Shadow Hawk. Jill Shalvis

on his throat, and then the fire in his body sizzled along with his vision as his air supply was abruptly cut off.

      By Gaines. Regional director.

      Traitor.

      Hawk tried to lift one of his arms to grasp at the foot on his windpipe.

      “Don’t bother.” Gaines pressed harder. “You’ll be dead soon, anyway. I just wanted you to suffer a little first, you know, for screwing with me for so long.”

      Hawk found himself shockingly helpless, an absolutely new and unenjoyable experience. He simply couldn’t draw air, and good Christ but he felt like his chest was burning.

      “Hurts like a mother, doesn’t it?”

      What hurt the most was that he couldn’t remember if he’d managed to spit out Gaines’s name before he’d gone down. In case this all went to shit, he wanted Logan to know they’d been right. That is, if the radio was even back up. “Logan—”

      “Sorry. It’s going to be a tragic evening all around. You’re both going to die trying to double-cross the agency.”

      Through a haze of agony as he choked on his very last breath, he realized he was still gripping his gun. Now if only he could get the muscles in his arm to raise it. As he struggled, he heard everyone checking in.

      Watkins.

      Thomas.

      Logan. Thank God, Logan.

      Any second now they’d realize Hawk hadn’t checked in as well.

      That he couldn’t…

      “HAWK? COME IN, HAWK.” Abby said this with what she felt was admirable calm, even as a bead of sweat ran between her breasts. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just that their equipment had failed—even the backup equipment—for five long minutes.

      “I don’t see him,” Thomas radioed.

      “Me either.” This from Watkins.

      “I’m going back up to the roof,” Logan responded. “Maybe he never got down.”

      She expected Hawk to jump in here with laughter in his voice to say that everything was good. But he didn’t. Oh, God. She needed to sit down. For several months. Because he would not joke, not at a time like this. He might be surprisingly laid-back and easygoing considering the constant, nonstop danger the job put him in, but he knew protocol. He’d been a soldier, Special Forces. He lived by the rules, and to her knowledge, always followed them. “Hawk.”

      When he still didn’t answer, she visualized him. Her therapist had taught her that picturing the cause of her grievance helped.

      Of course her therapist had meant the men who’d taken her hostage, but the idea behind it was the same. Hoping it would work, she concentrated on the image of Conner Hawk.

      It took embarrassingly little time—like one-point-two seconds. He came to her shirtless, which she didn’t—shouldn’t—speculate about. The only time she’d ever seen him that way had been six months ago, on her first day. He and Logan had spent hours lying beneath a truck in the broiling hot sun, surveying a house. After the arrests, Hawk had come into the office for a change of clothing he kept in his locker.

      Abby had been sitting at a table in the employee room eating lunch, her fork raised halfway to her mouth, her salad forgotten as he’d stalked past, eyes tired, several days worth of growth on his lean jaw, sunglasses shoved up to the top of his head. He’d ripped off his sweaty shirt and stood there in nothing but jeans riding dangerously low on his hips as he and Logan laughed about something while he fought with his locker door.

      Ever since the hostage situation, her therapist had been promising her that her physical desire for men would eventually return, probably when she least expected it. She’d traveled a bit, visited her parents and sister in Florida, where they’d busily set her up on all the blind dates she’d allow, and yet nothing had really taken. But sitting there in that room, it had not only returned, it came back with bells and whistles.

      Holy smokes.

      Conner Hawk had it going on.

      Unable to help herself, she’d continued to stare at him, soaking in his tanned, sinewy chest, the tattoo, the various scars that spoke of how many years he’d been doing the hero thing. His jeans had a hole in one knee and another on the opposite thigh, exposing more lean flesh.

      Then he’d glanced over and caught her staring.

      Unnerved, she’d dropped her fork in her lap. Unfortunately it had still been loaded with the bite she’d never taken. Ranch dressing on silk. Nicely done.

      Those melting chocolate eyes had met hers, filled with that cynical amusement he was so good at. He hadn’t said a word as he’d yanked a fresh, clean shirt over his head, the muscles in his biceps and quads flexing, his ridged abdomen rippling as he’d pulled the material down. His eyes, even heavy-lidded from exhaustion, had still managed to convey a heat that had exhilarated her in a way she hadn’t wanted to think about.

      After that, he’d never quite accepted her icy silence for what it was—a desperate cry for him to stay away, because she needed her distance.

      Oh, boy, had she needed her distance. And she couldn’t blame him for not really buying it. Hell, she’d definitely, at least for that one moment, given him the wrong impression. She’d given herself the wrong impression, because she’d wanted him—wanted his arms to come around her, wanted him to dip his head and kiss her, long and deep and wet as he slid his hands over her body, giving it the pleasure she’d denied herself all year.

      But she’d come to her senses and hadn’t let herself lapse again.

      At least not publicly.

      As the newcomer to the division, she’d made a big effort to fit in, to get to know all her co-workers, while definitely staying clear of Hawk. She’d been aloof and stand-offish with him and him alone because she’d thought it best for her to keep far away until she was ready for the feelings he evoked. Which she still wasn’t.

      That didn’t mean she didn’t care, because she did. Too much. Therein lay her problem.

      From that salad-in-the-lap moment, Abby had taken one look at him, past the bad boy physique, past the knowing grin, and had known.

      She could care too much for this man.

      Now she sat in the van, with the night whipping around them, desperately visualizing Hawk checking in because she had to believe he was okay.

      Please be okay.

      “Someone’s down,” came Watkins’s voice. “Repeat, agent down.”

      Oh, God. Once upon a time, she’d been the agent down, and just the words brought back the stark terror.

      Dark room.

      Chained to a wall.

      Cold, then hot, then fear like nothing she’d ever known when she’d realized her captors wanted information she didn’t have, and that they were going to torture her anyway….

      But this wasn’t then. And what had happened to her wasn’t happening now. Concentrate, damn it. Focus. “Where is he?”

      The men behind her, Ken and Wayne, already in high alert from the equipment failure, worked more frantically, trying to get feed on him.

      “Watkins,” she said. “Clarify.”

      Nothing.

      “Thomas, are you with Watkins?”

      More of that horrifying nothing. Whipping around, she looked at the two men in disbelief. “Are we down again?”

      Wayne’s fingers tapped across his keyboard. “Fuck. Yes.”

      Was it possible for a heart to completely stop and yet pound at the same time? “They need