LITMIR.BIZ

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with relatively little traffic on the road. Despite him running the air-conditioning, Kristen kept her window down for the free flow of air. She could think better with uncirculated air in her face. Yet thinking meant feeling and feeling brought guilt.

      She had done something that made bad guys want to harm her. They didn’t want a ransom. If so, they wouldn’t want her as exchange for her mother. Mom was worth more on the ransom market than Kristen.

      She didn’t know what the men wanted. She only knew their actions fell on her shoulders, were her fault, and she needed to find a way to stop them. She would find it regardless of the consequences.

      * * *

      Nick didn’t like Kristen’s silence. He liked her panic even less. She was strong-looking in appearance, gorgeous with those lake-blue eyes, high cheekbones and athletic build. Yet Kristen’s appearance was deceiving. She was as fragile in her spirit as petite Michele, his deceased fiancée, had been, maybe more so. Michele had come across as confident in her worth, in her belief others’ kindnesses to her were deserved. And they had been. Michele was one of the most giving people he knew, a true servant of the Lord’s.

      Yet in the end, that open heart of hers had been her undoing. She thought she was safe no matter what part of the city she ventured into because she helped so many people in need. Michele had trusted God to keep her safe. She had trusted the wrong people, and they had killed her. Nick suspected Kristen trusted no one, which might be just as dangerous to her safety as believing in the goodness of others.

      Or that God would take care of her.

      Nick shook off that thought. His family had been helping him to regain his faith since Michele’s death. Yet sometimes, doubt reared its ugly head.

      Kristen was not Michele. Kristen was strictly business. He was assigned to protect her. Protect her he would—with his life if necessary. He would not fail her as he had failed to be with Michele when she needed him most.

      He had failed her. God hadn’t.

      Along the lines of protecting Kristen, Nick pulled into the parking garage, but texted for someone to bring her personal items to them. She didn’t need to be walking on her battered feet. That meant the two of them sat in his car, Nick vigilant for all the garage was secure, and Kristen silent, still gazing out the window until another deputy marshal brought her purse and two laptop computers, her mother’s and hers, to the car. She thanked the courier, then fell silent again until Nick pulled onto the street.

      “They’re not going to question me further now that they know these men are after me and not my mother?” Kristen spoke at last.

      “They will, but not until tomorrow.” He headed to Lake Shore Drive and the north end of the city.

      Beside him, Kristen clutched her hands on her knees. “Isn’t that too late? Wouldn’t talking to me tonight help them find her sooner?”

      “Do you know any reason why someone would want to harm you?” He countered her question with a question, the obvious question she had surely been asking herself since he informed her of what they had heard from the kidnappers.

      She shook her head. “I can look on my computer, search case files for possibilities.”

      “But you can’t share that information with us because of confidentiality laws, right?”

      “Right.”

      “So we need to see what the kidnappers’ demands are.”

      “But you know already. They want me.” She bent her head and muttered something like, “And they can have me.”

      Nick inhaled the clean, crisp scent of the lake blowing through the open passenger window. “Of course they can’t have you. We would never exchange one person for another. And right now, we don’t even know where they want to make such an exchange.”

      “And when we do?”

      “When the Marshals Service knows, they will act appropriately.” He wanted to offer her some comfort, something proactive. “Meanwhile, think of someone who holds a grudge against you so we can get permission for you to release that information.”

      She needed to eat and rest, if he could get her to do either. He hoped his sister Gina, could. She was good at persuading people to do what was best for them. She had brought him back from the brink after his fiancée’s death.

      Call it what it is—her murder.

      Killed because he had been working and couldn’t help her when she got a flat tire, and she walked to an “L” station.

      He understood how Kristen must be feeling at that moment. He supposed that was why his boss had assigned Nick to watch over her, to protect her. Callahan knew Nick would give her sympathy, even empathy.

      He wondered if he should tell her about Michele. Twice before their exit, he opened his mouth to say he knew how she felt, but closed it again. Gina might have forced him to eat and rejoin the world, to keep going until the grief eased, but she hadn’t been able to get him to talk about Michele to anyone. Those thoughts and feelings were between him and God. He wasn’t going to change anything with a lady he barely knew and was unlikely to see again in twenty-four hours, except on a wholly passing way if she came to the courthouse.

      “The waiting is terrible,” he said at last.

      She nodded.

      “And you keep thinking about what you could have done differently.”

      “I could have stayed with her instead of running.”

      Nick flipped on his blinker to take them into the heart of the Lakeview neighborhood. “What good would that have done?”

      “They would have let her go if they had me.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I would know they weren’t hurting her.”

      “Or they would have kept you both and harmed you both.”

      Nick wished he knew her well enough to know how she would react if he touched her hand, her shoulder, gave her that bit of human contact so comforting in times of distress. He didn’t know her, though, so kept his distance.

      Off a more major thoroughfare, he turned onto a relatively quiet street and stopped in front of a four-flat building with a carriage house behind. “My sister and her husband live in the carriage house.”

      “I wanted to live in a carriage house, but I could never find one I could afford.” She popped open her door and climbed out before he could reach her side. “Can you park here?”

      “They’ll have a sticker for me.” Nick gathered up her belongings, such as they were, and carried them through the open gate. “I’m going to ask Sean, my brother-in-law, to lock this for the night.”

      Kristen stared at him. In the light of the security lamps, her face was sickly pale. “You don’t think I’m safe here.”

      “Kristen—” He stopped.

      Her wide-eyed horror roused his sympathy so much, he doubted he could keep an emotional distance from her.

      “Kristen,” he began again, “I don’t think you’re safe anywhere. This is just the best place at the moment if you don’t want to be locked away in a safe house until we hear more from the kidnappers.”

      As if to respond to his statement, a cell phone rang. Kristen jumped. Nick reached for his phone. Nothing showed on the screen, and the ringing continued.

      “It’s mine.” She was fumbling in her bag. A pack of tissues, a tube of lip balm and three peppermints landed on the sidewalk before she drew the phone from the suitcase she called a purse.

      “Let me.” Nick held out his hand.

      But she was already answering. “Hello?”

      She lowered the phone so it switched to speaker mode, and Nick heard the response as clearly as she did.

      “Please,”

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