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macramé bracelet you were wearing at my villa the night of the rainstorm,” he said. Ten thousand dollars in cash, and Buzz-cut Boy had left it untouched in the suitcase. Considering what the real prize was this morning, Zach would have done the same thing. “That’s the one you still have, correct? That’s the one you put in your suitcase? The pilot’s bracelet?”
    â€œYes. But…” She was straining to see into the backseat, but with the lid up on the suitcase, he doubted if she could see much.
    Tahiti?
    And ten thousand dollars in cash?
    Who in the hell made that kind of deal? And what was going to be that guy’s next move?
    He had a feeling those were questions with answers he wasn’t going to like. He and Alex had gone over Lily Robbins’s dossier before he’d ever left Langley, and even to the world-class analysts at the CIA, she’d looked to be precisely what she presented herself as—a schoolteacher in Albuquerque, born and raised in Montana on a ranch called the Cross Double R that had been in the Robbins family for nearly a hundred years, some of them damn lean, including most of the years since she’d been born. High-country, hard-scrabble ranching was not for the faint of heart or will.
    He figured that’s where she got her grit—and she did have grit, and impeccable aim under pressure, two things he tended to like in a woman. Considering how many people were already on to her, it couldn’t hurt for her to have plenty of both, even with him on her side.
    And he was on her side. For now.
    â€œOnce I’ve secured the bracelet, I’ll take you someplace where you’ll be safe.” All he had to do was figure out exactly where that might be. He had one idea, and it wasn’t in Albuquerque.
    â€œH-how did you know about the pilot’s bracelet?” she asked. “That he gave it to me?”
    Gave? He stopped with his hand around a charcoal gray T-shirt and looked up from the suitcase.
    That was his first mistake. He should have kept his attention on her clothes, not let it stray all over the place and get caught in her cleavage. Big mistake.
    Mistake number two was not catching himself in time to keep from glancing up into her eyes.
    He knew blue, but he’d never seen anything as blue as her eyes, crystalline sapphire blue, with dark rims and light shot through the middle—and with him stretched back between the front seats, and her leaning over the passenger seat, trying to see in the back, they were quite close to each other. Quite. Much closer than he’d actually realized.
    He cleared his throat and went back to sorting through her clothes. Mark Devlin had never given a woman anything except grief and more inches than Zach personally believed—but the rumors were rampant.
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me why he gave the bracelet to you. Did you know him, at all, even just casually?” That was what he needed to know, not “How did your eyes get so mother-loving blue?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe hadn’t stopped at St. Joseph’s while you were there? Maybe you spoke in passing?”
    â€œNo. I never saw him until the soldiers dragged him into the chapel.”
    â€œThen why did he give you the bracelet?”
    â€œI—I don’t know. I think he knew he was dying. Sister Theresa and I ran over to help him, and when I knelt down next to him, he grabbed hold of my hand. He…he held it so tight. I was surprised at how tightly he held me. He was…he was…so…” Her voice gave up, and she slid back into her seat, facing forward, her free hand coming up to cover her face.
    Broken up. That’s what Devlin had been—so broken up. After seeing the body, Zach’s respect for the guy, which had already been high, had skyrocketed. That Devlin had lasted as long as he had was a testament to how tough he’d been—tough enough to do the job for a