Rules In Blackmail

The lines running from the edge of his nose to those perfectly crafted lips deepened. She couldn’t read his expression, but the tension in his neck and shoulders released.

“How did you get through it?” she asked.

Sullivan’s chest expanded on a deep inhale. At least he wasn’t crowding her anymore. She could actually breathe again, but the cold fist tightened in the pit of her stomach. “I have people I trust to back me up no matter what the situation calls for.”

She nodded. That was what she was counting on. Why she was here in the first place. Sullivan had the reputation for committing himself to every job he took on, and while it was a risk to rely on the man she was blackmailing, she hoped his reputation proved true. “Well, I don’t have a team. I have you. And if it’s going to take blackmail to get you to help me, then so be it.”

Silence pressed in on her as Sullivan studied her from head to toe. A scorching trail of awareness skittered across her skin. What did he see? A woman who couldn’t protect herself? Or the woman responsible for his brother’s death?

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours of my time,” he said. “After that, you can go back to your cold, empty existence and leave me the hell alone.”

He was just like the rest of them: her peers, the men and women she prosecuted to protect citizens of the United States, even her commanding officer. She’d earned her reputation as the Full Metal B, she supposed. Her job required an almost ruthless approach to the cases she’d been assigned, but this was the first time her rib cage tightened at someone’s assessment of her. Which didn’t make sense. She didn’t care what Sullivan Bishop thought of her. She didn’t care what any of them thought of her. Her insides twisted. She didn’t care. Jane shoved off from the massive desk he’d trapped her against moments before. Uncrossing her arms, she stepped toward him. “So you’ll help me?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I? Isn’t that how blackmail is supposed to work?” Sullivan rounded his desk. The thick muscles across his back flexed through his shirt. She forced her attention to the sway of his gun rather than the way he moved, to prove she could take her eyes off him. Lean waist, strong legs, hints of his trident tattoo peeking out from under his T-shirt. Such a dangerous man shouldn’t be that attractive. “We’ll take my car.”

Jane straightened. Okay. They were doing this. “Where are we going?”

“To your town house. I’ll brief my team on the way.” He unholstered the Glock from his side and dropped the magazine into his hand. After a glance at the rounds, he replaced it with efficient, sure movements and chambered a round. He raised that piercing gaze to hers. “I have a man on my team who used to work forensics for the NYPD. If your stalker has been in your house like you claim, he’ll find the evidence and we can all move on with our lives.”

She ran her cold palms over the front of her jeans and took another step toward him. He was actually going to help her find the man trying to destroy her life? A knot of hope pulsed from deep in her chest. “And if he does find evidence? What then?”

Sullivan came around the desk, his wide shoulders blocking out the magnificent view of the Chugach mountain range behind him. Nearly pressing against her, he stared down at her. At six foot four, it wasn’t hard, but the intimidation had drained from his body. He stalked toward the office door. “Then you’ll have the proof you need to take to the police.”

“What?” Jane wrapped her hand halfway around his massive biceps and spun him around to look at her. He’d let her. She didn’t have the strength to move a mountain like him. She was at the end of her rope, and she hadn’t come here to admit defeat. Her leave ended in a week, and she’d come no closer to discovering her stalker’s identity than she was three months ago. Desperation held her tight.

She glared up into those sea-blue eyes of his, her throat constricting. “I thought I made myself perfectly clear. Either you help me find the person stalking me or I go to the government and your clients with what I know about you. And your family.”

Facing her, oh-so-slowly, Sullivan towered over her, and she fought the urge to take a step back. He leaned in close, mere centimeters from her mouth, as though he intended to kiss her. “Then let me make myself perfectly clear. The only way you get my help is if we do this my way, and I plan to get you out of my life as soon as I can.”

Jane flinched, but he didn’t wait for her to answer, heading for the door.

“Let’s go,” he said.

This was a mistake. She should’ve known how deep Sullivan’s hatred for her flowed, but she’d run out of options. Jane followed on his heels toward the elevator, allowing a good amount of distance between them as they crowded into the small space on the way down to the parking garage. Neither said a word. His clean scent wrapped around her, and she gripped the handrail to clear her head. In less than a minute, he led her out of the elevator and across the empty parking garage toward a black SUV.

Tingling spread across her back—an all-too-familiar feeling—and Jane turned back toward the elevator, heart in her throat. Darkness surrounded them. Everyone in the building had already gone home for the day. She’d made sure. Everyone except Sullivan and a few security guards, but someone else was here. He was here, watching her. She felt it.

“Jane.” Sullivan’s deep timbre flooded her nerves with relief, but she couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched. “Jane,” he said again.

She stared at him. It was her imagination. Had to be. There was no way anyone could’ve followed her here. She’d been too careful, but still, the sensation between her shoulder blades prickled her instincts. “I’m coming.”

Sullivan ripped open the driver’s-side door of the large black SUV, his eyes sweeping across the parking garage as she moved to the other side. Once she was safely inside the car, the sensation disappeared and Jane breathed a bit easier. Nobody had been watching her. The constant paranoia had just become a habit.

Sullivan slammed the door behind him and started the engine. Black leather and dark interiors gave her a false sense of security, but having him in the driver’s seat eased some of the tension on either side of her spine. At the exit, he lowered the window and scanned his key card. Nobody went in or out of the garage without a card. He swung the SUV north through an area of warehouses and railroads, as though he knew exactly where they were headed.

