No response. The answering machine beeped, cutting her off.
Okay. Okay. As long as she kept moving, she’d be okay.
And chances were, if she pulled into the brightly lit police-station parking lot, whoever was following her would drive away.
But what a missed opportunity that would be. If this were the rapist behind her, they could catch him. Right now. Tonight.
She pressed one of the other speed-dial numbers she’d programmed into her phone. Detective Lucy McCoy’s home number.
One ring. Two rings. Three…
“’Lo?” Lucy sounded as if she’d already been asleep.
“Lucy, it’s Syd.” She gave a quick rundown of the situation, and Lucy snapped instantly awake.
“Stay on Pacific,” Lucy ordered. “What’s your license plate number?”
“God, I don’t know. My car’s a little black Civic. The truck’s one of those full-size ones—I haven’t been able to see what color—something dark. And he’s hanging too far back for me to see his plate number.”
“Just keep driving,” Lucy said. “Slow and steady. I’m calling in as many cars as possible to intercept.”
Slow and steady.
Syd used her cell phone and tried calling Lucky one more time.
Nothing.
Slow and steady.
She was heading north on Pacific. She could just follow the road all the way up to San Francisco, slowly and steadily. Provided the truck behind her let her stop for gas. She was running low. Of course a little car like this could go for miles on a sixteenth of a tank. She had no reason to be afraid. At any minute, the San Felipe police were going to come to the rescue.
Any minute. Any. Minute.
She heard it then—sirens in the distance, getting louder and deafeningly louder as the police cars moved closer.
Three of them came from behind. She watched in her rear-view mirror as they surrounded the truck, their lights flashing.
She slowed to a stop at the side of the road as the truck did the same, twisting to look back through her rear window as the police officers approached, their weapons drawn, bright searchlights aimed at the truck.
She could see the shadow of the man in the cab. He had both hands on his head in a position of surrender. The police pulled open the truck’s door, pulled him out alongside the truck where he braced himself, assuming the position for a full-body search.
Syd turned off the ignition and got out, wanting to get closer now that she knew the man following her wasn’t armed, wanting to hear what he was saying, wanting to get a good look at him—see if he was the same man who’d nearly knocked her down the stairs after attacking her neighbor.
The man was talking. She could see from the police officers standing around him that he was keeping up a steady stream of conversation. Explanation, no doubt, for why he was out driving around so late at night. Following someone? Officer, that was just an unfortunate coincidence. I was going to the supermarket to pick up some ice cream.
Yeah, right.
As Syd moved closer, one of the police officers approached her.
“Sydney Jameson?” he called.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you for responding so quickly to Detective McCoy’s call. Does this guy have identification?”
“He does,” the officer said. “He also says he knows you—and that you know him.”
What? Sydney moved closer, but the man who’d been following her was still surrounded by the police and she couldn’t see his face.
The police officer continued. “He also claims you’re both part of a working police task force…?”
Sydney could see in the dim streetlights that the truck was red. Red.
As if on cue, the police officers parted, the man turned his face toward her and…
It was. Luke O’Donlon.
“Why the hell were you following me?” All of her emotions sparked into anger. “You scared me to death, damn it!”
He himself wasn’t too happy about having been frisked by six unfriendly policemen. He was still standing in the undignified search position—legs spread, palms against the side of his truck, and he sounded just as indignant as she did. Maybe even more indignant. “I was following you home. You were supposed to go home, not halfway across the state. Jeez, I was just trying to make sure you were safe.”
“What about Heather?” The words popped out before Sydney could stop herself.
But Luke didn’t even seem to hear her question. He had turned back to the police officers. “Are you guys satisfied? I’m who I say I am, all right? Can I please stand up?”
The police officer who seemed to be in charge looked to Syd.
“No,” she said, nodding yes. “I think you should make him stay like that for about two hours as punishment.”
“Punishment?” Luke let out a stream of sailor’s language as he straightened up. “For doing something nice? For worrying so much about you and Lucy going home from that bar alone that I dropped Heather off at her apartment and came straight back to make sure you’d be okay?”
He hadn’t gone home with Miss Ventura County. He’d given up a night of steamy, mindless, emotionless sex because he had been worried about her.
Syd didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him.
“Heather wasn’t happy,” he told her. “That’s your answer for ‘what about Heather?”’ He smiled ruefully. “I don’t think she’s ever been turned down before.”
He had heard her question.
She’d spent most of the past hour trying her hardest not to imagine his long, muscular legs entangled with Heather’s, his skin slick and his hair damp with perspiration as he…
She’d tried her hardest, but she’d always had a very good imagination.
It was stupid. She’d told herself that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t matter. She didn’t even like him. But now here he was, standing in front of her, gazing at her with those impossibly blue eyes, with that twenty-four-carat sun-gilded hair curling in his face from the ocean’s humidity.
“You scared me,” she said again.
“You?” He laughed. “Something tells me you’re unscareable.” He looked around them at the three police cars, lights still spinning, the officers talking on their radios. He shook his head with what looked an awful lot like admiration. “You actually had the presence of mind to call the police from your cell phone, huh? That was good, Jameson. I’m impressed.”
