In Destiny's Shadow

The shockwave caught them before they could reach the street. The man lunged for her, wrapping his arms around her as they were lifted into the air. He twisted so that he took their combined weight on his back when they hit the ground, then quickly reversed their positions, sheltering her beneath him as embers and pieces of burning wreckage bounced from the walls and the pavement around them.

It seemed to go on forever. Melina tucked her face against his neck and squeezed her eyes shut. Her retinas burned with an afterimage of the fireball. Her ears rang. Her knees stung.

And her nerves were humming as if she were still too close to that live wire.

She struggled to draw air into her lungs. She tasted smoke and ozone…and warm male skin. Her lips tingled where she touched the stranger’s throat. A shiver shook her body. The hair at the nape of her neck stirred.

He rolled off her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and opened her eyes. He was kneeling at her hip, a large, dark silhouette against the fire that crackled behind him. She could see the outline of his square jaw and caught a glint of gold at his ear but she couldn’t see his face. The fire was the only illumination—the streetlights beyond the alley had gone black.

He leaned over to run his hands along her arms and down her legs. He lingered at her knees. “I don’t think that’s your blood on your skirt.”

“No. It’s Fredo’s. I just was talking to him. I can’t believe—”

“I saw what happened. I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”

“I didn’t even know his last name. Oh, God, he—” Her voice broke.

He slipped one arm under her back to help her sit up. “Can you walk?”

She swallowed hard before she could speak again. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just…winded. What you did back there…” She sounded scared. Well, she was scared, and she felt sick. But at least she was alive. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Sorry if I hurt you when I grabbed you.”

“We both could have been shot. And that wire—”

“We got lucky.”

“I have to call an ambulance. For Fredo.” She groped for her purse. The strap had twisted around her neck but it hadn’t broken. She pulled the purse to her lap, undid the clasp and shoved her hand inside. “I need my phone.”

“No, you don’t.” He got to his feet and held out his palm. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him now. Or for his killers.”

In her heart, she knew he was right. She had been at enough accident and crime scenes to recognize death when she saw it. Fredo was gone. She squinted at the burning wreckage of the van. Unless they had escaped out the back doors, the people who had killed him were dead, too.

Could she have saved the people in the van if she had gone back to help them? Probably not—everything had happened too fast. If she had tried, she would be dead now, either from electrocution, the explosion or from one of their bullets.

She fought back a wave of nausea. God, this was a nightmare.

“Come on, Miss Becker.” The man leaned over, caught her hand and tugged it out of her purse. “Time to leave before we have more company.”

The slide of his skin against hers sent a strange tickle up her arm, distracting her. She had started to rise before she realized what he had said. She tried to yank her hand free. “How do you know my name?”

He firmed his grasp and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. “I’ll explain later. You need to get somewhere safe.”

“What’s going on? Who are you?”

“My name’s Anthony Caldwell.”

She tried to kick her brain into gear. The name wasn’t familiar—she was sure she had never met him—so how did he know her?

There was a sudden bang and a flare of light from the wreckage. The alley and everything in it was bathed in red. For the first time, she was able to see her rescuer’s face.

Once again, Melina couldn’t seem to draw air into her lungs. The man’s expression was as unyielding as his grip on her fingers. His features were all harsh lines and sharp angles, too austere to be termed handsome. His hair was thick and raven-black, pulled ruthlessly back and caught by a band at the nape of his neck. A thin gold hoop pierced his left earlobe. He looked hard, uncompromising. Untouchable.

Yet his gaze…oh, those green eyes snapped with power that shot right through her body, jolting her nerves to vivid awareness, sending her racing pulse into overdrive, reaching deep inside where she hid the pain….

She trembled. She felt as if she were being drawn forward. It took all her strength to keep from swaying into him. What was happening here?

The flare of light died. Oily smoke rolled over them. A dog barked somewhere in the distance above the crackle of the flames, jarring her back to reality.

“You have no reason to fear me, Miss Becker,” he said. “We’re on the same side.”

Melina yanked her hand free of his and stepped back. Her pulse still pounded. Traces of awareness trickled down her spine and hardened her nipples. Her nipples? She couldn’t be aroused, could she? Not now. What was wrong with her?

Her reaction to this man had to be shock, that’s all. Or adrenaline. She had to get herself under control. She had to think logically, objectively. Set aside her emotions and put the facts together. That was what she did best. That was who she was.

But who—and what—was he?

Anthony Caldwell was a complete stranger. She definitely had never met him before, or she would have remembered. Any woman would have remembered a man who caused a reaction like that.

She shoved her hand back into her purse. Her fingertips brushed the edge of her phone. This man had saved her life, but that was the only thing about him she knew for certain. The prudent thing to do now would be to call the police. “You said we were on the same side. What does that mean?”

“We both want the same thing.”

She turned the phone in her hand until her thumb was positioned over the keypad. “And what’s that?”

“Titan.”

This wasn’t how Anthony had wanted to play it. He did his best work in the shadows. He had never intended to meet Melina Becker face-to-face. It would have been simpler to follow her until he had the opportunity to take what he needed. But the man who called himself Titan had been a step ahead of him. Again.

Because of that, yet another soul had died.

Anthony’s knuckles whitened where he gripped the steering wheel. How many deaths were on the bastard’s hands now? How many more would there be before Anthony stopped him? Would any of them have happened if he had been stopped twenty-eight years ago, after the first one?

He kept the Jeep steady despite the burst of rage that shook him. The anger was nothing new. He couldn’t remember a time without it.

He spotted the oval green-on-white sign that was the trademark of the Grand Inn chain, and turned into the parking lot. Out of habit, he backed the Jeep into a spot so that he could get out quickly, then shut off the engine and looked at his passenger.

She probably thought that clenching her hands in her lap that way would hide the tremor in her fingers. It must be important to her not to show weakness. Anthony could understand that. For a woman who had witnessed a murder and had narrowly missed becoming a victim herself, she was holding up well.

He had expected no less. Melina was the lead crime reporter for the New York Daily Journal. She hadn’t gotten to the top of her field by being a coward. It had taken some nerve to fly halfway across the country and walk into a deserted alley in the dead of night to meet a source. Almost as much nerve as it had taken for her to get into this Jeep with him.

Then again, he knew she would do anything to get the man she knew as Titan. They had that much in common.

She turned her head to meet his gaze. Her auburn curls were backlit by the floodlight over the motel office, giving them the appearance of a halo. The curve of her cheek was softly feminine, gleaming like satin. Her lips were full and shaped in a classic bow, and he couldn’t help remembering how good she had felt in his arms.

Had she sensed the sexual current that had flowed between them back there in the alley? Its strength had taken him by surprise. It had been all he could do to bring it back under control, but he’d had no choice. He couldn’t afford the distraction. This was the wrong time, the wrong place and definitely the wrong woman.