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  “No. I had my reading glasses on to see with close-up work. By the time I got them off, they were gone.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Childers. The officer will escort you back home.”

  “That was smooth, Fitzgerald,” Beau said. “She was on the verge of panic. I saw it, too.”

  “Back to the Yard,” Chris, their boss, ordered. “Time is ticking.”

  * * *

  When Vin arrived, he went straight to his desk as did the other three agents. He hoped this hunch he had panned out as he brought up the necessary website.

  “Amber,” Chris called out.

  “On it,” she said as she pushed a key on her computer and Dr. Skylar Baang’s record popped onto the wide-screen monitor mounted in between Vin’s and Amber’s desks.

  Vin glanced up and then did a double take.

  Beau cut off Vin’s view, but that face was burned into his brain. With an ooh la la shaking motion of his hand, he said, “Wow, hot fille. Pas de bêtises.”

  Vin agreed. No joking. Dr. Skylar Baang stunned him. Almond-shaped eyes on an Asian woman were expected, but the brilliant blue color of the irises was not. Her gaze projected confidence and attitude, and her slightly raised chin clinched it. Her olive skin was flawless, her features decidedly a mix between Asian and American. Shaking his head out of his fascination with Skylar’s face, he focused on the keyboard and continued working.

  “She was born in the Philippines. Moved to China when she was four. Parents deceased. American mother in a car accident under suspicious circumstances and the Filipino father died in a Chinese prison just last year. Mechanical engineer accused of his wife’s murder. She was raised by an aunt right here in D.C. She has a former name, Malaya Matapang. According to court records, it was changed to Skylar Baang when she was six. Baang is the last name of the aunt, first name, Audris. She’s not the biological aunt, though. Looks like Dr. Baang was adopted by her legally when Dr. Baang was seven.” Amber paused. “Wow, get this, guys. She was homeschooled by her aunt up to age seven and went straight to high school. She then entered college at ten.”

  “Bona fide genius, then?” Beau commented.

  “I’d say. She earned her bachelor’s degree in two years. While you were popping your zits, she was getting her master’s.”

  Amber chuckled and shook her head, continuing. “Finished that in a year and had her Ph.D. in computer engineering by seventeen. From MIT, no less. Didn’t you graduate from there, Vin?”

  He nodded and she continued. “She went to work for the navy after a two-year stint in the private sector. She has a top secret clearance and is working on some heavy-duty stuff for the navy.”

  “Beau, get out to her aunt’s house,” Chris said.

  Beau grabbed his things and exited just as the picture Vin was hoping for popped up on his screen. “Got you!” he said to the screen.

  “What do you have, Vin?” Amber said, walking over to his computer.

  “A nice clear picture of one of the SUVs all prettylike with the license plate.”

  “The time looks right,” Amber said. She studied the monitor, then added, “That’s the corner of Connecticut and Porter. I hate that stoplight. Longest one on the planet.”

  He advanced the video and captured the second SUV.

  “How can you be sure these are the right SUVs?” Chris asked.

  “Like I said, the time is right,” Amber responded.

  “Run the plates,” Chris said.

  “Dammit, they’re rentals from Savoy Car Rentals.” Vin cursed.

  “I’m sure they’re closed,” Amber said.

  “Databases are never closed,” Vin said, intertwining his fingers and stretching out his arms.

  “What are you doing?” Chris asked.

  “Ah...borrowing information,” Vin replied. He was already through their first firewall. Piece of cake.

  “Hacking.”

  “That’s such an ugly word, boss, and illegal.”

  Chris shook his head. “I’m looking the other way.”

  “One is rented to a Mary Shelley and the other to Billie Holiday.”

  “Hmm...” Amber said. “One is a novelist and the other a singer. I suspect they’re bogus.”

  Vin committed the addresses to memory. “We’ll check first one, then the other. We’ll report back.”

  “Whoa,” Chris said, putting out a hand to stop him midstride. “If either of you discover her, call in for backup. No excuses.”

  Vin gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Sky maneuvered her hands under her butt, folding her upper body to get her bound hands underneath her legs and in front of her. Mobility wasn’t good, but it was enough to pull the tape off her mouth. This was her one chance to flee. Using her teeth, the nylon rope smooth against her lips, she worked at the bonds. She had to get out of here.

  As soon as her hands were free, she reached for the knot at her ankles. Swinging her feet to the floor, she lurched slightly, feeling the lingering effects from the drug they’d given her. She was still in the tank top and boy shorts she’d gone to bed in and her feet were bare, but she was free.

  She crept to the door and opened it enough to see out. She was on the second floor of a two-story house. She crept through the hall and peered around the corner. She could see down the stairs and the room beyond.

  She reared back, her heart jumping into her throat. The man with the shaved head who’d stabbed her with the hypodermic, or Death Head, as she thought of him, was on the phone, pacing back and forth near the front door. Two more were on the sofa, one with a ponytail and the other with a scar on his face. Her laptop! It sat on the coffee table between them. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to break the encryption on it. The fourth man was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his back to her. All she could make out was the automatic weapon slung casually across powerful shoulders.

