gotcha.

Holding her breath, she secured the bullet and gingerly retracted the instrument until she could pull it free of the flesh around it.

Like a fisherman who had managed to finally pull a marlin out of the water, she held up the tiny bit of mangled metal, examining it against the overhead light. She shook her head.

“Not much to look at, is it?” she marveled. Small but deadly was an apt description. She wondered if the man on the floor knew how close he came to never seeing another sunrise. “Bet that could have ended your life with no effort at all if it’d hit just a little bit higher and to the left. Talk about lucky…”

Again she shook her head, awed how some people died after tripping on the sidewalk and hitting their head, while others walked away from what appeared to be certain death after taking a fall from a second-story window. Or catching a bullet just beneath their rib cage, she thought, amazed.

Cleaning the wound a second time, Kasey then picked up the sutures and very carefully sewed up the small hole. She wished she had access to some antibiotics to insure against infections, but he would have to take care of that for himself. Once he was awake.

It didn’t take long to finish stitching him up, even though she took her time, studying his face after every stitch was taken.

“You really are dead to the world, aren’t you?” she marveled. Finished, she put what was left of the sutures into a small white envelope and sealed it again.

There wasn’t much.

“Now what?” she asked herself out loud, looking down at her patient.

He was still unconscious, still in her house. What did she do with him? She had no one to turn to, no one to go to for help. And that was strictly her own doing. Edwin Owens, the owner of the used bookstore Rare Treasures, had indicated that he was very willing to be her friend. Very willing to be more than that if she wanted him to be. But while he seemed like a nice man, she knew better than to make friends or form attachments. Friends asked questions, they noticed things about you. Things they could repeat, however innocently, to people who might come looking for you.

So this was better, remaining an isolated mystery. It was also far less complicated. Now that she thought about it, this path she’d been forced to choose was also a great deal more lonely. Until right this minute, loneliness had not been a real problem for her. God knew she had more than enough on her mind to keep her occupied and busy. Too busy to feel lonely.

But right now, if not an actual shoulder to lean on, she could have really used an extra pair of hands to help her with this man.

Blowing out a long breath, Kasey shrugged as she put everything back into the basin and went back to the bathroom with it. There was no point in dwelling on what she didn’t have. She would have to make the best of it.

The way she had these last endless months.

Switching off the bathroom light, she went to the minuscule linen closet next. It was hardly big enough to hold a handful of towels and the extra bedding she kept there for cold winter nights. Grabbing the pink flannel blanket and the lone pillow from the top shelf, she returned to her patient.

On her knees, Kasey gently raised his head and slipped the pillow under it, then threw the flannel blanket over him. She spread it out, making sure all of him was covered.

“Who are you?” she asked softly as she rose again to her feet.

He’d had no wallet on him, no ID. She’d already checked his pockets. Had he been mugged? Or was there some other reason he didn’t have any identification with him?

Too many questions, no answers, she thought.

Looking down at herself, Kasey realized that she’d gotten the stranger’s blood on her when she’d dragged him in as well as on the floor and her rug. It wasn’t going to scrub itself out. So, for the next forty-five minutes, she did what she could to wash the telltale streaks of blood from her house and herself.

When she was finally finished with that, she paused to check the lock on the bathroom door. Satisfied that it would hold, she still brought in a chair. Closing the door, she wedged the chair underneath the doorknob— just in case. She’d learned the hard way that trusting made you exceptionally vulnerable.

Kasey took the world’s fastest shower.

Coming out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of jeans and a fresh shirt, still relatively damp from the shower, she checked on the stranger one more time. This time, he was exactly where she’d left him and he was still unconscious. The body was doing its part to help him heal.

As for her, she knew that her body was far too keyed up now to sleep. Resigned to yet another restless night, not unlike so many other nights, Kasey staked out a place for herself on the sofa, turned the TV on to one of the classic cable channels and turned the sound down to a whisper. She didn’t really need to hear what was being said. She knew the dialogue to this particular movie by heart. Even so, there was a certain amount of comfort in hearing the familiar repeated.

