“He won’t talk,” Colin said.
“Not once he’s dead.” And that better happen soon or Colin would be next. “Then we need to come up with a solution for grabbing Ms. Raine that isn’t a direct attack.”
“Sir?”
The lack of common sense infuriated Gary. He felt his temper rise, but he strained to wrestle it back again. “We’re trying not to raise suspicion, though I’m not sure how that’s possible now.”
“Why?”
The urge to kill him surged. “Because there are people involved with this job who are not going to be happy with the way you’ve bumbled your way through this so far.”
Colin nodded and lifted his hand as if he was going to take another run at the pens, but stopped. “Right.”
“And get me intel on the boyfriend.”
Gary had names for the town-house ownership but there was surprisingly little to find. Looked like a dummy corporation of some sort.
That meant there was more digging to do. He wanted everything from credit reports to the second cousins’ medical records on this guy. Every stone would be turned over, scrubbed for information and dumped.
Colin checked his phone then looked up again. “I don’t have a name for the boyfriend.”
And that fact intrigued Gary even more. If Ms. Homebody was seeing someone, people would be talking. Find the right nurse or neighbor, or even on-scene policeman, and this would all be resolved. Good thing Gary had an “in” there.
But he still wanted to check Colin’s skill. See how far he could get. “Examine the police reports. Eyewitness statements.”
“By when?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Because there was a bigger concern at work here. Someone who disliked mess and surprise more than Gary did. “Whatever you need to do, do it before we both need to answer for this Ms. Raine and her ability to dodge capture.”
* * *
THEY ALL GATHERED in Davis and Lara’s kitchen the next morning. Three members of the team were out of town and had been for months. They were the traveling squad. The skeleton crew that manned the office every day in Annapolis was there, along with Jocelyn. Lara hadn’t come downstairs yet.
Ben eyed the ever-present coffeepot in the center of the table. Before he could reach for it, Jocelyn grabbed it and poured a mug for herself and one for him. Straight-up and black for both of them.
In the stark light of day, Ben still didn’t regret the kiss. She’d stood there babbling nonsense and acting as if he was some kind of criminal. Not because of NCIS but because of who he actually was inside and what he believed in.
The suggestion he somehow lacked humanity or would let her get hurt kicked him in the gut. It had ticked him off and kept him up most of the night.
But that kiss. That taste and feel of her turned out to be even better than he imagined, and he’d been having some pretty hot dreams about her almost from the beginning. That hair, a deep rich red, and eyes a sky-blue.
She was trim with an athletic build. And when she wore that nurse’s uniform, his brain flipped to autopilot and his lower half clicked on.
Being patient and giving her time to get comfortable was slowly eating away at him. He’d wait if that was what it took, but when she’d talked about cutting it off last night, he’d shifted into fast-forward. The relief that poured through him when she leaned into the kiss, meeting him touch for touch, not pulling back, still filled him today.
He leaned over and caught the scent of vanilla. Good grief, she smelled like cupcakes. A man could only take so much.
Joel swiveled his chair from side to side like a little kid. “You okay over there, Ben?”
Yes, but he planned to kill Joel later. “I was making sure Jocelyn remembered everyone. Yesterday was a bit crazed.”
She smiled and pointed as she went around the room. “Joel Kidd, the tech wizard. Connor Bowen, the boss. Davis Weeks, my current landlord.”
Pax nodded. “Nice.”
She frowned at him. “But you I don’t know.”
“My baby brother, Pax.” Davis dumped a tray of muffins on the table, then sat down with Connor across from Ben. “You’ll find that Pax is annoying, but you get used to it. You kind of have to because we need him around here.”
Pax leaned over Connor to snag a muffin. “I’m the good-looking one.”
Connor rolled his eyes. “And so modest.”
Ben noticed the Weeks brothers were alone when they usually had women by their sides these days. One absence was particularly notable, since she owned the house with Davis. “Where’s Lara?”
Davis didn’t look up from his coffee. “Sleeping in.”
“Now that we’re on the same page, we need to come up with a new solution.” Connor opened a folder as he talked.
“That’s why he’s the boss,” Joel joked. “Jumps right to the point.”
“So will I.” Jocelyn smiled as if she’d been waiting all night to drop this bomb. “I can stay in a hotel near the hospital.”
Ben almost groaned. He knew she’d immediately pick a solution that made him nuts. Forget running from him—this was just dangerous. Yeah, she believed he was the target, but whoever was behind this knew her and associated her with him. That made her safety his biggest concern.
“You can’t go to work.” Admittedly this wasn’t her field, but she had to know that fact. Seemed obvious to him. From the nods around the table, the rest of them got it.
“I have to.”
For a very smart woman, she was slow picking up on this point. “Absolutely not. And you can frown at me all you want. It’s not happening. It can’t.”
He glanced around the table looking for backup, and Davis jumped in. “Not a good idea, Jocelyn.”
