LITMIR.BIZ

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If this caller made an offer for her information and arrangements for an exchange, Ash had her. Instead of triumph, though, he felt a flash of disappointment.

      * * *

      CLAIRE DIDN’T CARE that he had a gun. She grabbed for her phone anyway. She wasn’t worried about him intercepting a call from a buyer. She still had no idea what he thought she was trying to sell. She was actually worried that he might intercept a call from someone from the dating service she had joined.

      She didn’t want a man answering her phone and scaring away a potential match. She had spent too much of her life alone; she wanted to share it with someone now.

      But he ignored her attempt to grab for it and clicked on the talk button. “Hello.”

      She groaned. She had only given out her number to a couple of promising prospects from the dating service—to guys that the service had matched her with for compatibility. She hadn’t needed five minutes or a dating service personality test to determine that she was totally incompatible with this man.

      These potential matches wouldn’t be too promising either after Ash got through with them, especially when he continued speaking, “This is Special Agent Stryker...”

      She swallowed another groan. Uttering it would do her no good—just as explaining her hacking nine years ago had done her no good, either. She had still been arrested. She’d been convicted. She’d been sentenced. While she hadn’t spent any time actually behind bars in the juvenile detention center with which she’d been threatened, she had been locked up—in a classroom studying to be an even better hacker. And then in a business that specialized in internet security.

      “It’s your boss,” Stryker told her.

      She’d worked for Peter Nowak for years, but the former CIA agent still intimidated the hell out of her. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for the phone, but Ash Stryker ignored her and continued to listen.

      “Give it to me,” she insisted.

      But he shook his head, still denying her access. To her phone or to the help she would be able to seek with it? She wasn’t sure how much help Peter would be, though, if he also suspected her of whatever the FBI did.

      She could call a lawyer, though, like she should have last time. But she hadn’t wanted her father to go broke trying to pay her legal fees.

      Ash replied to whatever her boss had said with “We’ll be right there.” Then he clicked off her cell phone and pocketed it.

      “Why are you speaking for me?” she asked. “Am I in your custody?” Had she already been arrested but she had been too drugged to understand her rights? She really needed to call a lawyer this time.

      “Your boss said the building was broken into—”

      She shook her head, not buying this story of his just as she hadn’t the first stories he’d told her. “We have an excellent security system at the office.” Peter had designed it himself. “We also have armed guards. There’s no way anyone got in—”

      “The alarm system was compromised,” he said.

      She shook her head, unable to believe it. “But there are guards—”

      “One of them was shot.”

      She gasped as her heart pounded. She saw those guards every day as she passed them on her way in and out of the office. “No! Who? Is he all right?”

      “Nowak is at the hospital with the man.”

      “Then we need to go there, too,” she said.

      “He told us to go to the company instead.”

      “But why would he want me to go there?” She wasn’t in management. She had nothing to do with the details of running the company or the office.

      “Your personal office was the only one that had been broken into,” Stryker said. “We’re going there right now to make sure nothing’s been taken.”

      “My office?” She shook her head in denial. “That makes no sense.”

      “Someone tried grabbing you in the parking lot,” he reminded her. “Since they couldn’t get the information from you directly, they must have tried getting it from your office.”

      She wanted to scream in frustration at his stubbornness. But apparently he wasn’t the only one with the wrong idea about her. “So a man was shot over something someone thinks I’m trying to sell?”

      The guard was shot because of her?

      She leaped up from the bed, but the aftereffects of the chloroform must have included dizziness. Feeling faint, she nearly toppled over, but he caught her.

      If what he’d claimed earlier was true, he had already caught her another time that night.

      “We need to go,” he said.

      “To the hospital—”

      “Are you all right?” he asked as he held her up, his hands warm on her shoulders.

      Her legs were too rubbery for her to stand without support. But she insisted, “I’m fine.” Or she would be once the room stopped spinning. “I want to go check on the guard.”

      “Your boss said the man is in stable condition. He will be fine,” he assured her. “We need to go to your office and make sure nothing’s been taken.”

      She hadn’t left anything of value to anyone else in her office. But there were things of value to her there, things she couldn’t replace. And she would be of more use at the office than she would be pacing a hospital waiting room. She wasn’t even sure she knew who had been wounded, but it didn’t matter. She still felt somehow responsible. Why had someone broken into the company and then only into her office?

      “Okay,” she said and pulled away from him. Her skin tingled from where his hands had grasped her shoulders when he’d been holding her upright. She needed distance from him. “Let’s go!”

      “You’re in an awful hurry,” he said. “But then you wouldn’t want someone to steal what you’re trying to sell.”

      Beyond irritated with him, she gritted her teeth and replied, “I am not selling anything.”

      “You want me to believe you were at this hotel tonight because you really were speed dating?” He sounded horrified at the prospect.

      Heat rushed to her face, which had probably turned as red as her dress. “I really was...”

      He glanced around the hotel room. “Is that why you rented a room?”

      Her face got even hotter. “I rented a room in case I’d had too much to drink.” And she felt as if she had, thanks to the chloroform making her head fuzzy and her legs weak. Or maybe Agent Stryker had made her legs weak. It really wasn’t fair that the FBI agent was so ridiculously good-looking. “I didn’t rent a room because I thought I’d get lucky.”

      There had been nothing lucky about meeting Agent Stryker. And while she wanted to meet someone else, she hadn’t expected much from the speed dating experience. She certainly hadn’t expected to fall in love in five minutes.

      On the floor next to the bed she noticed her shoes and her purse. She stepped into the uncomfortable heels. Then she grabbed up her purse and reached into the oversize bag to search for her keys. “I’ll drive myself to the office.”

      He held up her keys; she recognized them because the rhinestone wristband attached to the chain caught the light. She’d bought the wristband key chain so she could slip it over her wrist and always have her keys accessible. Yet she kept tossing them into her bag out of habit.

      “We’ll take my car,” he said as he walked toward the hotel room door. He didn’t wait to see if she followed him. He just opened the door and stepped into the hall.

      That

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