She smiled as Cary Grant, resplendent in a tuxedo and radiating charm, came on the scene. Some things you could always count on. It made her feel a tad better.

He felt as if his body had been disassembled and then put back together incorrectly, with some of the parts missing. Every single bone and muscle in his body made its presence known with one hell of an ache.

But pain was a good thing, right? Pain meant he was alive.

Either that or in hell.

With effort, Zack pried open his eyes. The first thing that came into focus was the flannel blanket.

He was no expert, but he was fairly certain that there were no pink blankets in hell. Which meant that his first impression was right. He was alive.

It was a good starting point.

He played dead for a moment, lowering his eyelids until all that remained opened were two tiny slits. Zack scanned the immediate area in front of him. He was lying on the floor of someone’s house.

Whose?

And for that matter, what was he doing on the floor, covered with a blanket? It wasn’t pulled over his head, so they—whoever “they” were—obviously didn’t think that he was dead. But why had they brought him here?

And, while he was at it, just where was here?

And what the hell was that searing pain all about? It threatened to take off the top of his head. The only way he could have felt worse was if he’d fallen headfirst into a wood chipper.

Zack struggled to extract his brain from the center of its cotton-batting prison. He needed to think clearly in order to piece things together.

He thought back. The last thing he remembered was going out into the alley behind the Internet café.

No, wait, the last thing he remembered was being shot and struggling with the man he’d been tailing. He’d tried to get possession of the man’s weapon before he could get off another shot. But it did go off again. And this time, the bullet had gone into the other man’s body.

Had it killed him?

Zack didn’t know. He always hit what he aimed for but this time, he wasn’t aiming. The discharge had been by accident, forced by the other man’s hand.

No, wait, that wasn’t the last thing he remembered, he amended again, desperately trying to hang on to loose, stray thoughts. He remembered trying to get away. He did get away. He’d managed to leave the strip mall and find his way into a development of white brick houses. A whole village of them. It was like something out of that silly fairy tale about the three little pigs. Except that he wasn’t the big bad wolf.

Even so, when he’d knocked on one door after another, nobody would let him in. No one would help him. And then, too weak to go on, he’d fallen to his knees before the last house.

After that, there was nothing. Had he passed out?

There was a woman on the sofa, dozing from the looks of it. Did he know her? He didn’t think so. He would have remembered a woman who looked like this one did, he thought. Even from this distance, with his eyes all but shut, he could see the woman with the curly brown hair had class. And looks.

Too bad he wasn’t going to meet her, but he really had to get out of here. There was someplace he had to be by noon. Dawn was breaking, so he judged that he still had some time left. But he had a feeling he wasn’t exactly himself today and that getting to where he had to be would require a lot of energy. If he didn’t make it in time, all hell could break loose. He knew that without being told. This was a delicate operation that required precise timing.

Removing the blanket from his body with a hand that felt incredibly stiff, Zack started to sit up.

The flash of sharp, excruciating pain was completely unexpected. So was the moan that involuntarily escaped his lips.

The woman on the sofa was awake and on her feet before he realized that the sound had come from him.

She had long, curly light brown hair and blue eyes that flashed as she came closer.

“What are you doing?” she demanded sharply, crossing to him.

He would have thought that would have been obvious. “Trying to get up.”

“Wait,” she cautioned, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She squatted down beside him. “Put your arm around my shoulders.”

Why did that sentence sound so familiar to him? As if he’d just heard it moments ago. But that was impossible. He had a feeling he’d been out at least several hours.

Shaking off any extraneous thoughts, he tried to do the same with the woman. “I can get up by myself,” he told her.

“No, you can’t.” She said it with such authority, he almost believed her. “If you strain yourself, you’ll wind up breaking open your stitches.” Her tone left no room for argument. “Now, lean on me and let me help.”

