A disturbed criminal wants to destroy her life.

After her colleague’s brutal murder, Dr. Waylynn Hargraves’s past makes her a suspect, but Blackhawk Security investigator Elliot Dunham is certain she’s innocent. When Waylynn’s research reveals she faces a danger worse than being framed, Elliot will defy all of the rules he’s set for himself in order to protect Waylynn from the killer who is stalking her.

NICHOLE SEVERN writes explosive romantic suspense with strong heroines, heroes who dare to challenge them and a hell of a lot of guns. She resides with her very supportive and patient husband, as well as her demon spawn, in Utah. When she’s not writing, she’s constantly injuring herself running, rock climbing, practicing yoga and snowboarding. She loves hearing from readers through her website, www.nicholesevern.com, and on Twitter, @nicholesevern

Also by Nichole Severn

Rules in Blackmail

Rules in Rescue

Rules in Deceit

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Rules in Defiance

Nichole Severn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09461-0

RULES IN DEFIANCE

© 2019 Natascha Jaffa

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

This one’s for you!

Thanks for joining the Blackhawk Security adventure.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

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

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Chapter One

An ear-piercing scream had Elliot Dunham reaching for the Glock stashed under his pillow. He threw back the sheets and pumped his legs hard, not bothering to check the time as the apartment blurred in his vision. That scream hadn’t come from his apartment, but close by. Air rushed from his lungs as adrenaline burned through his veins. There was only one name that came to mind. “Waylynn.”

Ripping open his front door, he made the sharp turn to his left in the darkness and faced his next-door neighbor’s front door. No hesitation. He aimed the heel of his foot toward the lock and kicked with everything he had. Pain shot up his leg, but the door frame splintered, thick wood slamming back against the wall. Dust flew into his beard and face as he raised the gun and moved in. One breath. Two. Nothing but the pounding of his heartbeat behind his ears registered from the shadows. He scanned the scene, his senses adjusting slowly.

He’d gone into plenty of situations like this before, but this wasn’t just another one of his clients. This was Waylynn. She mattered. He’d trained out of Blackhawk Security, offered his clients personal protection, home security and investigative services, as well as tactical training, wilderness survival and self-defense. But none of that would do Elliot a damn bit of good now. He was running off instinct. Because when it came to that woman, he couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Debris cut into his bare feet as he moved deeper into the dark apartment. A broken picture frame—Waylynn’s doctorate degree from Texas A&M University—crunched beneath his weight. Torn couch cushions, a broken vase, a purse that’d been dumped over the floor. Signs of an obvious struggle littered the living room, but it was the trail of dark liquid leading to the back bedroom that homed his attention to the soft sobs echoing down the hallway. Blood. “Waylynn? It’s Elliot. Are you dead?”

“Don’t come in here!” That voice. Her voice.

“I take it that’s a no.” While his gut twisted at her hint of fear, relief spread through him. She was alive. And the scream… Something horrible had happened to make her scream like that. The front door had been locked. No breeze came through the apartment from a broken window. Elliot moved down the hallway, putting the survival skills ingrained into him since he was fourteen to good use. No sign of a break-in. No movement from an intruder. He hit the bedroom and pushed the partially open door open with his free hand. The bed had been perfectly made, brightly colored throw pillows straight. Not much damage in this room. Light from beneath the closed bathroom door stretched across the beige carpeting.

And Elliot froze.

The gun faltered in his grip as water seeped from beneath the bathroom door. Not just water. Water mixed with blood. He shot forward. “I don’t care if you’re naked, Doc. I’m coming in.”

Elliot shouldered his way into the brightly lit bathroom and caught sight of his next-door neighbor huddled against the wall. Ice worked through him as he took in her soaked long blond hair, her stained oversize sweater and ripped black leggings, the terrified panic in her light blue eyes as she stared up at him, openmouthed.

And at the dead woman in the bathtub.

“Oh, I didn’t realize this was a party.” A hollow sensation carved itself into the pit of his stomach as he dropped the gun to his side. Terror etched deep lines around her mouth. Pressure built behind his sternum. Elliot set the gun on the counter and crouched in front of her, hands raised. Mildly aware he wore nothing but a pair of sweatpants, he ignored the urge to reach out for her. He’d take it slow. The woman in front of him wasn’t the one he’d moved in next door to a year ago. This wasn’t the woman who’d caught his attention with a single smile and a six-pack of beer in her hand when she’d made the effort to introduce herself to her new neighbor. This woman was scared, vulnerable. Dangerous.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked.

Her gaze wandered to the body, far too distant, far too empty. Color drained from her face. “Alexis.”

“Okay, then. First piece of the mystery solved.” Elliot framed her chin between his thumb and index finger and softened his voice. He didn’t have a whole lot of training when it came to trauma victims, but he couldn’t keep himself from touching her. “Second question. Are you the one bleeding?”

“I’m…” She turned that ice-blue gaze back to him, her voice dropping into hollow territory. “I’m not the one bleeding.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” He lowered his hand, careful of where he stepped, careful not to leave prints. He’d barged into the middle of an active crime scene. A crime scene where the most trusting woman he’d known stood in the center. There’d been a struggle, that much was clear. Things had obviously gotten out of hand, but he needed to hear the rest from her. He’d learned to trust his instincts a long time ago and something about the scene, about Waylynn’s scream a few minutes ago, didn’t sit right. He pointed to the bathtub. “Last question. Why is there a dead woman in your tub?”

“I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. I woke up facedown on the bathroom floor. Water and—” she shuddered, wrapping her arms tighter around her middle “—blood were spilling over the edge of the bathtub. I got up and then I saw her. I screamed.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and she wiped at them with the back of her long, thin fingers. She worked to swallow, her knees pressed against her chest, hands shaking. She blinked against the brightness of the lighting. “It’s Alexis. Alexis Jacobs. She’s my assistant at the lab.”

Genism Corporation’s lab. The largest, most profitable biotech company in Alaska. Also one of the military’s biggest prospects for genetic testing, from what he’d learned, because Dr. Waylynn Hargraves herself had put them on the map. Advancing their research by decades according to recent publicity, she’d proved the existence of some kind of highly contested gene.

Elliot scanned the scene again.

He dragged his thumb along her cheekbone, focused entirely on the size of her pupils and not the fact every hair on the back of his neck had risen at the feel of her. Only a thin line of blue remained in her irises, which meant one of two things in a room this well lit. Either Waylynn had suffered a head injury during an altercation or she’d been drugged. Or both. He scanned down the long column of her throat. And found exactly what he was looking for. A tiny pinprick on the left side of her neck. The right size for a hypodermic needle. He exhaled hard. Damn it. She’d been drugged, made to look like she’d murdered her assistant. Framed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Anything to give them an idea of who’d done this. Because it sure as hell hadn’t been Waylynn.

