Shooting Starr

was still enfolded in his arms, shaking nearly as badly as he was, and her hand, trapped between them, was making little stroking motions on the upper part of his chest.

He cleared his throat. She whispered, “What?”

And he said, “Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“Then what did you want me to shut up for?”

Damned if he could remember. He scowled up at the flitting bats and after a moment began to laugh silently.

“What?” It was quick and suspicious now.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing.” A distinct clicking noise distracted him and he growled angrily, “Listen to you-your teeth are rattling. I’ve got to get you home before you catch your death of cold. And just so you know, it’s dark, dammit. That may not matter much to you, but it would be nice if one of us could see where we’re going.”

She pushed abruptly away from him, and he had to shift his arm to her waist and get a grip on her belt to keep her from slipping out of his grasp.

“No problem,” she said, and her voice was artificially light and frosty and carefully restrained. “Bubba can lead us home-can’t you, Bubba? Where are you, boy?” She paused, and then a dark shape separated itself from the grasses and thumped wetly against her legs. “Oh, there you are. Yes, you’re a good dog. Let’s go home, Bubba. That’s a good boy…”

The dog took off walking and so did she. C.J. didn’t have much choice but to do the same, so he did. “I was kidding,” he muttered after he’d wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gotten her tucked up securely again against his side. “Dammit, I can see well enough to get us home.”

In that same annoyingly prissy-and obviously ticked-off-voice she said, “Then you were probably kidding when you said that about catching cold, as well. You do know you don’t get colds from being wet? You get colds from germs.”

“Huh. Is that right, Dr. Brown?”

“Yes, it is-and don’t be sarcastic.”

“Well,” he said after a moment, “I’m not about to argue with a woman who just threw me into a pond.”

He was caught by surprise when she jerked and then tried to turn within the circle of his arm. “Oh, God. C.J., I’m so sorry about that. Really. I don’t know-”

“Don’t start that again,” he growled, reeling her back against him. And after a moment, he said, “I just want to know one thing. How did you do it? I mean, where did somebody who looks like-” He squelched the fairy-tale images in his mind and began again. “Where did you learn a move like that, anyway?”

“Oh…it’s no big deal.” He felt her shrug. “I’ve had some self-defense training-quite a bit, actually. In my line of work it’s pretty much a necessity. And then, after I got involved with the organization…well, we deal with some very violent people, after all. And since I don’t like guns-”

Yeah, right. After the calm and efficient way she’d pointed a loaded one at him? He snorted and muttered, “You sure coulda fooled me.”

He felt her flinch again. “Oh, C.J., believe me-”

“You pointed a damn gun straight at me! Hijacked me!” The anger bubbled up like an unexpected burp and was out of him before he could stop it. “A loaded gun. Aimed right at me. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Lady, I coulda gone my whole life without having something like that happen to me!”

She paced beside him in silence while he thought over what he’d said to see if he regretted any of it. He’d about decided he didn’t when she heaved a sigh and said unsteadily, “You have every right to be mad at me.”

Mad at her? It astonished him to realize that he was and probably had been mad at her all along, deep down, telling himself he wasn’t because he didn’t think he ought to be angry with someone who was in such trouble, and wounded and blind and vulnerable. It astonished him, too, to realize that as soon as she said that, all the anger seemed to leak right out of him.

“I’d never have shot you, you know.” She paused, then went on in a grave, shivery voice, “I only decided to carry a weapon that one time because of Vasily-because I knew how dangerous he was. Now I’m sorry and I wish I hadn’t, but…all I can say is, it seemed like the best thing to do at the time.”

The best thing to do at the time. Images flashed through his mind: Mary Kelly’s eyes and her sad little smile when she said, “You just don’t know what it is you’re doin’.” Two women and a little girl walking away from him across a deserted parking lot toward the lights of a police station…

He took a breath. “Yeah, I guess I know how that is.” She tilted her head toward him in an inquiring way, and he gave a huff of laughter that hurt him inside. “That’s what I keep tellin’ myself about turnin’ you guys in. It seemed like the right thing at the time. Looks like we were both wrong.”

She didn’t reply, and they walked on together, just the two of them now. With the house lights visible through the trees, Bubba had evidently figured his job was done. Chills still racked her from time to time, and him, too, but it seemed to him there was something sort of companionable about it now-shared shivers in a friendly darkness.

Maybe it was that cloak of darkness, making her a faceless, warm and vibrant presence, but he didn’t think about how otherworldly beautiful she was, or how bruised and battered, but only how real…how human.

Somewhere along the line her arm had crept around him, and her fingers were hooked into the waistband of his jeans. He thought how nicely she fit there against his side, and how much more comfortable she seemed to be with him now. And how comfortable he was not. That was when it hit him. That was when he knew that he wanted her. It felt to him now that he had done so for quite a long time.

When had it happened? It couldn’t have been from the first moment he saw her. He’d thought her barely a girl then, in punky spiked hair and hooded sweatshirt, with a cell phone stuck in her ear. A girl with silver eyes, it was true, but since when had he lusted after a woman because of the color of her eyes? Shortly after that she’d pulled a gun on him and hijacked his truck, not exactly actions designed to excite a man’s libido. And yet…and yet. He had found her exciting. He had. In some strange way she’d fascinated him…troubled him. And he definitely recalled the way her body had felt, pinned under him while he’d wrested the gun away from her, every slender, well-muscled writhing inch of it. But then, he was only human…wasn’t he?

He’d thought of her for weeks after that, second-guessing his decision to turn her in to the law, anguishing over mental images of her in a jail cell, and while he distinctly remembered her voice and her eyes and the reproachful looks she’d given him, he hadn’t once pictured her naked in his arms…had he?

Then had come the shooting, and the terrible images on the television screen, and the hospital. He didn’t like to think about the hospital, especially those first hours-the way she’d looked, lying there, bruised, bandaged and blind. The way he’d felt. The pain, the awfulness of it, was too recent and far too vivid still; his mind shied away from it with a shudder.

So, when had it happened? Was it when he’d carried her up the stairs to his old bedroom, showing off a little bit because she’d taunted him, and her body thinner and lighter than he remembered, and a strange and unfamiliar tenderness filling up his insides? Or later, those embarrassing moments when she’d gotten tangled up with him in his mother’s kitchen, and he’d lost his breath and his composure because she’d touched his naked chest? Oh, yeah. But by then the lust that had lit up his insides had already seemed familiar to him.

So, in the long run, he supposed, when it had happened didn’t really matter. The fact was that it had. He wanted Caitlyn. He wanted her in his bed. He wanted her in his arms. He wanted her body warm and naked and trembling, tangled and intertwined with his in all the ways two bodies could be. The fibers of his being had known these things for a long, long time, and now his mind did, too. The only thing he didn’t know was what he was going to do about it.

That night, for the first time since the shooting, Caitlyn dreamed of Ari Vasily. Or rather, she dreamed of being chased by cloaked, faceless men, and the sound of gunshots zipping past her, and all the people she loved in the world falling down around her, one by one, in pools of thick crimson blood.

She awoke drenched in sweat with her head pounding so fiercely she feared for a moment C.J. was right, and that she had after all contracted some awful flu bug as a penance for dumping them both in the pond. Her weakness frightened her. She was so recently out of the hospital and her customary confidence in her own good health so badly shaken that she wavered on the brink of rousing Jess.

But as she lay rigid, trying to work up the courage to get out of bed, her galloping pulse slowly receded and so did the throbbing in her head. She drew long, measured breaths and concentrated on relaxing every part of her