No matter what she sounded like, the woman looked like a delicate little thing. Just proved that looks could be deceiving. The strength he felt in her hands as she wrapped one around his waist surprised him.

Though he hated to admit it, even to himself, getting up was a lot easier with her help.

She got him up and onto the sofa. But he didn’t want to sit, he wanted to leave. Had to leave. Still, he was grateful for the momentary respite. Just getting to his feet had taken a lot out of him. He wasn’t used to playing the invalid.

Breathing hard, he mumbled, “Thanks.” After a beat, his breathing more regulated, he asked her, “How did I get here?”

She watched his face as she answered, looking for some telltale sign that this was a ruse. So far, he seemed genuinely confused. “I found you on my doorstep and dragged you inside.”

Zack frowned. “Why didn’t you call the police?” That would have been what most people would have done—if they would have done anything at all. If this had happened in one of the more metropolitan areas, the good citizens of that city would have probably walked right by him, pretending not to notice that he needed help.

She saw no reason to embellish on the truth. “You were bleeding and had a bullet wound. I didn’t know if calling the police would have gotten you into more trouble.”

“More?” he echoed.

“You were wounded,” she pointed out. “That seemed like enough trouble for one person for the time being.” She saw him glancing down at his side. Raising his bloodstained shirt, he exposed the large gauze bandage that wrapped around his rib cage. “I took the bullet out,” she explained matter-of-factly, second-guessing his next question.

He let the shirt drop back into place. “You a doctor?”

Kasey congratulated herself on not batting an eyelash. Instead, she nonchalantly shook her head. “No. I work in a secondhand bookstore.”

He raised a perplexed eyebrow at her answer. “I don’t follow.”

“I do a lot of reading in my spare time,” she elaborated, adding, “I particularly like reading medical books.”

He supposed that made sense, in an odd sort of way. He couldn’t argue with the fact that she’d taken out the bullet. He spotted it in the center of a coaster on the coffee table.

“Lucky for me you retained what you read,” he commented, amused.

She merely nodded. Getting up off the sofa, Kasey glanced toward the window. The sun was up. Time for her to get ready for work even though she’d had approximately an hour’s worth of sleep. The television set was still on, softly droning in the background. Someone was extolling the virtues of a newly developed body cream that did everything up to and including finding Prince Charming.

Turning off the set with her remote control, Kasey turned toward the man she’d helped.

Logically, she should be ushering him on his way. She’d taken out his bullet, sewed him up and let him sleep on her floor. It was time for him to go.

And yet, caring for him had awakened the person she’d once been. The person she liked. It prompted her to take another step into the world of kindness. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt, she silently argued. “Would you like something to eat?”

The moment she asked, Zack became aware of the gnawing pain in his belly. It wasn’t giving him discomfort because he’d been shot. He was hungry. He tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. Was it yesterday morning? The night before that? Zack couldn’t recall. His line of work didn’t encourage sticking to any sort of a reliable schedule.

He nodded in response to her question. “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

She moved toward the kitchen. “If I’d minded,” she informed him, “then I wouldn’t have offered.”

The lady sounded tough as nails—or was that only the impression she wanted to give? His job had taught him to look beneath the surface and read between the lines. Something had struck him as off right from the moment he opened his eyes.

“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” he asked, rising to his feet. He was less steady than he would have liked and it hurt like hell to walk, but he figured each step would get easier.

Kasey stood before the pantry. “Do you want eggs or cereal?”

“Eggs.” That wasn’t the question he had in mind. “No, I mean about why I got shot.”

She spared him a quick glance just before she opened the refrigerator. She might have questions, but she wasn’t about to ask them.

“No,” she told him, taking out the egg carton. “The less I know, the less anyone else can ask me.”

Chapter 3

Gingerly, bracing his hands on the small kitchen table, Zack lowered himself into the chair closest to him.

