Laying her head against the branches sticking into her, allowing them to hold her tired weight, she held the bottle for the healthily sucking baby and closed her eyes.

  Longed for...escape.

  For Scott.

  Was he even still alive?

  He’d have come back if he could.

  Tears trickled from the corners of her closed lids. She didn’t care enough to wipe them away. She should have told Scott that she loved him.

  Stockholm syndrome aside, she’d been drawn to the man fourteen years before with such undeniable power that she’d broken off her engagement over it. He’d thought himself forever marred by biology, and she’d failed to prove to him that he wasn’t.

  She’d failed to do. To show him how very valuable, how wonderful and worthy, he was to her. She’d told him he was a good man.

  He’d told her he was selfish.

  And...she’d done nothing. Just let things linger unsaid.

  She could make diapers out of her sweats.

  Or take a nap, first.

  The baby’s sucking stopped.

  Eyelids popping wide, immediately, Dorian saw him lying there in her arms, sound asleep, tiny toothless mouth open, with the nipple still touching his lip.

  He was content. Secure.

  He trusted her.

  As Scott had.

  Do.

  She had to go choose a car.

  Do.

  The word wouldn’t let go of her. Wouldn’t let her give up. Or wallow.

  There were things she hadn’t done. In the faraway past and in the recent past, too. Because she wasn’t superhuman. She was one woman. Who couldn’t do it all.

  Who did a lot.

  And could do more.

  She had to go choose a car.

  Up on all fours, Dorian settled the satchel on her back, kissed the top of Michael’s head, and...

  Was that a siren?

  A rash of them?

  Remaining in position to move, she peered out from between the branches camouflaging her. Saw the vehicles, some unmarked, pulling up at all angles along the road.

  Froze.

  Had McKellips found Scott? Knew that he didn’t have the baby? Called in more troops? Did he have an entire police force on the payroll?

  Was he that desperate to save himself with the general?

  Or was the general in charge now? With powerful people behind him?

  Was their operation that lucrative?

  Pulse jumping through her skin, her thoughts flew while she remained completely motionless. Listening to the high-pitched warnings piercing the air.

  She was one woman with only a knife. Didn’t matter how well she knew the human body, or where and how to slice...she couldn’t take down multiple attackers at once.

  She had to retreat.

  Get back into the mountains. Live on fruit and juice and diapers made out of leaves if it came to that.

  Raise a caveman.

  They’d grown up strong in the past...

  “Dorian Lowell, Doctor, this is the FBI—if you’re out there, let us help you. You’re safe.” They had a real megaphone. Were approaching from the road.

  She didn’t budge. Was afraid to blink lest she alert someone to her presence.

  No way they were getting Michael. She couldn’t lose another loved one on her watch.

  “Dorian?” She heard Scott’s voice. It didn’t sound right. “We got them.”

  No. They had him.

  “It’s Hud, Dorian...” They had a recording?

  “And Win...”

  “Savannah, too...”

  “And Kel... You’re safe, honey. The baby is safe.”

  “And Glen...”

  “And Mariah, sweetie...you know you can trust me with Michael...”

  Michael.

  Only one other person knew that’s what she was calling the baby.

  Only one other person knew it had been her way to let him know she was there.

  Scott Michaels.

  With tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks, and the newborn strapped to her chest, Dorian crawled out of the brush, leaving smudges of blood in the dirt.

  Chapter 25

  The paramedic wouldn’t leave Scott’s side. “We need to go, sir. You’ve lost a lot of blood and the hospital’s an hour away...”

  Scott didn’t care if he lost the use of his left arm, he wasn’t leaving the site until he saw Dorian and the baby. Knew they were safe.

  His own team had already tried to convince him.

  And had accepted that they weren’t going to get him to budge from the case until he’d led them to Dorian.

  It was good to be known that well.

  It was family.

  They’d pulled a car up as close to the culvert on the side of the road as they could get. He’d had to stay seated. Had nearly lost consciousness when he’d tried to walk.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere with his charges still out on the run. He was the only one who knew where Dorian would go. How she’d hide.

  And how she’d survive.

  He’d called out to her. Her partners had.

  If they had to go farther into the mountain to reach her, he was the only one who...

  “We’ve got her!”

  He heard a voice before noticing the commotion. All six of the Sierra’s Web partners took off at a run across the desert. Followed closely by members of Scott’s team, and paramedics.

  “Now, sir?” The uniformed medical man beside him didn’t touch him. Didn’t attempt to take a hold of his arm and guide him away. He’d done that once. Earlier.

  It hadn’t gone over well.

  “Not yet.” His throat was dry. He ached...everywhere.

  But he hadn’t seen proof.

  Motioning someone to stand by Scott, the paramedic—Bruce, he thought—walked away to talk on his radio. And was back a minute or so later, while Scott continued to stare in the direction everyone had run.

