She was all his until Christmas…

Madeline must have heard their approach. She swung around to face them, and looked immediately wary to see Mitch with Neil, the officer who’d brought her to him. He tried to feel no emotion as they took each other’s measure.

Her admirers hadn’t exaggerated. She was everything he had heard—a tall, leggy beauty with amber eyes and a mane of dark red hair. What surprised him, though, was her youth. She couldn’t be more than in her early twenties. Still, there was a self-possession about her that he had to respect, considering she must be terrified.

“Madeline.” Neil introduced him. “This is Mitchell Hawke.

“Looks like I’ve been elected to take care of you,” Mitch said.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

If she was conscious of her looks and how they might be affecting a man she was meeting for the first time, she gave no indication of it. But Mitch was fully aware. And he didn’t like his reaction. Not one bit.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

Deck the halls with romance and suspense as we bring you four new stories that will wrap you up tighter than a present under your Christmas tree!

First we begin with the continuing series by Rita Herron, NIGHTHAWK ISLAND, where medical experiments on an island off the coast of Georgia lead to some dangerous results. Cole Hunter does not know who he is, and the only memories he has are of Megan Wells’s dead husband. And why does he have these intimate Memories of Megan?

Next, Susan Kearney finishes her trilogy THE CROWN AFFAIR, which features the Zared royalty and the treachery they must confront in order to save their homeland. In book three, a prickly, pretty P.I. must pose as a prince’s wife in order to help his majesty uncover a deadly plot. However, will she be able to elude his Royal Pursuit of her heart?

In Charlotte Douglas’s The Bride’s Rescuer, a recluse saves a woman who washes up on his lonely island, clothed only in a tattered wedding dress. Cameron Alexander hasn’t seen a woman in over six years, and Celia Stevens is definitely a woman, with secrets of her own. But whose secrets are more deadly? And also join Jean Barrett for another tale with the Hawke Family Detective Agency in the Christmastime cross-country journey titled Official Escort.

Best wishes to all of our loyal readers for a “breathtaking” holiday season!

Sincerely,

Denise O'Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Official Escort
Jean Barrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If setting has anything to do with it, Jean Barrett claims she has no reason not to be inspired. She and her husband live on Wisconsin’s scenic Door Peninsula in an antique-filled country cottage overlooking Lake Michigan. A teacher for many years, she left the classroom to write full-time. She is the author of a number of romance novels.

Write to Jean at P.O. Box 623, Sister Bay, WI 54234. SASE appreciated.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Madeline Raeburn—On the run after witnessing a murder, she can trust no one, including her protector—a man who assaults her senses on every level.

Mitchell Hawke—Madeline Raeburn is the last woman on earth the hard-bitten P.I. wants to be responsible for. Though he will protect her with his life, he doesn’t have to like it—or her. But he does.

Griff Matisse—He is determined to destroy the woman who betrayed him—Madeline Raeburn.

Gloria Rodriguez—Without Madeline Raeburn, the worried assistant district attorney has no case.

Neil Stanek—The cop needs Mitch to protect a vital witness.

Angel—He is a killer without mercy.

Morrie Swanson, Dave Ennis and Hank Rosinski—The three San Francisco officers were Neil’s trusted friends. But could one of them be a cop gone bad?

To Chad

Here’s the one you asked for. May it bring you the same

luck in your career as in your card playing—

except when I’m in the game, of course.

To Connie

Mach’s gut immer.

And to Rebecca

May lucky horseshoes hang always

over your doorways.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

San Francisco

She knew the risk in coming here. It would be the first place he’d look for her. But she couldn’t disappear without the collection that it had taken her years to accumulate. The precious objects could mean her survival in the months ahead.

But she must hurry, hurry. Take what she had come for and run before it was too late.

Madeline worked feverishly, thrusting the treasures one by one into the canvas satchel. She selected only those that were essential. The larger pieces weren’t easily portable and, regrettably, would have to be left behind.

One of the items slipped through her fingers and clattered on the bench. She retrieved it with a shaking hand and stuffed it deep into the satchel.

This is no good. You’re letting panic rule you. And, anyway, you’re probably exaggerating the danger. It was dark out in the hall. Griff couldn’t have had more than a fleeting glimpse of an unrecognizable shadow, before you turned and fled.

But Madeline wasn’t able to shake the image of his victim sinking to his knees with a bullet through his head. Horrifying!

The velvet pouch was the last of the collection to go into the satchel. She placed her purse on top. It contained the funds she had cleared out of her checking and meager savings account this afternoon. Thank God she’d had the sense to do that before going to the club.

Nothing else mattered in the apartment. Not her furniture, not even her clothes. All of it was expendable. Time to leave.

You’re going to make it.

She kept telling herself this as she picked up the heavy satchel and hurried toward the door. She made herself remember how lucky she had been that a cab had been cruising by when she’d burst out of the club. She had grabbed it and rushed straight to the apartment. That meant no wasted minutes. A comfortable head start on any pursuit. But she couldn’t shake her alarm, her awful sense of urgency.

After dousing the lights, Madeline unlocked the door and eased it back on the chain, then peered out into the hallway. Nothing. No one in sight. Seconds later, without a backward glance at the apartment with all its poignant memories, she was on her way to the elevators.

The hallway continued to be silent and deserted, but when she reached the elevators, the indicator revealed that one of the two cars was rising from the ground floor. What if the occupant of that car wasn’t another tenant, but someone who had been sent to find her? She couldn’t take that chance.

Turning away from the elevators, she flew down the hallway and around the corner. It was nine floors to the lobby below, but she considered the enclosed stairway a safer route to the street. It wasn’t. Madeline learned that when she shouldered her way past the metal fire door and, drawing a gasp, shrank back in fear.

He was waiting for her there on the landing, just as though he had expected her to choose this avenue of escape. He was the one they called Angel. An inappropriate name since, even in her days of innocence, she had always thought there was something lethal about him. It was there now in the smile on his bony face and in that low, breathy voice she found so chilling.

“I always said Griff knew what he was doing when he picked you. Said none of the other girls at the Phoenix could compare. Could be it’s all that red hair. You think?”

She had been wrong. Madeline knew that now. Griff had realized it was her outside his office and had sent Angel after her. She had made a serious mistake in coming back to the apartment, one that was about to cost her her life.

“Yeah,” Angel said, “I’m gonna be real sorry about that red hair.” His cunning eyes went to the satchel she carried. “Put it on the floor.”

“There isn’t any weapon in it,” she managed to croak, clutching the satchel protectively.

“Do it,” he commanded.

She had no choice. He had no gun in evidence, but she knew he must be carrying one beneath that finely cut suit coat. Madeline lowered the bag to the floor.

“Now step back,” he instructed her.

She retreated a few steps as he moved forward to take possession of the satchel. Her gaze cut to the stairs. Before she could even consider the possibility of plunging down them, he stopped her with a soft “I wouldn’t—not if you want to live long enough for me to get you back to the Phoenix. Griff is real anxious about you, Madeline.”

Trapped. There was nothing she could do. She watched him as he lifted the satchel, hanging it by its long straps on his shoulder in order to keep his hands free. He didn’t seem interested in its contents. He was probably leaving them for Griff to examine.

“We’ll go now,” he said.

Angel motioned for her to precede him down the stairway, but at that moment the metal door on the floor below them burst open. A group of people trooped out onto the landing, chattering loudly.

Angel muttered an oath. “Guess we have to take the elevator,” he said.

Madeline knew he couldn’t risk taking her past all those people, who seemed in no hurry to leave the landing. She watched him glance one last time at the stairway, an expression of regret on his thin face that she didn’t understand.

Conscious of him close behind her, she opened the fire door and returned along the hallway. They didn’t have to call an elevator. The car that had risen earlier was waiting.

“Inside,” Angel instructed her. He hesitated a second before following her into the elevator, where he stabbed the button for the ground floor and then stood so close beside her that she could smell his strong cologne.

Madeline was barely conscious of the door closing, the car descending. Her mind was on a desperate journey, searching for some means of escape. But there didn’t seem to be any hope, not even when the car bounced to a sudden halt. She waited for the door to roll back to admit another passenger. But it stayed firmly shut.

There was a moment of total silence, and then Angel demanded sharply, “What’s wrong? Why have we stopped?”

Her gaze lifted to the indicator above the door. They were stalled between the fourth and fifth floors. “We’re stuck, that’s all.”

“What do you mean, stuck?”

“It’s an old building. It happens.” Apparently he had never been caught in an elevator before.

“How do we get out of this thing?”

“How do you suppose? You press the alarm button, and hope someone hears it and that the super is around to come to our rescue.”

“And what if he isn’t around?”

She glanced at him as he went to the panel and repeatedly punched the alarm button. His voice had become even more raspy, and he was breathing hard.

“Then, we wait,” she said.

“How long?”

Madeline lifted her shoulders in a little shrug and eyed him warily as he leaned against the wall, cursing savagely under his breath. There was a frantic look now on his sharp-featured face. It told her why he had been reluctant to leave the stairs for the elevator. The deadly Angel suffered from claustrophobia. It was a situation that might be to her advantage, or prove even more dangerous for her. There was no way of knowing. She could only pray that, when help arrived, she could somehow make them aware of her plight.

They didn’t speak as the long minutes passed. She watched him become increasingly restless. Every few seconds, his movements jerky and impatient, he would attack the alarm button with his thumb or smack the other buttons in a futile effort to move the elevator. They could hear the bell ringing somewhere in the distance, but no one came. There was a sheen of perspiration on his face now. Madeline feared he was so panicked that he was nearing a stage of hyperventilation.

What would she do if he lost all control? What could she do, when she was trapped in an elevator with a wild animal who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she made the wrong move?