She blinked against the bathroom lights as though the brightness hurt. “I… I was supposed to meet Alexis here, at my apartment. She said she’d found something alarming in the recent study I oversee at work, but she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone or at the lab. She insisted on somewhere private where we couldn’t be overheard.”

If Waylynn headed that study, anything alarming her assistant uncovered would’ve fallen back on her, threatened the project. But not if Alexis disappeared first. Whoever’d killed the assistant had known she and Waylynn were meeting and planned the perfect setup. Pinning his next-door neighbor as a murderer.

“Okay. You had a meeting scheduled here,” he said. “You obviously got in your car and left the lab. Then what?”

“I…don’t remember.” She wrapped long fingers around his arms. “Elliot, why can’t I remember?”

“Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Doc, but I think you were drugged.” He pointed at the faint, angry puckering of the skin at the base of her throat to distract himself from the grip she had around his arms. “Hypodermic needle mark on the left side of your neck.”

“There’re only a handful of sedatives that affect memory. Benzodiazepines mostly. We store them at the lab.” Hand automatically gravitating to the mark, she ran her fingertips over the abrasion. Her bottom lip parted from the top, homing his attention to her mouth. That wide gaze wandered back to the tub and absolutely destroyed her expression. Waylynn worked over sixty hours a week at the lab. Stood to reason her assistant did, too. They’d probably spent a lot of time together, gotten close. Shock smoothed the lines around her eyes. Her hands shook as she covered her mouth. “But drugging me doesn’t explain how Alexis… This can’t be happening. Not again.”

Again? Alarm bells echoed in his head and his fight instinct clawed through him. “You know, that makes me think you killed somebody in a past life I don’t know about.”

Movement registered from somewhere inside the apartment and Elliot reached for the gun on the counter. The metal warmed in his hand as he barricaded the door with his back.

Voices thundered through the apartment. Then footsteps outside the bathroom door. “Anchorage PD! We received a disturbance call from one of your neighbors. Is anyone here?” a distinct feminine voice asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had this much excitement since getting shot at a few months ago.” This night was getting better by the minute, yet Waylynn hadn’t moved. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Doc, but I think the police are here. And they’re probably going to arrest you.”

“Elliot, I think I killed her.” Waylynn’s fingernails dug into his arms harder. “I think I killed Alexis.”

THIS COULDN’T BE HAPPENING. Not again. She couldn’t go through this again.

Waylynn Hargraves pressed her elbow into the hard metal table, threading her fingers through her hair. Focus. She hadn’t been charged with anything. Yet. They’d taken her blood to run a tox screen, but if Anchorage PD believed she’d killed Alexis, wouldn’t they have put her in cuffs? She couldn’t have killed her lab tech. She’d never hurt Alexis. They were friends. Even if… No. She’d been drugged. She’d been forced. Framed. All she had to do was remember.

Pain lightninged across her vision and she blinked against the onslaught of the fluorescent lighting above. A dull ache settled at the base of her skull. Whatever drug she’d been injected with still clung to the edges of her mind, kept her from accessing those memories. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to her own apartment, if she’d talked with Alexis, how she’d—

Waylynn swallowed around the tightness in her throat and lifted her attention to the mirror taking up most of one wall in front of her. They’d left her alone in this room, but she doubted the room on the other side of that glass was unoccupied. The weight of being watched pressed her back against the chair. “Elliot?”

The door to her right clicked open. A female uniformed officer set sights on her. Past memories overrode the present and, for a split second, Waylynn felt like the fifteen-year-old girl accused of murdering her father all over again. Scared. Alone. Pressured to confess.

Tossing a manila file folder to the table, the officer brought Waylynn back into the moment. Long, curly brown hair had been pulled back in a tight ponytail, highlighting the sternness in the officer’s expression. “Dr. Hargraves, sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Officer Ramsey. I have a few questions for you about what happened tonight.”

“I know how this works.” Waylynn shifted in the scratchy sweatshirt and sweatpants Officer Ramsey had lent her after crime scene technicians had taken her blood-soaked clothing as evidence. This time would be different. She wasn’t a scared teenager anymore. She’d left that girl behind, studied her way through school, worked multiple jobs to pay for it herself, graduated with a master of science, landed a job with the top genetics laboratories in the country as their lead research associate. The work she’d done over the last three years for Genism Corporation would save lives. But the research community wouldn’t see anything other than a murder charge attached to her name. “I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”

“You do know how this works, don’t you?” Officer Ramsey took a seat, sliding the folder she’d placed on the table across its surface. Waylynn didn’t have to look at the contents to know what they contained. Her sealed records. “You’ve done this before. Are you sure you don’t want your attorney present?”

Done this before. That wasn’t a question. That was an accusation.

Her entire career—everything she’d worked for, everything she’d left behind—crashed down around her. A wave of dizziness closed in, but Waylynn fought against the all-consuming need to sink in the chair. No. This wasn’t happening. She didn’t kill her lab assistant.

“I don’t have an attorney. Listen, my father wasn’t a very nice man. So if you’re looking for some sign of sympathy when it comes to his death, you’re not going to find it, but I didn’t kill Alexis.” She set her palms against the cold surface of the table to gain some composure. “If you read the file, then you know I was acquitted. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me of my father’s murder.”

She hadn’t been the one who’d killed him.

“But there is now.” Light green eyes pinned Waylynn in place. At her words, another uniformed officer shouldered into the room, handing Ramsey a clear plastic evidence bag and another manila file. The policeman closed the door behind him, nothing but silence settling between her and the woman across the table. Officer Ramsey held up the evidence bag for her to see. “Do you recognize this?”

A piece of paper? “No.”

“Really?” Ramsey set the bag labeled “evidence” flat on the table and slid it closer. “Why don’t you take a closer look?”

Picking up the bag, Waylynn studied the blank sheet of paper, not entirely sure what Officer Ramsey intended her to see. She flipped it over. A gasp lodged in her throat as a flash of memory broke through her drug-induced haze. Sharp pain as she held on to the pen. The barrel of a gun cutting into her scalp. The handwritten words fell from her mouth as she stared at the note. Her handwritten words. “Tell Matt Stover I’m sorry. I had to save the project.”

What was this supposed to be? A confession? A suicide note?

“Crime scene technicians discovered that note on your nightstand. That’s your handwriting, isn’t it?” Officer Ramsey collected the evidence bag, still holding it up. “Your supervisor, Dr. Matt Stover, who you mentioned in the note, was very helpful in providing us samples.”

A flood of goose bumps pimpled along her arms. That was why they’d kept her contained in this room for so long. They’d been buying their time. Dread curdled in her stomach. If someone had forced her to write that note at gunpoint, what else had they forced her to do? What else would the crime scene technicians uncover? “Handwriting analysis can’t be used as evidence in court.”

