breathed behind him. “Drop it or you lose that hand.”
Luke opened his hand and released his weapon.
He turned slowly to face the blond man. Up close Luke could see he was hard-muscled, with a hardness to his face, too, a cruel coldness in his eyes.
Those ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You walked into the wrong operation, cop.”
Luke heard the shots a split second before he felt them tearing into his flesh.
The first would have killed him, if not for the vest. As it was, it felt like a wrecking ball had swung into him. The force spun his body around and the second shot hit his left shoulder. Another clipped his leg and he could feel hot blood instantly, a bad wound, possibly femoral...possibly fatal.
His leg collapsed and he hit the dock hard, with just enough time to think, I am in bad trouble here...
Darkness moved over his eyes...a shadow? Or something worse?
His life’s blood was pumping from him; his jeans were soaked with it. He could hear his heart pumping too, as if it were being broadcast all over the pier, echoing across the water, a deafening, frightening sound.
Then suddenly he felt a great calm. The world narrowed to a tunnel, black, with a blinding light at the end of it.
Just like they always say, he thought with detached wonder. Do they expect me to walk that way? ’Cause no way am I walking anywhere with my leg like this.
From far down in the tunnel he could hear a thundering...not his heart this time but...
Horses? Are you kidding me?
Thundering, galloping, coming from the tunnel, and then a silhouette came into view against the light: a magnificent black steed and a dark woman wearing a silver breastplate riding it, her black hair flowing behind her. She and the horse were galloping toward him, just like in a movie.
This is so weird, Luke was thinking as his mind drifted... His eyes were so heavy he had to close them. A phrase from the dream floated through his mind: I’ll come for you by midnight steed...
Then just before the black closed in, he smelled that honey scent, the sweet, feminine fragrance from his dream, and there was a sense of presence suddenly, something warm and live.
He looked up into eyes as blue as the sky, eyes that it seemed he had always known...and heard a woman’s voice in his ear: “I’ll take care of you.”
And weirdly, even if maybe he was dying, it suddenly felt that somehow everything was going to be all right. Maybe more all right than it had ever been in his life.
Behind the woman there was a figure of a wiry man leaning jauntily up against a container, shaking his head. Luke heard him say, “Oh, darling, you are in so much trouble...”
And then everything went black.
Luke woke because there was motion—not just motion, but the sensation of speeding.
Speeding where?
I thought I was dead. Am I dead?
But the motion was familiar, not anything ethereal at all. He was...
In a car?
That makes no sense.
How did I get...?
He forced his eyes open, saw headlights racing over an open highway, nearly deserted—eerie lights floating in the fog, the night flying past outside a passenger window.
Maybe I am dead.
No, he was in a car, his own car, and it was being driven by...
He turned his head painfully toward the driver’s seat.
A woman?
He guessed she was in her late twenties, although as soon as he thought it something in him said he was wrong. In the dark he could see a perfect feminine profile, alabaster skin and luxurious hair shimmering even in the half-light...
Red hair?
She was in a simple pale dress, gold, he thought, that slipped silkily over a figure that could only be called spectacular. Those lush curves...
“Who are you?” he said thickly. His throat seemed to be closed up.
She careened around a turn. “I’ll explain when you’re safe,” she answered breathlessly.
“Safe? What the hell...?”
A wave of pain cut him off. Right. He’d been shot. Shot bad. In fact, it was a miracle he wasn’t dead.
“You need to rest,” the woman at the wheel said, reproving. “Try to sleep.”
Try to sleep? Is she joking?
“Not till you tell me...”
He stopped, because he didn’t know where to start. Who was she, how could she possibly have gotten him off the dock and into a car, where were they going, what was she doing there in the first place?
If he could just stop the car from spinning, he was going to get some answers.
“Who are you?” he said again, more faintly.
She said something that sounded like...
“Bodyguard?” he repeated in disbelief, and stared at her with all the skepticism of a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound male looking at a one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound woman. Bodyguard? Her body was—well, there was not a thing wrong with it. Those long, lithe legs, those curves... It was perfect, in fact, for a dancer maybe, but a bodyguard?
“Whose...bodyguard?”
“Yours,” she said softly, just before he passed out again.
* * *
Aurora breathed easier once Luke was out again. Talking would only cause him anxiety, when what he needed was absolute rest. Well, not absolute rest in the sense of “final rest.” Just rest.
She stared out at the dark road in front of her, and clenched her hands on the wheel.
She’d known Val was up to something.
Aurora could tell, could always tell. They were sisters, and Aurora knew every trick in Val’s encyclopedia-length book. Normally she wouldn’t worry about what her sister was planning; after all, the future was only ever that. It was the present where everything significant ever happened, and the present determined the future, and the present was Aurora’s business. But it was the way Val had looked at her this morning—as if whatever was in that beautiful dark scheming head had something
