Page 25

Piper hopped out of Ian’s truck in front of her apartment building and didn’t invite him in. He undoubtedly had a much nicer place in a much fancier zip code, and she had no desire to parade her general poverty in front of him.

He’d offered to walk her up to her door like he had in Khartoum, but this was America and she would be fine. She turned him down firmly. While she appreciated his protective instincts, he seemed to think she would like being hovered over like a helpless, wilting lily.

She knew all too well what it felt like to be helpless, and she’d long ago vowed to herself never to feel that way again.

She’d been helpless to evade her father’s unreasoning rage whenever she reminded him too much of her mother, helpless to escape his brand of crazy, helpless to stop the man for forcing her to master skills she’d never wanted to learn.

She’d made it a lifelong project for nobody ever to make her feel that way again, in fact.

She reached for her front door and noticed a sliver of wood had been knocked off the door jamb at knob height. It wasn’t anything big, just a thin strip of missing paint and bare pine. But still. It made her frown.

She cast a furtive glance around the basement landing and pulled her pistol from its holster in the small of her back.

Quietly, she unlocked her door, stepped to one side, and eased the latch open.

No violent reaction exploded. She spun through her door, crouching low, back pressed against the wall beside the door.

Holy crap . Her place was destroyed .

Tossed didn’t begin to describe the mayhem.

Furntiure had been overturned, drawers emptied, her TV smashed to smithereens.

It was hard to pick her way through the debris, but she raced to her tiny kitchen, made sure it was unoccupied, then headed down the short hall to her bedroom, bathroom, and closet.

It took about sixty seconds to determine that whoever’d robbed her was gone.

She headed for the front door, turned the corner out of her bedroom and lurched as a big silhouette spun into the doorway brandishing a handgun. Her own weapon whipped up into firing position.

“Stand down!” Ian barked at her. “It’s me. Ian.”

Jeez. She sagged against the wall in the hallway, her heart pounding. She’d almost shot him. Not that she’d have cared all that much, of course. It just would have been messy. Blood everywhere, and oy vey , the paperwork.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Had a gut feeling something wasn’t right. Came to check on you.”

Dang. Good instincts . “As you can see, I’m fine. But my apartment is not.”

“It’s clear?” he bit out.

“Yes, of course.” She wasn’t a total amateur. She knew to clear the scene and make sure bad guys weren’t lurking in a closet before she got around to assessing the damage.

He stepped gingerly into the war zone and closed the hallway door behind him. “What’s missing?”

“At a glance, nothing.” Which was weird. Why would a thief come in and trash her place without at least carrying out the portable electronics?

Ian righted the couch in an impressive display of casual strength that made her grit her teeth a little. The one way in which she couldn’t ever be one of the boys was that raw, physical power he’d just unconsciously demonstrated.

He piled cushions on the sofa frame, making a path through the worst of the mess. Her flat screen TV was a shattered wreck, as was her desktop computer. Its tower looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it.

Her books were intact, however, still sitting on the shelves as if nothing had ever happened.

Their calm unconcern was wildly out of place in the midst of the chaos.

She moved into her kitchen. Total destruction was the name of the game in here.

Her coffee maker, microwave, and the nice blender she made smoothies with were smashed into spare parts and wires.

Even her stove was trashed, the electric burners torn out, handles ripped off, the oven door torn free of its hinges. Her refrigerator door hung askew and the contents of both her freezer and refrigerator had been emptied on the floor into a spectacular, drippy mess.

Thankfully, she’d only been home a day and had yet to restock on food. She’d stopped by a convenience store yesterday and grabbed only a few items to tide herself over. She grabbed a trash bag from under the sink and quickly scooped the thawing vegetables and TV dinners into it.

“You got a wrench?” Ian called from the vicinity of the bathroom.

She fetched her toolbox from the front closet and carried it back to him. She’d registered hissing in her first pass through the apartment but hadn’t stopped to investigate.

As she rounded the corner into her bathroom, she stopped cold. “Oh, for crying out loud.”

The intruder had smashed her sink and bathtub fixtures.

A fine spray of water was the source of the hiss, and Ian was quickly getting soaked as he wrestled with the water cut-off valves.