“Right. You’ve done this before. I keep forgetting.” A placating smile thinned Officer Ramsey’s lips, deepening the laugh lines around her mouth as she leaned back in her chair. She pointed toward Waylynn’s throat. “Tell me about that mark on your neck. What’d you do? Shoot yourself up with saline to make it look like you’d been drugged?”

A pitiful laugh burst from between Waylynn’s lips. “What?”

She couldn’t be serious. Why would she drug—

“The tox screen we ran earlier on the sample of blood you gave us came back negative for any kind of sedatives or other drugs.” Officer Ramsey folded her arms across her midsection. “I have enough to arrest you right now, Dr. Hargraves. The only thing we can’t account for is the gun you used to shoot Alexis Jacobs. You worked with her, didn’t you? For three years. So why don’t you tell me what really happened after you lured your lab tech to your apartment to kill her and where you stashed the weapon?”

Alexis had been shot? But Anchorage PD hadn’t recovered the gun. Waylynn couldn’t focus. Couldn’t breathe. The toxicology screen was negative, but why couldn’t she remember anything after she’d left the lab? She threaded her fingers into her hair. This was insane. There was no way she would’ve killed Alexis. “Talk to Elliot Dunham, my next-door neighbor. He was there. He broke down my apartment door seconds after I woke up on the bathroom floor. He heard me scream. That wouldn’t have been enough time for me to stash a gun.”

“He’s in the next room over, but I’m not stupid enough to believe anything that comes out of Elliot Dunham’s or his team’s mouths, Dr. Hargraves. I rely on evidence.” Officer Ramsey leaned back in her chair. “All this evidence, plus the voice mail Alexis left on your phone, is telling me your assistant uncovered something in your most recent research trial for Genism Corporation. Something that would bring the entire study down. You killed her to protect yourself.”

The interrogation room door swung open for the third time and Waylynn studied a single man carrying a briefcase. Early fifties if she had to guess, short, cropped blond hair, piercing blue eyes almost the same shade as hers. The tight fit of his expensive suit and white shirt accentuated lean muscle, but it was the sternness etched into his expression that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “My client won’t be answering any more questions. This interrogation is over. Dr. Hargraves, I’m Blake Henson. Your lawyer.”

Waylynn straightened. “I didn’t call a lawyer.”

“Your employer keeps me and my firm on retainer,” he said. “Dr. Stover brought me in after the police coerced him into handing over writing samples without a warrant this morning.”

The less than enthusiastic tone in his voice slid through her, which she understood. Blake Henson was a corporate lawyer, not criminal. Maybe she should’ve called her own counsel.

“Dr. Stover gave us those samples voluntarily, but nice try.” Officer Ramsey collected the evidence bag with the handwritten note and both manila file folders and stood. “But it doesn’t matter. You’re just in time. Your client is about to be arrested for murder one, counselor.”

“Not without a murder weapon she’s not. Everything you have is circumstantial at best. For all we know, Alexis Jacobs shot herself to frame my client and had someone else get rid of the gun.” Leveling the briefcase parallel with the table, Blake Henson slid the leather across the surface and hit the locks. He extracted a single piece of paper and handed it to Officer Ramsey. “Regardless, Dr. Hargraves signed a nondisclosure agreement pertaining to the research she and the deceased perform for Genism Corporation. Any intellectual property Dr. Stover provided to this department wasn’t his to give, and I’m afraid you don’t have a judge in the state who will overturn that, Officer. Trust me, I checked.”

Officer Ramsey read the document, then lowered it to her side. “You’re suing the department?”

“Not yet, but if you insist on trying to charge my client of Alexis Jacobs’s murder without evidence, my firm won’t have any other choice than to take you and the entire department to court.” Blake wrapped a strong grip around Waylynn’s arm and lifted her from her seat. A rush of heavy cologne churned her stomach as he escorted her to the door. “You, of all people, can’t afford that, Officer Ramsey.”

Was her lawyer threatening an Anchorage PD officer? Before Waylynn had a chance to say anything, he’d directed her into the hallway, his hand still tight around her arm.

“Doc.” In the blink of an eye, Elliot was there, and a flood of relief washed through her. Elliot with his handsome face, dark brown hair, strong jaw, broad shoulders and athletic build. Elliot, the only man she’d ever let give her a nickname that actually made her feel better whenever he said it. No cuffs. He hadn’t been arrested, but his normally gleaming stormy-gray eyes darkened with an edge as his attention locked on her lawyer’s hand. “There a problem here?”

Waylynn wrenched her arm out of Blake Henson’s hold. “I’m not being charged. Yet.”

“Thanks to me.” Her lawyer switched his briefcase from one hand to the other, then offered his hand. “Blake Henson. Dr. Hargraves’s attorney. And you are?”

“Me?” Elliot closed in on her, ignoring Blake’s extended hand, his shoulder brushing along hers as though he intended to possess her. His clean, masculine scent dived into her lungs. He looked angry, which was odd considering her next-door neighbor usually went to great lengths to hide what he was thinking by layering everything out of his mouth with sarcasm or a joke. This wasn’t like him. Too serious. Too…dangerous. “I’m her damn bodyguard.”

Chapter Two

“You won’t be able to go home. Police tend to frown on someone living in the middle of an active crime scene.” Elliot pushed the SUV harder. The faster he got her to safety, the faster the knot behind his sternum might let up. He never looked for trouble, but he had no problem befriending it. And Waylynn Hargraves had been trouble since the day he’d moved in next door. The most recent example would be her dead assistant’s body in the tub. And the fact he’d nearly torn a man’s arm off and beat the bastard to death with it for putting his hands on her.

Not very professional. But the moment he’d seen Blake Henson’s hand on her arm, it’d taken every ounce of his control not to kill the lawyer in the middle of Anchorage PD’s station. Possessiveness unlike anything he’d experienced before had clawed up his throat and taken control. Nobody—not her lawyer, not the police, not him—touched Waylynn without her explicit permission.

“I remembered something.” Exhaustion clung to her words. The sweatpants and sweatshirt someone at the station had lent her hung off her narrow frame, but nothing could detract from her overall beauty. The light in her ordinarily bright eyes had dimmed over the past few hours. Finding a dead woman in your bathtub could have that effect on a person. “When Officer Ramsey was questioning me, she showed me a handwritten note, and I remembered writing it. Only, in the memory, there was a gun pressed to my head.” Her voice dropped as she stared out the passenger-side window. “Somebody forced me to write it.”

