The midnight breeze had turned soft with the hint of thunderstorms and the scent of the nearby bay. It filled the night with the restless rustle of leaves in the old live oaks. Spanish moss swayed eerily before it, creating dark, rippling curtains of shadow. Mixed with the swish of the leaves and the sigh of the breeze was a distant, low rumble.

From the west came the approaching thunder of a storm and the flicker of sheet lightning, an ominous promise. From the north, too, there came a louder rumble, a more distinct thunder and a sharper flash of light, as bombers practiced on the military reservation. Both storms had their own kind of eeriness, the one wholly natural, the other wholly unnatural.

Just as Honor Nightingale pulled into her driveway, beneath the sagging shoulders of a row of old oaks, a thick cloud scudded across the moon, swallowing the last bit of illumination. The night abruptly devoured everything beyond the yellow beams of her headlights. It was a wild, beautiful night, she thought. The kind of night that always made her want to kick off her shoes and run barefoot through the grass like a frisky colt.

She pulled up to the detached garage that sat behind her ramshackle house and shoved the car door open, pausing to draw a deep breath of the northwest Florida air. Nowhere else on earth had nights like these. Nowhere else could you smell the sea and the thunder on a breeze as soft as silk and satin.

Climbing out of the car, she smiled to herself and threw back her head to soak it all in. The wind caught at her blue hospital scrubs, snatching the fabric and molding it to her trim body. Laughing softly, she turned her head a little and let the breeze tug her hair free of its pins and whip the long, dark strands around her. It was a beautiful, beautiful night, she thought, and for just this little while she felt free of all the sorrows that had haunted her for so long.

The wind suddenly whipped around her, feeling cold and damp, and snatched the car door from Honor’s hand, slamming it shut. Damn—her keys were locked inside. She absolutely didn’t want to cope with that right now. She had just come off a grueling shift as triage nurse in the emergency room, it was well past midnight, and not a light had been visible in any house along the dirt road leading to the highway.

And then she recalled the damaged screen on the kitchen window beside the back door, the window with the loose latch she had discovered only yesterday. With a little patience she could probably jiggle the darn thing open. If worse came to worst, she could break the glass. So what was she standing here dithering for? Giving a last toss of her head in the breeze, she stepped toward the back porch.

And froze.

She wasn’t alone. How she knew that, she couldn’t have said. But suddenly her heart was in her throat and she was paralyzed by the absolute conviction that someone was watching her from the house. Her house. The house with the torn screen and the loose latch on the back window.

Holding her breath, she sorted through the possibilities with lightning speed, the same speed that often meant the difference between life and death in the emergency room. The house up the road to her right was closer, but it was deserted. The house to her left was occupied by some kind of recluse. She’d lived next door to him for a month and hadn’t seen him once, but Millie Jackson, who lived up near the highway, said he was some kind of military man who just wasn’t sociable.

So okay, he probably wasn’t a serial killer. He was probably some soured old warrior who would—

A thump. Distinctly, despite the rustling of leaves and the distant rumble of bombs and thunder, she heard a soft thump, as if something had been bumped. From the house. From her house.

That did it. Without another second’s hesitation, she whirled and took off for the recluse’s house. Whatever kind of crazy he was, he couldn’t be as bad as someone who would be waiting inside a house for a woman alone after dark. No way. She’d seen too many women in the emergency room who’d come home to find a creep waiting for them. She didn’t need to imagine a thing. She knew.

A holly hedge separated the two properties. The recluse might have preferred to let it grow into a forest, but someone had kept it neatly trimmed, so she was able to leap it with the grace that had made her a champion hurdler in high school. She covered the expanse of his yard like the wind and flew onto the porch without her feet touching a single step.

If the door had been unlocked, she probably would have barged right in, but the door was locked, which was probaby the only thing that saved her from getting a knife under the ribs. Or maybe not. Later she was never really sure that her neighbor would have done such a thing without checking out the situation first, though he definitely wanted her to think so.

She definitely thought so when, after thirty seconds of her hammering, a mountain of masculinity opened the door and greeted her with the ugliest-looking hunting knife she had ever seen. It was, in fact, exactly like the one her father had had. Recognizing it, she relaxed just a hair.

