Shatter Read Free Page A

least none that added up to fit the evidence he’d collected.
    Shit, he wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation. He didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to fight with her. The more he learned, the more he wanted to stay as far the hell away from her as possible. Yet in the next instant he wanted to get in her face. God, just thinking about what he’d gone through after she’d walked out made him livid.
    A sound tugged at his ear. A sound outside the shower.
    Mitch’s thoughts evaporated and the hair on his neck prickled into tiny needles. The skin across his shoulders rippled with gooseflesh.
    He eyed the clothes piled on the floor through the gap between the curtain and the wall, and eased his hand through the space, reaching for his gun.
    Gone.
    Fuck.
    The shower curtain whipped aside.
    “Sonofabitch.” A mixture of shock and fear zipped up his spine and he straightened, peering across the steamy room and through the water dripping in his eyes. “You don’t even have the decency to wait until a guy is dressed? That’s seriously chickenshit—”
    His next word, “dude,” melted in his mouth as his vision cleared and he focused.
    On Halina.
    Halina. Pointing one of those Heckler & Koch cannons at his chest.

T WO
     
    H eather was already breathing hard when she’d finally forced herself to enter the bathroom. Now, she could barely keep from hyperventilating. And her hands were shaking. Maybe she didn’t have much cold-blooded killer running through her veins after all.
    Or maybe it was just the sight of Mitch Foster, standing a few feet away. Completely naked. Dripping wet.
    Holy . . .
    Shit . . .
    “Mitch?” Heather barely breathed the shocked word before darting another glance around the empty bathroom. Reality check.
    She refocused on him with narrowed eyes. For some insane reason, her gaze darted to his right shoulder and searched his skin. The sight of that familiar tattoo—the Major League Baseball Association logo inked in red, white, and blue glory—confirmed that Mitch Foster was the man glaring back at her from the shower.
    “What in the fuck are you doing here?” Her mind cleared and a million questions hit her at once, but she could only get out the most important one. “And why have you been stalking me for two days?”
    “I wasn’t stalking you, for God’s sake.” He slammed off the water controls.
    Heather startled and realized she’d lowered her weapon. She took aim again, her heart skipping as she stepped back.
    Mitch leaned down and swiped the towel off the floor. Before he swung it around his hips, her gaze swept over him again. Just a quick once-over, soaking in the sheer male beauty of his body. That’s all it took for his raw sexuality to sink into her consciousness and take hold. Her breath eased out of her lungs with a low sigh of pained pleasure.
    “I was watching you so I could find a time, an appropriate time, to talk to you, Halina. Unlike some people, who decide to jack a man in the middle of a shower, I have manners.”
    “You call watching me through my windows at night ‘manners’? Have you forgotten how to use a phone ?”
    Hands on hips, he glared at her. He glared at her .
    “And you would have returned my call, right? And we would have met at Starbucks like normal people, right? Had a regular, civil conversation, right ?” He gestured between them, making a point to stare at the gun. “Because normal people always use silencers on their forty-fives during civil conversations.”
    “You’re not pulling that lawyer shit with me. You’ve been watching my house for two damned days. What are you doing here? How did you . . . ?” Fear singed her nerve endings. “How did you find me? And why ?”
    One part of her mind scanned for her misstep even as another kicked up in alarm. He stepped out of the shower.
    “Don’t move, dammit.”
    “Or what, Halina? You’ll shoot me?” A cynical grin cut across his face. Bright