Spinning on her heel, she took advantage of the dome light inside the car, heading for the door they’d just come through, determined to slam it behind her and barricade it with a chair. Donovan might not have pulled a knife, but he was acting as crazy as the guy who had, and no way was she allowing him to—
She stopped abruptly. Against the back wall of the garage, half hidden by the car, a man lay on the cement floor. Half-closed eyes seemed to stare at her, but they were unfocused and unblinking. Undeniably dead.
Holy shit. Lifting a hand to her mouth, she smothered a gag as she took it all in, wide-eyed. The slack face with Middle Eastern features. The arm draped awkwardly across his body. The jacket, unzipped and twisted as if he’d been dragged. The dark stain covering almost all of one leg.
“Goddamn it,” Donovan muttered. “I told you not to move.” A distant part of her brain registered the car door slamming shut as his hands gripped her shoulders, turning her around, walking her dazed body to the other side of car. All she heard was the chanting in her own mind: Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…
He pulled and pushed, and she followed his unspoken direction, moving automatically, sliding into the passenger seat, vaguely aware that he buckled her seat belt before closing the door and rounding the car to get behind the wheel. The sudden loud whir of a motor signaled the garage door opening.
The car roared to life and he backed it out quickly. Her stunned gaze took in the briefly lit scene before the door came down again—the motorcycle on the far right that hadn’t been there before—Donovan’s, she realized—and the dead body against the wall. Oh my God.
“You okay?”
She turned slowly, staring at him. “There’s a dead man in the garage.”
“Like I told you.”
She worked at ordering her thoughts, trying to make sense of a world turned suddenly upside down. “You killed him?” she croaked.
His jaw hardened as he looked straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to.”
Her mind spun wildly. Oh, you didn’t mean to. That’s okay, then. When she had no response, he reached into his boot and pulled out a folded knife. With the flick of a button, the knife sprang open. He held it up between them, the curved blade gleaming in the dashboard lights, razor sharp and deadly.
She uttered a startled scream and shrank away, huddling against the door and wondering how badly she’d be hurt if she opened it and threw herself out at highway speeds.
“He was carrying this. He would have killed you, Jessie.” In one efficient motion he closed the knife and dropped it back into his boot.
She relaxed marginally but continued to stare, struggling for coherent thought. If he sensed it, he ignored her, taking a turnoff and keeping his eyes on the road ahead, shadowed gaze intent on the dark strip of highway. Wherever he was taking her, he was not running in aimless panic. Everything about Donovan, right down to the way he gave orders and the decisive way he acted, was efficient and purposeful. Professional, she thought, chilled by the idea. Right down to killing a man, which she suspected was not a first for him, or he would have been more shaken up. She was with a professional killer. Was effectively his prisoner.
And incredibly, he’d saved her life. Twice, if she believed him.
She curled against the door as she took in his tight, determined expression and the muscular lines of his body, and shivered with fear. Also with an awareness she refused to name because it led back to that same fear.
Who in the hell was this guy?
Chapter Three
She was deathly afraid of him.
Donovan grappled with the mixed feelings that raised—relief that she was cooperating and, in an uncomfortable realization, disappointment. He wanted her to feel safe with him.
It shouldn’t matter. Not the terror that widened her soft brown eyes, and not the way her soft skin flinched at his touch. None of it mattered as long as he got the information Wally had left with her. But Jessie had meant a lot to Wally, and he would be upset at the rough manner with which Donovan had treated his daughter. That was enough reason to feel bad about the way she was cowering against the passenger door.
The fact that she also embodied a strange mix of innocence and sexuality disturbed him, turning his brain fuzzy while electrifying his hormones. It was wrong. Tyler Donovan didn’t take direction from his libido, especially not over a woman like Jess, who didn’t even mourn the loss of the father who had adored her. Also, she was far too innocent and naive to be exposed to someone like him. Yet some base part of him wanted to pull Wally’s daughter into the nearest bedroom, strip off her demure business suit, and teach her to unleash her inner vixen.