“In my house!” she gasped. “There’s someone! Someone broke in….”

Recluse or not, the man was quick. He threw open the screen door and dragged her inside. “Where is he?”

“He was—he was watching me from the back window when I got home. The screen is torn and the latch is loose…. I heard a sound….”

She was talking to the air. Beyond the screen door, the night whispered of coming storms, the cicadas screeched as if the world were normal, and the air smelled like the sea.

He had gone over there. Numbly she stared out at the night and wondered why. Why hadn’t he called the police? Any sensible person would have called the police….

And that was precisely what she was going to do right now. She saw the wall phone over by the kitchen table. Her hand barely touched it before she realized that her neighbor could get hurt if she called the police while he was over there. The cops wouldn’t care who he was or why he was carrying that Ranger knife. They would be too hyped to care, too scared to take a chance.

Unable to do anything, she paced rapidly from one end of the large kitchen to the other, back and forth, until her nerves were stretched to breaking and she figured a primal scream wouldn’t even begin to touch the tension.

God, what if he got hurt and she was responsible because she had asked him for help? But he shouldn’t have gone over there alone. He should have called the police. That was all she’d wanted. That was all he’d needed to do.

Maybe she should call the cops now anyway. He’d been gone too long. Maybe he was hurt and needed help. Maybe—

“He got away.”

The abrupt words, spoken in a voice as deep as the night and as richly textured as black velvet, brought her spinning around with a gasp. Her neighbor stood just beyond the screen door, a dark shadow in the darker night, standing back from his own kitchen as if he feared his very presence would terrify her.

Her hand flew to her throat, and she clutched at her scrubs. “There was someone there? I didn’t just imagine it?”

“I didn’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

Evidently he thought she was calm enough to handle him, because he pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. She hadn’t been mistaken, she realized. He was a mountainous man, surely one of the biggest, tallest men she had ever met, and every ounce of him was well-defined, well-developed musculature. He wore nothing but a pair of snug jeans, hastily donned when she’d knocked, to judge by the way they were unsnapped. Zipped but unsnapped, and that unfastened snap seemed to catch her gaze the same way the breeze had snagged her hair.

“I’m calling the cops, Miss, uh, Miss—?”

“Honor Nightingale.” Dragging in a deep breath, she managed to tear her gaze from the arrow of dark hair that seemed determined to point out his maleness to her. Darn it, Honor, you’re a nurse. There’s nothing there you haven’t seen a million times…. “Please, just call me Honor. You shouldn’t have gone over there. You might have been hurt….”

The word trailed off as he flipped on the overhead light. Now nothing was left to her imagination. Hurt? He might have been hurt the way the Incredible Hulk could be hurt, or Dirty Harry, or… Heck, any rapist in his right mind would flee like the wind at the sight of this man.

If faces could be likened to landscapes, then his was the north face of Everest, all angles, planes, sharp corners. A glacial, unforgiving face. It was a face that would never be comfortable with a smile, yet just now it smiled. Sort of. Just a quirk of one corner of his mouth, as if he found the thought of being hurt by anyone amusing. Almost as if he wished there were someone in the world who was capable of posing a threat to him.

“Nurse Nightingale, huh?” He turned toward the phone. “Or is it Doctor?”

“Nurse. Just nurse. And I’ve heard all the jokes.”

“I just bet you have.” He punched in the police emergency number and began to speak to the dispatcher. “My name’s Ian McLaren. I live at 4130 South Davis, and my neighbor’s house, 4132 South Davis, has just been broken into. No, the intruder is gone now. Yes. No. The back window is open, and the screen is torn. Yes, of course.” He glanced at Honor over his shoulder and suddenly frowned. “You’d better sit down, lady. You’re as white as a sheet.”

That was when Honor realized she had completely run out of steam. The kitchen was tilting crazily, and her ears were buzzing as if she had stepped into a hornet’s nest. And her field of vision was narrowing….

Some last vestige of sense caused her to slump onto a kitchen chair and drop her head between her knees. “I never faint,” she muttered to her feet.

