Native Born

She flapped her arms, now decorated with what was left of her Ann Taylor white blouse. He’d torn the collar right off the back as if he were tearing tissue paper.

She tried for a full breath and didn’t make it.

“Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?” he asked.

It did.

How did he know that?

But then she remembered. Clyne Cosen was a former US marine. His jacket didn’t mention that he had taken lead.

His smile held and she felt herself drawn in. Three words from his character profile bounced around in her head like a Ping-Pong ball dropped on concrete.

Charismatic.

Charming.

Persuasive.

“Took one here and here.” He pointed to his stomach and ribs. Making them part of an elite club, she supposed. The two of them. Only she was the one struggling with her breathing.

“A vest saved my life once before.”

She didn’t understand. He hadn’t been hit. She’d kept him from that, protecting him like she was in the secret service and he was the president.

“Before?” she asked.

He pressed his open palm over her middle, his fingers splayed over her abdomen and she swore she could feel his touch even through the body armor. He met her stare.

“Agent Walker, you just saved my life.”

Chapter Two (#ulink_f139c7b6-a8c6-5139-912d-6ce87405d92d)

“You can thank me later,” Cassidy said. The bullet meant for Cosen had struck her in the back. She’d done her job, acted like a human shield and was trying very hard not to feel pissed about it.

Who wanted him dead? she wondered.

Cassidy slipped the shoulder harness over her right side and winced as she reached to get that left arm through. She managed it.

“Let me help,” he said, reaching for the buckle.

“Did I warn you about the gun?”

He drew back. Once she had it clipped she was sweating like a marathon runner. But she still managed to drag her gray pinstripe blazer over her body armor, removing the view of turquoise lace from Clyne and any of the persons in the hallway. The tattered remains of her sleeves peeked out from the cuff of her ruined jacket.

She pushed off and he helped her up. Cassidy resisted the urge to bat his hand away.

“You’re uninjured?” she asked.

“Yes. But you need to see a doctor.”

“You carrying?” she asked, trying to surmise if he wore a holster under his blazer or clipped to the belt that sported an elaborate turquoise and red coral buckle. Her gaze dipped south of his buckle and she flushed. And wouldn’t you know it, when she lifted her gaze it was to find Cosen’s gaze intent and his body perfectly still. Only now the tension in his tightly coiled muscles seemed sexual and arousing as all get-out.

“Sorry,” she said.

He made a sound in his throat that fell somewhere between a growl and an acknowledgment.

She shook her head to clear the unwelcome arousal that stole through her. “Rendezvous point. Come on. Not safe here.” Man, it hurt to talk.

Cassidy motioned for him to proceed down the hall. They’d made it about halfway when two of the field agents from her unit, Pauling and Harvey, appeared in the hall. Pauling came first, jogging so the sides of his suit coat flapped open to reveal both the shield on his belt and the butt of his pistol under his left arm. Keith Pauling was young, hungry and a former army ranger, with neatly trimmed hair and a hard angular face that screamed Fed from a hundred yards. Behind him came Louis Harvey, more experienced, heavier set but the haircut was a dead ringer.

“She’s been shot,” said Clyne.

Harvey took charge of Clyne and Pauling flanked Cassidy as they ushered them to the rendezvous room and her supervisor, who no longer looked smug.

“Walker. What took you so long?” he asked.

“She’s been shot,” Clyne said again.

Cassidy cast him a look. She didn’t need him as her mouthpiece. Her ribs were feeling better and she’d be damned if she was going to spend the afternoon in the hospital when they had a shooter out there.

Clyne was herded away. He gave her one last long look over his shoulder, his braid swinging as he went. He was one of the most handsome men she had ever met and for just a moment, the confident mask slipped and she saw her daughter’s face. The resemblance took her breath away.

Amanda. The arch of the brow, the worry in those big brown eyes. And then he was gone.

She scowled after him. If she had saved his life, then he had also protected hers. When other speakers on stage had run or fallen or flattened to the platform, Clyne had acted like a soldier, recognized that she was injured and carried her to safety.

She hated to owe him anything and wondered if he felt the same. She had met him before this. On a snowy evening on the Black Mountain reservation while investigating a meth ring. And again in court when her attorneys succeeded in delaying the process for challenging her daughter’s adoption.

Cassidy saw a medic first, who decided that her ribs were bruised. The slug that they dug from her vest appeared to be a thirty caliber. She declined transport and borrowed an FBI T-shirt from Pauling that was still miles too big for her. The navy blue T said FBI in bold yellow lettering across the front and back. She covered what she could with the blazer.

Her people had already found the location of the shooter, now long gone. He’d left at least one rifle cartridge behind, despite taking two shots.

“He was on the roof of the adjacent hotel,” said Tully. Her new boss peered at her with striking blue eyes. His hairline had receded to the point that it was now only a pale fringe clipped short at the sides of his head, but his face was thin and angular with a strong jaw and eyes that reminded her of a bird of prey.

She knew from his previous comments that he liked running their unit and didn’t like that she wanted out. He took it as some kind of black mark that she was not satisfied to bake out in this godforsaken pile of sand called Arizona. But Cassidy wanted to join a team that chased the big fish, not the endless flow of traffickers and illegals that ebbed and flowed over the boarder like a tide.

Tully plopped her down before a computer and made her write her report. While the others moved out to investigate; she sat in the control room. The reporting didn’t take long. After she finished, she went over the footage of the event with one of the techs, watching her movements when the vase exploded from the first blast and then the proceeding mayhem. They had not stationed on the roofs because the threat was not deemed great enough to warrant the added security. If they had, her people might have been in place when the shooter arrived.

Her partner returned. Luke Forrest was Black Mountain Apache and Clyne’s uncle, though as she understood it, he was Clyne’s father’s half brother and born of a different father and clan, though she didn’t understand the clan system very well. Luke had not applied to the Bureau, but had been recruited right out of the US marines.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“Bored,” she said.

He laughed, his generous smile coming easily on his broad mouth.

“Well, there’s worse things,” said Luke.