He started the car and backed out of the space. But before he’d even turned it around, he said, “Why did you ask about the symposium?”
Sam didn’t dare tell him the truth about the red ink. No way was she giving him any warning. “When I saw the book on the shelf, I remembered talking with you at the signing. It was several months after we met here when I came to interview Jimmy.” That was a lie; she honestly didn’t recall Connolly being among the hundreds at the signing that day. But he couldn’t know that.
“Yes, it was. How lovely that you remembered me.”
She managed to keep her lips from curling in a tight, grim smile. Got you, bastard.
Alec would come. He’d figure this out, and he’d find her.
And if he didn’t show up in time, Sam would wait for the perfect opportunity, then drive Connolly’s own pen right through his vicious throat.
18
Not willing to waste one second looking for the others, Alec called Dean Taggert as he ran from the classroom toward his car.Telling them what he knew, he asked them to follow, seeing them in his rearview mirror, running to their own cars, as he tore off down the street. They were probably less than a half mile behind him now, all racing toward the state prison, though he doubted any of them felt the frenzy that surged through every inch of Alec’s body.
“Let her be okay,” he muttered for the hundredth time, not knowing if it was a prayer or an order. He couldn’t say it to Sam directly because her phone was turned off.
Everything that had happened since last night-Tricia’s attack, Sam’s mother’s near miss, and, of course, the news of Lily Fletcher’s death-had strung Alec to his tautest point. He felt on the verge of snapping, careening wildly out of control, knowing something happening to Sam Dalton would send him over the edge.
“My fault,” he whispered. “Should never have brought her into this.”
He hadn’t. Logically, he knew that. The Professor had known Samantha long before Alec had shown up at her door a week ago. Still, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of responsibility.
She might be okay. Her second call, as she’d left the hospital, had been one hour ago. So she had been at the prison for no more than twenty minutes. Myers’s presence might keep Connolly from doing anything crazy.
But this whole thing smelled like a setup to him, the call about Flynt a way to get Sam into his clutches. Deep down, he feared the Professor would not be forestalled by the presence of any city cop. Alec leaned forward, hunching over the steering wheel, as if he could make the remaining few miles to the prison disappear faster beneath the tires.
Finally, he reached the exit. Flying off it, he followed the same route he’d taken less than twenty-four hours ago.
Jerking to a stop at the prison guard shack, he flashed his badge. “Special Agent Alec Lambert.”
The guard ambled out, glancing at his clipboard.
Alec debated pushing him. But he had no warrant; he had no real proof that this guy’s own boss was a psychotic murderer. Coming off like a raging lunatic wouldn’t get him inside any sooner and could delay things.
“Don’t see your name here.”
“I’m working an active investigation and have a hot lead.”
The man shrugged in boredom, law enforcement visits not unusual. “Okay.”
“Did an Officer Myers come through here with a young woman this morning?”
“ ’ Bout a half hour ago,” the man said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Went up the private drive to the admin office. Warden’s orders.”
Good God.
The guard handed the ID back and Alec took it. “Several other members of my team are on their way here; they’re minutes behind me,” he said.
“Well, you can go, but your friends are gonna have to wait. Warden called me a few minutes ago and asked me to go down to the basement at eleven a.m. and check the electrical box. I guess they had some problems with the gate last night, right at eleven.”
Alec frowned; the story sounded incredibly suspicious. This guy couldn’t be too bright not to question it. “You’re leaving your post?”
“The entry gate will be locked down.” The guard pointed to the towers high above. “Nobody’ll get by, and anybody wanting to come in will have to wait.”
“My colleagues can’t wait,” he bit out, his nerves screaming.
The guy scratched his head. “I guess I could call up to the warden…”
“No!” Alec snapped, not wanting Connolly to have any warning. He glanced frantically at his dashboard clock. Ten fifty-seven. “Just give them another minute, two tops. I’m sure the other agents will be here by then. Now, I really need to get in.”
The warden wanted the gate unattended precisely at eleven a.m. Which meant something or someone would be going through it and he wanted no witnesses.
Like a car with a woman stuffed into the trunk?
The guard finally nodded, pressing a button to open the enclosure. Alec gunned it, but rather than heading to the public area, he immediately swung onto the private drive Sam and Myers had used. The guard yelled from behind, jogging after him and waving his arms.
Alec ignored the man. Racing up the drive, he was conscious of every second that passed. Ten fifty-eight. Was he getting in the car even now? Tying Sam up? Hurting her?
Suddenly, Alec spotted a dark vehicle coming toward him from the direction of the administrative wing. He swerved, straddling the center lane, blocking the route. “You’re not getting past me, you son of a bitch.”
His darkest suspicions were confirmed when the vehicle suddenly veered off onto a gravel access road. Connolly.
Swerving to follow, Alec felt the car fishtail. He steered out of the spin, flooring the gas pedal. As he roared away, he saw the guard, still jogging toward him, screaming and waving for him to stop.
“No fucking way, buddy,” he snapped, hunkering down and taking off.
