agent had taught him to never underestimate the potential dangers of a situation.
Doing so risked lives. He’d learned that the hard way and he’d vowed to never let it happen again. Not that he’d thought he’d ever be in that kind of situation again, and especially not on a college campus in the middle of small-town America.
He rushed after her, listening for footsteps, thumps or anything else that sounded out of place in a library. Would she be headed for the front door? The college library had a simple floor plan, so there couldn’t be more than a few exits for her to choose from.
The library’s front entrance was dim and empty, with no movement from any of the doors at the main exit. He couldn’t have been more than a few seconds behind her, and those doors were heavy and slow to close. She hadn’t left this way. Might there be another entrance and exit for library staff? Colin took a left turn and ran past the ground level’s odd contrast of modern cubicles containing student computer terminals and glass cases displaying old, rare books. When he reached the hallway containing staff offices, he heard the tap of shoes on laminate flooring, followed by a feminine shout of dismay.
Colin reached a bend in the hallway to find the woman he’d followed kneeling on the floor, crouched over another prone figure with dark, curly hair. He took two steps toward them, already pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to dial 911, and froze.
A black cylindrical device rolled into the hallway from around the corner at the other end. It bounced against the side wall and skipped toward them.
“Get out of there!” Colin shouted at the woman. She turned to regard him with wide, frightened eyes, but she hadn’t yet seen the grenade. “Grenade! Run to me!”
Fright morphed from confusion to alarm, but instead of running toward him, she lost a precious half second by glancing at the person on the floor. Colin knew that look—she wanted to save her friend, but knew she didn’t have the strength to carry the person.
And in that lost moment, Colin knew it was too late.
The grenade exploded with a concussive bang. Colin collapsed where he stood as a bright white light flooded all his senses. He closed his eyes and counted to five. When he opened them, his vision had begun to return.
Relief poured through every inch of his body, and the flood of adrenaline at realizing he was still alive shot him to his feet. Only a stun grenade...but I guess it wasn’t a student hiding in the stacks after all.
Colin stumbled toward the blonde woman and the prone figure, his ears ringing. She was blinking and shaking her head, trying to restore her vision and hearing. He wanted to tell her that her hearing would return within the next few hours, but she might have some ongoing discomfort for a few days. Tinnitus was always a possibility after being hit with a stun grenade. He reached for her shoulder, and she startled at his touch.
When she made eye contact, Colin swayed where he knelt before recovering his senses. She was stunningly gorgeous, with piercing blue eyes and long blond hair that framed her face. Her features reminded him of the images of runway models he’d seen in the newspaper—angular, perfectly proportioned, feminine. Combined with the display of compassion for her friend, it had a powerful impact, and Colin’s heart was overtaxed. He thought he felt it skip a beat before he regained control of the moment.
He lifted his thumb up for a moment and then turned it down. If she had an injury, they’d deal with that first. She gave him a thumbs-up in return and gestured to the person lying on the floor. Colin now recognized her as the middle-aged woman who’d given him a library tour on his first day of teaching on campus.
“Hurt?” Colin said, though of course neither of them could hear each other.
The younger woman leaned over and touched two fingers to the back of the librarian’s skull. Her fingers came away wet and red. Tears filled her eyes and he resisted the urge to let his emotions take over and offer comfort. His sympathy went out to her, but calling emergency services took priority.
He dialed 911 and repeated their location and the nature of the emergency five times, since he couldn’t hear the person on the other end to know if anyone had even picked up yet. Finally, he ended with a simple instruction. “Three subjects hit by stun grenade, hearing lost. Repeat, I cannot hear. If you have received this message, please redial this number after I hang up.”
He hung up and waited, counting the seconds until his phone lit up. When it did, he released the breath he’d been holding, thanked the person on the other end and turned his attention back to the two women. And here he’d thought teaching criminology classes in a small college would be a break from the exhausting Secret Service life. This was the exact thing he’d come here to get away from after making a career-ending mistake two years ago. Last spring, he’d realized staying in Washington, DC, wasn’t doing him any favors. He needed to move on and forget about the ache of being dismissed—and the regret of making a mistake that had caused the woman he loved to be killed, thanks to his inability to separate his heart from his job.
How did he not know the name of the woman in front of him? Shouldn’t he have seen her around by now? Gwyn Ponth was quite small, so far as local colleges went.
She checked the other woman’s pulse, and a second wave of relief flooded through his veins when her worried frown eased. Gently, he helped her to roll the librarian onto her back. She remained unconscious, breath labored but steady, and Colin checked around her head for the source of the blood matting her hair. It appeared to be a superficial wound, much to his great relief. The librarian would feel terrible for a few weeks and likely suffer frustrating headaches, but she’d live.
It was then that Colin noticed the younger woman’s tremble, tears of fright slipping down her cheeks despite the resolve set in her jaw. Her long hair fell in curtains on each side of her face, and from this angle, her delicate features carried an intriguing, ethereal symmetry.
An errant tear escaped its prison and slipped down the side of her right cheek. Without thinking, Colin reached out to wipe it away. Surprise swept through him as he brushed his thumb across her cheek toward her hair. Where he’d expected smooth skin, he felt the tight, bumpy dryness of skin damage—burn scarring? Some other injury?
Instantly, she gasped and knocked his hand away with enough force to sting. The motion revealed too-shiny, reddish scarring from the outside corner of her eye down to the midcenter of her jaw. Her hair had covered it completely.
She scrambled to her feet and leaned against the far side of the hall, where she stayed until the paramedics and police arrived on scene. Once they could both hear again, he’d apologize properly.
And find out if she knew of anybody who might want her or the librarian dead.
The next morning, Ginny arrived at work a half hour early, despite the department head’s insistence that she take the rest of the week off. Her hearing was still a little muffled, but nothing that she needed to lie in bed over. One of the Language and Culture Department’s teaching assistants had been assigned to take over her classes for the week—and she’d sent the lesson plans in early this morning—but Ginny had a meeting scheduled for today that nothing short of forced hospitalization could keep her from. Unfortunately for Donna, the head librarian’s injury had been more serious, and she was still hospitalized. The doctors had allowed Ginny to go home after getting checked over last night.
As Ginny checked her work email, the
