Dangerous Passion

Two

Feinstein Art Gallery

November 17

“Your secret admirer is going to love this,” Harold Feinstein said to Grace, holding up a pastel. She’d worked on it for an entire day, not eating, not drinking, stopping only to go to the bathroom, working feverishly to catch every stingy ray of winter sun that drifted down through her skylight.

She’d seen the image when she’d woken up and gone to the window to raise the blinds. A seagull, escaped from the ocean to the concrete of Manhattan, feathers a pristine white in the smoky city air, great wings outstretched, riding a thermal up the side of the nineteenth-century brick building across the street.

The building across the street from her apartment was worn, old, used up. It was slated for demolition soon and looked it—boarded-up windows, broken front door, the shell of a building no one lived in and no one loved anymore. A dying artifact.

In contrast, the bird had epitomized newness, freedom, lightness—the ability to simply pick up and leave troubles on the ground. She’d watched, entranced, for a few minutes as the bird reveled in its flight, wheeling in the sky above the street, lightness and grace. Utterly inhuman yet symbolizing the best of the human spirit.

How hard she’d worked to capture that magic moment of utter freedom.

Harold lay the pastel reverently on the big glass table in the center of the gallery, next to the watercolors she’d brought, lining her work up like brightly colored soldiers. It was a ritual they’d been following for well over a year now, ever since she’d walked into his gallery with a portfolio under her arm and 150 dollars left in the bank.

Harold touched the edge of the paper with his index finger, then moved on to touch a watercolor of a drake in last week’s snow in Central Park.

“He’s going to love these,” Harold murmured. “And I’m going to love selling them to him.” His eyes gleamed behind his thick glasses. “I’m raising your prices again. He’s not going to complain. Not when he sees this.”

Grace tried not to smile. “Harold, you don’t know it’s a he and neither do I. The man who buys my work on this other person’s behalf is a lawyer, for heaven’s sake. His client could be anyone. Man, woman. Could be a Martian, for all we know.”

What did she care? Whoever the lawyer’s client was, s/he was buying Grace’s entire output and didn’t so much as blink when Harold kept upping her prices. After years of struggling, trying to make it as an artist, she was finally supporting herself and more—socking money away. Real money, to her astonishment. After a lifetime of living like a student, she got a huge thrill every time she checked her bank statements.

Whoever was buying up her work had turned her life around. She didn’t even really mind that whoever was scooping up her work wasn’t showing it anywhere. Harold had told her that anyone who spent that much money and who had that amount of work of a single artist was usually planning a major show and in any case would want to publicize the collection, for investment purposes. But her unknown client was keeping her work tightly under wraps. Abroad, apparently.

Grace didn’t care. She wasn’t in the business to become famous. She was an artist because she couldn’t be anything else, not and remain sane. She had a lousy record of being fired from temp jobs, waitressing, teaching, trying to entice women she didn’t care about to buy things she found absurd and useless in her very very brief stint as a shop assistant at Macy’s.

“Ah. Him again.” Harold stopped and picked up a portrait. A small full frontal portrait in oil of a strong-featured man with dark eyes and short dark hair. Unsmiling and powerful, with a jagged white scar along the side of his face. “Different but the same.” Harold’s eyes were shrewd as he slanted a glance at her. “Nightmares back?”

Grace looked away, ashamed that once, when she’d been exhausted because she hadn’t slept, she’d confessed to Harold that she had nightmares, often.

Not nightmares, not really, not always. Just…very vivid dreams—full of color and sound. Often steeped in danger and heartache. So utterly unlike the calm progression of her days, her nights were etched in blood and turmoil.

She often dreamed of a man. The same man, every time, though each time his features were different. She never clearly saw his face anyway, just rough glimpses, as if through a thick fog.

A strong jawline, narrow nose, hooded eyes. By day, when she tried to capture the man on paper, his features would melt. Each portrait she did of him was different. The only things common to all the men were harsh features, dark eyes, short dark hair and a white scar like a lightning bolt on the left side of his face.

She saw him often from behind, walking away. And every time he walked away, there was a keen sense of aching loss in the air. She could never run after him, though she wanted to. She was always somehow mired in the horrible paralysis of the dream world.

The nightmares were due to stress, she knew that. She’d read every book there was on the subject because going to an analyst was out of the question. She didn’t have the time or even, really, the inclination.

What was a shrink going to tell her she didn’t already know? That she came from a highly dysfunctional family? Check, no secrets there. That her father’s abandonment when she was nine years old and her mother’s decline and indifference to her had colored her early years? That she immersed herself in her art because she didn’t function well in the world? What else was new?

No, analysis would be a huge waste of her time and money. Grace thought she had a pretty good handle on herself. On what she could do and couldn’t do.

“…framing?”

Oh God, she’d done it again. Zoned out while someone was talking. And that someone was Harold, no less. He cared for her, it was true. He was estranged from his only son, and treated her like a beloved child. They’d grown to be great friends. In fact, Grace probably talked more to Harold in the couple of hours a month she spent in his gallery than she did with any other human being.

