Calculating the odds on their fate isn’t exactly rocket science…

Nuclear physicist Mark Renfro will do anything to keep his daughter safe, including building a “suitcase nuke” for the radical group that killed his wife. Imprisoned alone in a makeshift lab, Mark has all but given up hope of seeing his daughter again. Until his captors provide an assistant—the beautiful stepdaughter of the terrorist leader.

Angry and defiant, Erin Daniels has no intention of assisting anyone—including a gorgeous scientist. That is, until a time bomb is strapped around her neck. They have one week to finish…or Erin dies. Mark knows he’s Erin’s only hope for survival. And she’s his only hope for a future.

The Men of Search Team Seven

He brushed his fingers along the sides of the collar, the hot flutter of Erin’s pulse beneath his fingertips sending a jolt of awareness through him.

The contrast of her silken flesh with the unyielding metal collar made her seem all the more fragile and out of place here—like finding a lily blooming in the middle of a minefield.

“Can you cut it off?” she asked.

“I don’t think we can risk it,” he said. “It looks as if there are wires embedded in the metal and running all the way around. My guess is if we sever one of those the bomb would go off.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes as big and dark as a terrified deer’s. “What are we going to do?”

He looked away, at the lab equipment arranged neatly on the workbench, at the sparse furnishings and barred windows of the place that had been his prison for the past twelve months. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

PHD Protector

Cindi Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CINDI MYERS is the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Mark Renfro—This top nuclear physicist disappeared almost a year ago and was believed dead. Kidnapped by terrorists, he must pretend to cooperate with them in order to protect his daughter. How can he escape his captors and defeat their plan to detonate a nuclear bomb?

Erin Daniels—The stepdaughter of a terrorist leader wants nothing to do with the group’s evil plans, and balks at her stepfather’s plans for her to assist his “pet scientist” in building the suitcase nuke he needs. But that scientist is nothing like the man she suspected he’d be, and working with him gives her hope of finding a way out of her messed-up life.

Duane Braeswood—The billionaire terrorist leader believes he can build a better world by first destroying it. He will use anyone and anything to achieve his goals.

Special Agent Luke Renfro—Mark’s twin brother, part of the FBI’s Search Team Seven, has never stopped looking for his missing brother. He refuses to believe Mark is a terrorist, but can he find him before it’s too late?

Mandy Renfro—The five-year old hasn’t seen her father in a year, but she never stopped hoping for his return.

For Vicki and Mike

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Cast of Characters

Dedication

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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

What’s the worst thing you would do to protect the ones you love? Would you lie—steal—even kill?

It was a question from a party game, the kind you played over beers with a bunch of buddies, the answers all alcohol-fueled machismo, backed by the knowledge that you would never really have to make those kinds of choices.

Mark Renfro had had to choose. To protect his daughter, his innocent only child, he had lied too many times to count, and though he hadn’t stolen or killed—yet—he had joined with a group of men who were working to kill thousands, maybe even millions of people. They called themselves Patriots, but he knew they were terrorists. They had murdered his wife, and if Mark didn’t do what they wanted, they would kill his daughter, Mandy, as well.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool metal of the laboratory hood. Formulas scrolled across his closed eyelids like a particularly boring and technical movie, the complex and intricate calculations of energy transfer and nuclear fusion, pages from textbooks he had read long ago and committed to memory, fragments of scientific papers he had written or read, and columns of computations that lodged in his brain the way phone numbers or the memory of a wonderful meal might take up residence in the brains of others. His photographic memory for all those numbers and calculations had allowed him to breeze though his undergraduate and graduate education and excel at the research that had propelled him to fame and even a little fortune.

All of that worthless, with his wife dead and his daughter far away from him. Amanda had been four when he had last seen her. She’d be five now—a huge chunk of her life he would never get back.

The door to the cabin that had been Mark’s prison for over a year burst open, but Mark didn’t even jump. The people who held him here were fond of such scare tactics as bursting in unannounced, but he was numb to that all now. “Renfro!” The man Mark knew as Cantrell had a big, booming voice. He was always on the verge of shouting. “We brought you a surprise.”

A muffled cry, like that of a wounded animal, made Mark whip around to face Cantrell. But instead of the dog or deer or some other nonhuman victim he had expected to see, he came face-to-face with a furious woman. Her hazel eyes burned with rage and hatred, and the tangle of auburn hair that fell in front of her face couldn’t obscure the high cheekbones, patrician nose and delicately pointed chin. She was young—midtwenties, he guessed, with a taut, athletic frame, every muscle straining against the man who held her, a baby-faced goon named Scofield. They had taped her mouth and bound her arms behind her, but still she struggled. So far her efforts had earned her a purpling bruise on one cheek and a torn sleeve on her denim jacket.

Mark half rose from his stool, an old, almost forgotten rage burning deep in his chest. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“The boss figured you needed some help to speed things along.” Cantrell nodded and Scofield shoved the woman forward. She stumbled into Mark and he had to brace his legs and wrap his arms around her to keep them both from crashing into the lab table. “She’s your new assistant.”

Both men laughed, as if this was the best joke they had heard all year, then they retreated, the locks clicking into place behind them.

Mark still held the woman, though they were both steady on their feet now. It had been so long since he had touched another person, longer still since he had felt a woman’s soft, lithe body beneath his hands. She was almost as tall as he was, with small, firm breasts and gently curved hips, and she smelled like flowers and soap and a world very far away from this remote mountain cabin.

She wrenched away from him and stumbled back, staring at him with eyes filled with hatred. He got the feeling she had no more of an idea why she was here than he did. “Turn around and I’ll untie your hands,” he said. “But you have to promise not to strangle me when I do.”

Her eyes made no such promise, but she turned and presented her hands to him. He clipped through the plastic ties with the pair of nail scissors—all his captors would allow him in terms of sharp objects. Though his kidnappers had provided him with a laboratory full of the most up-to-date equipment, they had been very careful to exclude anything that might be used as a weapon.

Ironic, considering the purpose of the laboratory itself.

He pocketed the nail scissors and the woman brought her hands to the front and rubbed them, wincing, then picked at the corners of the tape on her mouth.

“Trust me, the best way is to just rip it off,” he said. “It still hurts, but you get it over with quickly.”

She hesitated, then did as he suggested and jerked at the silver rectangle of duct tape. “Ah!” she cried out, followed by a string of eloquent curses.

He retreated to his stool in front of the lab bench, fighting the urge to smile. She wouldn’t get the joke, wouldn’t understand how good it was to hear someone else express the sentiments that had filled his mind for months now. “I’m Mark Renfro,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m not your assistant,” she said, her voice low and rough. Sexy.

She went back to rubbing her wrists, the movement plumping the cleavage at the scoop neck of her T-shirt. Mark felt a stirring below the belt, his libido rising from the dead, startling him. He had thought himself past such feelings, that part of him burned away by grief and the hopelessness of his situation.

“I didn’t request an assistant,” he said. “That must have been Cantrell’s idea. Or someone higher up the chain of command. I’m sorry they dragged you into this, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“You work for them.” She moved closer, scanning the array of scientific equipment on the table. “You’re their scientist.” The disgust in her voice and on her face showed just what she thought of a man who would do such a thing.

“There’s a difference between being a slave and an employee. I didn’t have any more say about being here than you did.” He glanced at her. “Maybe less. You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Erin. Erin Daniels.”

It didn’t ring a bell.

“You don’t have any idea who I am, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Should I?”

“I don’t know. But I would hate for anyone to associate me with this scum.” She began to move about the one-room cabin, taking in the double bedstead in the corner where Mark slept, the open door beside it that led to the single, windowless bathroom, the three-burner gas range and round-topped refrigerator and chipped porcelain sink on the other side of the room, and the table and two chairs that provided the only other seating, aside from the laboratory stool he currently occupied. Her intelligent eyes scanned, assessed and moved on. She tried the sash on the larger of the cabin’s two windows.

