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had failed to protect those he loved most. He wasn’t going to be caught off guard again.
    He’d thought this might happen. It was the real reason he’d chosen the diner. He’d planned for this, giving her no indication that was the case. She couldn’t help but wonder what else he wasn’t sharing with her and eye him more closely as a result.
    Brilliant, Hal had called him. Razor sharp. She’d just had no idea how much so.
    And for the first time it occurred to her that, beyond the information he could provide her with, this might be a good man to have on her side.

Chapter Three
    They’d gotten away.
    Albert Shaw scanned the street one last time, even though he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. He didn’t know how Stone and the Ellison woman had done it, but they clearly had.
    They were gone.
    A faint trace of anger flickered deep in his gut, the feeling too muted to make much of an impact. He wasn’t happy about this development, but he’d learned long ago to maintain absolute control over his emotions. Feelings could only interfere with getting the job done.
    This particular job was to eliminate Stone and the Ellison woman. This setback aside, he intended to complete it.
    From his vantage point in the front of the restaurant, he’d caught sight of them heading to the back, but by the time he’d made it to the alley behind the diner there’d been no sign of them. They’d either doubled back and left through the front after all, or they’d somehow made it down the alley before he could follow. Their escape route didn’t matter. All that did was finding them again—and fast.
    Shaw turned quickly and headed back to his vehicle. He could cover more ground faster in his car. It would give him an advantage if they were on foot.
    His cell phone vibrated. He checked the screen just long enough to ID the caller—Bridges—then ignored the device. He was going to hold off on talking to the man as long as possible, preferably until he had something to report. Bridges wasn’t going to be happy Stone and Ellison were still out there any more than Shaw was.
    He frowned, the anger nearly managing to burst through to the surface. The fact that they were still out there made him look sloppy, inept, and he took too much pride in his work to be happy about that. He always planned everything out completely, methodically. But this job had gone bad from the start. His initial assignment had simply been to obtain a copy of Talmadge’s book before he turned it in, so Bridges could determine if any action needed to be taken before its contents spread beyond Talmadge and the few he may have discussed it with. Eliminating Talmadge was a last resort, something that needed to be avoided if at all possible, because it was sure to look suspicious.
    Shaw had hired an associate to hack into Talmadge’s computer, but it had turned out Talmadge had been writing his book on a laptop that wasn’t connected to the internet—to keep himself from being distracted, or because he thought someone might try to hack it? Either way, Shaw had been forced to access the laptop himself. But when Talmadge had finally left his home and given Shaw the opportunity to break in, he’d returned earlier than expected. There’d been no way to get out of the house before Talmadge noticed, and when the man had found him, drastic measures had been required. Rather than simply leaving with the copy of the book he’d downloaded onto a flash drive, Shaw had had to terminate the man, using the fire to both cover the murder and destroy Talmadge’s work.
    Shaw didn’t regret the action. It had been unavoidable. What he did regret was the timing. If he’d had time to prepare, he would have tracked down Stone before acting, and Talmadge, Ellison and Stone all would have died on the same night, everything tied up neatly. Shaw had been monitoring the man’s phone and email communications and knew that Talmadge’s editor and agent didn’t know what was in the