Christmas Kidnapping
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Cindi Myers
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Harlequin🏙️ Contemporary
HarlequinChapter One
Experience had taught Andrea McNeil to trust her first impressions of a man. She had learned to read temperament and tendencies in the set of his shoulders and the shadows in his eyes. Whether they were heroes or the perpetrators of heinous crimes, they all revealed themselves to her as much by their silences as by what they said.
The man who stood before her now radiated both strength and anxiety in the stubborn set of his broad shoulders and the tight line of his square jaw. He wore his blond hair short and neat, his face clean shaven, his posture military straight, though he was dressed in jeans, hiking boots and a button-down shirt and not a uniform. He moved with the raw sensuality of a hunter, muscular shoulders sliding beneath the soft cotton of his shirt, and when his hazel eyes met hers, she saw pride and courage and deep grief.
“All I want you to do is help me remember the face of the man who killed my friend,” he said, before she had even invited him to sit on the sofa across from her chair in her small office just off the main street of Durango, Colorado.
She didn’t allow her face to betray alarm at his statement. This certainly wasn’t the worst thing she had heard from the people who came to her for help. “Please sit down, Agent Prescott, and I’ll tell you a little more about how I work.”
FBI special agent Jack Prescott lowered himself gingerly onto the sofa. He grimaced as he shifted his weight. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
She kept her gaze steady on him, letting him know she wasn’t buying this statement.
He shifted again. “I took a couple of bullets in a firefight a couple of months back,” he said. “The cold bothers me a little.”
The window behind him showed a gentle snowfall, the remnants from the latest winter storm. A man who had been shot—twice—and was still on medical leave probably ought to be home recuperating, but she might as well have told a man like Jack Prescott that he needed to take up knitting and mah-jongg. She didn’t have to read the information sheet he had filled out to know that much about him. Even sitting still across from her, he looked poised to leap into action. She would have bet next month’s rent that he was armed at the moment and that he had called into his office at least once a day every day of his enforced time off.
Her husband, Preston, had been the same way. All his devotion to duty and reckless courage had gotten him in the end was killed.
She focused on Agent Prescott’s paperwork to force the memories back into the locked box where they belonged. Jack Prescott was single, thirty-four years old and a graduate of Columbia with a major in electrical engineering and robotics. Twelve years with the FBI. A letter of commendation. He was in Durango on special assignment and currently on medical leave. He took no medications beyond the antibiotics prescribed for his gunshot wounds, and he had no known allergies. “Tell me about this firefight,” she said. “The one in which you were injured.”
He sat on the edge of the sofa cushion, gripping his knees. “What happened to me doesn’t matter,” he said. “But my friend Gus Mathers was killed in that fight. I saw it happen. I saw who killed him.”
“That would be traumatic for anyone,” she said.
“You don’t understand. I saw the man who killed Gus, but I can’t remember his face.”
“What you’re talking about is upsetting, but it’s not unusual,” she said. “The mind often blocks out the memory of traumatic events as a means of protection.”
He leaned forward, his gaze boring into her, his expression fierce. “You don’t understand. I don’t forget faces. It’s what I do, the way some people remember numbers or have perfect pitch.”
She set aside the clipboard with the paperwork and leaned toward him, letting him know she was focused completely on him. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.
“I’m what they call a super-recognizer. If I look at someone for even a few seconds, I remember them. I remember supermarket clerks and bus drivers and people I pass on the street. Yet I can’t remember the man who murdered my best friend.”
“Your talent for remembering faces doesn’t exempt you from the usual responses to trauma,” she said. “Your memory of the events may come back with time, or it may never return.”
He set his jaw, the look of a man who was used to forcing the outcome he desired. “The cop who referred me to you said you could hypnotize me—that that might be a way to get the memory to return.”
“I do sometimes use hypnosis in my therapy, but in your case, I don’t believe it would work.”
“Why not?”
Because there are some things even a will as strong as yours can’t make happen, she thought. “Hypnosis requires the subject to relax and surrender to the process,” she said. “In order for me to hypnotize you, you would have to trust me and be willing to surrender control of the situation. You aren’t a man who is used to surrendering, and you haven’t known me long enough to trust me.”
“You’re saying I’m a control freak.”