“They’re screwed shut from the outside,” he said. “And there’s reinforced wire over the glass. If you broke a pane, all you would accomplish would be to let in the cold.” He had endured a freezing month right after they took him, when he had tried to cut out one of the panes of glass, in hopes of fashioning a weapon. The glass had shattered and Mark had shivered for weeks before he had persuaded Cantrell that the low temperatures were detrimental to his lab work, and his captors had repaired the pane.

“There must be some way out of here,” Erin said, moving to the back door.

“The doors are locked and dead bolted from the outside, plus there’s an armed guard out there at all times. The floor is a concrete slab. The gas is shut off, so the stove doesn’t work. They bring in food, unless I’m being punished for something, then I don’t eat.” They had kept him on short rations for a week after the glass-breaking incident.

“If there’s no gas, how do you heat this place?” she asked. “It’s in the forties out there today, but it feels fine in here.”

“There’s electric heat,” he said, pointing to the baseboard heating unit along the side wall. “A solar panel charges a battery for that. If the sun doesn’t shine for a few days then too bad. I had better learn to like working in the cold.” He had spent whole days in bed under the covers in the middle of last winter—he didn’t want to think about going through that again.

“How long have you been here?” Her expression was guarded.

“What month is this?” He had tried to keep track at first, then gave up. What did it matter? His captors weren’t going to let him leave here alive.

“January,” she said. “Today is the ninth.”

“Then I’ve been here fourteen months,” he said. The weight of all those months rested on his chest like a concrete block. Crushing.

Erin sank into a chair at the table. “Why?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

He wanted to say “as little as possible” but he could never be sure the guards weren’t listening. He suspected Cantrell or his bosses had the place bugged. She might even be a plant, sent to learn his intentions, though her anger felt very real. Maybe his captors’ paranoia was rubbing off on him. “First, tell me your story,” he said. “How did you end up here? Are you a scientist?”

“No. I’m a teacher.” She straightened a little, as if one of her students might be watching. “I teach math to seventh and eighth graders in Idaho Falls, Idaho.”

“Then what are you doing in the middle of nowhere in western Colorado? Do you know anything about the men who brought you here?” What had she done to end up on the wrong side of a group of terrorists like the Patriots?

“Oh, I know about them all right.” Her expression grew even more grim. “Their leader is my stepfather.”

* * *

ERIN KNEW SHE had succeeded in shocking Mark Renfro. Frankly, he had shocked her, too. She had heard so much in the past weeks about the famous scientist who was going to help Duane Braeswood and his group of deranged thugs bring the world to its knees. She had expected him to be like them—a hardened, arrogant braggart whose cruelty showed in knotted muscles and cold expressions. She had been prepared to have to fight him—possibly to the death—to prove she wanted no part of his “mission.”

Instead, she had found a thin, weary-looking man in a dirty lab coat, with despair weighting his eyes and slumping his shoulders. He might have been handsome once, before deprivation and grief and whatever other emotions had etched lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and drained the life from his expression. “You’re Braeswood’s daughter?” he asked.

“Stepdaughter.” At least she didn’t have to claim any of that madman’s DNA ran through her veins.

Mark sighed and let his hands rest loosely in his lap. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

The beginning. Once upon a time there was a girl named Erin, who had everything she wanted. Then her father died and her mother made some very poor choices.

“My mother met a man online when I was twelve,” she said. “My father had died two years before, of liver cancer. She moved back to Idaho to be closer to her family and started hanging out on a survivalist message board. Who knows why?”

“And she met Duane Braeswood through these survivalists?” He nodded. “I guess his ranting might appeal to the more radical factions in that group.”

“Do you want me to tell the story or not?”

He looked sheepish. “Sorry. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in a while, so I’m rusty at conversation. I won’t interrupt again.”

She hugged her arms over her chest. “Mom didn’t meet Duane on the message board. She met a guy named Amos or Abe or something like that and they dated for a while. She started going to meet ups and gatherings with him and at one of those she met Duane Braeswood.” Just remembering the way Duane had come into their lives and taken over made her sick to her stomach. “Among that bunch, he was already a big celebrity. Maybe Mom was flattered by his attention, or impressed by the way he threw money around. Maybe she was just lonely. I don’t know.”

“Ah, Duane.” Mark said the name the way he might have referred to a notoriously badly behaved public figure.

“Yeah. My mother’s second husband.” Erin gave him a hard look, ignoring the sympathy in his expression. Maybe he was just a good actor. “Obviously, you know him well.”

“No. I’ve only seen him a few times. He reminds me of a televangelist. One who prefers camo to shiny suits. Though his charm is lost on me, I can see he has a kind of creepy charisma.”

“Exactly.” She rubbed her arms. “He gave me the creeps from day one, but my mom fell for it. Next thing I knew, she had married him and we moved to this big house with a bunch of other like-minded people, sort of a commune for survivalist types. At first I thought we were just going to stock up on dried food and hunt our own meat and that kind of stuff. I was a kid who wanted to fit in and I thought it might even be fun.” Looking back she could see how pathetic she had been, wanting love and approval from her stand-in dad, playing right into his manipulative hands. “As I got older, I figured out he had a more sinister plan.”

“The government needs fixing and he’s the man to do it,” Mark said drily.

She nodded. “He tried to recruit me as one of his loyal followers, but I balked.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t make you very popular,” Mark said.

“I told my mom he was a terrorist, plain and simple. We had a big fight about it. She just couldn’t see it.” The memory of her mother’s rejection still stung. “The day after I graduated high school I left the compound and swore to my mom I wouldn’t see her again until she came to her senses and got out of there, too.”

Her stomach still knotted when she remembered that day. She had walked out, sure the next time she saw Helen Daniels Braeswood she would be either dead or on the news, arrested for her involvement with some plot of Duane’s.

“That must have been tough,” Mark said.

“Yeah, well, we didn’t speak for four years. Then she called, out of the blue one day, to tell me Duane and the others had left her and moved to Colorado. She sounded worn-out. She asked if she could come stay with me awhile. I was thrilled. I moved her into the house I was renting in Idaho Falls and after a few weeks she was a new woman. She was the mom I had known and loved before. She still refused to admit that Duane was evil. She called him ‘misguided but sincere.’ She said she had loved him very much but that she was determined to get over him.”

Erin fell silent again, remembering all the hope she had had in those months.

“What happened?” Mark prompted after a moment.

“She stayed with me about eighteen months. I thought everything was great. Then one day I came home and found her bags all packed. She said she had had a call from Duane. He had been injured in an accident and he needed her. They were still legally married, so she was going back to him. I went a little crazy. I screamed and yelled and threatened to call the police. She was perfectly calm through the whole thing. She told me one day I would be in love and I would understand. Then she got in a taxi and left.”

“How did that lead to you ending up here?” Mark asked.

“I’m getting to that.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “About six weeks ago, I got a call, from a man who identified himself as Duane’s personal assistant. He said he thought I would want to know that my mom was very ill. In fact, she was dying of cancer. She was in hospice and didn’t have long and had been asking to see me. He gave me the address he said was for the hospice and suggested I might like to visit her before it was too late.” She covered her eyes with her hand, fighting back tears—of grief and rage and shame.

“Did you see her?” Mark asked, his voice gentle.

“She wasn’t even sick! It was a trick, to get me to a place where Duane’s men could grab me. He showed up, too. He was in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tank. He’d clearly been messed up somehow, but that didn’t seem to lessen the power he had over everyone around him. He told me I needed to be punished for upsetting my mother so much, and that he had a job I could do to make up for all the trouble I had caused.”