But Grace was also very very aware of the fact that every cent she earned came through him. Not listening while he spoke to her was incredibly rude and—worse—stupid.

“Sorry, Harold. I didn’t quite—”

He gave his characteristic bark of laughter, placing a light hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, my dear. Wherever it is you go when you do that, it must be a much more interesting place than my blathering on about the matting and framing.”

Grace smiled, ashamed. The matting and framing in question was of her work. Harold worked really hard to make sure each painting, watercolor and drawing was presented in the best possible way.

Though it was also true that her mysterious buyer was snapping up everything she produced, no matter the matting, no matter the framing.

“Come,” he said gently. “Let me make you a cup of tea.” Harold’s remedy for just about everything.

“Okay, I—” Grace turned at the sound of the bell over the door. Customers. She drifted away. Customers meant sales for Harold. They could have their tea afterward.

Only…they didn’t look like possible buyers of art. As a matter of fact, they looked dangerous.

Grace moved back to Harold’s side.

Grace lived alone in New York and she knew the look of dangerous men, enough so that she’d never been in trouble because she knew enough to avoid the dangerous places they congregated. The Feinstein Art Gallery was the last place on earth she’d think of in terms of trouble.

But trouble was walking through the door, right now.

Three men, one tall, broad, with bad skin, dressed in a long black leather coat, the other two short and wiry, one dressed in an expensive fleece track suit, the other in jeans and a bomber jacket. They came into the gallery in single file, footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor, then fanned out, as if covering territory. They didn’t look alike but they shared a look of cold menace, staring at her and Harold like sharks eyeing minnows.

Something cold and nasty had just entered Harold’s bright and civilized gallery.

In here, both she and Harold could forget for a moment what was out there, cocooned in art and hot tea.

But now the outside world was in here, lined up in front of them like gunslingers awaiting the signal to shoot. There was a moment of utter and complete silence as the three men stared at them, menace coming off them in almost visible waves. Fear made her senses diamond bright. Her heart kicked up its beat, sounding loud in her ears, like a drumbeat.

Grace moved closer to Harold in an instinctive attempt to protect him, though there was nothing she could do against three tough-looking men. But Harold was so vulnerable, so fragile. He was elderly and had a heart condition. Her shoulder touched his and she could feel that he was trembling.

At least she was young and strong. And had a can of Mace in her purse. She clutched the strap of her purse, surreptitiously fingering the clasp. She kept the Mace handy, in a side pocket. No sense in having a weapon if you had to dig down to the bottom of a purse to find it.

With a strong indrawn breath, Harold drew himself up and looked the men in the face. “May I help you gentlemen?” he said. She was so proud of him for his firm voice.

It happened so fast, she had no time to react.

Subconsciously, she was waiting for them to respond. Centuries of civilization had drummed it into her DNA that a query requires a response. Whatever bad thing the men might be bringing into the gallery, it would be after answering a question posed to them.

What happened next had nothing to do with civilization. It came straight out of the caves. Not a word was spoken. Shockingly, Leather Coat stepped forward, punched Harold in the face, then stepped to the side, hooking a big, beefy arm around her neck in one smooth motion.

Harold fell to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Blood lined his mouth and his nose spattered blood with each heaving breath.

With a cry, Grace lunged toward him, but was brutally restrained by the huge arm around her neck, holding her so tightly he was cutting off her air. She brought her hands up to claw at his sleeve but could find no purchase against the sleek leather and the hard, ropy forearm muscles underneath.

The man shifted, lifting her until her toes could barely reach the ground, tightening his arm until she saw stars dancing in front of her eyes. Inside she was screaming, scrabbling madly to get to Harold, but she was held as contemptuously as a doll off the ground, and only a high-pitched mewling sound escaped her lips.

An icy metallic ring dug into her temple. She shifted her eyes to the right to understand what it was.

A gun. A huge, black, terrifying gun, held against her head.

“Stop,” the man said simply. His voice was deep, guttural, inhuman, the tone one of utter command. There was nothing Grace could do. In another thirty seconds, she’d be unconscious anyway from lack of oxygen.

Resistance was not only useless, but any hope she had of helping Harold required her to be conscious and upright.

She stilled instantly.

“Good,” the man grunted, rewarding her by letting up a little on the pressure against her throat. Her feet hit the floor at the same moment her throat spasmed, wheezing as air burned its way back into her lungs. If she’d been free, she would have bent forward in an effort to breathe better, but the man maintained his hold around her neck, letting her know exactly who was boss.

The rim of the gun tightened against her temple until the skin broke. A trickle of warm blood dripped down the side of her face.

With every choked breath, she breathed in a nauseous combination of rank sweat overlaid by an expensive men’s cologne. The combination was so horrible she was almost sorry she could breathe again.

