He reacted forcefully. His left arm wrapped around her midsection, and he yanked her along with him. They were moving back toward the front door. Wrong way! They should be fleeing.
“He has a gun,” she repeated.
“Heard you the first time.”
His calm tone reminded her that he was a commando— specially trained to face danger. She could trust him. Though her pulse pounded and her nerve endings sizzled with fear, she forced herself to stand beside him on the porch instead of running willy-nilly toward her car. “What’s next?” she asked.
“Stay.”
“You mean, stay here?” She pointed to the concrete of the stoop. “Right here?”
Ignoring her, he was already on the move. He tore open the door to her house and charged inside, directly into the line of fire. His aggressive approach shocked her. He didn’t have a weapon. How did he intend to overcome a man with a gun? He’s Special Forces, she reminded herself. His aggressive assault must be some sort of tactic.
She pressed her back against the wall beside the mailbox and clutched her purse against her chest. Stay. It was a simple, unambiguous command. But what if the men in suits left her kitchen and circled around to the front? What if Blake was shot? What if …
Oh, damn. She darted into the house behind him. In her clunky sandals, there was no way she could move stealthily, but she tried not to plod like a rhino. She went right—toward the bookshelves beside the fireplace where she grabbed a poker to use as a weapon. Then she hid behind her wingback reading chair. Peering around the arm, she saw no one. She heard no gunfire.
When Blake entered from the kitchen, his movements were as swift and efficient as a mountain lion on the prowl.
She popped up. “Are they gone?”
He went into attack mode. For a moment, she thought he was going to launch himself at her like a missile. Instead, he waved her toward him. “Come with me. Hurry.”
Another quick command, spoken with authority. She jumped to obey. “I couldn’t stay on the porch because—”
He grasped her arm and propelled her through the front door, off the porch and across the yard toward a station wagon. He ran around to the driver’s side. “Get in.”
She barely had time to fasten her seat belt before he was behind the wheel. He flipped the key in the ignition, and the station wagon roared down her quiet residential street like a tank.
“Keep your eyes open,” he said. “Look for a black SUV with tinted windows.”
“Where were they parked?”
“In the alley behind your house. I saw them pull away.”
They were safe. She exhaled slowly, hoping to ease the tension that clenched every muscle in her body. That brief encounter in her kitchen might have been the scariest thing that had ever happened to her. Though the confrontation only lasted eight minutes, it had felt like hours. According to Einstein, time was relative. Her fear made everything move in slow motion.
She reached into her purse and took out her cell phone. “I should call 911.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “Getting the cops involved is a waste of time.”
Though she had no prior experience with intruders or guns being pointed at her, she was pretty sure he was wrong. “This is a job for the police.”
“Did the intruders steal anything?”
“They weren’t robbers.”
“How do you know?”
“They knew my name and asked me to come with them.”
“Not typical of burglars,” he said.
“And they were wearing suits and neckties.” She shuddered at the memory. “And gloves. The kind of throwaway latex gloves we wear in the lab if we’re handling sensitive material.”
“Did they break in?”
She frowned. “It wasn’t exactly breaking and entering because my back door was unlocked, but they could be charged with … entering.”
“You weren’t harmed,” he said. “What crime would you report to the police?”
“That guy pointed a gun at me. He’s dangerous.”
“You’re right about that.” He focused on the road, driving fast through a maze of residential streets. “They could be the men who killed my father.”
The unexpectedness of his statement stunned her. The air squeezed out of her lungs, and she felt herself gasping like a trout out of water. Those men? Murderers? She had it fixed in her mind that Dr. Ray was the victim of a burglary gone wrong—being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “You’re saying that your father was targeted. That the murderer came after him on purpose. It was premeditated.”
“Yes.”
She waited for him to explain, but he was too busy watching in all directions and driving too fast. “Could you possibly be more terse?”
“No.”
The tires squealed as Blake rounded a corner. “That’s them. That’s their vehicle.”
At the foot of the hill in front of them, about two blocks away, she saw a black SUV. It made a left turn and disappeared from sight, thank goodness. Unless the bad guys doubled back, they were safe.
In a purely counterintuitive manner, Blake zoomed toward the other car. She shouted, “What are you doing?”
“Going after them.”
He’d just acknowledged that those men were possibly murderers. “Are you crazy?”
“My dad was murdered. I have few leads and no evidence. Those guys might know something.”
“Or they might kill us.”
“Try to get the number on their license plate.”
He hit the brakes to avoid a collision with a car pulling out of a driveway. At the corner, he had to stop again for schoolkids with backpacks crossing the street.
Finally reaching the corner, he turned in the direction the SUV had headed. This street fed into a main thoroughfare, and the other vehicle had already disappeared in traffic.
“Damn.” Blake’s right hand clenched into a fist which he pressed against his forehead. His jaw was tight. He winced, and the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes deepened.
She sensed the depth of his frustration. Though she had no desire to ever see either one of those men again, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Dozens of questions popped inside her head. Usually, Eve was good at sorting out variables and assigning rational values, but she didn’t have enough information. “Why did you come to my house? Did you know I was in danger?”
“If I’d known, I never would have let you leave. I would never knowingly put you in harm’s way.”
His military phrasing reassured her; he sounded a bit like her father. “You must have had a reason for showing up on my doorstep.”
He made another left turn and drove in the direction of her house. “I called Prentice to set up a meet, and he told me that he might have accidentally put you in danger.”
“There are no accidents,” she said darkly. If she hadn’t been so confused, she would have been furious. Dr. Prentice was at the center of this tornado that had thrown her life into chaos. “Do you think Prentice is involved in your dad’s murder?”
“I don’t have facts or evidence,” he said. “My dad’s