Tabitha grinned at the off-key strains of “Desperado” muffled by the shower. She wouldn’t have pegged Jake for a shower singer. But the song definitely fit.

After last night, though, she was hoping he’d changed from desperado to desperate for her. After having tasted the sensual delights he’d awakened in her, she couldn’t imagine doing without. In fact, the only thing keeping her from joining him in the shower—though she’d been loved thoroughly the night before and again that morning—was the fact that they were already running late for the press conference.

Tabitha hummed along with Jake as she entered the kitchen. She wondered if he’d learned the song from the Eagles, or from any of the countless number of singers who’d remade it.

The phone rang, freezing her thoughts. Hines?

It wasn’t her home phone ringing. Like Jake’s singing, the ring was muffled. The cell phone?

It rang again as she dug through her purse. Definitely the cell phone.

First she plucked out the one Jake had given to her and looked at the display. Nothing.

She shook her head in relief. Her personal cell phone was the one ringing. It was probably Marie.

Tabitha pulled it out of the bottom of her purse. Local call. Hmmm. It wasn’t Marie. Her number was programmed into the phone and should display. But Marie could be calling from one of her kids’ houses.

Tabitha punched the talk button. “Hello?”

“I’ve seen you with your cop boyfriend,” a nasal voice spat.

Her heart stopped. “Branson Hines.”

“So you recognize my voice. Good. Shows you got a little sense anyways.”

“What do you— I mean, where are Cait and Dr. Matthews?”

“Like I’m gonna tell you. Your cop boyfriend there?”

“Boyfriend? I don’t know what you—”

“Save it, sister. I know you and that tin-star Houston cop are thick as thieves. Don’t lie to me now. I might just have to—”

“No! Don’t do anything rash, Mr. Hines. Don’t do anything we’ll all regret.” Tabitha stepped into the living room, away from the sound of the shower. “Chief White isn’t here. You told me to get rid of the police.”

“Okay, well, just making sure he ain’t hanging around, undercover like. ’Cause if you think he can save your friends, you got another think coming. You’re the only one who can save ’em, and only if you follow my directions to the letter.”

“I understand.”

“You listening hard?”

“Yes.” She searched for paper and pen, but there wasn’t any handy. They were in her office, too close to the noise of the shower.

“You bring me a baby and meet me this evening, right after sunset.”

“Where?” She listened intently, trying to hear above her pounding heart. She had to remember everything he said. Her cell phone wasn’t being recorded.

“Drive out to the Lone Star Highway.”

“East or west?”

“West. Toward Highway 16. Turn left on it, then go ’bout four miles. There’s a dirt road off to the right. It’s easy to miss, so look real hard. Drive down it until you see headlights flashing at you. You’ll just be rounding a hill. Drive straight at me, real slow-like. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“No cops. If your boyfriend follows you, he’ll be dead, you’ll be dead and your friends will be dead.”

She swallowed hard. “I understand.”

“You swear you’re gonna bring me a baby?”

“I don’t have any choice, do I?”

“Not if you want to get your doctor and nurse back alive.”

“How do I know they’re alive now?”

“I thought you might be asking that. Here.”

“Hello?” The feminine voice was weak, hesitant.

“Caitlyn. Is that you?”

“Tabitha?”

She sounded dazed. Was she drugged?

“Are you okay, Caitlyn? Is Dr. Walters with you?”

“He wasn’t allowed to—”

“That’s enough,” Hines growled. Then his voice was closer. “Sunset. If you ain’t here, one of them’s gonna be dead.”

With a definite click, there was silence.

Tabitha punched the end button automatically, then stared at the phone, panic racing through her.

What did she do now? Tell Jake.

She walked toward the bedroom, intending to do just that. But she stopped in the kitchen. The shower was still running, though her heart was beating so loud she could barely hear it.

Jake was totally unaware anyone had called.

If your boyfriend follows you, he’ll be dead, you’ll be dead and your friends will be dead.

Tabitha gripped the countertop, willing away the panic that threatened consciousness. She couldn’t give in to terror now. She had to think rationally.

If she told Jake, he would definitely organize the entire Mission Creek Police Department to descend on Hines. Police cars with sirens, flashing lights. Helicopters. Hines would hear, for sure. He’d kill Cait and Dr. Walters. He’d kill her, too. And Jake.

Tabitha forced herself to breathe.

On the other hand, the conversation wasn’t recorded. She was the only one who knew that Branson Hines had called.

If she didn’t tell Jake, he wouldn’t follow. He wouldn’t get killed. She wouldn’t get killed, and Cait and Dr. Walters wouldn’t get killed. If she did everything right. A very big “if.”