  “Here, Agent Michaels, does this do it?” The man was holding out a phone.

  Scott reached for it. Nearly passed out from the pain. Glanced at the screen.

  Dorian, with the baby still strapped to her, in the arms of her partners. A big, family circle of arms, all wrapped around each other.

  And baby Michael. He looked again at the sling. And the tangled ponytail of red hair.

  “That does it,” he said, stood, intent to go under his own cognizance.

  And felt himself floating away.

  * * *

  “Is Scott okay?” Walking slowly, with Win’s and Hud’s arms around her for support, Dorian approached the road-blocking barrage of law enforcement vehicles. She’d already given up the newborn. Kelly was ahead of them, walking faster than Dorian could, to get the baby to the ambulance waiting to take him back to Phoenix. To the birthing center where he’d been born.

  Where his mother, who was having preeclampsia issues, was still a patient. Hunter’s return—Hunter, not Michael—was expected to help her recovery in a major way.

  None of her partners, those holding her up, literally, and those walking behind her, had answered her question.

  “I heard his voice,” she said then, feeling confused. Unsure of herself.

  Had she heard him?

  Or had she just imagined him calling out to her?

  She stopped walking. Looked to the two sets of concerned eyes on either side of her, and then, glanced over her shoulder, too.

  “Agent Michaels,” she said, finding strength from somewhere to give the tone that would let them know she meant business. “Is he okay?”

  “We don’t know.” Kelly their psychiatry expert came up to stand in front of her. Making eye contact. And Dorian’s bravado slid away.

  Along with the strength in her legs. She felt the grips from the men beside her as they stabilized her.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “He’s been shot, Dor. Through the back, left shoulder area. No indication yet on internal damage. He’s lost a lot of blood. Was breathing on his own, but clearly struggling to stay conscious. And refused to leave the site until you were found. They’re on their way to meet a CareFlight copter to get him to Phoenix.”

  Her knees strengthened then. Enough to allow her to keep walking. Albeit slowly.

  Scott was alive.

  He’d brought his mountain mission to a successful conclusion.

  The baby, Hunter, was on his way home.

  She’d done what she could do.

  And that would have to be enough.

  * * *

  Scott’s entire body hurt too much to move. He was...somewhere. Felt like he was encased in something. Tied up maybe?

  He had to open his eyes. Figure it out.

  Didn’t want to alert anyone that he was awake until he knew who would benefit from the knowledge. His side or the other.

  If only the annoying beeping would stop, maybe he could gather more clues.

  And the stench. Like someone overdosed on Dorian’s antiseptic...

  Dorian!

  His eyes shot open.

  And saw all three members of his team, along with his unit chief, standing around him.

  He was in a bed. Strapped down?

  What the hell?

  Glancing into four concerned gazes, he looked down instead of dealing with them. Saw the white gauze tying his left arm to his chest. Wrapped all the way around him. Not just taped there.

  And frowned.

  “My leg was shot,” he said, remembering. So why was his torso tied up?

  Where was Dorian?

  And Michael?

  “There’s a little muscle damage there, but not much,” Tommy, his second-in-command, said. “The wound had already healed too much to stitch. Leave it up to you to get trapped with a gorgeous doctor.” The man’s grin was familiar. Scott relaxed a tad.

  “Dorian?” he asked then, eyeing his unit chief.

  “She’s fine,” Bonita Holmes assured him, with her no-bullshit voice. “Scraped and bruised, but already back at the office, from what I’ve been told.”

  Back at the office?

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Two days.”

  Two days? He’d lost two days of his life and didn’t even know it?

  And Dorian was back at the office.

  Not at the hospital.

  That felt all wrong.

  Yet, it was right, right?

  His head throbbed. And he was tired.

  Exhausted.

  “Where am I?” he asked, to make certain he had some bearings next time he awoke.

  “Once you were stabilized, we had you flown back to Vegas,” Bonita said, as Ashley, Henry and Tommy all looked like they were about to do something asinine, like cry.

  And he figured he might as well know. “Am I dying?”

  “No, sir, you most absolutely are not,” Ashley spoke up. “The bullet was lodged in the outer lining of your lung. It was touch and go at first, but Sierra’s Web called in an expert who was able to extract it without puncturing the lung. You’re going to be just fine.”

  The bullet from his leg traveled up to his lung? Didn’t make sense.

  He shook his head. Big mistake. “Dorian got...bullet...” He heard his voice. But wasn’t sure he was still awake.

  And, surrounded by his family, let himself fade off.

  * * *

  Dorian had thought, when she was rescued, that she was free. Instead, there she sat, with a bodyguard, McKenna Meredith, in her office. McKenna had retired from field work the year before, ran their bodyguard unit, but had insisted on taking Dorian’s case herself.

  Which was really Scott’s case.

  And now Sierra’s Web’s.