She passed him a wrench and backed out of the impromptu water park.

In a few seconds, silence fell, punctuated only by occasional dripping sounds.

“Let me get you a towel,” she said, “assuming I’ve got any left intact.”

“I’ll take a pile of rags if that’s all you’ve got.”

She headed for her walk-in closet to fetch an armful of towels.

Okay, so it was nice having a big, strong, capable man here with her, right now.

She felt a lot safer with him at her place.

The sense of violation was lessened somewhat by knowing nobody else would mess with her as long as he was around.

It struck her wryly that she was being a hypocrite to gripe about him intervening to save her in Africa but being grateful he was here, now.

Fine . It hadn’t been that awful having Ian looking out for her in Khartoum. She still didn’t like the idea of needing his protection, but maybe it had been a good thing he’d been there.

She found her towels wadded on the floor but doubted Ian would care at this point if they were dirty. He was drenched. She stepped back into her bedroom and gulped as Ian stripped his sodden shirt over his head to reveal that gorgeous man-hunk body of his.

He took the towels she handed him and dried himself off. He used another to vigorously dry his hair. And then, oh God, he unbuckled his pants and let his dripping slacks fall to the floor. Eyes averted from his muscular legs and clinging briefs, she passed him the rest of the towel remnants.

She scooped up his clothes, mumbled something about throwing them in a dryer, and fled the apartment and nearly naked man inside.

It took her until she slammed one of the building’s round, dryers shut to realize she was hyperventilating.

Must be delayed reaction to the shock of her place being vandalized?—

--Oh, who was she trying to kid? It was a reaction to seeing Ian strip down in her freaking bedroom. Never mind that her place had taken a tactical nuclear strike.

She was not in lust with him, dammit! Okay, so she was. But it was only lust. The man had rocked her world in Khartoum. This was purely a physical reaction to the sex they’d had. Past tense. There would be no more sex between them, future tense, thank you very much.

Not to mention, they were officially working together, now. And she was vividly aware that surveillance and tracking technology was significantly better here than in Sudan. The two of them could easily be monitored by their respective employers.

Which meant that, as of two hours ago, it was not only unethical but also illegal for them to sleep together, and neither of them wanted to ruin their careers by flirting with fraternization charges.

Reassured by that thought, she managed to catch her breath. She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering strength. She could do this. She could work with Ian McCloud and keep it just business.

Ian horsed Piper’s box springs and mattress back into place on the bedframe. Both were slashed beyond use, but it cleared floor space for him to move around the bedroom. The television in here was trashed, too. Along with the lamps, alarm clock, and ceiling fan.

Why in the hell would someone—a guy, given the strength required to do some of the damage in here—break into Piper’s place and randomly destroy it like this? It didn’t look like a typical B&E. It read more like a hate crime.

Obvious leap of logic from that—an ex-boyfriend did this.

Piper could be pretty infuriating, but what did she do to make someone this enraged?

He wrapped the remains of a bedsheet around his hips with the intent of tracking her down and asking her.

She slipped back into the apartment just as he entered the living room, however.

“Your clothes will be dry in twenty minutes or so,” she announced.

“Thanks.” He gestured at the wrecked couch. “Have a seat. Let’s talk.”

Wariness leapt into her sapphire gaze. She perched on the edge of a cushion and looked ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. He supposed she had cause to be jumpy after what she’d just walked in on.

He asked her, “Can you think of anyone who has something against you and might do something like this?”

Some strong emotion he couldn’t name flashed through her eyes. “Like who?” she said cautiously.

He shrugged. “An ex, maybe?”

“No ex’es to speak of.”

That surprised him. “None?” he blurted. “You’re a good-looking woman with healthy appetites. Surely, someone like you has a few old boyfriends under your belt.”

“Not really. I’ve been pretty much focused on my career since I got out of college. Even in school, I kept my head down and studied most of the time.”

Which might explain some of her prickliness regarding men in general. At least he knew for sure that she liked men. A lot. He pushed aside memory and reaction to their epic sex in K-town. Right now they needed to figure out who’d trashed her place and how much danger she was in.