the safe, he flipped the rug back into place. Then he stopped short.
Had he just seen a shadow move beneath the closet door?
He froze, barely breathing, his gaze fixed on the shadow. Several seconds passed. It moved again.
Someone was in the closet. And whoever it was had undoubtedly heard every word he’d spoken.
ALYSSA SHIFTED nervously from one foot to the other, thinking that an hour had to have passed while she’d been in this closet. And the longer she stood there, the more she realized something was very strange about this situation. Just the fact that the burglar had gotten past the security system to enter the apartment through the back elevator astonished her. Equally amazing was the speed with which he’d broken into the safe. Pretty soon it became clear to her that his running monologue was actually one side of a conversation he was carrying on electronically with someone who was downstairs keeping watch.
And he was saying the strangest things. Blackmailed congressmen? DVDs? Learjets? What was all that about?
Right now, though, she really didn’t care. She just wanted him to grab what he’d come for and leave the building so she could get out of this apartment, call the police, then go somewhere and have a good, stiff drink.
Then all at once, the closet door flew open.
Before she could react with anything but a quick yelp of surprise, the man in the ski mask took two steps into the closet, grabbed her and spun her around. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her back to his chest. When he pressed the barrel of a gun against the side of her neck, she let out a strangled gasp.
“Not a sound,” he said. “Not one.”
She fell silent, with only the hiss of her panicked breathing breaking the stillness inside the closet.
“Everything’s under control,” he murmured. “Just sit tight.”
Alyssa knew he wasn’t talking to her, but to whomever was on the other end of whatever hands-free communication device he was using. For a long time the man stood motionless, his arm clamped tightly around her. Fear raced through her.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“My name? Why—”
“Tell me.”
“Uh, Alyssa. Ballard.”
The man’s chest expanded with a deep, silent breath. “Damn.”
For some reason her name seemed to have made him unhappy. Given that he had a gun pressed to her jugular right now, she really wished it hadn’t.
“Do you work in this building?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Even as Alyssa’s heart pounded with apprehension, a sense of sudden recognition came over her. That voice. She’d heard it before. Despite the fact that his words were threatening, the deep, melodic tone of his voice still came through.
But it couldn’t be. She was imagining it.
He shifted his hand against her rib cage. She looked down at it and she couldn’t believe what she saw. A ring. Sterling silver. Alpha and omega symbols intertwined.
She glanced at his arm wrapped around her, his bicep bulging beneath his black T-shirt, and saw a long, irregular scar that extended the length of his forearm, faded to white but still distinct. The ring she was just now remembering, but his body she’d never forgotten. She’d memorized every inch of it, up to and including that scar.
For a moment she was too stunned to speak. Every second seemed sluggish and protracted as the reality of who he was slowly bared itself. She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice.
“Derek?”
His body stiffened, an involuntary reaction that told her just how right she was. Good Lord. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but…
It was Derek. He was here. In this building, two thousand miles from the last place she’d seen him. And he was robbing this apartment.
“It’s you,” she said. “I know it is. Your voice. Your ring. The scar on your arm.”
He was silent.
“So this is why you left me in Seattle?” she said, her voice escalating. “Because you’re a burglar?”
He said nothing. She squirmed in his arms. “Let me go!”
When he continued to hold her tightly, suddenly all the pain and frustration he’d caused her, both here and in Seattle, welled up inside her in a hot mass of anger. The man she’d been so crazy about, the man who’d intrigued her to no end, the man with whom she’d spent one wonderful week and had imagined a thousand more to come…
He was a criminal. And he wasn’t going to get away with this.
She lifted her knee, then slammed her heel down hard on his instep. He grunted in pain, loosening his grip on her just enough that she wrenched herself from his arms and shoved him aside to head out of the closet. But before she cleared the doorway, he snaked his arm around her and yanked her back. Only this time he didn’t stop there. He pulled a tie off a nearby rack and bound her hands behind her.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, yanking hard against the tie, unable to believe he’d done it. Unable to believe how fast he’d done it.
Ignoring her, he grabbed another tie and gagged her with it, then led her out of the closet and over to the bed, where he sat her down, bound her ankles and tethered her to the bedpost. She fought him every step of the way, but he was bigger than she was and infinitely stronger, and within a few minutes, he had her completely subdued.
He walked away and stood near the wall, his back to her, his shoulders heaving with a few deep breaths. She could almost feel the tension radiating from him. Was it from anger? Indecision? She couldn’t tell. When he turned back around, though, he seemed to sigh with resignation.
Then he reached up and pulled off the ski mask.
Alyssa had already known beyond all doubt that it was Derek, but seeing him again like this made emotions swirl wildly inside her. Fear. Surprise. Anger. All of those made sense. But mingling with them was something that made no sense at all—an unwanted rush of the elemental desire she’d felt the first time she’d laid eyes on him. But he was a burglar and a kidnapper. How could she have any feelings of attraction toward him at all?
He came back to the bed and sat beside her, tossing the mask aside. To her surprise, he also disconnected the tiny microphone clipped to his collar. He regarded her silently for a moment, then lifted his hand to brush a wayward strand of her hair gently back over her shoulder. His fingertips grazed her neck, sending shivers all the way down her spine.
No. He had no right to touch her. None at all. She turned away sharply, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Alyssa,” he said, “listen to me. I’m in a tight spot here. No matter what this looks like, I’m not a burglar. Not the kind you think I am, anyway. And as far as tying you up like this, I have no choice. I can’t risk you