She smiled at his choice of words. “Your job—your survival and the survival of those who work with you—requires you to control as many variables as possible,” she said. “In this case, your need to control is an asset.” Most of the time.
“I want you to hypnotize me,” he said.
“Consciously wanting to be hypnotized and your conscious mind being willing to relax enough to allow that to happen are two different things,” she said. “I’m certainly willing to attempt hypnotic therapy at some point, but not on a first visit. It’s too soon. Once we have explored the issues that may be causing you to suppress this memory, we may have more success in retrieving it, through hypnosis or by some other means.”
He stood and began to pace, a caged tiger—one with a limp that, even agitated, he tried to disguise. “I don’t need to talk about my feelings,” he said, delivering the words with a sneer. “I don’t need therapy. I know the memory of the man who shot Gus is in my head. I just have to find a way to access that information again.”
“Agent Prescott, please sit down.”
“No. If you can’t help me, I won’t waste any more of your time.”
He turned toward the door. “Please, don’t go,” she called. His agitation and real grief touched her. “I’m willing to try things your way. But I don’t want you to be disappointed if it doesn’t work.”
He sat again, tension still radiating from him, but some of the darkness had gone out of his eyes. “What do I do?”
“You don’t do anything,” she said. “The whole point is to relax and not try to control the situation. Why don’t you start by taking off your shoes and lying back on the couch? Get comfortable.”
He hesitated, then removed his hiking boots and lined them up neatly at the end of the sofa. He lay back, hands at his sides. His feet hung over one end and his shoulders stretched the width of the cushion. There probably wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man, but he had plenty of hard muscle. He wasn’t the type you’d want to meet alone in a dark alley, though maybe a dark bedroom...
The thought surprised her, and she felt a rush of heat to her face, glad Jack had his back to her so he couldn’t wonder what was making her blush. He folded his arms across his chest, a posture of confrontation and protection. “Put your hands down by your sides,” she suggested. “And close your eyes.”
“Aren’t you going to swing a pendulum or a watch or something in front of my eyes?” he asked.
“That’s not the approach I use. I prefer something called progressive relaxation.”
“Is that the same as hypnosis?”
“It’s a way of readying your body for hypnotic suggestion. Now, close your eyes and focus on your toes.”
“My toes?”
“Agent Prescott, if you’re going to question every instruction I give, this isn’t going to work.”
“Sorry. I’ll focus on my toes.”
“Relax your toes. Now focus on your ankles.” She made her voice as low and soothing as possible. “Imagine a warm wave of relaxation moving up your legs, from your toes and feet to your ankles and then your calves and knees. Your body feels very comfortable and heavy, the muscles completely relaxed. The sensation moves up your thighs to your torso. Every bit of tension is leaving your body. Each vertebra of your spine relaxes, one by one. You’re feeling very heavy and languid.”
She continued the journey up his body, instructing him to relax his shoulders and arms and hands. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Fine.” His voice was clear and alert, his posture still as stiff as if he were standing for inspection.
“Think of someplace pleasant and relaxing,” she said. “A mountain meadow with a waterfall or a beautiful beach with ocean waves rolling in. Choose whatever place you like to go to relax.”
“Okay.”
“What are you thinking of?” she asked.
“The gym.”
She blinked. “The gym?”
“Working out relaxes me.”
That explained those impressive shoulders and biceps. “That kind of relaxation is a little too active. What about vacations? Do you like to go to the beach? Or to a lake in the mountains.”
“The last vacation I took, Gus and I and some other guys went hiking. We climbed a mountain.”
She could imagine—all macho competitiveness: heavy packs, miles logged, not bathing or shaving for days, eating food out of cans. She shuddered. “I don’t think this is going to work,” she said.
He sat up. “Let’s try again. Do the thing with the pendulum. I think I would do better if I had something to focus on.”
She hesitated, but if he left here, she would feel she had failed him. She reached up and unclasped the necklace she wore—a gold chain with a gold heart-shaped locket. An anniversary gift from Preston a few months before he died. “Sit back and relax as much as you can,” she said.
Jack settled back against the sofa, his gaze fixed on the necklace. “Focus on the heart,” she said, and began to gently swing the locket from side to side. “As you focus, count back slowly, from ninety-nine.”