“Thank God for small favors,” he replied, in a voice that sounded dryly amused. “Just keep your head down until I can hang up the phone. Then we’ll find out if you’ve got any blood pressure left.”

He might be gruff, he might be tough, his face might look as ravaged as a war zone, but he was essentially a nice man, she decided as she studied her white oxfords and noticed blood in the creases. There had been a lot of blood in the emergency room tonight. A three-car pileup, a woman who had been shot by her husband during a quarrel, a man who had removed half his hand with a table saw. No, she never fainted. She lifted her head.

The next thing she knew she was lying on her back on the floor, staring straight up at the overhead light.

“I told you not to raise your head,” said a deep, dark voice. She knew that voice, didn’t she? Oh, yes. Her neighbor.

“I don’t faint.”

“Nope, you sure don’t. Just stay put, will you?”

That sounded like a good idea, she thought as her stomach did a curious flip-flop and beads of perspiration broke out on her forehead. Nausea caused sweating, and she was undoubtedly nauseated as a reaction to adrenaline. Pleased with her clinical observation of her own state, she closed her eyes and decided that she might faint, but she absolutely was not going to vomit. No way.

“Here,” said that same deep voice a few moments later. Strong hands gripped her shoulders and eased her slowly into a sitting position. “Okay?”

“Yes.” She gave an unsteady laugh, refusing to open her eyes, because she was afraid she would find herself face-to-face with that impressive expanse of hard, muscled chest. As a nurse, she must have seen a hundred thousand chests, but she’d never seen one under these circumstances. This was…different. “I think my blood pressure is back to normal.”

He gave a grunt of some kind—maybe of agreement, maybe of approval—and then scooped her up with astonishing suddenness to set her once again on the chair. He had, she realized with shock, lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling. It made her too aware of her defenselessness against such great strength.

Outside, the wind gusted, rattling the screen door in its frame and sending a wave of cooler air into the kitchen. Honor shivered.

“I’ll make coffee,” said her neighbor gruffly. “Or would you rather have tea?”

“Coffee would be great. Thanks.” Arms wrapped around herself, she tried not to shiver again. “I really appreciate you helping me out.” Her eyes followed him helplessly. Nurse or not, she finally had to admit she really hadn’t seen a million chests like this one. Nor a million backs that rippled under sleek muscle. Nor shoulders so broad or hips so narrow or legs so powerful… Sternly she shook herself back to reality.

He scooped coffee into the basket of the coffeemaker on the counter and started it brewing. “Women are at risk in this country,” he said after a moment. “The statistics are shocking.”

“I know.” She did. Too well.

“Men aren’t doing their jobs.”

“What?” The word was startled out of her, coming out as almost a shocked laugh.

He faced her, looking at her with cat-green eyes. “We’re the warriors,” he replied offhandedly. “Seems like we’re doing a lousy job of making the world safe for our women and children.”

“Oh.” A philosophical perspective, not a practical one. At the moment, it was one she could live with. He had, after all, rescued her without question. “Well, I’m sure glad you feel that way. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. Just before I realized someone was in the house, the wind blew my car door shut. It’s locked, and my keys are inside, so I couldn’t even drive away.” And then, helplessly, she shivered again. It really wasn’t cold, but as the adrenaline subsided she was beginning to feel the fear, the reaction.

Without a word, on feet as silent as a cat’s, Ian McLaren left the kitchen. Less than a minute later he was back, draping a soft blue thermal blanket around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said.

He acknowledged her thanks with a nod, then placed the length of the kitchen between them again. He did so, she realized suddenly, so as not to frighten her. The funny thing was, she wasn’t frightened of him. Not at all. Not even the merest quiver. Which, she thought as she looked up into his bleak, unforgiving face, might really be stupid. He didn’t look like a safe man. He looked like danger on the hoof.

He swiveled his head suddenly toward the kitchen window. “The cops are here. That was fast.”

She thought so, too. When there was no immediate danger, cops generally took their own good time about showing up. Now, through the screen door, she could see the swirling lights of a patrol car. They would, she figured, check out her place first, and then come over here to ask questions she didn’t have any answers for.