Madeline didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when he finally ruptured the silence with a growled, “I’m not taking this anymore! I’m getting out!”

She followed his lifted gaze, understanding his intention. There was a panel in the low ceiling above them, covering a service hatch to the roof of the elevator.

“Floor above us can’t be more than a couple of feet higher than the top of the elevator,” he said. “If I can get up there, maybe I can force the door, climb out. Get over here and make a step for me with your hands.”

Madeline didn’t want to touch him, but she didn’t dare to refuse him. She joined him below the hatch where he had positioned himself. Leaning down, she braced herself as he placed his weight on the sling she created with her hands linked together. He shouldn’t have been too heavy for her, not when she was nearly as tall as he was and his body was emaciated. But with the satchel still firmly in his keeping, he felt like a boulder.

Steadying himself, with his fingers biting painfully into her shoulder, he rose to his full height and shoved the loose panel up out of its frame. The hatch was now open to the elevator shaft. She wished he would hurry. Her hands wobbled under the strain, especially when he stretched himself to gain a hold on the frame. Having succeeded, he was ready to swing himself through the opening. That’s when it happened. The elevator lurched without warning, dropping another several inches.

Madeline lost her footing, Angel his grip. With a yell, he plummeted to the floor of the car. The satchel swinging wildly from his shoulder cost him his balance. He went crashing into the steel wall.

When she’d recovered herself, she went over to check on him. He was huddled tightly in a corner, unconscious, blood seeping from a wound where his head had struck the wall.

Madeline crouched beside him. The aroma of his cologne was overpowering, sickening. Forget that. Find his gun.

Her hands were on his coat, ready to search him, when there was a clang of metal from the floor above. She recognized it as the sound of a door scraping open. It was followed by the familiar voice of the small-statured Korean man who was the super for the building, calling down to her.

“Who is there, please?”

Madeline got eagerly to her feet. “It’s me, Kim.”

“You okay, Miss Raeburn?”

“I’m fine. Just get me out.”

“Sure. I got a ladder. It’s coming down.”

By the time he managed to lower the ladder to her through the hatch, Madeline had the precious satchel back in her possession. With a last glance at the still-unconscious Angel, she swarmed up the ladder. The fifth floor, where Kim waited for her, was no more than three feet above the roof of the elevator. He reached down and helped her scramble to safety.

“You got anyone else down there, Miss Raeburn?”

“No, Kim, I was all alone on the elevator.”

He started to mutter about how the tenants would complain again about the car having to be shut down until the engineer came to fix it. Madeline didn’t stop to listen to him. She was already flying toward the stairs.

Nor did she permit her pace to slacken when she reached the street. She hurried down the hill, the clang of a cable car making her start nervously as she threaded her way through the evening crowds. From time to time she checked over her shoulder, fearing that Angel might be in pursuit again. Or, if not Angel, another enemy sent by Griff to find her. Nowhere in the city was safe for her.

The police? No, Madeline didn’t trust the police to protect her. Hadn’t she learned firsthand what happened to informers? Griff Matisse was too powerful, had too many friends in high places for her to risk staying here in San Francisco. Damn it, she was scared. All she wanted to do was to lose herself, go far away and hide.

You’re doing the right thing. They’re dead. You can’t help them now. Stay and testify? Don’t be a fool. He’d never let you survive long enough to mount a witness stand. You were planning to go away, anyway, weren’t you? That’s why you took all your money out of the bank, remember?

She wouldn’t let herself feel guilty because she was running away. She wouldn’t.

SCARS, THE RESIDUE of a severe adolescent acne, pitted his jaw. They were the only flaws on Griff Matisse’s handsome face. He permitted nothing else to mar his appearance, which was as immaculate as his tasteful office in the Phoenix on Powell Street. Nor was Matisse willing to tolerate any mistakes from those who served him.

“I’m not happy,” he coldly informed the man who stood on the other side of his desk. “I think I have every reason to be unhappy, don’t you?”

Angel, resisting the urge to finger the wound in his scalp, nodded slowly. For a moment the only sound in the office was the muted wail of a saxophone off in the elegant main room of the club.

“What are we going to do about making me happy again, Angel?”

“She’s disappeared,” Angel said in his hushed, raspy voice that was almost a whisper. “She could be anywhere.”

“But she’s somewhere, isn’t she? And wherever that is, and whatever it takes, I want her found and eliminated. We have all the right connections. Use them.”

Angel didn’t need to be persuaded. He had his own score to settle with Madeline Raeburn.

Chapter One

Rural Wisconsin

Madeline didn’t have a good feeling about this arrangement. Maybe the setting was responsible for that, at least partly. It wasn’t very encouraging, she decided, gazing out the passenger window of the car as it bumped up the long, rutted farm lane.

It was a bleak situation, the fields brown, the trees leafless. Even the spiky evergreens that studded the hills on all sides were a dull shade of green. Snow would have softened the scene, made it more palatable. But even though it was late December and only a few days before Christmas, the ground was bare, though the gray sky was certainly cold enough to warrant snow.

The burly man beside her at the wheel, hair grizzled, face lined, must have sensed her anxiety. “We’re doing the right thing,” he reassured her gently.

He had been particularly kind to her since yesterday. Understandable, considering he had come within millimeters of losing her to an assassin’s bullet.

Madeline nodded. “This man…you’re sure he’s safe?”

“I wouldn’t be taking you to him if I wasn’t.”

But Madeline continued to be uneasy. There was no one and nowhere she really trusted anymore, though this setting certainly seemed isolated enough to provide her with the protection that was so essential now. Funny that it should seem so remote when it was less than fifty miles from Milwaukee.

That feeling of loneliness was emphasized when they crawled around a bend and came in sight of the old farmhouse. The place had a look of neglect about it. It would have benefited from a fresh coat of paint. The outbuildings were in even sorrier condition, the roofs sagging, the walls weathered to a dismal gray. There was no sign of life.

“Animals,” Madeline said. “Where are the animals? Farms are supposed to have cows and chickens and horses, at least a dog or a cat.”

“This isn’t a working farm,” her companion replied. “The owners only use it in the summer on weekends and as a vacation retreat. But, of course, this winter it’s being rented to—” He broke off to negotiate a particularly rough stretch of the driveway.

Madeline silently finished the explanation for him. The man you’re being taken to. She was beginning to feel like a waif. Dumped for the holidays with whomever would take her. Not very cheerful holidays, either, she thought. She had just observed not only that the farm lacked animals, but that it was missing any evidence of the approaching Christmas. There was no welcoming wreath on the front door, no decorated tree mounted in the bay window. It was probably foolish of her to have expected them. Or, considering her perilous circumstances, to even yearn for them.

The car rolled to a stop at the edge of the front yard. The man at her side checked the lane behind them, making sure it was deserted. All the way out from Milwaukee, Madeline had watched him repeatedly glance in the rearview mirror to be certain they weren’t followed. Neil Stanek was that sort of cop—conscientious, thorough. And considerate.

He demonstrated that now by turning to her with a concerned “You all right?”

He feels guilty, Madeline thought. Blames himself for what happened, even though it wasn’t his fault.

“I’m fine,” she assured him. She wasn’t, of course, and they both knew that. But it helped to pretend otherwise.

“You’ll be okay, then, if I leave you here in the car for a few minutes?” he asked, releasing his seat belt and opening the door on his side. “Just long enough for me to explain all the particulars to him.”

Madeline was suddenly worried. “He is expecting me, isn’t he?”

“Oh, sure, sure, no problem there. And, like I said, he’s got all the right skills and instincts for this. You just sit tight. I’ll leave the motor running so you’ll have the heater. Keep the doors locked, and lay on that horn if you see or hear anything you don’t like. Not that you will. No one now but us knows where you are, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

Madeline had no choice but to accept his word. Setting the lock, he slid out of the car and slammed the door. She watched his stocky figure trudge up the ragged path to the porch. The front door opened as he neared the house. A man stepped out and stood there in the dimness of the porch, waiting for Neil. She couldn’t tell much about that figure at this distance, only that he was tall and lean. But there was another impression Madeline had. Maybe it was the way he stood there by the door, hands buried in his pockets in an attitude of detachment. As though he didn’t mind the desolation of this place. As if it suited him because he, too, was using its seclusion to hide himself. Or was it merely her imagination, which lately had been working overtime?

MITCH WAS IN NO MOOD for visitors. These days he preferred his own company, rotten though it was. After all, that’s why he had buried himself out here. He’d needed to get away from people—friends with their sympathy that had driven him crazy, his loving, well-meaning family offering a comfort he didn’t want. Even strangers, who were apt to be curious, troubled him. That’s why he’d resented the sound of a car arriving in the driveway, and why he had gone so unwillingly to the door.

Mitch had been relieved when his caller turned out to be Neil. He didn’t mind Neil, didn’t regard him as an intruder. The cop never asked questions to which, these days, Mitch had no answers. Never expected more of him than he was capable of being.

But Neil wasn’t alone this time. Mitch could see someone else waiting in the car. That’s why he hung back on the porch. All he could tell was that the figure was a woman, nothing else. Must be Neil’s daughter, he figured.

“That Faye with you?” Mitch asked when the cop joined him on the porch, adding a reluctant, “She doesn’t have to sit out there. Ask her to come in.”

“It’s not Faye,” Neil said, shaking Mitch’s hand.

Who else? Mitch wondered. Maybe that neighbor of Neil’s, the widow who was trying to be more than just friends with him. What was her name? Claire Something-or-other. But Neil wasn’t prepared to name his companion.

“How about we go inside,” he suggested, “before one of us turns blue out here?”

Mitch led the way into the big farm kitchen with its sparse country furnishings. “Coffee?”