“Ninety-nine,” he said. “Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven.”
She shifted her own gaze from the locket to Jack and found herself staring directly into his gold-green eyes. The naked pain and vulnerability revealed in his gaze startled her so much she almost dropped the necklace. He took her hand. “Please. You have to help me.”
His grip was strong and warm but not painful. Far from it. His touch sent warmth coursing through her, as if someone had injected heated platelets into her bloodstream. The heat settled in her lower abdomen, reminding her in a way she hadn’t been reminded in many months that she was a woman with a very attractive, virile man touching her. She carefully extricated her hand, which still tingled from the contact. “I want to help you, Agent Prescott,” she said. “But the mind is the most complicated machine imaginable. There isn’t a formula or solution to solve every problem.”
The clock on her desk chimed and she glanced at it. “I’m afraid our session today is over, but I hope you will make an appointment to see me again.”
He looked away, frustration clear in the tension along his jaw and the defensive set of his shoulders. “Do you really think it would help me remember Gus’s killer?”
“I can’t promise you will ever remember what you saw the day your friend was killed,” she said. “But I can help you come to terms with what happened.”
“Maybe I’ll come back,” he said.
“I really do think it would help you to talk to someone,” she said. “Not only about Gus, but about your own injuries. Being forced into medical leave must be difficult for you.”
He looked startled, his eyes locked to hers once more. “The other team members kidded me, said I should enjoy the paid vacation. But it’s driving me crazy knowing Gus’s killer is out there and I’m not doing anything to help stop him.”
“That’s something we can talk about the next time you’re in.” She stood, and he rose also and followed her to the door.
“Do you have another client now?” he asked.
“No, it’s time for my lunch break.”
He checked his watch, a heavy stainless model she recognized as designed for mountaineers and other outdoorsmen. “Let me take you to lunch. I want to make up for wasting your time this morning.”
Her heart sped up at the prospect of being alone with him in a nonclinical setting. “Agent Prescott, I don’t think—”
“Call me Jack. And I just want to talk. Not therapy talk, just, you know, conversation. I’m bored out of my skull not working, and I don’t know many people in Durango. Not outside of work, anyway. You seem like you’d be good company, that’s all.”
She should say no. Professional ethics aside—and really, there was nothing unethical about having lunch with a client—spending more time with Jack was dangerous to her equilibrium. He was exactly the type of man who attracted her most—powerful, dedicated, intelligent and virile. And all those traits made him the worst sort of man for her to be with.
But the temptation to sit across from him and learn more of his story, to have his attention fixed on her for a little while longer, won out over common sense. “All right,” she said. “I can have lunch with you.”
* * *
SITTING ACROSS FROM Dr. Andrea McNeil in a café down the street from her office, Jack felt better than he had since the shoot-out. Maybe it was being with a pretty woman. He hadn’t dated in a while and she was definitely a looker—her businesslike blue suit did nothing to hide her shapely figure, and her high-heeled boots showed her gorgeous legs to advantage. Her sleek brown hair was piled up on top of her head, drawing attention to the smooth white column of her throat, and she had lively brown eyes above a shapely nose and slightly pouty lips.
But though he could appreciate her beauty, he attributed most of his good mood to the way she focused on him. As if anything he had to say were the most interesting thing she had heard today. That was probably just her therapist’s training, but it was doing him a lot of good, so he wasn’t going to complain.
“How did you hear about me?” she asked when they had ordered—a salad for her, a chicken sandwich for him.
“I have a friend—Carson Allen, with the Bureau’s resident agency here in Durango. He and I have done some hiking and stuff. Anyway, he said you’re the counselor for the police department and the sheriff’s office. How did you end up with that job?”
“My husband was a police officer.” She focused on buttering a roll from the basket the waitress had brought.
“Was?”
“He was killed three years ago, by a drug dealer who was fleeing the scene of a burglary.”
The news that she was a widow—a cop’s widow—hit him like a punch in the gut. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been tough.”
She met his gaze, serene, not a hint of tears. “It was. But I lived through it. I have a son, Ian.” She smiled, a look that transformed her face from pretty to breathtaking. “He’s five. I had to be strong for him.”
“Sounds like he’s a pretty lucky little boy.” And her husband had been a lucky man. Jack envied his coworkers who had found women who could put up with the demands of a law enforcement job. He had never been that fortunate.