“I have bills to pay.” She slid her fingers over the handle to her mug, back and forth over the smooth surface.
He was mesmerized by her lean fingers and trim, manicured nails. He blinked to break the trance. “Don’t worry about those.”
She made a face that suggested he needed meds. “How can I—”
“Whoa.” Davis held up a hand “She can continue to stay at the house. Lara would like the female company. Apparently, I can be difficult.”
“No.” All eyes turned to Pax when he gave the curt reply.
Gone was his usual lighthearted banter. He wore a matching scowl to Davis’s expression, and tension spilled through the room as they engaged in some sort of brotherly standoff.
Ben didn’t understand what was happening. “Something you want to share with the rest of the class?”
Pax didn’t break eye contact with his brother. “It’s not my news.”
“What are we talking about?” Jocelyn asked.
Pax folded his arms over his chest. “Davis, you know I’m right. It’s not safe. You’re offering because that’s what you do, not because you think it’s a good idea.”
Whatever was going on arced back and forth between the brothers. The rest of them sat there watching the staring contest.
But Ben had to pipe up. “Someone took two shots at Jocelyn in one day.”
A fact he still couldn’t process. Men at her home. Others following her around town to this house. He expected danger in his job. Even though he watched Davis and Pax get ripped apart when the women they loved stepped close to danger, Ben never thought his work would bleed into his personal life. Lately that was all it had done.
His father blamed him, claiming after all his years of service he was suffering a backlash at the Pentagon for Ben’s choices. Powerful people sat in jail awaiting trial. And Ben had walked away from a career that had once meant everything, only to have his name stamped on the front of every paper and as the lead in every news broadcast.
“Lara is pregnant.” Davis made the announcement with a slap
of his palm against the table. “Okay, that’s the issue.”
Everyone started talking at once. There were backslaps and congratulations. Davis took it all in, nodding and thanking everyone even as his face grew more drawn.
“Why the secret?” Not that Ben knew much about babies, but he couldn’t imagine a better set of parents than Davis and Lara.
“She’s not far along, and because of what happened before with the miscarriage...” Davis blew out a harsh breath. “Well, we were being careful and preferred not to talk about it yet.”
That explained it. Fear gripped Davis. Ben didn’t blame him one bit. “Congratulations.”
The only one not jumping up and down with good cheer was Jocelyn. For a few seconds she just sat there. “It’s great news, but how could you let me in the house at all? Or Ben?”
Again with the theory that he was the devil’s right-hand man. “I’m sitting right here.”
Jocelyn gave him a “wait until I get you alone” glare, and not in the good way. “My point is that Davis strikes me as the kind of guy who might put his wife in a protective shell when she’s pregnant. And in this case, he should. We’re talking guys with guns here.”
“I would if Lara would go without yelling the house down. I’d take her to an island with a private doctor and hide out until the baby comes,” Davis mumbled under his breath.
The click of Connor’s coffee mug against the table had everyone turning. He didn’t slam it down or yell. No, neither was Connor’s style. He simply commanded attention and somehow got it without any fanfare.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not convinced this is a Corcoran issue but—”
“What does that mean?” Jocelyn asked.
“I think they—whoever they are in this case—are after you.”
“Why?” Ben asked.
“I’ve been with Ben the whole time,” she said at the same time.
“If someone wanted to take Ben out, they could have gone after him on the street or at his house. Why wait until you were around?”
Ben had walked through that argument in his mind and on paper. He came up with one reason. “Leverage. They know we’re together and can use Jocelyn to get to me.”
“Together, really?” Pax asked as he looked around the room. “That’s news, right?”
“Then there’s the problem with the records search,” Joel said.
Ben groaned. He knew what that meant and it wasn’t good. Background checks. Quiet checking. It all spelled trouble for Corcoran.
Jocelyn sighed. “Now you lost me.”
“Joel has a warning system of sorts set up. When someone goes looking for information on us or our property or our backgrounds, it trips an alarm and Joel finds out.” Ben found the whole thing spooky but he had to admit it had come in handy more than once in the short time since he’d begun working with the team.
“Last night someone started looking into the ownership of Davis’s house.” Joel made a few swipes on his tablet. “Thought maybe that detective was double-checking but it didn’t trace back to him. This look came from someone skilled at hiding their digital footprints.”
Davis swore. “That’s great.”
But it was what Joel and Connor didn’t say that had Ben’s nerves clicking to high alert. “No one checked on me.”
Joel winked at him. “Exactly.”
“Hello.” Jocelyn waved a hand in front of Ben’s face. “Still lost.”
“No one is searching for my house, which is a brand-new condo, one I got since leaving NCIS.” One whose ownership trail Joel and Connor had helped Ben bury through a corporation and a shell and whatever else they insisted on to keep his name off the title. “The search was for Davis’s house, where you are right now. It suggests the attackers don’t know about me and are fishing to figure out who you’re with and why.”
