“It’s over. He’s dead,” a calm, deep voice assured her.
Large hands slid beneath her arms and lifted her off the body. Before his words could register, he had turned her around and embraced her, holding her close, pressing her face to the soft cotton of his shirt. His subtle cologne mixed with the tinny smell of blood.
She pushed herself away from the admittedly warm embrace.
“Thanks, but I’m okay,” she stated, but the words came out a little shaky and breathless, not as firmly as she meant them to. “Are you?”
“I’m fine. Why don’t you go in the other office and sit down while I call the police?” he suggested.
“Check the body,” she ordered. “Just to be—”
“Sure,” he said, finishing her sentence and turning her toward the door, his strong arm locked around her shoulders. “Trust me, he’s dead. Come on now, let’s get you out of here.”
Dani broke away. “Hey, I’m not falling apart, Mr. Michaels, and I don’t need any babying. I’m a federal agent and I can handle a little blood, okay? And rule number one—I check to see if the perp is dead or not.”
His eyebrows flew up. “You’re a what?”
Dani puffed out her cheeks and expelled a breath of exasperation. He was looking at her as if she had sprouted two heads. She reached in her pocket for her credentials folder and whipped it out, letting her badge dangle about a foot from his nose. “Danielle Sweet, Homeland Security Intelligence.”
But he was already shaking his head in obvious disbelief. “That’s pretty damn convenient!” Then he squinted at her. “So you were on to this guy? And you led him into my bank? You endangered the lives of my employees?”
“Oh yeah, I was on to him the instant he stuck his gun in my back. And since we were already at the front door, your bank just seemed like a great place to get the goods on him, so I brought him on in!”
The sudden silence seemed deafening. She suddenly realized just how loudly she’d been screaming at him.
Chapter 2
Dani tried to calm down and contain the shakes. Her whole body seemed to vibrate uncontrollably now that the threat was over.
“What were you doing here in the first place?” Michaels demanded.
Dani rolled her eyes. “Hey! Banking, maybe? Am I allowed?”
“You don’t have an account here!”
She threw up her hands, clenched her fists and turned away so she wouldn’t smack him. After a few deep breaths, she faced him again, measuring her words, moderating them into a somewhat mocking semblance of normalcy. Man, she needed some normalcy right now. “I came to open one!”
Defuse this right now, she ordered herself. Say something nice. Another deep breath. He was pacing now, his stride severely limited by the floor space available. “By the way, thank you for not doing something too stupid and getting us killed.”
A muscle worked in his jaw, clenching, unclenching. He stopped pacing and glared at her, his eyes flashing. “Stupid? You mean like grabbing somebody with a gun pointed at your head? Like leaping on his back? Stupid like that? Dammit, he could have taken your head off, you know that? Of all the freakin’, idiotic—”
“Shut up!” Dani snapped. “He was about to kill us both anyway and you knew it! So don’t you rail at me for—”
“Okay, okay!” he interrupted, struggling with his temper. A moment later he had his palms out in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s let it go. It’s over and we’re both alive. Just calm down, all right?”
“I’m calm as a cucumber, Slick. You’re the one going ape. Now, why don’t you do something constructive like get the hell out of my way?”
His intense gaze remained on hers as his breathing evened out. He jerked one hand toward the dead man. “Be my guest, then. Check the body while I notify the police.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Do that.”
Ignoring him, Dani crouched beside the dead man and felt his carotid for a pulse. Then she saw why he said it wasn’t necessary. There was a bullet hole right between the eyes, which were open and already glazing over. Plus, he had a massive exit wound at the top of his head.
If she hadn’t been so much shorter, she would have seen it when she’d jumped him. With that thought, she suddenly realized her hands were gummy. She examined them and began to worry about contamination from the blood.
“Bathroom’s that way. Better go wash that off,” Michaels said, pointing. He had gone around to the other side of his desk and stood waiting with the phone to his ear.
His perfect features held an expression of worry now. New frown lines forming. Probably his first serious problem, she thought. Men who looked the way he did must have a really easy skate through life. A hiccup like this was enough to throw him off polite behavior.
Dani felt bad about their heated exchange. Adrenaline could do weird tricks with a person’s attitude. Unfortunately, it seemed to have affected them both the same way. She would need to apologize later.
In the meantime, she retrieved her purse from the lobby floor, hurried to the restroom where she scrubbed off the blood. Thankfully, she had no scratches to worry about. Her right temple felt completely numb where the pistol had been jammed against it, though that was probably due to swelling from the blow she took. Her hip hurt where she had crunched it against the wall and her arm ached a little. Otherwise, she was okay.
Carol was going to kill her. It seemed every time Dani got within a mile of her sister, trouble exploded. Last visit, Bud’s new car had been stolen out of their driveway and found burned to a crisp over in the next county. Dani, a brand-new agent working for the Bureau then, had felt obliged to hunt down the guys who took it and bust up the car-theft ring. Bad call, jurisdictionally, she remembered. This time, she’d stay out of it and let the locals do their worst.
Even when she and her sister were growing up, Dani had been a trouble magnet. She was invariably swept up in the middle of whatever conflict developed anywhere near her, mostly due to her acting on her dratted premonitions. Maybe she had cursed them once too often. Today her Gypsy mother’s gift of foresight had all but failed.
Or had it? Maybe it had taken a different form with that pressing need to get out of the house on a day when sane people stayed inside. And that sudden notion of opening an account for the baby had struck her like a hammer just after breakfast. Had that foresight guided her here to stop the robbery?
Maybe she shouldn’t have come to Ellerton in the first place, but how could she stay away when Carol had a brand-new baby, Dani’s very first nephew? It wasn’t as if she was likely to have any children of her own any time soon, maybe ever.
Once again, she reminded herself why she had no business envying her sister the adorable baby, devoted hubby and the white picket fence. Mommies weren’t supposed to carry weapons and go looking for danger, like she did for a living. Like she enjoyed doing. It was not a life to be shared with innocents.
But what if she hadn’t come? Ben Michaels would probably be dead right now, as well as whomever else the robber would have held hostage instead of her.
She glanced in the mirror again, examined the new bruise on her head and pulled some of her bangs down to cover it. Out of sight, out of mind: one of those sayings that didn’t quite work in this case. Later, she’d cover it with makeup, but it would still ache like crazy.
To distract herself, she thought about Michaels as she made herself presentable. It took a certain kind of person to settle down in Smallville and be content. Someone like her sister and Bud, her brother-in-law. And this Benjamin Michaels, big bad bank manager. He had been unexpectedly cool under fire.