“You’re being framed for your assistant’s murder, but I have a sense you already knew that.” Someone had been in her home. Drugged her. Forced her to do hell knew what. And he hadn’t heard a thing aside from her scream. Right next door. Elliot strengthened his grip around the steering wheel as downtown Anchorage passed in a blur. Working for Blackhawk Security certainly had its benefits. Use of the company’s SUVs, health coverage, an armory of weapons, not spending the rest of his life behind bars in the middle of nowhere thanks to the founder of the firm. None of it did a damn bit of good if he lost the closest person he had to a friend. Snowy peaks along the Chugach Mountain Range glistened in the sun as they headed east, and he pushed one hand through his hair. Even in the middle of June, Anchorage gave him the proverbial middle finger. He missed the desert. He glanced toward Waylynn, then back to the road as the signal ahead turned red. “Anything else?”

“Nothing. Whoever drugged me knew what they were doing. I can’t remember what happened in my apartment and the drug didn’t show up on a toxicology screen. I guess I’ll take that as a win-win situation. I’m not sure I want to remember what happened.” Color drained from her face as she leaned her head into her hand and her elbow against the passenger-side door. Disheveled blond hair slid over her shoulder as she shook her head. The weight of her attention fell on him, hiking his awareness of her—of her flowery scent—to an all-time high. Geraniums. Her favorite. But not just from the bottle. Almost as though the scent had become a permanent part of her over the years. Now he couldn’t smell the damn things without thinking of her. “Why did you tell my attorney you’re my bodyguard?”

“I know you, Doc.” And not because it was his job to know. He’d spent the last year as a private investigator for Blackhawk Security, uncovering the secrets his targets hid from the world, declassifying documents for his own curiosity. Hell, he kept files on every one of his teammates. His former navy SEAL boss, Sullivan Bishop, and the fact he’d killed his own serial killer father, forensics expert Vincent Kalani and the accusations filed against him back in New York, their resident computer geek, Elizabeth Bosch—Dawson, whatever she went by now—Anthony Harris’s classified missions for the army, and the saddest of them all, their psychologist, Kate Monroe. But digging into Waylynn’s past had never crossed his mind.

The light turned green in his peripheral vision. Car horns blared for him to get moving, but he didn’t give a damn. “You’re a scientist. You’ve spent your entire life in search of the truth and there’s no way I’m going to let you get yourself killed going after this guy on your own.”

“My boss was right.” She hugged herself a bit tighter and stared out the windshield. “You and I spend way too much time together.”

“Or maybe Dr. Stover wants you all for himself.” Couldn’t blame the guy. Waylynn had a pull to her, a sort of gravity that was hard to fight. Even now, something about her urged Elliot to close the small distance between them, but he’d never cross that line. Not with Waylynn. She needed his help now and that was as far as it would go between them. Ever. He stepped on the accelerator, barely making it through the light. Her mouth parted as though she intended to deny it. “Trust me, Doc. Bosses don’t usually call lawyers when their employees are being charged with murder.”

Helping them escape out of an Iraqi prison was another thing.

“I think Matt is more interested in my research than what’s under my lab coat.” Fingers spread wide, a combination of passion and excitement controlled her hands as she spoke. She did that a lot—spoke with her hands and he couldn’t do anything but pay attention. “The research we’re doing is important. Have you heard of the warrior gene before?”

“Is that the movie about the boxer?” he asked.

“The warrior gene,” she said. “Nearly every human being alive has a monoamine oxidase A gene, but, in several cases, individuals with low activity in that specific gene were found to have higher aggression in certain high-stress situations. It’s a variant and has come to be known as the warrior gene. Identifying the subjects who possess the warrior gene has the potential to save thousands of lives a year. Active shooters could be stopped before they picked up a gun because they wouldn’t be able to get one in the first place. Homicide rates would plummet. Army, navy, air force, the entire military would benefit from our research.”

“What? No psychic telling you who to arrest before the vision comes true?” Elliot made a sharp right turn and floored the accelerator as they climbed Seward Highway’s on-ramp. Couldn’t take her to Blackhawk Security. Despite the fact its founder and CEO, Sullivan Bishop, had turned it into a fortress, Elliot wasn’t willing to take the risk while the building was still under construction. It’d been five months since a bomb had ripped apart the conference room, but the best place for Waylynn right now was with him. “What you’re talking about sounds like science fiction.”

“It’s not like that.” Her hands fell into her lap as they left the city limits.

Greenery bled together in his peripheral vision, the sunlight glimmering off the Turnagain Arm waterway almost blinding. He hadn’t chosen Alaska. If it were up to him, he’d have left a long time ago, but he’d keep his promise to his employer. He’d work off his debt.

“And, no, we don’t have a psychic predicting violent events and the justice system would never convict a person of a crime before the actual crime was committed,” she said. “But knowing who carries the gene will be a huge step forward in genetic engineering and protecting lives.”

“What you’re saying is everyone with the warrior gene will eventually snap when put in a high-stress situation.” Elliot turned off the highway, throwing them deep into the middle of the Alaskan wilderness just before the Potter Creek trailhead that led into Chugach State Park. The property wasn’t much and he’d bought it for close to nothing, but he could keep Waylynn safe out here. And that was all that mattered. “Good thing I’m prepared for the zombie apocalypse.”

“Not…everyone. But, according to the studies I’ve done, it’s a possibility.” Her voice wavered on that last part and he narrowed in on the slight twitch on the left side of her mouth. A tell. Waylynn cleared her throat as a rush of pink climbed up her neck and into her cheeks. She tipped her chin up, studying the surrounding trees as the SUV climbed up the dirt trail. Waylynn Hargraves was hiding something. “Why are you helping me?”

She could keep her secrets. For now. As long as they didn’t get him killed. Because he sure as hell wasn’t the sharing type. Besides, he had ways of uncovering the truth. No matter how deep it was buried. Elliot pulled off the main road, driving deeper into wilderness. No one would find them out here. And if they did, he’d come prepared. “I don’t think you killed your assistant. If you had, you would’ve asked me for help burying the body.”

A smile overwhelmed the exhaustion in her features and, for a split second, Elliot couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d never been the type to stick around long. A month here, a few weeks there. He’d made some enemies along the way, but having Waylynn next door settled the restlessness singing through his veins most days. “You have experience with that kind of thing?”

Elliot leveraged his palm against the steering wheel and stretched back in the seat. “Did I ever tell you why I came to Anchorage?”

She shook her head as the SUV bounced over fallen branches and dead foliage. He made one last turn, forcing her to reach for the handle above her seat before he brought the vehicle to a stop and hiked it into Park.

“I ran a con that ended with me on the wrong side of the Iraqi government.” Reaching back behind her seat, close enough to get a lungful of her light perfume, he grabbed the duffel bag he kept stocked full of supplies and hauled it into the front. “Turns out being paid for assassination contracts you never intended to carry out constitutes fraud when the people paying you work for the government.”

