Private S.W.A.T. Takeover

“You want to hypnotize her here.” Detective Grove still wasn’t up to speed on the idea of hypnotherapy. Or else, that doubt in his tone meant he understood just fine what Dr. Jameson was proposing—he just didn’t think it was a worthwhile idea.

Liza squirmed in her chair. Surrendering her thoughts and memories to a professional therapist was risky enough. To do it in front of an audience felt a whole lot like standing up on a firing range and letting the entire world take a potshot at her.

But she had to try. This was about more than clearing her head of the nightmares that plagued what little sleep she did get and left her exhausted. She owed something to John Kincaid, the dead man she’d found in the warehouse. Six years ago, witnesses had come forward to help convict the thieves who’d murdered her family in a home invasion. Liza had been away at college, working on her undergraduate degree, the night her parents and pet were murdered. She hadn’t been there to fight to protect her family. Or to see anything useful she could testify to at their killers’ trial.

But she could testify for John Kincaid. If she could remember.

Helping another victim find justice was the only way she could help her late parents.

Twisting her gloves in her hands, Liza distracted herself from the uneasy task that lay ahead of her by counting the dog hairs clinging to the sleeves of her blue fleece jacket.

“The setting isn’t ideal.” Dr. Jameson gestured around the busy precinct office with an artistic swirl of his fingers. “But I’m skilled enough to perform my work anywhere I’m needed. A little privacy would be nice, though.”

Detective Grove pushed his chair back and stood. “A little privacy sounds good. We can use one of the interview rooms.”

Divided up into a maze of desks and cubicle walls, the detectives’ division of the Fourth Precinct building was buzzing with indecipherable conversations among uniformed and plain-clothes investigators and the technicians and support staff who worked with them. Liza felt a bit like a rat in a maze herself as she got up and followed Dr. Jameson’s fatherly figure and Grove—the bulldog-faced detective who’d interviewed her before in conjunction with the Kincaid murder case.

Liza tucked her gloves into her pockets as they zigzagged between desks. While Dr. Jameson discussed their late morning session with the detective, she couldn’t help but compare the two men. Both were eager to tap into the secrets locked inside her brain. But while Detective Grove wasn’t concerned with how her memories got tangled up, her therapist seemed to think he could use the painful experience of her parents’ deaths to tap into her hazy memory of John Kincaid’s murder, and draw out the information that he believed was hiding in a well-protected corner of her mind.

It felt odd to be discussed as though she were a walking, talking clinical experiment instead of a human being with ears and feelings.

About as odd as it felt to be watched by the tall, tawny-haired hotshot standing beside a black-haired man with glasses at the farthest desk.

Liza’s first instinct was to politely look away. The two men were obviously sharing a conversation, and the parade through the desks had probably just caught his attention for a moment. But the moment passed and she could feel him still watching her. Liza turned his way again, then nearly tripped over her own feet as she stuttered to a halt. “Impossible,” she gasped.

Remember. An imaginary hand from her nightmare grabbed hers and she flinched.

She was being watched by a ghost.

Closing her eyes and shaking the imagined sensation from her fingers, she purged the foolish notion from her head. Her brain was tired and playing tricks on her. Ghosts, shmosts. They weren’t real. Taking a deep breath, her streak of self-preservation that had seen her through the most difficult times of her life kicked in, giving her the impetus to mask her shock before opening her eyes and moving on.

Man. Ghost.

Reality. Memory.

She snuck another peek as the man lowered his head to resume his conversation. See? You twit. Get a grip.

The similarities were there, yes. But that honeybrown hair wasn’t streaked with gray.

The square jaw was whole. Not bruised and broken.

The eyes were blue as cobalt. Piercing. Very much alive.

Liza circled behind a carpeted cubicle wall. No way could Captain Hotshot be the same man she’d found murdered on that warehouse floor. She was going nuts, plain and simple. Agreeing to interrogation under hypnosis was a very bad idea. She should go home. Go back to work. Go for a run with her dogs. Anything normal. Anything physical. Anything that would stop the fear and confusion, and get her life back to its fast-paced, sleep-deprived, business-as-usual state.

But when she cleared the wall, Liza was forced to pause again as a pair of uniformed officers escorted a young man wearing baggy pants to a desk and handcuffed him to a chair. Determined to convince her brain that she’d only imagined Kincaid’s ghost across the room, Liza used those few camouflaged seconds to study the man who’d spooked her.

