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  The car was there.

  His heart slammed in his chest.

  “The bastard’s here,” he said hoarsely.

  Sasha’s eyes widened. “We’d better call Rand, maybe he can light a fire under them, at least get the deputy who was here back.”

  Ryan nodded, and since hers was in the car he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. At a sudden thought he silenced it before he clicked on the phone book to get Rand’s number. Sasha looked toward the house, a little warily, and Ryan’s pulse jumped at the thought that the guy might just be in the house, and watching them. He could—

  A scream cut through the quiet setting like the harsh whine of a buzz saw. A girl’s scream. From the back of the garage. Obviously the isolated setting had the pervert thinking he didn’t need soundproofing.

  Ryan and Sasha didn’t even exchange a glance; they were both running before the scream died away. By the time they reached the back of the garage they could hear a male voice, shouting a litany of curses.

  Ryan didn’t waste time with the screws this time; guessing the hasp would give more easily since it had been removed once already, and since he knew he himself hadn’t fully tightened the screws, he gave a fierce yank to the door, then another. The second one did it, and the door swung open. They shoved the tools out of the way and were crawling inside in seconds.

  The man from the Web site was spinning around as they came through. Behind him, Ryan glimpsed a terrified young girl, her bright green T-shirt torn and her face bleeding. Fury boiled up in him, and knowing surprise was the only weapon he had, he launched himself toward the man.

  They hit the ground hard. He might be shorter, but the guy outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. Ryan knew he could be in trouble. But the man seemed slow to respond. Ryan had the flash of thought that he wasn’t used to fighting a man, just frightened girls. That made his rage hotter. He landed two good punches before the man even struck a blow. And on the edge of his vision he saw Sasha. Ever coolheaded, she had the terrified girl in tow and was headed toward the way out.

  The first blow the man struck had those extra thirty pounds behind it. Air rushed out of Ryan’s lungs. For a moment he didn’t think he’d ever get it back. Another blow landed. Ribs screamed a protest. He rolled, taking the man with him. He’d never been in a real hand-to-hand like this. The only thing that was saving him was that apparently neither had this guy.

  He dodged most of the wild swings until he took a hit on the left side of his face, just under his eye. His vision blurred with the force of it. It cost him, as the man rolled, got a knee on his chest and began to bear down.

  “It was you!” he yelled. “You stole her.”

  Ryan couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to. Couldn’t get the air.

  “It was going to be perfect. You ruined it.”

  God, the man sounded like a whiny kid. Disgust filled him. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a sick weasel like this beat me, he thought, even as the need for air got more urgent. Another sound registered, barely; it was hard to think when you couldn’t breathe.

  He twisted sharply. Managed to dislodge the knee and suck in a breath. Brought up his own knee, hard and fast. Caught the man in the gut, heard him grunt loudly. In that instant Ryan managed to push him off and get to his knees. He readied himself for another onslaught.

  And the man went down like a felled tree.

  Ryan stared, a little slow to take in the sudden silence. Sasha was standing over the downed man, the shovel she’d used to fell him still in her hand.

  Slowly, he got to his feet. Sasha looked at him and said, her voice anxious, “Are you all right?”

  After a moment’s mental inventory, he nodded. “I think so.”

  She kept a wary eye on the man, who was stirring.

  “The girl, is she all right?” he asked.

  The look she gave him then made every ache and pain he knew he was going to be feeling for weeks worth it.

  “Yes. Yes, she is. Thanks to you.”

  Belatedly he went to her, took the shovel in one hand, and wrapped his other arm around her. She hugged him gingerly, but he tightened his grip, showing her silently he didn’t care if it hurt.

  They stood that way, taking a certain grim pleasure in the whimpering moans of the man on the floor, until the cavalry in the form of Rand Singleton arrived.

  She’d never been so exhausted at the end of a case, Sasha thought. It wasn’t that it had been more physical—well, other than those last few minutes—so it had to be the unexpected emotional impact.

  That, and the fact that her adrenaline had soared at the sight of that pervert trying to kill Ryan.

  They’d spent hours unraveling it all, with Rand thankfully taking the lead, using his reputation with the sheriff’s office to ease the process. The fact that one of the first things he’d done was determine that the bogus call of a major-injury traffic accident that had pulled the deputy assigned to watch the house—something they now suspected he had done every time he brought a new victim to his lair to make sure there was no one to see him—had indeed come from Dennis Sadler Carlton’s phone had smoothed the waters considerably.

  The picture that had gradually emerged had been ugly, but not unexpected. Sasha was pleased, as much as one could be when dealing with such twisted psyches, that her analysis had been spot-on. After the death of his mother who had been the creator and stern administrator of the perfect garden, the impulses Carlton had been forced to smother broke free. At first he had paid willing models to pose for him, but soon it wasn’t enough. He wanted the real thing, young innocence to be terrified by his power. And the Internet had beckoned as the easiest and most effective way to lure his prey. He’d borrowed photos from various sources online to set up his fictional personas. And he’d been clever enough—and coldly calculating enough, which Sasha hoped would hinder his chances of claiming insanity in any way—to keep them barely legal, to lessen the intensity of any searching by the police, and his trouble if he got caught.