The prison grounds were expansive, covering a few hundred acres, and this narrow, on-site road was obviously intended for maintenance vehicles only. The warden had the advantage of knowing where it led, if it eventually came to any kind of gate that would allow him to escape.
Alec, however, had the advantage of being desperate to save the woman he was falling in love with.
Dust hung a foot off the gravel, kicked up by the dark sedan he was following, now no more than ten yards ahead. Close enough for him to make out the license plate and realize Connolly was driving the detective’s Baltimore PD vehicle. He didn’t want to think about what had probably happened to Myers, who would never have given the vehicle over freely. Right now, he could focus only on Sam.
Brake lights suddenly flashed. A few yards ahead of the police vehicle was a small building, probably a storage shack for road salt and lawn equipment.
The road ran out directly in front of it.
The Professor was cornered. Which would make him very angry, and even more dangerous. His brake lights flashed again, gravel spewing up and spitting on Alec’s windshield a few yards behind.
Alec quickly ran down the possibilities. He could ram the car, hope to incapacitate the suspect before he could retaliate against Sam. An accident could hurt her just as badly, however. Maybe even more so if she was already injured.
He didn’t want a hostage situation, especially not here, on the warden’s own turf, where his own men might be slow to react against him. But he wasn’t about to let the bastard get away.
Out of time, Alec jammed the brakes, spun the wheel, and slid his vehicle’s passenger side to within inches of the other car’s bumper. He blocked the entire width of the road, eliminating any turnaround room. If Connolly wanted to drive around him, he’d have to plow through a couple of trees.
Leaping out, his weapon in hand, he remained crouched down for cover, yelling, “Give it up, Connolly. There’s no way out of here!”
He counted to five, praying the man would have enough self-preservation instinct to give himself up, not go down
in a blaze of glory. But since Connolly had to know how he, a former warden, would be treated in prison, Alec didn’t figure it would be that easy.
Movement in the car ahead; then the passenger side door opened.
“Nice and easy,” he called, the gun trained on the kill zone.
But Connolly didn’t step out. Sam did. Her eyes were wide, frightened, her hands cuffed together in front of her, but she appeared unharmed.
“You okay?”
She nodded once but didn’t run to safety. He realized why when he saw the tip of a handgun pointed at her spine. Then the warden stepped out, grabbing her by the back of her neck, the weapon never dipping below its deadly target.
“Step away, Agent Lambert, or I’ll kill her,” he yelled. The man’s voice shook with rage. His hand, however, was remarkably steady.
“You have no escape,” Alec said. “There are other agents pouring through the gate right now, and armed guards everywhere.”
“Guards who are loyal to me,” the man said with a sneer. “They’ll do what I tell them to.”
“Aid and abet in a murder? I don’t think so.”
Connolly’s eyes blazed with hatred. “I said the sheep will do what I want them to!”
Alec didn’t respond, merely kept his weapon pointed at the man’s head, able to do nothing else. He would not lower it. This wasn’t some average, scared thug who could be reasoned with. The man would blow her head off the very second he thought he could.
Alec’s finger tightened on the trigger. His stare found Sam’s, silently pleading with her to trust him, to understand that he would find a way to get her out of this.
Something in her expression, though, made him hesitate before again focusing on Connolly. She lifted her cuffed hands an inch or two, looking down at them pointedly, though keeping her head very still. As he watched, she reached into one sleeve with her other fingers, extracting something long and slender, something silver and sharp-looking.
She had a weapon. A knife? Letter opener?
Alec wanted to tell her not to do a damned thing, to let him handle it. But he wasn’t that stupid. If they were both going to get out of this alive, he needed her help. If she could distract Connolly for a second or two, escape from his line of fire, Alec could take him out.
“I’m afraid you’re blocking me in,” said the warden, icily polite. But the words didn’t disguise the insanity of his twisted smile. “Put the gun down and get over there into the trees. Leave your keys in the ignition. The lady and I are going to drive away.”
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Then I’ll shoot her.”
That cold, matter-of-fact tone said he meant it. He was growing tired of the standoff, ready to act.
They had no time. Alec’s eyes shifted toward Sam’s face. She mouthed the words, On three, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I hadn’t wanted it to end this way.”
One.
“But you’re leaving me no choice.”
Two.
“Good-bye, my dear.”
Three.
Sam’s hands jerked so quickly, Connolly was caught completely off guard. She punched her fists up, hard, aiming directly at the suspect’s face and making contact.
He screamed, letting go of her neck as blood gushed from his wound. Sam dropped to the ground, the gun swinging wildly just above her.
“You’re dead, bitch!” the Professor raged.
But he didn’t make good on his threat. Because Alec pulled the trigger and put the man down.
“A pen? Jesus, you stabbed him in the eye with a pen?”
Sam didn’t know why Alec kept saying that-had been saying it for several hours, since right after he’d shot Connolly to the ground and raced to her side. He’d been there; he’d seen it; he knew exactly what had happened.
“It worked, didn’t it?” she said.
And nobody had been more shocked by that than Sam.
She had hoped to, at most, jab the bastard with the sharp tip of his own engraved writing utensil so he’d let her go and she could run. She’d never imagined actually hitting a serious target, plunging the thin rod directly into Warden Connolly’s eyeball.