A weak laugh escaped from her lips as those blue eyes of hers widened. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“My boss, Sullivan, was starting a security firm here in Anchorage. Needed a private investigator. I was recruited for the job.” Elliot shouldered his way out of the SUV, hiking the duffel over his shoulder. He clamped his hand on top of the roof of the vehicle. “And by recruited, I mean he made a deal with the people who had me arrested and is forcing me to pay back the money I conned out of those nice killers until we’re even. After that, who knows. Maybe my next project will be getting paid to bury bodies for people with your warrior gene.”

“You don’t strike me as a professional con man,” she said.

“That’s what makes me so good at it.” He winked at her, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth, and motioned her out with a single nod. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

Waylynn focused on their surroundings through his open door. He noted the exact moment she realized where he’d brought her as her mouth parted. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

He couldn’t hold back the laugh rumbling through him and turned toward the dark green cabin. “Not this time, Doc.”

A TINY CABIN.

Not an oh-this-is-so-cute-and-perfect cabin, but a real, featured-on-the-Travel-Channel tiny cabin in the middle of the freaking woods. Broken twigs and foliage crunched under her feet as she rounded the hood of his company SUV. Dark green paint chipping off wood planks, a single window above the shack-like door. She ran her fingers through her matted, blood-tinted hair, then cringed at the thought of what she might look like. He couldn’t be serious. “Anchorage PD is going to charge me with your murder in the morning and I’m going to tell them it’s because you made me stay here.”

There was no way they could both fit inside this thing. No way they wouldn’t run into each other in there. Waylynn swallowed hard. They’d been friends for over a year. Every night when she came home from the lab, he was there in his crappy camp chair with two beers and that damn gut-wrenching smile of his. She’d tell him about her day. He’d tell her about his most recent investigation, then they’d head inside to their apartments. Alone. But this? The idea there wouldn’t be any barriers between them? It’d either destroy their friendship or push it to the next level. Either way, their relationship would never be the same if she stepped over that threshold.

“Well, now you’re trying to hurt my feelings.” Elliot offered her his hand, the other cinched around the duffel bag he’d extracted from the back seat. He was giving her a choice. Giving her safety if she wanted it. “It’s a lot bigger than it looks.”

His easygoing smile and confidence melted through her. Of course he had confidence. Wasn’t that what con man stood for? She’d known he had a past. Everyone did. But could she trust him to keep her safe? Trust him to help her uncover who’d framed her for Alexis’s murder? That was the question. Despite his revelation about the con he’d pulled in Iraq—a con that’d landed him in prison—her gut already knew the answer. Waylynn stretched out her hand, sliding her fingers up his palm. Rougher than she’d expected. Calloused, as if he’d been working with some kind of machinery or maybe out here in the woods. Desire exploded through her with a single touch, just as it had back at the police station. “It better be.”

A breeze whipped through the surrounding trees, shaking them into a frenzy as Elliot reached for the door. He led her inside, a rush of heat dissipating the goose bumps pimpling along her arms. A combination of wood and spice wrapped around her as the main living space came into focus. She glanced toward him, unsure what to say.

“What’d I tell you?” Elliot released her hand, taking his body heat with him, and motioned to the unbelievably modern space with both arms wide. He set the duffel bag on the floor, then collapsed backward onto the single couch, fingers interlaced behind his head. For as small as the cabin looked from the outside, the layout worked well for the limited space. A fireplace, complete with a stock of firewood, lay dead ahead. Off to the left of that, a single countertop with bar stools on one side and a kitchen sink and stove on the other. No dining table. Not enough room. A short hallway led to what looked like a bathroom with a set of stairs leading to a space on the second level. The one and only bedroom. The decor fit the location. Wood, wood and more wood. Just as she’d expect from any other cabin stashed in the wilderness, but the granite countertop and brightly colored accents brought the entire room into the modern era. It suited Elliot. At least, what she knew of him.

“And you thought this would be awkward.” He compressed his mouth against a smile.

Surprise pushed through her. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.” He swung his legs over the side of the couch and pushed to his feet. Closing in on her, he leveled that dark gaze on her and every cell in her body responded. “I read people for a living, Doc. It’s what makes me good at my job.”

Heat flamed up her neck and into her cheeks. She brushed a strand of blood-matted hair behind one ear and fought the urge to cross her arms. What else had he read about her? “In that case, I can’t promise you I won’t let you down when you look at me too closely.”

“What are you talking about?” One distinct crease deepened between his eyebrows as he shifted his weight between both feet. “You haven’t let me down.”

“Someone is framing me for Alexis’s murder.” Waylynn interlaced her fingers. She used her hands to speak a lot of the time, but right now, all she wanted to do was close in on herself. To hide. From whoever’d killed her assistant. From the man standing in front of her who knew her better than any other person in her life, but she didn’t want to lie to him. Ever. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of killing someone.”

Seconds slipped by. Maybe a full minute. She couldn’t read his expression, didn’t know what he was thinking. Was controlling what others read in his body language part of being a con man, too? “Say something. Please.”

Elliot ran a hand over his beard, tugging on the end. “Tell me what happened.”

The same intensity she’d witnessed back at the police station consumed his expression. “I was fifteen. My father…” She pushed back the memories, but her pulse skyrocketed. “He deserved what happened to him. The cancer had already affected my mom, and police concluded she didn’t have the strength to do what had been done, so I became the next logical suspect. They took me out of school, arrested me and attempted to try me as an adult, but in the end, I was acquitted. Not enough evidence. They couldn’t find the gun that’d been used to kill him.” The Beretta 92 pistol he’d kept stashed away in the linen closet of her childhood home. “Same as now.”

That gut-wrenching smile overtook his stubborn expression, and she struggled against the gravitational pull she experienced every time he came around.

“What are the odds someone has been accused of murder twice in their life?” he asked.

“In my experience? High. Normally? Zero.”

He stepped into her, setting her chin between his index finger and thumb as he had in her apartment. Her insides turned to molten lava. Hesitation gripped her hard as he studied her. “Whoever’s doing this is counting on you taking the fall for Alexis’s death.” He released her, the tingling sensation spreading behind her sternum fading. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

All she had to do was lean forward—just a bit—to press her mouth against his. What would he taste like? Feel like?

A dull ringing reached her ears. Waylynn blinked to clear the last few seconds from her mind. She rushed to retrieve her phone from the pocket of the grungy sweats Officer Ramsey had lent her. The screen brightened with the laboratory’s number. “This is probably my boss. I should answer.”

Elliot swept his arms wide and bowed before retreating toward the door and, just like that, the intensity in his body language disappeared. As though it’d never happened. “By all means, use whichever part of this room you prefer. I’ll grab the gear from the truck.”

