Maybe she should have called him Special Agent Stryker, but for some reason his first name was what had slipped out of her lips.
Regardless of what she’d called him, he lifted a finger to his lips, silencing her.
The shadow stepped through the stairwell doorway and into the hall. The shadow belonged to a man—a big man—and like Ash, he carried a gun. He pointed the barrel at Special Agent Stryker.
“FBI,” Ash called out.
The man didn’t care. He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. But Ash fired, too.
Claire screamed and ducked as bullets struck the walls of the hallway, tearing through the blue-and-green-striped paper to burrow into the drywall. Or pass through into the rooms of those unsuspecting guests.
“Stay down!” Ash ordered her.
Then a bullet must have struck him because he staggered back. But he kept his body between hers and the shooter, using it to protect her as he returned fire.
She screamed again but she wasn’t worried just about herself or those guests; she was worried about him. Had he been hurt badly?
Ash cursed as the force of the bullet propelled him back. He nearly knocked over Claire, who stood behind him like he had directed her. Maybe he should have told her to run. But the man with the gun stood between them and the stairwell and the elevators.
She had no place to run.
Even if he passed her the key card to the hotel room, she wouldn’t be safe inside the room—at least not for long. A man this big could easily knock down her door. The only way to keep her safe was to eliminate the threat to her safety.
So Ash fired again. But this was a kill shot. The big man crumpled to the carpet like the guy in the parking lot had crumpled to the asphalt.
“It’s okay,” Ash told her as he turned back to Claire. “It’s over.” For now. But how long before someone else tried to abduct her? And why?
Why not just pay what she asked for the information? Unless she was telling the truth...
She moved as if to look around him, but he used his body to block her view. She didn’t need to see what he had done to protect them. But instead of moving around him, she moved toward him—her hands reaching out toward his chest.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice cracking with concern.
He nodded. But he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was all right because he was beginning to believe her and doubt himself. She had been so concerned about the security guard and now about him. Maybe she wasn’t the mercenary person he thought she was.
“But you were shot!” she exclaimed, her palms patting his chest as if she were searching for the wound.
He caught her hands and pressed them more tightly against his vest. “I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “You must be hurt.”
“The protective vest took the bullet,” he assured her. He had only felt the impact of the too-close shot. And he would probably have a bruise on his chest from the force with which the bullet had struck the vest. He pulled her hands away from his chest, and she tugged them free of his grasp.
“Thank God you’re wearing a vest.” Her breath shuddered out with sincere-sounding relief. “But of course you would be wearing a vest.”
“Of course.” But there had been times that he hadn’t been able to when he’d been undercover. He couldn’t have risked someone noticing the vest, no matter how thin and indiscernible the Bureau vests were. He also hadn’t been able to wear a wire then, either. He had been totally on his own. But that hadn’t been anything new to Ash.
“Maybe I should be wearing one, too,” she mused, and she must have finally caught sight of the man he’d shot because she shuddered in revulsion.
“He wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.
Her green eyes widened in skepticism. “Really? I was right behind you.”
“He wouldn’t have hit you.” The guy had been aiming only for Ash.
“Why not?” she asked.
“You’re too valuable.”
She laughed like he’d heard her laugh during the speed dating event, like he had told her a not-so-funny joke like those other guys must have. “Yeah, right...”
Was her self-deprecation real or feigned? He believed it was real, because he was beginning to believe her. He had conceived his opinion of her from her file—from the things she’d done in her past. He of all people should have known better than to think a person’s past defined the kind of person he or she would become.
“The information you have is valuable,” he clarified. “They want to know what you know.”
“But you think I’m offering that information for sale,” she said. “So why wouldn’t they just pay me for it?”
“Some people would rather get the information for free,” he said.
She glanced toward the man lying on the floor and shook her head. “That’s not free.”
No. Like the man in the parking lot, this guy had undoubtedly been hired to abduct Claire, but whatever they’d been paid hadn’t been enough. The mission had cost them both their lives.
Ash rubbed his chest where the bullet had struck the vest right over his heart. If not for the vest...
During his years with the Bureau, Ash had had some dangerous assignments, but now he wondered if this mission would be the one that cost him his life.
* * *
HE HAD KILLED a man, but the police hadn’t questioned him. Of course Special Agent Ash Stryker hadn’t stuck around to talk to them, either. He’d whisked Claire out of the hotel as if nothing had happened.
But the gunshots still rang in her ears, and she trembled in the aftermath of the close call. Maybe he was right. Maybe the man hadn’t been shooting at her. But she’d thought Ash had been hit, which had been entirely too close for her.
She had actually touched him, just to check his chest to see if a bullet had struck his heart. But he’d been wearing a vest. She’d felt the hardness beneath the softness of his sweater. Maybe she should have checked beneath the vest, too. At the thought of pulling up his sweater and peeling off that vest, her pulse quickened. Would his chest have dark hair that would be soft to her touch? Or would his muscles be all sleek and smooth beneath her palms? Her breath caught at both images.
“Is something missing?” Agent Stryker asked.
Her face heated with embarrassment that he had caught her daydreaming about him when she was supposed to be checking her ransacked office to see what could have
