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would have killed you, Jessie.” In one efficient motion he closed the knife and dropped it back into his boot.
    She relaxed marginally but continued to stare, struggling for coherent thought. If he sensed it, he ignored her, taking a turnoff and keeping his eyes on the road ahead, shadowed gaze intent on the dark strip of highway. Wherever he was taking her, he was not running in aimless panic. Everything about Donovan, right down to the way he gave orders and the decisive way he acted, was efficient and purposeful. Professional, she thought, chilled by the idea. Right down to killing a man, which she suspected was not a first for him, or he would have been more shaken up. She was with a professional killer. Was effectively his prisoner.
    And incredibly, he’d saved her life. Twice, if she believed him.
    She curled against the door as she took in his tight, determined expression and the muscular lines of his body, and shivered with fear. Also with an awareness she refused to name because it led back to that same fear.

Who in the hell was this guy?

Chapter Three
    She was deathly afraid of him.
    Donovan grappled with the mixed feelings that raised—relief that she was cooperating and, in an uncomfortable realization, disappointment. He wanted her to feel safe with him.
    It shouldn’t matter. Not the terror that widened her soft brown eyes, and not the way her soft skin flinched at his touch. None of it mattered as long as he got the information Wally had left with her. But Jessie had meant a lot to Wally, and he would be upset at the rough manner with which Donovan had treated his daughter. That was enough reason to feel bad about the way she was cowering against the passenger door.
    The fact that she also embodied a strange mix of innocence and sexuality disturbed him, turning his brain fuzzy while electrifying his hormones. It was wrong. Tyler Donovan didn’t take direction from his libido, especially not over a woman like Jess, who didn’t even mourn the loss of the father who had adored her. Also, she was far too innocent and naive to be exposed to someone like him. Yet some base part of him wanted to pull Wally’s daughter into the nearest bedroom, strip off her demure business suit, and teach her to unleash her inner vixen.
    The sooner he stashed her at Omega headquarters, the better. Once there, the team could debrief her, figure out Wally’s message, and get on with the operation before more lives were lost. The professional setting might even make him immune to the strange sexual energy he felt whenever he looked at her.
    Between her fear and his efforts to clamp a hold on his imagination, they didn’t exchange another word, not until he drove past the dark complex of hangars at Traverse City’s Cherry Capital airport and sped toward the small jet idling at the end of a runway.
    She sat up straight in her seat, watching nervously. “Where are you taking me?”
    “Someplace safe.” He pulled up beside the plane and got out.
    She stepped out, too, and watched him pull out her suitcases, holding onto her blowing hair as the plane revved its engines and a warm wash of air hit them. “You’re taking me home to Houston?” she asked hopefully, raising her voice over the noise of the plane.
    “Your apartment is no safer than Wally’s house. We’re going to Chicago.”
    “What if I don’t want to go?”
    He shouldered the carry-on and paused, noting her stubborn look and seeing the panic behind it. They didn’t have time for this argument. “I suppose you could make a run for it. Of course, I’d still have your luggage. Plus, I’d catch you before you hit those trees, and I’d have to tackle you and get us both scraped up and pissed off. But maybe you’d like to cause me some pain, so let me put it in simpler terms.” He pointed back the way they’d come. “There, bad guys with knives.” He pointed at the jet. “Here, good guy with a plane. Your choice.”
    She couldn’t argue the point.