Maybe it was his police background, but he sensed she’d had experience with interrogation. She certainly piqued his curiosity, even if he did feel as if he’d been run over several times by a semi. Who was she? And was it chance, or fate, that had brought him literally to her doorstep?

“A woman with no curiosity,” he marveled in awe. “I didn’t think such a thing existed.”

She set the carton of eggs on the counter. “I’m glad I could contribute to furthering your education.”

No curiosity and a flippant response. An interesting combination. So was her long, curly light hair and her golden complexion. He watched the woman move gracefully around the small kitchen. No unnecessary movements. Everything seemed within reach. In moments, she had everything out and ready to prepare the breakfast she’d mentioned.

As he drew in the welcoming scent of coffee, she turned suddenly toward him. “How do you like your eggs?”

“Cooked.”

His mouth quirked in a quick grin. It transformed a scruffy-looking possible criminal into an adolescent boy who knew his way around charming the opposite sex.

Wasted on me, hotshot, she thought. I don’t charm anymore. But if she did, she added silently, that grin would have been an excellent start.

She waited for him to be more specific about his choice. When he wasn’t, she pressed, “Any other requirements?”

Zack shook his head. “Nope, I’m easy. I’ll have them whatever way you’re having them. Fried, poached, scrambled…” His voice trailed off, leaving the rest up to her to fill in.

“Scrambled it is,” she answered, turning back toward the counter and stove. Breaking four eggs, she dropped them directly into the frying pan rather than into a bowl. To her, it was just an unnecessary step, generating more dishes to wash. She took the spatula and broke apart the pattern the eggs began to form. The yolks and whites flowed into each other until they began to solidify in fluffy tufts. “Toast?”

Something he quite possibly would have been had she not been his Good Samaritan, Zack thought. He started to nod in response to her question, then realized that she wasn’t looking at him. “If you don’t mind.”

This time she did spare him a glance over her shoulder. Her expression seemed to repeat her previous statement that if she’d minded, she wouldn’t have asked him.

As she dropped two slices into the toaster, the silver appliance only held two slices. She was single, he decided. And had taken quite a chance with him.

“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.

Instead of answering, she looked over her shoulder at him again and asked, “Why?”

She might be short on curiosity, but she was long on suspicion, he thought. Was that inherent or something she’d learned? And if it was the latter, what had made her this way?

None of his thoughts were evident in his voice or on his face as he said glibly, “So that when I tell people the story of how an angel came to my rescue, I’ll be able to refer to you by name.”

Uh-huh, she thought. Right. She turned back to her cooking. “Rumplestiltskin.”

Zack laughed. “Not hardly. You don’t look like any ugly little fairy-tale creature that I ever saw in my sisters’ storybooks.”

So, he had sisters. Or was that just what he wanted her to think? God, but she missed the days when a duck was just a duck and not a camouflaged cheetah.

“That’s just to give you a false sense of security,” she told him.

Done, Kasey divided the eggs that were in the pan between two plates. Just as she finished, the toast popped. After setting the frying pan down on a dormant burner, she took the toast and applied a light layer of margarine to both slices. She cut them in half at an angle and placed both onto the stranger’s plate, framing the eggs. If she’d had bacon, she could have made a smiley face, like her mother used to a million years ago when both she and the world were innocent.

Kasey slid the plate in front of the dark-haired stranger. “There.” She placed her own plate opposite his on the kitchen table. But instead of sitting down, she asked, “Coffee?”

He thought she’d never offer. His eyes darted toward the coffeemaker. “Just bring the pot.”

She went to the cupboard and took out one cup, one mug. It was all she had. “Oh, you’re one of those.”

Watching her stretch to reach the top shelf made him momentarily forget about all the little devils beating on his body with pointy silver hammers. She had one hell of a graceful body, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Those?” he queried when she turned around again.