  Going this way wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t make it to the front door, and there were no back stairs.

  She eased back down the hall and into the room, silently closing the door.

  Fear welled like a deep, dark pool. Finding a way out was her only chance. Panicking wasn’t going to help.

  Taking a deep breath into her lungs and exhaling helped. The wind churned outside, sending those damn branches against the house. The branches. Trees. She cautiously tiptoed to the window, careful not to make any noise. It took a moment to unlock it and slide it up. A chilling October breeze caused gooseflesh to ripple her skin, and she shivered. Popping out the screen was also soundless.

  The tree had long branches, but the trunk wasn’t close enough for her to step onto it.

  She would have to jump.

  Just as she stepped up on the edge of the sill, the door opened. Death Head stood there with a shocked expression on his face before yelling out in Russian. She had no idea what he was saying, and she didn’t care. Sky didn’t hesitate. She pushed off with as much power as she could muster. She crashed into the tree and slid a few inches. She scrambled for a firm grip, her arms instinctively hugging the trunk. Branches scratched at her face, hands and body, but she ignored the stinging pain. Without hesitation, using her bare feet, she worked her way down the tree as fast as possible without breaking her neck. She heard shouting from the house. Her heart slammed against her chest, adrenaline buzzing her skin.

  Death Head was running through the house shouting. It would be only a matter of minutes before they were after her. The urge to flee was overwhelming, but if she took a spill and hurt herself, she would find herself back under their control.

  She hit the ground, vibrations from the impact tingling up her legs. She turned to run away from the voices and the noise of the men coming after her.

  She hit a solid wall of human muscle. Lashing
out, she had no intention of being caught again. She didn’t know what these men wanted, but if they had her laptop, it had to have something to do with her classified navy work. She wasn’t going to reveal that information easily. They would resort to torture. Death Head looked as if he would enjoy it.

  She punched, kicked and used her knee to incapacitate her assailant. Then she was running again, adrenaline fueling her system like jet fuel.

  Suddenly, like a linebacker, the solid wall hit her, and she went down hard.

  Cold steel clamped around her wrists, and he hauled her up as easily as if she weighed no more than a child. With his rigid arm around her midriff, she couldn’t see his face, but that didn’t stop her from kicking out. He dragged her behind some hedges as she heard those all-too-familiar boots and that guttural language spewing words she was sure would singe the ears of sailors.

  “Stop resisting,” a resolute voice whispered in her ear. “Special Agent Vincent Fitzgerald, NCIS.”

  Relief crashed through her, leaving her wrung out and jittery. “Why the handcuffs?”

  “You were fighting me. Now, shush. The cavalry is on the way.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance, and her rescuer, still clutching her against him so that she couldn’t see his face, slipped out of the hedges, ducking around a fence. As he ran, her back bumped up against some impressive muscles, his biceps like a rock against her side.

  It was easy to see he was running for a black car parked at the curb. His breath was harsh in her ears. A blonde woman was standing on the driver’s side. “Vin, hurry up.”

  “I’m moving as fast as I can, Amber.” Automatic gunfire cut across their path. Her rescuer dived for the ground, cushioning and covering her body with his.

  They lay there trapped as the rat-a-tat sound of shots caused dogs to bark and lights to go on in the houses around them. His weight bore into her, protecting her against the hot lead that whizzed around them. He dragged her, half crawling, half running, to a big oak. The blonde agent, Amber, courageously returned fire.

  He still held her against his hard body as he pressed her to the tree to protect her from the flying bullets. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his arm extended, and the snub nose of a pistol materialized. Vin opened fire, the retort of the weapon loud in her ears.

  The sirens blasted closer, and the automatic gunfire ceased. She pressed her face to the rough bark of the tree at the sound of opening and closing doors. The SUVs. The Russians were on the run.

  The breath whooshed out of her, a relief so profound, tears rushed to her eyes. He let her slide down the muscled length of his body, setting her gently on the ground.

  Several vehicles raced by, presumably in pursuit of the kidnappers. The blonde woman went out to meet two other men, one tall and handsome, his body language unquestionably showing leadership. The other man was darkly attractive.

  Finally, she turned around and looked up into the face of Special Agent Vin Fitzgerald. The man who had cuffed her, manhandled her and...saved her life in the process.

  The words to thank him were on her lips until she got a load of him standing so confidently in front of her. For a moment it was as if she couldn’t form words. The other two men were attractive, but he was more of a threat to her equilibrium and stole her breath. She stepped back and hit the rough bark of the tree.

  “Whoa, steady there,” he said, reaching out and cupping her elbow, sending goose bumps along her skin, hardening her nipples against the soft cotton of her tank top. Touching her like that did nothing whatsoever to steady her.

  Reaching out her cuffed hands, she said, “Take these off me.” She didn’t have the social skills for this kind of interaction, especially with this man. And that was rude and blunt, after all that he’d just done for her. She bit her lip. Why did he make her feel so conscious of every breath she took, the half nakedness of her body, the tangle of her long hair, the dirt on her hands and knees? Most men weren’t even a blip on her radar, but this guy was trouble.