She winced. “But why me? I don’t know anything.”
“I have no idea, but we’re going to find out.” Connor glanced down at his notes. “We start with the clue about the first guy wanting something from you. That means we retrace your steps and, sorry to say, tear your life apart.”
Her body stiffened and she almost bounded out of her chair. “What?”
Ben held her down with a hand on her thigh. The reaction combined with the cryptic comment from yesterday about this not being her first experience with danger had him wanting to do some background searching of his own. “We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Whatever it is just happened, so I’m thinking this is about the last month, if it’s about me at all.”
Interesting how she defined the time parameter. Ben knew that meant something. There was something in her past she wanted to hide. With his personality, that was exactly where he now wanted to dig.
She deserved privacy, and a part of him wanted to discover things about her normally, like non-agents did. Over meals and while watching movies on the couch.
But life had been rapid-firing disasters at them from the beginning. He couldn’t figure out how to slow it all down now and double back.
And her past could hold the key to what was happening today. The way Joel eyed her, Ben knew he planned to call upon all of his search skills, which were considerable, to hunt this one down.
Ben wanted to be the one to find whatever was to be found about her. Give her some dignity in not having the whole group know, if that was her preference. So, he’d try to get answers from her, and if that failed, he’d step carefully and keep the search narrow. He owed her that.
“We’ll circle back to what we need to check in your past later.” Connor’s gaze traveled over the table. “You know what else this means, right? We’re on lockdown protocol. Pax and Kelsey move in with Davis and Lara.”
That was how the system worked. It was one of the many fail-safes they put in place. They drew in close, making it difficult for anyone to grab one of them. Ben was surprised Connor wasn’t insisting they all bunk with him. That was the usual rule.
More than likely had something to do with the pregnancy announcement. Lara would want to be home and tough-guy Davis would do backflips to make it happen. Connor’s decision to carve out an exception allowed them all to skip the arguing step.
Jocelyn leaned closer to Ben. “Who’s Kelsey?”
“Pax’s live-in girlfriend.”
Pax groaned. “She’s going to love this.”
“You want her safe,” Connor pointed out.
“And she’ll insist on opening her store.” Jocelyn opened her mouth, but before she could ask, Pax filled in the blanks. “She owns a coffee shop not far from the City Dock. We live above it.”
Connor’s hand balled into a fist. “No one goes to work unless you’re working at the Corcoran offices.”
“Wait a second.” Jocelyn pushed back her chair and stood. “Stop.”
Joel smiled. “I’m surprised you waited until now to jump in and say that.”
“I have nursing shifts. I can’t just disappear or fall out of rotation.”
Joel’s grin didn’t lessen one bit. “Use the excuse that you were attacked at home.”
“Since it’s true,” Davis said.
They were using the wrong strategy. Ben had been negotiating meals with this woman for weeks. She’d stick up for others before she did for herself. He had finally got her to say yes to a date when he pointed out the hospital staff had taken up a pool to see how many times he’d get shot down. He had no trouble using pity for the first date. After that, pity was off the table.
But the reality was, he wasn’t the only one on that side of the table with a rescue complex. “If someone is after you, they could follow you right to the hospital floor and endanger patients, other nurses, innocent visitors checking on sick relatives.”
Joel made an e
xplosion sound. “And he goes right for the gut shot.”
She sat down hard. Clenched her teeth together, looking as if she wanted to yell at Ben for taking that route. “That’s not cool.”
He didn’t budge. Didn’t give her a way out of lessening the possible tragic outcome. If anything, he was tempted to start listing all sorts of horrible things that could go wrong. “But it’s true.”
She saved them all from hearing more. “Impressive argument...and also a winning one.”
“I had a few hours last night to work on it.” Long hours of not sleeping and a few worrying she’d shimmy out the window to avoid him this morning.
“That’s enough information on your nighttime activities.” Keeping his caffeine addiction up and running, Connor reached for the coffeepot again. “Joel will take the crash pad on the third floor of my place. Ben and Jocelyn will be on the second floor with me. All in separate bedrooms, of course.”
Jocelyn rubbed her temples with her thumbs. “A lot of decisions are being made for me and no one is bothering to ask me.”
And Ben could tell she was not pleased about that. It was another thing he’d learned. She was independent and any suggestion of needing to be coddled didn’t go over well.
He liked that about her. The spirit. The way he first saw the dedicated nurse and welcoming smile, then the backbone underneath, won him over.
“It’s for your own protection,” Connor said.
Ben winced over the monotone delivery.
Jocelyn went a step further. “Do you know anything about women?”
“My wife would probably say no.”
Jocelyn’s gaze went to Connor’s ring finger and the slim band he wore. “You have a wife?”
“She’s out of town.”
Not a good subject. Ben had forgotten to warn her on this one. Jana had been MIA for months now. Connor talked about a sick aunt and then about some work she needed to do out of town. Neither excuse sounded all that compelling.
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