A mountain hideaway is all that stands between a bodyguard and the killer after his beautiful client…

As a highly skilled cyber security expert and bodyguard, there are few dangers Dylan Timmons can’t handle. But his next assignment brings unexpected risks. Hired to protect brilliant—but socially reclusive—neurosurgeon Jayne Shackleford, Dylan seeks answers in what he suspects was a foiled kidnapping attempt. As the daughter of an oil tycoon, Jayne is the perfect target for ransom, so retreating to the mountains is the first step in keeping her safe. The second step is remaining vigilant in their secluded surroundings—and resisting the beautiful brunette with a target on her back.

Before he could activate his lightning-quick reflexes, she went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

Then she turned back to the vending machine. Over her shoulder, she said, “Couldn’t help it. You’re cute when you get befuddled.”

He was willing to concede that she was smarter than he was…and probably a better leader…and, very likely, she was more confident. But he wasn’t about to let her take the lead when it came to what happened between them.

He was the bodyguard. He was in charge.

He grasped her upper arm and spun her around to face him. Holding her other arm to anchor her to one spot in the bland, empty break room, he kissed her. Not a belittling peck on the cheek, but a real kiss on the lips. His mouth pressed firmly against hers, he tasted mint and coffee. Though their bodies weren’t touching, the heat that radiated between them was hotter than a furnace.

Mountain Shelter

Cassie Miles

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CASSIE MILES, a USA TODAY bestselling author, lives in Colorado. After raising two daughters and cooking tons of macaroni and cheese for her family, Cassie is trying to be more adventurous in her culinary efforts. She’s discovered that almost anything tastes better with wine. When she’s not plotting Mills & Boon Intrigue books, Cassie likes to hang out at the Denver Botanical Gardens near her high-rise home.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Jayne Shackleford—A brilliant neurosurgeon who developed a pioneering method for treating stroke victims, she’s a little bit clumsy in everyday life.

Dylan Timmons—Not a typical bodyguard, he’s one of the owners of TST Security, a computer whiz and a totally sexy self-confessed nerd.

Detective Ray Cisneros—From the Denver Police Department.

Eloise—Jayne’s assistant.

Wayne (Woody) Woodward—An FBI special agent.

Peter Shackleford—Jayne’s wealthy, powerful father, whose business interests include oil and aviation.

Javier Flores—The handsome Venezuelan businessman shares many interests with Jayne’s father.

“Tank” Sherman—This talented hacker has bitten off more than he can chew.

Diego Romero—Longtime leader of a Venezuelan drugs and smuggling cartel.

Martin Viktor Koslov—The assassin would have no problem killing Jayne. Kidnapping her is much more complicated.

Henry and Cordelia Cameron—One of Jayne’s patients and his wife.

Tom and Betty Burton—Caretakers at RSQ Ranch.

Sean Timmons—Dylan’s brother, a part owner of TST Security.

Mason Steele—The third owner of TST Security.

Hello, Gorgeous! To my sister, Marya Hunsinger.

And, as always, to Rick.

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

With eyes wide open, Jayne Shackleford stared at the glowing numbers on her bedside clock: 9:29. Though it didn’t really make a sound, she heard tick-tick-tick. She rolled over so she couldn’t see the number switch to 9:30 p.m., which marked a sleepless half hour in bed.

She wanted a full eight to ten hours of deep, delta-wave slumber before she performed the operation tomorrow morning. Was anxiety keeping her awake? It shouldn’t. Her success rate with this neurosurgical procedure was nearly 100 percent: thirty-three operations and only one partial failure. That patient hadn’t died, but the surgery didn’t erase the effects of his stroke. She had this procedure in the bag. There’d be no problems. Why so tense?

Possibly, she was overly eager, like a kid waiting for Christmas. About an operation? Tick-tick-tick. But she couldn’t imagine any other pending moment of excitement.

Flinging out her arm, she reached for the wineglass on the bedside table. She didn’t take sleeping pills, but she’d found that a glass of merlot before diving between the covers helped her ease into REM.

Her fingers brushed the glass. It slid off the nightstand and fell to the floor. “I’m a klutz!”

The irony annoyed her. She could perform delicate microsurgery without a slip, but when it came to regular life, she was the queen of clumsy, barely able to walk across a room without tripping over her own feet. Her nanny used to say that Jayne was so busy racing to the summit that she couldn’t bother to look where she was going. Well, yeah! How else had she gotten to be a top-rated neurosurgeon by the time she was twenty-eight?

Though tempted to ignore the spill, she didn’t want to ruin the pale peach Berber carpet that had taken several hours and the advice of two interior designers to select. She sat up on the bed and clapped to turn on the lights. Nothing happened. She clapped again, an undeserved ovation. No glow.

Pushing her long brown hair away from her face, she reached for the switch on the lamp and flicked it. The light didn’t turn on. And the digital clock had gone dark. Her electricity must be out, which meant she’d have to go down into the creepy basement to the fuse box. Well, damn. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After the last bout of piecemeal repairs on her two-story house, the electrician promised her that she wouldn’t have problems. At least, not until the next time she did renovations.

And then, the neighbor’s dog sent up a howl.

As if she needed another annoyance?

The chocolate Lab, with dark brown fur almost the same color as her long hair, wasn’t usually a barker, but these occasions when he—or was it female?—dashed around woofing reminded her why she didn’t have pets. Barefoot, she padded to the window and peeked through the blinds at her usually quiet neighborhood in the Washington Park area of Denver.

Peevishly, she noted that everybody else’s lights were on. Looking down from the second floor, she saw the Lab dashing back and forth at the fence bordering her yard.

She should yell something down at it. What was the animal’s name? Something with a k sound, it might be Killer or Cujo.

The light at the top of her neighbor’s back steps went on and potbellied, bald-headed Brian appeared in the doorway. He called to his dog, “Cocoa, hush. Is something wrong? What’s wrong, Cocoa?”

Did he expect an answer? Jayne simply couldn’t abide people who spoke to their pets. Though she had high regard for the intelligence of nonhumans, she didn’t like to see animals treated in an anthropomorphic manner, i.e., asking their opinion or dressing them in doll clothing. Such interactions lacked focus and functionality. In this case, however, Brian’s voice had an effect. Cocoa ceased to woof, charged toward the house, crashed up the back stairs and through the door.

The neighborhood was tranquil again. Jayne looked down at the five-foot-tall chain-link fence covered with English ivy that was already starting to turn crimson in late September. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to bark at.

She opened the blinds so she could use the moonlight glow through the window to see. Going down to the basement meant she needed something on her feet. As she slipped into her moccasins, she heard noises from downstairs. Not the tick-tick-tick of a soundless clock, but a click and a clack and the squeak of a floorboard. The sound of a door being opened. Footsteps.

Impossible! No way could an intruder break in. She’d purchased a state-of-the-art security system that set off an alarm and called the police if a door or window was compromised. The system worked on battery even in a power outage. Jayne had specifically asked about the backup—electricity was fragile.

