SUSAN LUTE

Ten years before Madrid...

Jane Donovan glanced uneasily over her shoulder. The night closed in on her. A lone streetlight glowed dully at the entrance to the ally that ran darkly between the backside of Mike’s, a seedy nightclub frequented by the less affluent of Chicago, and the blacked-out windows of an empty warehouse.

An errant wind chased a discarded ball of paper across her shoe. The melancholy sound of blues playing in the distance stayed her hand for a moment. Through the window of the classic Mustang that was next on Quill’s shortlist, a stuffed green frog stared at her with laughing, goofy eyes from the front passenger seat. A kid’s toy. A Froot Loops box leaned against it’s chubby hind legs and on top of a rumpled child’s blanket, decorated with pink butterflies sewn on top of a green checkerboard.

She shifted her gaze to the back. A car seat.

One hand spayed across the window, then balled into a fist. Quill’s precious acquisition belonged to a family. She was stealing a car that belonged to a family, not some careless dude who had more money than brains.

Her hand tightened painfully around the slim jim, the hard metal digging into the palm of her hand. Releasing a jagged sigh, she pulled away, and using the sleeve of her shirt, wiped the window clean.

Slipping the slim jim in place, she firmed her jaw. All she had to do was pop the lock. For a minute she didn’t think the tricky mechanism was going to yield. Then just as a heavy hand grabbed her shoulder from behind, the snick of the lock echoed like a gunshot in the dead-silent darkness.

Breath lodged in her throat, she bit off a scream. Punching low and hard in the direction of her assailant, she was rewarded with an angry grunt.

“Jane, it’s me,” a low, familiar voice hissed near her ear, while a towering male body crowded her against the muscle car.

“Bear,” she hissed back, shoving her shoulder against the massive chest. “You scared the shit out of me! What are you doing here?”

He didn’t budge an inch. Jane stomped on his booted instep, but the only thing she got for the effort was a grunted, “Saving your bacon. You’re biting off more trouble than you can chew.”

Trouble. She’d been told often enough by the Sisters at the orphanage, she was a magnet for the worst kind.

“Why do you care?” She shoved the end of the slim jim into his hard stomach with enough force to show she meant business.

“Quill’s using you.”

Jane scowled; pushed harder on the slim jim. “Back off.”

His expression closed up.

“He loves me.” Scooting around him, she fished the phone Quill had given her out of her pocket, dialed, let it ring three times, then hung up.

Bear, because he was as big and tough as his namesake, just shrugged, pity darkening the brown of his eyes to black.

She pushed the cell back into her pocket and stalked away from the car. Anger boiled in the pit of her stomach. No one pitied her, she made sure of it. “You’re his brother.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Which is why I know what I’m talking about. If you don’t stop doing these jobs for Quill, you’re going to land in jail.”