Taking a little for herself—she only liked a small taste to get her going—she poured the rest into the large mug she ordinarily used when she sipped soup. “People who claim they can’t wake up until they’ve had their morning coffee.”

There were days when he felt as if he ran on coffee. “Guilty as charged.”

Leaving her cup on the counter, she brought his mug over to him. “Milk, sugar?”

Zack shook his head, taking the mug from her and holding it with both hands, like someone receiving long-awaited sustenance.

“Only gets in the way,” he told her. Zack took a deep drink and she could have sworn he sighed with contentment. Glancing up at her again, he said, “Good coffee.”

“Grew the beans myself,” she deadpanned, taking her seat. She saw his eyebrows knit themselves together in a bemused line. “The coffee comes from a can,” she told him, erasing any misconceptions.

Obviously the man thought she had no sense of humor. Ordinarily, he would have been right. She had no idea what had possessed her to make the quip. Things like humor and kidding around had long since ceased being part of her daily life. She couldn’t even begin to remember the last time she’d laughed. Running left no time for laughter, left nothing to even smile about.

With coffee in his veins and his belly, he felt almost human again. And ready to pick up where he’d left off. Trying to find out who she was. “You’re really not going to tell me your name?”

She didn’t look up from her plate. “Kasey,” she answered. “Kasey Madigan.”

“Well, Kasey, Kasey Madigan, it’s an honor and a privilege to make your acquaintance.” He put out his hand as if to shake hers.

Kasey kept her hand where it was. She nodded at his plate. “Just finish your breakfast. I have to leave soon and I can’t have you here when I’m gone.”

He could see her point. Nodding, Zack applied his fork to the fare before him.

He ate like a man who had only faint memories of his last meal. Quick and with gusto. Was he homeless? she wondered, going back to her initial impression of him. He was scruffy, but not that scruffy. The stubble on his face couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old. If he was homeless, it couldn’t have been for that long. But then, she supposed that even homeless people had a first week of homelessness in their past.

“Where do you work?”

He asked pleasantly enough, but she didn’t like dealing with questions. Any kind of questions. “In a bookstore.” She’d already told him that.

Zack nodded. “I know, but where is the bookstore located?”

“Why, are you looking to expand your library?” she asked.

She was reluctant to give out any information, he thought. And yet, she’d taken him in and seen to his wound, something a lot of other people wouldn’t have done. Especially if they lived alone.

The woman seemed like a walking contradiction.

“You never know,” he answered, going with her last comment. “I like reading.”

She merely nodded, as if she expected everyone to feel that way about books. Zack let the topic drop. He noticed her plate was empty. The next second, she was getting up, taking it to the sink. He quickly polished off the last of his eggs and toast. He could have eaten more.

“This was good,” he told her.

“It was simple,” she replied, ignoring the compliment he had given her.

Leaning his palms against the table top, Zack slowly pushed himself up to his feet. Damn, he still felt wobbly. He had no patience with infirmity when he was the one who was infirm. This was going to be a problem, he thought.

Approaching her, he asked suddenly, “Do you have a car?”

She turned around from the sink and looked at him for a second, trying to read his expression before she answered. Did he want to take her car? If so, he was in no shape to drive.

“Yes.” She let the single word hang in the air for a minute before asking, “Why?”

He didn’t like asking for favors, especially from people he didn’t know, but he needed to get back and Aurora’s public transportation left a great deal to be desired.

“Look, you’ve already gone more than out of your way for me—”

She saw no reason to dispute that. “Yes.”

He couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with him, or tossing out the word just to make him get to the point faster. “I need a ride,” he told her bluntly. “Someone slashed the tires on my car.”

She wondered if it was actually his car, or if he’d stolen it. “Before or after they shot you?”

“Probably before.” He stopped himself, his words replaying themselves in his head. “This sounds like some kind of melodrama, doesn’t it?”

Her mouth curved slightly. “One that went straight to video,” she agreed.

