Killer Countdown. Amelia Autin

frowning a little. But then she remembered those chocolate-brown eyes, and the way they and his mobile mouth could express a wide range of emotions, as they had in his hospital room. He’d been angry with her this afternoon—and all marine—but yesterday...yesterday he’d seemed human. Approachable. A wounded warrior trying to come to terms with a diagnosis that made a mockery of his seeming invulnerability.

      She ran through the facts she knew about him—the ones she’d known for a while and the ones she’d researched yesterday after she’d cut the interview short—and tried to assemble them into a picture of the man.

      Knowing he was a widower whose wife and unborn child had died at the hands of terrorists, explained that incredibly protective streak in him. Not just this afternoon, but five years ago, when he’d used his body to shield a pregnant woman from harm in a domestic terrorism incident outside a bookstore. He’d escaped injury this afternoon, but not back then. That’s when he’d sustained the TBI that most likely was the trigger for the seizures he was experiencing now.

      Carly had still been in college when Shane’s pregnant wife had been kidnapped and murdered, but it had made the news at the time. She remembered it vividly, but she hadn’t known it was him. She hadn’t made the connection until she’d researched everything she could about the senator.

      Wendy Jones, wife of a marine lieutenant stationed at the NATO headquarters in Belgium, had been abducted in broad daylight by a terrorist organization in retaliation for the arrest and conviction of three of its members, including its founder. And then executed in cold blood.

      Carly had read with keen interest the interview he’d given his hometown newspaper shortly after the US Marine Corps had retired him due to the injuries he’d sustained that day five years ago. He’d made the Corps his home for so long it almost seemed a sacrilege to even think of “hanging up his spurs,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Shane Jones had explained to the reporter. “Twenty and out” had never been in his mind. He was a lifer. “Once a Marine, Always a Marine” wasn’t just a slogan used by former members of the US Marine Corps to distinguish themselves from lesser mortals, it had been his mantra.

      Shane had been reticent, but the reporter had skillfully elicited the information that Shane was one of those rarities, a marine who’d enlisted in the Corps as a buck private and then had rapidly risen through the ranks. Not just as a noncommissioned officer—a noncom—but as a commissioned officer. Tapped at twenty-one for the Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Educational Program, the Corps had sent him to Officer Candidates School and then to college. Everything he was, everything he’d accomplished professionally, he owed to the Corps, he’d been quick to point out to the reporter, and he’d had no intention of reneging on the deal.

      “But all that’s at an end,” the reporter had stated. “So what’s next for you now?”

      Shane hadn’t had an answer for the interviewer. But Carly had read everything she could find on the senator, and she knew that after knocking around for a couple of months, Shane had gone into politics with the same single-minded dedication he’d once had for the Corps. He was an avowed independent—despite his military background that made some think he must be a right-wing “hawk”—but even though he’d staunchly refused to allow his media consultants to use the reason for his medical discharge in the campaign, the local media had played up his heroism despite his own refusal to do so, and he’d won that election in a landslide.

      A year later, when the then-senior senator from Colorado had announced his retirement, Shane had declared for the vacant seat in the Senate. He hadn’t been the only one vying for that position, but his heroism during the domestic terrorism incident at the bookstore had still been recent enough to be the deciding factor in a close election.

      Integrity counts, Carly mused. Then added with a touch of cynicism, Sometimes.

      She shifted positions, tucking her pillow between her head and the wall of the plane, her thoughts growing drowsy. Drowsy...and dangerous.

      She’d been drawn to Shane both physically and emotionally. Yesterday and today. But she knew better than to let herself get involved with someone like him. After Jack she’d sworn off men completely, then modified her stance somewhat. She would only date those who didn’t threaten her closely guarded heart.

      And Senator Shane Jones was a threat—no question about that. Not only did he have the emotional depth and strength of character she admired, he’d suffered the kind of injury that had stolen Jack from her. And that she couldn’t bear. She couldn’t lose another man the way she’d lost Jack. She just couldn’t.

       Chapter 4

      The ringing of the phone roused Carly from a chaotic dream, the basic elements of which lingered even after she pried her eyes open, glanced at the alarm clock and collapsed back onto the bed. She tugged her pillow over her head, ignoring the phone for once. She’d had all of three hours of sleep, and unless the building was on fire, there was no emergency that would get her out of bed.

      Eventually the ringing stopped. Then her brand-new, less-than-twelve-hours-old smartphone began chirping. She hadn’t had time to set up all her ringtones yet, so she had no idea who’d be calling her at the ungodly hour of—

      She emerged from beneath the pillow and cracked one eye open to peer at the clock—8:34 a.m. Not so ungodly, but still...she hadn’t arrived home until fivefifteen this morning. She’d dumped her carry-on suitcase in the hallway, stripped off her clothes without bothering to hang them up and tumbled naked into bed without even brushing her teeth, an oversight she was paying for now with the yucky taste in her mouth.

      Her smartphone stopped for all of five seconds, then started chirping again. Whoever was on the other end was persistent, she’d give them that. She tugged on one purse strap until she managed to pull her purse off the dresser and into bed beside her, then fumbled until she found her new iPhone. “Hello?”

      “Carly? It’s J.C.” The clipped British accent of her producer at the cable news network she’d joined last year filled her ear.

      “You have ten seconds before I hang up on you,” she told J.C. “So whatever it is, it had better be good. And quick.”

      “Senator Shane Jones is trying to reach you.”

      That made her sit up, then clutch the bedclothes to her chest as if J.C. could see her naked. “What?”

      “Yeah, the subject of your broadcast last evening wants you to call him ASAP.”

      “Did he say why?”

      “Wasn’t the senator himself. His press secretary called the network looking for your contact info, and that got routed to me. You know what this is about?”

      Carly slung her long, dark hair over one shoulder and scrubbed a hand over her eyes, her brain scrambling to focus. Was the senator just pissed because she’d reported on the assassination attempt? That didn’t make sense—she wasn’t the only reporter covering the story, and he had to know it. Of course, she was the only one with footage of the gunman, which raised her story head and shoulders above the rest. Still, even if he’d seen her broadcast, she hadn’t said anything he could really object to, hadn’t mentioned why he was there at the Mayo Clinic.

      “Carly?” J.C.’s voice took on an impatient tone.

      “I’m thinking,” she countered quickly. No, she reasoned, if he’s trying to get in touch with me, there’s only one explanation. He intends to go public with— “He promised me an exclusive,” she told J.C.

      His voice sharpened. “When did he promise you that? You never mentioned it to me.”

      “I don’t tell you everything.” A long silence followed, during which Carly could have sworn she could hear J.C.’s thoughts.

      He didn’t say any of the things she figured he was thinking. All he said was, “When the senator arrived in DC last night, he released a statement through his press secretary.”

      “Saying?”