She crept around the edge of her bed to the nightstand where her cell phone was charging. She wanted to be able to call 911 if she heard anything else. Her thumb poked the screen to turn it on. There was no response, no perky logo, not even a welcoming beep. What was wrong with this thing? There had to be enough juice—it had been charging for the past hour. She held the phone close to her nose and pressed in various spots. The screen remained blank.

The noises from downstairs became more distinct. She was almost certain that she heard heavy footfalls crossing the bare wood kitchen floor. The amygdala in the frontal cortex of her brain sent out panic signals, causing her pulse to accelerate and her muscles to tense. If she had an intruder, what should she do? Fight or flight? Fight wasn’t her forte. She didn’t own a gun and knew nothing about self-defense. Maybe she could hide...under the bed...or in the closet.

Any hope that she might be imagining this nightmare vanished when the third step from the bottom of the staircase squawked. The flicker of a flashlight beam slid across the carpet onto the landing outside her bedroom. Flight, baby, flight.

There was only one place to run. She dove into the small adjoining bathroom and closed the door. Not exactly a fortress. The door was flimsy; the lock wouldn’t hold. She had to find something to brace against the door.

The beam from the intruder’s flashlight shone under the lip of the bathroom door. He was right outside, only a few feet away from her. The knob rattled as he turned it.

She tore down the stainless-steel rod that had been holding the shower curtain around the old claw-foot bathtub. Thank God, she hadn’t remodeled in here yet. Thrashing and yanking, she managed to brace the pole between a cabinet and the door.

“Jayne,” he whispered, “let me in. I won’t hurt you.”

Damn right, you won’t. “I called nine-one-one.”

“I don’t think you did.” He kept his voice low, but she detected a hint of an accent. “I don’t think your phone works.”

He must have done something to disrupt her cell-phone signal. And turn off her security system. And cut her electric.

He was smart.

And that was bad news for her. He’d be able to figure a way around her crude door brace in seconds. She couldn’t just stand there, wringing her hands. She needed to escape.

The narrow window was her only outlet. If she could get the old paint unstuck and open the glass, she could slide down three or four feet to the slanted roof that covered the wraparound porch. From there, she could lower herself past the eaves to the porch railing.

He pounded the door. “Open up, Jayne.”

Using her hairbrush as a wedge, she forced the sticky window latch to release. Frantically, she shoved the glass open. A brisk autumn breeze whooshed inside, and she shivered. Her skimpy cotton nightie wasn’t going to provide much warmth. There were beach towels on the top shelf of the cabinet near the door. One of those would have to do.

She grabbed a towel, threw it around her shoulders like a shawl and leaned closer to the door to listen. It seemed quiet. Had he left? She put her ear to the door. Her panic spiked.

What was worse than an intruder who had you trapped in the bathroom? Two intruders.

She heard them whispering. They were plotting together, and it wouldn’t take them long to determine that she was going out a window. She had to move fast.

She threw the oversize towel with an orange-and-yellow sun out the window, and then she followed, slipping through the bathroom window and down the bricks to the slanted roof over the front porch. The angle wasn’t steep, but her footing felt precarious. As she wrapped the sunny-colored towel around her shoulders, she realized that she’d brought the hairbrush with her. A weapon?

The bedroom window to her right lifted. The head and shoulders of a man wearing a black ski mask emerged. He was coming for her. The synapses in her brain fired like a pinball machine. She screamed.

His buddy might already be downstairs on the porch, waiting for her to drop into his lap. She glanced up at the narrow bathroom window. No way could she climb back in there.

He spoke in his whispery voice through the mask, “Be careful, Doctor. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“How do you know I’m a doctor?”

“I’d be happy to explain.”

He held out his arm, beckoning her toward him. In the moonlight, she saw what he held in his hand. “You’ve got a stun gun.”

He didn’t bother with a denial. “I don’t want to use it.”

He sure did. His plan was to zap her into a state of helplessness and carry her away. Anger cut through her fear. Using all her strength, she pulled back her arm and fired her hairbrush at him.

She was surprised that she actually hit him. And so was he. The intruder dropped his stun gun.

In the moonlight, she could barely see the outline of his weapon against the dark gray shingles. She scampered forward, grabbed the gun and brandished it. “Don’t come near me.”

He swung his leg over the windowsill.

She went to the edge of the roof. Climbing over the gutter attached to the eaves looked more difficult than she had anticipated. “Help, somebody help me!”

Brian had been on his back porch only a moment ago. She continued to yell. Where was the barking dog when you needed him? “Please help me!”

Her shouts had an effect on the intruder. Instead of climbing out the window, he pulled back inside. Taking advantage of his retreat, she crept across the roof until she was right above Brian’s porch, screeching like an emergency-alert siren.

His front door opened. Dumbfounded, Brian squinted up at her. In his left hand, he held his cell phone. From inside his house, Cocoa was barking.

“Nine-one-one,” she yelled.

“Your house is dark,” he yelled back.

“I have an intruder.”

“A burglar?”

Now was not the time for a discussion. “Call the police. Please, please, call.”

He gave her the thumbs-up signal and made the call while she perched above the eaves with her knees pulled up. Her long hair fell forward and curtained her face. Though she could have climbed back into one of the windows without too much difficulty, Jayne didn’t trust herself to move another inch, not even to grab the towel she’d dropped. Her throat tightened as she gasped for breath. Adrenaline flooded her system.

In her subconscious mind, she must have known something was coming. Tick-tick-tick. But she never expected this. Shivering and sweating at the same time, she held her left hand in front of her eyes. Her fingers trembled. A sob exploded through her pinched lips.

Suffice it to say, she would not be getting a restful sleep tonight.

* * *

AN HOUR AND ten minutes later, Jayne was still scared. Her hands had stopped trembling enough to type, but her nerves were still strung tight. Wrapped in Brian’s green velour bathrobe that smelled like pizza, she sat at the desk in his home office with Cocoa at her side. His house was smaller than hers, only one story, but he worked from home three days a week. The intruders should have come here. Brian’s computer equipment was worth more than anything she had at her house.

From the front room and kitchen, she could hear people coming and going, voices rising and falling. It was time for her to rejoin them, but she wasn’t ready. All she really wanted was to hide until the danger had passed.

She’d behaved badly when the police officers first arrived to rescue her from the roof. She and Cocoa had both been problematic. The chocolate Lab had been barking and baring his teeth, which seemed like threatening behavior but was, more likely, an adrenal fear response. The dog was scared of all these strangers. Jayne’s issues weren’t that different.

Frightened, she hadn’t known who to trust and didn’t like taking orders from anybody. Not the police. Not the paramedic who wanted her to get into an ambulance. She was disoriented. Her neat-and-tidy world had gone spinning madly out of control, and she was so damn scared that she could hardly move.

In Brian’s kitchen, a uniformed officer had pulled out a small spiral notebook and started asking questions. Jayne snapped. “Why should I give you a statement? I’ll just have to repeat myself when the detective in charge of the investigation arrives.”

“Calm down.” The officer—a thickset woman with short blond hair—gestured to a chair at the kitchen table. “Have a seat, Ms. Shackleford. May I call you Jayne?”

“It’s Dr. Shackleford,” she said through tight lips.

“Any relation to Peter Shackleford?”

“My father.”

