Take My Breath Away…

“She’s at St. Vincent’s,” Gabe said. “One of my men just tracked it down. They didn’t discover the bullet until she was in surgery so it didn’t get reported right away. According to my man, she wasn’t carrying any identification.”

There was a beat of silence as Mark Adams appeared in the door of his office. Nick Guthrie turned to him. “Mark, I need to fill you in.” Then he shifted his gaze back to Gabe. “The two of you go and check the woman out. Get an I.D. on her. I’ll arrange for a police guard at the door, and I’ll get on that other matter we talked about.”

Nicola said nothing until they were out of the building and he was opening the door of a low slung black convertible parked at the curb. The car was certainly in Gabe Wilder’s signature color, but it was a sharp right turn from the black SUV she’d tailed. “How in the world did you persuade him to assign me to watch you?”

He gave her a sideways glance as the engine leaped to life with a purr. “I appealed to what matters most to him. I told him I thought you were in danger. I do, by the way. And I promised him I’d provide you with the protection you need.”

Nicola’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re really assigned to me and not vice-versa.”

“Not at all.” He smiled at her. “It’s a mutual assignment, Curls. And a perfect arrangement. You get to prove yourself in the field, and I get to work with the best mind the Denver FBI white-collar crime division has.”

Nicola felt the warmth steal through her right down to her toes. But as grateful as she might be to Gabe Wilder for making the “perfect arrangement,” it didn’t slip by her that she was dealing with a very smooth operator.

9

GABE STOOD WITH NICOLA and a male nurse just inside the room where a young woman lay hooked up to several beeping machines. Just outside the door, Pete Walters, a young man who’d been working for him ever since he graduated from college, was talking to the policeman that had just arrived.

The nurse’s name tag read Sid. He was in his mid-twenties with brown curly hair and a cherubic face, and in spite of his youthful appearance, he ran a tight ship. He wasn’t about to leave them alone with the injured woman, nor had he been overly generous with the details of her condition other than telling them it was critical.“Five minutes,” Sid reminded them. “Then I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“She looks so young,” Nicola murmured.

That had been Gabe’s first thought when he’d seen her. It was hard to estimate her exact age because she had enough bandages wrapped around her head to make her look like a nun. But he was guessing late teens, early twenties. Except for a bruise that had darkened around one eye, her face was free of injury, and there were no wrinkles. She had delicate features and the high cheekbones of a model. And something about her pushed at the edge of his mind.

Not recognition. For he’d never seen this woman before. He was sure of that. Just as he was pretty sure that she was the same woman he’d fought with the night before. The hospital sheets were tucked tightly around a tall, athletically built body. Gabe stepped to the foot of the bed to get a closer look.

“That’s far enough,” Sid said. “I agreed to let you see her. That’s all.”

Nicola pulled a notebook out of her purse. “I’m going to make a sketch of her. The FBI has a program we can run it through. We may be lucky enough to get a match.”

Gabe watched out of the corner of his eye as she moved her pencil skillfully over the page. The strokes were quick, competent. Either of them could have easily taken a picture with a cell phone, but the sketch might prove more useful. At the very least it was distracting the nurse.

“You’re good at that,” Sid commented, his eyes on her sketch pad now.

Gabe moved closer so that he, too, could take a look. Sid was right. She was very good. As he studied what was taking shape on the page, he once more felt the flicker of something, some memory. But it was too dim, too far away.

“Do you have any idea how old she is?” Nicola asked Sid.

“We figure she’s in her early twenties,” Sid replied. “Do they give lessons in drawing at the FBI?”

“I studied art in college,” Nicola said. “She must have been badly hurt.”

“Lucky for her Dr. Cashman was on call. He’s one of our most skilled surgeons. She suffered severe head trauma in the accident, but he was able to relieve the pressure on the brain.”

“She’s going to make it?” Nicola asked.

