he hallway was empty—Alyssa saw Sam take that in in one swift glance.

Right before he grabbed her and slammed her up against the concrete block wall. She must’ve made a sound of pain, because the look on his face was almost comical. That is, if there was anything funny at all about more than two hundred pounds of angry Navy SEAL jamming his arm up underneath her throat, cutting off her air.

“I’m sorry. God, Lys, I’m so sorry,” he told her as he groped her, searching for her side arm.

The one she’d carefully locked in the trunk of her car before coming inside the store.

She tried turning her head aside so she could get some air. She flailed, hitting him as hard as she could, but he just moved his arm, pinning her more completely.

“I’m not going to bring you in, you fool,” she said, although it came out gasped and garbled.

He got the gist of it. “Damn right you’re not.”

“No, Sam—”

She really couldn’t breathe. His grip on her tightened, and she knew he was trying to make her black out from lack of air. Whereupon he’d search her for her keys, free himself from the cuffs, and, first making sure she was breathing again, take off for parts unknown. And then she’d be back to talking to him on the phone.

His face was an inch from hers—the way he’d lifted her off the ground brought them nose to nose—and she stared into his eyes, shaking her head as much as she could, pleading with her eyes. Don’t do this.

She’d never seen him like this before. He was furious and terrified and remorseful as hell. It was not without possibility that he might actually start to cry. “I’m sorry,” he just kept saying. “Don’t make me hurt you. Alyssa, I don’t want to hurt you....”

“Don’t—” she managed to gasp as she struggled to get free, or at least get a breath. Just one good breath...

So she could beg him to trust her. So she could tell him she’d locked the keys to these cuffs in the trunk of her car as well. If she blacked out, then he’d be cuffed to dead weight.

Cuffed to...

Alyssa stopped fighting him—which wasn’t the easiest thing to do when her brain was sending “no air” panic signals to her body—and went limp.

Sam, however, was ready for her to do that—turning into a dead weight was a basic defense technique from Street Fighting 101—but he did have to adjust his grip on her, which loosened his hold on her arm.

It was the arm with which she was cuffed to him. Which meant she didn’t have the reach she needed to hit him in the eye—a blow that didn’t need a lot of force behind it to be painful as hell.

Instead, she tried for an elbow to his nose, and—whoa, what a lucky break—to avoid that, he brought his head down and closer to her. Which put his nose well out of range, but made it possible for her to throw her arm—leading with that same elbow—up and over Sam’s head. The cuffs and Sam’s arm followed, looping around his neck.

That put his own arm into an unnatural position, and now when she went limp, he had to back off fast and duck much farther forward in order to slip their arms back over his head. If he hadn’t, she would’ve wrenched his shoulder damn near out of its socket. It was then, when he backed off like that, that he finally lost his hold on her.

And there was air. Glorious, wonderful air. Alyssa took deep gasping breaths as she went down to the floor. Or at least as close to the floor as she could get while handcuffed to Sam.

She went instantly into a floor fighting position, on her side, one leg bent beneath her, and used the full force of her other leg to kick at him. Hard. She aimed for his knee. He was expecting her to target his groin so she connected and heard him swear. She kicked him again, but he was a fast learner, and she only managed to hit his thigh.

He grabbed her foot, yanking her off balance before he pulled up hard on the cuffs. He jerked her all the way up onto her feet, obviously expecting her to resist. But she didn’t. She pushed herself even farther forward, moving toward him instead of trying to back away.

It put him at a serious disadvantage, especially when she moved even closer—close enough to step between his legs and...

She hit him so hard with her knee that his feet left the floor. She herself was knocked off balance as the handcuffs dragged her forward and down with him, and she scrambled to stay on her feet.

He made a sound that was a mix of pain and despair, and God knows a hit to the balls like that would’ve put another man on the ground for good, whimpering in a fetal position, but Sam was back up and at her instantly, slamming her against that wall again.

But she was ready for him this time, and she tucked her head into him, grabbing him in as much of a bear hug as she could, with her one arm twisted and crushed between them.

She was winning, she realized—if this could even remotely be called winning—because he was trying his damnedest not to hurt her.

He could have smashed her head against the wall. He could have broken her arm with very little effort. He could have slapped her or punched her or kicked her to the ground a dozen different times. But he didn’t. And he wouldn’t.

She was fighting him as hard and as dirty as she could, and he was being careful.

“I’m not going to turn you in,” she told him again, talking directly to his armpit. All she had to do to stay in this fight was keep him away from her throat. “If I was, my backup would be here by now—twenty FBI agents cleaning this floor with your fancy suit!”

He was breathing hard, each exhale moving her hair, as he pinned her there, as he went through her pockets, searching for her keys.