Her freshly brewed cup of coffee had cooled just about enough to drink when Ian McLaren ushered the two young police officers into the kitchen. He dwarfed them, she saw, and she didn’t think either of the policemen liked the feeling. Their movements around him were defensive and uneasy. Poor guy, she found herself thinking. It must be awful to have people react to you as if you were a threat just because you’re so big. In fact, thinking about it, she would almost bet that when he got in an elevator, women stepped off.

The first questions were the usual, boring ones. “My name is Honor Nightingale. I’m a registered nurse, and I work in the emergency room at Community Hospital. I was on the 3:30-to-11:30 shift this evening.”

“Then you were probably on when Bill Cates brought in the little girl who was in the auto accident.”

Honor nodded. There had been only one little girl involved, a four-year-old, mercifully unconscious.

“Bill was wondering if she was going to make it.”

It wasn’t exactly a question, Honor realized, but she answered it anyway. “It’ll be touch and go for a while, I’m afraid. It all depends on whether they can keep down the swelling in her brain.”

The young officer, Lambert, let it go. “So you got home a little after twelve?”

“A little. Maybe 12:20.”

“When did you know someone was in the house?”

She explained about the wind slamming her car door closed with her keys and purse inside, and how she’d been thinking about the loose window latch and torn screen when she had the sudden feeling that someone was watching her from that very window. And then how she had heard the thump, as if something had fallen.

“Since I couldn’t drive away, I came running over here to ask Mr. McLaren for help.”

Lambert turned his attention to Ian, who stood leaning against the counter, one powerful arm crossed over his waist while he sipped coffee.

“You’re Ian McLaren, the man who called us, right?”

“Right.”

“Occupation?”

“U.S. Army, retired. I sometimes work on the air base as a consultant.”

“What kind of consultant?”

Ian set his cup down and folded his arms. “I advise the Rangers and other special-operations groups on operational tactics and survival skills.” The air base included a huge reservation of federal land set aside for training purposes. Not only did bombers practice actual bombing, but all the services practiced jungle-style combat tactics and survival skills back in there, as well. Among them were the army Rangers and the Special Forces, as well as certain elite marine units.

“So Ms. Nightingale came over here for help, and you called us?”

Ian shook his head, never taking his catlike eyes from the cop. “I went over there first. I found the window by the back door open and the screen torn. The back door was wide open, flapping in the wind. I imagine the intruder fled as soon as he realized Ms. Nightingale had become aware of him.”

The young policeman nodded, satisfied. “You’ll have to come back over there with us now, Ms. Nightingale. We need you to tell us if anything is missing, and what damage was done, if any.”

That was when Honor got the strangest feeling. She wasn’t a fanciful person by nature, not at all given to odd feelings and psychic impressions. She was a woman of cheerful, optimistic outlook and a very simple faith in God that made her feel safe in the darkest of nights. But suddenly, unexpectedly, she shivered. Almost helplessly, she raised her eyes to Ian McLaren’s.

“I’ll go with you,” he said abruptly. “I want to take a look at that window and see if I can’t make the house safer for you.”

She could have kissed him for that. Had he somehow understood her sudden uneasiness? Had it been that plain on her face?

She started to leave the blanket on the chair, but he picked it back up and wrapped it around her shoulders again. “You’ve had a shock,” he said. “Better stay warm.”

“Thank you.”

First, much to her relief, one of the policemen retrieved a tool from his cruiser and unlocked her car for her so that she could recover her keys and purse. Then they climbed the creaky steps to the open back door.

“This house really needs a lot of work,” Honor heard herself say. She wondered if anyone else could hear the nervous note in her voice. “I’ve been meaning to call all kinds of repairmen ever since I moved in, but I’ve been so busy…”

Ian gripped her elbow reassuringly, and she fell silent. There was, she reminded herself, no reason to be nervous. Not now. Not with two policemen and a former army Ranger beside her.

The policemen warned her not to touch anything and even went so far as to turn on the kitchen light with the tip of a key so that no fingerprints would be disturbed. A crime-scene unit would come out, one of them said, to see if they could find any fingerprints around the window or the door. She absolutely mustn’t touch anything until the team had come through.

“How long might that be?” she asked politely, wondering wildly if she was expected to leave her house untouched for the next week or so.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll be here soon, ma’am,” said the shorter of the two officers.

