she hadn’t taken time to disguise her route told him that she must be desperate. He charged across the snow and up the hill on the opposite side.
Spencer saw the lights of a cabin beside a church, an obvious safe haven against the storm. The wind had erased most of her tracks, but he still saw indentations as he rushed toward the two-story cabin. The lights were less than ten yards away. He could smell the smoke that rose from the chimney.
The gentle strains of a violin wafted through the air as he pulled off his glove and rapped on the door. There was no answer. He hammered more loudly and shouted, “Open up. FBI.”
The door opened, just a crack, and a voice commanded, “Step back.”
When Spence saw the barrel of a rifle, he decided to cooperate. An elderly, bearded man came out onto the wide, covered porch and pulled the door closed. There was a Santa Claus thing going on with the white beard and the red suspenders, but this old guy wasn’t jolly and smiling. He aimed his Remington at Spence’s chest. Bad Santa.
“I’ll need some ID,” the man growled.
Spence reached inside his parka pocket and took out his badge. “I’m looking for someone.”
“What for?”
“She might be in danger.”
“I’m going to let you inside. But if you make one false move, you’ll be sorry.”
As soon as the door opened, Spence saw her. With perfect posture, she perched on a wooden chair, wearing flannel jammies and playing a violin.
He called out, “Angelica.”
Abruptly, she lowered the bow and stared at him.
An elderly lady, who seemed to be the mate of the man who opened the door, chuckled. “Angelica is a perfect name for you, dear. You play like an angel.”
“A snow angel,” her husband said.
Unable to keep his distance, Spence strode across the room toward her. He needed to gather her in his arms, to stroke her hair and whisper reassurances that he would never leave her unprotected again.
“Stay back.” She stood and faced him. “How do you know my name?”
* * *
ANGELICA, MY NAME is Angelica. She thrust and parried with her violin bow, fighting to keep the guy in the huge parka away from her. Angelica! The word echoed inside her skull, and she liked the sound. It felt right. She remembered a rowboat with that name written in fanciful letters across the stern. And so, Angelica, what are you going to do now?
“He claims to be with the FBI,” Clarence said.
“We’ll see about that.” Her first priority was to deal with Parka Guy. “Give your rifle and backpack to Pastor Clarence.”
He spread his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She touched the tip of her bow to the center of his chest. The slender, fiberglass stick looked ridiculously delicate and flimsy against his girth and strength. His shoulders were as wide as the Frankenstein monster. He could snap that bow in half and use the horsehair strings as a garrote if he felt like it. For that matter, he could snap her in half, too. If she had any sense at all, she’d be shaking in her socks.
More forcefully, she said, “The rifle. Do it.”
In a few swift moves, he unfastened the rifle. He also removed the backpack, which he held toward her. When she didn’t take it, he growled and dropped the pack on the floor next to his gloves.
He unzipped the front of his parka and flipped back the fur-lined hood. His complexion was ruddy from being out in the snow, and he had a tiny scar on his chin that she somehow knew he’d gotten in a barroom brawl. Everything else about him was perfection. Square jaw, wide mouth, high cheekbones and the most intense, ice-blue eyes she’d ever seen. His gaze was mesmerizing and predatory like a wolf.
“Now,” he said as he thumped his very solid chest. “You recognize me now, right?”
Though there was something familiar about his towering height, the pattern of stubble on his chin and the blond streaks in his hair, she couldn’t say for sure that she knew him. And she really wanted to. It’d be a shame to beat this handsome man to death with her violin bow.
“On your knees,” she snapped. “Hands behind your head.”
“Oh, my,” Trudy said with a gasp. “Sounds like you’ve done this before.”
Had she? Where were these commands coming from? How did she know what to do when threatened? Classes... She remembered the exercises; she’d taken training. Every agent in her division was required to learn the basics of law enforcement and firearms. “Quantico,” she whispered.
“That’s right,” he said. “You trained at the FBI facilities.”
The FBI? She was an agent? It hardly seemed possible that a real federal agent would attempt to subdue an attacker with a violin bow. “I don’t think I’m in the FBI.”
“You’re in the NSA, in the Cyber Security division.”
Sure, why not? She turned away from Gorgeous Parka Guy, flipped the violin onto her shoulder and played the opening notes of “Blackbird” to show there were no hard feelings. Perhaps a silly, delusional thing to do, but it seemed like a positive gesture.
Angelica asked Pastor Clarence, “Would you please reach inside his jacket and disarm him?”
“Wait,” Parka Guy said. “I can save us a lot of time if I take off my own weapons.”
“Fine.” Angelica perched on the edge of her hard-back chair and continued to play the classic Beatles song. She segued to “Yesterday.”
Concern about Gorgeous lingered in the back of her mind, but she wasn’t scared of him. The opposite, in fact. She felt safe, ridiculously safe considering that she’d just escaped from four thugs and she was some kind of agent who had special training. She really ought to worry, especially since he was carrying two Glocks, an eight-inch serrated hunting knife and a small-caliber pistol in an ankle holster strapped above his heavy-duty boots.
Stripped of his weapons and his parka, he approached her, stood and waited for her to finish her violin solo. Gently, he took the instrument and the bow from her hands and laid them on the long, wooden dining table. He came back to her, leaned down and gazed directly into her eyes. “Say my name.”
Her breath caught in her throat. The whirlwind of confusion buffeting inside her head went still, and she was suspended, floating in midair. She felt neither cold nor hot, neither right nor wrong, neither safe nor terrified. She was simply there.
“Spencer,” she said. “Spence Malone.”
And then she was in his arms. The cold from outdoors still clung to his Irish fisherman’s sweater, but the internal heat from his body raised the temperature. She snuggled against him, inhaling the natural scent of lamb’s wool and warm man.
He whispered in her ear, “You couldn’t forget me.”
Apparently,
