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  Jesus, he’d been through years of some of the most grueling training on the planet, designed to keep him focused and on task, so that when the world was literally blowing up around him he didn’t waver from his mission.

  Turned out that to him at least, Krista was more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. Everything about her was a distraction. The warmth of her skin, the scent of her flooding the car so thickly, even the cold air blowing through the open windows offered no relief. He knew it was his imagination, but he swore that with the new dark hair, her own scent got darker, richer, and even more mind-blowing.

  Which was ridiculous, because he of all people knew she was still blond where it counted.

  He rolled his shoulders and told himself to get his mind out of the gutter and made himself a silent promise: When and if they got out of this mess, somehow, some way, he was going to work Krista Slater out of his system once and for all.

  As they drove, he entertained thoughts of taking her back to his cabin, caveman style, and keeping her there for a week, a month—as long as it took.

  But for now he needed to put a lid on all this craziness, get his head off of Krista and back on the task of getting them out of the mess that had them running for their lives.

  Five hours later, Sean parked the car along a curb in Seattle’s ritzy Washington Park neighborhood. He pulled a cap over his closely shorn hair and slipped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  Despite the cloudy day, Krista followed his lead and put on oversize shades as they climbed out of the car. With the haircut and the wardrobe change, she looked nothing like her usual self. No one, not even a neighbor who had known her all of her life, would match this urban fashion victim to cool, classically beautiful Krista Slater.

  Unless that person was intimately acquainted with her body, Sean thought, shifting uncomfortably as his eyes drifted to the long line of her legs, the muscles flexing and shifting under the clingy fabric of her pants. Others might not know her, but he’d recognize the curve of her neck, exposed now by the new haircut, across a crowded room.

  He gave himself a mental shake and forced his brain back to the mission.

  Sean followed Krista around the block and up the walk to an imposing iron gate. The main gate was wide enough to allow access to cars, and there was a keypad with a built-in speaker that would be level with the driver’s side window if you came in by car.

  Krista bypassed the keypad and went for the smaller gate to the right. She pulled her key ring from her purse and, click, click, they were inside the ten-foot-high, ivy-covered brick wall that surrounded the house.

  Sean let out a low whistle as he got his first glimpse of Krista’s father’s house. It looked like someone had transplanted a miniature French chateau to Seattle, complete with a cobblestone circular drive featuring a fountain in the center. To the right of the main house, Sean saw what looked like a four-car garage. “Nice digs.”

  Krista shrugged. “Pays well to defend rich scumbags,” she said.

  Sean gave another quick look around as she walked straight up to the front door. A place this big—Sean couldn’t tell for sure from the front but he’d bet the house was at least six, maybe seven, thousand square feet, not including the grounds—needed a decent-sized nearly full-time staff to stay on top of everything. Sean had expected maybe a nice craftsman, not a sprawling mansion potentially crawling with staff. “You sure we’re not going to run into anyone? A housekeeper, a gardener?”

  She gave a quick shake of her newly dark head and opened the door with her key. “It’s May.”

  “So?”

  “Elinor—my father’s wife—is in Maui until June, which means my father spends most of his time at the office or on the golf course, and staff works on half time.” The hard soles of her flat boots sounded against the marble floor of the entryway.

  Sean followed her inside, his nose picking up the scent of furniture polish and traces of expensive perfume. The entryway was dominated by a sweeping staircase, the curved kind Sean had only ever seen in hotels or in movies. “You grew up in this house?”

  “Since my mom and dad divorced.”

  “Which was when?” Sean asked.

  “When I was six,” she replied.

  “You split time between both parents?” he asked, and then told himself he shouldn’t give a crap how Krista grew up. Yet for some godforsaken reason he was intensely curious about Krista’s past.

  “No,” she said as she locked the door behind her. “My mom wasn’t really into parenting,” she said with little air quotes around the last words. “She moved down to Southern California to find herself. Last I heard she was playing sugar mama to a guy who’s my age.”

  She tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but beneath her flippant tone he sensed it still stung a lot more than she wanted to let on. He felt a pinch deep in his chest and had to force himself not to pull her into his arms.

  It was clear from her posture she didn’t want to walk any further down memory lane, so Sean took a moment to take in the details of the cold, imposing mansion. To the right of the staircase he could see a large, formal living room, and behind it an archway that looked like it might lead to a kitchen. Krista turned right and started purposefully down the hall. “Office is this way.”

  He followed at a slower pace, trying to imagine what it must have been like to grow up in this mausoleum. Not fun, judging from the few pictures of Krista, her father, and the dark-haired woman who must have been her stepmother.

  Unlike the informal and sometime goofy snapshots of him and Megan that had covered nearly every surface of his grandparents’ walls, the only pictures of Krista were formal and so tightly posed that her smiles almost looked like grimaces of pain. In the pictures of the three of them, Krista stood slightly off to the side. He leaned in to study a portrait where she couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. Her father and stepmother sat shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped so Elinor’s massive diamond ring caught the light, self-satisfied, almost smug smiles on their faces. Off to the side with her pale-blond hair and wide, solemn eyes was Krista, as though she understood even at that young age that she wasn’t really part of the main unit.

