Seduced by the Enemy (Blaze, 41) by Jamie Denton

If he was going to keep them alive, and clear both of their names, he needed not only her trust, but her complete and total reliance on him. Without it, they were as good as dead. “Now give me the gun, sweetheart. Or are you planning to shoot me?”
    She let out a sigh, then spun the small weapon inone hand to grip it by the barrel before extending the handle toward him. “Here. Take it. The last thing I need is an assault with a deadly weapon charge added to my growing list of manufactured crimes.”
    â€œOr murder,” he said, pocketing the weapon. He took hold of her hand. “We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s get out of here.”
    â€œWait,” she said. “What if we added to the confusion?”
    â€œPeyton, we don’t have time.” The paper trail had already been started. This place could be crawling with feds and other law enforcement in a matter of seconds.
    â€œNo. Listen.” She stopped and slipped one of her credit cards from her pocket and waved it in front of him. “Why can’t we have them chasing their tails for a while?”
    â€œMeaning?” he asked.
    â€œLeave this one here. With him,” she added, with an inclination of her head to where the kid was lying, still unconscious. “He won’t be able to access the ATMs without my PIN number, but he could use it for purchases.”
    She was really starting to amaze him. “Peyton, honey,” Jared said, taking the card from her, “now you really are scaring me.” He dropped the credit card beside the kid, where he’d be sure to see it when he came to. “I never realized what devious deliberations existed within that legal-eagle mind of yours.”
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    J UST BECAUSE MOST of the nation worked a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday routine didn’t mean that the government followed the same regime. In times ofnational crises or games of political maneuvering, the lights inside the Capitol often burned long after midnight, seven days a week.
    Steve arrived at his office precisely at 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning following his daily workout at the health club. He set his double-shot café latte on the coaster at the side of his desk, hung his jacket on the hook behind the door, then reached for the newspapers stacked in his In box just as his cell phone rang.
    He answered on the second ring. “Radcliffe.” He sat in his soft leather chair, leaned back and propped his feet on the polished edge of his desk.
    â€œHer car’s been found.”
    Steve was instantly alert despite his relaxed pose. A call this early from his contact within the bureau could only mean one thing—the chance of putting a quick, quiet end to a situation about to spiral out of control was at hand. The fact that they’d located Peyton Douglas’s vehicle was a good start in that direction. “Where?” he asked.
    â€œThe Horton,” the contact told him. “A low-rent motel near the expressway.”
    Steve knew the place. Rooms rented by the hour and a desk clerk who looked the other way, for a price. Whenever the senator had a taste for something low-class and raunchy, the kind of sex even his mistress wouldn’t provide, the Horton offered the kind of anonymity necessary in a town where whispered liaisons and scandals were considered appropriate dinner party conversation.
    â€œAny sign of her?” he asked calmly, effectively keeping the alarm rippling along his spine out of his voice. There was no reason for Douglas to frequentsuch a seedy establishment…unless she’d been informed of her status as a target to draw Romine out into the open.
    â€œNothing,” his informant told him. “The place came up clean on a search of the premises by local law enforcement.”
    Shit. That was not what Steve wanted to hear. “Do you have reason to believe she’s with him?” If Romine had gotten to Douglas before they could, then