Syd shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a deal. But I guess you just don’t spend that much time with smart women.”
Lucky laughed. “Ouch. Poor Heather. She’s not even here to defend herself. She’s not that bad, you know. A little heartless and consumed by her career, but that’s not so different from most people.”
“How could you be willing to settle for ‘not that bad?”’ Syd countered. “You could have just about anyone you wanted. Why not choose someone with a heart?”
“That assumes,” he said, “that I’d even want someone’s heart.”
“Ah,” she said, turning back to her car. “My mistake.”
“Syd.”
She turned back to face him.
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” she said. “Warn me in advance all right?” She turned away.
“Syd.”
She sighed and turned to face him again. “Quickly, Ken,” she begged. “We’ve got a seven o’clock meeting scheduled at the police station. I’m not a morning person, and I’m even less of a morning person when I get fewer than six hours of sleep.”
“I’m going to follow you home,” he told her. “When you go up to your apartment, flash your light a few times so I know everything’s okay, all right?”
Syd didn’t get it. “You don’t even like me. Why the concern?”
Lucky smiled. “I never said I didn’t like you. I just don’t want you on my team. Those are two very different things.”
Chapter 5
“Sit on th
e couch—or in the chair,” Dr. Lana Quinn directed Sydney. “Wherever you think you’ll be more comfortable.”
“I appreciate your finding the time to do this on such short notice,” Lucky said.
“You got lucky,” Lana told him with a smile. “Wes called right after my regular one o’clock cancelled. I was a little surprised actually—it’s been a while since I’ve heard from him.”
Lucky didn’t know the pretty young psychologist very well. She was married to a SEAL named Wizard with whom he’d never worked. But Wizard had been in the same BUD/S class with Bobby and Wes, and the three men had remained close. And when Lucky had stopped Wes in the hall to inquire jokingly if he knew a hypnotist, Wes had surprised him by saying, yes, as a matter of fact, he did.
“How is Wes?” Lana asked.
Lucky was no shrink himself, but the question was just a little too casual.
She must have realized the way her words had sounded and hastened to explain. “He was in such a rush when he called, I didn’t even have time to ask. We used to talk on the phone all the time back when my husband was in Team Six, you know, when he was gone more often than not—I think it was because Wes and I both missed Quinn. And after he transferred back to California, back to Team Ten, Wes kind of dropped out of touch.”
“Wes is doing good—just made chief,” Lucky told her.
“That’s great,” Lana enthused—again just a little too enthusiastically. “Congratulate him for me, will you?”
Lucky was not an expert by any means, but he didn’t have to be an expert to know there was more to that story than Lana was telling. Not that he believed for one minute that Wes would’ve had an affair with the wife of one of his best friends. No, Wes Skelly was a caveman in a lot of ways, but his code of honor was among the most solid Lucky had ever known.
It did make perfect sense, though, for Wes to have done something truly stupid, like fall in love with his good friend’s wife. And if that had happened, Wes would have dropped out of Lana’s life like a stone. And Lucky suspected she knew that, psychologist that she was.
God, life was complicated. And it was complicated enough without throwing marriage and its restrictions into the picture. He was never getting married, thank you very much.
It was a rare day that went by without Lucky reminding himself of that—in fact, it was his mantra. Never getting married. Never getting married.
Yet lately—particularly as he watched Frisco with his wife, Mia, and Blue with Lucy, and even the captain, Joe Cat, who’d been married to his wife, Veronica, longer than any of the other guys in Alpha Squad, Lucky had felt…
Envy.
God, he hated to admit it, but he was a little jealous. When Frisco draped his arm around Mia’s shoulder, or when she came up behind him and rubbed his shoulders after a long day. When Lucy stopped in at the crowded, busy Alpha Squad office and Blue would look across the room and smile, and she’d smile back. Or Joe Cat. Calling Veronica every chance he got, from a pay phone in downtown Paris, from the Australian outback after a training op. He’d lower his voice, but Lucky had overheard far more than once. Hey babe, ya miss me? God, I miss you….
Lucky had come embarrassingly close to getting a lump in his throat more than once.
Despite his rather desperate-sounding mantra, Joe and Blue and Frisco and all of the other married SEALs made the perils of commitment look too damn good.
As Lucky watched, across the room Sydney perched on the very edge of the couch, arms folded tightly across her chest as she looked around Lana’s homey office. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be hypnotized. Her body language couldn’t be any more clear.
He settled into the chair across from her. “Thanks for agreeing to this.”
He could see her trepidation in the tightness of her mouth as she shook her head. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it will.”
“Don’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t.”
She was afraid of failing. Lucky could understand that. Failure was something he feared as well.
“Why don’t you take off your jacket,” Lana suggested to Sydney. “Get loose—unbutton your shirt a little, roll up your sleeves. I want you to try to get as comfortable as possible. Kick off your boots, try to relax.”
“I don’t think this is going to work,” Sydney said again, this time to Lana, as she slipped her arms out of her jacket.