So she wasn’t going to get any sleep, either. “Wonderful. I’d be willing to bet the man who broke in here is already tucked into his soft little bed for the night. How many hours or days does it take for this team to complete their work?”

“That’ll depend on whether you find anything else missing or disturbed.”

That could almost be taken as a threat, Honor thought tiredly. By chance her gaze met Ian’s, and she saw a surprising amount of understanding in those cat-green eyes of his. She had the eerie feeling that he was reading her mind. Disturbed by the sensation, she turned quickly away.

Room by room she walked through the house, with the two officers hard on her heels. The survey tour served one purpose, she thought as she led the way upstairs. By the time she and the police had poked their noses into every closet, she could be sure there was no one else in the house. The intruder, whoever he had been, was definitely gone. Only as they returned to the kitchen did Honor realize how relieved she felt to know that for certain.

Ian McLaren, she noticed, had not intruded on her privacy. He had waited in the kitchen and was talking with the freshly arrived crime-scene team as they dusted for prints around the door and window.

“Nothing else has been disturbed,” said one of the policemen to the new arrivals. He glanced at Honor. “That means they’ll be out of here as soon as they finish what they’re doing now, Ms. Nightingale. But if you happen to notice anything after we leave, don’t touch it. Leave it alone and give us a call. Someone will come right out.”

A short while later, having received some needless advice about better locks, Honor found herself alone with Ian. He had snapped his jeans, she noticed irrelevantly. Or maybe not so irrelevantly. The wind gusted sharply, making the whole house creak before its force, and thunder marched closer, a hollow drumbeat. The fresh smell of ozone spiced the air.

“Well,” she said briskly, trying to sound like her usual fearless, capable self, all the while knowing that it was going to be some time before she felt fearless again. “I certainly can’t thank you enough for all your help, Mr. McLaren.” As she looked up at him, she wondered if she had ever before met anyone so expressionless. His face betrayed nothing, absolutely nothing. His walls, she realized, were all invisible, and utterly inviolable.

The man, she thought, was totally unique. Totally self-contained. Totally impervious to whatever the rest of humanity might think. He was a law unto himself, and he didn’t care one whit whether she was grateful or not. He had done only what he believed to be right and necessary, and her feelings in the matter didn’t come into consideration. He had acted purely out of principle.

He would be aware of her feelings, of anyone’s feelings, she thought, but they wouldn’t affect him. Not at all. Whatever decisions he made, he made to satisfy himself, and he judged them according to his own internal measuring stick.

Suddenly she sank onto one of her kitchen chairs and wondered if she was losing her mind. She couldn’t possibly know these things about this man from a few words, a few actions, the lack of expression on his face. She couldn’t know these things from a few glances of his cat-green eyes. No, she was overtired, overwrought and inexcusably fanciful.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing why she was apologizing. Maybe it was for dragging him out of his isolation and into her problems. “I need to sleep,” she added suddenly. “And I don’t think I’m going to be able to.” Now why had she told him that? Why? “I’m sorry,” she said again, pressing her palms to her eyes. She was losing it, she realized vaguely. She was going to sit here in front of this man with the expressionless eyes and the frozen feelings and go blubberingly, embarrassingly hysterical.

A heavy hand settled on her shoulder, and she jumped, startled. Looking up, she found him watching her.

“You go up to bed,” he said quietly. “I’ll be down here. Nobody’s going to bother you tonight.”

“But—”

“Look,” he said, interrupting her, “there’s no way you’re going to feel safe tonight, and that’s normal. And I don’t see anyone else around here to watch out for you. Is there somebody you can call?”

Reluctantly she shook her head, unable to tear her gaze from his. “I just moved here.”

“Exactly. And I’m not going to sleep over there, wondering if that creep might come back. So do me a favor and let me hang around over here so I don’t have to worry.”

At that precise moment something thudded in the living room. Honor gasped and froze, but by the time the sound had died away, Ian was already moving toward the living room. Somehow the knife had once again materialized in his hand, even though Honor would have sworn he hadn’t brought it with him.