“Tell me more about this talent of yours for remembering faces,” she said. “What did you call it?”
He recognized the shift away from any more personal conversation about her, and he accepted it. “I’m a super-recognizer. I think it’s one of those made-up government descriptors the bureaucrats love so much.”
“I’ll admit I’m unfamiliar with the concept. It must be pretty rare.”
He shrugged. “It’s not something that comes up in casual conversation. Scientists are just beginning to study facial-recognition abilities. More people may be super-recognizers than we realize. They just don’t admit it.”
“Why not admit it?” she asked.
“It makes for awkward social situations. You learn pretty quickly not to admit you recognize people you haven’t been introduced to. I mean, if I tell someone I remember seeing them at a football game last fall or on the bus last week, they think I’m a spy or a stalker or something.”
“I guess that would be strange.” She speared a tomato wedge with her fork. “How old were you when you realized you had this talent?”
“Pretty young.” For a long time, he had thought that was the way everyone saw the world, as populated by hundreds of individual, distinct people who stayed in his head. “In school it was kind of a neat parlor trick to play on people—go into a store to buy a soda and come out three minutes later and be able to describe everyone who was in there. But as I got older, I stopped telling people about it or showing off.”
“Because of the social awkwardness.”
“Because it made me different, and if there’s anything teenagers don’t want to be, it’s different.”
She laughed, and they waited while the waitress refilled their glasses. “Did your ability get you the job with the Bureau?” she asked. “Or did that come later?”
He shrugged and crunched a chip. “You know the government—they test you for everything. I was doing a different job—one that used my electrical and robotics background—when someone in the Bureau decided to put together a whole unit of people like me and I got tapped for it. Gus was a recognizer, too.” A familiar pain gripped his chest at the mention of Gus. Jack didn’t have any brothers, but he had felt as close to Gus as he would have any brother. They had been through so much together.
“Is that what brought you two together?” she asked.
“Not at first. We were in the same class at Quantico and we hit it off there. We had probably known each other a year or so before I found out he had the same knack I had for remembering faces. We used to joke about it some, but we never thought anything of it. Not until both of us were recruited for this special project.”
“That’s really fascinating.” She took a bite of her salad and he dug into the chicken sandwich. The silence between them as they ate was comfortable, as if they had known each other a long time, instead of only a few hours.
But after a few more minutes he began to feel uneasy. Not because of anything she was doing. He glanced around them, noting the group of women who sat at a table to their left, shopping bags piled around them. A trio of businessmen occupied a booth near the front window, deep in conversation. A family of tourists, an older couple and two clerks he recognized from the hotel where he had stayed his first two nights in town months ago filled the other tables. Nothing suspicious about any of them. He swiveled his head to take in the bar and gooseflesh rose along his arms when his gaze rested on a guy occupying a stool front and center, directly beneath the flat-screen television that was broadcasting a bowling tournament. Average height, short brown hair, flannel shirt and jeans. Nothing at all remarkable about him, yet Jack was positive he had seen the guy before. Probably only once—repeat exposure strengthened the association. But he had definitely been around this guy at least once before.
“What is it?” Andrea spoke softly. “You’ve gone all tense. Is something wrong?”
He turned to face her once more. “That guy back there at the bar—the one in the green plaid shirt—he’s watching us.”
She looked over his shoulder at the guy and frowned. “He has his back to us.”
“He’s watching us in the bar mirror. It’s an old surveillance trick.”
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“I’ve seen him before. Maybe only once. I think he’s in our files.”
“Why would he be watching you?”
Jack shoved back his chair. “That’s what I’m going to ask him.”
He pretended to be headed for the men’s room, but at the last second, he veered toward the guy at the bar. The guy saw him coming and leaped up. He overturned a table and people started screaming. Jack took off after him, alarmed to see the guy was headed right toward Andrea, who stared, openmouthed. Jack shoved aside a chair and dodged past a waitress with a tray of plates, but his bum leg made speed difficult and the guy was almost to Andrea now.
But the perp didn’t lay a hand on her. He raced past, headed toward the door, Jack still in pursuit. Andrea cried out as Jack ran by her. “My purse,” she said. “He stole my purse!”
