Protected In His Arms

“I tried to get the record of your interview,” Gideon told her. “Then I was put on forced leave and somebody tried to kill me. And now someone wants you dead, too. I don’t think this sequence of events is a coincidence.”

Marysia O’Hurley watched him with frightened, dilated eyes. Blue eyes. Startling blue that the black-and-white newspaper photograph hadn’t done justice. Rain soaked her clothes to her slender body, revealing every fragile tremor and sway, but she’d already shown him she was strong. She was scared, too, and he wished to God he could take that horror out of her eyes, but it was there because she was starting to believe him.

He had to hold on to that tenuous faith or even now, she’d cut and run. He’d catch her again. He had no doubt of that, but in the process he might hurt her again. And for some reason he didn’t want to hurt this woman.

“I need you to believe in me,” he said, afraid to take a step toward her, still afraid she’d run. “And I need to believe in you. We need each other, or Molly’s going to die.” He couldn’t let himself forget that this was all about Molly. “I don’t think you’re hysterical. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you do know things and I think you’re afraid it’s true. I think it’s true. And that is a huge leap of faith I’m taking here because I am believing the unbelievable, and I’m doing it for Molly because you’re the only hope I’ve got. I need you to take that leap with me because I think I’m your only hope, too. If you go to the cops, if you go to the Marshals, you’re going to end up dead.”

She was shaking her head at him, wildly.

He took a chance, reached for her arm.

“Let’s get back to the car,” he shouted over the growing noise of the wind and rain. “We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t help you!”

Her voice came out low and broken, hardly audible over the storm.

He was close to her now. She hadn’t bucked at his hold. Not yet, anyway. He could feel the trembling of her body through his grip on her arm.

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m not a real psychic!” Her eyes blazed at him, vulnerable and bright. Broken. Something about her was so broken.

He didn’t want to see that. He didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to be touched by her.

“I think you are. I think you think so, too.”

“No, I don’t!”

He realized she was crying. That wasn’t just rain streaking down her face, it was tears.

His heart, the one he didn’t want to have anymore, ripped just a bit.

Molly. He had to focus on Molly. What emotion he had left inside him had to go to her. He had a job to do. The clock was ticking, and he had nothing to go on but what he had to hope and pray was in the mind of the woman in front of him.

“Get in the car!” he shouted over the wind. “Please,” he added, softer, because she was still ripping at his heart or because he didn’t want to scare her any more than she was already, he couldn’t have said for sure. Or didn’t want to say, even to himself.

If things were different, if he wasn’t the shell of a man that he was, if she wasn’t terrified out of her mind, if their situation wasn’t so desperate, he might have noticed the perfect package that she was with her wild, dark hair, luminous skin and candy-sweet body.

But he was a shell of a man, she was terrified and their situation was desperate. And that made her nothing but part of the job.

She stood there staring at him, her hair plastered to her head, shivering, shaking, scared still, dammit, but there was no more time to waste. They had to get the hell out of here, and fast.

He tugged her arm, prodding her to move then run. He opened the passenger-side door and she slid inside. He got in, turned the key in the engine, flipped on the lights.

“I don’t know what you think I can do,” she said. “I don’t know anything about any little girl. I can’t tell you where she is, who’s holding her. I can’t just, snap, come up with information. It doesn’t work like that.”

He swung his gaze to her, let a tight beat pass. Was she admitting it did work, that she did have some kind of psychic ability? He let a second beat pass and it was one beat too many.

Lights strobed across the rearview mirror. A car had turned down the road.

Adrenaline surged, sharp. Run or deal.

He reached for the woman beside him, shoving her head into her knees, grabbed his GLOCK, slammed down the driver’s-side button for the passenger window as the other car screeched to a stop. One second for recognition of the driver and his intent. Two to fire.

Jimmy Guarino’s skull thunked hard against the headrest before he slumped forward over the wheel, the gun still in the mafia underling’s hand.

Rain pounded.

He’d studied the face of every known mafioso in the Pittsburgh family. Organized crime involvement in the case was no longer a working theory. And within the space of hours, a federal agent and a mafia gun had tried to take him out.

He yanked the car into gear even as Marysia O’Hurley sat up, took one look out the window in the second before he hit the gas, saw blood and screamed. The Impala flew down the narrow road.

“You killed somebody!” she shouted.

“It was him or me,” he said grimly, gaze locked on the road. “And you.” They’d almost gotten killed, again. He didn’t have time to sort it all out now. Or calm her down. “We have to get out of here.”

The windshield wipers slapped against the glass. She was silent now. He shot a glance her way. She was silent and shaking.

The road was narrow, so narrow that if two cars were to pass, one would have to move off onto the shoulder—or what passed for a shoulder on this country road. The blacktop was rutted and, in places, the bank dropped off steeply. There was a creek somewhere below. The road rolled up and downhill, at times low enough to see the dark water streaming parallel to the lane. Typical West Virginia backcountry, complete with blind curves and other narrow roads shooting off, some paved, some not.

“Where are we going?” Fear threaded through her voice.

At least she’d stopped screaming.

Closed in the car with her, he could smell the scent of her herbal shampoo, hear the soft panting gasps of her breath, see the damp tangle of her hair around her neck.

“I don’t know.” For the first time, he thought about gas. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get to Haven—and then get out of Haven—for the status of the gauge to register until now.

Obviously, he hadn’t been planning to go on the lam today. That was almost funny. Except not.

Jimmy Guarino didn’t work alone.

“That’s not making me feel better! I don’t even know if you’re really a U.S. Marshal! You just killed somebody!”

“He was a mafia hitman.”

“He was what?”

That, apparently, had not been the right thing to tell her.

“I don’t have time to explain now.”

“Of course. You know what? Nobody was shooting at me before you came along! How do I know anything you say is true? Some little girl was kidnapped. Somebody’s threatening a judge. Somebody in the U.S. Marshals is involved. Now it’s the mafia! Maybe you’re just a lunatic and the cops are hunting you down! Maybe you took me as a hostage! Maybe you’re a serial killer. Or a rapist!”

She was starting to sound hysterical and he couldn’t blame her. People kept trying to kill her.

And she wasn’t completely convinced he wasn’t one of them.