  As for Trish, after a lengthy phone call to her parents on her brother’s phone, she had told them she was going to spend one more night with Nick and his mother, to thank them for all they’d done, and she would use her return ticket tomorrow. It had taken a bit of persuading to convince Ryan to let her stay, but after an hour-long session on the Singletons’ porch swing and his own discussion with their parents, he’d finally relented.

  Sasha leaned back in the luxurious seat of the Hawk IV. It hadn’t been Josh this time, but instead a dark-haired woman with a pixie haircut that suited her beautiful features and highlighted her sparkling eyes. She’d introduced herself as Tess Machado, and Sasha recognized her name immediately; this was the woman Ryan had told her about, Josh’s personal pilot who had flown the helicopter in the search for Hope Taggert.

  “I’ve been instructed to take the scenic route and leave you to yourselves,” she’d said breezily to them as they’d boarded. “Somebody seems to think you two might have some things to talk out.”

  Neither one of them had been able to look each other in the eye after that. Rand had a big mouth, she’d thought. Or maybe Kate. Funny how it seemed anybody in love wanted it for everybody else, too. Nice, but funny.

  Ryan came out of the luxurious room that seemed far too elegant to be called simply a lavatory. He’d cleaned up a bit more, and dug an undamaged shirt out of his backpack to replace the one that had been bloodied in his valiant fight.

  He sat down beside her. She looked at him, at the puffiness of his face beneath his left eye, and the two split knuckles on his right hand.

  “My hero,” she whispered. The words were teasing, but the sentiment was sincere, and she made sure he heard it.

  For a long moment he said nothing. Then, abruptly and unexpectedly, he said, “I can’t change my life, Sasha. I can’t make my history match what your family went through. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

  The stark honesty of that struck her silent.
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br />   “I know,” he went on, “that what happened to your family has shaped who you are, what you do. And I know it’s made you the best at what you do. But do you really want that past to determine all of who you are?”

  That observation was so perceptive she shifted almost uncomfortably in her seat. “I admit, I take things a bit too seriously all the time.”

  “A bit?”

  “Okay, a lot.” She took a deep breath, another glance at what was likely going to be a pretty fierce black eye reminding her that he’d earned this. “In my way, I was as tunnel-visioned about my work as you were about computers. But the difference was, you also took time to have fun. I never did. And I used that against you. I’m sorry.”

  Ryan stared at her, his expression telling her he’d never expected her to admit that. That alone told her it had been the right thing to do. He reached out and took her hand.

  “And I took for granted all the things you treasure most. But no more, Sasha. The cost of that was nearly losing Trish, and would be losing you all over again. I’m not willing to pay that price.”

  Her breath caught.

  “Was she right? Trish, I mean?” he asked. “Do we…finally have it together? Are we in the right place at the right time, this time?”

  “We are,” she said firmly, with the certainty of everything she’d seen and learned about him since he’d called her that morning that seemed so long ago telling her Ryan Barton now was the man she’d hoped he was two years ago. And now, knowing she herself hadn’t been as fair as she’d thought, she would have to make darn sure neither of them slipped back into the old ways that had driven them apart.

  “Sash,” he murmured, reaching for her.

  She smiled at the shortened version of her name that she’d hated as a child, decided she liked it from him. But she liked even more the warmth of him, the strength of him, as he held her close. As unexpectedly fierce as he’d been in a fight, he was gentle now, and Sasha snuggled closer, savoring it.

  “Ryan?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Will you teach me how to have fun?”

  He went very still.

  “Right now?” she added, very aware that there was a stateroom as luxurious as that bathroom just feet away.

  As easily as that, in that stateroom—with a condom found in that clearly fully equipped bathroom—they picked up where’d they’d left off, not that night at the Singletons’, but that night two years ago. The promise, the fire, the passion now seemed as if it had only been postponed, not ended. Postponed until they grew into it, herself, Sasha admitted, as much as him.

  And then there was no room for thought. All reservations gone now, they kissed, tasted, explored, and when at last he slid into her, she felt an unexpected rush of tears at the sweet perfection of it. It was hot yet gentle, too slow and too quick, and when she felt the tide within her rise swiftly, it took only Ryan’s guttural groan of her name in a voice saturated with pleasure to send it boiling over.

  It was much later when she heard him chuckle.

  “What?”

  “Redstone water,” he said.

  It took her a split second to remember his joke about love and marriage apparently being contagious in the water at Redstone these days. Laughter bubbled up inside her, a kind she’d never felt before. Not just joyous, or happy.

  Carefree, she realized suddenly.

  “Now,” Ryan said, rising up on one elbow to look at her, a smile that matched her laugh on his face, “we get to the fun part.”

  “I thought we did that,” she said, blushing even as she said it.

  “We,” he said, “are just getting started.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3819-4

  HIS PERSONAL MISSION

  Copyright © 2009 by Janice Davis Smith

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  † Trinity Street West

  † Trinity Street West

  † Trinity Street West

  † Trinity Street West

  † Trinity Street West

  † Trinity Street West

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated

  * Redstone, Incorporated