see the face of evil to know that it existed, did she? He—and she was convinced that it was a he—was probably one of those corporate types, with a string of vengeful ex-wives, dangerously high blood pressure and out-of-control anger issues. He probably laughed maniacally every time that his rolling bully narrowly avoided tagging her bumper because driving like a maniac and terrorizing everyone else on the road made him feel powerful.
Elise docked her iPod into the dashboard, scrolled through her music and selected her Marsha Ambrosius playlist. Turning up the volume a couple of notches, she sat back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the rhythm. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been nervous about anything.
Before Carrington Consulting, she’d been a police officer for two years and then a US marshal for seven, and, by now, there was very little about criminal behavior that surprised her. She’d dealt with bullies every day on the job, and most of them were men who were on the same side of the badge that she’d been on. Compared to that particular brand of chaos, this maniac and his souped-up Hummer were child’s play. Still, his theatrics were starting to get on her nerves, especially since she was in just as much of a hurry to get where she was going as he apparently was.
I’m stuck in traffic, she texted Harriet. Please contact the Barclays and advise them that I’m going to be—
A car horn blared behind her, calling her attention to the fact that the Beetle had moved forward in front of her just about a fraction of an inch. She rolled her eyes at the culprit in her rearview mirror, then slowly caught up to the Beetle, with the Hummer riding her rear bumper the entire time. Its tires squealed when it suddenly stopped behind her and she sighed long and hard.
—a little late, she finished texting. She was this close to her exit. Another fifty yards, give or take, and she could ditch the Hummer from hell for good. Waiting for the moment that she could escape was like watching paint dry.
Done, Harriet texted back a few minutes later.
As soon as Elise was close enough to maneuver her Jaguar into the exit lane, she did, stirring up roadside gravel in her wake as she gratefully left the standing traffic on the interstate and took off down the exit ramp. Resisting the urge to flip the bird to her rearview mirror as she went, she rolled to a stop at the red light at the bottom of the ramp and reached for her cell phone, intending to reactivate the GPS.
She didn’t see the Hummer bearing down on her until it was too late to do anything except stare up at her rearview mirror in disbelief. “What in the world?” She heard tires squealing and then a sharp bump from behind sent her Jaguar hopping forward on the pavement and her cell phone flying out of her hand. Her car shuddered to a stop dangerously close to the Buick in front of it and vibrated with indignation for several seconds afterward.
Oh my God! I’ve just been hit by a stalker! Frantic, Elise threw her car into Park and quickly dived at the passenger-side floorboard in search of her cell phone.
The light changed, and, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, the line of cars to her left moved forward and merged into traffic, while the Hummer behind her pulled into the tow lane to her right and its driver shut off its engine. It took a second for the gravity of the situation to sink in, but when it did, she joined him in the tow lane, leaving enough space between the two vehicles to make a quick escape possible.
It didn’t occur to her to be afraid. What she was, she suddenly decided, was completely and thoroughly pissed.
* * *
Hidden behind tinted one-way glass, Broderick Cannon saw the woman coming, closing the distance between her sophisticated little gold car and his Hummer with long-legged, angry strides. With every step she took, her leather coat flapped open, giving him an enticing glimpse of nipples hard enough to cut glass underneath her dress and a generous hourglass figure. He sat back in his seat and lazily watched her come, wondering what the Jackie O–style sunglasses covering half of her face were hiding and if she was packing something other than lipstick in the ridiculously large purse dangling from the crook of her arm. She had to be, he decided, pressing a button to disengage the electronic locks and then releasing his seat belt. Either that or she was certifiable.
The pretty ones always are, he thought as his gaze momentarily settled on the rhythmic sway of her hips, then slowly traveled back up to her face. The fact that she could be, this very second, walking into a dangerous trap either hadn’t occurred to her or she simply didn’t care. Either way, the chances of her being completely nuts were looking better and better.
As if she could somehow read his thoughts, she slowed to a stop at the midway point between their vehicles and struck a pose, tapping a foot impatiently on the pavement. He cracked a smile despite himself. She was a sitting duck, and she didn’t even know it. But just in case she wasn’t as stylishly clueless as she looked in her red-bottom boots, he released the safety on his .357 SIG Sauer pistol and tucked it into the rear waistband of his slacks. Twice, he’d seen her touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror, instead of driving. Another time, she’d held up traffic while she fiddled with something on the dashboard instead of driving. And still another time, she’d spent way too much time fiddling with her cell phone instead of driving. Any idiot could see that her negligence was to blame for their accident, but maybe forcing him to rear-end her was her plan all along. Maybe she thought that he was the sitting duck.
And maybe pigs really do fly, Broderick thought as he climbed down from the Hummer and went to meet her.
Fifteen years ago, he’d put away his master’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University, and, instead of heading for Silicon Valley like he’d always planned, he joined the navy and applied to the SEALs program. He was recruited by the CIA’s Special Operations Group a few months after graduation, and the rest was history.
His specialties were global threat suppression and hostage extraction, and, for the past fifteen years, that’s exactly what he’d done—brought home hostages that the rest of the world had written off as hopelessly lost; hunted down reclusive global leaders and brought them to justice; and gathered intelligence on terrorist sleeper cells worldwide. Aside from the fact that he was a fifth-degree black belt, a decorated marksman and fluent in three languages, he was damn good at his job and, somewhere, he had a chest full of medals and commendations to prove it. As a result, when he decided to go into reserve status three years ago and launch Cannon Corp as the initial phase of his eventual transition back into civilian life, his inaugural client list had damn near built itself. Most of the cases that he took on nowadays were significantly less risky than the ones he’d once lived and breathed around the clock, but he hadn’t yet learned how to adjust his actions and reactions accordingly, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
Nevertheless, one thing was for damn sure—he’d never been anyone’s sitting duck.
“You hit my car!” she shrieked as soon as he emerged from the Hummer and sent the door flying shut behind him. Another round of cars whipped past them just in time to catch the tail end of her accusation, complete with flailing arms and a perfectly shocked O of a mouth. He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes to the sky.
The pretty ones were always drama queens, too.
“Are you out of your mind?” he countered calmly, approaching her head-on. “Or does the fact that you seem to have no regard for your personal safety mean that’s already a foregone conclusion?” To her credit, she didn’t flinch when he stopped less than a foot away from her, dropped his hands on his hips and purposely loomed over her. Instead, she crossed her arms underneath those lovely, Jell-O–like breasts of hers, shifted her weight to one side and faced him defiantly. She was taller than he’d first thought, and up close, her glittering mouth
