Seduced by the Sniper. Elizabeth Heiter
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She could describe the birthmark on his upper thigh in minute detail, but she couldn’t say if he had any siblings besides Maggie, what he’d done before he’d joined the Bureau or how he spent his free time.
As he sat on the edge of her bed, sinking down on the springs, his weight shifting her closer to him, an ache filled her chest. She wished she did know those things. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She opened her mouth, wanting to ask him...something, but he spoke first.
“I want you to check out the crime-scene images.”
Chelsie sat up straighter, moving away from him as he held his laptop toward her. “What? Why? No.”
She sounded frantic, but she didn’t care. The nightmares were already starting up again. She didn’t need to study the crime-scene photos and make it worse, regardless of how much of a coward that made her seem.
She scowled, hating that Scott would see her that way now, too. He’d picked a job where he ran into the danger everyone else ran away from. He’d already seen her run away, from her job as a negotiator, and from him.
Steeling herself, she grabbed the laptop before she could change her mind. But there were no crime-scene photos on his screen, only a drawing with the details—distances, locations of the victims and the shooter— written in. Surprised, she glanced over the top of the screen at Scott.
He moved slightly, leaning against the headboard, and stretched his long legs across her bed.
There wasn’t enough room for both of them, and she found her legs pressed against his through the thin sheet, with nowhere to go. If she turned her head, raised it a little, his face would be right there. His lips would be right there.
Instead, she stared resolutely at the screen. “What am I looking at?” Her voice sounded too high-pitched, but if Scott noticed, he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he pointed to the spot on the drawing marked Suspect. “Connors was here.” He moved his finger to the spot right outside the community-center front door. Next to an X, it read FBI Special Agent Russell. “You were here?”
There was a tension in his voice she didn’t understand. “Yeah.” She glanced at him, and this close, she could see the individual whiskers on his chin, the tense lines between his eyes that she wanted to smooth.
“Not here?” He moved his finger from the left side of the U outside the community-center front door to the right side.
“No. Why?”
“Chelsie.” The worry in his voice deepened, and there was concern in the depths of his deep brown eyes. “Connors not firing at you wasn’t because he couldn’t.”
Chelsie’s pulse picked up. “What are you talking about?”
“Look where he is.” He pointed to the X marked Suspect again.
“So?”
“So, I ran the numbers. If they’re right, he did have a shot at you. He chose to let you live. He chose to let only you live.”
Chelsie stared up at Scott, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, he let me live?”
“He had a shot, Chelsie,” Scott said quietly. “We found his shell casings. He was high enough on those bleachers. He could have hit you.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t he?” Chelsie demanded, not wanting to believe it. “If he could have gotten me in his crosshairs, he would have killed me. He snapped. He was taking out anyone he could hit that day.”
“Apparently not,” Scott said.
She stared at him, noticing the deep circles underneath his eyes. Andre had said they’d been up for eighteen hours before they’d brought her to the safe house. And yet, instead of getting some sleep, Scott had reviewed the case file.
Chelsie felt something suspiciously like affection, and tried to ignore it. “Maybe you did the geometry wrong.”
Scott shook his head, but instead of being insulted, he just appeared exhausted. “It’s the same kind of calculations I do in my head every time I fire my rifle, Chelsie. I mess those up and I shoot a hostage instead of the perp. I could do them in my sleep. Trust me. I’m not wrong.”
“Then why didn’t they figure this out before?” she demanded.
“If you look at the building from ground level, you’d assume he didn’t have an angle on you. Even if you look at it from the bleachers, if you’d been on the other side of that enclosed area, he wouldn’t have been able to hit you. It was an oversight. And it made sense that he didn’t hit you because he couldn’t. But that’s not what happened.”
“Then what was he really after?” she whispered, moving away from him on her bed. But the mattress offered no support and she just slid back toward him until her body was pressed against his again.
It didn’t make any sense. Clayton Connors had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching the rest of his unit die when an IED exploded under their vehicle. He’d gotten out of the military and gotten help—mostly in the form of very strong painkillers. Then, one day, he’d snapped and gone after military recruiters.
But the prosecution at his trial had made an airtight argument that Connors would have killed anyone he could have hit that day, that he’d actually planned on moving to a new location and killing again, until he’d been pulled over. It had been simple self-preservation that had kept him from raising a gun on the officers. A sudden fear of dying himself had landed him in jail instead of the morgue.
Chelsie threw her covers off and walked to the far side of the room. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling strangely exposed in her T-shirt and shorts as she stared down at Scott, who was way too tempting stretched out in her bed. “The guy was crazy. Does it really matter why he didn’t shoot me?”
Even as she asked the question, she knew she was avoiding dealing with it. Connors letting her live on purpose didn’t fit with anything they knew about what had happened that day. And it didn’t track with the idea of him coming after her for a second chance, not if he’d never taken that first chance.
So what did he want with her? A shiver ran through her and she tensed, hoping Scott wouldn’t notice.
He put the laptop on her bed and walked over to her, stopping so close that she could’ve leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. “You’re the one who gets into people’s minds,” he argued. “You tell me if it matters.”
“That would be Ella. She’s the profiler.”
Scott gave her a look of disbelief. “Oh, come on. You were a good negotiator because you understand what people want. How did you do that without getting into their minds?”
“In case you forgot, I failed as a negotiator.”
“That’s not true,” Scott said. “Connors was a nutbag. You couldn’t have talked him down if you had thirty days, let alone the thirty seconds you probably got.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You just came in here to say that Connors wasn’t a nutbag. That he’d made the conscious choice not to shoot me, instead of being driven by some blind rage.”
Scott paused. It was a fraction of a second, but it was long enough.
“I don’t want to talk about my old job,” she said. “You’re the one who’s so sure he could have shot me. You must have far more experience with that kind of scene than I do. What’s your assessment?”
Scott frowned back at her. “Remind me not to wake you without a full night’s sleep again. You’re seriously cranky without your coffee.”
Chelsie’s shoulders slumped, her anger