“We’re working on it,” Sid replied. “The coma she’s in is induced. The surgical team hopes to bring her out of it in a few days. Then we’ll see if there’s been permanent brain damage.”

“There’s a chance of that then?” Nicola asked, not glancing up from her sketch.

“Always. But Dr. Cashman is hopeful that he relieved the pressure in time.”

“What do you think of the likeness?” Nicola asked, holding up her notebook.

“Very good,” Sid said.

“Thanks.” She shot him a smile before she flipped to a new page. “There was a gunshot wound also?”

“Dr. Cashman removed a bullet from her shoulder. No artery was hit, and it missed the bone. The pain and the loss of blood may have factored into why she lost control of the car, but there’s a good chance the storm also played a major role. Our emergency room was filled last night with the victims of weather-related accidents.”

She wasn’t only good at drawing, Gabe thought. She’d also found a way to set Sid enough at ease, so that he was giving them the information they needed about the mystery woman’s condition.

“That’s why the policeman and that security agent are standing guard, right? Because of the bullet? Is she in trouble?” Sid asked.

“We won’t know for sure until we know who she is,” Nicola said. “Did she have any personal effects on her?”

“No wallet or cell phone,” Sid said as he moved to a small closet. “Just this.” Removing a plastic bag, he passed it to Nicola.

Inside was a bracelet. Nicola removed it and held it up to the light. The chain was thick, finely crafted gold and there was a flat gold disc hanging from one of the links. The engraved initials read D.A. Gabe felt something flicker at the edge of his mind again, but the memory was still out of reach.

Nicola slipped the bracelet into the plastic bag and said, “I’ll want to keep this. It could help us with the identification.”

When Sid frowned, Nicola hurried on. “Do you happen to know what color her hair was? That could be even more helpful than the bracelet. The last thing I’d want for her is to come out of that coma and not have anyone here for her.”

“I’ll make a call,” Sid said and hurried out of the room.

“And while he’s doing that, I’ll get her prints.” Gabe grabbed one of the plastic glasses and gently pressed the young woman’s fingers to it. Circling the foot of the bed, he did the same with a second glass, tucked both into his briefcase, and moved to Nicola. “Great idea to make the sketch.”

“It’s the first time I’ve had any practical use for all those art classes my stepmother insisted on.”

“Good job.” He noted the flush that spread to her cheeks. “You’re talented at drawing. You’re also good at questioning people.” And instinct told him that she hadn’t heard a lot of compliments in her life. He’d have to do something about that.

“I like working with you, Curls.” Then he made a mistake and did what he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do, something he’d been aching to do ever since he’d walked into her office. He touched her.

Not the way he wanted to. All he did was tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, but the simple act of brushing his finger over her cheek set off an instant chain reaction. Her breath caught, and he felt it like a punch in the gut. When the pulse quickened at the base of her throat, his own leapt to match it.

She raised a hand and placed it against his chest, and the pressure of each one of her fingers triggered a torrent of liquid heat so intense that the reality around him faded.

Neither one of them moved. He’d never experienced such an intense awareness of another person. In that moment, nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed except Nicola. The realization baffled him. It frightened him. And fascinated him.

“I want you. I have from the first moment I saw you in the office,” he murmured.

“I know. What are we going to do?”

Run like hell. That’s what he’d been doing for almost three months. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore. He was leaning toward her, closing the distance between them when a voice said, “Blonde.”

They dropped their hands at the same instant as Sid entered the room. “She has blonde hair.”

It was Nicola who recovered enough to turn and say, “Thank you so much, Sid. And we’re going to get right out of your way.”

Just outside the room, Gabe stopped to talk to his man, Pete.

Nicola listened to him fill the young man in, but she didn’t speak again until they were in the car and Gabe had pulled into traffic. By that time her heartbeat had steadied and she could think again. But she didn’t trust herself to look at him. Not yet. “We’re going to have to do something about what’s happening between us. The spilled milk strategy isn’t working.”