The officer literally took a step backward. When hearing the name, a lot of people kowtowed. Although her father hadn’t lived in Denver for ten years, he’d left an impressive legacy including a twenty-seven-story office building downtown and a small airport, both named after the man the newspapers called “Peter the Great.”

Jayne hated using her parentage for leverage. She’d left home when she was really young to attend college and hadn’t moved back to Colorado until her father was settled in Dallas. Trying not to sound like a brat, she confronted the policewoman.

“Here’s what I’d like to do,” Jayne had said. “I’d like to take some time alone to calm my nerves and to use my neighbor’s computer to type up every detail I remember.”

“That’s not usually how we do things.”

“I have a rational basis for my suggestion.” She had explained that much of her work in neurosurgery focused on memory. According to some theories, it was best to write things down while adrenaline levels were high. She had colleagues who would disagree, and her words were taking on the tone of a lecture. “Without the sharp focus engendered by panic, the brain may sort details and bury those that are too terrifying to recall.”

The policewoman had patted Jayne’s shoulder. “Tell you what, Doc. You can take all the time you need.”

Hiding out in Brian’s office had given her a chance to catch her breath. She’d finished her statement for the police, printed it and sent a copy to her email. She should have emerged, but fear held her back. The tech-savvy intruders had chosen her house for a reason. She had no idea why, but she felt the pressure of danger coiling around her.

Cocoa rested his chin on her thigh and looked up at her. He truly was a handsome animal. She gazed into his gentle, empathetic brown eyes. He’d tried to warn her.

“I misjudged you,” she murmured as she stroked the silky fur on the top of his head. “I thought you were a pest with all that running around and barking.”

Not a good sign...she was talking to the dog.

There was a tap on the office door, and Cocoa thumped his tail twice—a signal that the person at the door was friendly, probably Brian. If a police officer had knocked, Cocoa would have growled.

Swiveling to face the door, she said, “Come in.”

In a quick move, a man with glasses and a ponytail stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He confronted her directly and said, “I’m the guy.”

Chapter Two

Jayne would have reacted to “the guy” with more hostility, but she’d used up her quota of snarkiness for the day. Besides, Cocoa seemed to trust this person. With much tail wagging, the chocolate Lab bounced toward the stranger, who reached down to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

She cleared her throat and pushed her messy hair off her face. “What guy?”

“The one who can repair your security system.”

She vaguely recalled a two-minute conversation with Brian. When she told him that her home alarm system had been compromised and her cell phone wouldn’t turn on, Brian might have said something like I know a guy who can fix that. And she might have said that she wanted an appointment with that guy.

“I didn’t expect you tonight,” she said.

“Fine with me. I like being unexpected.”

“How so?”

“Since I’m buds with Brian who’s an IT specialist and I know how to repair your system, you might think I’m all about computers. You’d be surprised to learn that I’m also the part owner of a security firm with a license to carry a concealed Glock 17.”

To prove his claim, he pivoted and flipped up the tail of his plaid flannel shirt to show a holster attached to his belt. He turned to face her, pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up on his nose, grinned and said, “Ta-da!”

In spite of her fear, she had to grin back at him. “Did they send you in here to bring me out?”

He shrugged. “I don’t have much luck at rock-paper-scissors.”

Her initial impression was NERD in capital letters. He certainly wore the uniform: glasses, baggy plaid flannel, jeans rolled up at the cuff and a purple baseball cap on backward.

Then she took a second look—a lingering assessment from head to toe. She tilted her head, and her hair rippled all the way down her back. Though she was seated and not able to judge his height accurately, she estimated that he was well over six feet tall. The wide shoulders under that flannel shirt were impressive but he wasn’t bulky. His body was long and lean. His wrists were muscular, and he wore an expensive dive watch. Behind those dorky horn-rims, his eyes were a smoldering shade of gray.

Unexpectedly, very unexpectedly, she was attracted to him. Tickity-tick-tick-tick. Maybe he was her early Christmas present. “Do you have a name?”

“Dylan Timmons.” He held his hand toward her and then curled the fingers inward for a fist bump.

She tapped her knuckles against his. “Jayne Shackleford.”

“I thought you might prefer a bump. Being a neurosurgeon, you have to take good care of those hands.”

“I’m not that much of a prima donna.” She frowned, thinking of the way she’d behaved with the police. “At least, I try not to be.”

He placed her cell phone in her hand. “They said I could give this to you.”

The screen flashed on, and she felt a glimmer of hope. “You fixed it.”

“The phone fixed itself. Somebody used a signal-jamming device to disrupt your signal.”

“That’s just wrong,” she said.

“But not illegal. I’ve heard that pastors are using jammers during their sermons.”

Now that she had the cell phone, her mind jumped to practical concerns. “I might need to cancel my surgery for tomorrow morning. I should get a good night’s sleep before I operate.”

“Why so much?”

“The surgery takes five or six hours. I’m not intensely involved the whole time, but I need to be alert.”

Still, she hated to cancel. Rescheduling the staff was a hassle. A guest neurosurgeon from Barcelona would be observing. Jayne had prepared and reviewed the most recent tests, neuroimaging, PET scans and MRIs. Starting over at another time was an inconvenience for the medical personnel involved. But postponement was much worse for the patient, who had already checked into the hospital, and for his family and friends.

He asked, “What kind of surgery is it?”

“It’s not life threatening. Using implanted electrodes, I hope to stimulate the brain so the patient can regain the memory functions he lost after a stroke. The patient is actually awake through much of the procedure.”

“Cool.”

And she should be able to handle it. “I’ll wait until tomorrow to make the decision whether to postpone or not.”

“But you need more sleep,” he said. “I can start repairs on your alarm system tonight if you’re ready to go back into your house.”

“No,” she said quickly. “Not ready. Not tonight.”

After she’d seen the police charge through the front door with guns drawn to search for intruders, she’d never again be able to think of her home as a sanctuary. She felt attacked, violated. Might as well close it up, burn it, sell it. Jayne was ready to call the real estate agent and hand over the keys.

Dylan brought her back to reality. “Where do you plan to sleep?”

With you. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she kept from saying them out loud. She’d done enough inappropriate blurting for one evening. “I don’t know.”

“Is there anybody you can call?”

Her cell-phone directory was filled with colleagues and acquaintances from all around the world, ranging from the president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons to the teenager who shoveled her sidewalks in winter. But there was no one she could call to come over and take care of her. No one she could stay with at a moment’s notice.

She pushed the hair off her face and looked up at the surprisingly handsome man who stood before her. “You said you owned a security firm. Do you ever work as a bodyguard?”

“I do, TST Security.”

She rose from the swivel chair and straightened the sash on the Brian’s dark green bathrobe. “I’d like to hire you.”

“You’re on,” Dylan said without the slightest hesitation. It was almost as though he’d been waiting for her to ask.

“I’ve never had a bodyguard before.”

“Then I’m the one with experience. I’ve got only one rule—don’t go anywhere without me. For tonight, I’ll put together your suitcase and book a hotel room. Do you have a preference?”

She was so delighted to have somebody else taking care of the details that she wouldn’t dream of complaining. “Anything is fine with me.”

