Protected In His Arms

Protected In His Arms
Suzanne McMinn

He had only 72 hours… With the clock ticking, U.S. Marshal Gideon Brand knew a little girl would die unless he could convince genuine psychic Marysia O'Hurley to help him. But he never planned to enlist Marysia's help with bullets flying in the background and her as his unwilling hostage! She wanted a lifetime…Now the two are on the race of their lives to discover the link between the plane crash that killed Marysia's husband and the disappearance of a judge's granddaughter. And as Marysia learns to embrace–and not curse–her ESP, she's about to discover another more passionate side to herself in the sexy lawman's arms….

They were lost. People kept shooting at them. Someone wanted her dead.

Mary worked really hard at not having a full-blown panic attack.

“It’s dark,” Gideon said flatly. “If we keep driving around, we’re going to run out of gas before we find our way out of here. Let’s wait for morning. Hole up.”

Hole up? Was this actually her life, or one big, freaky nightmare? This morning, she’d just been Marysia O’Hurley, reclusive widow. Tonight, she was the target of multiple killers for reasons she didn’t understand, and on the run with a sexy federal agent who was scaring the pants off her. And that was almost literal.

She’d been shot at three separate times, she couldn’t go home, and she had the audacity to think “sex” every time she looked at Gideon Brand.

She was stuck in a car. In the middle of nowhere. Till morning. With six feet of big, bad, sexy male.

Some women would label that last bit lucky. Mary found it terrifying.

Dear Reader,

Marysia O’Hurley started out as the best friend of one of the main characters in my first HAVEN book, Secrets Rising, and she was so much fun, I couldn’t resist creating a story just for her. In Secrets Rising, she played at being a psychic and discovered that Haven’s earthquake had turned her power from pretend to real. In Protected in His Arms, follow Marysia as she deals with the dark side of her unexpected power and is forced to find the good in it when a U.S. Marshal needs her special skills. And soon, Marysia realizes it’s not only the hot, sexy federal lawman who needs her to help him find a missing little girl—Marysia needs him because the kidnapper is after her, too.

Welcome back to Haven, West Virginia!

Love,

Suzanne McMinn

Protected in His Arms

Suzanne McMinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

SUZANNE MCMINN

Suzanne McMinn is an award-winning author of two dozen novels, including contemporary paranormal romance, romantic suspense and contemporary romantic comedy as well as a medieval trilogy. She lives on a farm in the mountains of West Virginia, where she is plotting her next book and enjoying the simple life with her family, friends and many, many cats. Check out her upcoming books and blog at www.suzannemcminn.com.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Step down from the bench in seventy-two hours or the little girl dies.

U.S. Marshal Gideon Brand ran his hands over the rough stubble of his face. It had already been twelve hours since a federal judge’s six-year-old granddaughter had been discovered missing. She’d disappeared on Gideon’s watch.

The threatening message had arrived in the judge’s inbox an hour later, time stamped 7:21 a.m. Eastern Standard, and all the forces of federal law enforcement were hard at work attempting to unscramble its path. They would fail. The nascent technology of the heavily encrypted e-mail bypassed central servers and would automatically erase itself in a matter of hours—destroying along with it all evidence of its origin. It was as close to foolproof as had ever been seen.

“You’re supposed to be out of here already.”

Gideon pivoted in his seat to find the head of the West Virginia judicial security division watching him with expressionless eyes honed from his military special ops background. A look that caused Gideon to believe, far too often, that he was still in special ops.

“Go home,” Darren Tucker said. “Some rest will do you a world of good.”

“I’m not tired.”

“This isn’t your case anymore. I know that’s hard to accept, but that’s the way it is.”

Tucker was now assuming direct supervision of the operation.

Gideon was tempted to tell him where he could stick his case, and his pseudosympathy. Molly was more than a case. She was a human being and he had come to care for her more than he’d ever expected. Maybe she reminded him too much of what he’d lost, but this wasn’t about him. It was about Molly.

Unleashing his anger on Tucker for his insensitivity and authoritarianism would do nothing to save her life. But the statement Judge Alcee Reinhold was in the process of preparing likely wouldn’t save her either. Kidnappers rarely returned their victims, and the judge had a recent history of deadly intimidations against him that was believed to include the bombing of a small plane and the death of a federal agent.

“Go home,” Tucker repeated.