She stared after him as he closed the door. A small burst of disbelieving laughter escaped up her throat. No. Nothing was happening between them. That hadn’t been a connection. It’d been her body’s automatic reaction to a stressful situation. She and Elliot were friends and she’d keep it that way. They didn’t have a future together. There was no future with her.

The phone vibrating in her hand brought her back into the moment. She swiped her finger across the screen and brought it to her ear. “Dr. Hargraves.”

“Waylynn, I can’t believe it.” Dr. Matthew Stoker’s frantic tenor intensified the stress lodged between her shoulder blades. “The police were here at the lab. They wanted copies of your reports to match your handwriting—”

“It’s fine, Matt.” Waylynn ran a hand across her forehead. Dr. Matthew Stoker had been her boss for close to ten years. He’d given her the opportunity to conduct her research and convinced Genism’s board of directors to fund her projects. He was on the path to put the lab on the map for genetic research all before he hit forty. The entire company depended on him. But getting dragged into a murder investigation threatened his promising future. “You were doing what you had to for the best of the company. I don’t blame you for handing the reports over. I’m sorry they came to you.”

“Don’t worry about me. Are you okay?” Static reached through Matt’s end of the line. Or was that the sound of broken glass in the background? “I called the company lawyer for you. Blake Henson told me you’d been arrested, but they couldn’t keep you in custody. Where are you?”

“I’m…” She didn’t know what to say. She’d found her assistant dead in her bathtub and all the evidence Anchorage PD had recovered pointed at her. Someone had framed her for murder and the only reason she’d come out into the middle of the woods with Elliot was for her own protection. Should she trust Matt with the location?

The front door clicked open.

Elliot hauled another duffel bag inside, tossing it onto the floor, and her awareness of him rocketed to an all-time high. The zip-up hoodie he wore did nothing to hide the bulk in his arms and across his chest. The air in her lungs stilled. She’d never noticed his physique before.

What had changed?

“Waylynn?” Matt asked over the line.

She took a deep breath to restart her system as Elliot maneuvered around her in the small space and headed for the back of the cabin. His clean, masculine scent worked deep into her lungs, became part of her, and she had the feeling that was only the beginning as she studied the rest of the tiny space. He’d brought her here to keep her safe from whoever’d killed Alexis, but what if it was him who needed protection from her? “I’m somewhere safe.”

“Good. Keep it that way, because there’s something you should know.” The tension in Matt’s voice failed to drown out the tinkling of shattered glass over the line. “Someone broke in to the lab. Somehow a fire broke out and… Everything, all of your research from the past ten years… It’s gone.”

Chapter Three

“Good news. I found an unopened box of peanut butter Oreos stashed under the bed.” He tossed the package a few inches into the air, then caught it. Her favorite guilty pleasure. Elliot pounded down the small set of stairs and rounded the corner into the main living space from the back of the cabin.

The color had left Waylynn’s cheeks, her knuckles white around the phone in her hand. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end at the sight of her. Forget the cookies. Tossing the package onto the counter, he pulled the weapon from his shoulder holster beneath his sweatshirt and clicked off the safety, ready for war. “Tell me whose ass I need to kick.”

“Somebody doesn’t just want to frame me for Alexis’s murder. They’re destroying my life.” Her voice barely reached across the small space. Confusion deepened the color in her ocean-blue gaze. “Elliot, my research… It’s gone. Everything I’ve worked for—for the past ten years, is gone.”

His gut tightened. Hell. That’d been her life’s work, her career. And it was gone? Elliot didn’t believe in coincidences. First, her assistant’s murder in Waylynn’s apartment. Now this. She was right. Whoever’d set her up to take the fall was ensuring she’d never get back up. He scanned the perimeter from the nearest window, then centered back on her, approaching slowly, and lowered the gun. Locking on the phone still clutched in her hand, he holstered his weapon. “Who was on the phone?”

“Dr. Stover. Someone broke in to the lab. There was a fire.” Her voice hollowed. She somehow went even paler. Her attention snapped up as he closed the distance between them and everything inside him heated. The delicate column of her throat flexed on a swallow. “The fire department thinks it was arson. There were traces of accelerant all over my desk. Chemicals we keep in the janitorial closets.”

He denied the urge to wrap her in his arms. While he hadn’t taken her on as an official client—yet—the same rules applied. No getting involved with clients. “Just yours?”

She nodded but refused to let go of that damn phone. “Yes. Someone burned it all. My handwritten notes, my digital files, a decade’s worth of studies and genetic testing… It was all in my desk or on my computer. What am I going to do?”

“What about a backup?” There had to be something salvageable.

“Genism doesn’t allow employees to have backups other than the company server, but Matt said that’s been tampered with, too.” She swiped at her face, shoulders rising on a deep inhale as though her emotional reservoir had run dry. “We can’t bring any foreign devices into the lab, take files out or save them to the cloud.”

Of course they couldn’t. That would make too much sense. And, suddenly, Elliot couldn’t keep his distance from her any longer. Reaching for her, he slid his fingers up her arms. Calluses caught on her smooth skin, the rush of the scent of geraniums was intoxicating. “Waylynn, I’m sorry. I know how much your work meant—means—to you.”

It was her entire life, her career. Her ticket out of a rough childhood, which he’d most recently learned included a murder accusation. She’d moved on from that life, had obviously worked hard for it. College, graduate school, becoming one of the foremost experts in the country on genetics. And in the flash of a flame, it was gone. Didn’t seem fair.

“Does this place have a shower?” she asked.

“Bathroom is past the kitchen on the right.” Elliot hiked a thumb over his shoulder and turned slightly to give her a line of sight. Despite the bloody tint to her blond hair, the smear of her eyeliner and mascara, and the fact she’d lost everything that mattered to her, Waylynn held her head high.

“Take your time. Clean towels are hanging behind the door,” he said.

A single nod was all he got in response as she pulled out of his grasp and headed toward the bathroom.

The lock clicked into place and he didn’t waste any time. Whoever’d framed her for murder had started the fire in her lab. He was sure of it. The timing. The opportunity. They both lined up. The SOB might be dangerous, but Elliot was worse. Because they’d never see him or his team coming.

Extracting his laptop from one of the black duffel bags on the couch, he flipped it open and took a seat at the counter. Framing Waylynn to cover up a murder was one thing. Alexis’s murder could’ve had nothing to do with Waylynn, but his next-door neighbor happened to make the perfect scapegoat with her sordid past. Coming after Waylynn’s research? That was personal. Someone was hunting her.

The unsub—unknown subject—had to know about her father’s murder accusation in order for the frame job to stick. Except those records had been sealed because Waylynn had been a minor at the time. Which meant the bastard was either connected to the case or had premeditated pinning the murder on Waylynn by looking for something incriminating. He couldn’t discount any possibility. Not when it came to keeping her alive.