For a moment, Zack wrestled with his thoughts. He’d been undercover for several months now and things were obviously coming to a head. But his gut told him that this woman had no connections to the identity-theft ring he and his team were trying to break up. Wounded, bleeding and disoriented, he had come to her, she hadn’t sought him out. That made her an outsider.

He didn’t want to repay her act of kindness by telling her a lie. He really didn’t have to tell her very much at all beyond a few nebulous pieces of information. At the very least, she deserved to know who she’d gone out of her way for.

“My name’s Zack McIntyre.”

“Okay,” she said gamely. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

She really didn’t want to know anything, did she? That either made her incredibly unique, or afraid of something. “No, but you didn’t ask me what my name was after you told me yours.”

Slender shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “I figured if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” She looked at him as if her point was made. “And you did.”

Zack shook his head. His sisters could certainly take a few pointers from her. They acted as if they had the right to know every single detail of his life.

“You don’t have any curiosity, do you?” he marveled.

“I know all I need to know to get me through the day,” she replied complacently.

He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that as far as she was concerned, that was enough.

Zack watched her as she got ready to leave. “I’d be careful if I were you,” he told her.

He was kidding, she told herself. But she still couldn’t bank down the fear that suddenly spiked through her. Was he giving her a veiled warning? She succeeded in keeping her voice cool as she asked him, “And why’s that?”

He watched as she slipped on her high heels. They gave her an extra four inches. “Well, a woman with no curiosity is a rare creature. Someone might be tempted to kidnap you and put you in a museum dedicated to rare and mythical creatures—like the unicorn.”

Kasey slipped her purse straps onto her shoulder. “There are no such things as unicorns.”

He winked at her as she crossed to the door. “Or so they’d like us to think.”

It was just a simple little movement, a flutter of an eyelid. Why did that feel so unsettling? She hadn’t even looked at another man since Jim had died. Hadn’t even thought about anyone else. Where was this coming from?

It didn’t matter where it was coming from, she upbraided herself sternly. What mattered was sending this man on his way, out of her life.

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” she asked as she opened the front door.

Home, Zack thought. Either the bachelor digs where he kept most of his clothes, or better yet, his mother’s house where he and his brother and sisters had grown up. Just the sight of his mother would make him feel that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. Especially now that Lila McIntyre was finally going to be marrying the man she should have been married to all along, her former partner and the current chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh. She would have had a much more peaceful life had she been Brian’s wife and not his father’s. They would all have had more peaceful lives if she’d married Brian instead.

Zack locked away the thought. No point in going there. And physically, he couldn’t go to his mother’s house anyway, not right now. Until he was told otherwise, until his captain pulled him off the case, he was still Danny Masters, a hacking genius with a talent for resurrecting information on so-called reformatted hard drives and with an unending need for other people’s money.

So for now, he would return to the run-down motel room where he’d been staying for the duration of this charade. Because Danny Masters couldn’t afford any better digs. Master computer wizard though he was and blessed with a silver tongue, he had one very bad fatal flaw. He gambled. On anything and anyone. Which made him the ideal employee for an unscrupulous employer. His addiction made him easier to control, easier to have power over. In essence, “Danny Masters” owed his soul to the company store.

He leaned against the whitewashed brick as he waited for her to lock the front door. “I’ll give you the address,” he promised, “once we get into your car.”

The look in her eyes was wary, as if she was debating whether or not to believe him. And then she seemed to make up her mind and nodded, tucking her purse under her arm.

“All right,” she announced briskly, turning away from the house, “let’s go.”

Zack caught his lower lip between his teeth to suppress any sound of discomfort that might escape. His side really hurt. He fell into place beside his solemn angel of mercy, moving not nearly as quickly as he would have liked to.

But he was making progress, which was all that counted to him. His life and his job had taught him how to be a patient man.

Andrew Cavanaugh threw open the front door before his younger brother even took his finger off the doorbell. Brian had the keys to his house, as he had to Brian’s, but an inherent respect for each other’s privacy kept those keys in his pocket.