Outside the window, a businessman hurried by, coat whipping in the wind. A few heavy drops fell to the sidewalk and he put a burgundy leather briefcase over his head to shield himself from the rain that was beginning to pelt down.

He could have been on the moon for all the help he was.

Fleece Track Suit checked his watch, then looked at Leather Coat. “It’s time.”

The man simply lifted her off her feet again and, as compact and disciplined as a phalanx, the three men—Leather Coat holding her as if she were a doll being carried to another part of the playground—walked together quickly to a side door, the one that Grace knew gave onto an alleyway flanking the gallery. She’d once helped Harold dump cartons in the alleyway, a dank, dark cul de sac, the feral urban counterpoint to the airy grace and light of the gallery.

There was one small window set in the gallery’s north wall, overlooking the alley. She looked through it and gasped. There were two men there, one aiming a big black gun at the back of the other. The man holding the gun was tall, heavy, with long reddish-brown hair, his victim shorter, broader, with close-cropped dark hair.

The long-haired man with the gun tightened his grip on the trigger. Grace was horrified to think that she was about to witness a cold-blooded murder. If she could have, she’d have screamed a warning to the victim, but she barely had enough air to breathe. And even if she could scream, not much sound bled out through Harold’s thick windows.

Instinctively, though, she fought against the man holding her, trying to get some kind of sound out. Maybe if she kicked the wall…

The dark-haired victim suddenly dropped from sight and Grace stilled, stunned. He was there and then…he wasn’t. He’d just disappeared.

The goon holding her moved forward, together with the other two thugs, to the small window. There was a clear view of the alleyway and she could see that the man hadn’t disappeared. He had simply dropped to the ground like a stone. Grace would have thought that he’d been shot, but it looked like he was…

Oh my God, yes. He wasn’t down for the count. He was fighting. From the ground. And winning, too, from the looks of it. He had his attacker in some kind of complicated hold, completely paralyzed.

The victim’s legs tightened around his attacker’s middle and he held the attacker’s neck in the bend of his elbow, squeezing. One hand was squeezing the gun out of the attacker’s hand. The attacker was kicking madly, like a pig in a slaughterhouse, but nothing he did could dislodge the dark-haired man. The gun clattered to the ground and the dark-haired man snatched it up, handling it with familiarity.

One of the thugs in the gallery kicked open the door to the alleyway and the man holding Grace moved forward until they were spotlit in the doorway.

The two men on the ground looked up, both breathing hard, muscles straining.

“Drop the gun. Now.” Leather’s Coat’s voice was hoarse, as if he didn’t talk much, with a heavy Hispanic accent. He lifted his arm until her feet dangled again. The gun barrel cruelly ground into the skin of her temple. The entire right side of her face was covered in blood now. She could smell her own blood—a dark metallic smell. “Drop it or I pop her one right in the head.”

God. Watching the attack in the alley, she had, for a second, completely forgotten about the man holding her tightly against him with a gun to her head. She started trembling. She had no idea who the victim of the attack was. How could using her as a threat possibly work? It hit her like a sledgehammer to the heart that she was one second away from dying.

She twisted in her captor’s hold, trying to kick him, suddenly desperate now to get away. There wasn’t enough oxygen in her head to make plans, she only knew she didn’t want to die without putting up some kind of fight.

The arm around her neck was like steel, the muscles she could feel against her side and back thick and hard. He probably outweighed her by over a hundred pounds. Fighting was insane.

But the animal part of her refused to die without a struggle. Grimly, she clawed again at the arm around her neck and kicked as hard as she could at his shins, but all she encountered was something stiff and unyielding. The man was wearing boots that went to his knees.

Her tormentor growled low in his throat and squeezed. Tight, tighter.

Oh God, she was going to die. Right here, right now. All the things she had left to do with her life, all the paintings she wanted to create, the music she wanted to listen to, the walks she wanted to take—it was too late.

“Throw it,” her tormentor rasped.

The dark-haired man kept his gaze fixed on Leather Coat, unblinking in the rain that threw a scrim over the scene in the alleyway.

Her vision was failing, spots revolving in front of her eyes. There was a dull blackness at the edges of her vision. “Throw it,” her tormentor said again.

Throw what? What was he talking about?

A clatter on the ground. Her tormentor hadn’t been talking to her. He had addressed the dark-haired man, who had thrown the gun he’d wrested from his would-be assassin onto the oily, pebble-strewn ground. He slowly stood up.

“Let up on her,” the man said quietly. He had a deep, calm voice with a hint of accent. “You’re choking her to death.”

“Your other weapons first.”

The dark-haired man reached inside his parka and pulled a gun out. He held it carefully by the muzzle. “Safety’s on, as you can see. Now let her breathe.”

Amazingly, that quiet voice held enough command to make the arm around her throat loosen. Her feet scrabbled, touched the ground for the first time in what felt like hours. Grace took in a big wheezing breath, hoping it wouldn’t be her last. Though the chokehold had loosened, the gun was still rock-solid against her head. She was still so close to the man who held her that she could feel the vibrations in his chest as he spoke.