  “Are you coming?” she called. “No one’s here now but I don’t want to hang out any longer than we have to.”

  Even as he told himself Krista’s poor-little-rich-girl upbringing wasn’t his concern, it hurt him to think of that sad-eyed young girl. He could only wonder how the recent discoveries about her father might be chewing her up inside.

  He continued down the hall and found her in what had to be her father’s office, with its massive desk, heavy leather club chairs, and shelves and shelves of leather-bound books.

  Krista stood in front of a wall lined with wooden filing cabinets. She tugged at one drawer, grunting when she found it locked.

  “I got it,” Sean said. He pulled out his lock pick and knelt down on the floor. As he slid the pick in, he felt her shift and then she was kneeling next to him.

  “Careful not to scratch the lock,” she said, close enough for him to feel her breath against the skin of his neck. His hand shook a little and he mentally listed the top ten reasons it would be really bad to turn around, pin her down on the thick, no doubt woven rug, and have her right there in her father’s office.

  Come on, give her one happy memory in this ice chest of a house, his dick argued. The big head won out, barely. He slid the pick in and opened the lock with a soft click. She started to flip through the first drawer while he continued down the rows of drawers, unlocking as he went.

  Not finding what she was looking for in the first drawer, she moved down to the next, and then the next.

  “There’s a bunch of stuff for Karev, but nothing for JD Partners,” she muttered and continued to sift through the manila files. “Damn it,” she swore. “If he kept any files, they should be here.”

  Sean swallowed back his own disappointment and started to shut the drawer he’d been looking in when some
thing caught his eye. His jaw started to clench as he pulled the thin folder out. He opened it up and found it held what looked like a business contract. “Do you have any idea why your father would have a file for Nate?”

  Krista gasped and rushed over to peer at the contents of the folder. “I have no idea.” She flipped through the papers. “It’s a transfer of ownership document,” she murmured. “And there again, JD Partners is involved. They transferred ownership of a piece of land up in Bellingham to Nate.” She flipped through the pages, her mouth pulling into a tight line when none of them revealed the identity of the company’s owners. “No signature pages”—frustration made her voice tight—“but there are a few handwritten notes.”

  Sean looked over her shoulder at the yellow-lined paper full of handwritten scrawls. Nothing but a few notes about the deal. Nothing interesting except—“‘Ref. D.M. Strictly confidential.’ What does that mean?”

  “Could be a note on who referred Nate as a client or maybe D.M. is one of the parties involved in JD Partners.” Krista looked up from the documents, her face grim and pale. “I thought nothing he could do would surprise me,” she said, her voice shaking so hard Sean couldn’t stop himself from covering her hand with his. He threaded his fingers through her icy ones as she clung for dear life. “It’s one thing that he represented JD Partners, but to knowingly do business with that psycho…” She swallowed hard. “When the truth came out, Nate’s name was all over the papers. There’s no way he didn’t remember—”

  A loud thump sounded outside the door. Sean’s stomach jumped and in the next breath he wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her down behind the heavy leather couch. From here, he had a bead on the door so he could see who was coming. No idea yet how they’d get out if whoever that someone was decided to plant it for a while, but he’d jump off that bridge when he came to it.

  With his chest pressed against Krista’s back, he could feel their hearts thudding against each other and he struggled to slow his breath. He kept his gaze pinned to the doorway, barely breathing as he heard the whisper of movement.

  A small white paw appeared in the doorway, followed by a black-and-white face dominated by green eyes. Then a sleek black body ending in a long, white-tipped tail entered the office.

  Krista let out a relieved groan. “Goddamn you, Boots, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

  Boots turned at the sound of Krista’s voice, flattened her ears against her head, and bared her teeth in a menacing hiss.

  Sean rose to his knees to let her up and she pushed to her feet. “Yeah, feeling’s mutual, you stupid cat,” Krista muttered as she checked to make sure nothing had fallen out of the files she swiped.

  As she crossed the office, Boots held up a threatening paw, claws exposed. “I take it you two aren’t friends?”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she always knew I resented her for not being an Australian shepherd, but she hates everyone. Even Elinor, who got her when she was six weeks old.”

  As she said it, Boots turned her attention to Sean and trotted over, her tail whipping a salute. She stopped at his boots and looked up at him with a meow, and the next thing he knew, the damn cat was weaving her way in and out of his feet.

  He looked at Krista, who was staring, open mouthed, and shrugged. “Animals tend to like me.” He bent down to absently scratch the cat’s ears and he felt its purr rumble up his leg.

  He felt a smile tug at his mouth at the suspicious look she gave the two of them, almost like she thought he’d somehow put the cat up to it. He bent and gave the cat a scratch between the ears. “We should get out of here. Let’s take Nate’s file and whatever he has on Karev to Ibarra’s and figure out our next move.”

  She tucked the files under her arm and headed to the front door. She shut and locked the door and they headed across the drive, back to the pedestrian gate at the top of the driveway.

