Agent-in-Charge. Leigh Riker

time. Just as he’d raced from Hearthline, leaving the agency’s intense security behind as soon as the alert came in. Not secure enough, he thought, but he’d deal with that later. And with Jackie. What was her problem?

      His new partner had a thing or two to learn. Still, they had stayed in one piece—and captured the “bad guys.” When the time came for a real takedown, they’d be ready.

      Graham shook his head. Casey considered him to be just a boring civil servant. If she only knew. Which was exactly the point. She couldn’t.

      Now that he could breathe again, it wasn’t just Jackie who worried him. Or the exercise. For the two weeks since Casey’s horrible accident, he’d had a nagging feeling of dread. He had to get out of here. Graham couldn’t get it out of his head that she might still be in danger.

      He needed to see for himself that she wasn’t.

      “TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE.”

      The yellow-gray, elusive blur danced just beyond Casey’s wide-open eyes. Innocent and harmless, the light fluttered around the doctor’s examination room like a ballerina doing a tours j’eté under water. Then it spun away as if on satin toe shoes, trailing gossamer ribbons of remembered sun. Like that imaginary dancer’s flowing skirt, the glow was fleeting, graceful…gone.

      Casey stared hard at the blank space in front of her. “Nothing,” she said, her heart beating hard.

      She clenched the edge of the table with—probably—white-knuckled hands. She saw nothing. Felt nothing, except the terror that seemed to follow her everywhere. Without her sight, she felt vulnerable…afraid. Even the antiseptic smells of the office made her nervous. Oh, how she had hoped for better news.

      At an unexpected brush of air on her skin, Casey jerked back on the exam table. The doctor had passed a slow hand in front of her face, that was all. She had to get hold of herself.

      “Shapes?” he said. “Do you see any shapes?”

      She shook her head. “No. Just the flickering light sometimes.” Rarely.

      In the hospital that first day, her whole body had hurt but Casey’s vision seemed fine. Then a few days later, it blurred, dimmed. From there, her eyesight had gone downhill. Was this all she could expect, forever?

      Fresh anxiety ripped through her.

      Her future promised—no, threatened—total darkness, her own terrors locked inside her like a scream. She didn’t know where the next thought came from. Certainly she didn’t want it. I’ll never see Graham’s face again.

      She squeezed her eyes tight, turning the darkness into a blood-red sunset behind her lids, and conjured him mentally—dark hair and eyes, that handsome face and beloved smile, broad shoulders and tough, lean body so at odds with his sedentary job pushing papers at Hearthline.

      Casey bit back tears. “I should get myself a guide dog, what do you think? A nice big German shepherd….” With teeth like razors.

      She loved animals. She’d always wanted a dog, but not under these circumstances. How would she take care of it now? Take care of herself? She couldn’t do this, wouldn’t survive on her own this time.

      The doctor patted her shoulder but said nothing more. Which, for Casey, said it all. Poor thing. She hated pity.

      “Try to be patient,” he said. “You never know in cases like these. It can take time.”

      Casey couldn’t cling to false hope. “I doubt time will help. You said I had some kind of delayed hemorrhage.”

      “Yes, that happens sometimes after a frontal head trauma. Edema within the optic nerves leads to—”

      “I know what it leads to.” Casey touched a hand to her forehead, where some of the worst bruises had been. They were healed, but her eyes were not. She made herself say the words through tears. “I’m blind.”

      Bilateral blindness. Both eyes.

      He didn’t try to contradict her. When the doctor slipped out of the room to make her next appointment, he left Casey defenseless in the blackness from which there would be no escape. She was alone inside herself. And still terrified, not only because of her blindness.

      In Casey’s mind getting run down in that parking garage had been no accident. To her, that meant only one thing. Someone—the same someone who had blinded her—would try again to kill her. And now she couldn’t protect herself.

      Ironic, really, when she had prided herself on not needing anyone, especially Graham.

      But it wasn’t Graham she “saw” now. Another face, unsmiling, flashed through her mind. When she’d been in pain, she had suppressed the memory of the man she’d seen in the elevator at Graham’s office building. Pale hair, pale features, she remembered. Why think of him again now? Was he harmless, just an acquaintance she couldn’t quite place—or part of the threat she continued to feel?

      The fear raced through her again like another speeding car bent upon her total destruction. When it happened the next time, she wouldn’t be able to see it coming.

      IN THE LOBBY of her doctor’s building where he’d been waiting, Graham was relieved to see Casey finally emerge from the elevator. She wasn’t alone.

      Graham nodded at the nurse then focused on Casey.

      “Hey, babe.” He swallowed. “How’d it go?” He had heard the tap of her white cane before he actually saw her, but he could tell by her face that she’d had bad news. Casey didn’t hide her emotions as well as Graham did these days. She hadn’t walled them up inside.

      Startled by his voice so near, Casey missed a step and Graham cursed himself. He hadn’t meant to surprise her. Briefly, her head tilted in his direction. Then she kept walking, the cane that had become an extension of her right hand in the past few weeks rhythmically tapping the Carrara marble floor.

      “It’s a miracle,” she murmured in the too-light tone she sometimes used to downplay a problem, as she walked right past him. “I can see, I can see.”

      Obviously, she couldn’t, and sudden anger swept through him. Graham glanced again around the busy lobby of the professional building, making sure it remained secure. For the past half hour, after his quick stop at home to shower away the smell of smoke and change clothes, he’d made regular checks of the area from his leaning stance against the marble wall. But, like Jackie Miles’s earlier blunder, he couldn’t quell his own uneasiness about Casey.

      Graham peeled himself away from the wall. “I’ll take care of her,” he said to the nurse after introducing himself. When Casey didn’t object, he waited again while she thanked her doctor’s nurse, who gave Graham a crisp goodbye. And another thorough once-over as if to reassure herself that she was leaving Casey in good hands.

      Graham watched the woman disappear into the elevator.

      Casey wouldn’t welcome him fussing over her, either. Yet she needed someone right now—in this case, him.

      He stepped in front of her, forcing Casey to halt when she would have struck off on her own.

      “Tell me what he said.”

      She gazed sightlessly at the floor between them.

      “He said, ‘be patient.’”

      Her sleek blond bob had slipped like silk around her pale cheeks, creating a heavy curtain that hid her smooth, even features. Her straight little nose. Her beautiful green eyes were hooded by her lids now, and she didn’t try to look at him, which made him all the more angry. With her, with himself. They might not be married any longer but…

      “Casey. Don’t. It’s me.”

      And he watched her crumple. Just like that.

      She didn’t want to, he guessed, but she flowed like warm honey into his waiting arms.

      To his surprise,