“The rest of your weapons,” he said to the dark-haired man.

The gun came away from her head, the cold barrel sliding horribly down her neck, trailing down over her arm to stop at her elbow. “Or I blow a hole in her elbow. Then shoulder. Blow her arm right off. First one, then the other. Then I kneecap her. She’ll die piece by piece.”

Grace was shaking so hard her teeth rattled. The man’s low tone was matter-of-fact, not menacing, which made it even more horrible. He could have been ordering a drink in a bar, not threatening to kill her by slow degrees.

Fear set up a keening whine in her head. She looked around wildly, wondering if this would be her last sight on this earth.

A filthy alleyway in the rain, cloudy light at one end, dank darkness at the other. One of her few friends, Harold, lying behind her on the floor, wounded, if he hadn’t already died from the blow. And four men, all violent, all dangerous, all armed. They wanted something from the dark-haired man and, crazily, were using her to get it.

Though she felt danger to her coming from the four attackers, she didn’t feel that at all coming from the man who’d been attacked. The menace he radiated was tightly focused on the man holding her.

“Go on,” Leather Coat growled. The gun tapped horribly against her elbow. “Give me an excuse to shoot.”

Grace looked up at the man holding her. He was grinning at the dark-haired man. He never looked at her. She had a horrible feeling she barely existed for him. She was like a tool dangling from his arm, useful to get something he wanted, of no intrinsic importance. “I’m waiting. I hope you give me the excuse to blow her away bit by bit. I’ll enjoy it.”

No doubt he would. Cruelty was etched in every line of his face.

The dark-haired man reached around his waist, pulling a gun from behind him. Moving slowly, he placed it on the ground.

“Knives,” her tormentor rasped. “And don’t tell me you don’t have any.”

In a second, two sharp, gleaming knives clattered to the ground.

“I hear you carry a karambit. Out with it.”

A wicked-looking curved knife that came to a surgically sharp point fell to the ground in a flash of steel. The man holding her grunted.

The attacker on the ground stood up, wincing, with a sneer of victory. He’d been bested in a fight, but now the odds were in his favor.

“Turn around,” Leather Coat growled to the dark-haired man.

Grace’s gasp was loud in the alleyway. The dark-haired man was unarmed and helpless. They’d already tried to kill him once and now they were going to finish the job.

She had no idea who he was, but she felt connected to him somehow. He had let himself be disarmed to spare her. She had no idea if he could have prevailed against four men, but the way he fought proved that he wouldn’t die easily, not without inflicting a great deal of harm. The dark-haired man knew how to defend himself, not to mention the fact that he walked around with a small arsenal on his person.

Maybe he was a bad guy, too, just like the other four. Maybe she had stumbled onto some kind of turf war of drug dealers or something. Maybe this was a mob shakeout.

She could believe that, absolutely, of the other four but found it hard to believe of the dark-haired man, for no special reason her oxygen-deprived brain could conjure up, except that he had a different look.

Whoever he was, he’d pissed off the four criminals greatly and on the theory that your enemy’s enemy is your friend, she was on his side. As he was on hers. He’d allowed himself to be disarmed and was probably going to die, right now, to spare her.

No. Every cell in her body rejected the notion. He wasn’t going to die, slaughtered like an animal. She wouldn’t let him. Apart from anything else, the instant he was gone, she would be dead, too. She’d seen the goons’ faces. They weren’t the kind to leave witnesses behind.

Together with some oxygen, an electric pulse ran through her, grounding her, giving her strength. She wasn’t ready to die. Not here, in this filthy alley, and not now, two months from her twenty-eighth birthday.

And neither was he going to die. She met his eyes, the deepest brown she’d ever seen. His gaze was clear, direct and sad. Grace caught his gaze, willing him to look at her, to follow her thoughts, darting her eyes to her purse. He could see that the clasp was open. She looked deliberately at her purse, at him, at the man holding her. Over and over again.

He understood. The slight aura of resignation and defeat was gone. Grace watched as he turned back into a warrior, right before her eyes. His broad chest expanded as he took in deep breaths, like swimmers do before going a distance underwater. His stance changed, became springy as he balanced on the balls of his feet. The other men seemed oblivious to the change. They were gloating, sure that they’d won this battle, and weren’t paying attention.

Which was perfect.

Grace had no idea how good a fighter this man was, but she was willing to risk everything to find out. And if he couldn’t overwhelm four men, she’d rather die by a shot to the head trying to get away than by slow torture.

“Hey!” Leather Coat bellowed to him. “You heard me! Turn around right now, you fuckhead, or I’m blowing a piece of her away.”

