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“I can do that. Reports should hit your inbox any second.”

He thanked his friend and pulled up his email as he ended the call. With no other information to go on, other than somebody had purposely hit them, it was difficult to narrow the three accidents down and figure out which one Carrie had been talking about. Until he ran the license plates on all three limos. One of them was registered to the Doll House as a company vehicle. How had he missed her if she’d spotted him?

She said they’d dragged her from the limo. She was tiny enough it would have been easy to do during the chaos of an accident. It brought to mind a time he had staged a wreck to extract an asset for the CIA. The asset had not been small like Carrie, but it had still worked.

Setting the laptop aside, he looked at his watch. Still seven more hours. It was going to be a long day.

He willed himself to put her and their encounter behind him, but certain parts of his body weren’t getting the message.

***

Carrie paced the sidewalk in front of her building at ten minutes past eight. She had no idea how long it would take Peter to get to her, since she didn’t know where he was coming from.

After five more minutes of pacing, a black SUV pulled up and the passenger window rolled down.

“What the hell are you doing on the street? Get your ass in the car.” His voice was hard and his eyes stern.

She flung the door open and climbed in. The sight of him knocked the words right out of her and for a moment, she just stared.

“Close the damn door. Next time I tell you to stay in the building, you stay in the god damn building.”

She blinked rapidly and pulled the door shut.

“Sorry. I was getting claustrophobic inside.”

“You would really be claustrophobic in somebody’s trunk.”

He had a point, and the thought made her queasy.

“Thanks for getting me. I’m sorry I had to call you. I know…”

“Where do you live?” He cut her off and paid no attention to her expression of gratitude.

She gave him her address as she stretched the seatbelt across her chest and clicked it into place.

“I have no food at my house. We might want to stop for something.”

Again, he ignored her.How rude,she thought, as he eased into traffic.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into a drive through and ordered them both grilled chicken salads. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and leaned across him.

“We also want a double bacon cheeseburger with no lettuce or, and a large order of onion rings,” she yelled into the speaker.

When she brushed against him, his scent filled her nostrils. Memories of the way his mouth and hands felt on her body came rushing back, and she ached for him to touch her again. But he didn’t even seem to notice that she was practically laying in his lap. As the cashier repeated their order, she settled back into her seat, feeling flustered.

When they got to her apartment complex, he frowned.

“This place doesn’t look very secure.”

“Not all of us can afford to live in a fortress.”

“You’ve won multiple journalism awards. I figured you made better money. At least enough to afford a decent apartment.”

“There is nothing wrong with my apartment, and awards don’t always translate to money.” If he knew she’d won awards that meant he’d looked into her. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing.

He drove toward the building she’d indicated. “Just tell me you live upstairs. It’s not safe for a single woman to live alone on the first floor.”

She rolled her eyes, jumped out of the SUV, and made her way to the ground-floor apartment on the corner. It pissed her off that he assumed she was single. Then again, she’d followed him to the rooftop of his apartment building with no hesitation, so it wasn’t a bad assumption on his part.

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