“Write down the clothes, including shoes and toiletries, that you want me to pack for you.”

Her excitement dimmed when she thought of him pawing through her things, but the alternative—going back to the house and doing it herself—was too awful to contemplate. “I’ll make that list right now. And there’s one more thing.”

“Name it.”

She held out a flat palm. “Whatever you use to fasten your ponytail, I want it. My messy hair is driving me crazy.”

He whipped off his baseball cap, untwined the covered-elastic band and dropped it in her hand. “For the record, I like your hair hanging long and free and shiny.”

His fingers stroked through his own mane, and she realized that his hair was lighter than she’d thought. Thick, full and naturally sun-bleached, the loose strands curled around his face and down to his shoulders. Jayne wasn’t usually a fan of men with long hair, but “the guy” pulled it off. She couldn’t imagine him any other way.

* * *

DYLAN HADN’T COME here looking for work. His intention had been a simple response to Brian’s call, helping out a friend with a crazy lady for a neighbor. But he was happy with the way things had turned out; spending time with this particular lady promised to be a challenge and a pleasure.

With that extra-large bathrobe swaddled around her, he couldn’t tell much about Jayne’s body. But he liked the bits he saw: her slender throat, her delicate hands and her neat ankles. Drooling over her ankles probably qualified him for the Pervert Hall of Fame, so he transferred his gaze to her long, thick, rich brown hair. A few strands escaped the ponytail and fell gracefully across her cheek. Never before had the word “tendril” seemed appropriate.

He didn’t even pretend to look away. It was his duty to watch her body. He murmured, “I love my job.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll enjoy getting to know you.”

Her full lips curled in a wise smile as she accepted the compliment. He’d always believed that smart women were sexier, maybe because of their intensity or creativity or strength.

Then she licked her lips.

He swallowed hard.

“Also,” he said, “your break-in is the tip of the iceberg for a very cool puzzle. Your security alarm system is one of the best on the market. Disarming it took technical finesse that’s above the talents of the average burglar. Not that I think the intent of your intruders was robbery. After they entered the house, they went directly to your bedroom.”

“How do you know that?”

“While you were writing out the list of things you need, I read your account.” He gestured to the two single-spaced sheets of paper that lay behind her on the desk.

“How could you read it? The paper is upside-down to you.”

“It’s a skill.” He shrugged. “Do you think they wanted to rob you? Do you have some hidden treasure in your house?”

“I don’t keep anything of value at the house.”

Why did they break in? Since there were two of them, it didn’t seem likely that they were stalkers or that the break-in was for sex. Not his problem. As a bodyguard, he wasn’t expected to solve the crime. “Are you ready to talk to the police?”

She held her hand level in front of her eyes. “There’s only a slight residual tremor.”

“Not enough to register on the Richter scale. Let’s move.”

Keeping a hold on Cocoa’s collar, Dylan guided her from Brian’s home office to the kitchen, where a plainclothes cop sat at the table with Brian. Dylan handed over the dog to his owner and introduced Detective Ray Cisneros, a weary-looking man with heavy-lidded eyes and a neat mustache.

After Jayne shook his hand and gave him her typed statement, she approached the uniformed lady cop. Her name, as it said on her brass nameplate, was E. Smith. Dylan had met her when he first came in.

“I need to apologize,” Jayne said. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved earlier. I was rude.”

E. Smith darted a suspicious glance to the left and the right as though looking for somebody or something to jump out at her and yell boo. “Um, that’s okay.”

“Thanks for accepting my apology.” As Jayne turned away from the cop, her moccasins tangled in the overlong hem of the robe and she stumbled. Quickly recovering, she went toward Brian. “I want to thank you for being a great neighbor. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just ask.”

Dylan didn’t know what she’d done to make everybody mad, but he respected her for facing up to her mistakes. And she wasn’t just offering phony pleas for forgiveness. Her pretty blue eyes shone with sincerity.

When she returned to the kitchen table with a glass of water, DPD Detective Cisneros looked up from the typed statement and smoothed the edges of his mustache. “You work at Roosevelt Hospital, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re a neurosurgeon. A resident?”

“I completed my residency last year.”

“Is that so?”

Dylan heard the disbelieving tone in the detective’s voice and didn’t blame him for being skeptical. She looked too young for such an important occupation. In the droopy bathrobe with her hair in a ponytail, she’d have a hard time passing for eighteen.

“It is, in fact, so.” She took a deep breath and recited her accomplishments by rote. “I completed college at age sixteen, med school at nineteen, internship at twenty and fulfilled the requirements of an eight-year residence in neurosurgery last year. Twice, I’ve won the Top Gun Award from the YNC, Young Neurosurgeons Committee.”

If his theory that smart women were sexier was correct, Dylan had hit the jackpot with Jayne. She was a genuine, kick-ass genius.

Cisneros took a minirecorder from the inner pocket of his brown leather jacket, verified with Jayne that it was okay to record her and launched into the standard questions.

“Do you have any enemies? Anyone who would wish you harm?”

“There’s professional jealousy. Some of my colleagues wouldn’t mind if I vanished off the face of the earth, but none of them are likely to hire thugs with stun guns and stage a break-in. Likewise with patients and the families of patients.”

“What about in your personal life? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not at the moment,” she said.

Dylan stifled a cheer.

“Any bad breakups?” Cisneros asked. “Is there anyone who won’t take no for an answer? Or women who think you stole their boyfriends?”

“My personal life is super dull.”

“In your statement,” he said, referring to her typewritten account, “you quote the intruder as saying he doesn’t want to hurt you. Did you believe him?”

“He had a stun gun,” she pointed out.

“But he didn’t use it.”

Cisneros asked half-a-dozen more questions that circled the main issue, trying to get a handle on why the intruders had staged this break-in. They had to be after something.

Jayne’s responses weren’t real helpful. Not that she was being difficult. She just didn’t know why men wearing ski masks had attacked her.

Cisneros glanced down at the account she’d written with such care. Very deliberately, he set those pages aside. His unspoken message was clear. “Maybe they don’t want to hurt you, Jayne.”

“No?”

“Tell me about your father.”

“Please don’t call him,” she said quickly. “He doesn’t need to know about this.”

Dylan heard fear in her voice.

Cisneros picked up on it, too. “Are you afraid to tell him?”

“It’s not that.” Frown lines bracketed her mouth. “It’s just... I haven’t spoken to him on the phone for a couple of months, haven’t seen him since the Christmas before last.”

“Is he local?”

“Dallas, he lives in Dallas.”

Dylan watched as the cool, sexy, smart woman transformed into a little girl with messy hair. She gazed down at her hands, pretending great interest as her slender fingers twisted into a knot on her lap. Her feet in their scuffed moccasins turned pigeon-toed.

Her father, Peter Shackleford, was rich enough to have an airport named after him. His fortune was tied to the oil-and-mining business, and he had a rep for being smart. Not as smart as his neurosurgeon daughter but savvy enough to surf the waves of business and avoid a wipeout.

Cisneros smoothed his mustache and said, “Could this have been a kidnapping attempt.”