But if she didn’t tell Jake, she’d have to do it on her own.

You can’t do anything right.

Tabitha pressed her hand over her heart to stem the panic caused by her father’s lingering curse. Who was she to rescue anyone? What if she blew it? What if she said something she shouldn’t? Moved the wrong way?

They would all be killed.

But Jake wouldn’t.

Funny. He was the one with the rescue complex, and here she was thinking she needed to rescue him. Was she nuts?

No, she wasn’t crazy. Jake did need to be rescued—from himself, from his own rescue complex. He needed to be shown that he was a man, not a cop. Or rather, that he was a man who happened to be a cop. He needed to be shown that someone loved him as much as his parents had. Someone cared whether he lived or died. Someone cared what time he came home at night. Only then could he come down off his white horse and be a man.

Suddenly she saw with crystal clarity the rightness of her plan, the absolute beauty of this thing she could do for the man she loved.

No one had ever thought about rescuing Jake. Cops were there to rescue other people, right?

But cops were people, too. They didn’t always do things right, either. Like that kidnapping case Jake told her about where both the kidnapper and hostage were killed. Jake became a cop in order to save the world. But he hadn’t been able to save those people, and he wasn’t able to save himself. In fact, he didn’t even know he needed saving.

But she knew, and she had an opportunity to do for him what he couldn’t do for himself.

You can’t do anything right.

She squeezed her eyes closed, then started with a gasp when Billy jumped on the counter. She petted him absently, thinking about ways she could get Caitlyn and Dr. Walters safely away—and how she could make Hines believe she was stupid enough to risk someone else’s baby.

Then Billy started purring.

She focused her eyes on his orange fur, remembering how he lay still, on his back, like a baby, as long as she kept rubbing his tummy.

She picked Billy up and hugged him.

She could do this, and do it right. She had to…for Jake.

 

Jake left the bedroom, feeling good in the fresh clothes his men had brought him, feeling good about last night. He couldn’t believe how responsive Tabitha was to his touch. Making her feel good made him feel good.

He entered the kitchen and stopped.

Tabitha stared down at Billy in her arms, her face pale.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Did Hines call?”

“What?” She shook her head, as if shaking off deep thoughts. “Oh. No. It’s just that…” Her gaze slid away, and she smiled ruefully. “I’m out of coffee.”

Two strides took him to her. He lifted her chin. “You’re white as a ghost.”

She tugged her chin away so she could set Billy on the floor. “I need coffee first thing in the morning. I’m an addict, okay? There, the truth comes out. You’re involved with a caffeine addict.”

Jake chuckled and forced himself to relax. The stress must be getting to him. He was seeing ghosts everywhere. “Two seeds in a pod. I have to have my morning coffee, too. Come on. I’ll buy you breakfast at the hospital cafeteria.”

She agreed distractedly, then suddenly stopped. “But we have to get through a press conference first.”

“Afterward is too late?”

She set a hand on her hip. “Hey, you’re the one who kept me up half the night.”

He grinned and leaned toward her. “Complaining again?”

She yanked on his tie, pulling his mouth onto hers.

They shared a kiss so hungry, Jake was hard by the time he broke it off. “Damn, woman. You trying to make me call off the press conference altogether?”

She brightened. “Would you?”

“Do you want reporters camping out on your doorstep?”

She twisted her lips. “Point taken.”

“We’ll stop by a fast-food place and grab coffee and biscuits.”

“Coffee will be enough for me. I can’t eat.”

“Oh, yes, you can.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Cops are such bullies.”

“Only when we have to be. You ready to go?”

“Let me grab my purse.”

After the press conference, they settled into the familiar pattern of waiting. Jake tried to leave Tabitha alone as much as possible. She had work to do.

He did, too. State-of-the-art surveillance equipment had finally arrived from Houston, and he spent the rest of the morning overseeing installation.

But he couldn’t stay away from her. He found excuses to wander past Tabitha’s office, just to catch a glimpse of her beautiful face.

“You’ve got it bad, don’t ya, honey?” Marie asked the third time he came in to ask her a question.

Jake glanced away from Tabitha’s door. “Got what bad?”

“You sure as heck aren’t coming in here to see me.”

“But I—”

“Go on in there to her.” Marie shook her finger at him. “Those secret smiles give it away every time.”

“Give what—”

His words were cut off by the phone ringing. His eyes cut to Tabitha inside her office.

She looked up expectantly.

“Oh, it’s just Wendell Nordan,” Marie said with a glance at the caller ID. “He’s the paper goods rep from Dallas.”

