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“And where is this thing now?” he asked, punching out the words.

“I stuck it in the bottom of the trash can in the ladies’ room.”

“Jesus!”

“What?” she asked in alarm.

“You think they’re not going to find it?”

“They might have found it on me. They looked inside my purse before they let me leave the building.”

“How did you get the cell phone out?”

She flushed. “I stuck it in my bra. And with that other thing, there’s no proof I was the one who brought it into the building.”

“Fingerprints,” he muttered.

“I had on rubber gloves.”

“Oh, did you?”

“My brother gave them to me.”

“You were seen coming out of the bathroom. That’s when the camera started working again. They’ll check to see what’s in the trash now. And they’ll know the night cleaning crew emptied it shortly before you went in there.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Or a lot of other things, apparently.”

She looked like she was working hard not to cry, and he told himself to ease up on her. At least for now.

“Where did you leave your car?”

“On the street outside your building.”

“How do you suppose those four men knew where you’d gone?”

“I guess they could have followed me to make sure I went to S&D.”

“Or they could have had a tracking device on your car. This looks like a high-tech operation. They supplied you with something to turn off the cameras. And they had an opener for the apartment’s garage door.”

Before he could say anything else, Shane’s cell phone rang. He looked at the number, then at Elena, then back at the phone and sighed.

“It’s Kinkead.”

She grabbed his arm. “Don’t answer it.”

“I have to. When he found out you were there after hours and there was something funny with the cameras, he called me to come in. He has to be wondering why I’m not there trying to figure out what happened. Don’t say anything,” he ordered, then pressed the screen.

The voice on the other end of the line was angry. “Shane, where the hell are you?”

“Something’s come up.”

“What?”

“Elena came to my apartment after we spoke.”

Beside him, she drew in a startled breath.

“And you’re bringing her here?” Kinkead asked.

His answer was immediate. “Actually, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Listen here, Gallagher, I make those kinds of decisions, not you.”

“There were gunmen at my apartment a few minutes behind her. The police are probably there now. And the fire department, since I started a fire in a trash can to make a smoke screen.”

“Jesus.”

“And if you want, you can go over and see the bullet holes in the walls and my front door. And the mess in the garage.”

“What mess?”

“I had to shoot our way out.”

He heard Kinkead’s shocked exclamation on the other end of the line. But the man’s words were calm. “Come in. This isn’t something you can handle alone.”

“I’d do it if I were alone, but I don’t think it’s safe to bring her there,” Shane said.

“We can protect her.”

“I’m not betting her life on that.”

“Gallagher…”

Shane clicked off, then pulled to the side of the road. Getting out on the shoulder, he dropped the phone onto the gravel and ground it under his heel. Then he got back into the car.

Elena was staring at him.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because we can be traced through the GPS in my phone. Yours, too.” He held out his hand.

“But we won’t be able to call anyone.”

“Inconvenient.” He kept his hand out.

She dug into her purse and pulled out a phone, which he subjected to the same treatment as his own.

Then he drove away, wondering if he was making the wrong move.

He switched on WTOP all-news radio and waited through an announcement of sports scores.

The next item was what he was thinking he would hear. “A shoot-out at a Rockville apartment complex has left one man dead.”

Elena’s breath caught. “They’re talking about what happened at your apartment, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. And we’d better listen.”

“Shane Gallagher, head of security at S&D Systems, and Elena Reyes, another employee of the high-tech firm, are wanted for questioning regarding the murder.”

Chapter 14

Beside Shane, Elena’s eyes were wide. “He’s dead,” she gasped out.

“Because he came after us and started shooting at me. One of us was going down, and I wanted to make sure I walked away.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“My plans haven’t changed. I mean I’m not turning around and going back there. And I’m not turning you over to Lincoln Kinkead.”

“Why?”

“It’s a bad idea,” he answered, unwilling to share his reasoning.

She apparently wasn’t going to leave it at that. “But we’re wanted for questioning. And shooting that man was self-defense. You have to tell that to the police.”

“We’re going to lose a lot of time if we go to the cops.”

Her voice had gone high and strained. “But we didn’t do anything wrong. Well, I mean at your apartment.”

He snorted. “Haven’t you seen how things get twisted around in the legal system? People go to jail for years for things they didn’t do. Or they get off for something they did do.”

She gave a small nod.

He took his eyes from the road for a moment and gave her a hard stare. “You should have thought twice before you went into the S&D building to get that stuff from Blake’s desk.”

She looked like he’d slapped her, then firmed her lips. “Right. Too bad I didn’t come to you first.” She stared ahead of her, and he could see wheels turning in her head. Swinging back to him, she said, “I asked you how you found out about the job as chief of security at S&D. Did you tell me the truth?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because of the way you hesitated before answering and because of how wound up you are with this case.”

“Any chief of security would be wound up with a theft at their company,” he clipped out.

“That’s all it is?”

He sighed.

“What are you really—a cop?” she asked in a flat voice. “No, that doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t be wanted for questioning if you were a cop. Or maybe they’d say that if they didn’t want people to think so.”

He heard her snort as she finished working her way through that twisted logic. He wished they hadn’t gotten into this conversation, but on the other hand, he didn’t see much point in stonewalling. “Okay, I work for Rockfort Security. After Blake was shot, Kinkead hired us to find out who was planning to steal proprietary information from the company. And here you are.”

She winced. “I didn’t steal anything.”

“What would you call it?”

“He’d already stolen it. I took it out of his desk.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“I wish I knew what to think,” he answered, this time keeping his eyes on the road.

* * *

Elena hated the flat tone of Shane’s voice as she huddled next to him in the car. She cut him a sideways glance, thinking that he wasn’t much like the man who had kissed her so passionately. Was that why she had come to him—because he’d made her trust him? Or because she’d thought he was the only one who had a chance of getting her out of the mess she’d gotten into.