Leather Coat was distracted by the drama. Like all bullies, he relished control, imagining victory before victory was his, simply because it was unthinkable that he lose. She’d known people like that, who loved wielding overwhelming power over others because it fed their ego. And Leather Coat’s ego must be really pumped right now, holding a gun on a woman, facing an unarmed man four to one. The kind of odds bullies loved.

Grace could feel him relaxing, letting down his guard, ready to enjoy the next couple of minutes. It was a done deal, as far as he was concerned.

Over her dead body.

She waited a beat, allowing Leather Coat’s grip to loosen further, gave a sharp nod to the man, hoping he understood, reached into her purse with a lightning fast move, brought the Mace canister up to Leather Coat’s face and sprayed him full in the eyes.

His bellow could be heard in New Jersey. The big black gun clattered to the ground as he brought both hands to his eyes, roaring with pain and rage.

What she saw next defied belief. Dark Hair had moved almost too fast for her to track. Before her hand was in front of Leather Coat’s face, he was in the air, twirling, foot lashing out, striking his adversaries with meaty thunks! Barely landing lightly on his feet before twirling again.

Grace staggered back, hoping the dark-haired man knew what he was doing, because she’d just put her life in his hands. Leather Coat would surely shoot to kill just like he said he would if he caught back up with her.

They went down like felled trees: one-two-three-four. She still hadn’t registered what she’d seen when the man straightened, and—completely non-winded, completely in control—pulled out something sleek and black from his pocket and spoke into it quietly in a language she didn’t understand, then flipped it closed.

Leather Coat lay on the ground in a fetal position, his desperate gasps for breath echoing off the walls of the alley. The man who had attacked Dark Hair was on his side, eyes rolled up in his head. The man in the fleece track suit lay still, unconscious, his arm bent at an unnatural angle. The man in the bomber jacket had gleaming white bone showing through his jeans, blood pooling under him. The kick had smashed his femur. He was bleeding profusely, the rain sluicing the blood-red water under him into the drains.

Grace stood in the rain, shocked and shivering.

The dark-haired man looked down at the four men for a heartbeat, his face cold and remote, then bent calmly and snapped their necks with an efficient twist of his huge hands. She could hear cartilage crack, four times. Then he calmly scooped up his two guns and his knives.

Grace bent over, ready to vomit her guts out, when a strong hand took hold of her arm. “We don’t have time for that,” the dark-haired man said. “Sorry.”

She straightened and looked him full in the face, wincing, expecting a monster, expecting to see brutality and savagery. What she saw instead was a weary kind of gentleness and what looked an awful lot like remorse.

“I’m so sorry.” His deep voice was low as he wrapped a huge hand around her arm. “For everything. But now we must go.”

Though his voice was calm, he moved fast. In a moment, they were at the mouth of the alley, moving out into the street. He still had his hand around her arm. He wasn’t holding her tightly enough to hurt, but he seemed to be able to propel her forward through the rain as if she had wheels instead of feet.

In an instant, they were out on the sidewalk and the man was checking the street carefully, the kind of survey a soldier would give to enemy terrain.

The bell over the gallery door rang and Harold appeared in the doorway. He clutched the doorjamb for support. One eye was swollen shut and his face was blood streaked. He blinked, then saw her. Grace’s heart clenched as she saw relief flood his face. His free hand reached out to her, shaking, half in and half out of the doorway. “Grace. Oh my God, you’re alive.” Harold’s trembling voice cracked, barely audible over the rain.

Tears flooded her eyes. Harold, her friend. She started forward and was held back by the dark-haired man’s strong hand around her arm.

She met his eyes. “Let me go.” She wanted to shout, but her voice came out a hoarse whisper. She pulled against his hand, but it was like pulling against a steel pillar. He wasn’t letting her go.

“Grace,” Harold quavered, hand outstretched.

Every muscle in her body was tense and shaking, including the muscles in her throat. She had to cough to speak. “Please.” She was trembling so hard she could barely stand. “Let me go to him. He’s wounded, he needs help.”

The rain was pelting down hard now, moving in sheets down the street. She was soaked and chilled to the bone. She was scared and she wanted to get to Harold right now. If she was scared and hurting, he would be doubly so.

The man had maneuvered himself so that he was between her and the street. His shoulders were so broad she couldn’t see around him, he blocked off her entire visual horizon. He scrutinized the surrounding buildings again.

The rain was making the blood on Harold’s face run, his white shirt splashed with pale pink color, plastering his sparse gray hair against the skull. He swayed.

“Oh God.” Grace’s heart was pounding. She put her hand over the man’s where he was grasping her upper arm, his hand so big it met around her arm, coat and all, and nearly snatched her hand away at the heat. It was freezing cold outside, but his huge hand was so hot it felt like an iron against her wet coat. “Let me go to him, please.”

Another tug, the man’s hands tightening further, and then suddenly…Harold disappeared. Or his head did. Where his head had been there was a pink mist dissipating fast in the rain. Half a second later, Grace was facedown on the sidewalk and a ton of male was on top of her. Something was pinging, gouging holes in the pavement, in the walls of the gallery. Shards of concrete rained down on her.