“And his men brought you here.”

“First they took me to a fishing camp somewhere in the area, and we stayed there for a few days. I guess they were waiting for some signal from Duane or the stars to align or something. Then they took me to a house in Denver. I stayed there for weeks, in a locked room with the windows blacked out.” She glanced around the cabin. “At least this isn’t as bad as that.”

“Do you know why I’m here?” Mark asked. “What it is that you’re supposed to assist me with?”

“Duane always referred to you as his scientist,” she said. “A genius he had working for him, I assume on one of his crackpot schemes. What is it this time? A truth serum? Some potion that allows him to see in the dark? A new weapon?”

Mark shifted on his stool and cleared his throat. “You don’t know what kind of scientist I am, do you?”

“Duane just told me you were a scientist, and you obviously have some kind of laboratory here.”

“I’m a nuclear physicist. Duane Braeswood is holding me prisoner so I can build him a bomb. A nuclear bomb.”

Chapter Two

Erin’s lovely face reflected all the emotions that had battered at Mark the first time he heard the terrorist leader’s plans for him—shock, outrage and finally puzzlement. She glanced around the cabin, with its sparse furnishings and makeshift lab. “How—?”

He didn’t let her finish the sentence, but sprang up, grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the refrigerator. “Let me fix you some lunch,” he said. “There’s cold cuts and stuff in the refrigerator.”

She struggled to free herself from his grip, but he held her firmly, pulled open the refrigerator door and leaned in, tugging her alongside him. “We have to be careful what we say,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I think the place is bugged.”

Her expression tightened and he braced himself for her to dismiss him as a nut. After so many months alone, maybe he was losing it, letting the paranoia take over. But her gaze remained level and she nodded. “That would be just like Duane,” she said. “He doesn’t trust anyone or take anything for granted.”

Mark released her hand and pretended to look through the packages of ham, turkey and cheese on the shelf. “I spend all my time pretending to do the impossible,” he mumbled. “Your stepfather wants a nuclear bomb that can be carried around in an oversize suitcase or a backpack, but there’s no way that can be done. Certainly not by one man in a facility like this.”

“But you’ve convinced him you can do it.” She sounded both horrified and fascinated by the prospect. “Why?”

“As long as I keep working for him, my daughter lives.” He grabbed a package of ham and another of cheese and moved away from the refrigerator, back to the table. “There’s bread in the cupboard over the sink,” he said.

She hesitated, then grabbed the bread and followed him. “You have a daughter?” She kept her voice low, just above a whisper.

“Mandy is five. She was four the last time I saw her.”

“Where is she?” Erin’s voice rose. “Duane isn’t holding her prisoner, too?”

“No, she’s safe. She lives with her aunt.” At least, he prayed that was still true. Mandy had been with his wife’s sister the day Mark left on the hiking trip from which he had never returned. He and Christy had both designated Claire as their chosen guardian for Mandy in their wills, so he had assumed his daughter had stayed with Claire after his disappearance.

“What happened to her mother?” Erin asked.

“She died two months before Duane brought me here.” He glanced up from spreading mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “Officially, it was ruled a one-car accident, but someone tampered with her car, I know. Duane wanted to send me a message about the consequences of not cooperating with him.”

Sympathy darkened Erin’s eyes. “I heard rumors about that kind of thing when I lived with him,” she said. “I wanted to believe they weren’t true. That no one would be that cruel and manipulative.”

“Oh, this is true.” When Christy had died, grief and rage at the man responsible consumed him. All these months later, he felt only numb.

“But how did you meet Duane in the first place?” she asked. “You don’t strike me as the prepper type.”

“No, I’m not. I had never even heard of Duane Braeswood when he stopped by my office at the University of Colorado one morning about eighteen months ago. He presented himself as a businessman who was interested in providing a grant for research. I was naive enough to be flattered.” How many times over the past year had he wished he had had the sense to see through the madman’s ruse and refuse to ever speak to him?

“And once he had snared you, he wouldn’t let go.” She nodded. “He’s done it before. He identifies something he wants and then uses whatever means possible to get it.”

“At first, he tried to sell me on the scientific advantages of working for him—a private laboratory with top equipment, an endless supply of resources, eventual fame and fortune, and a key role in his new world order.” He grimaced. “When that didn’t sway me, he turned to threats. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was a crackpot but harmless. I found out too late that he was anything but.”

“I’m sorry about your wife,” Erin said, all the hardness gone from her voice.

“Thank you.” He swallowed, regaining his composure. “When he threatened my daughter next, I knew I didn’t have any choice but to cooperate.”

“So now you’re trying to do the impossible.”

“I’m the best—or one of the best—nuclear physicists in the country.” He raised his voice for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. “The organization supplies me with anything I need, from high-grade uranium ore to the most sophisticated equipment. It’s only a matter of time.” He met her eyes, letting her know he was lying through his teeth.

“And I’m supposed to help you.” She stared down at her completed sandwich. “I don’t know the first thing about nuclear physics.”

“You’re a math teacher. That should come in handy. You can help me with my calculations.”

She looked around the cabin again. “You don’t have a computer?”

He shook his head.

“And I don’t see any books. Don’t you need reference materials? Formulas?”

He tapped the side of his head. “It’s all in here.” He almost laughed at the skepticism that was so plain on her face. “No, really. I have a photographic memory. I’ve memorized all the textbooks and formulas and manuals. Once I read something, I remember it. Some of my colleagues thought I was a freak, but it made me the perfect candidate for Duane’s little project.” Finding out how thoroughly the Patriots’ leader had vetted him had made Mark feel even more vulnerable and helpless, as if there was nowhere to hide from Duane’s reach.

“I thought photographic memories were something people made up for movies and books,” she said.

“No, it’s a real phenomenon. Something to do with how the person’s brain is wired. There may even be a genetic component in this case. My mother had perfect pitch. My twin brother never forgets a face.”

“You have a twin?”

“Yes. Luke is an FBI agent. He’s part of a special task force composed of people like him—super-recognizers who never forget a face.”

“An FB—” She shook her head. “Then Duane is an idiot—and I don’t care who hears me say that.”

“Duane believes he’s untouchable,” Mark said. And maybe he was. The man had managed to get away with murder—literally—for a while now. “I know Luke is looking for me,” he continued. “But Duane is hunting him, too. He’s made it known he’ll pay a big bonus to anyone who kills a Fed.”

“He bragged about it to me, too.”

He studied her, wishing he could decipher people as easily as he could chemical formulas. Was she telling the truth about how she had ended up here, or was this merely one more way for Braeswood and his bunch to mess with Mark’s mind? “Why did he send you here, really?” he asked, leaning toward her. “I don’t need an assistant for this project. Are you here to spy on me? Will you report back to him everything I’ve said?” He ought to be afraid of those consequences, but after all this time trapped here with no way out he would welcome a bullet to end it all.

“You really think I would work for people like them? That I could believe in their sick plots or condone anything they do?” She shoved the sandwich away and glared at him, cheeks flushed, eyes blazing.

“Accusing me isn’t the same as denial,” he pointed out.

“No! I don’t want anything to do with those monsters. And I don’t want anything to do with you.” She stalked away and sat on the end of the unmade bed, her back to him.

Even from across the room, he imagined the heat of her anger washing over him. He welcomed the warmth, the intensity of the emotion, the life in her. For so long now—before they had even brought him here, since Christy’s death—he had felt cold and hollow inside, more robot than man. Only his daughter had been able to stir him, her tiny breath able to coax sparks from the few coals of life left inside him.

Then she was gone and the fire had died altogether. He had gone through the motions of living, but had felt nothing.

