only the essentials: a change of clothes, bottled water and his laptop. He kept his flash drive, passport and cell phone in his pockets.
His stories for this assignment had already been filed electronically with World Sport Magazine, the New York–based publication that financed this three-week trip to Europe to cover the extreme skiing competition in the Alps and the bicycle marathons in Spain and Italy—an incredible range of sports, considering that it was only March.
Drew wasn’t employed by World Sport. Though he remained doggedly freelance, he sure as hell wasn’t opposed to taking an assignment like this one. An expenses-paid trip to Europe? An insider’s pass to interview elite athletes? A chance to try his hand at extreme skiing? Oh, yeah, he loved his work.
A week ago in Verbier—a ski resort in the Swiss Alps—he noticed that he was being followed. In spite of his evasive maneuvers, they’d been coming closer. Drew needed to get back to Sioux Falls. When he came face-to-face with these guys, he wanted home field advantage.
The problem was getting out of Europe in one piece. He arranged to meet up with a Cessna pilot in Sorrento. From there, they’d fly to Rome, where Drew would make his connections back to the States.
At a high point on the Amalfi cliffs, he pulled onto the shoulder. This seemed like a good place for cell phone reception, and he wanted to check with his pilot. Standing beside a cypress tree at the edge of a forty-foot precipice, he looked down at the sea. White froth roiled and rushed against the jagged rocks below him. In the opposite direction, the sun was rising over Mount Vesuvius.
There was a text message from Melinda Winston.
As soon as he saw her name, he grinned. Though Drew never had a place he considered home, being with Melinda gave him a warm, cozy, comfortable feeling. He liked almost everything about her—from the way her auburn curls fell softly past her shoulders to the slender curve of her waist to her delicate ankles and pink toes. She was always quick to laugh at his jokes, and he never had the sense that she was playing games or trying to manipulate him. There was nothing phony about her. A librarian, she was a solid, Midwestern woman with solid, Midwestern values. Except when they made love. He’d been lucky to find her, living in the apartment directly under his.
Her text said, “Home on Wed? Dinner at my place?”
His first impulse was to call her back so he could hear her voice, but the time difference meant it would be the middle of the night where she was. He texted: “I’m there. Six p.m.”
He almost added the word love, but it wouldn’t be right. As soon as he returned to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he needed to move. Now that his enemies knew his identity, they’d be coming after him. His dinner with Melinda might be the last time he saw her. Regret tugged at his heart. If his life hadn’t been so damned crazy, there might have been a chance for something more between them.
He called the pilot and verified that he’d be there within half an hour.
Back on the bike, he rode steadily on the cliff-side road. Thoughts of Melinda occupied his mind. He’d bought her a present while he was in Switzerland—a souvenir to remember him by when he left her.
He heard the engine of a car behind him, turned his head to look. A black sedan. Coming right at him. He veered off the road. The car followed.
Nowhere to go. They were too close. This bike wasn’t made for off-road maneuvers.
The car aimed directly at him. Abandoning the bike, he ran through the shrubs and grasses that separated him from the brink of the steep, white cliff.
Car doors slammed. He heard yelling. Two voices. Two of them and one of him.
No time for finesse.
Running as hard and fast as he could, he leaped over the edge. For a moment, he flew. His arms churned, grabbing at the air, fighting for distance. He hoped to jump wide of the rocks at the base of the cliff. He almost made it.
Feet first, he landed on a sharp outcropping. His left leg crumbled, and he sprawled. His left arm jolted. His hands scraped against the jagged stone. Pain shot through him.
Still, he managed to push himself into the sea. The temperate Mediterranean waters were cold against his overheated body. He swam underwater as far as he could.
When his head broke the surface, he saw two men standing on the cliff. Even at this distance, he recognized something familiar about the shorter man with white hair. The other had a shaved head. He was holding binoculars.
Drew dove under the water again. His left leg was virtually useless, but he managed to get beyond a spit of land, out of sight from the cliff. He climbed onto the rocks.
Ignoring the pain, he inspected the injury to his leg. The bone wasn’t visibly broken, but there was already swelling around his ankle. His hands looked worse, as thick blood oozed from the abrasions. The little finger on his left hand bent at a weird angle.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart. Injuries never stopped him.
As a kid, he’d been quick to heal. As he got older, he learned to focus the healing. His body needed little direction or encouragement. His blood surged toward his injuries. His muscles repaired themselves at a cellular level. His torn flesh knitted.
In a matter of minutes, he was healed.
His head throbbed from the strain. Later, he’d need a long nap. Exhaustion and a headache were the downside to his miraculous talent—the ability that made him a freak.
MELINDA WINSTON stared at the big, round, old-fashioned clock that hung on the kitchen wall in her one-bedroom apartment. In slow motion, the second hand ticked down. Four minutes and forty-five seconds until six o’clock.
She knew that Drew was home from his travels; she’d heard him climbing the stairs to the third-floor apartment just above hers. Though he’d texted an acceptance to her dinner invitation, she halfway expected him to call and cancel. Any normal person would need a rest after a three-week assignment in Europe. As if Drew Kincaid was normal? Not hardly!
His job as a freelance reporter for sporting events had to be the most fantastic occupation she could imagine. On a moment’s notice, he’d be on a plane to Aspen or Hawaii or Alaska. She’d never even heard of some of the extreme sports he covered; most of them weren’t available on basic cable. All of which made it rather bizarre that he chose Sioux Falls as his home base. Even more strange was the fact that he was living here in a plain, old, three-story brick apartment building not far from the Augustana College campus where she worked in the library. Most preposterous of all? They were dating.
Why would an exciting, handsome, incredible man like Drew be interested in her? Not that she suffered from low self-esteem, not much anyway. But Melinda faced facts. She wasn’t stylish, gorgeous or even athletic. From the first time he’d kissed her, she’d told herself that this relationship wouldn’t last. When they’d fallen into bed together after watching an evening performance by the Augustana Madrigal Choir, she allowed herself to be swept away by fierce passions unlike anything she’d experienced in her twenty-six years. He’d made her feel like a truly exotic creature, elevated far above the realm of dull reality. Golly darn, it was amazing. She’d felt beautiful and remarkable, capable of conquering the world, climbing Mount Everest, racing a Ferrari.
When the afterglow had faded, she’d put on her glasses and looked in the mirror. Other than her
