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She must have been parked close, he thought. The only way she could have gotten away from him so quickly was if she was parked directly in front of the Cantina. His jaw tightened.
He was turning to stalk to the far end of the lot to his Harley when he heard it: a muted cry.
He stopped, pausing, his gaze searching the parking area across the street. Where had it come from?
There. Again.
Moving, Nik raced across the street, seeing two shadows struggling at the far end of the parking lot. He was pounding across the blacktop when he heard a strangled cry of feminine rage.
The taller shadow fell back briefly. But only briefly.
Nik wasn't close enough.
"Mikayla!" He called out her name as he raced between the cars. The shadow paused, twisted, and in less than a second sprinted off. Nik watched in horror as hair the color of the softest wheat shone for the briefest second in the flashes of the car lights on the other side of the parking area. Almost in slow motion she crumpled to the ground just before he could reach her. Fuck. Fuck.
He was too late.
Horror raced through his system as he hurriedly crouched beside her, his hands running over her quickly as he searched for the telltale dampness of blood, the sign of broken bones. The hilt of a knife.
"No." Weak, panting, she pushed at his hands as they moved over her breasts.
"What are you doing?"
She sounded muffled, strangled. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He could see her face now, no blood. One hand pushed at his as the other rose to rub at her neck.
"Miss Martin?" He brushed her hair back from her face as he helped her sit up.
"Are you okay?"
If he were a lesser man, a normal man, he would have been shaking. His hands framed her face as she stared up at him, her head wobbling as he felt her shuddering.
"Mikayla?" He tried to smooth out the ruined sound of his voice, compliments of a fire that had burned too bright, too hot, too long ago.
"I'm fine." Her voice was low, weak. "Who are you?"
"Nik. Nik Steele."
Fuck, he knew her name, but she hadn't met him. She was going to be suspicious as hell.
37
"The waitress was nice enough to tell me your name," he told Mikayla as he watched her fighting to catch her breath, her hand still massaging her neck. "Are you okay?"
She nodded jerkily, the movement halting as she grimaced in pain.
"He tried to strangle me," she rasped, fear quaking in her voice. "You scared him off."
He hadn't scared the fucker off fast enough. She could have been killed. It took only a second to
use a knife, but whoever had attacked her hadn't wanted to kill her the quick, easy way.
Thank God.
"Help me up." She pressed her hands to the ground to push herself up.
"Here." Nik gripped her beneath her arms and lifted her carefully to her feet, holding her as he watched her find her balance. "You should go to the hospital." Her head lifted slowly.
"Oh, my God, no!" The ragged sound of her voice had rage striking through his chest. The sound of irritated vocal cords. The struggle to breathe as she was being strangled had done minute damage as well.