She wasn’t built to handle this, she thought wildly as she waited. Her heart was hammering as if she had just run a marathon, and she was breathing in huge gulps that never quite dragged in enough air. She couldn’t handle this. She couldn’t stand this. Her knuckles had turned white from the strength of her grip on the blanket, and she wished she could hide, just hide. Like a child, she felt that if only she pulled the blanket over her head and closed her eyes tightly enough, if only she didn’t move and didn’t breathe and didn’t make a sound, whatever it was would go away.

In the emergency room, she knew what to do. Instinct and knowledge guided her surely in the worst situations. Her choices might not always work, but she wasn’t helpless. And there was nothing quite like feeling helpless, she thought now. Nothing quite as undermining or terrifying. She had been fearless all along only because she hadn’t come up against something she couldn’t deal with. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how she was supposed to deal with this. What if that man came back?

Ian returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, knife once again hidden wherever he hid it. “The wind must have blown something against the house,” he said. “Everything’s okay. There’s no one here.”

“Oh.” Even that sound was a triumph of self-control. She was shaking now, shaking steadily, uncontrollably. I think…I think I want to go to a motel,” she said between chattering teeth.

“What good will that do?” he asked flatly. “Will you feel safe here tomorrow night?”

That was the crux of the matter, Honor realized. She wasn’t going to feel safe again for a long time. Slowly she lifted her frightened, moist eyes and looked at him.

She was unaware of all that was written on her soft, young face and revealed by her damp blue eyes. The man who wore a mask of iron was aware, however. He read it all in a glance, and something in him shifted infinitesimally, like heavy stone dragging over stone.

Thunder boomed hollowly, and lightning flickered brightly enough to be noticeable. The wind whipped around a corner of the house and moaned gently. The live oaks whispered restlessly, and the cicadas were suddenly silent.

“You can stay at my place tonight,” Ian said, his voice sounding as rusty as an unoiled hinge. “I’ve got a guest room that’s all made up, and you’re welcome.”

He had a guest room? This isolated man had a guest room? “I couldn’t impose—”

He shook his head. “Look, neither one of us is going to sleep tonight at this rate. Just come over to my place and try out the sheets on the guest bed. In the morning we’ll see about making this place trespasserproof, okay?”

He somehow managed to make her feel as if she would be obliging him by accepting his offer, that she would be inconveniencing him if she didn’t. “Thank you, Mr. McLaren.”

Something in him shifted just a little more. “Call me Ian. Let’s go up and get whatever you need for the night.”

He stood in the hallway just outside her bedroom as she hastily stuffed the necessary items into an overnight bag. Her hands still trembled, but her terror was subsiding as she realized that tonight, at least, she didn’t have to face this alone.

The man who waited outside for her was remarkable, she found herself thinking. He had only just met her, yet he was putting himself out in a way very few people would. Most people would have backed out of this situation just as soon as the police arrived.

If anyone had told her that a man’s protectiveness could feel like a warm sable coat wrapped around her, she would have chuckled at the absurdity of it. Women, she had always believed, were perfectly capable of doing anything and everything men could do, if only they were willing to put forth the effort. She never would have imagined that she could want, could need, a man to stand between her and anything. Thank God nobody had told Ian McLaren he shouldn’t!

“I’m ready.” Stepping out into the hallway, she switched off the light behind her and let him lead the way down the stairs. That was protective, too, she realized. He was a very protective man. She wondered what he was like when he cared.

Wind whipped the leaves around, ghostly shadows in the night. The last of the moonlight had been swallowed by the storm clouds, and the lightning blinded more than it helped. Ian seemed to have preternaturally acute vision, however, and he guided her around the hedge toward his house as effortlessly as if it were broad daylight. For once in her life she didn’t mind someone taking her elbow and guiding her. Somehow, this evening, she had lost a little of her newfound independence.

Once inside his kitchen, he locked the door behind them, and the storm was silenced. “I’m going to turn on the air-conditioning tonight,” he said, filling the sudden, obvious quiet. “That way all the windows and doors will be locked and you won’t be uneasy.”

“You don’t have—”

“No, I don’t,” he said. His gaze scraped over her. “Maybe I should explain that I don’t do anything I don’t choose to. So save your breath. I’m doing what I feel is necessary.”

