Agent-in-Charge. Leigh Riker
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the team exercise. Graham tried to tamp it down, but Casey, slender yet curvy in all the right places, her skin warm and as soft as down, felt like home in his embrace. Hell. What was he doing, lusting over a broken woman? A woman who didn’t belong to him now?
“It’s over,” she said against the front of his dress shirt. He felt wetness seep through the blue cotton. “I’m trapped inside myself. I’ve never liked small, enclosed spaces, but now that’s all I have. I’ll never be able to run an art gallery of my own again. Never see the paintings on the walls. The colors. Never know if something is good, or bad. How could I now?”
Graham shut his eyes, sharing the darkness with her for a moment. “You’ll find a way. You know you will.”
He had to remind himself that they were quits. Over, as she’d said of her gallery.
His remark seemed to stiffen her spine, but he hated seeing her like this, hated knowing what someone else had done to her in that lonely parking garage. To Casey, her career, her life, her future had been snatched away along with her vision.
And her accident still troubled him, too.
That was natural.
She had nearly been killed.
But why in hell had the accident happened in the first place? Mere steps from his own office at Hearthline?
He took another look around the lobby. When he saw nothing suspicious, Graham tipped up her chin so he could look into her eyes, and the pain ripped through him all over again. Her gorgeous green eyes. Hell, he could do this much for her if nothing more.
“Let me take you home. My car’s outside.”
Casey pulled away, then set her shoulders. “I may be blind. I’m not crippled. I am fully capable of leaving this lobby and raising a hand to call a cab.” She stepped back a few inches. “You have no responsibility for me, Graham, remember? Our marriage is over.”
“We’re divorced, not mortal enemies.” Which only made Graham angrier at himself. “Frankly, if you ask me, you could use not only a lift—you could use a friend.”
“You are not my friend.”
Ouch, he thought, but he knew he hadn’t acted like a pal, much less a husband. He couldn’t fault her for not trusting him, for walking out. He’d driven her to it.
Yet Graham would be the first to admit that things weren’t always what they seemed. Including him. Too bad he couldn’t tell Casey anything—for now—but lies.
He double-checked the lobby, finding only the normal flow of passersby intent upon their errands. It didn’t soothe him. He forced his tone to sound lazy, nonthreatening. He wanted to get her out of here.
“Listen, friend or not, I’ve got a great car. Leather seats. Air conditioning. I haven’t had a speeding ticket in, oh, three or four weeks.” Since before Casey was hurt, the last time he’d felt able to unwind. “Take a chance, babe. Sit back and enjoy. I’ll have you home in fifteen minutes. Less, if we hit the lights right.”
Safe, he thought. If only, as he’d planned, he could have kept her safe….
Casey raised her face to his.
“Thank you very much, but I can find my own way home.”
Graham’s mouth tightened. Like hell you will. When she started to tap-tap her way toward the revolving doors, he stood there for a moment, staring, before he went after her. He couldn’t help feeling thwarted—and for some niggling reason he couldn’t define, still afraid for her.
He took one step before he felt the very air around him grow thick, heavy, with an ominous portent that seemed to smother him—and at the same time to shout a warning.
“Casey!”
Too late. Helpless, Graham watched it happen. One second she was making her way to the revolving doors, probably guided to their location by the constant swish of movement she heard as people came and went. In the next instant Casey had been shoved into a moving door. From the sidewalk, a man in dark clothes sent the door spinning, circling, round and round and round with Casey trapped inside.
Breaking into a run, Graham hurdled a woman’s stroller carrying a small child and twisted to avoid a pair of startled businessmen. His heart threatened to burst in his chest. Out of my way, damn it. All he could think was, Trust the feeling. I was right. He had known something bad would happen. He had to get to Casey….
CASEY’S CRIES echoed through the vaulted lobby. By now, she didn’t know up from down, in from out. Her world of darkness whirled. Played havoc with her sense of balance.
She tried to brace herself but felt like a rag doll being flung by a furious child from one side of the constantly circling space in which she was caught to the other. Over and over. Her head spun. Her own voice shrieked, and sound shattered. First she heard the swish of the revolving door, then a wedge of traffic noise. Blaring horns. Screeching brakes. A few footsteps passing by. Then that pressured silence again, like being shut inside a vacuum.
Casey couldn’t tell where she was. In the spinning section of the door her shoulder hit one glass partition then another, hard, her bones and muscles throbbing on impact.
The whole terrifying incident happened in less than a minute, but all the while she could sense the man who stood outside, preventing her escape. She could imagine the Grim Reaper smile on his lips. Her blood rushed through her veins, the memory of her “accident” roared through her mind again. Was it the man from the elevator? She tried to fight back, to push against the glass, but without effort he only shoved the door. Harder.
GRAHAM’S PULSE hammered. He raced across the lobby in seconds that seemed like a lifetime. Charging out onto the sidewalk, he stopped the man’s arm on the upswing before he could push the revolving door again. Then Graham lowered his shoulder and charged, trying to butt him. The guy sidestepped him and Graham missed. Bastard.
He was solid, well-muscled. So was Graham, but before he could recover his own balance, the guy was gone. Graham hadn’t even seen his face. Casey, who had been flung out of the revolving door when Graham’s arrival slowed its motion, was lying on the sidewalk. By that time a crowd had gathered.
“Somebody help her!” he shouted then took off to prevent the guy’s escape. Graham did his best imitation of a linebacker, snaking his way through the puzzled crowd, breathing in sharp hisses like a set of air brakes. Heads turned, necks craned at him and the man he was chasing down the busy Washington street, but Graham’s hours in the Hearthline gym were no match for his heart-pounding terror.
He was still ten yards away when the man, a blur of black pants and shirt, knocked a male pedestrian aside. He vaulted into a dark car at the curb, then tore off, literally. On his way out of the space he bashed the left rear fender of the SUV parked in front of him. Metal crunched. A taillight splintered. A passing taxi horn blew, the cab narrowly missing the car that peeled off into traffic. Then there was silence. Eerie silence.
Graham no longer heard the rush of passing vehicles, the growing buzz of conversation. He bent over, hands braced on his thighs, and gulped in the smoggy, humid air until he could breathe. Then he jogged back to Casey, now sitting on the pavement looking dazed.
Several people hovered over her, offering handkerchiefs and sanitary hand cleaner. Graham bent down to her. Casey’s palms and knees were scraped raw, oozing blood, and fresh anger spurted through him.
“Damn. Come on, babe, let’s get out of here.”
With thanks for the small group of passersby who had come to her aid, he gently helped Casey to her feet. Graham should have trusted his instincts. Divorced or not, whether or not she trusted him, he needed to see her safe at home. Then he needed to start asking hard questions. He hadn’t wanted to think the hit-and-run was deliberate, but now he would learn the truth—all of it.
Maybe then he could tell her the truth about himself.
“YOU SURE