Neil shook his head and opened his coat. But he didn’t remove it, and Mitch noticed that he stood near the window where he could keep an eye on the car in the driveway. Mitch was beginning to have an uncomfortable feeling about this unexpected visit.

“Something up?”

Neil replied by removing a business card from his pocket and slapping it down on the sturdy table, his action like a challenge. Mitch had only to glance at the prominent logo of a golden hawk to recognize it. And why shouldn’t he know it, since it was one of his own business cards?

The Hawke Detective Agency. That’s what it read. Neil’s silent message to him was very plain. This time his friend did expect something from him. Mitch was immediately resistant.

“Whatever it is,” he said firmly, “you can forget about it. I’m out of the business. Anyway, I don’t have a license to practice here in Wisconsin.”

“You don’t need a license for this. It’s a simple matter of protection. Your specialty, remember?”

Mitch laughed. It was a brittle laugh without a trace of humor. “Yeah? Like I protected Julie, huh?”

“You weren’t responsible for what happened to Julie. When are you going to stop beating yourself up over that?”

“I wasn’t there for her, Neil. I wasn’t there.”

“And that wasn’t your fault, either. All right, I know you’re hurting, but it’s been five months. Hell, Mitch, when a man starts feeling sorry for himself, it’s time to stop grieving.”

“What would you know about it?”

The angry words were out of Mitch’s mouth before he could stop them. Damn it, how could he have said something like that to Neil, of all people? Because, of course, Neil did know all about losing someone who mattered.

“Sorry,” Mitch mumbled.

“Forget it. Look, I wouldn’t ask, but there is no one else. No one I trust, anyway. I need you.”

He would have been justified in saying that Mitch owed him, but Neil would never do that. It wasn’t his way. Mitch would probably regret this, already did regret it, in fact, but how could he send Neil away without at least listening to him?

“Okay, who are we talking about? The woman out there in the car? Who is she?”

“A murder witness. A vital one. If we can keep her alive long enough for the accused to come to trial, we stand every chance of convicting the bastard for cold-bloodedly icing an undercover cop.”

“Why come to me, when you’ve got the whole Milwaukee police force to guard her?”

“That’s the problem.” Neil turned his head to check on the occupant of the car before continuing. “We did have her in a safe house, only it turns out it wasn’t so safe. She came close to swallowing a bullet last night. Guy got away. Probably a mob assassin. The bastard has some powerful connections. Anyway, they knew just where to find her.”

“Are you saying there’s an informer in the police ranks?”

“Looks like it. Now I’m afraid to trust her with any of our people.”

“So you’re in charge of her. Why you, Neil? This isn’t exactly your area.”

“Because I’m the one she came to when she finally decided to turn herself in.”

“Turned herself— Wait a minute, just how long ago did this cop killing take place?”

“Couple of months. She’s been on the run since then, too scared to do anything but hide.”

It occurred to Mitch that there was something decidedly wrong about this situation, a whole lot that didn’t make sense. It also occurred to him that the uncomfortable feeling he’d been experiencing over his friend’s visit was probably not just his imagination.

“Talk to me, Neil. Tell me exactly what this is all about. Like, for instance, why she happened to want you.”

Neil’s heavy shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I guess I’m the one she trusted. I guess because she thought I treated her fairly when I questioned her during another investigation last summer.”

Mitch stared at him, his suspicion growing stronger by the moment. “You weren’t with the Milwaukee department last summer. You were still on the San Francisco force.”

“That’s right.”

It was more than just discomfort Mitch was feeling now. It was something raw and wrenching deep inside him. “You didn’t phone me before you came out here,” he said, his voice accusing. “Why is that, Neil? Because you knew I’d hang up on you after you told me what you wanted?”

Neil, looking decidedly awkward now, gazed at him silently.

“Who is she, Neil?” Mitch demanded. “Who is it you’ve got out there in that car?”

And that was when Neil dropped his bombshell, the one Mitch had been expecting.

“Madeline Raeburn,” he said quietly.

Hearing the name was worse than anticipating it—a pain that tore at Mitch’s gut. He fought for self-control, strove to keep his voice level. “Take your witness and get out of here. Now, before I forget you’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here, and you’re going to listen to me.”

“And what am I going to hear, Neil? You telling me that I’ve got Madeline Raeburn all wrong? That she’s a decent, caring woman who is in no way to blame for Julie ending up in San Francisco Bay?”

“I don’t know what she is or isn’t. All I know is that she’s scared. She’d gotten as far away from San Francisco as her money could take her and was lying low somewhere in Indiana when she saw me on a newscast involving that Milwaukee Brewers case and learned I was in Milwaukee. That’s when she found the guts to come to me and agree to testify against Griff Matisse.”

Matisse. Another name that had Mitch’s insides tightening in rage. “Matisse is your cop killer?”

Neil nodded. “Back in San Francisco.”

“Then, what is Milwaukee doing protecting her? Why isn’t one of those close friends of yours from the Frisco force taking charge of her? You always said they’re the best.”

“The DA’s office in San Francisco is going to send an escort for her. They’re just waiting until they can get a secure safe house set up for her out there—one that Matisse can’t penetrate this time. You know how delayed everything gets around the holiday. Meanwhile, they think she’s better off in this area.”

“Even with a dirty cop on your force passing information to Matisse’s connections here?” This just didn’t make sense to Mitch. “You sure?”

“That’s the decision.”

Mitch shook his head, still puzzled. “It’s a bad decision. And I’ll tell you one that’s even worse—you wanting to stash her out here with me.”

“Just for a few days,” Neil pleaded. “Just until after Christmas. By then, we’ll either have plugged our leak here, or the safe house will be ready for her in California. Look, I’d keep her myself, but my house is no secret.”

“And mine isn’t vulnerable like that, huh? Besides, I should want to do it, now that I know Madeline Raeburn has found both a conscience and courage. Except,” he added cynically, “I’ve got to wonder whether that’s why she came to you or whether she finally realized she isn’t safe anywhere and needed police protection to save her own neck.”

“Maybe she sees it as risking her neck.”

“Yeah? Then, if she’s so good, why did she wait until now to talk? Why didn’t she open up to you when Julie was murdered?”

Neil gazed at him, his face solemn. “When did you become so bitter, Mitch?”

Mitch squirmed under the sorrowful expression in his friend’s eyes. He knew that Neil was right. He had become bitter since Julie’s death. It was something he needed to lose, but he also knew that could never happen with Madeline Raeburn in his house.

“I’d like to help you out, Neil, but I can’t do it. The answer is no.”

His friend didn’t say anything. He just went on gazing at him, while Mitch stood there, trying to look casual about his emphatic refusal. And then Neil delivered his final shot, the one he must have been saving for this exact moment.

“That’s too bad, Mitch,” he said quietly. “Because if Matisse was responsible for Julie’s death last summer, and we don’t keep Madeline Raeburn alive to testify against him, then he ends up not paying for any of it. You want to see him just walk away again?”

It was an argument for which Mitch had no defense, and his friend knew that. He stared at Neil in an explosive frustration that finally released itself when he snatched up the business card from the table, crushing it angrily in his fist.

Neil, understanding the surrender that anger signified, nodded slowly. “You coming out to the car with me, or do you want to wait here while I bring her in?”

Mitch answered by striding across the room and snagging his leather jacket from a hook on the wall. “She know who I am?” he asked, shrugging into the coat.

“You mean that you’re Julie’s ‘Mickey’? You don’t think she would have agreed to come out here if she did, do you? And let’s keep it that way, please. I don’t want to risk her going on the run again. She’s already nervous enough after last night.”

Mitch nodded as he zipped up the jacket. He remembered how Neil, after questioning Madeline Raeburn last summer, had told him that Julie apparently had never referred to him at the Phoenix by anything other than her playful nickname for him. Their private joke. Mitch also remembered how Neil, with just short of physical force, had managed to keep him from going to Matisse and Madeline Raeburn. Mad with grief, he’d wanted to tear both of them apart. He realized as he joined Neil by the door that that memory was still painful.

“And, Mitch?”

“Yeah?”

“Anything happens—not that it will—you won’t let me down, will you? You’ll stick by her?”

Mitch promised, and they went out on the porch. The cop swore. “Damn it, I told her to stay in the car.”

Madeline stood a few yards away from the car, her back to them as she gazed off into the wooded hills.

“Nice beginning,” Mitch muttered. “A woman with her own mind.”

“You just treat her right,” Neil instructed him as they started toward the car. “She’s been through a lot.”

“Hell, Neil,” Mitch said dryly, “before it’s over we’re gonna be best friends. Probably share the same toothbrush.”

Madeline must have heard their approach. She swung to face them, looking immediately wary when she realized Neil was not alone. Mitch tried to feel no emotion as they stood there near the car, taking each other’s measure. But holding his feelings in check wasn’t possible, not with what felt like a fist slowly squeezing his insides as he looked at her.

Her admirers hadn’t exaggerated. She was everything he had heard she was: a tall, leggy beauty with wide, amber eyes and a mane of dark red hair that was probably the result of Scottish ancestry. But he had expected no less. Griff Matisse wouldn’t have owned her if she hadn’t been stunning.

What did surprise Mitch was her youth. She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties. Still, there was a self-possession about her, which he supposed he had to respect considering she must be terrified under all that seemingly quiet composure.

If she was conscious of her looks and how they might be affecting a man she was meeting for the first time—and in Mitch’s experience women like her always were—she gave no indication. But, hell, she didn’t have to be conscious of her looks. Mitch was fully aware of them for her. And he didn’t like his reaction. Not one bit. Her mere existence was problem enough.

“Madeline,” Neil introduced him, “this is Mitchell Hawke.”