Now Erin was here, all fiery anger and glowing life, making him remember things—hatred and hunger and sex. Somehow being near a woman, after so many months with only the company of other men, reminded him of his own humanity. He wasn’t dead after all, but he didn’t know if that knowledge was good or bad. Living meant feeling—risking and caring and hurting. All things he had told himself he couldn’t afford to do again.

* * *

ERIN ENVIED MARK’S COMPOSURE. She couldn’t sit still, agitation driving her to pace. She had lived with fear for so long it was part of her makeup now, like the color of her hair or the shape of her face. Even years after she had left the family compound she continued to look over her shoulder, expecting her stepfather to make good on all the threats he had hurled at her when she’d walked away from him. Duane had a need to control situations and people. If you thwarted him, you could expect to be punished.

He had bided his time, but he had finally exacted his revenge, though she still wasn’t sure of his final plans for her. She kept expecting his thugs to come back for her—to tie her up again and tell her there had been a change of plans, that this remote cabin wasn’t her real destination. This place was too bizarre, even for Duane. Did he really believe he could build a nuclear bomb in a place like this? With a scientist who didn’t even bother to look at a book?

She risked a glance at Mark, who had returned to work at the lab table. He wore goggles and a mask and was working with his hands in heavy gloves, manipulating something inside a large glass box. Maybe the protective gear was because the material in that box was radioactive. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders to ward off a sudden chill.

She couldn’t figure Mark out. The story he had told her—about his wife and little girl—was horrifying. She was pretty sure Duane had killed other people, so why not Mark’s wife? But how could Mark be so calm about his situation? She had spent every waking moment for the last six weeks trying to figure out how to escape from her captors. She had almost succeeded twice—she still winced, remembering the beatings she’d received when she had been caught. But Duane hadn’t let them kill her or rape her or otherwise harm her. She had thought he drew the line there out of consideration for her mother, but now she wondered if it was because he had other plans for her. Plans that included the enigmatic Mark Renfro.

Her stomach growled. The sandwich she had made earlier still sat on the kitchen counter, so she retrieved it and took it to the table to eat. Mark glanced up from his work. “They usually bring dinner by now,” he said. “Since they haven’t, we may have to make do with cold cuts.”

She shrugged. She didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to get any closer to him, but curiosity—and maybe loneliness—weakened her resolve. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m using a solvent to extract pure uranium from powdered ore,” he said. “The process takes a couple of days, but there’s a lot of high-grade ore in this area. I think that’s why Duane was interested in the property in the first place. Some things I’ve overheard make me think he hasn’t owned the place long—that he acquired it specifically for this purpose. The remote location suits his purposes well, too.”

“I still don’t understand how you convinced Duane you could make a bomb out here,” she said. “He’s insane, but he isn’t stupid.”

He removed his hands from the box, pulled down the mask and pushed up the goggles and faced her. “I didn’t convince him of anything. He decided it could be done and chose me to do it.”

“But what made him think it was even possible?” she asked. “Don’t you need, I don’t know, a particle accelerator or something like that?”

He chuckled. “Actually, in the 1960s, three physics students working in a small laboratory were able to design a functional bomb. The United States government paid them to make the attempt. They wanted to see if it was possible for a few people with a limited amount of knowledge and not a lot of sophisticated equipment—a situation that might crop up in an underdeveloped country, for example—to make a nuclear weapon. Turned out they could. The government called it the Nth Country Experiment. You can read about it online if you’re interested. And in 1994 a teenage Eagle Scout built a nuclear reactor in his backyard, using materials he found around the house.”

“So you really could build a bomb?” The idea made her skin crawl.

“I’m sure I could, given enough time and the right materials.” He scrawled something on a piece of paper and passed it over to her. In case anyone is listening—building a bomb isn’t the problem. Building one small enough for one person to carry around inconspicuously is.

She nodded and crumpled the paper, holding it tight in her clenched fist. “I still don’t see how I can help you.”

“Perhaps you’re merely here to boost my morale.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”

He frowned. “I only meant that having someone to talk to is a nice change.”

Right. Maybe she had grown too accustomed to the company of Duane’s goons who, despite their boss’s orders not to lay a hand on her, spent plenty of time leering and making lewd remarks. “How have you kept from going crazy, alone here for so many months?” she asked.

“I try not to think about it too much,” he said. “And I focus on the work.” He turned back to the lab equipment.

She stared at his back for a long while, then stood and walked to the window. He could focus on work all he wanted, but she was going to focus on finding a way out of here.

In different circumstances, she might have enjoyed the view out this window. The cabin sat on a slight rise at the edge of a valley. Feathery junipers and piñon pines dotted the rocky ground amid a thick blanket of snow. A few hundred yards beyond the cabin the land fell away in a steep precipice. Across from this gorge rose red rock mountains, the peaks cloaked in white, the setting sun painting the sky in brilliant pinks and golds. How ironic that such a peaceful-seeming place could be the source of potentially great destruction.

A cloud of white off in the distance, moving in their direction, caught her attention. “I think someone’s coming,” she said.

Mark was by her side within seconds. “That looks like Duane’s entourage,” he said, as three black Humvees slowly made their way up the narrow, rutted track. A guard who must have been seated on the other side of the door rose and walked to the edge of the narrow porch, an automatic rifle cradled in his arms. When the vehicles stopped in front of the cabin, the guard snapped off a salute.

Erin didn’t even realize she had backed away from the window until she bumped into Mark. He rested one hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and she fought the urge to lean into him. She didn’t even know the man, and didn’t fully trust him, yet she felt safer with him than with any of those on the other side of the door.

Men piled out of the first and third vehicles, all dressed in camo and bristling with weapons. One man unpacked a wheelchair and set it up next to the middle vehicle, while another man opened the back door of this Hummer, leaned in and lifted out Duane Braeswood.

Mark sucked in his breath. “Is that really Duane?” he asked. “What happened to him?”

Instead of camo, Duane wore a black suit and turtleneck. His thin body was twisted and hunched, and tubes trailed from his nostrils to an oxygen tank that one of his goons hooked to the back of the wheelchair.

“You didn’t know?” She had been shocked, too, the first time she saw this sick, diminished version of her stepfather. But he was diminished in physical stature only. His spirit had struck her as stronger than ever.

“I haven’t seen him in almost a year,” Mark said.

“Don’t let his appearance fool you. He isn’t weak.” Despite his disability, the man in the wheelchair radiated power, with every man out there focused on him.

The group headed for the cabin, two of the men lifting the wheelchair, with Duane in it, onto the porch. Mark pulled Erin into the middle of the room as locks snicked and the door opened.

She forced herself to look at her stepfather, to meet the blue eyes that burned feverishly in his withered face. “Erin, dear.” The sound of her name on his lips made her flinch. “Your mother sends her greetings.”

She bit back a curse, aware of the guards looming on either side of him. She had found out the hard way what they thought of any slur on the man they viewed almost as a religious figure. “How is my mother?” she asked, because she wanted desperately to know, though she knew Duane would tell her the truth only if it suited him.

“Helen is fine.” He rolled his chair toward the lab. “Renfro!” The strident voice seemed incongruous coming from such a weakened frame. “What progress have you made?”

Mark walked to the workbench, unhurried, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, the picture of the singularly focused genius who couldn’t be bothered to worry about anything outside of his work. “I’ve almost perfected the refining process,” he said. “And I’m accumulating the quantity of uranium I’ll need for the project.”

“You need to finish within a week,” Duane said.

Mark’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked even more bored, eyes hooded, his expression guarded. “I can’t promise that. The process takes as long as it takes. I can’t change physical laws.”

Erin didn’t see any signal from Duane, but he must have given one. Without warning, two men seized her arms, while a third forced her head back.

