beside him, then pivoted toward freedom.
They got two steps before her trim body turned to deadweight. It was as if her feet fell out from under her. Aaron assumed she tripped and bent down to lift her, only then seeing the death grip the leader had on her ankle.
“Drop the gun.” He issued the order through shallow breaths.
As he held the weapon pointed at them, the man’s hand shook. He blinked repeatedly as if trying to keep a cloud from settling over his mind.
Aaron didn’t waste any time. He kicked out, ramming his heel into the other man’s fist and sending the gun flying from his loose fingers. The second kick landed on the guy’s temple and pressed him into an unconscious heap.
Risa gasped as she lost her balance and Aaron grabbed her. Relief flooded through him when her hand tightened on his. With a tug, he drew her into his arms and held on with all his strength.
Feeling her body shake against his brought reality rushing back. She was a civilian in the wrong place at the very wrong time. She was innocent, as were the people downstairs. Someone was making a move on Lowell and somehow mistook Risa for Angie. The plan reeked of desperation and poor planning. That meant everyone was a target and no one in the building was safe.
Royal’s voice finally registered in Aaron’s ear. Instead of answering, he asked a question of his own. “Where are you?”
“Coming.” A one-word reply, and then silence filled the other end of the line.
“Royal?”
Risa wrapped her fingers around Aaron’s arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” It was as if the world went quiet. No one even breathed on the other end of the comm.
Worry for his team warred with the fury racing through his body over the attack on Risa and how close he came to having her pulled out of his hands. But the groan in the hallway as the slumped man tried to sit up against the wall refocused Aaron’s attention on the disaster on this floor.
“Stay here.” He tried to move away from Risa, but she held on.
“No way are you walking away from me again.”
Since she left his shooting hand free, he didn’t argue. With her body plastered against his side, he walked toward the injured man.
“Who do you work for?”
The man on the floor snarled as he pressed his hand against his bloody side. His shoulders rose and fell on labored breaths, but he had enough energy left to pronounce his loyalty. “Go to hell.”
Aaron shoved his foot against the man’s open wound and the blood-soaked shirt underneath. The string of curses started a second later, but Aaron didn’t let up. He increased the pressure until the other man squirmed against the floor.
He winced and swore. “I don’t know.”
Aaron leaned in, letting menace flow through his voice as he aimed his gun at the attacker’s head. “Someone is paying you and you have two seconds to tell me.”
The guy slid flat against the floor, his voice shifting from talking to panting. “My orders were to grab the woman.”
Risa leaned over his shoulder. “You picked the wrong one.”
Confusion wrinkled the man’s brow.
Aaron didn’t let that part of the conversation go any further. “I want a name.”
“I don’t know.” The man shouted his answer this time.
Fearing the guy had an earpiece or a mic, Aaron ended the interrogation. With a sweep of his arm, he landed a sleeping blow to the side of the guy’s head, knocking him unconscious.
“He’s still bleeding,” she said.
“Right.” Part of him didn’t mind the idea of this guy bleeding out, not after what he’d tried to do to Risa, but Aaron figured he’d lost enough humanity in this job. He couldn’t afford much more.
Using the cloth towels on the sink top, he constructed a makeshift bandage and pressed it hard to the guy’s side, anchoring it there with his belt.
Risa leaned over Aaron’s shoulder. “Will that be enough?”
He didn’t pretend to be a medical expert, but he knew the guy needed real attention soon. “For now.”
After a quick check for more weapons and a phone, which proved futuile, Aaron turned back to Risa, expecting to see fear or disgust at the violence and bloodshed. Instead, she bit her lower lip, as if in deep thought.
“What is going on? I came to check out a party venue and walked into some sort of mistaken-identity nightmare.” Her voice slowly returned to normal as she spoke. Gone was the tremor of fear. In its place was a simple determination to get through the next few minutes.
Aaron appreciated the change, and the bluntness of her response startled him into an honest answer. “It looks like someone is planning an attack against the businessman downstairs and is using a woman to get to him.”
“This Angie person.”
“Yes, and I have no idea how anyone would confuse the two of you.” Aaron’s mind shifted to the Lowell’s mistress. They both had long brown hair and hovered around five foot six. But the similarities stopped there.
Angie was in her early thirties, a few years older than Risa, with a deep bourbon-soaked voice and a buxom Barbie Doll shape that had men discounting her brains. Aaron didn’t like the overly done look, but he never underestimated her. The woman ran the office with a quiet confidence and manipulated everyone in it, ignoring the affair whispers blowing around her.
Where Angie reminded Aaron of smoke-filled back rooms and expensive jewelry tastes, Risa … glowed. With the soft skin and shiny hair, it was as if sunshine kept her in its sights. The skeptic in him wondered if he’d seen so much bad that goodness of any type got magnified to an unrealistic degree.
His luck with women usually made sure that didn’t happen. One broken engagement hadn’t ruined him for all women, but it did make him wary. But he’d been struck by Risa from the very first time he saw her fighting with her laptop in a coffee shop a few weeks ago. Wearing sweatpants and a slim T-shirt, she’d had that sexy, ruffled, just-out-of-bed look that had sent his temperature spiking.
She didn’t have to work very hard at being pretty. When you turned over on the mattress in the morning, you knew who you’d see on the pillow beside you. She wouldn’t have to put on her face first. At least that’s how it had worked in Aaron’s mind. He’d never gotten as far as the bed, or even the couch, let alone a kiss, with Risa.
Yet.
Risa treated him to a half smile. “You know when I see this Angie person and do a comparison, you might get punched for that comment, right?”
“I’d prefer you anytime and anywhere.” He held a hand up as a pledge. “Couldn’t be more serious about that.”
Risa lifted an eyebrow but didn’t respond