He’d be blind on one side. At least, he would be if he recovered from the shot Alec had centered right in the man’s chest.
She still couldn’t believe it had all happened. Her head hadn’t stopped spinning all day, not during those insane minutes when she’d seen her own death seconds away. Not afterward, when Alec had wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Or when the two of them had dragged a somehow still-breathing Myers from the trunk. When they’d wondered if they should seek refuge in the maintenance shack, waiting for backup against what could be an army of angry prison guards whose boss lay bleeding on the ground.
Thank God that stubborn guard from the front gate had followed Alec all the way out onto the maintenance road. He’d witnessed everything and had helped defuse the situation when more responders started showing up.
It had all seemed crazy, the kind of nightmare scenario that happened to other people. Not to Sam the Spaminator, who didn’t even leave her house unless there was an ice-cream emergency.
“It feels like I’ve been gone for a month,” she said as she entered her apartment that evening. Alec had brought her here after a long day of interviews, police reports, and questioning.
And sadness-when she’d learned about the death of Lily Fletcher, she had cried long and hard, though she’d known the woman only a few days. It was just so damned senseless. All of it, everything that had happened in the past few weeks, from the minute Ryan had IM’d her… insane and senseless.
“I know. I’m sure you’re ready to get back to your normal life.”
Alec didn’t look at her as he said the words, and his face was set in stern, serious lines. It had been all day, since the moment he’d come charging to her rescue, against all odds getting there before Connolly had made her disappear off the face of the earth.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him as she tossed her coat on the back of a chair and kicked off her shoes, wanting to feel normal, safe, and at home.
He shook his head briefly. “Nothing. Just glad it’s over.”
“Me, too.”
She stared at him, finally realizing he hadn’t taken off his coat as well. And certainly not his shoes. In fact, he looked stiff, poised to turn and walk out of here again. That was crazy, of course. After everything they’d been through, surely he wouldn’t…
“I should go.”
Her jaw dropped.
“It’s been a hell of a day.”
“Hell of a week,” she said slowly, trying to figure out what was going on here. She and Alec had just shared the most intense day of her life, after what had been one of the craziest nights of her life. From frightening to sensual to terrifying, all in a matter of hours, and all with this man right by her side. And now he thought he was going to just walk away?
Uh-uh. No way. Not happening. “Where do you think you’re going?”
One brow shot up in surprise at her aggressive tone. “I, uh, figured I’d head home.”
“And then what?”
He knew she wasn’t asking something mundane, like whether he was going to go right to bed or stop for a shower first. She didn’t have to put it into words; they both knew what she really meant.
“And then I’m staying there,” he finally admitted.
Alone. Never to come back.
Sam swallowed away a stab of hurt, knowing there was more to this. Alec wasn’t the type to walk away having gotten what he wanted. He wasn’t that guy; she knew it down to her very soul.
More, he felt something for her. She knew that, too, just as she knew she had developed feelings for him as well.
“No, you’re not,” she finally said, remaining calm and resolute.
He finally met her stare directly, and she saw the genuine emotion in that handsome, weary face. “Sam,
you told me last night how glad you were for life.”
“I am.”
“So I want you to go start living it.”
That was exactly what she wanted to do. “I intend to. No more locking myself away here; there’s a lot going on in the world and I plan to be a part of it.”
A faint smile widened his mouth. “I’m glad.”
She wasn’t finished. “I plan to be a part of yours, too.”
Though a spark appeared in his eyes, the smile faded. “I don’t expect that.”
She pounced on his words. “You don’t expect it? Or you don’t want it?”
“Semantics.”
“No, it’s not,” she snapped. “One implies that you’re about to walk out of here for some noble, it’s-for-your-own-good reason. The other says you got what you wanted last night and don’t care to repeat the experience now that I’m not in any danger and you’re not stuck babysitting me.”
Anger tightened his features as he stalked over, grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t you say that. Don’t even think it.”
“Then take off your coat, stay here, and prove me wrong, damn it.”
His hands dropped. The coat remained on. An invisible veil of determination separated him from her as fi nitely as one of the fences from that hellish prison.
She stared up at him, searching for the truth, needing to understand why he was trying so hard to walk away when he sounded as though he wanted to do anything but.
God knew Sam had a lot of reasons not to trust men after what her loving husband had done. But she trusted him. She trusted them-what they could have together, if only he’d let them. Lifting a hand to his face, she cupped his cheek. “I’m falling for you, Alec.”
His eyes closed.
“I’m not some inexperienced kid who confuses lust with love. I’ve had relationships; I’ve been in love. I’ve been married; I’ve been divorced. And I’ve never felt for anyone-even after years-what I feel for you now, after less than a week.”
He finally looked at her again, but that emptiness remained. “In that time you’ve seen someone you love brutalized, your own mother targeted. You’ve been kidnapped. You’ve had to stand by and watch an injured man bleeding at your feet. And you’ve learned about the death of a woman you were coming to like. All in less than one week. So where’s this newfound gladness for life gotten you so far?”
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