“Leave her alone!” Mark shouted, all semblance of boredom vanished, but the fourth guard held him back.

Erin tried to struggle, terrified her captors intended to cut her throat. But the two men who held her remained immobile, impervious to her kicks and shouts. A third man wrapped something hard and cold around her throat. She heard a click, and all three men suddenly released her.

“I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you, Erin.” Duane’s voice had its usual smooth cadence. “The mechanism in your new necklace is fairly sensitive.”

The three goons stepped back and Erin grabbed at her throat, grasping the thick metal collar now fastened there. The edges chafed her skin and the weight of it dragged at her. “What have you done to me?” she demanded.

“You’re wearing an explosive device,” Duane said, as calmly as if he had been commenting on the weather. “It has a timer, and is set to go off exactly one week from today.” He turned to Mark. “You deliver the product as promised by then and we will remove the collar.”

“Why such a hurry now?” Mark asked. “You’ve waited all these months, why not a few more to make sure things are done correctly?”

“I’m done with waiting.” Duane’s voice was strident, his face red with strain. “You will have the device for me in a week.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then the bomb goes off and you both die.”

Chapter Three

Mark stared at the man in the wheelchair. The eyes that looked back at him were as cold and untroubled as a mountain lake. Erin had been right—whatever physical ailment had reduced Duane to a husk of his former self, it hadn’t diminished his madness. A man with eyes like that might very well kill his own stepdaughter just to make a point. But delivering what Duane wanted within a week—or even within a year—was impossible. Mark chose his words carefully, wary of upsetting his kidnapper more. “Mr. Braeswood, building a...an apparatus such as you require isn’t like baking a cake. I can’t just throw a bunch of ingredients together and come up with a viable product. I need time and—”

“You’ve had time,” Braeswood snapped. “If I don’t have what I want in one week, you both die.”

And even if I could deliver your bomb, we would still die, Mark thought. Duane wouldn’t leave any witnesses to his plans. “You’re asking for the impossible,” he said.

“You’ll have your bomb. Next week!” Despite the constricting collar Erin turned her head to face Braeswood. “Mark is being a typical scientist—overly cautious. He was telling me earlier that he’s almost ready to assemble it. With both of us working together I know we can meet your deadline.”

“Erin.” Mark sent her a warning look.

Her gaze burned into him, pleading with him to go along with her lie. Her terror swamped him. Maybe he would feel the same if he had a bomb at his throat. “Sure,” he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. “There’s still some work I need to do...with the plutonium-catalyst ratios.” There was no such thing, but Mark had learned that Braeswood appreciated it when he threw around scientific jargon.

“Excellent.” Braeswood’s voice sounded much stronger than he looked. Floorboards creaked as he turned his chair and rolled back to the door. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

“You can’t just leave me like this!” Erin’s voice rose, on the edge of panic.

“So impatient.” Braeswood regarded her coolly. “You were that way as a child, too, never content to wait for a reward, no matter how hard I tried to teach you. I would have hoped that maturity would have curbed that unfortunate character trait, but I see it has not. This should be a good lesson for you.” He nodded to his henchmen and one opened the door while two others hoisted the chair.

The locks snapped into place again after the door closed behind the entourage. Car doors slammed, engines growled and the pop of tires on gravel gradually faded away.

Erin sank into one of the kitchen chairs, as if her legs would no longer support her, her hands clutching the collar. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she moaned.

Mark’s hands knotted into fists and his heart hammered, emotion rocking him back on his heels. He recognized rage—something he hadn’t felt, something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel, in months. The intensity of the feelings caught him off guard. He was furious with Braeswood and his men, but also with himself. Why hadn’t he done something to stop them? Why hadn’t he protected Erin? And what was he going to do to help her now? He may have given up on life, but she deserved to live.

He pulled his hands from his pockets and moved to her side. “Can I take a look at the collar?” he asked.

She dropped her hands to her lap and looked up at him. “Do you know anything about disarming bombs?”

“Not a thing, unfortunately.” He studied the collar, which was gold colored—plated, he imagined, with platinum or aluminum or some other sturdier alloy beneath. About three inches wide, it fastened at the back with a locking mechanism similar to a seat belt, the halves fitting tightly together. The explosive device sat front and center, the size of a pack of playing cards, comprised of wires and button batteries and a glob of yellowish plastic he suspected was the explosive. Who had made this horrible yet ingenious device for Duane? Did he have a combination jeweler-explosives expert in the ranks of his followers? Or was he holding another man prisoner, compelling him by threat or force to do Duane’s malevolent bidding?

Mark brushed his fingers along the sides of the collar, the hot flutter of Erin’s pulse beneath his fingertips sending a jolt of awareness through him. The contrast of her silken flesh with the unyielding metal made her seem all the more fragile and out of place here—like finding a lily blooming in the middle of a minefield.

“Can you cut it off?” she asked.

“I don’t think we can risk it,” he said. “It looks as if there are wires embedded in the metal and running all the way around. My guess is if we sever one of those the bomb would go off.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes as big and dark as a terrified deer’s. “What are we going to do?”

He looked away, at the lab equipment arranged neatly on the workbench, at the sparse furnishings and barred windows of the place that had been his prison for the past fourteen months. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “We need to get you to someplace with people who know how to disarm something like this.” The FBI had experts who could deal with this kind of thing. If he could get to Luke, his brother would know what to do.

“How are we going to get away?” she asked.

If he knew that, he would have left months ago. Escaping from the cabin might not even be the most difficult challenge. Once they were free, they would have to cross miles of wilderness in freezing weather before they could even reach a road, or a telephone they could use to summon help. “I don’t know.” He dropped into the chair across from her. “I tried everything I could think of when I first got here. I was always caught.” Caught and punished. He closed his eyes. He understood now that it wasn’t merely confinement that wore down prisoners—it was the utter helplessness, the loss of control over even the simplest aspects of life.

“How many guards are there?” she asked.

“Two at a time—one on the front door and one on the back. They work eight-hour shifts, so that means six men a day, plus two others that rotate in and out when one of the others needs to take a day off. They’re armed with semiautomatic rifles and unlike the men in books and movies, they don’t fall asleep or get distracted.” He had spent many hours in the early days of his captivity studying his guards and trying to learn their patterns and spot any weaknesses. Unfortunately, he hadn’t identified any of the latter.

“So Duane has eight men stationed somewhere near here, but only two of them are up here at a time,” she said. “There are two of us now. That evens the odds.” She sounded stronger, and some of the color had returned to her face.

“Except we’re not armed,” he said. “And where do we go when we do get out of here? We’re miles from any major road, we don’t have a map and, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s snow out there.”

“I’d rather freeze to death in the mountains than sit here waiting to be blown up.”

Until she showed up, Mark would have opted for sitting. Truth was, he had given up months ago. Without his wife, without his daughter or his work, he had nothing to live for. But Erin was young. Not that much younger than him in terms of years, but she was so full of life. She had every reason to avoid death.

“Why is Duane doing all this now?” he asked. “Why lure you back to him after years away? Why demand a bomb in a week after I’ve been working on it over a year? He hasn’t shown any sign of impatience with the project before now.”

“Maybe he’s tired of paying for all the man power needed to keep you up here,” she said.

“He hasn’t balked at paying the money before. Has something happened to make him worried about finances?”

She shook her head. “Duane’s grandfather was some kind of robber baron who made a killing in insurance in the twenties. Apparently, even the Depression didn’t touch his fortune. His father parlayed those millions into billions with a string of tech companies. Duane apparently inherited their knack for business and invested in everything from highways to high tech to fund his more nefarious activities—the actual source of the money all neatly hidden in various shell companies and shadow corporations. Add to that the donations he receives from people who support his cause and he’s got an endless supply of bucks. All this—” she swept her hand around the lab “—probably only qualifies as a footnote on a spreadsheet somewhere.”