Grace was so shocked, it took her long seconds to realize what the sharp cracks were.

“Goddammit. A sniper.” The deep, low voice was speaking right into her ear, so close she could feel the puffs of his breath. He lifted and pulled her closer to the curb until she was resting against the front fender of a big black vehicle. “The engine block should stop a bullet. Stay here and don’t move.”

Another crack sounded and his heavy body jolted.

Grace lifted her head slightly to look at him. She didn’t process his words in any way. She looked back down the street to where a limp collection of clothes lay sprawled across the doorway to the gallery, the rain washing red, then pink, into the gutter. None of this made any sense, least of all the remains of her best friend, a shattered mass of pink-and-gray flesh.

“Harold,” she whispered, her voice shaking so hard she could barely articulate.

“Is dead,” the man said brutally. “Now we have to stay alive. No, dammit.” He brought an arm like iron over her back. She’d been blindly trying to rise up, putting her shaking hands on the ground to lift herself up to…to go to Harold.

To do something.

“Stay down, dammit,” the man on top of her hissed. One huge hand covered the back of her head and pressed until her cheek lay on the rough pavement. She watched the big raindrops ping and bounce off the concrete, her mind completely blank, empty.

The heavy man on top of her shifted and started talking in a low, deep, urgent voice. What was he saying? Whatever it was, there was no possible response in her. She was too shocked to make out more than a few words here and there. Sniper…west side of Lexington, second-story window, come from Park…

It took her several seconds to realize that he wasn’t talking to her but into a cell. He was discussing some kind of strategy. The words flew into her head and then right back out again. The only thing that penetrated the fog in her head was the deep calm of his voice, the assurance. He could have been a man discussing the menu of that night’s meal. It was amazing to think that voice came from a man under fire.

Even his body was calm. His coat must have been open because she could feel the heat of his wide chest against her back. His heartbeat was strong and steady, unlike her own trip-hammering one, beating wild and high in her chest. His breathing was calm, regular, while she was gulping in great gasps of air that choked her and burned her lungs.

A click and the cell phone closed.

Tears were running down her face, lost in the rain.

“My men are coming.” That deep, calm voice next to her ear again. It was insane, but somehow it calmed her, just a little. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

A huge hand planted itself next to her face on the pavement. He was holding his gun, big and black and oily-looking. Something else caught her attention. A big pool of deep red forming underneath her, spreading and turning pink in the rain.

She was shot! Oh my God, she’d been shot!

Grace stopped breathing for a moment, trying to take stock through her shattered senses. She was freezing, lying in a puddle of red-tinged water, her cheek grinding against the rough pavement, trying to breathe, though the man on top of her weighed a ton. She was cold and shocked and terrified.

But not wounded.

The amount of blood that was now flowing freely down into the gutters was from a serious wound and wasn’t coming from her. Couldn’t. She’d have felt a wound that deep.

“You’re—” Her voice wasn’t coming out at all. She tried again. “You’re wounded.”

He grunted in answer and shrugged, the movement sending a fresh welling of red onto the pavement.

Grace chanced a look upward, trying to gauge how badly he was wounded. God, if he was dying, what could she do?

But he didn’t look like he was dying. His face didn’t in any way betray that he was wounded. He wasn’t grimacing in pain, he wasn’t pale. His skin was that same smooth olive tone as before and he looked as if he were trying to figure out a particularly difficult chess problem, not as if he were in a life-or-death situation with a hole in his chest and a man with a rifle just waiting for them to show. Shockingly, when he met her eyes, he even smiled.

It was faint and over almost before it began, but it was definitely a smile. Dying men don’t smile. Or at least she imagined not.

Only one way to find out. “Are we going to die here?” she whispered.

“No.” His jaws clenched. “Nothing will happen to you, I swear. I won’t let it.”

He rolled away from her, gun at the ready. Grace twisted her head to watch him. His parka had a big hole in it and underneath that, a big hole in the shoulder, oozing blood.

“My God,” she whispered. “That’s serious.” Her fingers scrabbled for her purse. It had fallen in the middle of the sidewalk, the long strap facing them, thank God. She caught the tip and started pulling it toward her. “I’ve got a scarf in my purse. I can use it as a pressure bandage to stop—”

The world blew up in her face. One second her purse was inching its way to her and the next there was a big crater in the pavement and tiny pieces of black leather floated in the air.

Grace’s ears rang as all outside sound was cut out. Her face and neck hurt. When she put her hand to her face, it came away wet and red.

All her senses were gone. She was screaming but she couldn’t hear herself. She’d lost all sense of up or down and it was only when the man’s face came into view that she realized she’d been blown on to her back.

His mouth was moving, the strong cords in his neck were standing out, so it was entirely possible he was shouting, but she couldn’t hear a thing. It was like being dead, or halfway into a coma. Large hands were frantically touching her all over. His long fingers sifted through her hair, feeling every inch of her skull.

