“Yes,” he said, frowning. “A message from whom?”
“Her sister, asking for a return call.”
Just a brother, she’d said.
Without a word, he took off running toward the elevators.
* * *
Brooke froze, heart slamming into her ribs, paralyzed. Should she run by the door or back up the stairs?
She was about to bolt past when the door swung open. A startled maintenance worker jerked when he saw her.
“Man, you scared me,” he said.
“Sorry,” she managed after sucking in a breath. “Is… Did you see anyone out there? A lady with black hair and a big bag?”
He chewed a piece of gum and considered. “Saw someone like that earlier in the lobby. She looked around for a while and made a phone call, then I lost track of her.”
She nodded her thanks and continued on down until she reached the lobby. Opening the door and peeking out, she was relieved to see no sign of the lady. Trying to appear calm even though her heart was still thundering inside her, she walked to the reception desk and asked the attendant to summon her a taxi. While she waited, her attention divided between looking out the glass doors for the taxi in the bustle of the financial district and watching the elevator and stairwell for any sign of her stalker, Brooke shivered.
Could be the lady was completely innocent, but Brooke was positive it was the same person she’d noticed the week before in San Diego, watching her from a parked car.
Brooke positioned herself nearer to the glass doors where she would be easily seen by passersby and the front desk person. Once again she was overreacting. Her fears were silly. She tried to focus her thoughts on the next step. Since Victor had declined, she had to find another way to get access to the tunnels under the college. How? Dean Lock would never allow it, not considering his hatred of her father. The police wouldn’t get involved. Who could pressure the dean into allowing her access?
No one but Victor Gage.
She pushed the dark thought aside.
God will help me through this, she thought. He’d held on to her and her father and brother through a lifetime of struggle. He wouldn’t turn His back on them now. She didn’t need anyone’s help anyway.
The elevator doors opened. Brooke was startled to see Victor step out, troubled eyes scanning the room until he found hers. There was an intensity in his face she hadn’t seen before.
He’d changed his mind. Her heart leaped until she saw her jacket in his hand. Merely returning a forgotten item. Disappointment swirled inside, but she held up her chin and plastered a gracious smile on her face.
A moment later the smile fell away. Brooke watched over Victor’s shoulder as the black-haired woman emerged from the stairwell, her expression grim.
Brooke gasped and took a step backward.
In a fog of confusion, she saw a look of horror twist Victor’s handsome features, his eyes rounding over her shoulder as he looked out the glass doors.
She had no idea what had startled him until the glass shattered around them and Victor pulled her to the floor.
TWO
Victor saw the situation unfold, but his head did not believe it. One moment he was heading toward Brooke Ramsey, wondering at the frightened look on her face. The next, he saw a car pull up outside the office, the window rolled down just far enough for him to see a gun thrust through the opening. He had a split second to leap on top of Brooke and carry her to the ground before three shots drilled through the glass. They tumbled along the tile floor, small pieces of the safety glass crackling underneath them. There was a scream from somewhere as the car pulled away and out of sight.
Her breath came in short pants against his cheek. He pushed away a section of her glossy hair and looked into her eyes, so close he could see his own expression mirrored there.
“Are you hurt?”
She tried a few times to answer before any words came out. “I don’t think so. What happened?”
He took another look to make sure the car hadn’t returned before he rolled off her and moved her away from the glass. “A shooter,” he managed, before he noticed the front desk person sprinting across the lobby, shouting into a radio.
Victor followed his progress. Brooke must have, too, because he heard her gasp, her hands flying to her mouth. Then his body was moving on instinct, feet crunching over the broken glass, mind running like a mad thing as he raced to the dark-haired woman lying motionless on the floor.
Mid-fifties, he guessed as he checked her vitals. No breathing, no heartbeat, bullet wound visible on her forehead. He knew the prognosis of a bullet plowing through the frontal lobe of the brain, but he ignored it, tilting her jaw to open the airway and starting chest compressions. Every few cycles he rechecked the vitals without much hope.
Cold horror seeped into him as he was transported back to the moment when he’d awakened in a wrecked car, Jennifer unconscious and broken next to him. He could still feel the warmth of her body under his hands as he frantically tried to restart her heart. There must have been people there, too, as there were now, standing helplessly, dialing cell phones, calling encouragement to the victims of the awful accident, but he hadn’t heard them. Everything faded into a mumbling haze except the reality of his hands on her ribs, his lips blowing air into her mouth, the fading pulse under his frantic fingertips.
“Help me, God,” he’d said, because that’s what Jen would have prayed.
And He hadn’t.
And Victor couldn’t either.
Jennifer was gone.
Victor knew with the same sickening certainty that the black-haired woman was gone, too. He could force her heart to pump, squeeze it into pushing the blood around, but the life, that indefinable force that separates the living from the dead, was gone. He continued the compressions anyway, shoulders burning, until the paramedics arrived and took over the effort. When he finally did move away, he saw Brooke staring at him in shock. An officer took her by the arm and another one escorted him to a nearby hallway, away from the broken glass and the death that lay in awkward display on the cold tile floor.
He was surprised to find that his hands were shaking, so he stuffed them into his pockets as the officer began to ask him questions. He retold the strange interview with Brooke and her assertion that someone was following her. With a start, Victor remembered why he’d gone to the lobby in the first place.
“Someone called my office looking for Ms. Ramsey, pretending to be her sister.”
The officer raised an eyebrow and dutifully recorded the information. “Why don’t you sit down here while we look into some things, Mr. Gage?” The officer moved off and Victor caught sight of Brooke talking to another cop, the freckles standing out strikingly against the paleness of her skin.
He wished he could settle on one feeling, but a stream of conflicting emotions surged through him. Post-traumatic shock, he figured. He’d just witnessed