“I just told you that I’m not close to my dad.” Without looking up, Jayne shook her head. “I can’t imagine he’d pay a ransom for my release.”

“Does your father have any enemies?”

“Yes.”

“Any enemies who might want to hurt you.”

She lifted her chin and looked directly at Dylan. “My father isn’t a bad man.”

He didn’t believe her.

Chapter Three

Dylan excused himself to go next door and pack a suitcase for Jayne. He didn’t want to listen to her heavily edited version of what a great guy her dad was, and he expected that was all Cisneros would hear from her. Though Dylan gave her points for loyalty to Peter Shackleford, he doubted that she’d score high in the honesty department. He could almost see her digging in her heels. No way would she speak ill of her father even though her mysterious intruders were very likely tied to dear old daddy.

That was Jayne’s business. Not his. He was her bodyguard, not her therapist.

Before he left Brian’s kitchen, Detective Cisneros ordered Officer E. Smith to accompany him to the crime scene. Cocoa escorted them to the back door and wagged goodbye. The dog needed to stay inside while the strangers on the DPD forensic team ferreted out clues at Jayne’s house.

Dylan glanced down at the lady cop, whose short legs had to rush in double time to match his long-legged stride. “Does the E stand for Emily?” Dylan guessed. “Or is it Eva, Ellen or Eliza?”

“Eudora,” she said. “That’s why I go by Smith.”

“Nice meeting you, Smith.”

“Same here.” She had a broad smile and big, strong teeth. Her orange-blond hair stood out from her head in spikes. “Did Jayne give you a list of things she needs?”

“In detail,” he said as he took the list from his jeans pocket. “I’m not sure how accurate it is. She’s still shaky. Her map of the upstairs of her house shows three separate bathrooms.”

“That’s true,” Smith said. “The weird floor plan is because of the renovations she’s been doing on the house since she moved in four years ago. Brian told me all about it.”

Dylan had also heard a lot about Jayne and her intense renovating. Since Brian spent a lot of time working from home, his neighbors were a source of amusement. He’d told Dylan how she’d dive in and work like mad on some project, then she’d come to a complete halt while concentrating on her career. For several months, the eaves and porch in the front of her house were painted charcoal gray while the back was sky blue.

Though the electricity at her house had been reconnected, Smith pointed the beam of her Maglite at the back door. “If you look close you can see a couple of scratches from where they picked the lock and the high-security dead bolt.”

Since the intruders had already turned off the alarm system, breaking out a window would have been a simpler way to gain access. The neatly picked locks showed a level of finesse that made him think these guys were professionals. In her written account, Jayne had described a whispery voice with a slight accent.

As he strolled through Jayne’s house with Smith nodding to the forensic team, he noticed an eclectic sense of decorating that seemed to mimic the pattern of off-and-on renovations. He believed you could tell a lot about a person from their living space. If that was true, Jayne had multiple personalities.

Her renovated kitchen was ultramodern, sleek and uncluttered. Directional lighting shimmered on polished granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances and a parquet floor. This room told him that a modern, classy woman lived here...not necessarily someone who cooked but someone who appreciated gourmet food.

Walking through the archway into the dining room and living room was like entering a different house. The chairs and tables lacked any sort of cohesive style. The walls were bland beige and empty, without artwork or photographs. The only notable feature was a dusted and polished baby grand piano. From these rooms, he might conclude that Jayne didn’t do much entertaining at home and was passionate about her piano playing. The sheet music on the stand was for Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”

He caught a quick glimpse of the library opposite the staircase at the front door. The big, heavy, rosewood desk and wall-to-wall bookshelves showed an old-fashioned sensibility and a reverence for tradition. Not like the kitchen at all.

Climbing the carved oak staircase, he noticed the loud creak on the third step that had alerted Jayne to the intruders. The stairs and banister had been cleaned and refinished but otherwise remained unchanged from when the house was built in the 1920s. The same held true for the carved crown molding on the upstairs landing. Again, he had the feeling that she appreciated the work of a long-ago craftsman and was perhaps old-fashioned.

Her bedroom, which had been redesigned in shades of peach and gray, looked like the sanctuary of a fairy-tale princess...a tasteful princess but super feminine with a dainty little crystal chandelier. Set aside on a chair were three stuffed animals, all cats with white fur. The kitties were worn but sparkling clean. Though he didn’t see any fresh flowers, the room smelled of roses and cinnamon.

He doubted that anybody had sex in this room. There was zero hint of testosterone apart from the forensic guy who was crawling around on the carpet, peering and poking into the fibers.

Dylan noticed the wineglass on the bedside table. In her account, Jayne mentioned spilling the wine but never said that she’d picked up the glass.

“Excuse me,” he said.

The CSI popped up. “Who are you?”

Smith said, “He’s with me. Are you about done in here? We need to get some clothes for the owner.”

“I’m wrapping it up.” Like Smith, he held a Maglite with a beam that flashed wildly when he gestured. “How come we’re making such a big deal about this break-in? Nobody got killed.”

“A weird situation,” Smith said, “what with cutting the power and disabling the alarm system and all. Have you found anything?”

“A bunch of prints, but they all belong to the lady who lives here and her employees—a maid and a cook.”

“How did you get them read so fast?” Dylan asked.

“Computer identifications, plus I’ve got one of those handheld fingerprint-readers.” As he stood, he picked his satchel up off the floor. “Everything I need to break open a crime is right in here.”

“When you arrived,” Dylan said, “was this wineglass on the floor?”

“No, sir, it was standing right where it is.”

“Have you checked it for prints?”

“I’ll be doing that right now.” He gestured over his shoulder. “I’m done with the closet and the dresser, if you need to pack.”

Dylan found Jayne’s hard yellow suitcase with spinner wheels in the back of the closet right where she said it would be. The organization of her clothing and shoes was impeccable, and he would have thought she was obsessive-compulsive but those characteristics didn’t fit with the casual messiness downstairs. He packed the three outfits that she had described precisely. One was for before the operation, then a pair of baby-blue scrubs and then another outfit for post-op.

When he opened the top drawer of her dresser, there was an outburst of colorful silk and satin. Jayne had mad, wild taste in panties and bras. He held up a black lace thong and a leopard bra. For a long moment, he stood and stared.

She baffled him. A brainy neurosurgeon who wore stripper underwear and played ragtime on her baby grand. Who was this woman? He needed to find out more about her.

The CSI made a harrumphing noise. “I’ve got two prints on this glass—a thumb and a forefinger. And they don’t look like all the others.”

“Run them,” Smith ordered. “I’ll step over here and help Dylan pick out the right undies.”

When she rapped his knuckles, he gratefully dropped the thong and said, “I’d appreciate your help.”

She lectured on why most women wouldn’t want to wear a thong in the operating room and how a sports bra was most comfortable for a long day’s work. Her anatomical details were too much information for Dylan.

The CSI had turned away and kept his focus on his handheld fingerprint-matching device while Dylan followed Smith across the landing to the incredible bathroom. With the marble and a fluffy white throw rug, this space was as feminine as the bedroom, but there was a difference. The bedroom was suitable for a princess. The bathroom was meant for a sensual queen.

