LITMIR.BIZ

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realized the threat. But here on the beach, with the dark lake gaping on one side and the deserted strip of Lakeshore Drive stretching along the other, over a hundred yards away, awareness hit like a swift blow to the gut. Liam Brooks, or whoever he was, had taken her son.

      Her mistake burned.

      This man had been in her house. She’d had him in her grasp, but instead of leveraging her advantage, she’d let him disarm her. She hadn’t even put up a fight when he’d put his hands to her body. She’d let him touch her, hold her hand. Worse, far worse, she’d let the warmth of his body seep into hers, let it dull her senses, her defenses, as she’d wondered for a few crazy minutes what it would feel like to lean closer, to accept his lies as truth and—

      “I’m here,” she said, lifting her chin. The wind whipped harder, blowing long strands of tangled dark hair into her face. She made no move to push them back. “I’m here just like you instructed. Now where the hell is he?”

      The man from the hotel, the one who’d come to her house, who’d touched her and lied to her, who claimed to be with the FBI but who knew things there was no way he could know, lifted a hand and eased the hair behind her ear. “It’s your little boy, isn’t it? He’s in trouble. Someone’s taken him.”

      It was the gentleness that got her. It was the gentleness that pushed her over the edge. “Is this how you get your kicks?” she asked hoarsely. “By playing twisted mind games?”

      Through the darkness, she would have sworn the hard lines of his face gathered into a wince. “I’m not playing, Danielle.”

      The words, so soft and grave and ominous, chilled. “Then what do you want?” The question ripped out of her, followed by a sobering truth. She would do anything—anything—to bring her son home safe and sound. There was no price she wouldn’t pay. No sacrifice too great. Nothing she could lose that mattered more than Alex.

      But Liam—if that was really his name—said nothing. He just looked down at her through those dark, somber eyes of his.

      “Is it me?” she asked, ripping at the buttons of her shirt. “Do you want me? Because you can have me, right here and right now.”

      He caught her hand before she bared her breasts. “Danielle, stop it.”

      She stared up at him, into those dark, dark eyes, not at all understanding what she saw. The shadows and secrets were there, yes, but something else glistened like the little pings of rain against his cheeks. “Then what?” she asked, and God help her, this time her voice broke. “What do you want?”

      “To help,” he said quietly, transferring both her wrists into one of his hands. Then he shrugged out of his black jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Why didn’t you call me? Why did you come here alone?”

      The breath sawed in and out of her. She fought his voice, the concern softening the rough edges, the same concern she lavished on Alex when she sat on the side of his bed, easing him from a nightmare.

      “Come on,” he said softly, then slid his hand to clasp one of hers. “We need to get you in your car before the storm hits. Then we can talk.”

      The rain fell harder, cool and wet, but she didn’t move.

      “He’s not coming,” he said even more quietly. And his eyes, hard and penetrating before, gentled. “Whoever it is you thought you were meeting tonight, he’s not coming.” He tugged her toward the parking area. “Now, come on. Let’s get you out of the rain.”

      Deep inside she started to shake. There was no lightning with the storm, no thunder, but the truth flashed as garishly as though shards of light split the sky.

      She’d always been a woman to trust her instinct. Luck, her brother and sister had called it, a byproduct of the Gypsy blood that flowed through them all. Creepy, Ty had always said.

      Regardless of the label, Danielle had learned to listen to, to trust, the voice inside of her, the intuition that served as sentinel for them all. Over the years the whispering had warned of trivial things, like thunderstorms and blizzards, of impending accidents like the time she’d slammed on the brakes at a green light seconds before a drunk driver had careened through the intersection and mowed down the car next to her.

      Later, her knowledge of events before they happened had helped them know when to stay and when to go, which door to open and which to leave closed, who to trust, where danger lay hidden. Her Gypsy intuition had never let her down, not until that hot summer night when she’d watched in horror as Ty’s car wrapped around a tree, and exploded.

      In the days and months and years since then, she’d quit listening to the voice. She no longer trusted the gentle prodding she’d once considered a gift, not when it had failed her in the most fundamental way imaginable. Eventually the whisperings had gone quiet. Or maybe she’d just trained herself not to hear them.

      But now from that place she’d tried valiantly to wall off, the Gypsy instinct on which she’d once relied screamed, much as it had been doing since the moment she’d looked up to find the impossibly tall man with the dark eyes in the hotel lobby. At first she’d interpreted the uneasy hum as paranoia, maybe even a primal attraction she had no interest in exploring. Then, when Alex turned up missing, it had been so easy to blame him.

      But now as she stared up at him, at his hard face and shadow-drenched eyes, at the lingering shards of a pain she recognized all too well, a sobering truth drilled through her.

      He wasn’t the one who had taken Alex.

      He wasn’t the one who wanted to hurt her.

      He wasn’t the one she’d come here to meet.

      Which could only mean one thing. He really was FBI.

      “No,” she whispered, fighting the truth, the implication. The warning had been explicit. Tell no one. Come alone. But here she stood, on an open expanse of beach where anyone could see her with a federal agent.

      Horror convulsed through her. She hadn’t meant to, she’d been willing to play the nasty little game, but in the end she’d disobeyed the cardinal rule, and now her son was the one who’d suffer the consequences.

      “No,” she said again, this time louder, and before Liam could react, she twisted from him and ran.

      Liam had seen a lot of ugliness in his life. He’d prowled crime scenes, studied photographs of grisly murders, listened while a child molester recounted how a five-year-old boy from Kansas City had ended up dead in a Mississippi canal. He’d walked among the wreckage of downed airliners and bombed buildings. He’d seen the shell-shocked faces of the survivors, listened to desperate descriptions of relatives searching for their loved ones. He’d seen the grim determination of rescue workers. He’d seen and touched, smelled and tasted. And through it all he’d learned.

      He knew the masks people wore to hide their pain. He knew the bravado that concealed sheer desperation. He knew how to recognize the tattered fabric of someone just barely holding on.

      He knew, and he hated, but he never felt. He never felt the pain, the desperation. He never felt the fear. He’d walked like an automaton from crime scene to crime scene, investigation to investigation, wearing the same masks as those he encountered, because, God help him, he was one of them.

      Until tonight.

      For three years he’d suppressed everything, biding his time, waiting for a day he knew would come. Now the day he’d craved, the one he’d lived for, planned for, was here. But he’d never counted on Danielle.

      She didn’t fit. She didn’t belong. Titan’s trail of destruction was littered with wealthy, influential, often political figures. He dabbled with the worst of them, piped drugs into elite circles all over the world. His name had even turned up during the World Bank investigation, linked to the reputed General DeBruzkya of Rebelia, who’d had deep ties to the Coalition.

      Anonymous women in the heartland of America did not match his profile. Hurting kids wasn’t

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