hand,” the voice continued. “You will apprehend the target, you will videotape her, you will send me the tape, and you will hold her until you are told to finish it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Completely.” A kidnapping! Max had never stooped so low. Kidnapping was a messy, dirty business. Too much contact with the target, too much time, too many variables to control. Each one a reason why kidnappers were invariably caught. Max wanted nothing to do with this. Somehow he’d find a way out.
“I knew we’d come to an understanding. And, Max, just so you don’t think I’m bluffing, take a look at the lake.”
Max looked out at the lake, picking up a pair of binoculars, dreading what he would see. A speedboat appeared, headed directly toward his sister and her children.
At the last possible moment, it swerved, clipping the bow of the boat. Wood shattered, water churned and the small boat overturned. The children and his sister bobbed to the surface, their bright orange life jackets doing their job. The speedboat made an arcing turn and at full throttle charged back across the lake.
“Do what you are told, and your family will be fine,” the caller said before hanging up.
Max ran outside to rescue his family. And his mind raced, assessing details about the call. He hadn’t heard the speedboat over the phone, so his caller hadn’t been on the boat. Which meant, like Max, he could be anywhere.
He’d do the job, Max decided. Then he’d track his caller down. That man would never again blackmail him or anyone else.
Chapter 1
“C’mon, Jack Trahern,” Dahlia Jensen muttered beneath her breath when the Daniel E. Baker Building that housed the College of Physical Sciences disgorged a flow of students. She didn’t know which one was hers, but he was late.
Opportunity was vanishing at the same pace as the thunderstorm moving northeast at a good clip. It had the perfect profile for her lightning study, and she was anxious to follow it. Everything she had been working toward these past two years hinged on the data she collected during the next two months: funding for her own grant; a promotion to associate professor.
All she had to do was stay away from her supervisor, Doreen Layard. The tension between them had been escalating for months. If the woman couldn’t find anything obvious to take issue with, she dug until she found something. Dahlia reminded herself that her focus was to do her job to the best of her ability.
With or without today’s student assistant. She glanced again at her watch.
The students either hurried by without giving her a second glance or stopped in groups of two or three to chat. Dahlia wondered which one was Jack Trahern.
She wished she recognized the name. He hadn’t taken any of her classes, which made him either new to the atmospheric science program or a storm chaser wannabe. Too many of the latter had cropped up after last year’s block-buster movie. She had hoped for a student assistant who was competent—at the moment she would settle for one who was prompt.
This was midterm week, and none of her regular students were available. Jack Trahern’s name was at the bottom of the list of undergraduates who wanted to be involved with the program next year—and the only volunteer available today.
One last time Dahlia glanced around the parking lot and grounds in front of the building. She fished her keys from her pocket and looked around again, hoping to see some pimply faced eighteen-year-old looking for her. No such luck.
Instead, a tall athletically built man came out of the building, paused at the top of the steps and gazed out over the parking lot as he put on a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. Dahlia gave him the second look his well-built physique deserved, then opened the door to the van.
“Scoot over, Boo,” she said, to the dog sitting in the driver’s seat of her car after she opened the door. She patted the blond Cocker Spaniel on the head and, tail wagging, Boo dutifully moved to the passenger seat.
Dahlia climbed into the van, unclipped the HAM radio from her belt that kept her in touch with the National Weather Service and set it on the dash, her attention immediately focused on the storm. She rolled down the window the rest of the way. A cool gust of wind swept through the car—outflow from the storm. Yes! This was the time of year she lived for—the volatile season of thunderstorms that began in late April and continued into midsummer.
She started the van, then put it into gear and, looking into the rearview mirror, eased backward out of her parking spot.
The man in the aviator sunglasses appeared behind her. She slammed on the brakes. He stared at her, though the reflective lenses of his glasses made it impossible to tell for sure.
He came up the side of the car toward her.
“Dr. Jensen?” he said, leaning down slightly so he could look at her through the open window.
“Dahlia,” she automatically corrected. She deliberately used her first name to cultivate rapport with her field students.
The guy looked even better up close. His dark hair was cut military short, and his clean-shaven square jaw already showed the shadow of a beard. This was no kid, but a man in his prime.
He took off his sunglasses, revealing deep-set, brilliant blue eyes, beneath thick, nearly black eyebrows. Bracing a hand on the car door, he said, “I’m Jack Trahern.”
This man was far removed from the eighteen-year-old she had been expecting. Kids she could deal with. Kids she could coerce into doing what she wanted. Kids…were one thing, and this man was no kid.
“Jack Trahern?” she echoed finally, and could have kicked herself for her breathless tone. Firming her voice, she said, “You’re late.”
“Sorry. I got hung up.”
“Great,” she muttered, casting an eye toward the heavens. She didn’t have time for this. Not for a tardy student—no matter how gorgeous—certainly not for a man whose mere presence snapped her lonely hormones to attention. “Get in the car.”
He put the shades back on and ambled around the hood of the car as though he had all the time in the world. Even as she mentally cursed him for taking his time, she couldn’t help but admire how he looked. He was tall, six-three or four and he carried himself with an easy, loose-limbed grace. A small black backpack was slung over one shoulder—the omnipresent book bag of college kids and the only thing about him that struck her as remotely studentlike. She was positive she hadn’t seen him around campus before. She would have remembered.
What she did remember, vividly, was swearing off men. If her womanizing ex-husband hadn’t proven to her that she had rotten taste in men, the ex-fiancé who followed him would have—a man who had chosen a drug habit over her. Two long years, and she was finally on her feet again. Finding Jack Trahern in her path was undoubtedly a cosmic joke to find out how serious her intentions really were.
He opened the passenger door, and Boo sat there, wagging her stubby tail.
“Hello there, you beauty,” Jack said, smiling. Boo sat up straighter, her little body wriggling in anticipation.
“Back seat, girl,” Dahlia said, motioning toward the back of the van.
By then Jack had set the pack down and was scratching Boo’s ears, massaging them close to her head, something she loved only slightly more than cookies. The dog looked as though she might dissolve into a puddle. An unexpected longing to be touched—with as much affection—feathered through Dahlia.
“Boo, back seat,” she repeated, her voice more stern.
Boo cast her a decidedly disgusted glance, jumped into the open space between the two bucket seats and plopped herself onto the floor.
“Nice dog,” Jack slid into the seat. “Her name is Boo?”
Dahlia nodded. “When she was a puppy, she was scared of her own shadow.”
“She’s