Marie rang the call back to Tabitha, who took it calmly.

Jake watched her for a minute. Was she too calm? Yesterday she’d been so nervous she’d jumped every time the phone rang.

The look that he’d caught on her face that morning popped into his mind, and with it his suspicion that Hines had called.

Jake stepped into Tabitha’s office, over to her desk.

She smiled at him as she talked to the salesman, but there was a brittle quality to her smile.

The call was brief. When Tabitha hung up the phone, her hand shook ever so slightly.

Jake relaxed. Nerves. Just nerves.

Tabitha looked up with widened eyes. Another sign of nerves. “What’s wrong?”

He leaned down and kissed her. “Nothing, kitten. I just need a kiss.”

She sighed, as if relieved. Her smile was genuine this time. “That feels good.”

He kissed her again, then left her to her work.

Marie’s grin was as wide as the Texas sky. “I knew it.”

He grinned back. “So sue me.”

He walked back down the hall.

He was seeing ghosts again. If Hines had called, his men would have picked up the conversation. Even if somehow they hadn’t, Tabitha would have told him. What reason would she have not to?

Still he couldn’t shake off his doubts. His gut told him something wasn’t right—and his gut was rarely wrong. He just couldn’t figure out exactly what his gut was trying to say.

Jake had his men order sandwiches for lunch, then took one to Tabitha on the excuse of making her eat. He even managed to work in a little cuddling. Though he didn’t take it as far as the night before, Tabitha was as responsive.

Although… Was there just a hint of desperation to her caresses?

He couldn’t tell, couldn’t put his finger on anything specific to explain his uneasiness.

Then, just as Jake was leaving to check on his men, Tabitha’s phone rang. Marie had gone out to lunch, so Tabitha had to answer it herself.

Jake stopped at the door and looked back at her.

She picked it up without hesitation. “Tabitha Monroe. Can I help you? … Oh, yes, Mrs. Wainwright. Thanks for calling me back. Crystal’s out of town, so I’m making calls to reschedule the fund-raising meeting.”

Jake froze. She had no reaction at all to the phone ringing. Yesterday she’d nearly jumped out of her chair.

Still, it wasn’t conclusive evidence. So what would be?

Maybe if he checked her caller ID.

After getting Tabitha’s house key from Dan Hammel, who’d used it when he installed surveillance equipment there that morning, it took Jake twenty minutes to ascertain that Hines hadn’t called her home phone. The one call coming there had been from the hospital.

It took a little longer to get to her cell phone, since it was buried in her purse which was buried in her desk.

They were leaving her office for the afternoon press conference when Jake stopped just as they stepped on the elevator. “Damn. I forgot my notes on the search areas. You go on down. I’ll be right behind you.”

She nodded distractedly. “All right.”

When the elevator slid closed, he spun around and headed straight for her office.

“Forget something?” Marie asked as he walked through.

“Yeah. I’ll just be a minute.”

He didn’t close the door behind him. Walking behind Tabitha’s desk, he pulled open the right bottom drawer and grabbed her purse. Fishing out both cell phones, he checked the one he’d given her, the one his men could record. No calls.

He quickly found the incoming call history on her private cell phone. The last call was at eight-eleven that morning. It was from a “local call,” but didn’t list the number.

Jake’s hand gripped the phone so hard his knuckled turned white, as white as little Miss Feng Shui had been that morning.

She’d lied. Hines had called her.

He stared at the phone in disbelief. Why wouldn’t she tell him? Did she think she could handle a violent criminal like Branson Hines? He had an arrest record as long as Jake’s arm. The man was crazy.

Jake tossed both cell phones back in Tabitha’s purse, then threw it in the drawer.

And she’d told him he had a Superman complex. Hines had no doubt told her he’d kill the hostages if the police were involved, and she obviously didn’t trust cops to get her employees back alive.

Which really meant she didn’t trust him.

Jake dropped into Tabitha’s chair, feeling as if his heart dropped even further, into some dark corner of his soul where he’d never find it again.

After last night he’d thought that maybe she’d begun to care for him, that she’d begun to trust him. That maybe she’d realized he was a man even though he wore a badge. A man who wanted her, needed her.

For the first time in his life he didn’t feel a pressing need to be on the job all the time. He didn’t feel as if he would be missing something if he wasn’t there. Last night he’d been content to lie in Tabitha’s arms all night. With any other woman, he would have been up ten times, checking on the situation, on his men.

He closed his eyes and banged his head back against the chair.

This morning he hadn’t even kept an ear out for the phone while he showered. He’d sung, for God’s sake.