She winced when he touched the back of her head. It was incredibly painful. Maybe she wasn’t dead, after all.

The man threw his black parka onto the sidewalk and when that was blasted away, he lifted himself up, big black gun in hand. He grasped the gun with both hands, sighting over the top of the roof of the car, and shot three times. She couldn’t hear anything but she could see his hand buck slightly with each shot, then come straight back to the position it had been in before. Three pretty, bright brass casings twirled in the air. One fell on her hand and she jerked to roll it off. It was hot and burned her.

Then suddenly she was lifted to her feet, an iron arm around her waist, and she was half carried to a waiting car on the street. Men were all around her now, in a tight circle, backs to her. Big men, dressed in black, all carrying weapons.

She was literally thrown into the backseat of a large car, her head banging against the far window. Another body piled in, the door slamming closed just as the car took off so fast it pressed her against the seat.

A second later, the car took a corner violently. She bounced off the door and would have fallen to the floor if an arm hadn’t come around her shoulders, anchoring her to a hard male body.

The car raced through the streets, veering wildly around corners. Grace would have been tossed brutally around if she weren’t clamped to the man’s side.

She burrowed into him, the one steady thing in a wildly careening universe. She’d seen five men killed, she’d seen her best friend’s head blown off, someone had shot at her. It was as if she’d entered another dimension, a world of darkness and danger, feral and lethal.

A deep, calm voice sounded in her ear. “It will be all right.”

No, no it wouldn’t be all right. Not ever again.

She closed her eyes and clung to him as they raced through the streets. The big car had excellent suspension and the driver was superb. They were traveling as fast as an ambulance or a police car racing after a suspect, but of course without the siren, so the driver had to zip around other cars like a crazed man. It was a miracle they didn’t crash and burn.

Grace was in a fog of pain and shock, with barely the energy to hope that the car wouldn’t run into a light pole or overturn at a corner. She rocked against the man holding her as his blood soaked through her coat. When she felt the wetness she pulled away, horrified to see the front of her coat wet with his blood. She looked up at him, at that calm, strong face. He looked as if absolutely nothing was wrong. As if he hadn’t been assaulted, shot at, wounded.

But the wound was real, she could see the mangled flesh. “You need to close that wound with something or you’ll bleed out.”

What to use to staunch the wound? The scarf in her purse was long gone. A shrug and her coat was off. The lining was a silk and polyester blend. Maybe that would do as a pressure bandage, though she didn’t know the absorption properties of polyester. Still, it was the only thing she had, so she started ripping the lining. Her hand was covered by his broad, olive-toned one.

“Not necessary.”

“You’re bleeding!” Grace could hear the hysteria in her voice. Of all the horrible things that had happened since she’d walked into Harold’s gallery, this was one she could do something about. Not much, but something. “We have to stop the bleeding.” She batted his hand away, crumpled up the back panel of her jacket, pressed it against his wound and held it tightly.

Surely she was hurting him, but he gave no sign of that, not even a grunt. He just closed his eyes when she pressed against his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she whispered. He looked a little pale now, though it was hard to tell in the darkened cabin of the car. “I know I’m hurting you. But we’ll be at the hospital soon and they’ll stitch you up. It will be okay, you’ll see.”

She threw his words of comfort right back at him. The usual cheery words, words that were often overused and were often untrue. Life sometimes opened wounds that never healed. She hoped this one would. He’d saved her life.

The man leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. One big hand came up to cover hers. It was still shockingly warm, considering they’d been in the freezing rain and that he’d lost a lot of blood. “Not going to the hospital,” he said softly. “Not safe.”

Grace waited a few beats while what he said penetrated her weary brain, then jerked when she realized what he’d said. “That’s insane. Of course we have to take you to the hospital. You’ve been shot.”

His eyes opened suddenly, looking at her intently. Their faces were only inches apart. His eyes were chocolate brown, intelligent, weary. He reached up a hand to touch the scrapes and cuts on her face. His fingertips came away red and he held them up, studying them. “And you’ve been shot at.” Something flashed in his eyes, something hot and dangerous. “I’d kill them again for this. I’m sorry it was quick.”

Grace shivered. It was as if someone had opened a window and let in the chill winter air. “Never mind that, they’re all dead. Now we have to deal with your wound.”

“Yes, and yours. Just not in a hospital.”

Grace blinked. “If not in a hospital, then where?”

He glanced out the window, jaw muscles jumping. “Here.”

The car took a sudden turn into a garage entrance, plunging full speed down a ramp, braking inches from a concrete wall. Grace would have fallen to the floor if the man hadn’t braced her. The car was still rocking when the passenger doors were wrenched open and Grace was lifted out by two men.

