LITMIR.BIZ

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had a chance to get off a second shot when the frying pan was snatched from her hand, then went flying, end over end toward the man’s head.

      The pan hit hard, knocking the man off his feet as another shot went wild.

      “Wow.”

      The man in black stared at her for the briefest moment before he shrugged and grabbed her free hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

      She followed him out the same back door she’d used to enter the house. “Wait!”

      The impatience was evident in those broad shoulders and the quick rocking from foot to foot, but he stopped for her. “What is it?”

      “Give me a minute.” Rowan reached for the small, slim plastic bag she kept in her back pocket.

      “We don’t have time for this.”

      “Just wait.”

      She flipped the small bag inside out as she waved him through the door with her other hand. “Go in front of me.”

      “What is that?”

      “Petroleum jelly.”

      His low whistle echoed in her ear at the same time their felled thug let out a large roar. “Time to go, Peach.”

      Rowan gave the knob one more swirl from the bag before slamming the door behind her and fled down the back steps. “Come on down here. Through the old mews.”

      He reached for her hand to drag her out the back garden toward the main road. “They’ll follow us that way.”

      “Not when we go up.”

      “Up where?”

      “The vines. All the houses back here have thick ivy. We climb it.”

      “Absolutely not.”

      If the situation weren’t so dire, Rowan might have laughed at his clear affront. “You’ve got a better idea?”

      “We keep on and make a run for it through the alley. Same way I came in.”

      “They’re going to follow us that way.”

      A shout behind them confirmed the truth of that and the man shrugged. “You sure about this?”

      “Positive. There’s a tree a few doors down for the descent. It’ll be more secure than the alley.”

      Another bellow echoed from the direction of the kitchen, and Rowan knew the thug had found his progress stymied with the doorknob. A quick smile flashed in the man in black’s eyes as he laced his fingers and put his hand out to give her a boost up the ivy. “Real nice trick back there, Peach.”

      “Thanks.” Rowan put her foot in his hands, but stopped, the question she’d wanted to ask back behind the curtain flaring up once more. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

      “Because you’re lush and ripe, like a fresh peach.”

      The cavalier words—delivered with a wicked smile that was visible even through the mouth of the mask—caught her up as a flood of warmth rushed through her.

      She knew it was reckless.

      Pointless, really, and terribly dangerous, but like the bracelet she couldn’t resist, she could no more stop the impulse than she could stop her heart from beating. With the quick fingers she was known for, she had his mask halfway off his face and her lips against his in the span of a breath.

      Whatever surprise he might have had at her move was quickly tamped down by the hard press of his lips and the quick heat of his tongue as it swept through her parted lips.

      A streak of heat flooded her belly before racing to the end of her limbs, and Rowan had the very real sensation of feeling her knees go weak.

      He lifted his head, his lips bright with wetness in the moonlight, but it was his eyes that truly captured her. The gaze that had teased mere moments before glinted with something else. Something elemental. Something that called to her and made all those empty places inside—the ones that clamored so loudly in their silence—still.

      And for the first time in four years, Rowan Steele felt an emotion that was stronger than the emptiness.

      Voice gentle, he nodded toward his still-laced fingers. “Come on, darling. Up you go.”

      Rowan placed a booted foot in his hands, their eyes meeting once more. In the moonlight she saw what had only been an impression earlier when she’d thought him as gangly as her brother.

      Likely because he was.

      He was barely a man, no more than nineteen or twenty if she estimated correctly. The half of his face she could see—over his hard jaw and past the thin scruff of beard—held a softness. Even more than that, she had the distinct sensation that he wasn’t quite done filling out the body that would ultimately be his.

      With a hard push and the determination to find out who he was when they reached safety, she launched off his laced fingers, grabbing the ivy. She worked her way up the side of the house, hand over hand. He did the same on several strands next to her, his grunts the only sounds breaking the silence.

      She cleared the second floor and turned to see him still struggling on the first. “Hand over hand and use your feet on the wall.”

      “Bloody vines are breaking under my weight.”

      “Grab a thicker handful.”

      “I’m try—”

      The protest bubbling in his words never fully formed as the thug they’d left in the kitchen came into view beneath them. Rowan screamed as the pistol lifted, even as her body moved on, desperate with the urge to flee the threat.

      They were so close.

      And then they weren’t.

      The boy who climbed next to her shook with the impact of a bullet. His fingers loosened against the ivy.

      His body slid down the wall, his gloved hands barely hanging on to the vines, before collapsing in a heavy slump on the ground.

      Tears burned her eyes but she climbed on, torn between going back to him and the all-consuming need to get away.

      To leave the nightmare behind.

      The last image she saw before she ran over the London rooftops was that slumped figure—clad in black—lifeless on the ground.

      Chapter 2

      Today—New York City

      Rowan Steele fired round after round at the Lower West Side gun range that had been her main practice site for the past decade. The fear of guns she’d long carried had never faded, but Rowan refused to be ruled by it.

      And she took some solace when the multitude of holes in the center of the paper target’s chest indicated she’d mastered a technical proficiency, if not an emotional one.

      The distinct feeling of being watched washed over her and she laid the gun down on the platform in front of her before turning around.

      Straight into the eyes of her brother Campbell.

      “What are you doing here?”

      He shrugged, his long frame on the lanky, slender side of muscular. “Same thing you are. Staying sharp.”

      “You haven’t been back from Paris all that long. I’d have thought picking up a gun was the last thing you’d want to do for a few more weeks.”

      The hollow laugh was as empty as his eyes. “Why the hell do you think I’m here?”

      Rowan nodded, well aware the events he and his fiancée, Abby, had faced the previous month were still far too fresh for both of them. The half brother Abby didn’t know she’d had was gone, but his attempts at terrorizing her were going to take time to fade. Add on the fact that the man

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