Eye of the Beholder. Ingrid Weaver

The man carrying Glenna dove to his left. An instant later, the ambulance exploded in a fireball. Black smoke billowed upward while twisted shards of debris rained down.

      “Oh, my God!” Glenna cried.

      The man staggered sideways and muttered a curse. “Where did that shell come from?” He recovered his footing, then glanced toward the airport gate. “Oh, hell.”

      Glenna saw the answer to his question at the same time he did. Two olive green pickup trucks, their cargo areas filled with armed men, sped toward them from the direction of the airport gate. At first she thought more help was on the way, but then she saw that the weapons were aimed directly at her and her rescuer.

      He veered in the opposite direction, increasing his speed from a jog to a sprint. Glenna tightened her hold on him, doing her best to keep from flying out of his grasp as he lunged into a zigzagging path toward the fence.

      Puffs of dust burst from the ground on either side of them. Glenna felt something whiz past her ear. They were almost at the fence when she felt the man jerk. A shudder went through his body and his grip on her slackened.

      Desperately Glenna clung to his neck. Would this nightmare never end? Had she put her trust in the wrong man again? “Please. Oh, please, don’t leave me now. We’re nearly there.”

      He grunted. “I’m not leaving you, princess,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”

      Behind the black mask, his expression was invisible, yet his eyes shone with determination. He spared her only a glance.

      It had the same effect on Glenna as before.

      He managed another three limping steps before his leg buckled in midstride. He shifted as he fell, taking the impact of their combined weight on his back, then rolled over, rose to one knee and thrust Glenna behind him. While she pressed as close as she could to his body, he unslung his rifle from his shoulder and faced the trucks full of armed men that were bearing down on them.

      Chapter 2

      After the heat of the day, night brought a creeping clamminess that chilled straight to the bones. The air was thick with the musty odor of damp cement. Glenna hunched her shoulders and huddled closer to the motionless man on the floor, as much to share her warmth with him as to draw comfort from his.

      No more than a sliver of lamplight came through the crack beneath the door. It was enough to distinguish shapes and outlines, but the shadows swallowed any color. For that, she was grateful. She didn’t want to see whatever small creatures were making the scurrying noises in the corners. She didn’t want to look at the swelling on her ankle. And she didn’t really want to see the blood that seeped onto her hand.

      The bullet wound in her rescuer’s leg had opened up again when their captors had tossed them onto the floor of this storeroom. In the darkness, she wouldn’t have discovered he was bleeding if she hadn’t felt the sticky warmth on her palm. She had done what she could to help, ripping up her suit jacket to wrap around his thigh as a makeshift bandage, but her knowledge of first aid was minimal. For lack of anything better, all she could think to do was press her hand to his thigh over the bandage to help stop the bleeding.

      Even slack with unconsciousness, his body was rock solid. He emanated an aura of strength that was as tangible as his warmth. Whoever he was, he must be in superb physical condition to have survived the treatment he’d received. It had taken seven men to overpower him and knock him out when the trucks had reached them. Glenna suspected that if it wasn’t for her, he never would have allowed himself to be captured. Despite the wound in his leg, he probably could have made it to the fence and gotten away from the airport altogether, but he’d remained by her side, willing to risk his life for a complete stranger.

      What kind of man did that?

      Her gaze moved to the pale blur of his face. His black mask, along with some kind of radio headset, had been removed when he’d been dragged onto the pickup truck, but he’d been lying facedown during the trip here, so all she had been able to see was the back of his head. The transfer to this room had been short and rough—she hadn’t gotten a good look at him then, either.

      He had carried her in his arms. He had sheltered her with his body as bullets had hissed past them. Yet she didn’t know his name. And if she passed him on the street, she wouldn’t recognize his face. After what they had been through, it seemed…wrong somehow.

      Keeping her palm on his thigh, she lifted her free hand to his face. His skin was taut, with a hint of roughness from the day’s growth of his beard. She ran her fingers along his jaw, exploring the contours. It wasn’t enough to build a picture in her mind, but it did reinforce the impression she already had. He was lean, hard and uncompromisingly male.

      A smooth ridge of skin interrupted the sandpaper beard stubble on the right side of his jaw. It had to be a scar, she thought, tracing the ridge to his cheek. The scar branched there, scattering into a network of furrows and more patches of raised skin that curved upward to his right temple. She swayed closer, curious, running her fingertips over the pattern. She didn’t need to see it to realize how bad it was. He must have suffered horribly.

      Was he a policeman? A soldier? Did he storm hijacked planes and rescue women for a living? Had he obtained these scars while he was being a hero for someone else?

      Whatever had caused it must have happened years ago—the skin had the firm smoothness of an old injury, like the tiny line on her own index finger that was a souvenir of a childhood mishap with a crystal water glass. She felt a surge of sympathy for him. What courage he must have, to continue to brave danger despite the pain he must have endured.

      Compared to him, she had been a cringing coward, afraid to fully live, to take a chance on life.

      Yes, well, she intended to change all of that.

      She moved her fingers along the ridges and grooves that crossed the rise of his cheekbone until she reached the corner of his eye. The scar didn’t extend this far, or it would have showed at the edge of his mask. The only lines on his skin here were laugh lines, too fine to feel, but she remembered them perfectly.

      He had beautiful eyes, so blue and piercing. Would the fine lines at the corners crinkle when he smiled? Was his laugh as deep and rich as his voice? Would she get the chance to hear it?

      Before today, the sensible, levelheaded Glenna Hastings wouldn’t have wasted one moment considering those questions. What possible relevance could the sound of his laughter or the color of his eyes have to her life?

      But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She was alive, and she hadn’t forgotten what she had vowed when she had believed she was going to die. Every extra minute she lived was a gift. Every detail about her rescuer was relevant. The sound of his breathing, the scent of his skin, even the warmth of his blood against her palm…at this moment those things were more important than any of the thousands of trivial details that usually filled her days.

      Her knees nudged against his hip. She winced at the stinging from her scraped skin and the ache in her ankle, but her injuries were nothing compared to her rescuer’s. She moved her hand to his hair. In the shadows it was leached of color, but on the ride here she’d seen it gleam golden in the sunshine. It was cropped short in a no-nonsense style that had appeared stiff, but as she slid her fingers into it, she discovered that his hair was as fine as a baby’s. It tickled her fingertips in a caress of silk, and for the first time since she had left the airport in Montego Bay, she felt her lips relax in a smile.

      It was a little thing, to be sure, but taking pleasure in the texture of a strange man’s hair was something Glenna simply didn’t do. She might do lunch with a man. Or dinner and the theater, when her schedule allowed. Nice, sensible functions with no commitment, no expectations and no messy demands. She had found the situation completely satisfactory.

      But it all seemed so impossibly faraway now, another world, a previous existence.

      There was a furtive scrabbling along the far wall. Glenna’s smile faded as quickly as it had formed. Her situation was worse now than it