Smith made quick work of packing the essentials on Jayne’s list. They were almost ready to leave when the CSI stepped into the doorway. “I’ve got a match for these prints.”

“And a name?” Dylan asked.

“You’re not going to like it.”

* * *

JAYNE APPROVED OF the downtown Denver hotel where Dylan had arranged for a suite, but she wasn’t pleased that he’d called in one of his partners to drive the car to the hotel and accompany them onto the elevator and into the room.

While Dylan stood beside her with one hand clamped around her upper arm, ready to yank her out of there at the first hint of danger, his partner, Mason Steele, drew his gun. Looking like a secret agent from an espionage movie, Mason searched the attractively furnished outer room with the sofa, chairs, table, television and kitchenette. He nodded to Dylan before entering the adjoining bedroom.

Though impressed by their professionalism, Jayne didn’t appreciate the show. She had a real life. No time for games. “Tell me again why all this is necessary.”

“Standard procedure,” he said. “When we take you to a new place, we search. It only seems overprotective because there’s nobody lurking in this room. If there was a monster hiding in the closet...”

With a start, she realized that Mason hadn’t yet looked in the closet by the entrance. A dart of fear stung her, and she stared at that door, remembering herself in the bathroom when the knob had jiggled. Don’t be scared. It’s just a door. Shivers trickled up and down her spinal column as Dylan helped her out of her heather-blue trench coat. When he opened the door, her jaw clenched.

And nothing happened. The boogeyman didn’t jump out. There was nothing to be scared of. The sooner she remembered that, the better.

After he hung up her jacket, he returned to her side. Towering over her, he pushed his glasses up on his nose with a forefinger. “You went through a scary time tonight.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you are.” Though she refused to meet his gaze, she knew he was watching her and had seen her fear. His voice was low and soothing. “Over the next couple days, you might have flashbacks or be jumpy or tense for no apparent reason. I’m sure you know all about post-traumatic stress. I mean, you’re a brain surgeon.”

“Not a behaviorist.”

“What’s that mean?”

“There are many theories about how the brain works, and I can only speak for my own opinion. The source of many emotions can be pinpointed on the naked brain, but it’s extremely difficult to control behavior.”

“Emotion isn’t your thing,” he said. “You’re into memory.”

“With my neurosurgery, I can stimulate old memories that have already formed, but I can’t implant new memories without the experience.”

“But you don’t have to experience something to recall it. I’ve learned about volcanoes but never seen one erupt.”

She hadn’t intended to meet his gaze, but she found herself looking into his cool, gray eyes and seeing the sort of deep calm associated with yogis and gurus. At the same time, she realized that her moment of panic and flashback had passed. Dylan had distracted her by luring her into lecturing him about her work.

“Very clever,” she said. “You handled me.”

He directed her to a side chair upholstered in a patterned blue silk that echoed the colors of the wallpaper, while he sat on the sofa and opened a metal suitcase on the glass-topped coffee table in front of them. After removing a laptop computer, he flicked a switch on a mechanism inside the case. A small red light went on.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It means we can talk freely in here without fear of someone listening in.”

The various dials and keyboards in his case were nowhere near as complicated as the equipment she dealt with in neurosurgery. “You can be more technical, Dylan. I’m capable of understanding.”

“I don’t doubt your smarts,” he said. “I just don’t expect you to be interested in my security tools.”

“Unless I say otherwise, you may talk to me in the same depth you use with your colleagues.”

“That won’t be too hard.” Dylan called out to his partner. “Hey, Mason, do you want to know about the circuitry in my white-noise machine?”

His partner stepped into the bedroom doorway. “As long as it works, I don’t care.”

She glanced between the two men. Mason was clean-cut and muscular. Dressed in a leather jacket and khakis, he looked like a bodyguard. Dylan was a different story. With his horn-rimmed glasses, his purple Colorado Rockies baseball cap on backward and his long hair, he didn’t appear to be a tough guy. And yet, if given a choice, she’d pick Dylan every time. There was something about him that connected with her.

He motioned for Mason to join them as he explained the machine to her. “Much of my equipment is proprietary. I invented this stuff for my own use in security. This machine emits a noise that disrupts any other listening device but is too sensitive for our ears to hear. While we’re in this room, we can speak freely.”

As a neurosurgeon, she understood the concept of blocking different frequencies of sound, but she didn’t understand why this sort of machine was needed. “Who would want to overhear?”

“I have something important to discuss.” He glanced toward his partner. “You need to hear this, too.”

“Shoot.”

“There were prints found in Jayne’s bedroom. They were on the wineglass that was on the bedside table.”

“I didn’t pick up the glass.” Revulsion coiled through her as she visualized the man in the ski mask touching her things.

“The fingerprint belonged to Martin Viktor Koslov, a hired assassin from Venezuela who learned his trade with the Columbian drug cartels.”

Mason growled, “What kind of trade are you talking about?”

“Think of the worst torture you heard about interrogation methods,” Dylan said. “Koslov has worked for Middle Eastern emirs and superrich oil men from his home country. For the past eight years, he’s been sighted in the US, including Alaska.”

“Why Alaska?” She couldn’t imagine why an assassin would take a side trip to Juneau.

“The pipeline,” Dylan said. “He’s not a bomber or a terrorist, but he’s suspected in several murders, thefts and complex arms deals.”

Mason looked toward her and asked, “How did you get away from this guy?”

“He said he didn’t want to hurt me.” She remembered his accent. It didn’t sound like Spanish, but she really didn’t know. Languages weren’t her thing. “Detective Cisneros seems to think he wanted to kidnap me and hold me for ransom so he could get something from my dad.”

“Your father is...?”

Dylan filled in the blank. “Peter Shackleford, international oilman with interests in the Middle East and in South America.”

Mason nodded. “Kidnapping seems like a neat, logical working theory.”

“I’m not so sure,” Dylan said. “I’d like more evidence, starting with interviewing the person who disabled Jayne’s home alarm system. That hack took a high level of expertise, and I can only think of three or four locals who could pull it off.”

“Did you contact them?” Mason asked.

“I’m the bodyguard, not the investigator. I gave their names to Detective Cisneros.”

Mason sank back in his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “What do you want me to do?”

“That depends on Jayne.” Dylan turned to her. “You had a surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. My advice is for you to postpone.”

Though she had been thinking the same thing, she didn’t like having her plans dictated by some South American assassin. Koslov didn’t rule her life. She took her cell phone from her jeans pocket and checked the time. “It’s just after midnight. If I could sleep until nine in the morning, I could operate.”

“We don’t know what to expect from this kidnapper. He might come after you again. Are you sure you don’t want to schedule the operation for another time or have someone else take over for you?”

“I’m the best surgeon for this procedure, possibly the best in the world.” She wasn’t bragging, just stating a fact. “Also, I have a relationship with this patient. He’s a professor of philosophy in his early sixties. A stroke robbed him of his memory. I can get it back for him, and I don’t want to wait.”

Dylan regarded her with a measured gaze. “Is his condition life threatening?”

“No, but this is about the quality of his life. He’s brilliant and wise. He needs to be able to use his memory.”

“Agreed,” Dylan said, “but he could wait a few days.”