“Looks like I’ve been elected to take care of you,” Mitch said. It was the best he had to offer her.

There was a bad moment while she went on silently regarding him. Did his name mean something to her, after all? Or had another recognition occurred, the physical one that was certainly possible?

Mitch relaxed, and Neil with him, when she finally nodded gravely and extended a gloved hand. Mitch accepted the slim hand. Her clasp was brief but firm; her voice was low and husky—the kind that did things to a man’s imagination.

“Thank you for letting me be your guest,” she said simply. And then her thickly lashed gaze flicked toward Neil. “It is all arranged, isn’t it?” she asked, a note of concern in her voice.

“Everything’s settled,” Neil assured her. He opened the back door of the car and took out a single suitcase.

Madeline went to the front and removed a bulging canvas satchel. It looked heavy. Mitch tried to take it from her, but she clung to it possessively.

“I’ll carry it,” she informed him, holding it close.

Mitch, leading the way to the house, wondered what she was guarding in that satchel. It was one more complication in a situation that was already difficult. He knew this was not going to be an easy few days. How could it be, when, once Neil was gone, he would be alone with Madeline Raeburn and all that alluring red hair?

CLARK GABLE.

That’s who Madeline had been trying to think of all afternoon. The actor from the golden age of movies. The name finally came to her all at once as she sat across the dinner table from Mitchell Hawke. He had the same prominent ears as Clark Gable.

Funny, she thought, how ears that were a bit too large for their wearer, and stuck out slightly, as well, could qualify as sexy. They certainly had for Clark Gable, and they did for this man. Maybe it was the way they were set on his head.

Or maybe it was that dark head itself with its other bold features—a pair of probing blue eyes, a strong nose and a wide, sensual mouth above a square jaw. All of this was carried on a solid body clad in a bulky, wheat-colored sweater and snug jeans.

Madeline had been making a concerted effort ever since her arrival not to notice just how well Mitch Hawke filled those jeans. This had become especially difficult during their preparations for dinner.

The kitchen was not small, but they had been forever bumping into each other. Brief as those contacts were, they had been charged with a kind of intimacy in which Madeline had been far too conscious of the heat radiating from his six-foot frame.

Neil Stanek trusted this man to protect her—Madeline kept reminding herself of that. Still, she couldn’t seem to shake the conviction that Mitch Hawke was dangerous. Dangerous on some level she was unable to define but that had her fearing it was a mistake for her to be here with him in this house.

“Something wrong?”

He had looked up abruptly from his plate and caught her staring at him. Maybe his ears were a sensitive subject. Madeline felt herself flushing, the penalty of a fair, slightly freckled complexion.

“No. The meat loaf is very good.”

She busied herself slicing it, but she was aware of him eyeing her across the table. Madeline was used to men looking at her. It was essentially what she had been paid for at the Phoenix. But there was a difference in the way Mitch Hawke looked at her. It wasn’t admiration. It was something else, something that worried her. Something that was very wrong.

This, too, had been on her mind all afternoon. She had even asked him about it when she’d noticed all the somber looks he’d cast in her direction while helping her settle in to her room. But he had denied it in that brusque manner she found so troubling.

She could feel his gaze still lingering on her as she ate the meat loaf. That was why she asked him about his relationship with Neil Stanek, not because she needed to understand it but simply in an effort to ease the tension between them.

“You were friends with Neil back in San Francisco, weren’t you?”

“That’s right,” he said, adding more dressing to his salad.

“I think he mentioned you were both in law enforcement there.”

“Something like that.”

“But you aren’t here? In law enforcement like Neil, I mean.”

“No.”

He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press him for an explanation. She sensed that he wouldn’t appreciate any probing in that direction.

Madeline helped herself to applesauce, trying to decide whether Mitch was just a private man by nature or whether he was hiding something. And if he did have secrets, ought she to be worried about that? After all, it was a little odd that a man of his robust age—somewhere in his early thirties, she guessed—should be living a solitary existence in this remote place.

On the other hand, Neil trusted him and she trusted Neil. Which brought her back to the subject that she judged was a safe one.

“It’s a long way from San Francisco to Milwaukee,” she said. “What brought Neil here?”

He didn’t answer her for a moment, and then he apparently decided there was no reason why she shouldn’t know. “Neil lost his wife last spring after a long battle with cancer. It was pretty hard on him.”

The loss of a loved one. Madeline certainly had no trouble relating to that kind of anguish. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t know.”

“He can deal with it now, thanks to his daughter and her family. They live in Milwaukee. That’s why Neil eventually moved here, to be close to them.”

“And you helped him through that bad time, too, when you were both in San Francisco, didn’t you. He said as much on the drive out here, although I didn’t understand then what he was referring to.”

Mitch didn’t deny it.

And you ended up here yourself, Madeline thought, not daring to ask him why he also was so far from San Francisco, but wondering just the same. Had Neil somehow brought Mitch to Wisconsin, just as Neil’s existence here had brought her? No, that wasn’t right. It was guilt that had finally summoned her to a Milwaukee police station. The need to make a bad thing right. Because no matter how she had struggled to silence it, and wherever she had tried to hide from it in those long weeks on the road, the voice of her conscience had given her no peace.

Madeline was suddenly aware that Mitch was no longer eating. When she looked up from her own plate, it was to find those blue eyes fastened on her again. Intense, unreadable. But there was something now in that steady gaze that she did understand. Something that was both hot and potent, robbing her of her breath. Smoldering desire.

It had all the impact of a searing physical contact, and in a kind of panic she tore her gaze away from his and cast it about the kitchen in an effort to distract herself.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“There aren’t any,” she suddenly said.

“Any what?”

“Christmas decorations. Not a single one.”

It was one thing not to have a wreath on the door or a tree in the window, but a house deserved some acknowledgment of the holiday season. Except, this house hadn’t so much as a homely poinsettia in it, she thought sadly. Why? Because even a plant, in its need for water, demanded commitment? Was that why he kept no animals for company, either?

“No, there aren’t,” he said simply and without emotion. As if he were curtly telling her that he preferred his self-imposed exile to be without any attachment whatsoever, thank you.

Madeline was sorry about that. She had always tried to make Christmas special for Adam and her, filling their apartment with every ornament imaginable. Maybe it had been her way of expressing the importance of everything they’d been for each other.

And this year? This year, it seemed, she would be spending Christmas in a sterile farmhouse with a mystifying, disconnected stranger—one who was barely civil to her while managing at the same time to disturb her senses on every level.

Just what, Madeline wondered, had she let herself in for?

DAMN NEIL for saddling him with her.

Mitch, stirring restlessly in his bed, wasn’t able to sleep. He was too aware of the woman in the room just across the hall. Madeline Raeburn, with her tantalizing red hair and full mouth. He could still see her across the table from him, unconsciously playing with that distinctive enameled pendant resting above a pair of full breasts.

Dinner had been difficult, a really strained affair. She had been understandably curious about him. There had been all those questions, which, out of necessity, he had either avoided or answered vaguely. And all the while he had longed to blast her with the truth. Yeah, there aren’t any damn Christmas decorations. That’s because I’m not here to celebrate. I’m here because I’m supposed to be healing. That’s why Neil dragged me to this place. Because he thought I needed to get far away from San Francisco. Because I was so haunted by losing Julie that I was an emotional wreck, no longer able to function. A real hoot, huh?

That’s what he would have told Madeline Raeburn, and it would have satisfied him to watch the shocked expression on that bewitching face of hers. Then he would have followed it up by attacking her with a barrage of his own questions.

Why did you urge a vulnerable girl like Julie to get involved in a place like the Phoenix and with people like Griff Matisse and his kind?

What really happened that night, and why did you stand by and let it happen? And why did you keep your mouth shut afterward?

Why are you willing to talk now? Did your lover betray you, find someone else? That why?

Angry questions he hadn’t dared to ask. And the worst of it, the absolute worst, was his realization that he could hang on to his torment and his memories, but he could no longer hang on to the woman they stood for. Julie’s image was beginning to blur, beginning to slip away from him. And that worried him. It didn’t seem right, somehow—felt like a betrayal of his grief for her.

Bad enough, but to have Madeline Raeburn in this house, to find himself actually aroused by her siren sexiness made him livid. Hell, he could feel himself thickening every time she came close to him. And, fair or not, he blamed her for that, too.

Barriers. That’s what he had needed. He had to keep throwing up barriers against his desire for her. He had to tell himself over and over that she was here for protection, nothing else. Had to keep reminding himself of the kind of woman she was and that she’d been that bastard Griff Matisse’s girl.

Even with these resolutions, sleep eluded him. It was long after midnight before Mitch finally drifted off. His restless night cost him in the morning. He slept late, and when he finally woke, it was to a clear sky with the sun already well above the hills.

He was aware of the silence in the house as he showered and dressed. He wondered if his guest was still in bed, but when he left his room to check on her, her door was open and her bed neatly made. There was no sign of her inside.

Mitch wasn’t worried. He’d made certain last night that all the windows and outside doors were secure. He had also elicited a promise from her that she wouldn’t try to go anywhere without him. He imagined she was in the kitchen, sitting over a mug of coffee.

“Hey, are you down there?” he shouted from the head of the stairs, feeling a little foolish.

He didn’t feel foolish when there was no answer. Mitch began to experience the first stirrings of alarm. Ducking back into his room, he removed his Colt automatic from the locked drawer of the table beside his bed.

With his loaded pistol in hand, he raced down to the first floor and searched the rooms. They were all empty, and there was no evidence in the kitchen that she’d made any breakfast for herself.

