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Chapter 1
Jackson
From the first moment I laid eyes on her, I knew my best friend’s sister would be dangerous.
Ariel was fearless.
Seriously pretty.
I’d never admit my need to stare at her, or the effort it took not to.
Once, I’d had a sister of my own, and in the process of her life being ended, my instincts for keeping women safe had been blasted then broken.
Obsession was the real danger, and I would never, ever succumb.
On any normal day, I steered clear of Ariel Gordonson, but not today.
I stared at the smashed-up Mini, her car, abandoned by the side of the mountain road near a village in our remote corner of the Scottish Highlands.
I’d passed here a minute before, returning from duty at Inverness Hospital where the rock star I was employed to protect had brought home his wife and new baby. I’d been fully focused on providing an escort, but now we were back and the family safe, I’d retraced my steps to Ariel’s car.
She could have stopped to take a call. Been meeting someone for a date. None of my business.
But I couldn’t shake my sense of foreboding.
And her car had been intact then.
In the time it had taken me to turn around after dropping Leo off, someone had crashed into it then taken off, not stopping at the scene of the accident.
My mind raced, and I flung open my door, my boots crunching through a frosted layer of snow.
Her front road-side headlight had been taken out and the bonnet crumpled. Glass twinkled on the frosty ground. Her door was open, but there was no sign of the woman herself.
“Ariel,” I shouted.
Nothing.
I circled the vehicle.
Ice spread through me that had nothing to do with the winter’s night. Ariel’s possessions were scattered by the open door.
Her keys.
A shoe.
The worry lurking in the back of my mind activated into full-blown alarm, and my heart pounded.
Recently, I’d helped to protect Daisy, Ariel’s closest friend, who’d suffered a kidnap attempt in the US, and we’d worked out that the man involved was someone who’d been overly interested in Ariel when the two women had been in school together.
Ariel, not Daisy, though he appeared to be on the payroll of Daisy’s family.
Ariel had relocated here in secret.
She’d left her old life behind entirely, vanishing into smoke.
On the surface, it looked like I was pulling together loosely related facts, but my skill set involved a detailed understanding of how twisted a mind could get. I knew all too well that fanatical men didn’t get over their fixations.
What if he’d come after her?
