I had a lot to think about the following morning. I took my time about my morning routine, moving Rachel back out into the bedroom before taking my shower. When I came out, she was still sitting on the couch where I’d left her, handcuffed to the frame of the window. As I’d expected, she hadn’t cried out or tried in any way to get someone to notice her. I didn’t think she would. She needed whatever it was Thomas had promised her too much.

“I’m taking you to the office with me,” I told her.

Her eyebrows rose. “Why? Do you have a torture chamber there?”

I ignored the barb. “We’ll wait until it’s time for your call, then we’ll go to the office.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him? That I don’t know anything yet? He’ll see through that in a second.”

“No. You tell him I’m taking you to the office, that I’m giving you a few tasks to do. Tell him you’ll have access to our computers.”

She sat up straighter. “You’re hoping he’ll let fly what he wants.”

“I want to keep him on the hook.”

“You think he’ll show his hand.”

She was a little pushy, this woman. I inclined my head slightly as I tossed a frozen egg sandwich in the microwave. “I think he’ll show his hand.”

“Okay.”

I glanced at her, a little surprised that she would accept that so easily. But I could see on her face that she just wanted me to reinforce what she thought she already knew.

My cell rang as I waited for the food to warm up. I glanced at the screen, saw Matthew’s number. “What’s up?”

“Quentin’s going over to Alli’s, and Pastor Fuller is home sick. What do you want me to do?”

“Take the morning off, then go over and relieve Quentin.”

“My sister called last night. She and Jack are rolling into town today.”

“Today? He’s not due back until tomorrow.”

“They decided to come back a little early. You want me to do anything here at the office to get ready for him?”

I thought about that for a second, but there was nothing that needed to be done. Except figuring out what I was going to do with Rachel, of course.

“No. Go home.”

“All right.”

I disconnected, shooting a glance at Rachel. She was watching the microwave with a naked hunger on her face. I popped open the door and tossed the sandwich at her. She caught it deftly and bit into it with a pleasure that was unmistakable.

“What’s your real name?”

She glanced at me. “Rachel is my real name.”

“Seriously?”

“Rachel Marie Abbott.”

I inclined my head slightly. “Nice to meet you.”

“What’s your real name?”

“You know my name.”

She took a big bite of the sandwich as she studied me. “Where are you from? Israel? Germany? Argentina? There’s no underlying accent, so you must have worked hard at your speech.”

I turned away, shoving another sandwich in the microwave. “What makes you think I’m not American?”

“You could be, I suppose. But there’s something about your mannerisms that suggests otherwise.” I could feel her eyes boring through me. “Something elegant. I’ve known a lot of people from Europe who had the same sort of thing going on.”

“You travel a lot?”

“I’m an Army brat. My dad was stationed all over the world, moving every year, sometimes every two years. I told you, I’m from just about any place you can think of.”

“Must have been a difficult childhood.”

“Explains why I would be drawn to someone like Briggs Thomas, right?”

The microwave binged. I picked at the sandwich, leaning back against the low dresser to study her. There was something different about her this morning. I supposed being cuffed to a pipe in the bathroom all night put a few things in perspective for her. She had dark circles under her eyes, suggesting she didn’t get much sleep. Not that I’d expected her to. But there was also a sort of acceptance about her, like she’d decided that one evil was less threatening than the other.

“How long were you with him?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Two years, give or take.”

“This was while you were in college?”

“UCLA. I was a junior, he was a senior.”

“What’d you study?”

Her eyebrows rose, but she answered the question without protest. “Drama. I wanted to become an actress.”

“Did you?”

She blushed a little. “I did a couple of commercials. Nothing big.”

“Still waiting on that big break?”

“No. I was teaching up until last year.”

“Drama?”

She nodded. “At a middle school in Van Nuys.”

“What happened to stop that? You get a big casting call or something?”

“I was in an accident.” Rachel finished her sandwich and tossed the plastic wrap toward the small trashcan in the corner, acting as though it was no big deal. “I was in the hospital when it was time to get back to school, so they decided it was best to end my contract and go with someone else.”

I remembered the scars on her chest and belly, wondering if that was where those had come from. Must have been a significant accident.

“You always been in security?”