She hadn’t misread him, then. Well, she thought as she followed him down his hallway to the foyer, and from there up the stairs to the second story, it certainly made it easier on her not to have to worry about it. It appeared that Ian McLaren was a little like a force of nature. Like that storm outside. And it seemed she was now just along for the ride, like tumbleweed caught up in a cyclone. He would do things his way. If that meant sheltering her and turning on the air-conditioning, then that was what he would do. She wondered if he would consult her about anything at all.

His guest room was a bare-bones affair, not too different from a cell. There was a small four-drawer dresser, a metal cot, a straight-backed chair, and nothing else. That he had this room meant he sometimes had guests. That it was decorated this way made her wonder just what kind of guests they were.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” he said abruptly. “Take a shower if you like—the towels are fresh. My room is straight across the hall. If you get nervous or need anything, holler, and don’t worry about disturbing me. I seldom sleep at night.”

With that enigmatic and totally intriguing statement, he exited the room and closed the door gently behind him.

Sighing, Honor dropped her overnight bag on the chair and looked around once again.

It really did look like a cell. And it occurred to her that she had just become a prisoner of fear.

 

Across the hall, Ian McLaren stood at the closed window of his bedroom and stared out at the wild, stormy night. As a rule, he needed very little sleep, and what little he needed usually eluded him at night. That didn’t prevent him from attempting to be normal, though. Every night he came up here, stripped and climbed into that narrow bed. And every night he eventually rose, dressed and pursued other activities. He had been trying to sleep when Honor’s pounding at the door summoned him, and he was glad now to have an excuse to quit trying, at least for tonight.

A natural inclination toward insomnia had hardened into something nearly pathological as a result of his military experience. He had been little more than a boy when he learned that the night hours were favored for surreptitious attacks, and that night was not a safe time to trust others to remain alert. For him it was easy to stay awake and alert, but it hadn’t been for his comrades. When Ian had understood that, he had taken it upon himself to keep the night watches. Now, nearly a quarter century later, he was generally able to sleep only in the daylight.

Some people might have seen that as a problem, but since Ian had little regard for other people and preferred his solitude, it was no problem at all. When he needed to advise at the base, he usually did so at unconventional hours anyway, and when he needed to do a regular nine-to-five, a quick lunchtime nap was all he required to keep him going.

From his window he had an unobstructed view of Honor’s house and garage. He had noticed her occasionally in the month since she moved in, had recognized at some point or other that she worked a rotating shift, and knew she didn’t pursue a social life. He knew these things because survival depended on knowing your surroundings, and while he was no longer in that kind of danger, old habits didn’t die.

So he knew a little about Honor Nightingale, more than she suspected. It was nothing she would object to him knowing, but she would probably feel uneasy if she knew that he’d paid that much attention to her. Once or twice he had considered picking up the phone to request a background investigation—a BI on her, then had dismissed the idea. He was retired, damn it. He no longer needed to know everything about everyone around him.

And now she needed him. Thinking about what she had come home to, he felt a familiar stirring of anger. Anger was about the only feeling he allowed himself, and then only when someone or something violated his sense of rightness. The crud might only have been planning to rob her, but Ian doubted it. No, the intruder had had more despicable things in mind. The question was whether he had happened on her by accident or whether he had planned this. Whether he wanted Honor in particular.

Disturbed, Ian turned from the window. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had attracted the obsessive attentions of a sicko. Well, only time would settle that issue.

Deciding he wanted a cup of coffee, he stepped out of his room and began to make his silent way toward the stairs. A gust of wind rattled the window at the top of the staircase, and a sharp clatter announced the first few raindrops. Lightning flared brightly, momentarily blinding him, and he gave up, turning on the hall light. The eye’s adaptation to darkness vanished in an instant before flashes that bright.

He liked the night. He liked the quiet and the solitude. He liked being able to step out his door and take long, undisturbed walks. The whole world changed at night, and a whole different set of creatures came into the ascendant. Night was the time of the predators, and the time of those who hunted them.

Ian McLaren was a hunter. And this evening he had definitely scented a predator.