“We need to talk,” Andrew declared, doing his best to harness the emotions that had prompted him to call and ask Brian to come over as quickly as possible.

“As I recall, you do that far better than me, big brother.” Chief of Detectives Brian Cavanaugh braced himself as walked into his older brother’s house.

The former chief of police had summoned him via a voice message that he’d left on his answering machine. Andrew’s message, unlike his normal, friendly fare, was very somber. He hadn’t a clue as to why.

Considering the fact that he and Lila McIntyre had given Andrew carte blanche to do whatever he wanted for their wedding reception, he would have expected his brother to be in fantastic spirits. Since leaving the force to care for his then-motherless brood of five, Andrew had turned his attention toward his second passion: cooking. Cooking was his way of keeping not just his immediate family but his entire family together. With one hand tied behind his back, the man could create huge, sumptuous meals for an amazing amount of people. No one who ever went to Andrew’s house remained hungry once they crossed his threshold.

But one look at Andrew’s face told Brian that this wasn’t about food. Still, trying to keep the mood light and far too happy to allow himself to be brought down, Brian cracked, “What’s the matter, the man doing the ice sculpture decide to back out?”

Andrew didn’t even attempt to smile. Instead, he led the way to the kitchen and nodded toward a chair. “Sit down, Brian.”

Something in Andrew’s tone undercut any further attempt at humor. Andrew sounded just the way he had when he’d broken the news to him that their middle brother, Mike, had been killed in the line of duty.

They’d all followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the force in their early twenties. Of the three of them, Mike had been the black sheep, the one who grew more and more resentful of the rut he found himself in. Andrew had done his best to keep Mike in line, to make him see and appreciate just how rich his life actually was. But Mike would have none of it, becoming envious as both his brothers received accolades and promotions while he remained a beat cop. Toward the end, there’d been hatred in Mike’s eyes when he looked at them. Hatred because he felt he could never “measure up.” Hatred mingled with self-loathing he’d tried to anesthetize with progressively more alcohol. All that did was generate even more problems.

Brian looked at his brother, trying to fathom whatever was coming. “I’ll take whatever you have to say standing, Andrew.”

This wasn’t easy for him. Andrew had been the patriarch ever since a heart attack had claimed their father all those years ago. The patriarch and the voice of reason. After everything he’d been through in his life, he’d earned the right to expect tranquility, not turmoil, to fill the end of his days. But even beyond the grave, Mike managed to toss a little chaos their way.

“I had a visitor the other day,” he began, searching for the right words. This was going to be a shock. Not just to Brian, but to Patrick and Patience, Mike’s kids. Maybe especially to them. “Three visitors, actually,” Andrew amended.

When Andrew paused, Brian prodded him along. He’d promised to stop by Lila’s. Her oldest was on some special assignment and she hadn’t heard from him in a week. She needed reassurance.

“And?”

Andrew gazed at him. Brian tried to remember when he’d seen so much sadness in his brother’s eyes. “They were Mike’s kids.”

Was Andrew getting muddled? He knew the names and ages of not only his kids and their spouses and children but the names and ages of all his nieces, nephews and their spouses and children.

“Mike didn’t have three kids,” Brian reminded him. “He had two. Patrick and Patience.”

Andrew’s expression never changed. “Besides Patrick and Patience.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed and his mouth dropped open. “Mike had three other kids?” That didn’t seem possible. They would have known, he and Andrew. “You’re kidding, right?”

If anything, Andrew seemed more somber. “You know me better than that. I never kid about family.”

“When? How?” Questions popped up in Brian’s head like wild mushrooms after a summer rain. “Do they live in Aurora?”

An ironic smile twisted Andrew’s lips. “Not only do they live in Aurora, but they’re all cops, the lot of them.”

“I’ll take that seat now,” Brian murmured, sinking down onto the barstool.

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