“You’re both asking for the same person. That’s a little too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?” Indignation surged through Andrea, and she fought to hold it back. Her ankle might be throbbing, but her fists were ready to fly. She’d show this dark-eyed man he’d messed with the wrong woman if he so much as breathed too hard. He’d have more than a bruised cheek to worry about if...
She tilted her head. Had she actually given him that bruise? Smug warmth heated her face. Sweet. She still had it, even at thirty-two and after six years of sitting behind a desk.
Josh cleared his throat. “I have no idea what your first visitor wanted, but I can tell you that at approximately 1630 I watched Specialist Wade Cameron walk through those doors—” he jerked his thumb behind him “—and take a left turn.” His eyes scanned the lobby and lit on a door as his words evaporated into the muggy air.
Andrea tipped her head, still tensed for a fight. What was he talking about? “Wade never came in here. At 4:30 I was halfway through a fifty-minute session. With my receptionist Grace on vacation, Wade would have sat right here in these chairs and waited if you dropped him off here.” She stepped between Josh and the door he still eyed. “That’s a supply closet. The only other way out of this building is down that hall.” She pointed behind her to an opening near her office, on the opposite side of the lobby from the closet. “But that door’s always locked and it’s armed with a fire alarm. The only way out without making a racket is to unlock it and turn it off with the key, and only my receptionist and I have one.”
“He’s in that closet, then. I never saw him come back across the lobby, and there’s nowhere else in here he could be,” Josh muttered, moving to brush past her.
“Hold on.” Andrea planted a palm against his chest. It felt like a brick wall. Her hand burned against him. Liquid warmth seeped through her muscles, robbing them of their readiness. Was she crazy? The guy could be in league with the man who attacked her and she was noticing his chest? Maybe she should be the one having her head examined. She swallowed hard and willed her muscles back into fight mode. “Why did you bring Wade here?”
“You’re his counselor, I’m assuming? Alcohol abuse? He came to me and said he was struggling, that he’d slipped and started—”
“No.” Andrea braced her free hand on the reception counter. History couldn’t repeat itself. It couldn’t. They’d worked too hard to set him free. “There’s no way. Wade isn’t using again. That’s not possible.” Wade Cameron had come so far. He’d shown up in her office with an alcohol addiction so strong he couldn’t even get out of bed to go to physical training without a shot. When that didn’t work, he’d turned to marijuana. One hit, and he knew he’d gone too far. That was the day he’d shown up in her office, begging for help, ready to break the craving that was dragging him to his knees through the muck, threatening to ruin his career.
Josh softened. “He asked for help. He has a lot of respect for you. Not too long ago, he told me if anything ever happened to him I should see his counselor, Andrea. I had no problem bringing him here and waiting for him to come out again, only—”
“He never came out. But he never talked to me and there’s no way he got out the back door.”
* * *
Betrayal locked Josh’s back teeth together, shooting pain through the muscles in his injured cheek. He should never have teamed up with her brother to teach her how to defend herself. He took two steps toward the closed closet.
Andrea pushed herself from the counter and grabbed his biceps. “No. Give him a chance to come out before you go barging in. If he’s hiding, there’s a reason. Let him man up and face you instead of dragging him out like a child.”
Josh bit back a groan. Leave it to a therapist to play mind games. Fine. He’d call his soldier out, but he’d do it with every ounce of his authority. “Cameron!” The roar echoed off the walls.
Andrea jumped. “I didn’t mean so loud,” she muttered. “You make me want to hide in the closet.”
With a quick, amused glance in her direction, Josh took a deep breath and swallowed some of his ire. If he were a scared kid, he wouldn’t come out to bellowing, either. But any coward who hid while a lady fought off an attacker didn’t deserve much leniency in his book. Still, he’d humor her and lower his voice, but he refused to tone down the sternness. “Let’s go, Cameron. Time to talk.”
No sound leaked from the closet.
“You scared him.” Andrea wasn’t smiling anymore. “Let me handle it.” She stepped to the door. “Wade, it’s Andrea Donovan. The only two people out here are me and First Sergeant Walker. It’s safe.”
When nothing happened, Josh’s blood pressure soared. “This has gone far enough,” he muttered, his words drowned out by sirens from an approaching police car. Without wasting another second, he slipped around Andrea and yanked the wooden supply closet door open.
It was empty.
Wade Cameron had vanished.
TWO
When the front door to her apartment closed behind her, Andrea peered through the peephole and watched the policeman who had escorted her home disappear from sight down the heavy metal stairs. They’d searched her office building, taken her statement and Josh’s, and insisted the paramedics give her a once-over. When they were finally convinced her ankle was only twisted and she’d been allowed to leave, the police had discovered Wade had crawled out through the drop ceiling to the office next door and walked out the back. The whole evening took on a surreal quality colored by a heightened emotional hangover and fatigue.
She turned and pressed her back against the door, staring at the empty space of an apartment that suddenly felt larger than the White House. What if the guy she’d kicked in the face had followed her home? What if he knew where she lived and was already here waiting?
Her spine dug into the door as she tried to make herself as small as possible. She’d chosen this apartment because its third-floor location meant the door was the only way in. Now, alone in the dark, only one way in meant only one way out. She’d been all bravado in front of Josh, confident after bruising her attacker, but being alone now seemed to make the day’s events loom larger.
Josh. It had been years since she’d last seen him. He’d been her brother’s high school baseball teammate, her first really big crush. The times he’d allowed his senior self to hang around a freshman like her, she’d have thought he’d dropped to one knee and proposed with a six-carat solitaire.
Andrea rolled her eyes heavenward and let them slip shut. Lord Jesus, please don’t let him remember the way I gushed over him back then. That humiliation might be ten times worse than an attempted snatch and grab in her office lobby.
The feeling that unseen eyes watched her slowly dissipated as Andrea dropped the mail on the kitchen counter then marched through the apartment, flipping on lights and peeking in closets. Back in the kitchen, the neon of the microwave clock declared it to be nearly eleven. No wonder she was hungry enough to chew the linoleum like a puppy.
She dug a frozen chicken dinner out of the freezer and popped it into the microwave as a thought occurred to her. Puppies. Andrea had never been a dog person, but tonight it sure would be nice to have one. A dog would curl up beside her on the love seat and make her feel a little less alone. A dog would sound an alarm if someone tried to sneak in while sleep left her vulnerable.
Like sleep was going to happen anytime soon.
Every time she blinked, that giant of a man loomed in front of her. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it would be like when she turned off the lights and actually shut her eyes. He’d likely materialize in her room and try to steal her again.
And this time, there would be no Josh Walker to intervene.
He’d taken her number with a promise to call if anyone found Wade