LITMIR.BIZ

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T-shirt. His matted sandy hair hung down over his squinting eyes. “Dude. It’s too-early-thirty. What are you doing here? You need a place to crash?”

      Victoria stepped onto the patio to join Jeff. Drake’s eyes widened at the sight of her. “Well, hello.” He swung his head in a motion that flipped his long bangs back.

      “We need a ride, Drake. My car—” Jeff closed his eyes a moment, in grief. “Can you drive us back to my place?”

      Drake groaned and muttered a few unpleasant words as he shoved on shoes and grabbed his keys, but he didn’t ask any questions. What kind of guy had friends who would help him out at five in the morning without any questions asked? Did she even have a friend who would do that?

      The backseat of the pickup had very little legroom, but she had it to herself. When would be the next time she would be in a place of her own? Her neighbor Darcy would no doubt let her stay a night or two, but then Victoria would need a place to stay with Baloo while her house was rebuilt. And if she didn’t have a job to— Victoria blinked back tears. She couldn’t let herself think that way.

      Drake pulled into Jeff’s assigned space in front of the set of town house buildings. Looking out the window, Victoria noticed Jeff’s front door was open. Thoughts of her dog out in the city propelled her forward. “Baloo!” she shouted and flung the back door open. Disregarding the pain in her ankle, she ran up the stairs toward his door. Two arms grabbed her around the waist.

      All the air rushed out of her lungs as her feet left the ground. The arms around her middle loosened, and she turned to find Jeff holding a finger up to his mouth. She tried not to cough, but it was useless. Her lungs were still very sensitive after the night’s events. Victoria glared at him. “Baloo,” she croaked.

      “You can’t just walk in there. Someone might still be inside.” Jeff pointed hard at his front door. “Go back to the truck with Drake,” he whispered.

      “Then you shouldn’t go in there either!”

      The outburst made her lungs to spasm again, and a series of coughs prompted Jeff to put both hands on her arms.

      “You okay?”

      “What if the guy bombs your place like he bombed your car?” she asked, careful not to strain her voice.

      Jeff straightened to his full height, several inches above her. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He pulled out his phone and dialed the police. “Hopefully they caught the creep that blew up my car by now, and this will just add to his sentence.”

      She didn’t take her eyes off the door. “What if there is more than one creep?”

      Jeff’s jaw clenched. He offered her his free arm and marched her back down to the truck. He took her behind it and around to the other side, the farthest distance away from his ajar town house door. Just as she worried he was going to force her back into the tiny backseat, she heard a growl. Jeff’s arm dropped as he turned and found Baloo giving him the evil eye.

      “Baloo!” Victoria dropped to one knee and let her dog snuggle up into her arms.

      Drake watched from behind the steering wheel, his window rolled down. “Guess your stalker dude likes dogs more than cars.”

      Victoria stood, her jaw clenched. “Please don’t compare a hunk of metal to a hero.”

      “A hero?”

      “Baloo saved my life last night.”

      “Seriously?” Drake nodded appreciatively. “I totally respect that.”

      She drew in a deep breath, hoping to regain control of her emotions. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.” A small square of fabric hung from Baloo’s bottom lip. She reached down and removed the denim from his lower canine tooth. “Besides, I don’t think he let Baloo go by choice.” She ruffled his fur. “Good dog.”

      Jeff missed her interchange with Drake as he spoke rapidly into the phone.

      Baloo stood directly at her side, practically on her foot. She looked over her shoulder to confirm they were still alone. They were safe, for now.

      Baloo left her side, approached Jeff and pressed into his leg. Jeff patted Baloo’s head while he answered questions on the phone. Huh. Baloo must’ve decided Jeff was all right. She blinked hard. It was a good thing Jeff was off-limits, because her heart was getting harder to guard.

      Her neck tingled as if someone was watching her. She turned to find Drake looking between her and Jeff with a goofy grin on his face. She shook her head but wasn’t willing to talk about the reasons why a relationship would never work.

      Drake’s head bobbed to the seventies music playing softly on the radio. Was he disagreeing with her, or truly enjoying the music? She racked her brain, trying to think of something to say to ease the awkwardness. “So, you skydive with Jeff?”

      “Yeah.” He yawned. “We met in the Earth Generators factory like ten years ago. I watched him work his way out of there, but he didn’t leave me behind. Dude’s got a heart of gold. He got me started on this skydiving business. Jeff’s got some big plans, which means big plans for me, you know?” Drake looked forward out the window. “I’m better off for knowing him.”

      Victoria blinked. A heart of gold?

      Her next question froze on the tip of her tongue at the sight of police cars and a black armored van surrounding them.

       FOUR

      It seemed as if a lifetime passed while they waited for the bomb squad to do a sweep of his apartment and Victoria’s car. That hour wasn’t spent twiddling thumbs, though. Jeff endured a lecture from a tall, burly officer. He lost count of how many times the man said, “You left the scene?”

      “As I said before, I believed we were in danger and didn’t think it was prudent to wait around for the cops to show up.”

      The officer launched into reasons why that was a “false” assumption. “You should have called. You made our job harder. Now, explain again why you thought you were in danger, because according to the initial report, malfunction of the engine was listed as a possible cause.”

      Jeff’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

      The officer raised an eyebrow. “Vehicle fires account for 16 percent of fire department responses, sir. The fire started with the engine, emergency response vehicles were called, but unfortunately, the fire reached the gas tank before they arrived. So I’m going to repeat my question: Why did you think you were in danger?”

      Jeff answered, but kept getting distracted by what was happening twenty feet away—on the other side of the parking lot—another officer was questioning Victoria. Jeff’s gut churned as he watched her. What had made him think he could be a hero? If Victoria’s theory proved to be wrong, then both of their jobs would be on thin ice. Only, after they found out about his past, he wouldn’t be of any help.

      A commotion at the end of the building, at Victoria’s car, caught the officer’s attention. He fiddled with his earpiece a moment, then cleared his throat. “Sir, we will be looking more closely at your car. They just found explosives in your friend’s vehicle.”

      Jeff fought a wave of nausea. So the man in the baseball cap had placed an explosive in her car, checked his apartment out, then followed him to the office and put an explosive in his car? How was that possible? “We’re dealing with more than one person,” he said aloud.

      The officer didn’t appear to hear him as he spoke into his radio.

      Jeff raised his voice to get the officer’s attention. “If the same explosive was set in my car as her car, why did mine go off first? Why hasn’t hers gone off? Do you have to turn on the car for it to explode?”

      The policeman pursed his lips and lifted his

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