Armed men surrounded the car and she found herself in the middle of a little phalanx, together with the dark-haired man. The armed men moved fast, as a unit. In an instant they were in an elevator. It was large enough to accommodate the team, and rose quickly. Grace looked up above the door to see what floor they were going to, but there was nothing. No indication of what floors they passed. She glanced to the side, to the big shiny brass panel with the CLOSE DOORS button. It was the only button on the panel. They were in an elevator that only stopped at one floor. At the top of a building, apparently, because they rose at an ear-popping pace.

The men stood at attention, surrounding them with their bodies, weapons drawn.

One of the men, tall and very fit, with a white streak in his black hair, turned to the man with her. “Glad you’re safe, Drake.” He glanced down at the shoulder wound, unflinching, as if he’d seen many of them. “Dr. Kane’s on his way, just like you asked.”

Drake. The man’s name was Drake. She had no idea if that was his first name or his last name.

She had no clue who he was, or where she was. All she knew was that she had been caught in the middle of what looked like an assassination attempt in which her best friend had violently lost his life. She was now in an elevator in the middle of a group of hard-looking armed men and had no idea what plans they had for her.

All of a sudden, it occurred to Grace that she was a witness. A witness to four murders. Five, counting Harold. Actually, six, assuming this Drake had killed the sniper. And they were definitely not headed toward the nearest police station so she could testify to what she’d seen.

She looked around, her heart starting to pound. Every man there was taller than her, way bigger than her, immensely tougher. They looked strong and dangerous, none more than their boss, the man they called Drake.

He hadn’t threatened her in any way, it was true. Indeed, the threat of harm to her had been used against him.

But she was in an enclosed space with him and this small army of men, who looked perfectly capable of violence, and she knew for a fact that Drake was capable of terrifying, swift and terrible violence.

If he meant her harm in any way, she was as good as dead. Nothing she could do could stop him or even slow him down. She didn’t even know where she was, and no one else knew where she was.

For an instant, Grace regretted her quiet life. She had a few friends, but they didn’t meet up that often. Everyone was busy, no one more than she was. She essentially worked around the clock, eating and sleeping at odd hours. She could be missing for several weeks, even a month, before anyone really took notice.

The person she saw the most was dead, his head shattered by a sniper’s bullet.

She’d had lunch with one of her best friends, Alice Restrepo, the day before yesterday. They only saw each other about once a month. How long would it take Alice to report her missing to the police? When Grace didn’t answer the phone, Alice would just assume she was consumed by a painting. The bell of worry would ring eventually, but by that time, Grace could be long dead. Could be at the bottom of the Hudson River or in a concrete piling in New Jersey. Could be raped, tortured to death, her mangled body buried where no one would ever find her.

She shivered, looking down at her feet, wishing she were invisible. Though no one was paying particular attention to her, she had no illusions that she could make a run for it. A private elevator spoke of lots of money buying lots of privacy.

With a ping, they arrived at wherever it was they were going. The elevator doors opened with the quietest of whooshes. In front of them, across a very large hall, was a door worthy of the gate of a fortress. Twelve feet high at least, made of shiny steel.

The men around her filed out, fanning out into a security perimeter, but Grace stood still, eyes fixed on the ground, trying to control her trembling. Drake stood beside her, unmoving.

“Boss…” one of the men said. The men were obviously quivering with eagerness to get him behind that huge steel door.

“Go now, I’m fine,” Drake said quietly. They didn’t look happy, but they did it. They were used to obeying this man.

Drake pushed a button and the doors of the elevator closed again.

Grace stepped back and looked him full in the face. He winced a little at what he saw on hers.

“You’re frightened.” The deep voice was soft. He lifted a large, blood-stained hand to her cheek. His touch was soft, though she could feel the calluses on his fingertips. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about everything. More than I have words for. You’ve become involved in…a business dispute through no fault of your own. You’ve lost a friend and you’re hurt. I cannot tell you how much I regret this. But it’s done. And now you need to be kept safe from my enemies and you need medical care. All of this exists and is waiting for you behind that door you saw.”

She stared at him numbly. Though his touch had been fleeting, she still felt the warmth along her cheek.

For all she knew, this was a serial killer just waiting to entice her into his fortress. Certainly he had dealings with criminals. It was entirely possible he was a criminal himself. But the regret in his voice sounded sincere. And he wasn’t pushing her out of the elevator and into whatever was behind that door. Something in his stance told her that he would be willing to stay here forever, dripping blood on the floor, until she left the elevator of her own free will.

He swayed slightly, then brought himself back upright. The muscles in his jaw worked. There was a soft plop and when Grace looked down, another drop of bright red blood joined the small puddle on the floor.

Oh my God. He was badly wounded, he’d lost a lot of blood. He was barely standing, his forehead was beaded with sweat. And yet here he was, standing with her until she took a decision, patiently waiting for her.

Grace wasn’t too good with people, but like many introverts, she was an observer. What she saw before her was patience and regret with an overlay of pain and fatigue. No cruelty or craziness.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Let’s go in.”