Vanished. Elizabeth Heiter

felt his eyelids swelling as he skirted the back of the cop car, close to where the pepper spray must have been dispersed. Residents—a few women but mostly men—rushed past him, heading in both directions, not seeming to know whether to flee or fight. Someone took a swing at him, and Kyle sidestepped it, twisting the man around and down onto the trunk of the squad car without breaking stride.

      From the corner of his eye, he saw Gabe dodge a pair of men running full out for the street.

      The crowd was dangerous, but it was relatively small. And he and Gabe had helped break up a prison riot last summer, so in comparison this was a piece of cake. At least here no one was trying to shank him.

      As he closed in on Evelyn’s position, he saw her roll away from a guy in a suit who’d stepped back to kick her.

      Kyle put on a burst of speed and tackled the man before he could try again, throwing him off to the side.

      Gabe came up beside him as Kyle yanked Evelyn up and over his shoulder. He felt a surge of relief the second he had her off the ground where he could protect her.

      He heard more cars coming in, sirens blaring, as he rushed for the station door. The crowd scattered, moving faster; most of them had obviously abandoned thoughts of fighting.

      But the man Kyle had tossed aside had gotten to his feet—Kyle hadn’t thrown him hard enough to knock him out, hadn’t wanted him to get trampled by the crowd. And instead of running away, he was coming back for more, fury on his face and a police baton in his hand, up and ready to swing.

      Kyle just kept going, stepping over a bullhorn, and taking Evelyn farther away from the rushing man. Gabe moved in front of them fast, as Kyle had known he would, using the man’s own momentum to push him against the brick of the station wall. Instead of forcing him onto the ground, Gabe twisted his arm behind his back, making him drop the baton, then pushed him inside the station alongside Kyle.

      Kyle lowered Evelyn off his shoulder, steadying her as she swayed. He pushed her into a chair as she pressed a hand to a bump swelling her forehead. Tilting her head back to check her pupils, Kyle stared into her eyes. They were clear, the pupils normal-size and tracking. She looked a little dazed, but she was okay. Damn, when he’d seen her on the ground, he’d wanted to forget strategy and just plow straight through the center of the crowd.

      He glanced back at Gabe. His partner had the man he’d brought inside cuffed to a metal bar on the station wall. When he caught Kyle’s gaze, he nodded toward the door.

      “Stay here,” Kyle told Evelyn. “I’ll be right back.” Then he followed Gabe outside.

      The mob was pretty much under control now. Most of the residents were long gone. A few were on the ground, being cuffed by the additional officers and FBI agents who’d arrived. The police chief was helping the cops near the squad car to their feet. A gruff-looking veteran officer set down his shield and grabbed a Glock from the ground, tucking it beside his own weapon.

      “Where’s the profiler?” the veteran cop asked, scanning the ground as if he’d seen her go down.

      “She’s in the station,” Gabe said. “She’s okay.”

      The cop scowled. “She shouldn’t have been out here. She shouldn’t be here at all.” He spun away from them and handed the weapon he’d picked up to one of the newbies by the squad car.

      Kyle looked at Gabe and pointed back to the station, and his partner followed him inside.

      Evelyn got to her feet as they came in the door. The bump on her forehead was nasty and her eyelids were almost swollen shut from the pepper spray. Her suit was torn at the knee and shoulder, and from the way she hobbled when she walked toward them, he guessed a heel had come off her shoe.

      But it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

      “Is anyone hurt?” she asked. “I heard a gunshot.”

      “It didn’t look like anyone was shot,” Gabe said.

      “Good.” Evelyn bent down and took her shoes off, then peered up at them. “What are you guys doing here?”

      “What do you think?” Kyle asked, a little more harshly than he’d intended. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t Evelyn’s fault things had gotten dangerous. And it wasn’t her fault his emotions took over wherever she was concerned.

      He didn’t quite know how it had happened. But sometime between a year ago, when he’d first seen her in the BAU office, and now, everything had changed. She’d gone from the newbie agent he couldn’t resist teasing to the woman he flat-out couldn’t resist.

      “We heard what went down. I was worried you were in the middle of it.”

      She frowned back at him, but then seemed to realize what she was doing, and said, “Thanks for the help. It got nasty out there fast.”

      “Is the station going to need reinforcements?” Gabe asked as cops streamed back inside, some hauling prisoners.

      Evelyn shook her head, then put her fingers gingerly against the bump on her forehead. “I don’t think so. They just didn’t expect this reaction to bringing in Brittany’s father.”

      “What a fucking mess,” the veteran cop with the shield contributed as he came in the door hauling a cuffed and bleeding resident.

      “Is anyone hurt, Jack?” Evelyn asked as Gabe signaled a free cop and swapped the cuffs on the prisoner he’d brought inside.

      “Nothing serious.” Jack pushed the resident into a chair. “Stay there,” he told the man, then turned his gaze on Evelyn. “What the hell were you doing out there? Inciting them with the bullhorn? Are you crazy?”

      Kyle forced back a response, because he knew it would piss Evelyn off to have anyone stand up for her. It always did.

      “I was trying to calm them down, remind them what we all need to be focused on,” Evelyn replied, a lot more calmly than Kyle had expected.

      Jack snorted. “Yeah, that worked well.”

      Kyle couldn’t stay silent any longer, but he tried to keep his tone nonconfrontational. “The problem wasn’t trying to talk the crowd down. The problem was not planning better for that arrest.” He should know. He’d helped execute arrests on enough high-profile targets.

      Jack shot him a look, then turned pointedly to Evelyn. “How do you know those guys? Who are they? More feds?”

      Instead of answering Jack, she asked Kyle, “Can you give me a ride back to the hotel?”

      “You’re just going to leave now?” Jack cut in.

      What was this guy’s problem? Kyle stepped closer, angling into Jack’s line of sight with the kind of warning glare he liked to use on uncooperative targets.

      “Let me grab a file, okay?” Evelyn raced off as though she hoped her disappearance would make Jack lose interest.

      But Jack just moved forward, giving Kyle his own cop stare.

      “You might want to watch your prisoner,” Gabe said mildly as Jack got in Kyle’s face.

      “Shit!” Jack took after the bleeding resident he’d brought in a minute before, who was hobbling for the door.

      Then Evelyn was back, and Kyle ushered her out the door toward Gabe’s car. “What’s with that guy?”

      “Apparently he’s held a grudge for eighteen years.”

      Kyle steered her around the broken glass from the patrol car headlights since she wasn’t wearing shoes. “He had a grudge against a twelve-year-old?”

      Gabe looked questioningly between them as Evelyn shrugged. Evelyn had told Kyle about her past, but Gabe didn’t know what this case meant to her, or her history here.

      Kyle had tried to respect her privacy and keep it to himself, but if she was in danger—and