She was watching me again, those beautiful eyes moving over my face. I watched her, too, drawn to her in ways that threw me off guard. There was something about the curiosity in her eyes, the nakedness that seemed to draw me in, and then the cockiness that yanked my walls back up into place. She was a ball of contradictions, a woman who knew how to manipulate everyone around her.

A dangerous woman.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Why security?”

I shook my head. “I decided I wasn’t made for a desk job, and I don’t really like manual labor. Security is…entertaining.”

“Entertaining? Not a word I would have chosen.”

“It gives me a certain insight into people and the things that drive them. I like that.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with right and wrong and getting the bad guy?”

I snorted, a sound that was a chuckle wrapped in derision. “Not all our clients are the good guys, and not all the people we protect them from are the bad guys.”

“But you took down the Guardians.”

“We set a trap and let them walk into it.” I brushed a hand over the front of my shirt, straightening it more out of habit than a desire to remove wrinkles that didn’t exist. “The Guardians were responsible for the death of my boss’s friend. We just allowed them to confess to that crime.”

“Their former leader was a fool.”

“He was,” I agreed. “Is Briggs?”

A dark, serious expression came over her face. She touched her cheek where a particularly dark bruise had formed. “He’s not someone you should take on lightly.”

“Why did you break up with him?”

“What makes you think I’m the one who did the breaking up?”

“You seem like a woman with her head on straight. Surely you saw through him.”

“Sometimes the heart clouds the truth.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “He left me. Said I wasn’t the kind of woman a man like him needed in his life, especially since he’d found the church.” She rolled her shoulders again. “I’ve heard part of the reason he agreed to come here was because the church leaders promised him a pious wife.”

“Does that bother you?”

“I got over him a long time ago.”

But there was a cloud that floated over her expression when she spoke the words. I got the impression there was more to the story than she was telling, but I supposed that was a conversation that could wait.

Besides, I had the impression I knew part of that story. She might not have been raped. She might not have been attacked. But she was a woman who’d been abused by a man at some point in her life. Not everything about her behavior the night I found her was a lie.

“I need a shower,” she suddenly announced. “Do you think that’s possible?”

“You want me to set you free?”

“You can handcuff me to the shower wall if you want. I just want to wash my hair.”

It seemed like a reasonable request. I went over and leaned against her to unhook the cuff from the window frame. She touched me with her free hand, sliding her palm over my ribs and against my abs. I glanced at her as her hand came dangerously close to the front of my slacks, wondering if she would dare to be that obvious. She was watching me, a teasing light in her eyes.

“You can watch,” she said softly. “I’m not shy.”

I pulled her up off the couch. She stumbled into me, her body pressed against mine. She looked up, a smile on her full lips even as she bit her bottom lip. Again, her free hand pressed itself against me, against my abs, before sliding up to cover that place where my heart was pounding in my chest.

“I bet you have women coming out of the woodwork just to be close to you. You seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t go to bed alone unless he wants to.”

Our bodies were so close that when she looked up, it wouldn’t have taken much for me to close the space created by the inches I had over her, to move close enough to steal a kiss. The feel of her lips on my throat had burned its way into my dreams last night, making me wake with a need I hadn’t felt since I was a teen. And now…there was something about the way her body fit against mine that made me have thoughts I knew I shouldn’t be having. I knew she was using my baser instincts to manipulate me, but a part of me didn’t care. I wanted to feel her, wanted to know every inch of her gorgeous body.

“I can show you things those women would never do for you,” she said softly. “I can make you feel better than you’ve ever felt.”

I ran my hand over the side of her face, following the curve of her jaw. And then I buried my fingers in her hair and twisted her around, causing her to cry out.

“I’m not playing your games.”

She laughed, a full-bodied laugh that was filled with amusement. “You’re an unusual man,” was all she had to say.

I took her into the bathroom and removed the other cuff from her wrist. “You have fifteen minutes. If you’re not done by then, I’m going to drag you out.”

“Yes, sir!”

Rachel cut a salute, a sharp salute that looked almost professional. And then she backed away, that amused smile still twisting her beautiful lips.

She closed the door, and a moment later I could hear the water running in the shower. There was no window in the bathroom, no escape except through that one door. I felt safe turning my back on it, taking my laptop out of its bag and settling at the desk, my fingers flying over the keyboard as I listened to the sounds of her morning shower. She was singing. And she had a beautiful voice.