“Like they did to your friend across the street,” she told him. Once Sam found what he was looking for, he was going to wrestle her to the ground, sit on her, and unlock the cuffs. Except the only keys she was carrying were her car keys and the key to her lockbox in the trunk. He was going to be very disappointed.

She couldn’t move with the full weight of his body against hers, the wall grinding into her backbone. He’d protected himself against another kick to the groin by pushing himself between her legs. She could kick the backs of his legs with her heels, but she couldn’t get up enough force that way to do anything but annoy him.

“Forty-eight hours,” she persisted as he attempted to get into the front left pocket of her jeans, as she tried to make it as difficult as possible for him to do so. “We have forty-eight hours to find Mary Lou and Haley, and you’re wasting time!”

Someone was coming. Sam heard it at the same time she did. A door opening. Voices. Two or three of them. Young women, girls, from the sound of it, heading toward them, about to turn the corner and see...

Alyssa wrapped her legs around Sam and lifted her head. She could taste his surprise as she kissed him. Kissed him? Hell, she ate him alive. She soul-sucked him so hard, it made those kisses they’d shared in the back of her car seem staid by comparison.

It took him maybe three one-hundreths of a second to catch on and to kiss her back, making it look as if they’d ducked through the “Employees Only” door to grab a semipublic quickie.

Alyssa heard the girls giggling, felt them hurry past, felt Sam hard between her legs as he ground himself against her, as she tasted blood.... God, at some point in their struggle, she’d hit him so hard he’d cut his lip on his own teeth.

He didn’t seem to care. He didn’t seem to notice that the girls had gone out the door, that he and Alyssa were alone once more. He just kept kissing her. She tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“Stop,” she said into his mouth. “Sam—”

It was hard as hell to talk with his tongue in her mouth. Doubly hard because part of her didn’t really want him to remove it.

“Please,” she said, but it probably sounded as if she were begging for more, because he kissed her even more deeply, but slower now. Sweetly.

Oh, dear God...

She could feel his heart pounding, or maybe that was hers because the rhythmic way he was rubbing himself against her was enough to make her... Oh, but heavenly Father, if she did, then he’d know that it had been years since she'd... since they’d...

“Stop,” she said, but of course he didn’t since she hadn’t actually managed to say it aloud.

So she bit him. Not very hard. But certainly hard enough to get his attention.

“Shit!”

“Stop,” Alyssa ordered him, even though he already had. He was still pressed against her, though, which made her want to scream. “I kissed you so they wouldn’t see that we were fighting, so they wouldn’t call the police. But they just might call security, and if the rent-a-cops find us here, cuffed together like this...”

But he didn’t move. He just stared at her as she looked back at him, at the graceful shape of his mouth, at the smooth, clean lines of his cheeks, at his eyes—startlingly blue eyes he’d kept too often hidden behind all of his hair, or beneath the brim of one of his infernal and always present baseball caps.

“Now,” she said, trying to sound as if her heart wasn’t about to pound out of her chest, as if her body wasn’t screaming for them to finish what they’d started, “will you please trust me enough to put me down and walk out of here with me? My car’s just outside.

“I’m here alone,” she continued, knowing that if he was still able to stand after that kick she’d given him, then he had a significant amount of adrenaline charging through his system. It was enough to make everything harder—including his ability to comprehend what she was saying. So she brought it down to the bottom line again. “I’m not here to turn you in. I made a deal with you, even though you were right about Max. Even though he didn’t mean it. But I did. We have forty-eight hours to find Haley. Let’s stop dicking around and go and do it.”

Sam smiled at that—perhaps it was a poor choice of words.

Damn, he was handsome with his hair cut short and his entire face showing. Some women might not agree because there was nothing pretty about this man. His good looks were rugged and he had a smile that was loaded with testosterone. He had the kind of big, lean, man-sized face that was going to get craggier as he got older. But he’d be just as handsome, possibly even more so, at seventy than he was right now.

The suit he had on was not expensive, but it fit as if it had been tailored to his rangy frame. Or at least it had before he’d ripped out the sleeve.

When Alyssa had first spotted him in the store, she’d looked past him. He was so completely the anti-Sam, right down to the shiny black dress shoes.

The embarrassing truth was, she never would have recognized him if she hadn’t had sex with him. In the shower. Hungover and sick as a dog from a night of heavy drinking, handcuffed to Sam with the key temporarily lost, stone cold sober and horrified that she’d slept with him the night before, she still hadn’t been able to keep herself from jumping him one last time. Yes, it was because she’d seen him before with his hair wet and slicked back from his face almost exactly like this, that she’d realized it was indeed Sam Starrett inside that business suit.

“What can I do to make you trust me?” she asked, well aware that he still hadn’t released her.

“Kiss me again,” he said.