Mitch felt a sick dread deep in his gut. It was followed immediately by guilt. Damn it, he had been careless in his preoccupation with his own roiling emotions, had failed to be alert. Neil had been counting on him, and if anything had happened to her—

The back door off the kitchen was still locked, but when he checked the front door, his worst fear was confirmed. It was unlocked. There was no longer any question. Madeline Raeburn was gone.

Chapter Two

Mitch paused only long enough to struggle into his jacket before tearing out of the house. Leaping off the porch, he swept a frantic gaze over the empty yard, then the outbuildings. No sign of her.

He was on his way to the barn, prepared to search both it and the crumbling granary, when he saw something. The sun reflecting off something hard and shiny, high on the wooded hill behind the farm. The quick flash through the trees told Mitch there was someone up there. Someone on the move, bearing an object bright enough to catch the glare of the sun. A metal object. Like a gun.

On the heels of that thought came a fear that was almost a certainty. They had somehow learned Madeline was here at the farm, had managed to invade the house and snatch her. He had heard no sound of a car in the driveway, but he remembered there was another lane down on the other side of the hill. Was she being taken to a car waiting there?

Mitch didn’t hesitate. His long legs carried him swiftly across the frosted meadow behind the sheds and up the steep slope of the hill. The morning air was clear and crisp, and on any other occasion he might have found it invigorating. But now it was nothing but a hindrance, its sharp coldness burning his lungs as he struggled through the dry, brittle undergrowth.

He kept scanning the ridge above him, but he detected no further reflections or movements. And all the while he cursed himself for his lack of vigilance. He had to get her back. Whatever it took.

He must have covered half the distance to the top, his labored breath steaming now in little clouds, when he heard it. The sound of something approaching through the thicket above him. He dodged behind an oak tree, the enormous girth of its trunk hiding him as he waited, his gun ready.

Whatever, or whoever, it was came on through the dense growth, unaware of him concealed behind the oak. Seconds later, Mitch risked peering cautiously around the trunk. The sight that met his gaze was one of the oddest he’d ever seen.

There, emerging from the woods, marching blithely down the hill in his direction, was an upright evergreen tree. Nothing else. Just an evergreen that must have been a full six or seven feet in height.

Evergreens didn’t walk by themselves. Someone had to be behind it, maybe using it as camouflage or a shield. He was certain of this when once again, this time through the thickness of the tree’s boughs, he glimpsed metal winking in the sunlight. There was a figure supporting that evergreen.

Mitch announced his presence with a growled, “You’ve got a gun covering you, so drop it!”

The evergreen came to a startled halt and was perfectly still. There was a long, uncertain pause.

“Now!” Mitch barked. “And make sure that whatever else you’re carrying back there gets lowered to the ground with it.”

With a suddenness that took him by surprise, the object that had first captured his attention came sailing through the air from behind the evergreen. At the apex of its arc, it flashed again in the sun before descending to land with a thump in the weeds. Not a gun. Not even a weapon, unless you defined its polished steel blade as a weapon. In this case Mitch didn’t, since he realized immediately that the ax had been used to chop down the evergreen.

A second later that same tree, which he identified now as a fir, was flung to one side, revealing the figure behind it. There was no further hesitation from her, no willingness to be challenged again by the assailant lurking behind the oak. In a headlong panic, not daring to look back, she charged down the hill.

What in the—

But Mitch had no time to question her reckless flight. Fearing she’d break her silly neck on the steep, rough slope, he took off after her. “Hey, hang on!” he shouted. “It’s just me, you little—”

Too late. A root caught her by the ankle, throwing her to the ground, where she rolled over like a log before coming to rest in a little hollow. Slipping and sliding down the incline, Mitch reached her side. Pistol tucked now into his belt, he knelt in the dry grass and leaned over her, intending to help her to her feet.

By this time Madeline was so blind with terror that she failed to recognize him. Or, if she did, to comprehend that he hadn’t become the enemy. When his hands started to close around her arms, she read his action as an attack and struck out at him. Mitch didn’t know quite how her instant and ferocious struggle managed to rob him of his balance, but the next thing he knew he was lying full length on top of her.

It was a treacherous position, in more ways than one. Fighting for her release, she squirmed and heaved under his weight. Mitch took several blows, but they didn’t matter. Not when he was aware of her tantalizing body under his, igniting a fire in him. He supposed he was a bastard for his arousal, for experiencing the excitement of her lush warmth.

To his credit, he did try to make her understand. “Madeline, it’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”

At some point she must have listened to his repeated pleas, must have realized who he was. Her body went still under his, and for a timeless moment their close gazes locked, their breaths mingling on the cold air as she searched his face. He could almost taste her. Wanted to taste her.

The moment altered when her anger surfaced. She pushed against him with an urgent, “Off! Get off of me!”

Dragging his head back, he levered himself into a sitting position. She sat up beside him and smacked him on the arm with her gloved fist. There were tears of rage in her eyes.

“What were you doing hiding behind that oak? You’re supposed to protect me, not ambush me.”

Mitch was angry himself, not just with her but with himself for being susceptible to that sweet body. “How was I supposed to know it was you under all that shrubbery? Why did you run like that?”

“Why wouldn’t I run, when every time I turn around somebody points a gun at me?”

“I might have shot you, you little fool, and all for the sake of a— What were you doing with that fir, anyway?”

“Taking it back to the house, of course. And don’t yell at me.”

Mitch suddenly understood. “A Christmas tree! You were bringing in a damn Christmas tree! Probably planning this since yesterday. That’s why you disobeyed Neil and left the car. You wanted to get a better look at the evergreens up here. Where did you find the ax? In one of the sheds, I suppose.”

She wanted a Christmas tree. It was a sentiment that didn’t jibe with the kind of woman he knew she was.

“What’s wrong with that?” she said, getting defiantly to her feet and brushing bits of leaves and grass off her coat and jeans. “And it wasn’t planned. It was an impulse.”

Mitch surged to his feet. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. You made me a promise last night not to leave the house without me.”

“No,” she corrected him. “I made a promise not to leave the house without telling you.”

“Which you didn’t.”

“Which I did. I left a note for you on the table.”

“Which I didn’t see, since I happened to be a little too busy going out of my mind with worry to notice it. Why didn’t you just tell me in person what you wanted?”

“I meant to, but you were so sound asleep I…well, I didn’t like to disturb you.”

She couldn’t have known that, Mitch thought, unless she had opened his bedroom door to check on him. And since he happened to be in the habit of sleeping in the nude, and sometimes in the night kicked off his covers, there was the possibility that she had—

He looked at her sharply. She lowered her gaze, flushing.

So she had gotten an eyeful of him. Interesting. Of course, he ought to be annoyed that she had caught him in the buff. Instead, the image of Madeline Raeburn standing there in his doorway gazing at him filled him with a sudden heat that made him think of a steamy night in July, not a frigid morning in December.

“Anyway,” she mumbled, “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. We’re in the boonies, and no one knows I’m out here but you and Neil, so how could I be in any danger?”

“That’s what you thought about that safe house and— Where are you going?” She had started up the hill.

“To get the tree.”

“You don’t need the tree. Forget it.”

“I do need the tree,” she insisted stubbornly.

All this trouble, and she still wanted that blasted fir. “Fine,” he grumbled, “we’ll get the tree, but I don’t know what you think you’re going to decorate it with. I don’t have any lights or ornaments.”

“You’ll see.”

If I manage to survive her, Neil, I’m not going to let you forget this. You’re gonna owe me forever.

They trudged up the hill, rescued the evergreen and the ax, then dragged both of them back down the hill. Once they reached the farm, Mitch was prepared to turn his back on the whole project—which made him wonder how he ended up in the barn a few minutes later, searching through an accumulation of junk for a tree stand. Miraculously, he actually found one. Rusted and battered though it was, it managed—after a frustrating effort on his part, all of which involved mutters, groans and considerable exertion—to support the fir.

To his relief, Madeline assumed responsibility for the tree once it had been placed to her satisfaction in front of the parlor’s bay window. She had turned up a supply of construction paper in one of the cupboards, which wasn’t surprising since the wife of the couple from whom Mitch was renting the farm was a kindergarten teacher.

Madeline settled herself at the kitchen table with the paper and a pair of sharp scissors she had extracted from the depths of the canvas satchel she’d fetched from her bedroom. Mitch continued to wonder about that mysterious satchel. Once the scissors had been removed, she snapped the bag shut and kept it close to her side. Why was she so careful about it? What was so precious about the contents?

Mitch, fixing a late breakfast for them, tried to ask her about it with a casual, “I’m all out of cornflakes. You got any to spare in there?”

She responded with an unrelated query of her own. “Is there any glue in the house?”

“Try the drawer over there.”

She was either so absorbed in her project that his curiosity hadn’t registered, or else she didn’t want him to know what the satchel contained. Probably the latter. He let it go. For now.

Madeline was interested in nothing but coffee. As he ate his own breakfast, he watched her work and was impressed by the ornaments she fashioned out of the simple stack of paper. A series of intricately designed snowflakes, whimsical angels, loops of paper chain. The pile grew. She was creative. He’d give her that.

Mitch would have been all right if he’d been able to keep his fascination focused strictly on her efforts and not on the woman who produced them. He couldn’t. Gazing at her across the table as she frowned with concentration behind a pair of reading glasses, he watched her lips making quirky little movements that he assumed were silent directions to herself. He kept remembering their encounter on the hillside and how that same sultry mouth had been so close under his that it seemed to beg him to take it.

When he abruptly shoved himself back from the table, she looked up from her work. “Where are you going?”

“To split some wood for the fireplace.”

He hadn’t used the parlor’s fireplace since coming to the farm, didn’t even know if it worked. But he needed an excuse to leave the house, to get away from her and what she was doing to him.

He spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon in one of the sheds, attacking logs they didn’t need, in an effort to rid himself of his mounting tension. When he returned to the house, she had the Christmas tree all decked out with her paper ornaments. Even without lights, the result was impressive.

He admired the tree, and she thanked him. Neither of them referred to the sparks they had been rubbing off of each other since her arrival yesterday. They got through the rest of the day politely pretending that the unbearable strain between them didn’t exist.

Their truce lasted until the next morning, when Mitch, emerging from his room, passed her door and noticed that it was ajar. He figured she was in the shower. He heard the water running behind the closed door of her bathroom. An empty glass on the bedside table told him she must have been down to the kitchen to get herself some orange juice and hadn’t bothered latching her bedroom door when she returned.

There was something else he could see through the gap. The canvas satchel was there beside the bed. It was an invitation he was unable to resist.

Spreading the door wide, Mitch entered the room and crossed to the bed. He hesitated before reaching for the satchel, knowing that what he was about to do amounted to snooping. But, hell, he was a PI, wasn’t he? He was supposed to investigate, especially when it was a woman with a history like Madeline Raeburn’s.

Burying his guilt, telling himself he was entitled to know just what he was dealing with under his own roof, Mitch opened the satchel and dumped its secrets on the bed.

MADELINE HOPED THE SHOWER would revive her. She had spent a sleepless night trying to quell the disturbing image of Mitchell Hawke. But even behind her closed bedroom door, those stormy blue eyes had haunted her.

All day long yesterday, whenever she had turned around or looked up from her work, she had caught him watching her. She could still feel his dark gaze on her, following her with a brooding hostility she didn’t understand.

He had been right, of course. She’d had no business going out on that hill without him. But she’d badly needed to get out of the house for a while, away from its charged atmosphere, away from him.

There was another memory that Madeline couldn’t seem to shake, one that was far more unsettling. She kept seeing him there on his rumpled bed when she’d so unwisely opened his door yesterday morning to check on him before slipping away.

It refused to leave her—the potent image of sleep-tousled hair, long legs and muscular chest, the covers barely draped over another area that didn’t bear thinking about. There had been a kind of flush on all that hard, naked flesh, as if its owner had spent a long night of heated lovemaking. And then on the hill when he had—

You have to stop this. You’re in no position to be intrigued by any man, much less some steel-eyed stranger who seems to resent you, maybe just because you’ve dared to intrude on his privacy.

Madeline’s mind continued to question that privacy, wondering if it had a connection with the harsh lines of suffering around his bold mouth.

Enough. Forget about him.

Impatient with herself, she slammed a hand against the plunger that cut off the shower portion of the tub. She left the water running in the tub itself, however, to wash away the soap and scum.

Her cosmetics bag wasn’t on the sink counter when she stepped out from behind the shower curtain. She then remembered having placed it on the chair just outside the bathroom door. Wrapping herself in her terry-cloth robe, she opened the door to retrieve the bag—

And caught Mitchell Hawke in the act of examining the contents of her satchel.

For a moment their gazes met, hers shocked, his wearing a challenge without apology. Then, outraged by his invasion, Madeline swiftly crossed the room and snatched the velvet pouch he was holding out of his hand.

She lashed out at him furiously. “If you have an explanation, I don’t want to hear it, because nothing you say can—”

“Oh, I’m not going to try to make excuses for myself. Why should I, when I’m supposed to be responsible for you?”

He made it sound as if he was her jailer. She could have smacked him for his smugness. “And that entitles you to look through my belongings?”

“Maybe it does, when it turns up something illicit.”

Madeline frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Those.” He nodded at the articles strewn across the bed. “A hacksaw, blades, hammers, files. And then there’s the matter of that little bag you’re hugging. I saw the stones inside it. They must be worth a fortune. What would you say all of that adds up to, Madeline? Would you say it adds up to…oh, I don’t know, maybe a case of safecracking?”

She stared at him, wondering if she ought to laugh or smack him, after all. “I see. You think I’m involved in some form of jewel robbing.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what branch of law enforcement you practiced back in San Francisco, but you couldn’t have been very good at it.” Opening the pouch, she emptied its shining contents on the bed. “This,” she said, picking up one of the stones, “is carnelian. And that’s a tigereye. The blue ones are lapis lazuli, the milky ones moonstones and opals. All of the others, including the garnets and amethysts, fall into the same category. There isn’t a precious gem in the whole collection. Now, would you like to know about the tools?” She scooped up the three hammers and held them out. “This is a chasing hammer, this one here a raising hammer, and this is called a planishing hammer. I seriously doubt that any of them, or all the rest in the satchel, could get you inside a safe.”

Mitch said nothing for a moment. She watched his gaze travel from the bed to the table beside it. Next to the empty orange juice glass was the enameled pendant she had worn that first night. His eyes came back to her. She saw understanding in them, and something more. For the first time he actually looked contrite.

“You made the necklace thing yourself, huh?”

“And designed it, yes.”

“Okay, so I made a mistake, and I apologize for it. But if all this is just about a hobby—”

“It isn’t a hobby. I’m very serious about my jewelry making. I’m good, and one day I expect to make a living from it.”

He had a look of surprise on his face, as if he thought such a pursuit uncharacteristic of the woman he believed she was. Obviously he didn’t know her, any more than she really knew him.

“All right, not a hobby. Then, why were you so secretive about the satchel?”

“I wasn’t being secretive, I was being protective. My tools are valuable, and I can’t afford to risk them. It’s bad enough I’ll have to replace all the larger equipment I had to leave behind in San Francisco. Do you know what a good rolling mill costs?”

“No idea. Here, give me the pouch. I made the mess, I’ll pick it all up and put it back.”

His hand came out with the intention of closing around the pouch and taking it from her. Madeline, who was holding the pouch by the drawstring, wasn’t ready to forgive him. She started to jerk the pouch back out of his reach. She wasn’t certain whether what happened next was deliberate or merely an accident. She knew only that his hand was suddenly grasping not the velvet bag but her own hand.

Jolted by his touch, she tugged against his grip. She expected him to release her. He didn’t. He went on clinging to her, his strong hand searing her flesh. Their eyes met, and she was instantly lost in his mesmerizing gaze, raw with desire. She stopped resisting, almost stopped breathing.

They stood like that for what felt like a long time. Then slowly, insistently, he drew her toward him until she was resting against the hard wall of his chest. Madeline wanted to believe that when she lifted her head and parted her mouth, it was to voice her objection. But she would never be sure of that, either. Never know whether, instead, she issued a silent invitation he was immediately prepared to answer.

His mouth came crashing down on hers in a deep, blistering kiss—an explosion that involved his tongue plundering hers, the clean taste of him in her mouth, the virile aroma of him in her nostrils. For one uncontrollable, urgent moment, as he strained his hardness against her, his hand dipping inside her robe to stroke the softness of her bare skin, Madeline surrendered to his sensual assault.

Sanity was restored to her at the same time as his own awareness must have surfaced. When he suddenly released her, she felt she was being thrown away. If she experienced any sensation of loss, she denied it to herself. It would have been canceled, anyway, by the look in his eyes as she backed away from him to an area of safety. It was a wounded look, one of naked accusation. Then, without a word, he swung around and strode out of the room.

Shaken, Madeline went to stand by the window. She stared out at the leafless trees against the overcast sky and remembered his kiss. There had been a wild passion in it. There had also been a seething anger. It was the anger that decided her.

Recovering herself, she went back into the bathroom and turned off the water. She was still damp from her shower. She dried herself, fixed her hair and gathered together all of her belongings. When her satchel and suitcase were packed, the bed neatly made, she left the room and went to look for him.

She found him in the kitchen by the back door, hands thrust into his pockets as he gazed out at the barren landscape. Their situation had become impossible, one Madeline could no longer bear. He would have to understand and accept that.

“I can’t stay here any longer. I won’t stay here,” she informed him, managing to keep her voice low and even, though she was trembling with emotion.

He turned away from the windowed door and looked at her. Then, without asking for an explanation or offering any argument, he nodded slowly. That’s when she realized that he, too, could no longer endure this bewildering mixture of stress and sizzle that had been between them from the start.

“Neil will have to make other arrangements for me,” she said. “I don’t care what they are, just as long as he makes them immediately.”

Again he made no objection. He must have known as well as she that they were a mistake together and that giving her back to Neil was the best thing for both of them.

“All right,” he said.

He went to the phone on the wall and dialed. She listened to him speak briefly to someone at the Milwaukee precinct where Neil worked.

“He’s off today,” Mitch reported after he ended the call. “I’ll try him at home.”

Again she waited while he dialed and talked to someone who, by the tenor of the quick conversation, clearly was not Neil. He hung up and turned to her.

“It was the girl who cleans house for him,” Mitch explained. “She’d finished her work and was just leaving. Neil isn’t there. She said he went out to get a paper and coffee and would probably be back in a few minutes. We’ll just have to wait.”

Madeline shook her head, her frustration at an intolerable level. “I don’t want to wait. I want you to drive me to his house.”

Her tone was so insistent that one of his thick eyebrows quirked. “What are you saying? That if we wait I might change my mind, or that if I give Neil the chance, he’ll change it for me?”

“There is that possibility,” she admitted. “But if you deliver me to his door, he’ll have to take me in. Please.”

“Have it your way,” he conceded. But she knew he was relieved by her decision.

Minutes later, with her suitcase and satchel tucked behind the front seat of his pickup, they headed in the direction of Milwaukee. They didn’t talk on the drive. Glancing at him at the wheel, she wondered if he was experiencing either regret or uncertainty. If he was, he didn’t express it by word or look.

