Her Forgotten Betrayal(12)

And for the life of her, she couldn’t resist him. It felt as if she were slipping backward in time. As if they’d already shared a moment like this, many moments like this. Yet she’d swear to her grave that, as compelling and dead sexy as his features were, they’d never met.

“Who are you?” she demanded again, telling herself to be terrified of this man but finding it impossible to let go of his hand…or of the feeling of security flooding her in response to his presence.

“You mean, am I the source of whatever’s scaring you?” he asked, daring her to deny what she’d been thinking. When her lips parted wordlessly, he said, “Let’s go see.”

…

Cole shouldn’t have touched Shaw again. He shouldn’t still be here at all. Her unconscious mind had begged for his help, asked him not to leave her. But awake, Shaw clearly found his presence anything but reassuring.

He was already at risk of being pulled from the mountain simply for making contact with her—a suspect who was a hair’s breadth away from being indicted on felony charges for espionage and treason. What was he thinking? Once he’d made sure she was awake and unharmed, and when she hadn’t recognized him, he should have backed out of the house and left her alone to heal.

Except healing wouldn’t begin to resolve the rest of her problems, not unless she could remember what he needed her to so he could clear her name.

Someone was trafficking in Cassidy Global’s DOD intelligence secrets, selling them to unfriendly governments, mostly in the Middle East. Too many people believed that someone was Shaw Cassidy. From the start, Cole had insisted she be treated as a witness in need of protection. In reality, she was at the top of an FBI watch list. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had spent the last six months, via a task force armed with both Bureau agents and Justice Department officers, building a case against Cassidy Global. All that had protected Shaw from indictment so far was that there was no hard evidence of her involvement, no direct links between Cassidy’s CEO and the top-secret research material cropping up on the intelligence black market.

At first, the leaks had pertained to state-of-the-art web and Internet coding, advanced fiber optics, and the latest discoveries in nanotechnology. None of which was handled at Shaw’s nuclear research offices in Atlanta. Then, three months ago, the Iranians had gotten their hands on schematics almost identical to Cassidy’s groundbreaking designs for the semiconductors, transistors, and other high-speed elements used in nuclear instrumentation. That jump in technology, if not checked, would accelerate Iran’s march toward developing nuclear weapons. The research had come from one of Shaw’s pet projects.

From then on, the direction of the task force’s efforts had shifted firmly toward her. Her late-night attack at her office had solidified suspicions that she was up to no good.

The conference room where she’d been found bleeding from a superficial head wound had been wiped clean by the time security arrived. There’d been no forensic evidence of the shooting or of the meeting she said she’d overheard. There’d been only Shaw, holding the bag for everything, looking as if some under-the-table transaction had gone bad, and she’d been left for dead while her lowlife associates cleaned up after themselves and disappeared.

Cole didn’t buy it.

Shaw’s exile to High Lake was Rick Dawson’s show, set in place because of the slim chance that she might turn out to be merely a high-profile witness in need of protection by the Federal Marshals Office. So far, the task-force leader was going through the motions of giving Shaw a chance to clear herself. Yet every power-that-be involved with the situation saw her as a traitor who was being given a temporary reprieve while legal grounds could be secured to pry the details of her latest clandestine activities from her impaired memory.

The wolves were circling. And Cole, the only person who fully believed in her innocence, was sitting front-row-center, powerless and watching the hammer come down.

God, he really shouldn’t be in this house, leading her away from her grandmother’s overly decorated parlor. But she’d woken dangerously disconnected and paranoid, just as she had at the hospital. She was still seeing more of her nightmare world than she was their reality. No way he could leave her alone, not until he was certain she’d merely spooked herself, and that no one had in fact broken into the mansion.

He’d checked the place’s dated security system while he waited for her to regain consciousness. Something had shorted it out. He couldn’t find any obvious signs of tampering. But it was still an argument for reconnoitering the place as soon as he got the chance. Before he reported her latest episode to Atlanta, he needed to see for himself what had happened. With Shaw along for the ride, he needed to investigate where it had occurred. Presumably somewhere near the kitchen, the last place where the lights had flickered on after she’d left her bedroom.