wanted to send Ethan bolting across the room to help his fallen comrade. Logic had him pausing to test the floor, which was tipped at an angle beneath his feet. When it seemed sturdy enough, he crossed the room, looked at how Robert was pinned, and levered a corner of the desk up and away.
After a quick field check for major injuries, Ethan hauled Robert to his feet. “Angel’s got the blast doors open. Take the stairs.”
Robert swiped a hand across a bloody gash on his cheek. “Bugger that. Where’s my wife?”
Though Robert and Evangeline’s relationship had been bumpy since he’d returned from the dead, Ethan heard the raw grief in the other man’s voice. Trying not to resent Robert’s right to that grief, Ethan turned away. “Let’s go find her.”
The men ducked out of Robert’s office, crossed the short distance to Evangeline’s door and stopped dead.
A low groan rattled in Robert’s chest.
Beyond the door, dust and smoke blurred the sight of the mountains in the distance. There was no outer wall. Hell, there was no office. It had become a crater in the side of the building. Heat radiated from the remnants of walls, floor and ceiling. Black soot smeared the carpeting beneath their feet, and the floor beyond fell away to air.
Robert sagged against the door frame.
“God,” Ethan rasped. “I’m so—”
“Don’t say it,” Robert snapped. “Don’t even think it. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead, not when we’ve just found each other again.”
You knew where she was all along, you selfish bastard. An angry ball congealed in Ethan’s gut, alongside the grief. You have no idea what it was like for her, what it feels like to lose someone you love.
But because Ethan did know, he said, “Let’s check the other offices, and the break rooms. The bathroom. Maybe—” He broke off when he heard a faint sound.
Robert heard it, too. He spun and bolted down the hall, shouting, “Evangeline? Evangeline, damn it, answer me!” He skidded to a halt outside the small kitchenette they used as a break room. “She’s in here!”
Then he cursed viciously enough to jab fear into Ethan’s gut.
When he reached the doorway, Ethan saw that the floor tilted away from them and down, as though all the support beams were gone. The refrigerator had tipped over, spilling its contents onto the floor. The chairs and tables were all lodged against the far wall, with Evangeline trapped beneath them.
The tall, forty-something blonde was bleeding but conscious. She and Robert locked eyes and she smiled with relief. “You’re okay.”
He made an unintelligible sound, and when he reached out a hand as though he could touch her across the distance separating them, his fingers trembled.
Dark emotion rose up to clog Ethan’s throat, a blend of relief, resentment and hell, yes, jealousy. Not because he wanted Evangeline, but because he hadn’t gotten a second chance with the woman he’d loved, and Prescott seemed to get nothing but second chances.
“I’ll get her,” Robert said. “You check the rest of the offices.” Ethan nodded shortly and turned away, but before he’d gone more than a few steps, Prescott called, “Did your client get out okay?”
Ethan stopped and looked back. “I’m not scheduled to see anyone today.”
“Angel left a message a few minutes ago on my voice mail,” Robert said. “She said a client was on her way up to see you.”
Ethan didn’t bother asking why she’d left the info with Robert—Angel lost half their messages and garbled the other half, but she was one of Evangeline’s projects, so firing her wasn’t an option.
“I haven’t met with anyone all morning,” he said now, a faint alarm stirring in the back of his skull. “Did you get a name?”
“I think she said Nicole Benedict. Ring any bells?”
The faint alarm became a war whoop as the name did more than ring a bell. It sent a lightning bolt through Ethan’s midsection, a mixture of guilt, regret and pure, unadulterated lust.
Air hissed between his teeth at the thought of the woman who’d helped him forget himself for a night, then disappeared. “Yeah. I know her. And if she was on the way up—” He broke off on a second hiss of breath as logic overtook emotion and he remembered that the track for the glass elevator ran along the outside of the building, right beside Evangeline’s office. It would’ve been right in the path of the explosion.
He took off at a dead run, hoping to hell he wasn’t already too late.
NICOLE REGAINED fuzzy consciousness to the feel of something cold and hard beneath her face. For half a second, she wondered what the hell she was doing lying on her kitchen floor. And why were her ears ringing? Was she hungover?
But that wasn’t right. She’d never been much of a partyer, and wasn’t drinking at all these days because of—
The connection sparked in her brain and clenched her stomach in an instant. The baby. Ethan. Prescott Personal Securities. Images blinked through her mind in rapid succession—the office building, the helicopter, the rocket launcher—
The explosion.
Her eyes flew open and she found herself facedown on the floor of the glassed-in elevator. She saw the street far below. Then a thin stream of blackish- gray smoke obscured her view for a moment, and the contrast showed her something far worse than the height. There was a crack in the glass beneath her.
As she watched, it grew longer and branched into two cracks that gave birth to two more in a growing spiderweb that weakened the only thing separating her from a fatal fall.
“Help me,” she whispered, half-afraid the small sound might send her crashing through. When it didn’t, she filled her lungs and screamed, “Help me!”
Incredibly, a man’s voice answered from above. “Hang on, Nicole. I’m almost there.”
“Ethan?” She wasn’t sure how she recognized his voice, ten weeks after they’d spent the night together doing everything but talking, but she knew him instantly, and the recognition brought a fierce rush of relief edged with fear.
“Don’t move.” His words sounded clearer than they ought to, and she heard the whistle of wind.
Fearing what she might see, Nic held her breath and tried to keep her body still as she turned her head to the side. She saw more glass, more cracks, and a gaping hole in the side of the elevator car, where the glass was gone. Beyond that was blue sky, a smudge of smoke and a dangling climber’s rope. She heard masculine shouts from higher up, a mixture of suggestions and curses from whoever was anchoring the line.
She remembered him saying something about rock climbing in his free time. Now he was shimmying down to rescue her. God.
As she watched, a pair of sturdy, brown leather hiking boots swung into her limited slice of view, followed by a hint of tube sock and a pair of strong, muscular legs encased
