“Don’t leave me here without you, Alex. Please,” she whispered as Mark jerked the front door open and he slid her inside.

He and Tyrell took two of the communication sets and slid them into place on their ears and at the sides

of their necks. Testing reception between the three of them, they nodded quickly.

“Alex, please,” she whispered again.

He turned to her, touched her cheek, and stared into her worried eyes. “It stops here, Janey. You’ll be safe with Mark. I promise.”

Her eyes closed as a pain-filled grimace contorted her face.

“I love you,” she whispered when her eyes opened, the soft, fierce words striking into his soul. “Do you hear me, Alex Jansen? I love you. Don’t you let yourself get hurt again.”

God, she filled his soul. How the hell was he supposed to handle this kind of emotion?

“I’m yours,” he whispered. “I’ll always come back to you, Janey.”

Then he turned away from her. He had to, or he’d never be able to leave her there.

“Keep her safe, and call the Mackays. We’ll be back within twenty,” he told Mark. “I want this bastard tonight.”

He had the most experience. As Mark had stated before, he and Tyrell had been out of the game for a while. They didn’t have the reflexes or the sense of predatory awareness Alex still possessed.

Mark would protect her with his life, Alex had no doubt of that. But Tyrell had always been a natural at the hunt, while Mark’s instincts had been more refined. He could sense it coming, but he wasn’t as good at pinpointing the direction it was coming from.

Alex would have been a hell of a lot more confident with a Mackay here. Natches would have been nice.

He didn’t like trusting her to anyone else. But the stalker couldn’t know where they were. Whoever it was was watching his house, not the trucks.

The dome lights to the trucks had been disengaged weeks before, so no one could have detected their presence. She would be safe here.

“You be careful.” Mark nodded to Alex before turning to his lover.

His lips kicked up in a knowing grin as Tyrell, just as broad, as tall, and as strong as the other man, lifted his fist. Mark and Tyrell touched fists, but the gesture was strangely intimate despite the fact that it was the same action often used between soldiers in the field.

This had a gentler quality to it. Male to male, lover to lover, their smiles a bond that went deeper than some male/female kisses Alex had seen.

It blew his mind every time he saw it. Until Mark and Tyrell had come to him years before and revealed that they were lovers, he had never guessed.

“Weapons.” Mark turned from Tyrell and reached into the backseat. He returned with knives, handguns, ammo clips, and backup ankle weapons.

Alex and Tyrell weaponed up before Alex dipped into the front door, jerked Janey to him, and took his kiss. A deep, tongue-thrusting kiss despite her whimper, her attempts to hold on to him. Pulling back from her, he pressed his fingers to her lips. “Twenty minutes,” he whispered. “Do as Mark says, Janey.

Stay safe for me.”

She nodded jerkily.

Janey could feel the fear shaking her apart from the inside out. She moved across the console to the passenger seat as Mark eased into the vehicle and closed the door softly behind him.

Darkness surrounded them. Janey had lost sight of Alex within seconds of him moving away from the truck.

Mark flipped his cell phone open and hit speed dial. “Natches. Back street across from Alex’s house.

Come in quiet, lights off. We have the stalker on-site and Alex and Tyrell are moving in.” He was silent for a second. “Confirmed. I have her with me and we need backup.” He flipped the phone closed and turned to grin at her. “Cavalry is coming.”

“Alex should have waited,” she said worriedly, fighting the fear and the tears that would have escaped.

“He and Tyrell are the best at this that there is,” Mark promised her, flashing her a smile. “They’ll be back in twenty, your stalker bleeding and moaning in pain, and everything will slide back to normal for all of us.”

She gripped the gun Alex had given her, staring around in fear. It was too dark. There were too many shadows. And Alex wasn’t with her. He was out there, in danger.

Mark tried to reassure her again. “The major has always known what he was doing. Trust him.”

“I trust him.” She trusted him with her life, but he wasn’t here and she couldn’t see him. She had turned and was staring through the passenger window, her gaze delving into the darkness, when she heard the windshield shatter.

TWENTY-THREE

Janey felt the pinch of something in her shoulder as she turned to Mark. His head had slammed back, his eyes widening in shock, a dart buried in his neck.

Janey reached, scrambling to the side of her seat to jerk it out.

“Mark. Oh God. Mark.”

He was struggling to start the pickup, the motor cranking as Janey felt dizziness sweep over her. The gun fell from her hand and terror swept over her as she heard the locks to the truck disengage. She felt around her shoulder and pulled out a dart embedded there.

“Comm.” Mark’s voice was raspy as he struggled to pull the small, black communications device from his neck. He shoved it at her. “Alex. Move. Move.”

Janey struggled against the darkness trying to sweep over her. Reaching over Mark’s now-still figure, she fought to reengage the locks, to secure the truck. Her shoulder throbbed. She felt as though she were moving through water, weighed down, her vision and her tongue thick as cold air swirled into the vehicle.

“Move, bitch!” Hard hands gripped her hair, jerking her back, pulling her along the seat and through the door until she collapsed to the ground.

Alex would be coming. She knew he was. He would be running. She just had to delay.

“Get up or I kill that little fairy in the truck. Fucking queer. He doesn’t deserve to live.”

