his head.
Glennon had clamped a hand over her left shoulder, both her gun and flashlight discarded on the floor where he’d tackled her. The small amount of moonlight reaching them showed something dark and wet spreading through her fingers. Blood. She’d been shot. Squinting, she let a small groan vibrate through her.
Peeling her hand back, Anthony scanned her shoulder. “Can you move?”
A scream escaped her control, singeing his nerve endings. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself upright. “I’m fine. Just get us out of here.”
He aimed for the now motionless trees and fired. Three rounds. Four. The gun kicked back in his hand with each pull of the trigger. No movement. No return fire. The shooter had done what he’d come to do and disappeared. Or maybe not.
Hell. Pulse pounding hard in his throat, Anthony holstered his gun then reached for her. Wrapping one arm around her back and the other in her hand, he wrenched Glennon off the floor and into his side. Her roselike scent—a scent that seemed to cling to him—claimed his attention as they moved through the house. He couldn’t focus on that now. There were no guarantees the shooter had vanished or that he’d come alone, but they weren’t going to sit around and wait to find out.
Mentally alert. Physically strong. Morally straight, he reminded himself. The words had been drilled into his mind at boot camp.
Glennon picked up her discarded weapon. Moving when he moved, turning when he turned, she followed his lead, not missing a beat. “Do you want to help me now?”
Want to? Hell, no. Need to? Apparently.
“Do you really want to have this conversation while you’re bleeding?” He steered them toward the north end of the house, opposite the shooter’s last known position. If they had any chance of making it to his SUV without being shot, this was it. One hundred yards. That was all they had before they reached the vehicle, but that distance could feel like a mile when under fire. Pulling up short of the slashed screen door at the back of the house, Anthony scanned her from head to toe. “Ready?”
She nodded, blood coating her gun hand.
“Keep low, move fast and use me as cover if you have to.” He didn’t give her a chance to respond as he kicked the screen door aside and rushed them onto the covered back porch. A gust of freezing December air took the breath from his lungs. Hiking the Beretta shoulder-level, he sidestepped along the side of the house, making them as small a target as possible in case the shooter decided to come around the corner.
Snow crunched under their steps. Once they reached the corner of the house, they could make a run for it. Until then, the snow would only slow them down. Instincts on high alert, he listened for movement—anything—that pointed to an ambush.
“On my count.” He had the SUV in his sights and Glennon glued to his side. “One.” He studied the fast-spreading pattern of blood across her T-shirt. “Two.” There were no other options at this point. They had to run. Now. He slowed his breathing, wrapped his free hand around her upper arm. A rush of electricity shot through him at the contact. “Three.”
They raced toward the open white-picket-fence gate. A third shot exploded from the trees. Then a fourth. Anthony maneuvered Glennon to his opposite side, using his body as a shield, and emptied the Beretta’s magazine toward the trees.
Alaska winters were some of the darkest on the planet. He couldn’t see a damn thing, let alone narrow down the shooter’s location in a patch of thick trees without stopping. Getting Glennon to safety had to be his priority. Pocketing the empty gun as they crossed the cul-de-sac, he unholstered another weapon and fired.
“Go, go, go!” Fifty feet. Thirty. The SUV came to life at the press of a button and, within seconds, he’d shoved Glennon into the back seat. He ripped open the driver’s door, hiked himself behind the wheel and rammed the vehicle into Reverse. The houses that lined the street blurred as he leveraged his arm against the passenger’s headrest and slammed his foot against the accelerator. One last bullet fought to penetrate the windshield as he maneuvered the SUV out of the neighborhood, tires screaming in protest, but didn’t make it through. One of the perks of working for a heavily resourced security company: bulletproof glass. He’d never been more grateful for it than right that second.
He spun the vehicle around and sped away from the abandoned house and the single shadowed figure standing in the middle of the street. The gunfire died, his fight-or-flight response returning to normal. The SUV’s engine roared as he pushed it faster. One glance at Glennon in the rearview mirror and he white-knuckled the steering wheel. He inhaled deeply to slow his racing heart rate. “You still alive?”
“I’m alive. Thanks to you.” She refused to look at him, staring out one of the back windows. Pretending the last few minutes hadn’t happened—that she hadn’t just been shot—wouldn’t get her out of answering his questions.
He relaxed against the seat, finally able to take a full breath since setting foot in that house. “Good, then you can tell me who the hell tried to kill you.”
* * *
SEVENTY-TWO HOURS. That was how long her partner, Sergeant Bennett Spencer, had been missing.
Criminal Investigations Special Agent Glennon Chase read his last text message on her phone’s screen for the hundredth time as the SUV plowed through the snow-covered streets of her hometown.
I found proof.
What did it mean? She hadn’t been able to locate him since. He wouldn’t return her calls, hadn’t been seen anywhere near his army barracks or shown up at the temporary office they’d been assigned to complete their investigation. On top of that, the GPS on his phone had gone offline. Or been destroyed.
But Bennett was alive. She had to believe that. Otherwise...
“Your guess is as good as mine at this point.” Glennon pressed her palm against the bullet wound in her left shoulder as she shifted in the back seat. Pain flooded through her but it kept her focused. In the moment. Her attention slid to the wall of pure muscle in the driver’s seat. Because letting her guard down around Sergeant Major Anthony Harris would be a mistake she couldn’t afford. Not again.
The former Ranger hadn’t changed a bit. Aviator sunglasses hanging from his T-shirt, sandy-brown hair, full beard, thick muscles strapped inside that familiar Kevlar vest adorned with a patch of the Grim Reaper. Gun at his side. He was attractive, intelligent, protective—everything she’d imagined she’d needed when they’d first gotten together after basic training. He’d still been in the army then, her weapons instructor out of Fort Benning. And those eyes...the darkest blue she’d ever encountered. Dark and deadly.
“Hope a bullet in the shoulder was worth it.” Anthony kept his focus on the road, but the dangerous sinking of his tone meant his focus rested one hundred percent on what had happened back at that house. She didn’t blame him. An ambush had been the last thing on her mind when she’d tracked Bennett’s GPS to that location. “Did you at least find what you were looking for?”
Right. Focus. She swallowed the rush of warmth spreading through her chest and stared out the passenger-side window into the cold. “You mean aside from proof someone doesn’t want me to find my partner?” She inhaled through another round of pain and pressed her shoulders into the leather seat as a distraction. “No.”
The house had been abandoned long before she’d gotten there, but Bennett’s
