Operation: Midnight Escape. Linda Castillo

on the line, they hadn’t been able to resist each other. A single, earth-shattering night in his arms and she’d been lost….

      “How could I have been so naive to get involved with a man like Ian Rasmussen?” she whispered.

      Jake rolled his shoulder. “You couldn’t have known what kind of man he was. He kept his secrets well hidden. He was Chicago’s favorite bad-boy bachelor. He had a successful North Michigan Avenue restaurant. The local media loved him.”

      “I was with him for almost a year.”

      “Don’t start the blame game, Leigh. You were young. Inexperienced. He knew that and used those things to manipulate you.”

      Even after all this time, it made her feel like a fool. Yes, she’d been young—just twenty-one when she met Ian Rasmussen. But why had it taken so long for her to see him for what he really was?

      As if realizing where her thoughts had gone, Jake turned to her. “If it hadn’t been for you, he never would have gone to trial.”

      The mention of the trial made her feel queasy. The court proceedings had been a nightmare. Leigh had taken the stand to testify against Rasmussen. Only, Rasmussen’s high-powered lawyer had done his best to put her and the MIDNIGHT Agency on trial instead. That was when it had come out that she and Jake had been intimate. That the MIDNIGHT Agency had formally disciplined Jake for inappropriate conduct with a witness. Rasmussen’s lawyer had tried to use the information to get the case thrown out. The judge however had seen through the ruse. But Rasmussen had gone off the deep end. Not only had Leigh betrayed him by wearing a wire and getting him on tape for the feds, but she’d betrayed him on an even deeper level by sleeping with the very man who’d brought him down.

      For a second, when she looked across the seat at Jake, she saw him as the man he’d been six years ago. He’d been her protector, heat and strength and steel control. But Leigh had seen that control fracture. She would never forget the way he’d looked at her the first time he’d kissed her. The way his eyes had gone dark when he’d touched her. She would never forget the way he’d trembled when he’d been inside her. Or the moment when her own control had shattered with a power that had moved her to tears….

      Like it or not, those images were forever branded on her heart.

      “He’s never going to stop looking for me, is he?” she asked after a moment.

      Jake’s dark expression said it all. “No,” he murmured.