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have abducted Annalise outside Payne Protection. Was that why they had come to the hospital parking garage? Had they been determined to try again?
    But if they’d been after Annalise, why had they been attacking Nikki? Why had they been standing beside Nick’s government-issue SUV?
    Who the hell was their real target?
    Nikki?
    Her coupe had been parked near his SUV—near enough that she had been able to go for her gun. If she hadn’t, he might not have survived the onslaught of ammunition the other men had fired at him. Sometimes she acted like she hated him, but she had helped him. Hell, she’d probably saved his life.
    And instead of making certain she was okay, he had left her alone. Sure, the other gunman was injured. But he was still armed. He could hurt her.
    Of course, the injured man had been running after his partner, too—until he’d seen Nick behind him. Then he had dived between some parked cars. Nick hurried back toward where he’d remembered losing him—between a Hummer and a Cadillac—in the reserved staff parking section.
    It was easy to track him. All he had to do was follow the blood trail—the one that wasn’t his. His blood was running down his arm and dripping from his fingertips. At least it was his right shoulder that had been hit, since he was left-handed.
    He gripped his gun more tightly as he tracked the blood to where it turned from a trail to a pool. But he didn’t need a weapon. He found the man leaning against the side of the Hummer. Deep gouges marred his face. Someone had scratched him. Nikki? Or Annalise? His eyes were open. So was his mouth.
    But he wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t answer any of Nick’s many questions. He was dead.
    Then Nick heard the telltale metallic click of another gun cocking—near his head. And he worried that he might be a dead man, too.
    * * *
    Annalise had loved Nick too long to lose him now. Not that she’d ever really had him. Even that one night...
    They had made love. But he didn’t love her. Not like she had always loved him. She couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t been in love with Nicholas Rus.
    â€œWhere is he?” she asked Nikki.
    Tears brimmed in her brown eyes. She shook her head and tousled her already tangled auburn curls around her pale face. “I don’t know...”
    Logan cursed.
    Nikki flinched—either over his reaction or because she was in pain. She had obviously been roughed up. But she had refused medical attention for her injuries. She had rushed into the lobby instead—to fill in Logan on what had happened in the garage.
    The men who’d stolen Annalise’s car had come back. They had been waiting in the parking garage.
    For her?
    For Nikki?
    For Nick?
    Why? What did they want?
    Annalise owned nothing of value to anyone but her. After all the times they’d broken into her home and her office and stolen her vehicle, they had to realize that she had nothing they wanted. So why wouldn’t they leave her alone?
    Unless it really wasn’t her that they were after...
    The trouble hadn’t started for her until after Nick had been to Chicago, until after that night they had made love in the house where he’d grown up.
    â€œNick chased them out of the parking garage. And I don’t know how he could...” Nikki’s voice cracked with emotion as she continued, “I think he was hit. I know he was hit.”
    â€œHit?” Panic clenched Annalise’s heart. “You think he was shot?”
    Biting her lip, Nikki nodded. “He was bleeding. There was blood all over the cement.” She shuddered. “But it didn’t stop him.”
    Nothing stopped Nick from going after what he wanted. The son of a drug addict single mother—the odds had been against his making anything of his life. But he had accomplished everything he’d wanted. He’d joined the Marines, gone to college and earned a