  On the morning of the third day since her rescue, Glen Rivers, forensics expert, partner and friend, walked into her office. Nodded at McKenna before looking straight at Dorian, and said, “Ballistics have come back on the bullet that killed Chuck McKellips.”

  “And?” she asked, knowing that him telling her was only a courtesy. At the moment, with Scott unconscious, she was the only viable witness to a high-powered national case—not an expert working the job.

  “It’s a match for Scott’s service revolver. He managed to get the fiend.”

  “And he didn’t remember that?” Scott had been conscious when she’d been rescued. She knew now that she had heard his voice call out to her. That he’d insisted on being at the scene, in case he had to help find her. He’d know where she’d hide.

  “He didn’t mention the shooting, if he did remember. He was in bad shape,” Glen repeated what she’d already been told. Sending another weight to the growing pile in the pit of her stomach. “The man was hell bent on using what strength he had to find you.”

  She’d heard that before, too.

  Glen’s sympathetic look flashed briefly as he turned and left her office.

  From the second she’d crawled out from under the brush, Dorian had been under the concerned and watchful gazes of the six people who knew her better than anyone ever had.

  Her Sierra’s Web partners.

  They had questions about Scott Michaels. About her and Scott. About what had happened between them during their days on the run. Personal questions. She could almost feel the queries on the tips of their tongues.

  But no one asked them.

  And she had no answers for them.

  She was pretty sure that she was in love with the man. Didn’t completely trust herself to be discerning. And was absolutely not going to talk to anyone else about what had happened between her and the FBI agent in the mountains until she had a chance to speak to Scott.

  If she was really in love, he should be the first to know that that little complication had arisen.

  At the moment, they had a bigger problem to contend with. A killer dead. His henchmen unidentified.

  An old woman with dementia who kept confusing Chuck McKellips, who’d helped her out ever since her husband died, with said husband.

  And no idea as to the identity of the general.

  By the time the FBI had gotten to the mission, it had been bulldozed, with a perimeter dug around it filled with water, and torched. Clearly part of a well-thought-out exit plan. They’d found the officer Sharon Luthrie dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest, tossed in the debris.

  What they did know was that Dorian’s and Scott’s identities had been all over the news in missing persons reports, as part of what everyone had assumed was a manhunt for Dorian’s kidnapper, with them as his victims. They’d originally assumed, when they found McKellips’s dead body, that Chuck McKellips was the kidnapper. Dorian had quickly set them straight on that. Her kidnapper’s body had yet to be found. Until Dorian had mentioned the general to her partners on the way to the hospital, everyone had thought the case had been solved.

  And because she and Scott had been in the news, they had to assume the general knew who they were.

  No one was sure whether the general knew if McKellips had mentioned his existence within earshot of them. No way to tell if the general knew Scott and Dorian were aware of his existence. But after the terror of the previous days, no one was willing to risk that he didn’t know.

  The joint FBI and Sierra’s Web team working the case had determined, unequivocally, that she and Scott could not be in the same place at the same time until the general was identified and locked up. They weren’t going to give the unnamed leader a chance to take them both out.

  They’d further proclaimed that having the two of them even in the same state was too close.

  Luckily, by the time the experts had reached that conclusion, she’d already brought in the surgeon who’d operated on Scott, and had been a microphoned observer of the surgery itself.

  Since then, she and Scott had both been placed in protective custody. Separately. In two different states.

  Made a troublesome thing like a pretty strong possibility of a declaration of love a moot point.

  And it wasn’t like anything was going to come of her feelings, real or not, anyway. Scott was firmly ensconced in Las Vegas. His team was his family. Her home, her firm, her partners, and now her childhood best friend, Faith, were all based out of Phoenix.

  And he’d said, any man, but not him.

  He’d made his feelings clear on the matter.

  Besides, love or not, she was not at all ready to seriously consider the idea that she might change her own life choices as far as her future was concerned.

  In spite of emotional involvement, she’d managed to help Scott keep the baby safe. And...maybe...emotions could be dealt with to the point of—if not exactly relying on them for guidance, then at least learning to accept and live with them...but...

  “You ready to do another cognitive interview?” Kelly popped her head around the corner of Dorian’s office. “They want me to take you back to that officer whose body they found this morning. Luthrie.”

  “Of course,” she said. Her steady gaze indicated her need to communicate her willingness to do whatever it took to find the man who’d ruined so many lives for his own financial gain.

  To save any babies in current danger, and to recover those who’d already been taken.

  To help Scott finish the job.

  Even if that meant relieving the terror a thousand more times.

  Chapter 26

  For all his physical trauma, Scott was working from a chair in his hospital room by the afternoon of the third day after he’d been shot. With officers stationed at his door, he listened through headphones as he watched a series of cognitive interviews with Dorian. The most recent had been recorded that morning.