She fumbled behind her for the doorknob.

“Let me out,” he said, low and intense. “Say the words. I will be your shield. I will stand between you and all others. ’Tis what you need and you ken it. Doona be a fool, woman.”

Shaking her head, she turned the knob.

“Will it be nay, then? Prefer you to die? Over me? Just what is it you fear I might do to you that would be so terrible?”

The way his heated gaze was lingering on certain parts of her made quite clear some of the things he was thinking about doing to her.

Which of course made her think about them, too, in great detail. And there she was, wet-pantied again. What on earth was wrong with her? Had her ovaries somehow gotten stuck in a permanent ovulation cycle? Were her eggs firing indiscriminately and constantly—and in some perverse, inversely proportionate fashion—with greater enthusiasm the worse the man seemed for her?

Yanking open the door, she backed out into the hall. “I need to think,” she muttered.

“Think fast, Jessica. You’ve not much time.”

“Great, just great. Every-freaking-body knows my name.” With a fierce little scowl, she slammed the door so hard the frame shuddered.

“The next one he sends after you may arrive any moment,” came his deep burr through the door, “and will be more sophisticated than the last. Mayhap it will be a woman. Tell me, lass, will you even see death coming?”

Jessi gave the door an angry little kick.

“Doona venture far. You’re going to need me.”

She gritted something rude at the door that he shouldn’t have been able to hear, but he did. It made him laugh out loud and say, “A physical impossibility, woman, or, believe me, most of us ‘asshole men’ would.”

She rolled her eyes and didn’t bother locking it this time.

As an afterthought, she plucked off the rest of the police tape, balled it up, and stuffed it in her pocket.

Maybe she’d get lucky and somebody’d steal the damned thing and get it out of her hair.

OPTIONS

1. Go to police. Tell all and request protection.

2. Get in touch with original delivery company, ship mirror back, hope that fixes everything.

3. Flee country.

4. Check self into mental hospital and trust, with lockups and padded walls, they’re safer than regular hospitals.

Jessi finished the last of her coffee, pushed aside the mug, stared down at her pathetic little list, and sighed.

She was still feeling shaky in the pit of her stomach, but compiling her list of options had calmed her a bit and forced her to take a realistic look at a completely surreal situation.

Number four was out: it reeked of casting one’s fate to the wind and, when all was said and done, if she had to be in a car wreck, she’d prefer to be the one driving when it happened—control of one’s own destiny and all that.

Number one was out. The police would laugh her right out of the station if she tried telling them she knew who’d murdered their John Doe: a tall, dark, and broody sex-god who was after his freedom, who just happened to be inside a ten-thousand-year-old-plus mirror, who might also be a ruthless criminal that had been . . . er, paranormally interred inside said mirror for the . . . er, safety of the world.

Uh-huh. Wow. Even she thought she was nuts with that one.

That left numbers two and three as potential solutions. The way she figured it, fleeing the country and staying out of it forever—or at least until she was reasonably certain she’d been forgotten about—would cost a whole lot more than trying to ship the thing back, even with the exorbitant price of insurance figured in, and Jessi had to believe that if she just returned the relic, whoever was after it would leave her alone.

After all, what was she going to do? Talk about it, for heaven’s sake? Tell people about the impossible artifact once it was gone? Totally discredit herself and ruin any chance she might one day have of a promising future in the field of archaeology?

As if.

Surely she could persuade them of that, whoever they were. Anyone with half a brain would be able to see that she’d never, in an Ice Age, talk.

She glanced around the university café; the cushioned wood booths were sparsely populated at this time of night, and no one was sitting near enough to eavesdrop. Pulling out her cell phone, she flipped it open, dialed Info, and got the number for Allied Certified Deliveries, the name she’d seen emblazoned on the side of the delivery truck.

At 8:55 P.M., she didn’t expect an answer, so when she got one, she sputtered for a moment before managing to convey the purpose of her call: that she’d gotten a package she wanted to return, but she’d not been given a copy of the bill of lading, so she didn’t know where to ship it back to.