“I want my life to proceed as normal. That’s why I hired you as a bodyguard.” She rose to her feet as she played her final card. “But if you can’t protect me...”

Dylan unfolded himself from the sofa and stood, towering over her. Though she was above average height at five feet nine inches, he was over six feet, maybe six-five. He was taller, broader, stronger. An archetypal male, he was everything a man should be. She felt herself melting.

Gazing down at her, he removed his horn-rimmed glasses and made direct eye contract. “I’ll keep you safe, Jayne.”

The effect caught her off guard. Desire twitched in her belly. Goose bumps erupted on her arms. She wanted to grab his arm and pull him into the bedroom with her. No way, absolutely not. She shouldn’t be thinking about sex.

She pivoted, took one step and walked into the chair beside the sofa. Lurching to an upright position, she marched to the bedroom door, stepped inside and closed it with a loud slam.

Chapter Four

The aroma of fresh coffee twitched in her nostrils. Chords of harp music tickled her ears. Where am I? Her usual wake-up alarm was as loud and as harsh as a fire engine, the better to wake her up. Then Jayne remembered that she wasn’t sleeping at home.

The harp continued as she lifted her eyelids and saw a man with long, sun-streaked brown hair sitting in the chair beside her bed. Dylan wasn’t wearing his glasses...or his baggy flannel shirt...or his baseball cap. His black T-shirt outlined his wide shoulders and lean chest. A handsome man, there was nothing of the nerd about him.

Without thinking, she extended her arm toward him. He caught her hand, raised it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles before she was aware of what he was doing. The gesture seemed absurd, given that she was wearing flannel pajamas. After being caught on her rooftop in a filmy gown and feeling exposed, she’d chosen the world’s unsexiest flannels on purpose.

“Nine o’clock, Jayne.”

“I love the harp music.”

“It’s a wake-up app called Morning Angels.” He gestured toward two china cups on a silver room service tray. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

Her usual clumsiness was even worse in the morning when she wasn’t wide-awake, and she hated to risk slopping a hot beverage all over herself. But it couldn’t be helped; she needed caffeine. While she arranged the pillows against the headboard, Dylan went to the windows, where he opened the shades and the filmy drapes. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. Those jeans were the same ones he’d worn yesterday, still rolled at the cuff. But today they seemed well fitted, not tight but snug enough to outline firm glutes and muscular thighs. Long legs—he had very long legs.

He returned to her bedside and poured steaming coffee from a white room-service pot. He added two dollops of cream and gave it a quick stir before passing her the eggshell-white cup and saucer.

“I never mentioned that I took cream but no sugar.”

“If you know your way around the internet, you can find almost anything.”

She figured that discovering her coffee preference required a search that went deeper than a quick identification. He’d researched her. On one hand, she didn’t like being spied upon. But she was complimented that he’d taken the trouble. Last night, she hadn’t been sure he’d want to stick around after she’d slammed the door and thrown out an unveiled threat to fire him.

He took a sip from his cup. “How are you feeling?”

“Are you asking whether I’m alert enough to proceed with the scheduled surgery?”

“I am.”

Jayne tasted the delicious coffee and considered for a long moment. “Not sure.”

After he fiddled with his wristwatch, the harp music went quiet. “I’m resetting an alarm for eight minutes while you make up your mind. You’ve already had a bunch of phone calls and—”

“Stop!” She held up her palm to halt him. “About these calls, why didn’t I hear the phone ringing?”

“I took your cell phone into the outer room.”

“Are you telling me that you came into my room, uninvited, and took my phone without my permission?”

“As your bodyguard, I have to invade your personal boundaries. Coming in and out of your bedroom, even watching you sleep...” He shrugged. “It’s part of my job.”

“Watching me sleep?”

A warmth that had nothing to do with the hot coffee spread through her body. Though she didn’t recall her dreams last night, some of her REM and delta-wave activity had to be about sex. As she lifted her cup to her mouth, she sloshed coffee into the saucer.

“I took your phone,” he said, “because you wanted to sleep until nine, and I was afraid you’d get calls earlier than that.”

Reaching for a napkin, she tilted her saucer, almost spilling coffee over the lip. He passed her a napkin which she used to dab at her mouth, then to swab the near spill. “I’m glad you caught those calls. I needed the sleep, and I’m surprised that I got it. After all that happened last night, I didn’t think I’d be able to relax.”

“Oh, yeah, you relaxed. There was some big-time snoring going on. One time, I peeked in to make sure you weren’t being trampled by rhinos.”

A lovely image! “Who called?”

He recited from memory. “Eloise, your assistant, needs to know something about scheduling the ER. Mrs. Cameron is worried about her husband’s surgery and wants to know if he can eat chocolate-chip cookies later today. Three doctors—Lewis, Napoli and Griggs. And one more.”

When he hesitated, she cast a curious glance in his direction. “Are you going to tell me who?”

His eight-minute alarm went off, blasting a noise that sounded like screaming cats in heat. He silenced it. “What’s it going to be, Jayne? Are we going to the hospital or not?”

“Why won’t you tell me about this person who called?”

“It was your father.”

His words hit her with a jolt. She spilled her coffee, with most of the liquid being sopped up by the napkin before she shoved the whole mess onto the tray. “What does he want?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Belatedly, she realized that if Dylan was answering her phone, he must be giving some kind of explanation for why she was unavailable. She didn’t want wild stories about her intruder to spread all over the hospital. “What have you been telling people?”

“Not a thing. I’m saying that you’re not available and you’ll call back. Your assistant demanded to know if we were dating, and I told her that she’d have to ask you.”

“And my dad? What did you tell him?”

“He was a different story.”

She knew he would be. Peter Shackleford, her esteemed-by-everybody-else father, was a man who expected people to take his phone calls, especially his only grown daughter. She figured there would have been loud shouting, threats, demands and a hearty dose of cursing. “What happened?”

“He was at your house.”

“Here? My house here in Denver?”

“That’s right.”

Panic exploded through her. She threw off the covers and charged toward the adjoining bathroom. In the doorway, she pivoted and faced him. “Did you tell my dad where we were staying?”

“Nobody knows we’re here. It doesn’t do much good to take you to a safe place if I tell everybody where it is.”

“And my dad accepted that?”

“He wasn’t happy about it,” Dylan said. “He called about half an hour ago, and I expect he thinks he can triangulate your phone signal to get your location. But I have my own signal jammer that I attached to your cell phone.”

“Another of your proprietary inventions?”

“That’s right.” He finished his coffee and stood. “We need a plan for the day.”

“I’m going to perform the surgery. Give me fifteen minutes to get dressed, and we’ll go to the hospital.”

“And your father?”

“Later.”

She didn’t want to deal with him right now, but she had to contact him. He was at the center. If an international assassin/kidnapper had broken into her house because of something her dad had done, he should be the one to fix it.

This wasn’t her fault. She’d gotten sucked into this high-stakes game, and she didn’t want to play.