Madeline thought about asking him again why he seemed to resent her, and just what had gone wrong between them. But at this stage, what was the point? Turning her attention from the man beside her, she diverted herself with the countryside through which they dipped and wound. Neil had told her on the drive out to the farm that the area was known as the Kettle Moraine. Even under a cold, dismal sky, it was a lovely region with wooded hills and gentle valleys.

When the first snowflakes of the season began to drift down from the darkening sky, Madeline remembered thinking two days ago how a blanket of white would soften the scene, enrich it. It seemed that her longing was being answered.

But as the snowfall thickened, the route began to seem less like a welcome Christmas card and more like a potential problem. She finally voiced her concern to Mitch. “This is getting heavy, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It’s Wisconsin. It snows.”

There was no reason to be worried if he wasn’t bothered himself. That’s what she told herself, but by the time they reached the fringes of Milwaukee it was snowing in earnest. The wind had risen, driving a curtain of white against the truck as it crawled through the traffic. Snow was piling in the streets faster than the plows could remove it, making the going hazardous.

Madeline was relieved when Mitch pulled into the driveway of the small, suburban ranch house that Neil occupied. There was no sign of life along the quiet street. People were wisely staying indoors.

Mitch left the engine running and turned to her. “I want you to stay here in the cab while I go in and talk to him. Neil isn’t going to be happy about this. I have some explaining to do, and I’m better off handling that without you on the scene.”

Madeline was puzzled. What could he have to say to Neil that he didn’t want her to hear? She started to object but decided that she wanted no more quarrels with him. All she needed was a fast resolution to the problem and a final parting from him.

“You’ll be all right,” he assured her, turning off the blower that had kept the windows clear. They immediately began to cloud over with moisture. “With the fogged windows and all that snowfall out there, no one will know you’re even in here. Just stay in the cab and keep the doors locked. I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

His coat strained against him as he opened the door and started to slide out of the truck, revealing an unmistakable bulge beneath the leather. He must have brought his gun with him. He couldn’t have anticipated trouble, not here. He must simply be exercising caution, feeling a responsibility for her until he handed her back to Neil.

But before she could ask him about it, he was gone. Scrubbing the mist off a spot on the window, she could just make out through the swirling snow the dim shape of his tall figure disappearing around the back corner of the house.

Making sure the doors on both sides were secure, Madeline turned on the radio to hear a weather forecast. It was something they should have done on the drive in, but both of them had been too preoccupied to think of it.

She found a news station and learned what she already feared—that the snow was rapidly developing into a major winter storm. When the station started to announce early school closings and cancellations of public meetings, she switched off the radio.

She went on waiting, wondering what was taking him so long. It seemed forever before a sudden rap on the window of the driver’s door startled her. Leaning over, she rubbed away the condensation and discovered Mitch’s face pressed against the glass. She unlocked the door.

There was an urgency about the way he flung open the door and climbed behind the wheel, bringing a rush of snow and cold air into the cab with him.

“Is something wrong?”

He didn’t answer her. Without bothering to buckle up, he turned the blower on full blast, threw the gear into Reverse, gunned the engine and backed out of the driveway. The wheels spun in the snow on the turn. Then, digging in, the pickup leaped forward and tore up the street.

Madeline stared at him. His face was granite hard and grim. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?”

“Not now,” he muttered, biting the words, each syllable uttered on a note of harshness.

They roared recklessly around a corner, the pickup skidding dangerously on the slick snow. Rocked against her seat belt, Madeline caught her breath and waited for an impact. But the pickup righted itself and went on speeding through the blinding whiteness.

“Slow down before you kill us,” she pleaded.

He didn’t seem to hear her. His hands tightened on the wheel. Her own hands clenched the seat. She felt sick. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Why were they fleeing?

“Tell me,” she insisted.

And he told her, bluntly and without looking at her.

“Neil is dead.”

Chapter Three

Mitch knew he couldn’t go on risking their necks like this, that he had to pull over somewhere long enough to tell her the rest. He didn’t trust himself to do that while they were rolling. He just wasn’t steady enough.

There. A strip mall. The snowstorm had nearly emptied the parking lot. They should be safe for a few minutes.

Slowing, Mitch swung into the lot and tucked the pickup between a large van and a panel truck. It was a spot where their presence wouldn’t be obvious but where he could still keep an eye on the street. He left the engine running and turned to her. She was frightened, of course, and looked it. He was sorry about that, but there had been no time to waste on explanations. They had needed to leave the scene as quickly as possible.

Hell, Mitch was badly shaken himself. Still so jolted by the whole thing that he had yet to take it in, to realize his terrible loss. Nerving himself, he waited for her questions.

“What do you mean, dead?” she whispered, voice husky with emotion, amber eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

There was no way to soften it, no time for niceties. He had to make her understand. “Dead,” he said, managing not to choke on the words, “as in lying on his kitchen floor with a bullet in him.”

Madeline stared at him, numb and silent. He was aware of the snow hissing against the windows, of the wipers slashing across the glass. Then he was conscious of something else. There was a disturbing expression in her eyes as she searched his face, and Mitch knew she was remembering he’d insisted on going into the house alone. She had no way of knowing it was because he hadn’t wanted her to hear him tell Neil that he could no longer protect the woman he held responsible for Julie’s death.

Her expression was followed by something even more unsettling. He saw her gaze drift in the direction of the place where he kept his pistol in the belt holster under his coat. The pistol that was no longer there. Then that same gaze flew back to his face in horror.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t kill him.”

She shook her head, not in denial but as if to throw off the initial shock. “I—I’m sorry. It was just that for a second I thought—” She paused to clear her mind. “Then, why did we run like that?”

“It was necessary. Look,” he explained, “I knew something was wrong when I got to the back door. I could see someone lying facedown on the floor of the kitchen. That’s why I went into the house with my gun drawn. It was Neil on the floor. I was kneeling beside him, checking for life signs, when something heavy came down on the back of my skull. By the time I came to, the pistol was no longer in my hand, and Neil had a bullet hole in his head that hadn’t been there before.”

“What are you saying?” Madeline whispered. “Are you telling me—”

“Yeah, the bastard must have used my gun to kill him, because I don’t think Neil was dead when I knelt beside him. I think he was just unconscious, knocked over the head like I was. I don’t suppose you heard the shot?”

“Nothing. I had the radio on. What about the gun? What happened to it? Do you think the killer took it with him?”

“What I think is that it’s still in that house, hidden someplace where I wouldn’t easily find it but where the police are certain to after a thorough search.”

“Did you look for it?”

“Yeah, and without luck. I would have looked a lot further if she hadn’t waltzed into the kitchen with a casserole in her hands.”

“Who?”

“Claire, his next-door neighbor. She was forever doing favors for Neil, trying to win his attention.”

“And when she found you like that with his body—”

“That’s right, she figured I killed Neil. I could see that much in her face. And she wouldn’t listen. Too scared to stop for any explanation. The next thing I knew, the casserole was all over the floor and she was out of there. By the time I got outside, she was back at her own house barricaded inside—and you can be sure she was calling the cops.”

“But if you had stayed there and waited for them to come, then explained—” She broke off in sudden understanding. “But, of course, you couldn’t, could you. The gun that killed Neil would be registered in your name.”

“Not to mention my fingerprints on it. The murderer would have made sure of that. All the evidence is there, pointing straight to me. I had no choice but to run.”

“And we can’t trust the police, anyway, can we? Any one of them could be the man or woman in Griff’s pay.”

And if I’m arrested, sweetheart, that leaves you at the mercy of the enemy. I have to stay free, because right now I’m all you’ve got.

Mitch hated this. Hated suddenly having to behave like a guilty fugitive. All he had wanted was to be rid of this woman, give her back to Neil—but that could never happen now. Neil was gone, leaving Mitch with the maddening memory of the promise he had made. That he would protect Madeline, make sure she stayed healthy until it was reliably safe for him to do otherwise. It was a promise he continued to owe his friend. No choice, then. Madeline Raeburn was still his responsibility.

She was still gazing at him, looking more troubled by the moment. “Who could have killed Neil? This—this bad cop?”

“Don’t know. But it must have been someone he knew, someone he even invited into the house. He was too good an officer to let a stranger take him by surprise.”

“But why kill him?”

Mitch didn’t answer her.

“Oh, yes,” she said in a small, shaken voice, “I see. It was because of me, wasn’t it. Because Neil refused to tell him where I was, and once he’d revealed himself to Neil, exposed his identity like that, he had no choice but to—”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“But it’s the most likely explanation.”

Mitch could see that probability deeply distressed her, maybe just because it emphasized her own danger. He wasn’t ready to credit her with any less self-interested motive than that.

“And all the time,” she murmured, “what he was after was sitting out there in the driveway.”

“Yeah, and if he hadn’t slipped out the back and across the yard without looking around the corner of the house—which is how he must have made his exit—then…”

“I’d be dead.”

In the silence that followed, those incredible eyes of hers, thick-lashed, beautifully shaped, remained fastened on him. Then she asked him slowly, softly, “What are we going to do?”

Before he could tell her, they both tensed in alarm at the sound of a siren far down the block. The siren could have been in response to any emergency, and even though the wail receded in the distance, it was a grim reminder to Mitch that they couldn’t go on sitting here in this exposed lot.

“We need to go someplace where we can think this thing through and not be caught while we’re doing it.”

“Where?” she demanded, as he backed the pickup out of the parking space and headed for the street.

He had an idea. He’d once accompanied Neil and his grandson to the spot. “There is a place,” he said. “It’s not far from here. Providing I can find it.”

The weather didn’t help. Even if he’d been comfortably familiar with the area, the swirling snow hindered his vision while the streets grew more treacherous with every mile.

