Strong and Sexy (Sky High Air #2)(26)

And yet she felt as she had in her apartment.

As if she was being watched.





Chapter 9




S hayne was halfway down the hill, windshield wipers proving ineffective against the mist and fog, when the doubt hit.

Or maybe it’d always been there, from the moment Dani had gotten out of his car. It was just a little niggling, really, but it wouldn’t go away.

She wasn’t safe.

He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Shook his head. “Don’t do it, man. Don’t go back.”

But what if…

Damn.

He was going back.

With a sigh, he executed a U-turn. He should have hooked up with friends.

Hit a bar.

Or a party.

There were plenty this late, and plenty that would welcome him. Michelle had been texting him all night, he’d just ignored her. She’d be thrilled to see him and would be willing to show him just how thrilled with that lush body of hers.

And yet…that didn’t appeal, not in the least. Instead, he was heading back to a woman he hadn’t imagined he would be attracted to.

He’d been incredibly wrong.

Pulling back into the parking lot, he caught a flash of light. The gate. It was opening. Opening, and a figure running out into the night.

Right in front of his car.

Dani.

And as she glanced back over her shoulder behind her, he caught her pale face and the sheer terror on it as she ran from something he couldn’t see. Jerking the steering wheel, he slammed on the brakes, missing her by an inch, which did not in any way soothe the heart that had just about leapt right out of his chest. Jumping out of his car, he ran around the front toward her.

“Sorry,” she gasped as she bent over his hood, gasping for breath.

He pulled her around to face him. Her face was white as she gripped the front of his shirt in her fists. “Are you hurt?” he managed.

“We have to get out of here.”

Something cracked the night, shocking his eardrums as it whizzed past them, pinging into one of the tall steel light poles.

A bullet. A f*cking bullet?

“Hurry,” she gasped. “We really gotta hurry.”

Pretty much the understatement of the century. Grabbing her hand, he yanked her with him, opening the driver’s door, shoving her in ahead of him.

On her hands and knees, she scrambled over his seat and into the passenger’s, whirling back to glue her gaze to the direction she’d just come from.

Where the bullet had come from.

“Go,” she said tersely. “Before—”

Another shot rang out into the night, missing his car, though he had no idea by how much. “Get down.” He emphasized this with a hand to the back of her head, shoving it to her knees as he peeled them out of the parking lot with an exhibition of speed that would have gotten him one hell of an expensive ticket.

“Shayne—”

“Stay the hell down,” he commanded, simultaneously driving and watching the rearview mirror. “Are you okay?”

“The light in my office was on. I didn’t leave it on, Shayne, so—”

“Goddamnit, are you hurt?”

“No.” She gulped for breath. “No.”

He let out a long breath of his own. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay. So what the hell was that?”

“Someone shooting at us.”

“Yeah, I got that much.” At the bottom of the hill, he pulled into the gas station on the right and got out his cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking if Patrick was interested in taking a look at the gun you found, then he’s going to be extremely interested in this.”



There were questions to answer, and then the same questions to re-answer. First with Shayne present, and then without him. Dani walked through her entire evening for the police, over and over again, until she started slurring her words from sheer exhaustion. “No, I didn’t see anyone, just the light in my office,” she said for the hundredth time. “Then I got that tingly sensation of being watched, and I ran. And then someone was shooting at me.”

Proving her words, there was a bullet embedded in the light pole in the zoo parking lot. Not to mention Shayne’s earlier statement concurring that someone had indeed been shooting at her.

Finally, she was given the okay to leave, and she walked out the gates of the zoo into the damp, chilly dawn and found…

Shayne propping up his car, arms and feet casually crossed as if he was at a party, content as can be.

That is until she got a little closer, and in the predawn light saw the tight, grim set of his mouth, and the way his entire body was rigid with tension.

If she wasn’t so exhausted, this unusual show of decided un-laid-backness from him would have fascinated her. “Hey.”

Pushing off from the car, he stepped close enough that their toes bumped. Cupping her face in his hands, he looked into her face with such scrutiny she squirmed.

“What?”

“You okay?”

The genuine concern in his voice had her discomfort fading away, replaced by a suddenly tight throat and burning eyes. “Good news. I think the police are taking my craziness seriously now.”

“You didn’t imagine those bullets.”