"Good-bye, Shayne. " Flipping the phone closed, she cut him off as effectively as possible and ignored its strident ring as it lay in the passenger seat.
No man ordered her around, and she was going to be damned if she was going to allow Shayne or Khalid to do so.
She could see this situation deteriorating rapidly, and she knew it was her own fault. She shouldn't have run. She should have faced this; she should have faced Khalid and demanded what she knew was her due as a lover. Spending the night in his study was not acceptable loverlike behavior as far as she was concerned.
But perhaps it wasn't just Khalid's fault. From the moment the intensity of her orgasm had begun to ease, Marty had known she had entered a realm of sensation and emotions that she wasn't prepared for.
She had been suddenly terrified of a broken heart. In the moments after that final orgasm she had sensed that she had already allowed herself to cross a line. She had invested much more of herself in a man than she had ever intended.
Pulling to a stop at the intersection, she waited for the car in the opposite lane to proceed first, her mind still racing to figure out how to handle her personal life.
She was distracted, and she knew better than to allow herself to do that. Khalid and Shayne had her off balance, but not so off balance that she didn't see the black car as it raced from its parked position farther up the street or the barrel of the rifle as it was shoved out the back window.
Bullets tore into the front of her vehicle as Marty jerked the wheel to the right, stomped the gas, and started praying as the window shattered. A scream tore from her lips as she ducked, and her foot hit the gas harder.
Another blast blew out the back window, and a second later she heard the scream of tires, horns blowing, and the sound of voices raised high in shock. The vehicle slammed to a hard, shocking stop, throwing her forward into the steering wheel. For a moment the world seemed to tilt on a crazy axis. She could hear sirens in the distance. Her cell phone was ringing again, that crazy "Who Can It Be Now" ringtone echoing in her head as she fought to get her bearings.
She struggled to reach the phone on the passenger seat as she lay across the console, the world still tilting around her.
"Hello?" Her voice was scratchy, weak. It didn't sound like her, even to her own ears.
"Marty?" Shayne's voice was instantly concerned. "What's wrong?"
She tried to push herself upright. "I'll have to call you back. Someone just tried to blow my head off. " She was going to throw up. "Bye, Shayne. "
She could hear him screaming her name as she flipped the phone closed and took a hard, deep breath. Her stomach was roiling. A sense of vertigo plagued her, as she struggled to sit upright.
She hadn't hit her head. She hadn't been shot. The car had slammed into a tree, however.
"Lady, you okay?" a voice asked her from outside the broken window.
Marty forced her eyes open and focused on the officer.
"FBI. " She forced the word past her lips as she tried to get her senses back into line. Pulling the small wallet from the inside of her jacket pocket, she flashed her identification at him and breathed in hard and deep once again.
Okay, she was going to get through this. She wasn't hurt, just a little shaken.
"Agent Mathews, an ambulance is on its way. " The officer pulled the car door open and knelt beside her.
"Witnesses. " She breathed through her nose to get past the rising nausea. "Plates on that car. "
"My partner's getting statements on it," he assured her, rising and backing up as she started to pull herself out of the car. "You should stay put until the ambulance arrives, Agent Mathews," she was advised. "They're on their way. "
"I'm fine. " She waved his advice away but accepted his arm as he helped her step from the vehicle. "Did they get away?"
Of course they had gotten away. She couldn't have been lucky enough that they had actually stuck around to be arrested and interrogated. Hell no.
"Sorry, ma'am. " The officer kept a firm hold on her as she swayed for a second. "You need to be checked out, ma'am. " There was a concerned look on his face. "You're going to be bruised. Some of that glass got you. "
She shook her head again. "Contact Director Zachary Jennings, FBI, immediately. He's my godfather. "
The officer snapped into place as Marty gave him her godfather's name. Instant results produced instant action.
Within twenty minutes there were two detectives on the scene as well as a crime scene van and the personnel required to collect what little evidence could be gathered from the scene.
Pictures of the skid marks, witness statements, the bullets that had ripped into her leather seats.
It also didn't take long for her godfather to call her father. Within thirty minutes of the detectives' arrival Marty turned at the sound of screaming tires and watched her father's Pors