* * *

LAST NIGHT WHILE Jayne was sleeping, Dylan had done computer searches on her, her father, Martin Viktor Koslov and local hackers who might have helped out Koslov. After a sickening dive into the dark web where you could buy any sleazy thing for the right price, he’d found a set of digital footprints running away from Denver. Well-known cyber-ace, Tank Sherman, was erasing himself, changing to another identity, trying to escape. If Tank had worked with Koslov, the local expert might want to make himself invisible before Koslov erased him.

Martin Viktor Koslov was a ruthless killer whose land of origin was Venezuela. Reputedly, he had garroted, beheaded, shot and stabbed his targets. Never caught, never even arrested, he was known for planning down to the last precise detail. The neatly picked lock on Jayne’s back door was typical of Koslov; leaving behind a fingerprint was not.

What had thrown the assassin off his game? Was it the instruction to kidnap rather than kill? Koslov avoided explosives because he’d lost several family members, including his mother, to a bomb explosion. Koslov had a brand of violence that was not inspired by any type of loyalty or ideology; rather, he committed acts of atrocity for the highest bidder. And that might make him an enemy of her father.

Dylan had also found a number of connections between Peter the Great and Koslov. They knew many of the same people, visited the same cities and were both cruel in their own way.

Jayne’s dad—the man she defended so fiercely to the DPD detective—wasn’t a murderer, but he hired and fired without concern for his employees and didn’t hesitate to destroy his competitors. He’d made plenty of enemies. Most were businessmen and women based in the US, but there were a few Middle Eastern sheikhs and South American oil magnates who might consider kidnapping to be nothing more than leverage on the next deal.

When Dylan got the phone call from Mason, telling him that he would arrive at the side entrance in five minutes, he rapped on Jayne’s bedroom door. “Time to go.”

“Are we coming back here tonight?”

He wouldn’t make that decision until later today. Right now there was no time for a discussion. The plan was for them to jump into the vehicle as soon as it pulled up to the curb.

Dylan shoved open her bedroom door. “Now, Jayne.”

She was dressed in a pair of dark teal slacks, a matching suit jacket and a shiny black blouse. With her dark hair pulled up in a high bun, her appearance was professional and classic. “Give me a sec, I need to find my sneakers.”

He grabbed her sneakers off the floor and lobbed them into the gym bag on the bed where she had packed other clothing items. He zipped the bag and tossed it toward her. “Remember when I said there was only one rule for you when I’m being a bodyguard?”

“Don’t go anywhere without you,” she recited.

“I lied. There’s another rule.”

“Which is?”

“When I say go, we have to go.”

She stuck her toes into a pair of polished black loafers. “Why are we in such a big rush?”

“No questions. I’m serious.” Though he wasn’t trying to scare her, Dylan didn’t want her to think this was a game. “Your life might depend on your ability to respond to my instructions.”

The grin fell from her face as she picked up her gym bag and purse. He grasped her elbow and rushed her through the suite, out the door and into the concrete stairwell. He went first so she’d have to keep up with his pace.

As they descended, he explained, “Lots of abductions occur when the victim is in transit, moving from one location to another. That’s why Mason is driving over here to pick us up. It’s also why we’re taking the stairs. It’s too easy to trap you in the elevator.”

“I’m glad it’s only five floors.” Their steps were loud on the concrete stairs, and their voices echoed. “I’m guessing that you aren’t carrying my bag so your gun hand will be free.”

“Good guess.” And he didn’t feel guilty about making her drag a heavy burden. All she had was a shoulder purse and her gym bag. He pointed to the bag. “Are your scrubs in there?”

“Lots of stuff—lotion, scrubs, comfortable shoes, a cap that’s big enough to cover my hair, extra barrettes and more. These operations take several hours, and it’s important to have clothes laundered exactly the way I like them. By the way, you did a good job choosing my undies. The sports bra is just what I need.”

“That was Smith’s idea. If it had been up to me, I would have picked the red satin bra and the leopard panties.”

“Most men do.”

Was she flirting with him? He couldn’t let himself be distracted right now. Dylan had to keep his focus on getting her to the car without incident.

They rounded the last turn in the stairwell. Both he and Mason were familiar with the layout of this particular hotel. If they had their timing right, Dylan and Jayne would emerge from the stairwell, walk down a short hall and exit onto the street just as Mason pulled up to the curb.

Entering the lobby, he scanned quickly. No heads turned. No one noticed Jayne. He pushed open the exit door.

Bright sunlight hit them smack in the face. Holding her arm, he moved across the wide sidewalk adjacent to downtown’s central mall. Mason was waiting in Dylan’s dark green SUV.

He opened the rear door, got her seated and followed her inside. The minute he closed the door, Mason drove away. Safe!

“Seat belt,” he said to her. “Mason, do you know the door we’ll enter at the medical center?”

“Northeast corner.”

“That’s near my office.” She opened her purse and started digging. “I have a key card to use on that entrance.”

“It’s handled,” he said. “We downloaded the hospital floor plan and figured out your routes to and from the OR and your office. Detective Cisneros arranged for key cards and necessary identifications since I’m carrying a concealed weapon and can’t go through scanners.”

For the first time since he’d met her, Jayne seemed to be impressed. Usually, he didn’t care if the clients noticed that TST Security did a solid, professional job, but her opinion was important to him. He liked Jayne and wouldn’t mind getting closer to her. After this job was over, he’d like to get close enough to pick out her wild undies.

“What are we going to tell people about you?” she asked. “If I introduce you as my bodyguard, I’ll have to explain a thousand times why I need guarding.”

The thought had already occurred to him. He didn’t consider himself a master of disguise, but he was capable of fading into the woodwork as a computer nerd and—thanks to Mason and his bodybuilding workouts—Dylan could expand his narrow frame enough to look big and tough. Today, he was wearing a tweed sports coat, jeans and a black T-shirt. His hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail at his nape.

He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses. “I think I can pass as a professor.”

“Interesting thought,” she said as she studied his look. “You do have an academic look, but you’d need a whole background story. Somebody would catch on.”

“I could be a boyfriend.”

Her full lips drew into a circle. “No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to start that rumor. Besides, we don’t let friends and family into the OR.”

“Much as I’d like pretending to be a neurosurgeon...” He actually would enjoy playing that role. The brain fascinated him. “I don’t think your patient would appreciate that disguise.”

“Or my insurance carrier.”

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ll be a journalist doing an article on America’s hottest neurosurgeons.”

“Oh, swell, and doesn’t it bother you to reduce the schooling and talent it takes to become a neurosurgeon to an article about physical attractiveness?”

“I’ll be a regular old journalist. My catchphrase will be—don’t pay any attention to me. I’m here to observe.”

“Perfect.” Glancing toward the driver’s seat, where Mason sat stoically behind the wheel, she lowered her voice. “Do you really think I’m hot?”

“You sizzle, Doc.”

At the medical center, a sprawling complex at the edge of Denver’s suburbs, he rushed her through the side door and up one flight of stairs. From studying the floor plan, he knew exactly where her second-floor office was located. It spoke well of her status that she had her own small office space with a door that closed. Not much larger than a walk-in closet, the room had one floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, a desk with a chair and two other chairs for guests.

From his web research, Dylan recognized the man who had taken the swivel chair behind her desk.

Jayne stopped short and glared. “Hello, Dad.”

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