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father might be lying inside that empty house with a bullet through his head, just like Michael—
    “I said don’t.” Lijah lightly grasped the tops of her arms as he looked down at her intently. “Do you trust me, Callie?”
    After what she had witnessed this afternoon? “Oh yes.” With her father’s life. With her life.
    “Then trust me now when I tell you there is no reason to suppose that any harm has come to your father. Peter may just have gone underground. No phone calls, no contact with anyone he knows. It’s what he’s trained to do, remember?”
    She gave a pained wince. “Even me?”
    “Especially you. There is no way that Peter would want this bastard to know anything more about you than he possibly already does, and that includes your telephone number.”
    She looked up at Lijah, searching those deep blue eyes, noting the skin taut over high cheekbones and the stubble having grown even darker on the strength of his jaw during the course of the afternoon. “Do you have family who worry about you too, Lijah?”
    It was as if a shutter had come down over those indigo eyes as he released her and stepped back. “We’ll be leaving in three hours.” He turned away and began gathering up her father’s papers. “I suggest we go back to my place so that I can pick up a few things, maybe eat dinner too, before driving to the airport.”
    Callie had no doubt that some of those things Lijah wanted to pick up would be a gun and whatever other weapons he favored. Quite how he was going to get them through airport security, she had no idea, but she now had every faith Lijah knew exactly what he was doing.
    “Why were you so tired this morning when I arrived here?” She had realized, as she watched him working today, that the lines etched beside his eyes and bracketing his mouth were caused by fatigue. Not the sort of fatigue from spending a night on the town or in bed with a woman, but a bone-weary fatigue that he ignored so he could concentrate on finding her father.
    “Because I only arrived back in England at six o’clock this morning.”
    She had thought it might be something like that. “From where?”
    “Long story.”
    Callie frowned, having realized this was his stock answer when he didn’t intend saying any more on a particular subject. That perhaps he couldn’t say any more than that. “Did it have a happy ending?”
    “Yeah.” Some of the tension left his shoulders. “It had a happy ending.”
    She gave a pained grimace. “I’m sorry I was so impatient with you when I arrived. I—didn’t realize… I had no idea what you do here.”
    “Pretty impressive, hm?”
    He was pretty impressive.
    Callie had also noted that the subject of his family was a closed book.
    Because Lijah didn’t want to talk about his family, or because he didn’t have any?
    Any more than he would tell her why, as an Englishman, he chose to wear a Stetson and cowboy boots?
    The more time Callie spent with Lijah Smith, the less she felt she knew about him.

Chapter 4
    She felt that even more when she stepped into his home a short time later.
    “Not what you were expecting?” Lijah taunted as he watched Callie walk slowly about his house.
    Well, house was probably overstating it. Lijah had bought this old abandoned warehouse and turned it into an open-plan living space, except for the bedroom and a bathroom up a dozen stairs onto the floor above. On the ground floor, apart from another bathroom, it was all open; sitting area, dining area, kitchen, games-and-training area. The floors were polished oak, the furniture comfortable rather than fashionable, the bare brick walls covered with an assortment of paintings and photographs.
    From the outside, it still looked like an abandoned warehouse. Deliberately so; sometimes Lijah had to lock up for weeks at a time if he was away on a mission. He had a Grayson state-of-the-art security system installed, of course, but the less inclination anyone felt to break in, the