Dark eyes met his. There was an entire circus of emotion in that gaze. “Hahn. You ok?”
“I will be. Idiots had fists made out of foam. I’m sure Leina’s girls hit harder than they did.”
She smiled softly. “You’re just saying that. You don’t have to impress me. I know what happened in there.”
“Oh, I’m not trying to impress you.”
Her smile faded. Hesitancy and mistrust were all he could read now. “Of course not. Well. We survived, didn’t we? Time to get back to real life.”
“Yes. Because of you. And those skills of yours.” He’d known she was good, but that good? No. He hadn’t had a clue.
“I wasn’t sure it would work. But Carrie Lorcan...her protocols...they worked. Thank God they worked.” She shivered.
Ezra wrapped one hand around her skinny little arm as gently as he could.
Those bastards had yanked her around by her arms far too many times. Hurt her. The skin beneath his fingers was silky soft and perfect.
He leaned down until less than six inches separated their faces. “They worked. Because you made them work. You did this, Toliver. And those sonsofbitches won’t hurt anyone else ever again. We stopped them.”
“But we don’t know who they are or why they came after us in the first place.” She looked past his shoulder. The first of the CSI teams were arriving. Everything would be processed and cataloged. From the bodies of the four men down to the smallest fiber. It could all potentially get them the answers they needed.
The why.
But that didn’t matter to Ezra at that moment. What mattered was her and the fact that they were alive.
The paramedics were insistent that he get out of their way. He stood back, then watched as she was bundled into the ambulance.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Ezra turned toward the man behind him.
Ken Chalmers wasn’t exactly a close friend of his, but he liked the man well enough.
“You doing ok, Hahn?”
Ezra nodded. He’d known Shannon’s team leader was out there searching for her somewhere. Knew Chalmers wouldn’t stop until he’d found her. “Hurt like hell, but I’ll live. For a while there, I wasn’t certain that would be the case.”
“We were on your trail within five minutes of the abduction. Jac Jones saw it go down in the parking lot and sounded the alarm. Sorry it took us so long to find you.”
Hell, Ezra knew the odds. They were lucky to have been found alive. In most cases, all that would have been left would have been bodies. “These guys were organized. And I don’t think it was just this four.”
“What do you mean?”
Something had been gnawing at his subconscious for the last forty-eight hours, at least. “There was someone else calling the shots in there. The leader kept getting messages. Everything would pause while he dealt with it. Things he said made me think someone else with a beef against the bureau is involved. Possibly not just PAVAD.”
“We’ll find them. It may take time, but we will.”
Ezra nodded. “Everyone’s safe at PAVAD now?”
“Bomb team found two explosives in our building. One just behind the Forensics lab, the other in the lobby. Another near the lobby of the St. Louis building. Whatever message Carrie Lorcan received from Shannon bought us the time we needed to find them. It was close. We evacuated the entire damned block. The guests at the inn aren’t too happy with us, but they’re alive.”
“She kept her head. Even though...one of the guys was all over her. If it hadn’t been for the older guy keeping him under control, Shannon would have been assaulted. Yet she kept her head.”
“She’s good at what she does, Ezra. One of the best in her field. Very, very good.”
He nodded. “I was just incidental. It was her they wanted, and if I hadn’t been there, they would have just taken her. That damned blanket inside—apparently it came from her apartment. Taken to terrorize. And then they showed her photos of your kids. Of Mia Stephenson. Of Kyra.”
“We’ll keep her safe. I’ll make sure of it.”
Ezra nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. But it wasn’t finished. He had no doubt about that at all. “See that you do. It’s not over, Chalmers. I feel it in my gut.”
“I’ll let Team Five know. They’re handling it from here on out.”
“I’m sure I’ll be talking to them shortly then.”
“Not at the moment. Get your ass to the hospital. Get that face of yours looked at. The rest of this stuff—let us handle it. We have your back.”
Ezra nodded. What else was there for him to do now? He didn’t have a clue.
But Shannon was already on her way to the hospital.
And he wasn’t ready to let her out of his sight just yet.
TWENTY
THERE WERE PEOPLE waiting for her at the hospital. People she recognized— and wanted to see. People she was afraid she would never see again.
Kyra hugged her first. “We took a chopper down here.”
Shannon resisted the urge to cling. She smelled. And definitely needed new clothes. Still, her friends didn’t seem to mind. She fought tears.
They were there for her. Seven hours from home. They were all there. Even Mia. That mattered. It took everything she had not to grab hold of them and just cling like a limpet.