  His dark brows winged above his intense green eyes, and that power doubled as he took in her face, dropping down to her cuffed hands.

  “Sorry about the cuffs, but you were fighting me, and this was the easiest way to subdue you and get you out of harm’s way. You’re Dr. Skylar Baang, correct?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Those men kidnapped me, but since you’re here, I suspect you know that already.”

  He reached into the pocket of his dark blue suit and produced a key. He stepped closer, invading her personal space, and she wanted to step back, but she needed to get the cuffs off. His hand slipped around her wrist; the warmth of it suddenly made her shiver. Bending his head, the wind tousled his dark sable hair, sending his enticing fresh scent toward her in an invisible assault on her senses.

  Damn, he smelled good.

  The cuffs released, and he clicked them shut and deposited them in a case at the small of his back.

  He unzipped his coat and, without asking her permission, slipped it around her shoulders. The warmth was immediate, bringing with it that intoxicating scent.

  Gratitude built in her chest, her stomach flipping over when he slipped his arm around her and helped her to the car. “Blast the heat, Amber,” he said as he settled her in the backseat and climbed in beside her. “Dr. Baang, this is Special Agent Amber Dalton.”

  Amber nodded to her in the rearview mirror. “Good to see that you’re safe and sound, Dr. Baang.” She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “We’re going to take you to the hospital to make sure everything is okay. Then back to the navy yard for the time being until we can figure some of this out.”

  Sky nodded. She hoped that it would be someone else who would be asking the questions. Even with a Ph.D., she was having a hard time forming words around this man.

  “Did they...hurt you?”

  She knew immediately what he was asking her, and she shook her head. “They drugged me and tied me up, but don’t think any of them touched me while I was under. They just scared the living crap out of me.”

  Those tears threatened again, remembering the moment she’d seen her father’s welcome face as he took her away from the men who’d taken her as a child. For a moment she wanted to lean into him, that same feeling warming her inside, as if drinking hot cider.

  “After that I’ll be able to go home, right?”

  He met the female agent’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and her dubious look made her anxious.

  “Dr. Baang,” he said gently, his voice as beautiful as his face, “we’ll talk about that later.”

  “Oh, God, I forgot. They took my laptop.” How she had forgotten about the most important research in her life she could only attribute to the terror, the escape...and the rugged Special Agent Fitzgerald.

  “One of our agents has already secured it. It’ll be returned to you. Rest assured that we’ll take good care of you.”

  She wasn’t sure what scared her the most—interacting with this intriguing man who made her insides turn to liquid or facing the four kidnappers with automatic weapons.

  Chapter 2

  Vin stood in the examination room, not willing to let Dr. Baang out of his sight. He wanted to be in there and close to her, his protective instincts on high alert.

  Amber was outside on the phone.

  He’d never been in the presence of such an elegantly beautiful woman. Her straight black hair went to her waist; a swath of it had fallen over her shoulder on the nylon of his NCIS jacket. Her eyes slayed him every time he met them. He might be a geek, but he’d never had a difficult time with the ladies. But in this particular case, it was best that he not notice anything about her. She was his charge, and that nixed anything else.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Her soft voice drew his gaze. “Your arm,”
she said, focusing on the sleeve of his white dress shirt. “You should have someone take a look at it.”

  She eyed his gun clipped to his side and his badge that was tucked in his waistband, and she noticed blood there, too. “You’re hurt.”

  “We’ll see to you first, Dr. Baang.”

  She bit her soft, full bottom lip and looked away from him. Her legs were quite bare, long and beautiful with slim ankles and delicate feet. In fact, she didn’t have much on. The skimpy pink shorts left almost nothing to the imagination and showed off her slender hips; the tank top she wore revealed her nipples through the fabric as a reaction to the cold. It was a good thing that his coat covered up a lot. He’d have to get her something to wear back to NCIS. The perpetrators had literally snatched her straight out of her bed. It must have been a harrowing experience. He noticed her feet were very dirty.

  He walked over to the sink they had in the room and wet some paper towels. Returning to her, he said, “May I?”

  She nodded and bit her lip again as he slipped his hand over her warm, soft skin and started to scrub off the dirt. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she said, jerking slightly against his hand when he obviously hit a ticklish spot.

  “Do you need to speak with someone about your kidnapping?” He moved to her other foot, once all the grime was cleaned from the first one.

  “You mean a therapist?”

  “Yes. We have one on staff at NCIS.”

  He cleaned the bottom of her foot, then dried both off. “No. I don’t need a therapist. I’d really just like to go home.”

  He decided not to broach that subject here in the hospital. She wasn’t going to like the answer he gave her.

  A doctor and nurse came in. After looking her over and ministering to the cuts she’d gotten from the branches of the tree, they said she could leave.

  When they saw the blood on his shirt, he rolled up his sleeve so they could clean and bandage the wound he must have gotten when he’d covered her from the hail of bullets. It stung a bit, and he caught her staring at him with a pensive expression before she looked away. He hadn’t needed stitches, as it was more a scrape than a cut. But the one on his side, where a bullet had grazed him, hurt a lot worse and needed a few stitches.