“If it’s not money, what else is driving him?” Mark asked. “Has something happened on the world scene to make him think now is the best time to strike? I haven’t heard a news report in the last year, so we could be ruled by Martians right now and I wouldn’t know it.” He’d been like a castaway on a deserted island. He had told himself he didn’t miss knowing what was going on in the rest of the world, but now that Erin was with him, he fought the urge to bombard her with questions: Who was president of Russia these days? What was the dollar worth? What was the hottest tech gadget? Who was hosting the next Olympic Games? Who’d won the World Series?

But he had held back, and now, with that horrible collar around her neck, didn’t seem the time to worry about trivialities.

“There’s nothing much new in the world situation that would have set him off,” she said. “Though maybe his accident has him thinking about his mortality, and that’s given him this sense of urgency.”

“What kind of accident?” Mark asked. “I’ll admit I was shocked by his appearance this afternoon—I haven’t seen him in months. I thought maybe he had cancer or something.”

“I’m not sure what is wrong with him, but I don’t think it’s cancer,” she said. “I only heard bits and pieces of the story from my mom or from things people said when they didn’t know I was listening. It’s something to do with the FBI—he was injured when they tried to capture him or something like that. It’s one of the reasons he hates them so much.”

“Did you overhear anything else interesting, about Duane or his plans?”

“There was some rumor about a power struggle between Duane and his second in command, a man named Roland Chambers. He lived with us for a while when I was a teenager and he practically worshipped Duane, so I don’t know how much truth there was to the rumors that he was trying to take over after Duane was injured. But Roland was killed last month, so Duane doesn’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“So no money problems, no political upheaval and no rival.” Mark ticked off the possible reasons for Duane’s sudden change of plans. “Maybe you’re right and it is a mortality thing. I guess it doesn’t matter why he’s putting the pressure on us, only that he is.”

“We’ve got to find a way out of here,” she said.

“If you think of a plan, I’ll try it.”

She surprised him once more by leaning over and gripping his hand. “We’ll think of something,” she said.

Her conviction both stunned and moved him. A wave of emotion—regret, longing, even hope—welled up in him, so strong he had to look away for fear of betraying his weakness. Five hours ago he had been contemplating ways to end his life. Now, thanks to Erin, he was desperate to hang on to all the time he had left—to not only survive, but to live.

* * *

THE COLLAR WASN’T tight enough to choke her, Erin reminded herself, fighting the panic that lurked at the very edge of consciousness. But the thick metal band felt like Duane’s hands around her throat, threatening to squeeze the life from her.

Mark had returned to his workbench, bending over his experiments as if the previous hour hadn’t happened. She supposed his work was his escape, the way some people lost themselves in television shows or books. But she had no escape, only a hyperawareness of the weight around her throat and the fear that a wrong move could set off the bomb that would tear her to pieces. She had lived with fear so long she thought she had grown accustomed to it, but Duane had found a way to ratchet up the terror until it was almost unbearable.

She replayed every conversation she had had with him since she had returned to his sphere of influence—not so much conversations as arguments and debates, often exchanged at top volume while her mother hovered nearby, a diminutive referee prepared to throw herself between the opponents should they come to blows.

Erin’s refusal to follow Duane’s dictates or believe in his worldview had always annoyed and even angered her stepfather. As a teen, his attitude had only egged her on. As an adult, she saw a hatred she hadn’t noticed before, lurking beneath the surface ranting. Maybe this whole charade with the kidnapping and the collar was an elaborate revenge plot. Maybe she was the primary target of Duane’s latest ultimatum, not Mark and his bomb-building assignment. He was collateral damage incurred along the way.

Engrossed in his work, Mark didn’t even seem aware she was in the room. She studied him, determined to distract herself from thinking any more about the collar. He was a fairly tall man—over six feet, his frame lanky beneath the loose-fitting lab coat. His dark hair just touched his collar, the cut uneven, as if he had done it himself with the pair of nail scissors. The thought of him struggling to remain well-groomed despite the direness of his situation touched her.

He had probably shaved this morning, but now dark stubble shadowed his jaw, sharpening his features and making him look less like a scientist and more like an outlaw, or a fugitive on the run.

She wanted to be on the run, but the wire mesh on the windows and the guards at the doors blocked their escape. She studied the ceiling. If they could find a way to climb up onto the roof, could they jump off and flee before the guards noticed? But the cabin didn’t appear to have an attic, and she doubted they had tools capable of sawing through the metal roofing. The concrete beneath the floor meant tunneling wasn’t an option.

She sighed and closed her eyes, determined not to give in to the tears that threatened.

“It’s getting dark.”

Mark’s voice startled her. She opened her eyes, surprised to note the landscape around the cabin was no longer visible through the windows.

“Darkness comes early at this elevation, this time of year,” Mark said. “Are you hungry? You should try to eat.” He moved from the workbench to the refrigerator and began pulling out cold cuts. “I’ll make sandwiches.”

“I couldn’t eat,” she said, but he kept assembling bread and ham and cheese.

He set a sandwich and a bottle of water in front of her and took the chair across from her. She stared at the food and shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

He looked down at his own plate, then pushed it away. “Yeah. I don’t have much of an appetite, either. Maybe we should just call it a night. The batteries drain pretty fast once the sun goes down, so I’ve gotten in the habit of retiring early. Maybe in the morning we’ll think with clearer heads.”

She looked at the double bed with its tangle of sheets and blankets. “I don’t think I could sleep,” she said.

“Take the bed,” he said. “I’ll stretch out on the floor.”

“That’s ridiculous. I won’t take your bed.”

His expression grew stubborn. “Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not going to rest in comfort while you try to make do on the floor.”

“Then we’ll share the bed.” She looked him in the eye, striving for a calm she didn’t feel. “We’re adults. We can do that. Under the circumstances, it’s ridiculous to be prudish about something like this. There’s only one bed and two of us, so we should make the best of it.”

“All right. Suit yourself.” He stood and returned their leftovers to the refrigerator, then removed the lab coat and draped it over the stool at his workbench.

Erin blinked. The baggy coat had hid the outline of his body. Beneath it he wore a blue flannel shirt that stretched across lean but muscular shoulders, and canvas hiking pants that hugged a narrow waist and decidedly attractive backside.

He turned and caught her staring at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, fighting to hold back a blush. “I was just...lost in thought.” The thought that there was more to the depressed scientist than she had first surmised.

They moved to the bed. The metal frame was shoved into the corner. “I’ll take the outside,” she said, not wanting to be trapped between him and the wall.

“All right.” He removed his shoes, then, still wearing his pants and shirt, slid under the covers and rolled over to face the wall, his back to her.

She sat on the side of the bed and slipped out of her own shoes, then switched off the lamp and lay back on top of the blankets. The metal collar rubbed against the underside of her chin and she tried not to think of the possibility that she might roll over in sleep and put pressure on the wrong wire or something...

She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing—eight slow counts in, eight slow counts out. A friend who taught yoga had assured her that this was a surefire technique for releasing tension and falling asleep.

On the first count of eight Mark shifted, the movement rocking the bed and banishing all thoughts of achieving calm. The heat of him caressed her skin and she sensed the shape of him only inches from her, the jut of his shoulders, the long line of his spine, the length of his legs. The memory of him brushing his fingertips along her throat made her heart speed up and her breath catch. Not because she could ever be attracted to a man like Mark Renfro—a man still in mourning for his dead wife and lost child, a man whose eyes held a despair that tore at her. She was reacting this way only because it had been a long time since she had slept with a man. A long time since she had lived in the same house with anyone else. She had avoided close relationships, fearful of exposing anyone else to Duane’s manipulations and hate. Duane controlled people by threatening those they loved, as he had done with Mark. Avoiding love protected other people, but it was also a way of protecting herself.

