One Night In Texas

“Why didn’t we know about them?”

“Apparently, Galloway is the only one who came forward and asked for help.” Derek flipped through a few more pages and saw a schedule of delivery dates. “Right now it looks as if Galloway was the last guy Owens collected information on, and it’s the only DVD he hasn’t yet sent to his client.”

Derek wasn’t sure what to do with the file. If Galloway was the only one being blackmailed, he’d take it, along with every other file in the safe. But now that it was clear that other congressmen were involved, he didn’t want Owens to know that somebody had broken in. Owens would alert his client in a heartbeat, which meant they wouldn’t stand a chance of locating the rest of the blackmail material that had already been delivered.

“Call Washington,” Derek told Kevin. “Get in touch with Sedgewick. Tell him the situation. We need some new marching orders.”

Derek waited impatiently as Kevin made the call, anxious to get the hell out of this apartment before something else went wrong. Only two minutes passed before he heard Kevin’s voice again, but it felt like a hundred.

“What’s the word?” Derek asked.

“We need to grab Owens and get him to Washington for interrogation. They need to find out who his client is so they can have a shot at locating the blackmail material before Monday morning. And bring everything else in the safe, too. They want to know what else this guy is up to.”

“Okay,” Derek said. “Get on the phone to Wilson and McManus and tell them to pick up Owens and deliver him to the Learjet at Love Field.”

“Gotcha.”

Derek was confident that that part of the plan would come together. His men were as proficient at kidnapping as they were at surveillance.

“Then call Lambert and tell him I need him to fly the plane,” Derek said. “Have him meet us at the airfield ASAP.”

“Will do.”

“I’m coming down now.”

Derek grabbed all the folders from the safe and stuck them into his backpack. After closing the safe, he flipped the rug back into place. Then he stopped short.

Had he just seen a shadow move beneath the closet door?

He froze, barely breathing, his gaze fixed on the shadow. Several seconds passed. It moved again.

Someone was in the closet. And whoever it was had undoubtedly heard every word he’d spoken.

ALYSSA SHIFTED nervously from one foot to the other, thinking that an hour had to have passed while she’d been in this closet. And the longer she stood there, the more she realized something was very strange about this situation. Just the fact that the burglar had gotten past the security system to enter the apartment through the back elevator astonished her. Equally amazing was the speed with which he’d broken into the safe. Pretty soon it became clear to her that his running monologue was actually one side of a conversation he was carrying on electronically with someone who was downstairs keeping watch.

And he was saying the strangest things. Blackmailed congressmen? DVDs? Learjets? What was all that about?

Right now, though, she really didn’t care. She just wanted him to grab what he’d come for and leave the building so she could get out of this apartment, call the police, then go somewhere and have a good, stiff drink.

Then all at once, the closet door flew open.

Before she could react with anything but a quick yelp of surprise, the man in the ski mask took two steps into the closet, grabbed her and spun her around. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her back to his chest. When he pressed the barrel of a gun against the side of her neck, she let out a strangled gasp.

“Not a sound,” he said. “Not one.”

She fell silent, with only the hiss of her panicked breathing breaking the stillness inside the closet.

“Everything’s under control,” he murmured. “Just sit tight.”

Alyssa knew he wasn’t talking to her, but to whomever was on the other end of whatever hands-free communication device he was using. For a long time the man stood motionless, his arm clamped tightly around her. Fear raced through her.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“My name? Why—”

“Tell me.”

“Uh, Alyssa. Ballard.”

The man’s chest expanded with a deep, silent breath. “Damn.”

For some reason her name seemed to have made him unhappy. Given that he had a gun pressed to her jugular right now, she really wished it hadn’t.

“Do you work in this building?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Even as Alyssa’s heart pounded with apprehension, a sense of sudden recognition came over her. That voice. She’d heard it before. Despite the fact that his words were threatening, the deep, melodic tone of his voice still came through.

But it couldn’t be. She was imagining it.

He shifted his hand against her rib cage. She looked down at it and she couldn’t believe what she saw. A ring. Sterling silver. Alpha and omega symbols intertwined.

She glanced at his arm wrapped around her, his bicep bulging beneath his black T-shirt, and saw a long, irregular scar that extended the length of his forearm, faded to white but still distinct. The ring she was just now remembering, but his body she’d never forgotten. She’d memorized every inch of it, up to and including that scar.

For a moment she was too stunned to speak. Every second seemed sluggish and protracted as the reality of who he was slowly bared itself. She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice.

“Derek?”

His body stiffened, an involuntary reaction that told her just how right she was. Good Lord. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but…

It was Derek. He was here. In this building, two thousand miles from the last place she’d seen him. And he was robbing this apartment.

“It’s you,” she said. “I know it is. Your voice. Your ring. The scar on your arm.”

He was silent.

“So this is why you left me in Seattle?” she said, her voice escalating. “Because you’re a burglar?”

He said nothing. She squirmed in his arms. “Let me go!”

When he continued to hold her tightly, suddenly all the pain and frustration he’d caused her, both here and in Seattle, welled up inside her in a hot mass of anger. The man she’d been so crazy about, the man who’d intrigued her to no end, the man with whom she’d spent one wonderful week and had imagined a thousand more to come…

He was a criminal. And he wasn’t going to get away with this.

She lifted her knee, then slammed her heel down hard on his instep. He grunted in pain, loosening his grip on her just enough that she wrenched herself from his arms and shoved him aside to head out of the closet. But before she cleared the doorway, he snaked his arm around her and yanked her back. Only this time he didn’t stop there. He pulled a tie off a nearby rack and bound her hands behind her.

“What are you doing?” she shouted, yanking hard against the tie, unable to believe he’d done it. Unable to believe how fast he’d done it.