The pressure against her scalp was agonizing. Janey cried out with the pain, struggling to her feet and fighting to hang on to the slender communications device Mark had pushed at her.

Her hands were shaking, a sense of vertigo slamming through her as she lowered her head to hide her efforts to tuck the device into the band of her jeans, beneath her shirt.

“God, this was almost too easy.” The voice, disguised somehow, was gloating. “I knew where they’d come in at. I knew where they would park. I was smarter. I was better.”

Janey struggled against the hold as she was dragged through a yard. It was dark, late, for some dumb reason no one on this street had a dog in their backyard; now, how stupid was that?

She could feel the edge of hysterical laughter bubbling in her throat.

“Don’t worry, bitch. He walked right into my hands.” The voice was familiar but she couldn’t place it.

She shook her head, praying she had activated the right button on Mark’s communications device and that Alex was able to track her.

If he didn’t track her, she was dead. Hell, she was probably dead anyway.

“If you don’t step it up, I’m going to just shoot you and get it over with,” the voice snapped. “And I would, except that spineless little brat of mine needs to understand success. Stupid little bastard. He’s so fucking weak. Always arguing over what I want to do.”

Augusta Napier, Hoyt’s mother.

Janey could feel her body trying to shut down, her mind fighting to escape the reality of the knowledge.

Augusta was a friend of the Mackays. She knew the other woman was ill. Hoyt had said she was sick; everyone knew she had been battling cancer. How had she found the strength to do this?

“Almost there, you little tramp.” Augusta pushed her through a dark, tree-sheltered yard. “Your lover had no idea how close I was, did he? And I outsmarted him. Sometimes it’s just too easy to outsmart a man.”

Janey couldn’t quite make her senses work. She stumbled at the sound of a heavy door lifting, then she

was tumbling, falling. She hit the stairs and rolled down them, feeling the painful bite of each strike of wood against her body.

The door was closing then. A cellar door. Many of the houses on this side of town were older, the cellar doors built on an angle outside the house and leading to the basement or storm shelters.

Beneath her cheek was cool cement. The dank, musty smell of the air clogged her nostrils and had her choking, fighting to breathe.

“Come on.” She was picked up and tossed onto a couch. “You need to put some weight on, girl. You’re too skinny.” Then she cackled. “Oh well, too late to put some weight on. Tonight is the last night of the rest of your life.”

The electronic edge of the voice was gone now.

“Augusta, why?” She moaned painfully. “Where’s Hoyt?”

“Hoyt!” Augusta yelled out his name as Janey lifted her head, turning her body enough to allow the link to work, if it was working, for Alex to know where she was.

Another door opened.

“Mother, what you doing in the basement? It’s time for your medication.”

A light snapped on, nearly blinding as Janey jerked in reflex and pulled the edge of her jacket over the communications device.

God, she wanted Alex. She was terrified.

Squinting, fighting the mind-numbing drug that had obviously been in that dart in her shoulder, Janey tracked the other woman in the basement as Hoyt moved slowly down the stairs.

Augusta wasn’t very old. Forty-five or forty-seven, Janey forgot which. A tall, raw-boned woman with sharp cheekbones and dull hazel brown eyes. She had been pretty once, before the death of her husband several years ago in Iraq. Janey had heard Augusta had gone a little crazy at the news of his death.

Evidently, it wasn’t just a little crazy.

“Oh, Mother, what have you done?” There was weary resignation in Hoyt’s voice now as he stepped into the basement.

Janey noticed he didn’t get there in a hurry. Not at work, and not here. He moved slowly to the couch and bent beside her, brushing her hair from her face and checking her pupils.

“You drugged her?” he accused.

“Your father’s dart rifle.” Augusta shrugged her shoulders beneath the man’s heavy jacket she wore. “He always said I would never know when I needed to use it. I guess he was right.” Her laughter was evil, slightly crazed.

“Hoyt. Help me,” Janey whispered desperately. “You’re Alex’s friend. Natches’s.”

“Stop trying to use your wiles on him, bitch,” Augusta barked. “Trust me, Hoyt’s not going to listen to you, are you, Hoyt?”

He lifted his head and breathed in roughly, sorrow and weary pain mixed in his expression as he rose to his feet.

He was still wearing the slacks and shirt he’d worn at work. His black leather shoes were dusty and scuffed.

“How long have you not been taking your medication, Mother?” he asked her.

“You sound like your father.” Affection and amusement filled Augusta’s voice. “I don’t need the medication, Hoyt. I just need her dead. That’s all. Kill her and everything will be right again.”

“Do you really want to hurt Alex like that, Mother? I told you; he cares for her.”

Augusta paused, her gaze flicking over Janey. “I helped Alex raise Crista.” She smiled fondly. “Those stupid parents of his were never there to help him or to help him with Crista. I’d watch her if he had to do something of the evenings. Alex is a good boy.” She frowned. “Too good for the likes of you.”

“Alex loves her,” Hoyt stated. “You should see them together, Mother. I think we’re wrong about her.”

There was a hint of misery in his expression as he turned away from her. “And Natches, he’s her brother.

He loves her like a brother. She doesn’t act like Dayle.”

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