But that kind of life was lonely, and clearly, Erin was paying for that now. She told herself simple human contact, not sexual attraction, had set her heart pounding and her skin heating over Mark’s proximity.

She took a cue from him and rolled over to put her back to him, clinging to the side of the bed and trying to ignore the weight of the bomb collar against her throat. She closed her eyes and allowed the tears to wet her lashes and slide down her cheeks as she prayed for sleep to take her.

* * *

MARK LAY AWAKE deep into the night, stretched out rigid on the mattress, the events of the day playing and replaying behind his closed eyelids. The sudden appearance of Erin, followed by Duane’s visit and his homicidal ultimatum, unsettled him more than he would have thought possible, like a trumpet blast disrupting the white noise of the lab, or a slash of vivid crimson across a black-and-white photo.

When sleep finally pulled him under, he dreamed restless, confusing vignettes: he was at a birthday party for four-year-old Mandy, Christy leaning forward, cheeks puffed out, helping her daughter blow out the candles on the cake. He saw Christy in the kitchen, long blond hair partially covered by a pink bandanna, a smudge of flour on one cheek, brows drawn together in fierce concentration as she studied the directions in a cookbook.

Then Christy was in bed beside him, the thin straps of her nightgown slipping off her shoulders, a warm smile deepening the dimple in one cheek as she pulled him to her. She was so incredibly warm and soft, skin as fine as silk as he glided his hands over her shoulders, turning her around and pulling her back tight against him, the curve of her bottom snugged against the hard length of his arousal.

He cupped her breast, the beaded nipple nuzzling into his palm. She murmured and shifted, then made a sound of alarm and jerked away.

Mark stared into a pair of wide feminine eyes—not blue like Christy’s, but the gold-green hazel of the forest floor. Erin’s eyes, filled with accusations and questions.

Chapter Four

Erin had surfaced from a stupor of exhaustion to luxurious warmth—the warmth of a firm male body pressed to hers, strong hands caressing her. She smiled, and snugged into the heat of him, this dream man whose fingers played across her skin as if she was precious to him. She gave a purr of satisfaction as he cupped her breast, a glow building within her. Yes. How long had it been since she had felt so aroused—so cherished?

The question intruded into the fantasy, demanding an answer, summoning reality. Opening her eyes, she stared at the lab equipment on a counter across from her, shadowed in the dim light of early dawn filtering through the mesh-covered windows of the cabin. Emotions tumbled over her like falling debris—confusion, anger, fear—topped off by the knowledge that whoever had his hands on her and his body against her, it wasn’t a lover, because she hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

Fear lanced through her as she pulled out of his grasp and rolled onto her back to stare into the troubled face of Mark Renfro. “I’m sorry.” He held up his hands, like a robber caught reaching into the till. “I didn’t mean... I was dreaming... I’m sorry.”

She did a quick check as her initial panic receded—they were both still dressed, nothing out of place. Mark looked so horrified she had to believe him. After all, she had been dreaming, too, and the dream hadn’t been at all unpleasant. “It’s okay.” She managed a smile. “Nothing really happened. I guess this just proves you’re human.”

He rose up on one elbow and wiped his hand over his face. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“I think we could both say that about pretty much everything these days.” She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “Must have been a nice dream, huh?”

The room had lightened enough to show the flush of color on his cheeks that made him look much younger and quite endearing. “It’s okay,” she said again. “The mind is a funny thing. The subconscious can throw up the oddest stuff when you least expect it.”

He sat up also, then leaned over and pulled a small transistor radio from beneath the bed and switched it on. The white noise of static surrounded them. “I read once that was one way to make it tougher for a hidden microphone to pick up conversation.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“I found it under the bed after I had been here a couple of weeks. I guess whoever owned the cabin before left it behind.” He leaned back against the iron bedstead. “I don’t suppose your subconscious has come up with a way to get us out of here?”

She touched the collar at her neck, the metal smooth and heavy and deadly. Then she glanced at the array of lab equipment. “There must be something there we can use as a weapon,” she said. “I mean, you’re supposed to be building a bomb. So you must have some dangerous stuff.”

“Radioactive material is potentially deadly,” he said. “But by itself it doesn’t kill or disable instantly, like a bullet or a knife. If we threatened the guards with a chunk of radioactive rock, they would just shoot us.”

“What else have you got? Chemicals?”

“I have some solvents, a couple of acids—”

“That’s it.” She leaned toward him. “Throw acid on someone and you could certainly disable them.”

“But they have to get close enough for you to be sure you don’t miss,” he said. “You might take out one guard that way, but not both of them.”

She mulled over this problem. “I could create a distraction. Something they would both have to respond to. You could douse them with acid and we could make a run for it.”

He didn’t automatically dismiss the plan, which she considered a positive sign. “What kind of distraction?”

“I don’t know. It would have to be something that would bring them inside. What about a fire? Or a minor explosion in the lab?”

“I tried that the second week I was here. One of them stuck his head in and told me if I burned the place down with me in it, I would save them all a lot of trouble. I ruined my only sweater putting out the blaze.”

“I could scream rape.”

He shook his head. “From what I’ve seen of this bunch, they’d either want to watch or participate.”

She cringed. “Right. Bad idea.” She rubbed a finger under the collar. “If I told them something was wrong with this, they would probably want to keep their distance.” She looked around the cabin. “What do they care about in here?”

“Nothing,” he said. “The only time they set foot inside is to bring food, and then one of them keeps his gun on me while the other one sets the bags on the table. The whole process takes about three minutes.”

“So you’ve been practically living in solitary confinement.” No wonder he was depressed.

“I would rather be by myself than have anything to do with people like them,” he said. “Killers who justify what they do with a pretense of saving the country from itself.”

“So we’ll have to make our move when they bring the food,” she said. “When do they usually bring it?”

“Midafternoon. I thought they were making a delivery when they brought you.”

“Do they come every day?”

“No. Three or four times a week.”

“Next time they come we won’t make our move, but we’ll watch and see if we can spot any weak points. Have you ever seen any other women up here?”

“Never.”

“I’ve seen a few hanging around Duane’s compound—a few wives and girlfriends of the men who follow him. Maybe a few of the women are followers, too. But there’s never any female muscle. That runs counter to all those old-fashioned values they like to espouse.”

“What are you getting at?” he asked.

“These guys aren’t around women a lot,” she said. “They don’t know how to handle them.”

“They don’t have any problem killing women,” he said, and she wondered if he was thinking of his dead wife.

Her stomach knotted. “I don’t intend to let them kill me if I can help it. But I was thinking if I got a little hysterical it might throw them off balance long enough for you to douse them with the acid.”

“That’s a lot of ifs.”

“The alternative is sitting here and waiting to be blown up. I would rather take the risk.”

“And what happens after that?” he asked. “After we get outside? I don’t even know where we are. Do you?”

“No. But there is a road leading up here, and if we head down the mountain and keep walking, we’re bound to eventually reach a house or a highway or someone who can help us.” She angled her body toward him. “We can gather supplies to take with us—food and water and blankets. When we get to a phone we can call your brother the FBI agent.”

“The guards will come after us. It won’t be as simple as walking away from here.”

“If we disable both guards on duty, we’ll have a head start. I’ll admit it won’t be easy, but if we don’t at least try it, we’ll die for sure.”

He let out a long breath. “You’re right.” His eyes met hers, a strength in them she hadn’t seen before. “We’ll do it.”