Elliot glanced toward the bathroom at the sound of water hitting tile. It’d take a few minutes for her to wash off the blood. Focusing on the screen, he pulled up the internet browser and typed in her name. His finger hovered over the enter key. Of all the people he’d investigated, of all the chances he’d had to dig into her past, he’d kept Waylynn’s off-limits, respecting her privacy. He had an entire team of coworkers. Former SEALs and Rangers, an ex-National Security Agency consultant, a military investigator, Blackhawk Security’s forensics expert and a psychologist. He’d worked with them for over a year, trusted them with his life, but Waylynn was different. Special. Forbidden.

And yet someone was trying to hurt her.

He hit the button. The screen brightened as headlines filled the page. Top stories included the massive progress she’d made in the bioengineering community, but one stood out among the rest. “Rhinebeck, NY, fifteen-year-old acquitted of father’s murder.” Elliot read through the article. Waylynn had spent over three weeks in county lockup after her arrest on school grounds. Never gave a statement, never tried to blame the crime on someone else, or offered an alibi. Police had questioned her cancer-stricken mother at the time, but ultimately concluded Nora Hargraves didn’t have the strength to lift the missing handgun used to kill her husband in cold blood. Without the murder weapon, the prosecution had no other choice than to release the teen despite ample motive and opportunity. Her mother had died during the trial.

Hell. In the year they’d been neighbours, he’d known Waylynn had lost her mother when she was younger, and about the foster family who’d taken her in until she’d turned eighteen, but he hadn’t realized the circumstances. Elliot leaned back in his chair to break up the tightness in his throat. He’d been on his own since he was fourteen. Voluntarily. Waylynn had everyone taken from her in a three-week span. He glanced toward the bathroom.

But none of this narrowed down a suspect pool. Nathan Hargraves had been shot nine times and died from massive blood loss. The forensic pathologist who’d signed the death certificate hadn’t gone into more detail other than a final conclusion reading “homicide” and a note that reported a mere five dollars in cash had been found on the body at the time of the autopsy.

No other family. No friends who’d seemed too beat up about her father’s death. No reason for someone to come after Waylynn. He’d have to do some more digging, but if Alexis’s murder and the fire at the lab had anything to do with Waylynn’s past, he couldn’t see it. Which meant their suspect had learned about the trial, but only planned to use it to secure an arrest fifteen years later. Would’ve worked, too. If police had recovered the gun.

Elliot ran a hand through his hair, then rested his elbow against the counter. She hadn’t told him any of this. In the year they’d been neighbors, she’d never mentioned her parents, her hometown, the fact she’d been in the foster system at the age of fifteen. Then again, how often had he talked about his parents? His hometown?

“All right, Alexis Jacobs, show me what you’ve got.” He rolled back his right shoulder, working through the stiffness that still paralyzed the scar tissue around the bullet wound there. If the unsub wasn’t connected to Waylynn’s trial, then someone wanted the assistant dead for a reason. What had Waylynn said when he’d found her in the bathroom this morning? Alexis wanted to meet because she’d found something within the study they’d been conducting at the lab. But with all of Waylynn’s research destroyed, he doubted the assistant’s discovery hadn’t been destroyed with it. He scanned through Alexis’s social media pages. Three different sites. Hundreds of pictures. But this one… Elliot stopped scrolling and straightened. The redheaded beauty with freckles had taken a photo of herself a few days before her death, showing off what looked like a new tattoo of a Q with a heart on her wrist. The Queen of Hearts. But it was what was behind her that urged him to lean closer to the screen. A black external hard drive sticking out of the victim’s purse.

“Bingo.” Waylynn had said Genism didn’t allow employees to back up their files on foreign devices, but what if Alexis hadn’t followed company rules? He needed to get that hard drive.

The bathroom door clicked open and in his next breath, Waylynn rounded into the kitchen. Damn, he hadn’t even heard her shut off the water. Hair still wet, she notched her chin level with the floor and curled her fingers into tight fists at her sides. Defiant. Strong. Sexy as hell.

“Well, don’t you look nice when you’re not covered in blood.” Nervous energy exploded across his back as he closed the laptop, sliding it against the granite. She didn’t need to see photos of the woman she’d found in her bathtub. Didn’t need to know he’d looked into her trial. He drew his eyebrows together when she didn’t respond. “You okay?”

“I want to know who’s trying to destroy my life.” Determination had cooled the day’s confusion in her expression. The tears had dried, her jaw set, and she focused 100 percent on him. “You’re a private investigator. I’m hiring you and your firm. Find out who did this to me.”

“WE NEED TO get to my lab.” There were plenty of monsters who knew how to play at being human. Which one of them had ruined her life? The possibilities were endless. Someone from her own lab. A rival geneticist. One of the volunteers from her studies. Her research into the warrior gene fulfilled her in a way nothing else had managed to for her entire life. She wasn’t going to let that go. Not for anything. The person responsible wasn’t going to get away with it. Waylynn settled back against the granite countertop, crossing her arms across her midsection. Then again, not all monsters did monstrous things. “Alexis said she wanted to meet with me about one of the studies. We record all of those sessions with our volunteers. So if something strange happened with one of them, it’d be on the security footage.”

The weight of Elliot’s gaze warmed her neck and face. Her pulse quickened. Her body surged to attention when he looked at her like that—like she was the only woman in the entire world—and her brain checked out temporarily. This place, the location, it suited him. If anything, he seemed more relaxed here than he had in the year she’d known him as her next-door neighbor. Fewer tension lines bracketed the edges of those gray eyes. If she was being honest with herself, in his tiny cabin, out in the middle of the woods trying to keep her safe, he’d never been more attractive.

“You want to be caught at yet another crime scene tied to this case? That’s a terrible, horrible, incredibly foolish idea.” He stood, clapping his hands together. “Let’s do it and see what happens.”

Reality snapped her back into the moment and she pushed thoughts of him into a dark little corner of her brain where she prayed it’d never see the light of day again. “What?”

“First things first.” Elliot pointed toward her and closed the space between them faster than she thought possible. His body heat tunneled through her borrowed sweats as he slid one arm around her. Her breath caught in her lungs, surprise paralyzing her in place. In the next moment, he’d retreated, handing her a package of peanut butter Oreos. “You need to eat, then sleep. In that order.”

She blinked, staring at the unopened blue plastic package in her hand. Tiny cabin. Limited space. He hadn’t been stepping in for an intimate moment or to help tame the chaos eating her up from the inside. Waylynn released the breath she’d been holding. Had she wanted him to? “You know my favorite flavor of Oreos?”

“Investigating 101.” He leaned back against the opposite counter. “Everything you need to know about a person is in their daily routine, and you, my friend, bring home a lot of peanut butter Oreo packages.”

