Seduced by the Sniper

A sudden fury hit him. Connors had taken more than Scott had realized on that beautiful June day. Not only had he robbed nine men of their lives, he’d also stolen away a promising career.

Scott might not have seen Chelsie in action, but he’d heard enough about her from Maggie and some of the other agents at the WFO long before he’d taken her home. Even before she’d trained as a negotiator, she’d had a reputation as someone who could see to the heart of what a perp wanted and talk him into choosing a peaceful way to get it.

It was not a talent a lot of people had. He sure didn’t. He could take out a moving target at half a mile, but talking down a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest? That was a job he’d gladly leave to someone else.

Cursing under his breath, Scott pulled up the case file from last year. Chelsie might not want anything to do with it, but there was something about this whole situation that felt off to Scott. Something about Connors’s actions that didn’t add up. And the answer had to be in the original case, or in the trial testimony.

Wherever it was, he planned to find it. And hopefully, it would lead them to Connors.

Once they put Connors back behind bars where he belonged, Scott could turn to the next problem. And suddenly that wasn’t how to get Chelsie back in his bed, but how to convince her not to throw away her career as a negotiator.

And if she happened to fall for him again in the process, he wasn’t going to put up a fight.

* * *

FEAR PUMPED THROUGH Chelsie’s veins as she crouched outside the community center, pressed as tightly to the brick wall as possible. The roar of the rifle was all she could hear. Dead men lay in the parking lot, their blood slowly streaming toward her.

Her bullhorn was discarded across her lap, useless, as somewhere out there, Connors tried to center her skull neatly in his crosshairs. Chelsie crouched lower. Everyone was dead. She was a failure, a failure, a failure...

Bang!

The sound split through the air as Chelsie jolted upright, breathing too hard. Everything was dark, except for the light streaming toward her from the left, and it took her a minute to get her bearings, for her eyes to adjust.

She was in the bedroom in the safe house. She’d been sleeping, having the dream again—the one she thought she’d quit having six months ago. She wasn’t back at the community center with Connors trying to kill her. It was over. She was safe. As long as Connors didn’t find her again.

Scott stood in the open doorway, backlit from the hall. He held a laptop in his hands and his hair was sticking up on top. He seemed exhausted, but there was a sharpness to his expression that made her drag the covers up to her chin.

Which was ridiculous, since the cop who’d been called to the break-in at her apartment had packed her a conservative T-shirt and pajama shorts to sleep in. Scott had already seen her naked, already had his hands and mouth on just about every inch of her skin.

“What are you doing in here?” she croaked, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. She’d gone to bed hours ago, after eating a silent, awkward dinner with Scott. She’d thought he was asleep, too. Andre had woken up to finish off the rest of the cold pizza and take the next watch.

“I knocked,” Scott replied. “You okay?”

“Fine.” As he stepped into her room and flicked on the light, Chelsie squinted up at him. “Did they find Connors?”

“Not yet.”

She slumped against the headboard, dropping her covers. “Then what do you want?”

His gaze slid over her, and she squirmed as he moved closer, his steps slow and sure. His jeans and T-shirt fit his lanky body just right, made him seem laid-back and approachable while doing nothing to hide the bunching muscles underneath. It reminded her of how he’d looked in Shields a year ago.

It reminded her of exactly why she’d thrown thirty-four years of caution away and gone home with a near-stranger.

In a lot of ways, he was still a stranger. They’d talked in Shields, had discovered they could make each other laugh, that they had similar outlooks on their jobs. But once they’d left the bar, they hadn’t exactly passed the hours chatting. She could describe the birthmark on his upper thigh in minute detail, but she couldn’t say if he had any siblings besides Maggie, what he’d done before he’d joined the Bureau or how he spent his free time.

As he sat on the edge of her bed, sinking down on the springs, his weight shifting her closer to him, an ache filled her chest. She wished she did know those things. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She opened her mouth, wanting to ask him...something, but he spoke first.

“I want you to check out the crime-scene images.”

Chelsie sat up straighter, moving away from him as he held his laptop toward her. “What? Why? No.”

She sounded frantic, but she didn’t care. The nightmares were already starting up again. She didn’t need to study the crime-scene photos and make it worse, regardless of how much of a coward that made her seem.

She scowled, hating that Scott would see her that way now, too. He’d picked a job where he ran into the danger everyone else ran away from. He’d already seen her run away, from her job as a negotiator, and from him.

Steeling herself, she grabbed the laptop before she could change her mind. But there were no crime-scene photos on his screen, only a drawing with the details—distances, locations of the victims and the shooter— written in. Surprised, she glanced over the top of the screen at Scott.

He moved slightly, leaning against the headboard, and stretched his long legs across her bed.

There wasn’t enough room for both of them, and she found her legs pressed against his through the thin sheet, with nowhere to go. If she turned her head, raised it a little, his face would be right there. His lips would be right there.

Instead, she stared resolutely at the screen. “What am I looking at?” Her voice sounded too high-pitched, but if Scott noticed, he didn’t say anything.

Instead, he pointed to the spot on the drawing marked Suspect. “Connors was here.” He moved his finger to the spot right outside the community-center front door. Next to an X, it read FBI Special Agent Russell. “You were here?”

There was a tension in his voice she didn’t understand. “Yeah.” She glanced at him, and this close, she could see the individual whiskers on his chin, the tense lines between his eyes that she wanted to smooth.

“Not here?” He moved his finger from the left side of the U outside the community-center front door to the right side.

“No. Why?”

“Chelsie.” The worry in his voice deepened, and there was concern in the depths of his deep brown eyes. “Connors not firing at you wasn’t because he couldn’t.”

Chelsie’s pulse picked up. “What are you talking about?”

“Look where he is.” He pointed to the X marked Suspect again.

“So?”

“So, I ran the numbers. If they’re right, he did have a shot at you. He chose to let you live. He chose to let only you live.”

Chapter Four (#ulink_13057057-839d-5890-a6d1-ebf69097fa57)

Chelsie stared up at Scott, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, he let me live?”

“He had a shot, Chelsie,” Scott said quietly. “We found his shell casings. He was high enough on those bleachers. He could have hit you.”

“If that’s true, then why didn’t he?” Chelsie demanded, not wanting to believe it. “If he could have gotten me in his crosshairs, he would have killed me. He snapped. He was taking out anyone he could hit that day.”

“Apparently not,” Scott said.

She stared at him, noticing the deep circles underneath his eyes. Andre had said they’d been up for eighteen hours before they’d brought her to the safe house. And yet, instead of getting some sleep, Scott had reviewed the case file.

Chelsie felt something suspiciously like affection, and tried to ignore it. “Maybe you did the geometry wrong.”

Scott shook his head, but instead of being insulted, he just appeared exhausted. “It’s the same kind of calculations I do in my head every time I fire my rifle, Chelsie. I mess those up and I shoot a hostage instead of the perp. I could do them in my sleep. Trust me. I’m not wrong.”

“Then why didn’t they figure this out before?” she demanded.