“Don’t worry about that,” Lana told her, sitting down in the chair closest to Sydney. “Before we go any further, I want to tell you that my methods are somewhat unconventional. But I have had some degree of success working with victims of crimes, helping them clarify the order and details of certain traumatic or frightening events, so bear with me. And again, there’s no guarantee that this will work, but we’ve got a better shot at it if you try to be open-minded.”
Syd nodded tightly. “I’m trying.”
She was. Lucky had to give her that. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t have to be here, yet here she was.
“Let’s start with you telling me what you felt when you encountered the man on the stairs,” Lana said. “Did you see him coming, or were you startled by him?”
“I heard the clatter of his footsteps,” Syd told her as she unfastened first one, then two, then three buttons on her shirt.
Lucky looked away, aware that he was watching her, aware that he didn’t want her to stop at three, remembering with a sudden alarming clarity the way she had felt when he’d held her in his arms. She’d tasted so sweet and hot and…
Lucky was dressed in his summer uniform, and he resisted the urge to loosen his own collar. He was overheating far too often these days. He should have called Heather after following Syd home last night. He should have called and groveled. Chances are she would have let him in.
But he’d gone home instead. He’d swum about four hundred laps in his pool, trying to curb his restlessness, blaming it on the fact that Alpha Squad was out there, in the real world, while he’d been left behind.
“He was moving fast,” Syd continued. “He clearly didn’t see me, and I couldn’t get out of his way.”
“Were you frightened?” Lana asked.
Syd thought about that, chewing for a moment on her lower lip. “More like alarmed,” she said. “He was big. But I wasn’t afraid of him because I thought he was dangerous. It was more like the flash of fear you get when a car swerves into your lane and there’s nowhere to go to avoid hitting it.”
“Picture the moment that you first heard him coming,” Lana suggested, “and try to flip it into slow motion. You hear him, then you see him. What are you thinking? Right at that second when you first spot him coming down the stairs?”
Syd looked up from untying the laces of her boots. “Kevin Manse,” she said.
She was still leaning over, and Lucky got a sudden brief look down the open front of her shirt. She was wearing a black bra, and he got a very clear look at black lace against smooth pale skin. As she moved to untie her other boot, Lucky tried to look away. Tried and failed. He found himself watching her, hoping for another enticing glimpse of her small but perfectly, delicately, deliciously shaped, lace-covered breasts.
Sydney Jameson was enormously attractive, he realized with a jolt as he examined her face. Sure he’d always preferred women with a long mane of hair, but hers was darkly sleek and especially lustrous, and the short cut suited the shape of her face. Her eyes were the color of black coffee, with lashes that didn’t need any makeup to look thick and dark.
She wasn’t traditionally pretty, but whenever she stopped scowling and smiled, she was breathtaking.
And as far as her clothes…
Lucky had never particularly liked the Annie Hall look before, but with a flash of awareness, he suddenly completely understood its appeal. Buried beneath Syd’s baggy, mannish clothing was a body as elegantly, gracefully feminine as the soft curves of her face. And the glimpse he’d had was sexy as hell—sex
y in a way he’d never imagined possible, considering that the women he usually found attractive were far more generously endowed.
She straightened up, kicking off her boots. She wasn’t wearing socks, and her feet were elegantly shaped with very high arches. God, what was wrong with him that the sight of a woman’s bare foot was enough to push him over the edge into complete arousal?
Lucky shifted in his seat, crossing his legs, praying Lana wouldn’t ask him to fetch anything from her desk all the way across the room.
“Who’s Kevin Manse?” the psychologist asked Sydney.
Syd sat back, crossing her legs tailor-style, tucking her sexy feet beneath her on the couch. “He was a football player I, um…” she flashed a look in Lucky’s direction and actually blushed “…knew in college. I guess the sheer size of this guy reminded me of Kevin.”
Wasn’t that interesting? And completely unexpected. Syd Jameson certainly didn’t seem the type to have dated a football player in college. “Boyfriend?” Lucky asked.
“Um,” Syd said. “Not exactly.”
Ah. Maybe she’d liked the football player, and he hadn’t even noticed her. Maybe, like Lucky, Kevin had been too busy trying to catch the eyes of the more bodacious cheerleaders.
Lana scribbled a comment on her notepad. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s give this a shot, shall we?”
Syd laughed nervously. “So how do you do this? All I can think of is Elmer Fudd trying to hypnotize Bugs Bunny with his pocket watch on a chain. You know, ‘You ah getting vewwy sweepy.”’
Laughing, Lana crossed the room and turned off the light. “Actually, I use a mirror ball, a flashlight and voiced suggestions. Lieutenant, I have to recommend that you step out into the waiting room for a few minutes. I’ve found that SEALs are highly susceptible to this form of light-induced hypnotism. My theory is that it has to do with the way you’ve trained yourself to take combat naps.” She sat down again across from Syd. “They fall, quickly, into deep REM sleep for short periods of time,” she explained before looking back at Lucky. “There may be a form of self-hypnosis involved when you do that.” She smiled wryly. “I’m not sure though. Quinn won’t let me experiment on him. You can try staying in here, but…”
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