“Look, Starrett, this is serious. I didn’t kiss you because I wanted to.” Liar. “I also didn’t kiss you because I’m trying to play you. I’m done with that. No more games. It’s honesty time. I’m not helping you because I want us to have sex again, because I don’t.” Liar. “Nothing’s changed between us. I’m helping you because your reasons for wanting to find Haley first and put her someplace safe are good ones. I’m helping you because despite what he says now, Max did agree to this deal.”

Sam nodded, but he still didn’t let go of her. “Honesty time. Okay. I should probably tell you that if you don’t kiss me again, my adrenaline levels are going to drop. Enough so that my body is going to realize that you kicked me so hard that my balls are now lodged near my tonsils. And at that moment of realization, I will probably drop to my knees and start retching. Oh, Jesus.”

He let go of her, and she slid down him.

“In case you were offended,” he told her raggedly, “the hard-on didn’t really... have anything to do with you. At least not... at first. It’s a... male fighting... thing. But as long as... we’re being completely honest, I feel it’s fair to tell you that your making love to me... would go a long way toward making me trust you.” He sank to his knees and closed his eyes. “Oh, fuck.”

She wanted to sink down beside him, and close her eyes, too, weary from relief, but they had to keep moving. She looked around. There was a machine selling cans of cold soda a little farther down the hall.

“Of course... it’s entirely... possible I’ll never... have sex... or walk... again.”

“Do you have your wallet?” Alyssa asked.

“What, are you going to... rob me now, too? Right front pocket... pants.”

She fished for his wallet as gently as she could, took out a single. Put the wallet back in her own pocket. “Come on.” She reached under his arms and helped him to his feet. God, there was a lot of him.

“I was serious... about the retching.”

“I know,” she said. “Let’s get you into the car. But first...”

She stopped at the soda machine and fed it Sam’s dollar. A can of soda clunked out. She handed it to him.

“Hey... I wanted... Dr. Pepper.”

“It’s an ice pack alternative, funnyman.”

A wave of hot air hit them as they went through another door and out into the blinding morning light.

There was no one out in the back lot. Alyssa watched as Sam made note of the fact that there were, indeed, no FBI agents staked out and waiting for them to appear.

She’d parked at the end of a row of employees’ cars and she led him in that direction.

“Can you hold off on the retching for just a little bit longer?” she asked.

It wasn’t a good sign that he didn’t speak, that he just nodded.

She held out her car keys to him. “I need you to get a couple of things out of the trunk.”

He nodded again. He was gritting his teeth, and she knew that he wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball in the backseat for about twenty minutes. But, as usual, he was determined to be Superman, so he took her keys, and after about three tries, during which he started sweating all over again, he managed to unlock the trunk.

Alyssa purposely stood back, as far away from both him and the car as the handcuffs would allow.

“There’s another key on that ring,” she told him. “It’ll unlock the box that my side arm is stored in.”

Sam turned to look at her, surprise and wonder in his eyes. It almost canceled out the haze from his pain. Almost.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she told him. Although it sure would have been easier if he’d trusted her before she damn near killed him. She gestured toward the trunk, toward her handgun. “This is about me, trusting you, in return.”

He understood. He unlocked the box and took out the weapon. Checking to make sure it was loaded, and then that the safety was on, he stashed it in his jacket pocket. “Thanks.” It came out as little more than a whisper.

“The keys to the cuffs are in there, too,” she said. “In my fanny pack.”

He was trying his best to stand up straight, but it was more than clear that he was fighting a losing battle. Of course, he’d never admit that, not in a million years.

Alyssa grabbed her fanny pack, took the car keys from him, and closed the trunk. She led him to the front of the car, unlocked the passenger’s side door, and went in first, crawling over the parking brake. Men were entirely too fragile.

Sam got in very gingerly, and when he closed the door it didn’t quite latch.

Alyssa reached across him, opened it, and closed it.

He had the can of soda strategically placed, the seat reclined, and his eyes closed as she found the key to the cuffs and unlocked them both.

But he opened his eyes and caught her hand, turning it so he could take a closer look at her wrist, where the cuffs had rubbed her skin raw. “I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you,” he said.

“Yeah, well...” Alyssa pulled her hand away from his so she could start the car. “It’s not that big a deal. Especially since I’ve been wanting to kick you really hard in the balls for a couple of years now.”

Sam’s own wrist was equally abraded. But he didn’t give it a glance. He just closed his eyes again. “I don’t know which is scarier, thinking you’re joking or thinking you’re serious.”

“We have to figure out a game plan,” Alyssa said. “With only forty-eight hours...”

“Can I please just have ten minutes to sit here and weep?”

“Can you listen while you do it?”

