The Renegade Steals A Lady. Vickie Taylor

her car within minutes after he left.

      Unless there was no one around to tell them he’d taken it.

      She shivered, sure that her blood temperature had dropped five degrees in the last five seconds. She didn’t even realize Marco had moved until the car door next to her swung open. One of his hands slid behind her shoulders and the other caught her behind the knees.

      Her heart seized up like a bad bearing.

      She studied the hard lines in his face, the bruises, the shadows under his eyes. This wasn’t the Marco she knew. This man was a stranger. A murderer, the state trooper had said, and she had no reason to disagree. He’d shot her. Kidnapped her.

      For the first time since she’d known Marco, she was afraid of him—truly and deeply afraid. Each step he took with her in his arms added to her anxiety. Her fingers curled to fists on his back. Forget convincing him to turn himself in. She just wanted him to leave.

      The thought twisted her pride. She was a cop. She had a job to do. But she was also a woman, alone and vulnerable, and she was hurt.

      Bravo followed them up to the apartment entrance and ducked around Marco as soon as the door swung open. Marco followed him to the laundry room. A creature of habit, Bravo went straight to his kennel and stood over his bowl. She always fed him when they got off work.

      Standing well back, Marco swung the gate to the dog pen closed with his foot. The clank of the closing latch signaled the loss of Paige’s last best hope for survival.

      As she watched Bravo nose his empty bowl, whining, Marco carried her out of the room.

      In the bedroom, she scanned frantically for potential weapons. Her thoughts raced with her heart. If he put her on the bed, there was the lamp. If he set her on the chaise in the corner, she might be able to reach the scissors in her sewing basket. If—

      He walked right through the bedroom, into the bathroom, and plunked her down on the toilet lid, then promptly turned, dropped the stopper in the tub drain and twisted the faucets on full.

      Her jaw hung slack. “What are you doing?”

      He’d left the tiny bathroom before she finished the question, but he called back, “Get out of those clothes.”

      Like hell. The image of her naked body swimming in a crimson tub, her wrists slashed, shimmered in her vision. Would he try to make it look like suicide?

      The absurdity of the thought wiped the vision away a second later. The bruises and abrasions on her body would make suicide a tough sell. She wasn’t sure what he was up to, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

      Growing more frantic, she scanned the cluttered bathroom counter for something to use as a weapon. The facial cleansers, perfumes and assorted hair products within her reach weren’t much of a match against the 9 mm Glock Marco had taken from her.

      But they would have to do.

      Keeping one eye and one ear turned toward the bedroom, Marco dumped ice from Paige’s freezer into a plastic bag. He’d taken the phone out of the bedroom, but he didn’t dare leave her alone for long. He didn’t think she was ready to give up yet. Not by a long shot.

      Ice pack in hand, he hurried back through her room, refusing to let the wide, pine bed he passed mean anything to him. What was past was past. He wouldn’t dwell on it.

      Yeah, right.

      He was still trying to shake himself out of the daze brought on by the sensory assault of her bedroom when he walked into the bathroom. Too late, he realized he should have been more careful.

      Through the steam, a pair of dark service blues lunged at him. Instinctively he threw his hands up. Her forearm collided with his and he grabbed on to her fine-boned wrist.

      He heard a hiss, but didn’t identify the sound until it hit him.

      Aerosol.

      Fire ripped through his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but did nothing to douse the flames. Only the edge of the counter that caught his hip kept him from going to his knees.

      He swiped at his face with his free hand, the pain shooting back from his eyes into his brain. Paige tried to jerk away, but he tightened his hold on her wrist and yanked her toward him, growling, “No!”

      The hair-spray can clanked to the floor. Paige fell forward. Her sharp cry pierced the curtain of pain blinding him. He pried his eyes open long enough to see her huddled on the floor beside him, grasping her leg. He must have pulled her weight onto her sprained ankle.

      Grunting, with one eye cracked open just wide enough to be sure she didn’t have any more tricks up her sleeve, he lifted her from the floor back to the toilet seat. “Don’t move,” he warned.

      As soon as she settled back, he fell over the vanity and splashed cold water in his face. The wash cooled the fire in his eyes pretty quickly. The fire in his blood took a little longer. He gave himself a few more seconds. Then, when he had himself under control, mentally and physically, he straightened up, shutting off the faucets and drying his face with the rose-embroidered hand towel hanging over the counter.

      “Good try,” he said tightly. “But not good enough.”

      “This time.” She angled her chin defiantly, but the tremor in her chest ruined the effect.

      “There won’t be a next time.” He bent to scoop the ice he’d dropped back into the plastic bag.

      “Why don’t you just get it over with then, and get out of here?”

      “Get what over with?”

      “Are you having trouble building up the courage, or are you just dragging it out because you’re enjoying torturing me first?”

      He stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about. Understanding gradually dawned. His throat tightened. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

      “You shot at me,” she said.

      “If I’d shot at you, you’d be dead.”

      She had to know that. He was the Port Kingston Emergency Response Team’s best marksman. At least he had been, once. But that seemed like a lifetime ago.

      “You couldn’t afford to kill me. You needed me to get out of the park,” she said.

      The cords in his neck pulled so tight he thought they might snap. A headache beat at the back of his skull. “And now I don’t need you so I’m going to kill you?”

      A heartbeat passed. Enough time, even for Marco’s watery eyes, to read the confusion etched onto her features. To feel the genuine fear radiating from her. For it to twist through him like a corkscrew in the heart.

      His jaw turned to granite. “You know me better than that.”

      She turned her limpid gaze up to him. “I don’t know you at all. Not anymore.”

      “That’s a lie.”

      Mesmerized by the melted-honey swirl of confusion in her eyes, he stepped forward. When he reached out to cup her chin, she flinched—the final blow to his tattered pride—but he wouldn’t let her turn away. He brushed a wayward curl off her cheek, let the myriad feelings inside him boil close to the surface.

      “You know me,” he said, reveling in the way her pulse kicked up where he stroked the soft underside of her jaw. “You know every inch of me.”

      A tide of color flooded her cheeks. Suddenly disgusted with himself, he dropped his hand.

      The water in the tub had nearly run over. Fixing his gaze anywhere but on hers, he pushed past her and twisted the faucets off. Mentally he shut down the flow of his emotions, as well. He couldn’t afford to feel anything toward her. Not anger, not lust and certainly not sympathy.

      “If you didn’t shoot me, then…” Her voice trailed off as if she forgot what she was going to say.