A burst of laughter escaped from between her lips, because if she didn’t have this small release, she feared she might fall apart. “You just happened to have a supply here?”

“I may have wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” He crossed his arms, emphasizing the muscles across his chest, and his boots at the ankles.

She played with the back of her earring, scraping her thumbnail along the edge of her earlobe. “And?”

“And they’re addictive.” A bright widening of his lips played across his mouth as he blinked at her, and every cell in her body shot to attention. How was it, after everything that’d happened this morning, he could affect her like this?

“That’s what I thought.” Waylynn peeled back the sticky plastic in an empty attempt to calm the uncertainty ripping through her, took a cookie, then offered him the package. Nope. Not even the combination of chocolate and peanut butter frosting could erase the last twelve hours. Alexis was still dead and her career had gone up in flames. Another flash of her writing that note skittered across her memory. She fought to steady her racing pulse and forced herself to study Elliot as he bit into an Oreo instead.

The rest of the world fell away. The charges against her, the accusing tone in Officer Ramsey’s voice, the fact police would probably want to speak to her about the fire, too. In this moment, all she saw was him. Elliot. Her next-door neighbor, her closest friend who she’d spent countless hours quizzing on horrible ’90s country music lyrics by text message throughout the day. Which he knew by heart. The only man who’d been able to change her breathing patterns with a single look in her direction.

Elliot laughed, pulling her back into the moment. “I promise I’m not that interesting, Doc.”

Oh, no. No, no, no. She wasn’t going to go down that road.

“Excuse me. I need some air.” Waylynn discarded the remainder of her cookie into the sink and put one foot in front of the other until she reached the front door. She had to get out of here. Away from him. If only for a few minutes to clear her head. The wood walls blurred in her vision as she escaped out the front. The rush of a cold Alaskan breeze beat against her as she closed the door behind her. Her heartbeat pounded loud behind her ears, the pressure behind her sternum more manageable the longer she kept the door between them. She ran a hand through her damp hair easily. No longer crusted with blood.

The sudden surge of desire she’d felt for him in those heated moments drained. She’d kept her and Elliot’s friendship casual for over a year, but now… Now she’d started imagining that smile in the morning after they woke up in the same bed. How his hair would stick out in every direction as he prepared her breakfast. How they’d have the rest of their lives to test each other’s knowledge of bad country music. She shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the fantasy. They were friends. Nothing more.

A ring of trees surrounded the tiny cabin, weeds cleared approximately fifteen feet in each direction. Nothing but wilderness and blue skies as far as she could see, and a sense of peace settled over her. Elliot had certainly picked the perfect spot to get away from reality. When was the last time she’d gotten out of town, away from work, took a break for herself? Waylynn took in a lungful of crisp, clean mountain air.

Short answer? Never.

After the trial, after her mother’s death, she’d thrown herself into investigating what had gone wrong. Why her father’s behavior had changed so drastically in such a short amount of time with no sign of disease, no evidence of cancer, tumors, mental disabilities, no added stresses at work. Why he’d suddenly turned against her and her mother. The yelling, the fights, the physical altercations. In the end, she’d tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. He’d gotten what he’d deserved, but what if it hadn’t been his fault? What if, like those afflicted with any other genetic disorder, he hadn’t been able to control himself?

Waylynn rolled her lips between her teeth and bit down to fight back the burn in her eyes. A simple blood test had confirmed her theory. He’d been born with a variant of the monoamine oxidase A gene. The “warrior gene.” By disrupting the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, the gene predisposed carriers to more aggressive and violent behavior. While Genism and their military contractors paid her to take advantage of those specific behaviors, she’d spent every waking minute looking for ways to neutralize them. One success. That was all it would take to change the world. To change her world.

Maybe then she and Elliot could become more than—

A low vibration came from the tree line, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Movement shifted the weeds and bushes to her right and her blood pressure spiked. She unfolded her arms. The vibration grew louder, harsher, a split second before thick, brown fur and four long legs materialized at the edge of the trees. Black eyes focused on her and Waylynn couldn’t move. Frizzy hackles raised along the moose’s back. No antlers. A female. But with her ears flattened against her head and nostrils flared, she was just as terrifying as the male of the species.

Waylynn raised her palms in surrender, taking a step back.

Another warning reached her ears and outright fear paralyzed her in place. The creature’s long, thin face dipped toward two smaller brown faces at her feet. Her babies. Newborn twins. Waylynn wouldn’t hold up against a full-fledged moose charge. The damn tiny cabin wouldn’t hold up against the mother defending those calves. “Elliot.”

His name barely registered over the moose’s low-pitched growl. With a couple of licks to the newborns, the mother refocused her efforts on keeping them safe. Waylynn lowered her hands slowly, sweat building on her upper lip. She fought to breathe around the fear clawing up her throat. Any sudden move, any attempt to escape, and the moose would charge. Licking dry lips, she tried to speak again. “Elliot.”

“Don’t move.” Warmth flooded through her. He stepped inside her peripheral vision, so quietly she hadn’t heard him come outside. As though he’d been able to feel her fear from inside the cabin and had come running. Elliot shifted in front of her, attention on the mother and her young. It was only after he’d moved between her and the moose that Waylynn understood what he was trying to do. He tossed an apple in the creature’s direction. His voice leveled with reasoning. “Nobody wants your babies, Mabel. They look like a handful. So I’ll make you a deal. You can have the rest of these apples, but you have to get them to go.”

“I take it you two know each other?” Waylynn kept her voice low. She didn’t dare look away from the cow protecting her young despite the fact all she wanted to do was run.

“We’ve met.” Elliot notched his head back toward her slightly. “Mabel moved in around the same time I had the cabin built. Thing One and Thing Two there were born about two months ago, and she does not like the fact I vacation close by.”

Mabel searched for the fruit, then brought her head back up, mouth empty. A rough exhale expanded the moose’s nostrils.

“All right, Doc, she’s not taking the bait, and it looks like we’re in the middle of a standoff.” Elliot rebalanced his weight between both feet. “When I give you the signal, I want you to run as fast as you can for the cabin. Don’t look back and don’t wait for me.”

“What?” Waylynn took her eyes off Mabel. “I’m not going to leave you out here to take on a moose by your—”

A wall of muscle slammed her into the dirt. Her head snapped back against the ground; she couldn’t see straight. He’d moved so fast she didn’t have time to comprehend what’d happened until the beat of twelve hoofed feet faded into the woods. Mabel had charged, her babies had tagged along with her, and Elliot had tackled Waylynn to the ground. She struggled to breathe as he positioned his hands on either side of her, that damn gut-wrenching smile stretching his mouth thin. “That was fun.”

His exhales skittered along her oversensitized skin and her heart fought to break through her rib cage in response. He’d saved her life. From a moose. “You and I have very different ideas of fun.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.