“You know when you hit your funny bone really hard?” Sam asked, his eyes tightly closed. “And you’re all, ‘Go away, go away, don’t touch me, I just need to be alone so I can scream?’ This is like that only much, much worse.”

“So far no retching,” she commented.

“Yes, thanks for noticing. I’m very proud of myself.”

“I have the information that Beth Weiss from the Sunset Motel gave us after we found her in Orlando,” Alyssa told him.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“She said that Mary Lou and Haley checked out at around twenty to ten. I checked the schedule and the next bus that left Gainesville was at 10:35, which works, but it was going to Sarasota, which doesn’t. That’s where she was running from, so why would she go back? Next on the schedule was a bus heading for Atlanta. We’ve questioned the driver, who doesn’t remember seeing her, but it’s possible she altered her appearance, so—”

Sam’s eyes opened. “Holy fuck,” he said.

“What?”

“Sarasota,” he said, struggling to sit up. He reached along the seat to take it out of its reclined position and ended up smacking himself on the back as it sprang forward. “Ow! Fuck! Mary Lou went back to Sarasota.”

Alyssa shook her head. “Why would she do that?”

“Hide where they’ve already searched—I told her that once. We were talking about some movie or some book that she’d read, and I told her if I was the fugitive or public enemy number one or whoever we were talking about, I’d end up back where I’d started. I said, then when everyone’s looking for me in Alaska—”

Mary Lou had told her mother that she was going to Alaska. “Did you really say Alaska?”

“Yeah. Because that’s what this was about. I remember now—it was a book she was reading about some guy who went to Anchorage because the mob was after him, and I was like, unless he changes his habits along with his appearance, the mob’s going to find him in Anchorage. I mean, sure, he can go out on the tundra and live in a house that’s five hundred miles from his nearest neighbors, but the reason the mob won’t find him isn’t because he’s isolated. It’s because his isolation keeps him from doing the things that’ll allow the mob to catch him. Stealing cars or gambling or fencing hot TVs. When it’s just him and the moose, and the moose don’t particularly want a great deal on a TV set... "

“I told her if this stupid ass guy in this book really wanted to get lost, he could get lost just as easily back where he started, in Newark, New Jersey. He just had to hang with a new crowd and stay away from the strip clubs and stop fencing TVs. No gambling, no prostitutes, no strippers, no drugs—he had to cut his ties with all those fun things the mob has its fingers in. He could live two streets down from the mob boss, but if he joined the church choir and volunteered at the old folks’ home and really changed his habits completely—you know, along with his appearance—he’d be invisible. And if he left a bunch of clues out there that he was heading for Alaska, he would be even more invisible. Because everyone on the mob’s payroll has already looked for him in New Jersey. They figure he’s long gone, so they’re waiting for him to show in Alaska, when in reality, where is he? Back in Newark.” Sam shook his head. “That’s what I told her. I had no idea she was actually listening. She usually didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”

“So where did Mary Lou go?” Alyssa asked. “Is Sarasota back where she started? Or San Diego?”

Sam was silent, staring out the window, wincing slightly as he repositioned the can of soda.

She knew he was thinking about that conversation he’d had with his next door neighbor—Don DaCosta, the mentally challenged man who saw “aliens” hanging out around Sam’s house. DaCosta had been questioned—gently, per Sam’s specific request—by agents who were still staking out the neighborhood and keeping an eye on both his and Sam’s houses. DaCosta couldn’t remember the name of the dark-skinned man he’d called the “flower guy.” The man he’d referred to as Mary Lou’s friend. How close had Mary Lou and this “friend” of hers been?

“I think she’d go to San Diego if she could,” Sam said, glancing over at Alyssa. “But I don’t think she had the money. Knowing how much she got for her car and knowing that she paid cash when she stayed at the Sunset Motel... I don’t think she could make it as far as California. I think she and Haley are in Sarasota.”

Alyssa nodded. “Then Sarasota is where we’ll start.”

“This is one freaking long shot,” Sam said.

“We have to start somewhere,” she told him.

He was quiet as she took the entrance ramp to 75 south. In fact, he was quiet for so long that when she glanced over at him, she expected to find him asleep.

Instead, he was watching her with those intensely blue eyes, his hair still slicked back from his face in that style Alyssa would forever associate with raw, screaming sex.

“I wish we had more than forty-eight hours,” he said quietly, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about the time they had left to find Mary Lou and Haley.

It was best to be honest, best not to leave him hoping for something that she’d be crazy to let happen.

“I’m doing this to help you find Haley,” she told him. “As far as you and I are concerned, I’m still feeling like we’ve been there, done that.”

“I hear you,” he said, but she knew he didn’t believe her.

And when he looked at her like that, with his heart in his eyes, she wasn’t sure she believed herself.