LITMIR.BIZ

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then opened the safe door. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and flicked it on. A sweep of the interior of the safe revealed a small stack of folders. His intelligence said that Owens had yet to deliver the DVD of Galloway to his client, and when Derek opened the top folder, he saw just how dead-on that information was. In the left-hand pocket of the folder, he found a DVD that was labeled clearly with Galloway’s name. Owens was a meticulous record-keeper. Derek smiled to himself. Anally retentive criminals made his job so much easier.

      “Got it,” he told Kevin.

      He was about to close the folder and tack it into his backpack when his attention turned to the right pocket of the folder, which contained photos, lists and other information about the blackmail operation. As Derek flipped through the pages, he came to a stunning realization.

      He might have solved one problem, but he’d just found five more.

      “Holy crap,” he said.

      “What?” Kevin said.

      “It looks as if Galloway isn’t the only congressman Owens is blackmailing.”

      There were photos of several more congressmen, as well as detailed plans for blackmailing each of them. One other congressman shared Galloway’s predisposition toward women’s clothing. Two had been caught cheating on their wives. Two more were victims of setups that only made it look as if they’d been cheating. But real or staged, it didn’t matter. Either one could send a man’s reputation right down the toilet.

      “How many are we talking?” Kevin asked.

      “Five others besides Galloway.”

      “Why didn’t we know about them?”

      “Apparently, Galloway is the only one who came forward and asked for help.” Derek flipped through a few more pages and saw a schedule of delivery dates. “Right now it looks as if Galloway was the last guy Owens collected information on, and it’s the only DVD he hasn’t yet sent to his client.”

      Derek wasn’t sure what to do with the file. If Galloway was the only one being blackmailed, he’d take it, along with every other file in the safe. But now that it was clear that other congressmen were involved, he didn’t want Owens to know that somebody had broken in. Owens would alert his client in a heartbeat, which meant they wouldn’t stand a chance of locating the rest of the blackmail material that had already been delivered.

      “Call Washington,” Derek told Kevin. “Get in touch with Sedgewick. Tell him the situation. We need some new marching orders.”

      Derek waited impatiently as Kevin made the call, anxious to get the hell out of this apartment before something else went wrong. Only two minutes passed before he heard Kevin’s voice again, but it felt like a hundred.

      “What’s the word?” Derek asked.

      “We need to grab Owens and get him to Washington for interrogation. They need to find out who his client is so they can have a shot at locating the blackmail material before Monday morning. And bring everything else in the safe, too. They want to know what else this guy is up to.”

      “Okay,” Derek said. “Get on the phone to Wilson and McManus and tell them to pick up Owens and deliver him to the Learjet at Love Field.”

      “Gotcha.”

      Derek was confident that that part of the plan would come together. His men were as proficient at kidnapping as they were at surveillance.

      “Then call Lambert and tell him I need him to fly the plane,” Derek said. “Have him meet us at the airfield ASAP.”

      “Will do.”

      “I’m coming down now.”

      Derek grabbed all the folders from the safe and stuck them into his backpack. After closing the safe, he flipped the rug back into place. Then he stopped short.

      Had he just seen a shadow move beneath the closet door?

      He froze, barely breathing, his gaze fixed on the shadow. Several seconds passed. It moved again.

      Someone was in the closet. And whoever it was had undoubtedly heard every word he’d spoken.

      ALYSSA SHIFTED nervously from one foot to the other, thinking that an hour had to have passed while she’d been in this closet. And the longer she stood there, the more she realized something was very strange about this situation. Just the fact that the burglar had gotten past the security system to enter the apartment through the back elevator astonished her. Equally amazing was the speed with which he’d broken into the safe. Pretty soon it became clear to her that his running monologue was actually one side of a conversation he was carrying on electronically with someone who was downstairs keeping watch.

      And he was saying the strangest things. Blackmailed congressmen? DVDs? Learjets? What was all that about?

      Right now, though, she really didn’t care. She just wanted him to grab what he’d come for and leave the building so she could get out of this apartment, call the police, then go somewhere and have a good, stiff drink.

      Then all at once, the closet door flew open.

      Before she could react with anything but a quick yelp of surprise, the man in the ski mask took two steps into the closet, grabbed her and spun her around. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her back to his chest. When he pressed the barrel of a gun against the side of her neck, she let out a strangled gasp.

      “Not a sound,” he said. “Not one.”

      She fell silent, with only the hiss of her panicked breathing breaking the stillness inside the closet.

      “Everything’s under control,” he murmured. “Just sit tight.”

      Alyssa knew he wasn’t talking to her, but to whomever was on the other end of whatever hands-free communication device he was using. For a long time the man stood motionless, his arm clamped tightly around her. Fear raced through her.

      “Tell me your name,” he said.

      “My name? Why—”

      “Tell me.”

      “Uh, Alyssa. Ballard.”

      The man’s chest expanded with a deep, silent breath. “Damn.”

      For some reason her name seemed to have made him unhappy. Given that he had a gun pressed to her jugular right now, she really wished it hadn’t.

      “Do you work in this building?” he asked.

      “Yes.”

      Even as Alyssa’s heart pounded with apprehension, a sense of sudden recognition came over her. That voice. She’d heard it before. Despite the fact that his words were threatening, the deep, melodic tone of his voice still came through.

      But it couldn’t be. She was imagining it.

      He shifted his hand against her rib cage. She looked down at it and she couldn’t believe what she saw. A ring. Sterling silver. Alpha and omega symbols intertwined.

      She glanced at his arm wrapped around her, his bicep bulging beneath his black T-shirt, and saw a long, irregular scar that extended the length of his forearm, faded to white but still distinct. The ring she was just now remembering, but his body she’d never forgotten. She’d memorized every inch of it, up to and including that scar.

      For a moment she was too stunned to speak. Every second seemed sluggish and protracted as the reality of who he was slowly bared itself. She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice.

      “Derek?”

      His body stiffened, an involuntary reaction that told her just how right she was. Good Lord. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but…

      It was Derek. He was here. In this building, two thousand miles from the last place she’d seen him. And he was robbing this apartment.

      “It’s you,”

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