The SUV plowed through the wet streets of downtown Anchorage, spitting up water and snow along the way. The heater chased away the ice that’d built inside her over the past few weeks. She was reminded of Sullivan’s heat back in his office. The same heat rolled off him in waves now. She watched him from her peripheral vision. He wore only a T-shirt and jeans in these temperatures, a human furnace. It’d been too long since she’d felt anything but fear.

“I know what you’ve heard about me, what they called me in Afghanistan. I’m not as cold as you think.” Sitting straighter in her seat, Jane stared down into her lap to counteract the need to explain herself to Blackhawk Security’s CEO. “I didn’t want to dig into your history. I needed—”

“We’re not doing this right now,” he said, one hand on the wheel. He still wouldn’t look at her. Typical alpha male, determined not to talk. Sullivan pressed his foot on the accelerator as they rolled onto the bridge across Knik Arm, the shallow water almost motionless with a few inches of ice across the top.

“All right.” She wiped her clammy hands down her thighs. “Tough crowd.”

A light falling of snow peppered the windshield. Nothing like the storms Anchorage usually saw this time of year, but just as beautiful as she remembered growing up in Seattle.

The high screech of peeling tires broke their self-imposed silence, and Jane swept her gaze out the window. Blinded by fast-approaching headlights, she shoved away from the door as a truck slammed into her side of the SUV.

Chapter Two (#uc8719d2b-73ae-5592-9ab7-f439170bdfce)

The loud groan of a truck’s engine brought Sullivan around.

“Reise?” Pain. In his skull. Everywhere. He blinked to clear his vision and ran his hand over his left cheek. Something warm and sticky coated his hand. Blood. He fought to scan his body for other injuries. Hell. They’d flipped.

Cracks in the windshield spidered out in a dendritic pattern, blocking his view of the other driver. Had they survived? Been injured? He depressed the seat belt button and collapsed onto the SUV’s roof. Broken glass from the window cut into him. He pounded his fist into the roof and locked his jaw. “Damn it!”

He swiped blood from his eyes. Where was Jane? Twisting inside the crushed interior, he spotted her. Sullivan crawled through debris and around the middle console, ignoring the pain screaming for his attention. The seat belt held her in the passenger seat, upside down. Couldn’t search her for injuries here. They needed to get clear of the wreck. “Captain Reise, can you hear me?”

She didn’t respond, unconscious.

Bracing himself, Sullivan released her belt and caught her just before she hit the SUV’s roof. He pressed his palm against the glistening gash across the right side of her head to stop the bleeding, then checked her slender neck for a pulse. Thready, but there.

Burning rubber and exhaust worked down into his lungs. Crouching low to see through the passenger-side window, he kept pressure on her wound. But couldn’t hold it for long. The yellow tow truck’s tires screeched again as it made another lunge straight for them.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” His fight-or-flight instinct kicked into high gear. Heaving Jane across the cab, he pulled her through his shattered driver’s-side window with everything he had. They cleared the SUV, but his momentum catapulted them down the steep embankment surrounding the shallow water of Knik Arm.

The world spun as snow and mud worked under his clothes and clung tight to his skin and hair. His arms closed around Jane, the movement as natural as breathing as they rolled. They slammed into a nearby tree, mere feet from the ice-cold water of the river. Positioned on top of her, he scanned her once more, panting. His vision split into two and he shook his head.

He leveraged his weight into the palms of his hands to give her more breathing room, his heart pumping hard. “Captain Reise, wake up. We need to—”

The second crash forced Sullivan’s gaze up the snow-covered hill. The SUV’s headlights flickered a split second before the entire vehicle started to slide down the slope, heading right for them. There was no time to think. He dug his fingertips into Jane’s arm and spun them through the snow and weeds to the right as fast as he could. The SUV sped past, breaking through the six inches of solid ice at the edge of the river.

Hell. This wasn’t some freak accident. Someone wasn’t just stalking Jane. They’d now decided they wanted her dead. He studied the cut across her head, then her sharp features. She’d been telling the truth. Sullivan exhaled hard. Puffs of breath crystallized in front of his mouth. “Come on, Jane. We have to get out of here.”

Jane? When had he started calling her by her first name?

Screeching tires above echoed in his ears as the tow truck hauled fast away from the scene. Damn it. He hadn’t seen the driver at all. He could still catch up. He could—

Jane moaned as she stirred in his arms. Her lips parted. Such soft, pink lips. Pulse now beating steady at the base of her throat, she fought to focus on him. She lifted one hand toward her face, but he wrapped his fingers around her small wrist. “What...happened? My head—” She locked her fuzzy gaze on him. “Did you just call me Jane instead of Captain Reise?”

He swallowed. She’d heard that? “You hit your head pretty hard against the window when the truck slammed into us. Must’ve heard me wrong.”

Sullivan shoved a strand of her hair out of her face to see her wound better. Her features softened as she closed her eyes. She was okay as far as he could tell, but the spike of adrenaline had yet to drain from his system. Whoever had been driving that truck had made a very dangerous enemy. Not only had he gone after an unarmed woman, he’d tried killing the CEO of the government’s most resourced private security contractor. No way Sullivan was going to turn Jane’s case over to Anchorage PD now. That bastard was his.

“What happened?” Those brilliant hazel eyes swept over the embankment, and he noted exactly when Jane caught sight of the totaled SUV. Every muscle down her spine tightened as she dug her heels into the snow to sit up. “Somebody tried to kill us.”

No point in denying the facts. Her stalker had gone from hunting Jane in her own home to outright attempted murder. “Looks that way. Can you stand?”

She nodded, rolling her upper body off the ground, but grabbed for his arm. Stinging heat splintered through his muscles where she touched him, his bare skin exposed to the dropping temperatures.