Once she’d helped Jessie straighten the kitchen she’d had the nerve to say good night and just leave. It wasn’t even dark yet. He hadn’t had a chance to cop a feel, steal a kiss, or piss her off before she left.

What he had managed to do was to make certain the bloody dish towel they’d pressed to her hand was bagged and prepped to send out for DNA results. When he’d seen her cut herself he’d nearly frozen in such a gut-level reaction, it had shocked him. The fact that she had been hurt had been so offensive to him that he wondered if he’d ever be able to see her with a knife in her hand again. It was obvious she needed a little practice before using one again.

“How long before the DNA results come back?” he asked Slade as they watched Annie’s taillights fade into the night.

“A few days to a week,” Slade answered absently as he propped his foot on the railing and leaned against the post of the porch. “Bridget will send me the results and I’ll match them first against the personal DNA database I’ve set up before running them on the federal program.”

If Slade was ever caught, there would be hell to pay. His fingerprint and DNA database for damned near everyone he’d come in contact with since returning to Loudoun included men and women the federal government was probably salivating for at any given moment. Unfortunately, it was 100 percent illegal as well, especially for a former federal agent.

“You think she has relatives in Loudoun?” Sometimes Slade’s suspicions went in strange directions.

Slade shrugged at the question. “She reminds me of someone. I just can’t place who. I’ve spent the majority of my life here, so I thought it seemed logical to start here.”

Slade was damned good with faces, but the suspicion only followed his own that the color of her eyes was due to contacts and that her hair had been colored. Like Slade, he must have seen her somewhere, possibly even here in Loudoun. It wouldn’t have been recently, though. A relative of a friend perhaps, or someone they’d dealt with in a business capacity.

“Let me know when the results come in,” Jazz asked, heading down the steps.

“Leaving?” Slade’s quiet voice was amused.

And knowing.

“I told Jessie good-bye before coming out here,” he promised his friend. “I have things to do tonight.”

“Things like heading to town to surprise Annie with a little visit?” Slade was no one’s dummy.

“Seems like the thing to do. Make sure her boo-boo is still covered and all that.” He chuckled as he threw his hand up in a farewell gesture and stepped into his pickup.

Okay, so he was chasing after a woman when he hadn’t done so in a lot of years. It wasn’t as though he were becoming involved or anything.

He left emotional entanglements to men like Slade and Zack. They needed the women they were focused on at such a gut-deep, primal level that it would destroy them should anything happen to those women. Jazz had learned years ago what happened to him when he let himself get emotionally entangled with someone and she died. As though he hadn’t learned his lesson the first time when his mother had died. Hell no, he’d had to go and let himself get entangled with a little vixen who had walked into his heart without his knowledge. He hadn’t even been aware of how important she was to him until she was gone.

Pulling out of Slade and Jessie’s driveway, Jazz turned onto the main road and accelerated away from the house. The drive into town didn’t take long, despite the curvy mountain road. In less than twenty minutes he was pulling into her driveway and turning off the truck.

Night had eased fully across the mountains, bathing them in mystery and the shield of darkness. Annie’s house sat on the outskirts of town, about halfway up the quiet street. The houses here weren’t as pristine and well presented as those closer to the town’s center, but the gentle wear Annie’s home was showing gave it a sense of character and life that the others didn’t have.

The rental was a spacious, single-story brick with a fenced front and backyard. The grass was trimmed; no weeds struggled to take over even at the edges of the yard. It was clean, if empty of most of the feminine touches he would have expected. There were no flowers ready to burst into rioting color. No newly planted shrubs or even a potted plant on the wide front porch.

The house was dark but for the faint hint of light at the rear of the house, but he knew she was there.

The main door eased open as he stepped to the porch. Coming to a stop he just stared at her as she stood on the other side of the storm door without opening it or asking him in.

“What are you doing here, Jazz?” The wariness in her tone gave him a vague sense of discomfort. It bothered him that she didn’t trust him, that she stayed on guard with him.

“Fuck if I know,” he admitted, watching her through the glass. “I should be home getting ready to go to work tomorrow, not standing here wondering how I’m going to try to talk you into letting me visit for a while.”

There was no way he could explain to her why he needed to be around her. He couldn’t even explain it to himself.

To protect her?

He could buy that, he was pretty “hands on” when it came to his damsels in distress.

She looked away, her gaze going to the darkened street before she shook her head slowly. Unlocking the door she stepped back, watching him as though she expected him to jump her at any moment.

It wasn’t trust—maybe more weary resignation than anything else—but he was in the front door. That was definitely a step in the right direction.

She’d changed from the jeans and T-shirt she wore at Slade and Jessie’s into a pair of soft cotton shorts and a tank top. She still wore a bra, though, where most women would have already tossed it to the side for comfort’s sake.

Ready to run at a moment’s notice, wasn’t she?

He bet she had a small pack that contained everything she needed if she had to escape quickly. Hell, he knew she did. He still kept one himself. Just in case.

Moving inside he closed the doors behind him, locking them automatically as she moved to an end table and turned on the lamp there.

The soft, low light bathed the room in a gentle glow.

It was as sparse as the front lawn. There was no more there than what had to be. Couch, two chairs, matching end tables, and a flat-screen television. A flannel throw was tossed over the back of one recliner but there were no pictures, no mementos, nothing that would illustrate parts of her life as most women had. No knickknacks, flowers, framed prints on the bare walls, or books to mark her tastes.

There was nothing to leave behind if she had to run. No pictures of friends who could be endangered, no indication of where she might go or where she might hide.

This room made his chest tighten, made him hurt for her. It was as empty as she seemed to have been forced to make her life.

Fuck, who was she? What the hell had her so spooked that she thought he’d ever allow her to just disappear?

“What do you want?” There was an edge of defensiveness in her voice, that tone that never failed to make him want to show her exactly what they both wanted.

Looking around the room it was all he could do to tamp his anger down, to pull back the urge to demand answers. He wanted to give her no chance of lying, no way to wiggle out of the facts. Anyone forced to live on the run long enough to learn how to stay unencumbered would know how to lie and make it believable. He didn’t want that between them. Nor could he handle the hunger for her that seemed to grow daily.

Damn her. He thought of little else anymore but her. It was bad enough before he’d learned that she wasn’t who she said she was—and that she could be in danger. Now it was like a constant storm surge, battering at his self-control until he began to wonder if he’d make it another day without confronting her. Without claiming her.