Madeline was quiet while he concentrated on the route. She waited until they were stopped at a traffic light. And then in that low voice that never failed to stir his senses, even when he knew it shouldn’t, she said something completely unexpected.

“I’m sorry. Deeply sorry.”

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have to. Mitch knew that she was offering her sympathy for the loss of his best friend. He wasn’t sure how genuine her expression was until he turned his head and saw that those alluring amber eyes were misty with sorrow.

All right, so it surprised him that in this moment, when she had to be frantic about her plight, she could grieve for Neil. It still didn’t make her an angel, even if she had the face of one.

“Yeah,” he muttered hoarsely. It was all he could manage by way of acknowledgment. Any further effort would have cost him his self-control. He was already torn up inside—and he meant to keep it there.

Faye, he thought as the light changed and the traffic moved forward again. It was going to kill her to hear about her father. And there were Neil’s friends on the force back in Frisco. The news would be hard on them.

But Mitch knew he had to stop worrying about Neil’s daughter and his friends. Had to put his own grief on hold. All he had time for now was to get them out of this mess.

A PLOW HAD BEEN THROUGH HERE recently, Mitch noticed, so the snow wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. He was able to negotiate the winding lane without difficulty. The lot was understandably empty when they reached it. He parked the pickup facing the lagoon.

On any other occasion Mitch would have admired the setting. The dark waters of the lagoon, which for some reason was still unfrozen, were rimmed with evergreens. Their somber green boughs drooped with snow, making a scene that an artist might have effectively borrowed for a Christmas card.

But all he could appreciate was the seclusion of the place. Nothing stirred in the vicinity of the lagoon or on the equipment of the children’s playground behind them. The park was as deserted as he’d anticipated, offering them a reasonably safe haven. For now, anyway.

Madeline had been silent for most of the drive. But her mind must have been very busy, because the instant he shut off the engine and turned to her, she gave voice to her decision.

“There’s only one thing for me to do. I’m going to turn myself over to the Milwaukee police.”

“And what do you think that’s going to accomplish, except to make you a target?”

“I’ll take my chances on their protecting me, even if one or more of them is in Griff’s pay.”

She was offering to free him of any responsibility for her, giving him the chance to focus all of his energy on clearing himself. So tempting. Only, he couldn’t accept her offer, not when it meant he would be failing Neil. Because whatever else Mitch had either lost or intentionally abandoned after Julie’s death, he was still a man of his word. That much he’d been unable to shed.

“Yeah, why not? It’s your life if you want to risk it. Except a lot of people are counting on you to stay healthy long enough to put Griff Matisse away where he belongs. Neil was one of those people.”

His tactic worked. She was immediately apologetic. “Yes, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Then, what do we do? Go back to your farm?”

Mitch knew that neither of them was happy about that prospect. In any case, returning to the farm was out of the question. Although Neil wouldn’t have shared the existence of the place with any of his colleagues—not when he had chosen it as a sanctuary for Madeline—his daughter knew about the farm. So, perhaps, did his neighbor. And under the circumstances, neither would hesitate to reveal their knowledge.

“No good,” he said. “It’s the first place the cops will look.”

“Then, where or who do we turn to?”

Under other circumstances, that would have been an easy question for Mitch to answer. A single phone call would have provided them with immediate assistance from his family. But Mitch’s family wasn’t available. Every member of the Hawke clan was out of the country on a holiday cruise. He was supposed to have joined them, but he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate anything this year.

“There is no one. Neil was the only contact we could trust, and now that he’s gone, Milwaukee is no longer safe for you.”

She was quiet as she gazed out at the lagoon. Then she said, “There’s something I’ve learned since leaving San Francisco. I’m not really safe anywhere as long as Griff Matisse is free and so powerful that he has connections everywhere. So I might as well return now to San Francisco. At least there the DA’s office wants so badly to put him behind bars that they’ll go to extra lengths to protect me until the trial. Maybe their safe house is ready for me by now.”

Mitch wasn’t happy about that safe house. Neil had explained it as the reason for the delay in San Francisco’s sending an escort to return Madeline to California. But Mitch had sensed all along that something wasn’t right about this explanation. For the moment, though, he was prepared to put that argument aside.

He could see Madeline was determined, that it would be a wasted effort to challenge her decision. He had a better method for handling this situation.

“All right,” he said, “what do you want me to do?”

If she was surprised by his easy compliance, she didn’t say so. “Drive me to the airport and put me on a flight. That’s all I ask.”

“Sounds simple enough. Then, once you’re in the air, I can start clearing myself of Neil’s death.”

“Exactly.”

Mitch made no objection. There would be time enough once they were under way to make her understand that her plan wasn’t going to work. That he had no intention of simply dumping her in Matisse’s backyard and forgetting about her. Oh, she would be flying to San Francisco, all right, providing this weather hadn’t already canceled all flights, but it would be under his terms.

He started the engine. “One thing, though,” he said. “You can’t just land in San Francisco without security of some sort waiting there to meet you. We have to let the DA’s office know you’re coming.”

She thought about that and then nodded. She was being calm about the whole thing, but he knew she had to be scared. What she intended involved considerable risk.

“Look,” he suggested, “I noticed a public phone back there near the picnic shelter.” They would have to use a public phone because, in his hurry to deliver Madeline to Neil, he’d left his cell phone at the farm. “Let me make the call for you. I know the assistant DA, Gloria Rodriguez. She’s a woman I trust, and right now you need someone like that in your corner. Besides, you’ll need to know if that safe house is ready and, if it isn’t, what alternative she has to guarantee that you’re fully protected.”

She considered his offer and apparently saw the advantages of it. “All right.”

Mitch drove them back through the park to the rustic picnic shelter at the side of the lane. When he pulled over and started to slide out of the pickup, she opened her door with the intention of accompanying him.

“What are you doing?”

“I said you could make the call for me. I didn’t say I wouldn’t be listening in on it.”

Damn it, he had counted on her staying in the truck. There were things he hadn’t wanted her to hear until the arrangements were settled, after which it would be too late for her to object. But she wasn’t giving him any choice. Okay, so she’d learn the program now, and whatever her reaction, he would deal with it.

There had been a lull in the snowfall, but now the stuff was coming down again at a furious rate. The phone was located in a glass-walled stall that was open at the front, offering little protection from the weather. Coat collars turned up, shoulders hunched, they were squeezed side by side against the instrument.

But it wasn’t the wet snow in his hair and down his neck that made Mitch miserable as they waited for the assistant DA to come on the line. In that tight place he was aware of Madeline’s closeness, her warmth breath steaming on the air and mingling with his, the provocative scent of her hair near his face, the creamy smoothness of her cheek almost touching his. These were the sensations that made him uncomfortable. Never mind that this was the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong woman. He was still aroused.

And relieved when Gloria Rodriguez’s sane, familiar voice finally reached his ear. “Mitchell Hawke, is that you? What on earth—”

He interrupted her by asking if she was alone in her office and if the line she was speaking on was secure. Once assured of that, he described the situation for the assistant DA as succinctly as possible, holding the phone so that Madeline could hear the conversation.

There was a pause after Mitch explained Madeline’s wish to return immediately to San Francisco. Madeline’s questioning gaze met his, and he knew she could sense it, too—the unmistakable anxiety in the silence on the other end. It was more than Gloria’s shock over learning that Neil was dead. Something was wrong.

“Mitch,” the woman finally said, her tone decidedly reluctant, “this isn’t wise.”

“It’s necessary. Hell, Gloria, she isn’t safe here in Wisconsin.”

“The thing is…”

“What?”

“We may not be able to guarantee her safety in San Francisco, either.”

And that’s when she told them. How her office wasn’t sure where the leak had originated. How it might be either in Milwaukee or in San Francisco. Because it was only after all the particulars, along with Madeline’s deposition, had been sent to San Francisco by Neil that the attempt had been made on her life in the Milwaukee safe house. Which meant that the information on her could have been relayed from California to one of Matisse’s connections in Milwaukee. They didn’t know. They were trying to discover the source, but they just didn’t know.

So that, Mitch thought grimly, had been the reason for the delay in returning Madeline to San Francisco. Preparing a safe house for her had either been an excuse or not the important issue, which was to try to plug that leak. He’d been right in not trusting Neil’s explanation.

And why hadn’t Neil trusted him with the truth? Because he hadn’t known it himself? Or had he not wanted Mitch to know just how complicated the situation was?

“Gloria, Neil’s killer is somewhere on the loose in this town. He’s not going to rest until he finds Madeline Raeburn. And if this guy is hiding behind a badge, she doesn’t stand a chance, not with the whole Milwaukee police department behind him. So you tell me, just who do we trust at this point?”

“I see what you mean. Under the circumstances, it would be better if she’s here in San Francisco where my office can directly control the situation. Also, the DA has changed his mind and isn’t comfortable about sanctioning Matisse’s arrest until the witness is back in California.”

California maybe, Mitch thought, but not San Francisco. Not with Griff Matisse sitting right there waiting for her. Mitch had his own ideas on the subject of a safe house, but he didn’t think this was a smart time to share them with either the DA’s office or Madeline. His plan could wait.

“Mitch,” Gloria went on, “can you hole up with Ms. Raeburn somewhere long enough for me to send a reliable officer to escort her back? I want her fully protected on that flight.”

“She will be,” he said, his gaze on Madeline’s face. “I’m escorting her myself.”

Her eyes registered astonishment and then anger. She tried to snatch the phone out of his hand, but he’d anticipated her reaction and held it out of her reach.

Hearing their scuffle, Gloria sounded alarmed. “What’s going on there? Is something wrong?”

Mitch managed to get his mouth against the phone. “Ms. Raeburn is just expressing her happiness over my being her personal bodyguard on the flight, that’s all.”

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