“What? Why—”
“Connors escaped from jail this morning. We’re putting you in protective custody.”
* * *
AS SCOTT SPED out of the WFO’s parking structure, he sensed Andre’s gaze on him from the passenger seat. They’d been partners since Scott joined HRT. When you’ve put your life in someone else’s hands enough times, spent enough missions scouting out targets for days on end, you got to know the person. Andre definitely knew something was up.
Scott had never told him about Chelsie. He wasn’t the type to kiss and tell in general, but he wasn’t completely secretive, either. Still he’d never spoken to anyone about what he’d shared with Chelsie. Somehow, it felt too intimate, and he wanted to lock the memory away, keep it only for himself.
From the backseat, Chelsie finally spoke up. “How’d he get out?”
“Faked a medical emergency,” Scott said. “The ambulance was in a car crash. Connors overpowered his guard and then tackled the driver. He was gone before the police arrived.”
Andre turned in his seat, stretched his hand toward Chelsie. “Special Agent Andre Diaz. Scott and I are partners at HRT.”
“Chelsie Russell. So, Andre, why the protective custody?”
Tension vibrated in her voice. As an agent, she was well aware they wouldn’t put her into protective custody simply because a criminal from one of her cases had escaped.
“There was a break-in at your apartment this afternoon, about an hour after Connors got out,” Andre said in his typical straightforward way.
“What? Why didn’t anyone call me?”
“There’s probably a message on your phone,” Scott said. “You were in a meeting.”
Scott sensed Chelsie lean forward in the backseat, and he couldn’t help but notice the familiar scent of her strawberry shampoo. He wanted to reach his hand back and clasp it around hers, but he swallowed the urge and tightened his grip on the steering wheel instead. She might still have been attracted to him on some level—he’d seen that in her wide blue eyes the second she’d stepped close to him in the WFO parking lot—but Chelsie had made her feelings about him clear.
“Did he take anything? And how did he find me?” Chelsie asked.
“Well, the place wasn’t ransacked,” Scott answered. “We don’t know how he tracked you down.” Her information was unlisted, but apparently Connors’s skills extended beyond his rifle.
“Are you sure it was Connors?”
“No. But prison officials went through Connors’s cell after he got out and it seems like the guy was fixated on you.” Scott gritted his teeth, remembering the briefing the team had gotten from Froggy an hour ago. The Bureau wanted Chelsie Russell in protective custody, and since Connors had gotten his marksman training from the military, they wanted a pair of snipers watching her.
HRT did protective details all the time. Protecting another agent was an unusual assignment, but Scott had volunteered. Every time he thought about Connors, he remembered how the man had shot the tactical mirror out of his hand from two hundred yards away. There were top-notch snipers in HRT, but this was Chelsie’s life they were talking about. Regardless of her feelings for him, he had to be the one protecting her. And Andre, good friend that he was, had immediately raised his hand, too, when Scott volunteered.
“He fixated on me, how?” Chelsie asked, her voice tight.
“Your name was written repeatedly in a notebook that was found in his cell,” Andre said. “He had limited internet privileges and when they checked, they discovered that he’d been looking for information on you.”
At Connors’s murder trial, the prosecuting attorney had argued the only reason the two community-center workers and Chelsie had lived was because Connors hadn’t been able to line up shots on them. He’d been drawn to the site because of the military connection, but for some reason, after his capture, he’d become obsessed with Chelsie.
The FBI wasn’t sure why he’d fixated on her—she’d barely arrived on scene before Connors had taken off. Maybe it was because, unlike the community-center workers, who’d been inside the building when he’d started shooting and who he might never have known were there, Chelsie had talked to him. Whatever she’d said must have made an impression. Or maybe it was just because she was the only one he’d known was there whom he hadn’t been able to hit.
Apparently now he’d decided to come back and finish what he’d started. The two community-center workers had been put under protective custody, too, but the locals were handling that. And they’d only found references to Chelsie in Connors’s cell.
“He won’t get anywhere near you,” Scott promised, and he knew there was no way anyone in the car could miss the too-personal conviction in his voice.
Andre’s eyes flicked to him, then away, as the car went briefly, uncomfortably silent.
The silence stretched until finally Chelsie asked, “Where are we going?” Her voice was neutral, but she was trying too hard to sound as though she hadn’t noticed his intensity.
The scent of strawberries faded as she leaned back in her seat, away from him.
“We’re taking you to a safe house,” Andre answered. “There’s a bag for you in back. We had one of the cops who responded to the break-in pack it for you.”
“A female cop,” Scott added, ridiculously bothered by the idea of a male cop pawing through her underwear drawer. An equally ridiculous thought followed—the hope that the cop had packed the underwear set Chelsie had been wearing when they were together. Pale pink and completely, unexpectedly feminine, especially underneath the straight-cut dress pants and loose button-down she’d worn to Shields.
“Okay,” Chelsie said, obviously having no idea about the direction of his thoughts.
But from the way Andre’s lips were quivering, he had an idea. When Scott glanced at his friend, Andre’s eyebrows lifted toward the dome of his shaved head.
Ignoring him, Scott turned onto a random side street, weaving his way leisurely through the neighborhood and keeping an eye on the rearview mirror.
“No one,” Andre said as they came out the other side and Scott made a series of sudden, erratic turns.
They didn’t have a tail. Good. There was no reason to think they’d been followed, but Scott wasn’t taking any chances. Finally, he got back on the freeway and started driving south.
Ironically, the safe house was only fifteen miles from his home, ten miles from the scene of the shooting. It was in the middle of nowhere, an abandoned farmhouse on a flat, empty piece of land that would telegraph anyone’s approach for miles. No good place for a sharpshooter to set up a hide, which was the reason they’d chosen it.
He and Andre had driven over there right after the briefing and set the place up, leaving Andre’s car behind. Then they’d gone back for Chelsie. Good thing they’d been fast because although a message had been left for Chelsie not to leave the office, apparently it hadn’t been delivered.
Hopefully,
