Page 2 of Protected Hearts

“I’m not changing in front you. Get out of my bedroom.”

Two heartbeats passed, as if he was wondering how she could dupe him into leaving and make an escape. But she was trapped, and he knew it.

“Make it quick.” He turned and sauntered out as if he owned the building, leaving the door cracked open.

With a frustrated cry barricaded behind her sealed lips, Shiloh threw off her robe and dressed in seconds while her mind plotted her getaway.

The windows on the fifth floor were too high. The fire escape would take her to the ground, and she could immerse herself in the crowd that never seemed to thin on sidewalk. Maybe duck through an alley.

She was just eyeing the window when the door smashed off the inner wall of the bedroom, announcing her ex’s return. William stood there, a bag in hand. The bulky shape told her that he’d found her laptop and probably her phone too. Stashing them behind the trash bags in the kitchen cupboard wasn’t much of a hiding place.

He hustled her out of the apartment and into the street. He was tall, but so was she. Her long legs easily kept up with William as he yanked her down the sidewalk.

She cast a frantic look at the pedestrians and the cars lining the street. Taxi drivers honked their horns, and the general bustle of the city she’d utilized to hide herself now made her invisible.

Not one person was aware of a woman being taken against her will.

If she screamed, William just might be pushed to kill her. In the tight grasp of his fingers around her elbow, she felt a new tension in him. He was running off fear too—fear of what she could do to him if she went to the authorities with the dirt on him she’d scraped up.

He yanked her around a group of pedestrians. As they passed, she threw the older ladies a glance. None of them were paying attention to just another woman on the street.

Up ahead, a moving van was double-parked—the reason traffic was backed up and taxis were blasting their horns.

“Walk faster!” William’s voice was low and tight with anger.

Shiloh stopped dragging her feet. Nobody was going to help her. Not here.

Then she turned her head. A muscular man slammed the doors of the moving van and swung around just in time to meet her stare.

Military. He had military written all over him.

In a blink, her mind was made up. She mouthed:Help me!

She had no idea if William saw what she’d done, but the man’s face blurred past her vision as her kidnapper dragged her across the street. He ripped open the back door of a black car—armored, if she knew anything about the way William traveled. When he twisted his fingers in her hair, shoving her down into the back seat, she swallowed a scream.

William jumped into the front seat. The doors locked, and the vehicle shot off.

There was no escape. No hope of getting away from a man who would havenoproblem burying her in a shallow grave or dumping her off a pier into the Hudson River.

Hopelessness lodged as a hot brick in her chest. Then she glanced out the window and spotted a van. Not the moving van, but it reminded her of her silent plea to the broad-shouldered man on the street.

Was it her imagination, or had he given her an almost imperceptible nod?

* * * * *

Oaks Malone’s SEAL training kicked in. In the blink of an eye, he assessed the situation.

That woman was being forced against her will.

In the split second after she looked him dead in the eyes and mouthedhelp me, Oaks’s brain ran through several scenarios.

He could rush after her, tear the victim away from the man forcing her at a near run across the street and figure shit out after she was safe.

He could pull his weapon from where it was concealed in his waistband along the base of his spine and order the guy to stop. But there was also a cop making a big deal about the moving van being double-parked on a busy street to deal with, and Oaks couldn’t see the officer being very happy with him pulling out a gun.

The man now dragging the woman across the street at a fast clip was probably armed too.

Oaks couldn’t risk a shootout. There were too many people around. Too many casualties.

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