* * *

ERIN’S DETERMINATION TO escape kindled a fire in Mark. He felt like a man awakening after a long sleep, dormant emotions coming to life once more. Last night’s erotic dream was just one more sign of his reawakening. When he had first come to the cabin, he had fought, but weeks of isolation and torture and no success from his efforts had left him listless and numb. The sight of the beautiful woman sentenced to death by the bomb around her throat hit him like an injection of adrenaline.

“I did an inventory of the lab equipment and supplies,” he told Erin as they ate lunch—the last of the sandwich fixings—that afternoon. She had spent the morning looking out the windows, not speaking. Maybe the direness of their situation was sinking in.

“How do you replenish your supplies?” she asked. She lifted the top slice of bread on her turkey sandwich and frowned at the grayish meat inside.

“I make a list and give it to the guard who delivers the food.” Mark bit into his own sandwich. After his first weeks here he had learned to eat when food was offered, since he could never be sure when the next meal would arrive. “I’m pretty well stocked right now, but I need more nitric acid. I use it to process the plutonium.” Any chemist would recognize this as a gross oversimplification of what he did, but the guards didn’t strike him as chemistry majors.

“So you think they’ll bring more food this afternoon?” she asked.

“I hope so. We need more food since there are two of us now.”

“It must be pretty boring for the guards,” she said. “I’ve been watching them all morning and they just walk around the cabin all day. What do they do when it snows, or at night?”

“There’s someone on guard all the time,” he said. “Sometimes they build a fire in winter, and they have a trailer parked nearby, where they can take turns warming up.”

He could almost read her thoughts. She was thinking if they could get out of here at a time when only one guard was outside, they would have a better chance of getting away.

“They keep the doors locked from the outside,” he reminded her.

She nodded, still thoughtful.

The crunch of tires on ice alerted them to new arrivals. “This might be our dinner,” he said, standing.

She stood also, and together they faced the door. A car door slammed, locks turned and the door swung open to reveal a guard Mark had named Tank—a thick-muscled, broad-shouldered guy with a shaved head, a gold front tooth and a permanent scowl. The floor shook as he strode toward them, two plastic grocery bags looped over one hand, the other balled into a fist at his side.

A second guard—a wiry black man with a thin mustache—positioned himself by the door, a semiautomatic rifle held across his chest. He glanced at Mark, then his gaze fixed on Erin and one corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. She moved a little closer to Mark, her breath shallow, skin pale. He wanted to put out a hand to steady her, maybe squeeze her shoulder to reassure her, but doing anything to draw attention to her felt like the wrong move.

Tank set the grocery bags on the table, the cans and bottles inside rattling. At this point, he usually turned and shuffled out, but this afternoon was different. He moved toward Erin, who shrank back.

“I’m supposed to check your collar,” he said, and took hold of her arm, dragging her toward him.

She stood rigid, jaw clamped shut, as he ran one thick finger under the edge of the metal collar. The other hand slid down her arm to cup her breast. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Nice.”

“Get your hands off of me,” she warned.

“Now, sugar, seeing as how you’re going to be here awhile, we might as well be friendly.” He squeezed, and Erin brought her knee up toward his crotch, but he blocked the move and twisted her arm around her back, hard enough that she let out a cry.

Mark launched himself at the thug, landing a knuckle-bruising blow that sent blood spurting from Tank’s nose. Howling, the guard released Erin and swung the butt of his rifle against the side of Mark’s head. Mark staggered back, his vision blurring. Erin’s screams mingled with the pounding of his pulse and the animal growl that rose from Tank. Mark fell backward over one of the kitchen chairs and tried to regain his balance as Tank lunged toward him. He scanned the area for a weapon and grabbed for the chair, swinging it up to block a second blow from the rifle. Then the barrel of the weapon zeroed in on him, stalling his heart in his chest as he stared death in the face.

Chapter Five

“No!” Erin’s scream tore through the noise of their struggle. “Don’t be an idiot.” She lunged toward the biggest thug, held back by the black guard, who wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground as if she weighed no more than a pet dog. She kicked and flailed anyway, desperate to keep the other man from hurting Mark. “If you kill him before he finishes the bomb, Duane Braeswood will make sure you suffer,” she shouted.

The big thug hesitated, and Mark staggered to his feet. He swayed, blood trailing down the side of his face, but he managed to glare at the guard, who snarled, but lowered the rifle. Then the thug turned and stalked to the door. The black guard shoved Erin toward Mark and seconds later the front door slammed behind them and the locks slid back into place.

“You’re bleeding.” She rushed to Mark, her fingers fluttering over the broken bruise on the side of his head, fearful of hurting him more if she touched him. But when he swayed alarmingly, she gripped him by the arm and led him to the bed. “Stay here and I’ll get something to clean you up.”

He opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed his eyes and said nothing. She hurried to the sink and ran cold water over a clean dishrag, keeping one eye on him in case he toppled over. The guard had hit him so hard she had been afraid at first that he’d been killed.

But he opened his eyes when she returned to his side, and sucked in his breath when she dabbed at the wound with the wet rag. “Sorry,” she said, “but I need to clean up this blood. You’ve got a nasty bruise, and it broke the skin.”

“At least I’m not dead,” he said. “If you hadn’t said that about Duane and the bomb, I probably would be.”

“You shouldn’t have punched him.” Her hand tightened on his shoulder as she continued dabbing at the blood. Now that her initial terror had faded, she felt light-headed and shaky. “You didn’t ask for me to come here and it’s not your responsibility to defend me.”

“I wasn’t going to stand by and let him maul you.” Mark turned his head to meet her gaze. “I didn’t ask for you to come here, but I’m glad you’re here.”

The sad, defeated look had left his eyes, replaced with such strength and vitality she might have thought she was with a different man altogether. She lost track of everything in the heat of that gaze and for that split second, he wasn’t hurt, she wasn’t wearing a bomb around her neck, they weren’t trapped and this whole nightmare had never happened. They were a man and a woman making a connection.

But under the circumstances, that kind of moment couldn’t last. The situation was too dire, their need to get away too urgent. She squeezed his shoulder again, then dropped her hand. Her voice trembled only a little as she changed the subject. “Did you notice?” she asked. “The one who grabbed me after you hit the big guy left the door unguarded. We might be able to use that information.”

“I don’t think we can risk trying the same moves again.” He touched the wound on the side of his head and winced. “Next time they might kill me. They might kill both of us.”

“No, we can’t risk it. But that tells us that under the right circumstances, the man on the door will abandon his post.” She stood. “Let’s see what they brought us to eat.”

The two plastic grocery bags the guard had carried in had tipped over and spilled their contents across the table: canned soup and fruit, sliced cheese and cheap lunch meat, a partially smashed loaf of bread, toaster pastries, instant coffee, crackers, corn chips, canned ravioli and a box of chocolate cupcakes. Mark picked up the cupcakes. “This is new,” he said. “They never bring anything sweet.”

Erin stared at the cupcakes, heart pounding. It was just a stupid box of cupcakes, but still...

“What’s wrong?” Mark asked. “You look like you’re going to faint.” He put a steadying hand on her arm.

She shook her head, trying to clear the fog. “It’s silly.”

“But you think you know why the cupcakes are here this time?”

She swallowed, trying to keep her composure. “They’re my favorite. When I was a kid, my mom would buy them as a special treat for my lunches. And even as an adult, she would keep them around for me.” Erin swallowed tears at the memory of sitting at the kitchen table after school, peeling back the thick chocolate frosting with the white squiggle through the center to reveal the cream-filled chocolate cake beneath, while her mother sat across from her, sipping coffee and asking about her day. “Mom must have persuaded Duane to include them in the delivery for us. Either that, or it’s his sick way of reminding me that he knows all about me.” She turned away, fighting to regain control of her emotions.

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