  The wrought iron creaked as the gate swung open, and he could hear the crunch of gravel under her booted feet. As Sean stepped onto the sidewalk next to her, he did an automatic scan of the street.

  His stomach nearly bottomed out when he saw the squad car heading down the street toward them.

  “Shit,” he whispered. He grabbed her hand and started walking down the sidewalk toward it.

  “What are you doing? Our car’s the other way.”

  “And the last thing I want to do is lead the cops to it.”

  “But they saw us come out of Dad’s place.”

  He kept walking, his pace brisk but not rushing. He tucked his chin into his collar against the wind and hoped the cop would take them for a couple walking down the street, away from the giant mansion neither of them lived in…

  The cop tweaked the siren just as they passed him. “Fuck,” Sean muttered and picked up the pace.

  Behind them a car door slammed. “Hey, can I ask you a couple questions?”

  Sean took off in a flat-out run, adjusting his pace to make sure Krista stayed with him. He heard the squawk of a radio, the sound of a car door, and the squeal of tires as the squad car whipped around.

  The siren pealed through the cold air as they sprinted around the corner.

  “This way.” The squad car screeched around the corner just as Krista pulled Sean between two houses and through a back yard that opened into a heavily wooded area that bordered one end of the neighborhood park.

  Branches slapped his face as he followed Krista, who seemed to know where she was going despite the lack of any trail. He could hear sirens coming from two different directions now. The first officer on the scene must have called for backup.

  They came out of the woods about a block from where they had parked the car, near the park’s playground. Fortunately the park was deserted, no curious eyes to wonder what they were doing as they squatted behind a Dumpster and watched one of the squad cars go screaming by.

  “Do you think they recognized us?” Krista asked, panting from the run.

  “Either way, if they pick us up we’re screwed.” He waited a couple of seconds. He could still hear the sirens in the distance, but they didn’t seem to be coming any closer. “You ready to make a run for it?”

  Krista nodded, and on his signal they both took off flat out across the park and down the block to where Ibarra’s vehicle was parked between a Saab coupe and a Volkswagen station wagon.

  The sirens were getting closer—the cops must be doing a loop through the park, but with no cover and the car only a dozen yards away there was nothing to do but run. He skidded to a stop and unlocked the car. He and Krista both scrambled inside.

  The sirens were blaring now.

  “Go, go,” Krista whispered, frantic.

  “Wait,” Sean said and scrunched himself down on the floor, ignoring Krista’s cry of pain as she banged her hand on the gear shift when he yanked her down.

  “What—”

  “I’m pretty sure they didn’t see us get in the car.” But “pretty sure” wasn’t a hundred percent and he was taking a big goddamn risk. “If we go screaming out of here like a bat out of hell, they’ll know it’s us. And whatever you’ve seen in movies, a high-speed car chase in a populated area is no fucking picnic.”

  “What if they get out to check the car? We’re sitting ducks.”

  As she said it, the sirens abruptly silenced and blue-and-red light flashed through the interior.

  Sean could hear the low rumble of the squad car’s engine and the intermittent static of the radio.

  “Keep driving,” Krista whispered, echoing his thoughts.

  Sean watched the lights bouncing off the interior and tried not to think about the fact that the doors were shut and the windows rolled up tight. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck and his chest started to go tight.

  “I think they’re going,” Krista said.

  The lights moved through the car and finally faded. Sean closed his eyes and forced himself to stay on the floor for another minute before checking. As soon as he was sure
the cop car was gone and another wasn’t about to come hurtling around the corner, he turned on the ignition and opened the driver’s side window wide.

  Krista opened her window too.

  Sean sucked down half a dozen lungfuls and then forced himself to roll the windows up until there was only an inch-and-a-half crack in each to let in air.

  At Krista’s cocked eyebrow, he said, “It will look a little strange if we’re driving around with the windows down in this kind of weather.” Sure, native Seattle-ites were used to the cool spring weather, but most didn’t drive around with the windows wide open when it was barely sixty degrees and threatening rain. “And the windows will help obscure us from the traffic cameras.”

  In case the cops decided to monitor the cameras in the vicinity, Sean pulled a ball cap over his short hair. He picked his way carefully back to the house Ibarra owned in Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood, avoiding as many stoplights and busy intersections as possible.

  Krista stared nervously out the window, but after several minutes with no cops following them down the side streets, she relaxed a few degrees. Her face was still grim, her eyes shadowed as she stared sightlessly out the window.

  Sean couldn’t help but try to comfort her. “I know it’s a blow, finding out your father’s messed up in all of this, that he was working with Nate…” Though he knew it led to danger, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching across the gear shift to put his hand on her leg.

  She let out a mirthless laugh and covered his hand with her own. “It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

  “I get it. He’s still your father. No matter what your differences, it has to hurt.”

  “You’d think I’d be immune by now, and yet, in the back of my mind, I’m always hoping…” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head and a hard glint appeared in her stare. “Let me tell you why nothing my father does should surprise me anymore.”