She’d done that for him. She’d made him relax, made him see that there was more to life than dragging criminals off the street, made him forget all about crime for a little while. She’d made him trust her, made him want to be with her twenty-four/seven.

But he obviously hadn’t touched her in any way. She still saw him as one of the cops she hated. She didn’t see Jake the man.

He wanted to call her on it, wanted to see her reaction to him figuring out that she’d talked to Hines. But he couldn’t say anything.

No doubt Hines told her to meet him alone. Jake didn’t know why she thought she could pull this off by herself, didn’t know why she would even want to, but he had to let her think she was doing it.

In one of his first kidnapping situations, years ago, he let the father take the money in. Because the man knew dozens of police officers were hidden, watching him, he kept looking around for them, clueing the kidnapper in to their presence. Eight people were killed that day, including four officers.

Jake had never forgotten that lesson.

“You okay?”

Jake looked up to see Marie in the doorway. He shook off his dejection. He had to seem normal. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

She nodded as if she only half believed him. “Good things, I hope.”

Jake didn’t release the bitter laugh that bubbled to the surface. “Yeah, well, guess I need to get down to the press conference. Thanks for waking me up.”

 

“What time are we going home?” Tabitha asked.

Jake studied her carefully averted face. She’d been quiet since the press conference. In fact, this was the first thing she’d said since then that wasn’t answering a question of his. “I don’t know. Why? You tired?”

She shrugged, but the movement was jerky. “Billy’s probably getting hungry. He needs to be fed.”

Jake had been wondering how she planned to separate herself from him. She needed to be alone so she could slip away and meet Hines.

Throughout the day Jake had been quietly arranging for backup. Since he didn’t know the location, the force he was assembling had to be on standby, had to wait on his signal to move in when he knew where they were going.

The only thing Jake had been able to do to prepare Tabitha was to show her some self-defense moves on the pretext of being restless and wanting to kill time. At the same time he’d given her a can of pepper spray just in case something happened when he wasn’t around.

Jake glanced at the window behind Tabitha. About an hour until dark. That must be the time Hines had told her to meet him.

Didn’t kidnappers have any imagination? Hines was going strictly by the book. Dark or dusk was a favorite time of kidnappers for meetings because the light was so uncertain. Shadows distorted things, or made them disappear altogether.

He would have laughed at Hines being such a cliché, but he wasn’t in the mood. “I still have a couple of things I need to take care of around here. Probably another hour or so. You want to go on home and feed him?”

“By myself?”

Jake probably wouldn’t have heard the hopefulness in her voice if he hadn’t been looking for it. “Now, kitten, would I do that to you? No, not by yourself. I’ll have a squad car take you home.”

The officers he’d already chosen had orders to let her slip away “unnoticed.” Jake would be parked down her street in one of the department’s unmarked vehicles, waiting to follow her.

“I don’t want to leave my car here overnight,” she said.

“Of course not. They’ll follow you home.”

“Okay.”

“Be sure to let them search your house before you go in.”

She nodded. “I’m getting used to it.”

He watched her gather her things. This might be the last time he saw her alive. He wanted to shake her, demand to know why she was being so irrational as to meet Hines on her own, urge her to be careful.

Most of all, however, he wanted to know why she couldn’t love him.

But he couldn’t make her love him. Letting on that he knew would only distract her when she needed all her concentration to come out of this unharmed.

As she rounded the desk, he took her in his arms and kissed her hard. She returned his kiss fervently, wrapping her arms around him as if she never wanted to let go, which made it even harder to let her go.

Finally he pulled back and gently forced her to look at him. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

She dropped her gaze. “I’m only going home.”

He drew his thumb across her cheek. “I know.” He dropped another kiss on her lips. “I’ll miss you.”

She stepped away from his arms. “You’ll see me in just a little while, Jake.”

God willing.

He walked her to the elevator and hit the down button. “There’s a couple of squad cars patrolling the hospital perimeter. I’ll radio one of them to follow you home.”

“All right.” As the elevator dinged, she searched his eyes.

“Something wrong?” he asked, giving her one last chance to tell him.

She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him, then trailed a hand down his face. “I’ll see you.”

Unable to let her go, Jake hugged her tight. “Why don’t you just wait for me? I won’t be that long.”

She returned the hug, then drew away. “Billy needs to be fed.”

“Yeah.” He tried to smile but didn’t think he was all that successful.

The elevator began to close, and he reached out to hold it for her.

She stepped in, then turned to face him. “See you later.”

“Yeah.”

As it closed, he thought he heard the words “I love you.” He quickly punched the down button to make it open again, but it didn’t.

She was gone.