The badge hanging from a chain around his neck marked him as a police officer. Yet, unlike the detectives wearing suits and ties or the patrol officers wearing their standard blue uniforms, this man was dressed in black from neck to toe. Black turtleneck. Black gun and holster at his hip. Black pants tucked into what looked like black army boots. And a black flak vest that bore two rows of white letters—KCPD and S.W.A.T.

Mask the spiky crop of hair with a knit cap and add stripes of eye black beneath his eyes, and she’d think he was ready to launch some kind of covert attack.

Against her, judging by the way his gaze darted back to her the instant her path cleared and she took a step.

That nosy son of a… Red-haired temper flamed through her veins, and Liza tilted her chin and hurried after Jameson and Grove.

So Captain Hotshot was a tough guy. One of those S.W.A.T. cops who defused bombs and calmed riots and shot rifles at bad guys from a mile away. He probably hunted for fun—had trophies of innocent deer and hapless pheasants mounted on his walls at home.

Tough guys didn’t scare her.

The detective with glasses standing beside him kept talking, but the man in black continued to watch her. Suspecting her own scrutiny might have intensified his, Liza resolutely focused her gaze on the back of Jameson’s silvery head and wished the path from Grove’s desk to the interview room was straighter and shorter.

She felt the tough guy turn his conversation back to the man beside him, but the instant she snuck a glance over to make sure his fascination with her had waned, he blinked. And when those clear blue eyes opened again, they locked on to hers across the sea of desks and detectives. What the hell? Liza’s pulse rate kicked up a notch. Without looking away, he lowered his head to say something to the other man. Were they talking about her?

Liza broke eye contact as she neared his position. A distinct feminine awareness hummed beneath the surge of temper. But both energies fizzled as an all-too-familiar panic crept in. Maybe she had more than her sanity to worry about. Did he recognize her? Did he know why she was here? Dr. Jameson and Detective Grove had reached the hallway leading to the interview rooms. Another few steps and she’d be there as well.

Two more steps. One more glance.

Enough.

“What?” she exclaimed, turning and taking a step toward the armed man, realizing too late that he was several inches taller and a heck of a lot broader up close than he’d been with the length of the room between them. But guts and bravado spurred her past the unnerving observation. “Do I have lunch in my teeth? You think I’m some kind of circus sideshow? Why are you staring at me?”

Without batting an eye or missing a beat, he grinned. “You started it.”

“I did not.” Snappy, Liza.

“Holden…We need to walk away.” The caution from the detective beside him went unheeded.

Tough Guy faced her, looking as calm and bemused as she was fired up. When a man was armed for battle and built like a fort, he probably didn’t feel the need to lose his cool. “Maybe I’m just admiring the view.”

Liza scoffed at the flirtatious remark. Right. Like her freckles and attitude had turned his head. “And maybe you’re just full of it.”

An elbow in the arm from the man standing beside him made the tough guy raise his hands in surrender. “My apologies. Can’t help it if I’ve got a thing for redheads.”

“Uh-huh.” Liza hadn’t expected the apology. Didn’t trust it. Wasn’t quite sure how to handle it, either.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand at her elbow. She calmed her reaction before it reached her face and looked up into Dr. Jameson’s indulgent expression. “Liza? It’s not the time for chatting. I want to pursue this while the dream is fresh. Come along.”

“Who’s chatting?” Liza grumbled. Grateful for the opportunity to escape, she allowed Detective Grove to usher her into a room stuffed with a conference table and chairs. Before the door closed behind her, she gave one last look over her shoulder. The tough guy with the smooth lines and eerily familiar countenance was still watching her. Her reaction to his intense scrutiny was still sparking through her veins. Something about those probing blue eyes was as spellbinding as it was unnerving. Turning away from his inexplicable fascination and determined to dismiss her own, Liza let the door close behind her.

“Who was that man staring at me? I’m sure I’ve never met him, but he looked…familiar.”

Detective Grove glanced toward the door as if her ghost had followed them into the room. “The big guy in the S.W.A.T. vest?” As if anyone else had zeroed in on her through the midday crowd like that. “That’s Holden Kincaid.”

Liza sank into the nearest chair. “As in Deputy Commissioner John Kincaid?”

“Yeah.”

That explained the resemblance. A thing for redheads, my ass.