High-Heeled Alibi. Sydney Ryan

for breaking hearts, Grey.”

      He said nothing. He had mentioned the bruises only once. She had asked him never to mention them again.

      “Come on.” Grey made his voice light. “I’ll buy you a tofu omelet.”

      She made a face. “Bean curd isn’t my idea of comfort food.” She stopped a few steps from her car, turned and faced him. “Besides, I’m beat.”

      “All right, I’ll accept that, but only because I’ve got some tax records to go over before I drive down to meet a client this morning.”

      “Beverly Hills?” she guessed.

      “Malibu,” Grey answered with a toothy smile. “I’m driving up to the lodge next weekend. You come, too. Try a little rock climbing.”

      “Rock climbing?” She shook her head. “I like to keep my feet on the ground nowadays.”

      Grey looked down at her. “That’s not my ‘two Scooter Pies’ Bitsy talking.”

      She looked up at her friend. “No, it’s not.” Tiredness was tangible in her words.

      “I’m calling you next week, and you better be ready to scale some peaks.”

      She was too exhausted even to try to think of an excuse. She touched Grey’s arm. “Thank you again for coming.”

      “No problem. It’ll give me an amusing story to tell in chambers.” He leaned down and gave her a light kiss on her forehead. “Go home. Get some sleep. Wash off that makeup. I keep waiting for you to say, ‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.’”

      She smiled. “I love you, Grey.”

      Grey straightened and regarded her with a similar smile. “Don’t think that’s going to scare me away. You know I don’t give up easily.”

      “I’ve got the cavities to prove it.”

      She went to her car, unlocked the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Through the side window, she watched Grey walk back to his car, turning his collar up against the early morning chill coming in from the coast. She started the engine and waved goodbye as he reached his own car. He was a good man. A lousy tree climber, but a good man.

      She pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward home, trying not to think about last night, trying not to think at all. The day’s light had erased the night, but, in her mind’s eye, she still saw the man with the slow smile and the eyes of a storm.

      She’d been so careful this time. She’d arranged her life neatly, forced herself to stop and look before leaping. Truth be told, her current vampire vixen getup was the wildest thing she had allowed herself since her divorce. And considering it had been Halloween in Canaan, she had still been among the conservative faction of the town’s population.

      For months, she had bitten her tongue, ignored desires, walked calmly away instead of rushing head-first into the flames. It hadn’t mattered. Michael James had made her realize what she’d feared deep down all along was true. She was not safe.

      She shook her head to clear the man’s image from her mind, releasing a sigh of relief at her close call. The man was a criminal, for goodness sake, reaffirming her belief she couldn’t trust her own faculties of attraction. Desire clouded the mind, sent logic and common sense scurrying.

      She took a deep breath, hands steady on the wheel, and moved the car forward at a reasonable speed. Her composed world had been threatened, but it wouldn’t be toppled by one smiling stiff. Last night was already on its way to becoming an anecdote for Grey’s colleagues. According to the police, Michael James was probably heading to the border. And she was on her way home to take a long, hot shower, crawl into bed with the latest Mary Higgins Clark novel and dismiss the brief, disturbing appearance of Michael James in her life.

      She reached for the radio’s buttons, the quiet she usually sought seeming unnaturally still. As she clicked the radio’s on button, she heard a voice, but it did not come from the speakers. It came from directly behind her. A voice she’d heard before. A voice she’d never expected to hear again.

      “Beautiful day to be alive, isn’t it, darling?” Michael James observed from the car’s backseat.

      Chapter Three

      The hell with control. Bitsy screamed so loud the windows vibrated.

      In the rearview mirror, the man winced. “Is that necessary?”

      She screamed again, louder and longer.

      The man rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s not really helping matters.”

      She slammed on the brakes and grabbed the door handle. At the same time, the man’s broad hand snaked from behind the seat and snapped down the lock button.

      “I’m not going to hurt you.”

      She twisted her head, meeting the man’s eyes.

      “I’m one of the good guys,” he said. His lips parted in a thin smile, the mouth sensual with a touch of cruelness.

      Her fear intensified. “Not according to your APB.”

      His smile faded, leaving his features gray and drawn. “Just drive,” he ordered.

      She faced front. Her hands gripped the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver. He was scared, too, she realized. A tiny bit of her fear slipped away, making room for rational thought. After her marriage, she had bought a weight bench and a set of weights, and lifted every other day. She’d taken self-defense seminars and had gotten up to a green belt in tae kwon do until a torn hamstring had set her back. She had promised herself she would never be a victim again.

      She would keep that promise.

      She looked through the windshield, hopeful for any sign of life in this small square of the City of Death. All was quiet.

      “Where do you want to go?” She asked. Better, she thought. Controlled. Calm. She had to stay cool. If she gave in to the panic coursing through her, the man would win. And she could lose her life.

      She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw his gaze nonchalantly lift to hers. She could taste her fear. Like bile, it rose in her throat. She looked away. Damn him.

      He leaned in close behind her until she could see the sharply drawn lines of his features in her peripheral vision. His fingers rested on the side of the seat right near her shoulder. One inch closer and those at-ease fingers could wrap about her throat; those nails with their pale half moons could line up like little soldiers along her jugular.

      “To your house,” he whispered. A bolt of ice darted up her spine.

      The man sat back, the pressure along her seat relenting. Still, his hand remained, deceptively lifeless, on the side of the seat. She slid her foot off the brake to the gas pedal. She released the clutch, not realizing the car was still in third gear. The engine seized. The car bucked. The man swore as he was thrown into the back of her seat. Bitsy was slammed into the steering wheel. She straightened, her hands clutching the wheel as if in spasm.

      “Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. Never did meet a woman who could handle a stick.”

      She wrapped her hand around the black knob of the shifter, its hardness beneath her palm. No give, no take. She shifted into first, eased up on the clutch and gently pressed down on the gas. The car moved forward as smoothly as hot fudge melting on French vanilla ice cream. Control.

      The street was empty. People were sleeping. Dream now, she told them, as the car passed house after silent house. Dream sweet, illicit dreams.

      The police station was in the opposite direction the car had been heading. If she could keep the man preoccupied while taking a series of lefts and rights, he might not notice they were turning around.

      “How’d you avoid the police?” she asked. She sounded good. Efficient, in