Of course.

I googled her name—Rachel Marie Abbott—along with UCLA. I was immediately rewarded with pictures of her in various school productions. At least that part of her story was true.

I slowly scrolled through the pictures, studying the faces of the other students around her. I knew about Briggs Thomas weeks ago, so I had pictures of him. I sought him out, took photographs myself of his comings and goings from the homes of the church leaders here in town. Less than a week ago, I photographed him coming out of the church after a meeting with what I guessed were the new Guardians. It was in our best interest to know what he and his group of fanatic militants were up to. So, I recognized him in some of these pictures.

He wasn’t an actor, that was pretty clear. But his likeness appeared in several crew pictures and backstage candids. In each one, his expression was darkly serious even when others around him were laughing or smiling. And in the ones where he appeared with Rachel, he was always watching her, as though he was waiting for her to make a mistake, or guarding against an inappropriate touch from one of the other men standing around her.

He was a dark character, this Briggs Thomas. Just looking at him gave me an uneasy feeling. Seeing him in these photographs, looking at her that way? It brought out a protective instinct that was fierce and immediate.

And then I asked myself why I should care about this woman. She’d tricked me into bringing her here so that she could get information on me. She’d lied about being raped. If there was one thing I hated more than any other, it was someone who would take such a horrifying, life-destroying thing and turn it into a method of manipulation. It was like they’d known about my past, known what would bypass all of my natural instincts, and used it. I couldn’t forgive that.

But then I looked at this picture of her dressed like a Disney princess, him beside her with that dark, sick look on his face, and I couldn’t help but want to tear his throat out.

There were other results for her name. I found a Facebook page that was a couple of years old, a Twitter account that looked to be solely for professional use. And there were links to one of the commercials she’d done. It was for a fast food restaurant in which she played a cashier trying to convince a customer to buy the new burger they were promoting. It was cheesy and embarrassing, but she was the best thing about it.

She could have made it in the acting world. Eventually.

The bathroom door opened as the commercial ended. I slapped down the lid to the laptop and turned just in time to watch her slip into the room covered in only a white cotton towel. The towel was tied at her chest, pressing hard against her full breasts, and the split along her side exposed her thigh and hip with every step she took. As I watched, she moved around the room, gathering clothing from the shopping bags I’d brought back for her. And then she dropped the towel.

“Hey!”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to see it now.”

“You don’t want to see this?”

She turned, exposing her full nudity to me. Her breasts were surprisingly perky for such full breasts, her tummy flat and firm, her hips just the right amount of curvy. And then there was that patch of womanhood with its carpet of dark curls. Hers was trimmed into a landing strip, pointing to that place every woman desires to be explored and every man aches to find.

My body responded instantly to the sight of her, my thoughts growing a little more difficult to form. Her hair hung wet and wavy around her face, her skin still glowing pink from the heat of the shower. There was nothing more beautiful than a woman fresh from a bath, her skin still warm and smelling of the sweetness of her soaps. I could imagine how incredible it would be to press my face into that thick hair, to run my hands over her silky—just lotioned—skin. I wanted her, and it was getting harder and harder to deny it.

But I had no other choice.

I turned away, forcing myself to focus on my computer.

“Get dressed.”

“Whatever you say, warden.”

I could hear her moving behind me, hear the rustling of her clothing and the shopping bags. I waited until I thought enough time had passed, until the sounds stopped. When I turned again, she was sitting on the edge of the couch brushing out her long hair. She was dressed, wearing a flowered skirt and dark blouse I’d purchased. Conservative. But still incredibly erotic.

I stood, yanking her arm up to cuff her back to the window frame.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked.

“Until I know I can trust you, it is.”

“You looked me up. I saw the video on your computer.”

I pulled away, grateful she didn’t touch me, not sure what I would have done if she had. She had her head down and was still brushing out her hair, her attention on the ground.

“Just because you didn’t lie about where you went to school and your acting career, doesn’t mean everything that comes out of your mouth is true.”

“You’re right about that.” She glanced at me through a veil of hair. “But you did me a solid. Why shouldn’t I do one back?”

“Because you’re here to spy on me. I can’t trust a spy.”

“Touché.”