of control she hadn’t known she possessed kept her from running.
She counted the last remaining steps, her breath hitching in her throat. One. Two. Three. Four.
And there it was.
Go!
She cut around the corner and broke into an all-out run.
Almost immediately, she heard the muffled curse, a confused noise, then the sound of someone bursting into the alley behind her.
She didn’t look back or slow for an instant. The alley was dark, dank and cramped, ripe with the odors of garbage and the sewer. She noticed none of it, couldn’t hear him behind her, couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of her shoes on the pavement. The close walls echoed the sound. He wouldn’t be able to tell how near she was or how far.
And there was no way for her to tell where the end of the alley was. The street it intersected was primarily residential, with almost no lights illuminating the road. So she kept running through the darkness, toward the darkness. She didn’t know until she suddenly cleared the smells and felt the open air wash over her that she was free.
And still she didn’t stop. Her apartment building was to the left. She cut right, back toward the well-lit business district she’d left behind. He wouldn’t be expecting her to do that. He’d expect her to head in the direction she’d originally been going. He needed her to. It would be easier for him to take her where there were fewer people, little chance that someone would interfere. That was why he hadn’t taken her on the street, had tried to follow her home. That was exactly why she couldn’t.
She took another right into the next alley, then another, working her way blindly through a network of back streets that should lead her back to the one where she’d begun. There would be people at the bar. If she could just get back there, she would be safe. He wouldn’t dare come after her in there. He didn’t want to involve the police any more than she did. She just had to get to the bar.
And when she finally spotted the phosphorescent glow that signaled the main street was up ahead, she picked up one last burst of speed, running straight for its blessed safety. She reached it within seconds, her heart thudding, nothing but hope and adrenaline coursing through her veins. Breaking through, she darted around the corner.
And straight into a wall.
A blast of cold water couldn’t have been more of a shock. She bounced back, stumbling unevenly, off balance. Hands reached out to grip her forearms.
Startled, scared, she lifted her head and found herself staring into a face that was partially hidden in shadow.
Not a wall.
A man.
Fog billowed around him, rendering him nothing but a menacing silhouette that loomed over her. It didn’t matter. She knew from the unyielding hold he had on her arms that he wasn’t about to let her go.
She should have known Taylor wouldn’t be alone.
He was one of them. He had to be.
Her limbs froze just when she needed them to fight back the most. After running for so long, it seemed impossible to believe the moment of reckoning had arrived.
They’d caught her.
“Y OU JUST MISSED him. Left not ten minutes ago.”
Ross barely heard the bartender over the raucous noise filling the bar, but he got the message loud and clear. He bit back a curse. He couldn’t afford to indulge the instinct, couldn’t risk offending the bartender when the man held information he needed. It wasn’t the man’s fault that he didn’t have the answer Ross wanted to hear. That didn’t make it any easier to take.
He had to wait to question the man further. The bartender turned away to refill the glass of a man at the other end of the bar. The small neighborhood pub was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night. The bartender and a single waitress were the only ones working. Ross was lucky to get the man’s attention at all, especially since he wasn’t drinking.
Impatience gnawed at him all the same. It rankled that he’d managed to track Taylor down to this bar, only to miss him by ten minutes.
It had been far easier to find Taylor than he’d expected, so much so the situation made Ross a little uneasy. For someone on the run, Taylor hadn’t done a very good job covering his tracks as he’d cut an uneven path from New York to Chicago. Despite the head start the man had on him, it had only taken Ross a few days to catch up.
The bartender finally swung back in his direction. Ross motioned him over. “How long was this guy in here?” he asked, tapping the photo of Taylor he’d placed on the bar.
The bartender heaved a sigh that sent his belly quaking and considered the question. “Three hours or so. Sat at the table by the window there. Had four beers.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yep. Just sat there. Didn’t talk much. Kept his eyes on that window.”
“He leave alone?”
“I didn’t see him leave. One minute he was there, and the next, when I turned around, he was gone.”
The bartender was eyeing his patrons down the length of the bar, and Ross knew he was about to lose him. Figuring he’d gotten all he was going to out of the man, he pulled a bill out of his wallet and placed it on the counter. The bartender accepted it without a word. Ross moved away from the bar and headed for the door.
Outside, he glanced in both directions down the street, trying to gauge which way Taylor might have gone. There was no one in sight. To the left were a couple of businesses, their windows shuttered, the lights dimmed. There was a laundromat, a drugstore. Nothing he could imagine Taylor being interested in.
To the right lay houses and apartment buildings, what was mainly a residential area. The windows were mostly dark, their inhabitants safe in their beds for the night.
The bartender’s comment that Taylor had stared through a window for hours bothered him. Instead of choosing a more discreet position in the back of the bar where it was unlikely anyone would see him, he’d chosen a seat right in front of the window. Either he really wasn’t worried about being spotted—and Ross knew Taylor was too savvy to be so careless—or he was looking for someone. Undoubtedly the same someone he’d come all this way to find.
At this time of night Ross was inclined to believe someone would be heading home, instead of to any of the closed businesses to his left. He headed right.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Ross flipped up the collar on his leather jacket, but didn’t try to seek cover. He moved quickly. There was the possibility that Taylor had driven off, having completed whatever business had brought him here. Ross refused to consider that yet. He wouldn’t accept that he’d been this close only to lose the man again. He had to be somewhere nearby.
Distracted by his thoughts, Ross heard the running footsteps a heartbeat too late. He took an instinctive step back, but not quickly enough to avoid the person who barreled straight into him from out of nowhere.
Too slow, man.
His hands automatically went up to steady the person. One touch,
