Secret Agent Heiress

When she turned his way toward the light, he swore. Five dark bruises, fitting the span of a man’s rough hand, dotted her cheekbones. Against her pale, peaches-and-cream skin, the marks stood out like a crude attempt at finger painting.

She cowered back a step, startled by his curse. “What’s wrong?”

He remembered her wrists. She’d mentioned pain there twice before. He reached for her fingers, water bottle and all, and pulled her wrist up into the light. The duct tape had left angry welts the size of thick yarn, curling like bracelets around her bruised wrist. “Son of a bitch.”

“So you said.” She pulled her hand away, as if embarrassed by the marks.

“Get something in your stomach,” he ordered. “I’m giving you some aspirin and we’ll doctor those up.”

Her immediate protests fell on deaf ears. He spread a tarp on the floor and set out aspirin, alcohol swabs and antibiotic ointment. He could sense her fatigue because the arguments didn’t last for long. When he told her to have a seat, she crossed her legs like a ballerina and folded herself, pretzel-style, to sit on the tarp.

Vincent brought the lantern close to illuminate his work. He bathed her face with water and dabbed the bruises with alcohol. She had such fine pale skin. Clear and smooth, like cream to the eye. And down the bridge of her nose, spilling onto her cheeks, a sprinkling of dusty freckles reflected the reddish highlights in her hair.

He pushed aside the red-gold locks that fell in waves past the top of her shoulders and tended the thick bruise across her neck. He recognized that kind of marking. She’d been choked to unconsciousness. Applying that kind of pressure a few inches higher or lower would have fractured her larynx or crushed her sternum. Either wound, left unattended, could have killed her.

Damn Chilton. Vincent didn’t know Whitney beyond the dossier her father had sent. But Jewel McMurty thought the world of this woman. Daniel Austin and his men were chomping at the bit to get her back. And though she’d already complicated the hell out of his well-laid plans, she’d proved herself to be more than a pretty face or a rich bank account. She didn’t deserve this kind of abuse.

No one did.

It was Vincent’s job to stop the bastards who preyed on innocent victims. Melissa Stamos, his high-school sweetheart, couldn’t see that calling. She’d bashed his heart and his pride on the altar of Saint Stephen’s Church in front of family and friends, condemning him for putting his life on the line for people he didn’t know.