She didn’t get much time with them before she was ushered to an exam room where a doctor was already waiting. She answered his questions and got the ball rolling. The sooner she was done here, the sooner she’d make it to what she really wanted—a shower. Food. In that order. Maybe.
She refused a sexual assault kit. She made it clear to the ER doctor that it wasn’t necessary, and thankfully, he accepted her at face value. She shivered again when she thought about that asshole Jim’s eyes when he’d looked at her.
She’d gotten lucky, and she knew it. If Ken and the rest hadn’t found her... Shannon shivered.
She’d run up against far too many crazy people lately. Occupational hazard, maybe, but it still made her ill to think about.
When the doctor was finished, Shannon got the bad news that she’d half expected.
They were making her stay until morning. She didn’t quite understand why—until Kyra poked her head in and smiled. Yeah, she suspected her friend had pulled some sort of FBI: PAVAD IA magic and insisted on it. “We could put you in with Ezra, if you like. It would save the bureau a few bucks.”
“Ha ha.” It was a weak response, and she knew it.
To be honest, she almost wished they would. The room around her seemed cold and sterile. And she wasn’t ready to deal with things alone. Every time she turned her head, she expected to see Ezra. Wanted to see him.
She’d probably never go back to how she’d felt about that man before. Something about having only him to depend on for those three days had shifted every perception she’d had of him.
He’d wanted to protect her. Even to the point of getting his ass kicked when he’d tried to intervene on her behalf. He’d done whatever he could to keep them angry at him, keep their attention on him, rather than her.
She would never forget that.
If she had had to face it alone, she would have cracked. Broken.
Failed.
He’d become a visible reminder of all the people she worked with whose very lives were at stake.
If she had failed, both FBI buildings in St. Louis would have been destroyed. The abductors, the damned terrorists or cult members—whatever they had been—had been that determined.
When the nurse came in to tell her they had her room ready on the second floor, Shannon rode in the wheelchair without protesting. After the nurse had promised she could take a shower as soon as she got to the room.
A shower was most definitely needed.
Then food. And sleep. Food and sleep. That was all she was going to worry about now.
She’d deal with everything else in the morning.
TWENTY-ONE
CHAS NE
EDED TO see Geoff and Nils and Ezra again. Watching those newscasts with Ezra had made that clear to him. It had been less than five hours since Ezra had been rescued.
It brought back memories.
Chas needed to see him and the others. See if they could answer some of the questions he still had. Maybe it was best to get the closure everyone spoke about. Then he could move forward. Come out into the light again.
He would still be invisible. It was a trick of his trade.
But he didn’t have to be all the time.
And then he had business to attend to.
They owed him, big time. It was time he collected his debts. Put his affairs in order, so to speak. Before he could move on to the next stage in his life. That money would go a long way to buying him the kind of life he wanted.
And whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was time to move past Amelia. Chas was only thirty-four. Young enough to find another woman to love, to start a family with.
He would guard this one far more carefully than he had the last.
It was time he found what he needed. He’d thought about Ezra and the others most of last night. Remembered.
Chas half missed the feeling of having people around.
He was playing around on his laptop—he split his off time between editing the photographs he took and the sword and sorcery games he’d created—when he first saw the links with Ezra’s name right there emblazoned across his screen.
Ezra, who had left the army to join the FBI right after they’d returned stateside. He read the article summarizing how the man he’d once considered a friend had been abducted, then rescued by the superheroes of the FBI. PAVAD.
Ezra had been doing well, making a name for himself saving lost kids. He smirked. Ezra had always had a bit of a hero complex or something. Hollace hadn’t liked the other guy much at all. Said Ezra Hahn was just a damned poser. Needing the glory or something.
He didn’t know if he believed that, but Hollace sure had.
It was good to see that Ezra had been rescued. But it was the girl who’d also been abducted that had truly caught his attention. He had to wonder about her. There had been something on Ezra’s face in that last photo. He’d looked at the woman like she mattered.
Like Chas used to look at Amelia.
He tossed his soda toward the garbage can as anger and grief filled him.
There always was a woman involved. Men like Ezra pulled them to him effortlessly.
Men like Chas had to work for the women they got.
It seemed like there always was that disparity where some of the men he’d fought with were concerned. The woman’s name was listed: Agent Shannon Toliver.
He studied the photos of her closely. Ezra hadn’t been a real player, but he’d had girls who wanted him. More than Chas had. Were Ezra and this Shannon involved? She didn’t look like Ezra’s usual type. Ezra went for the model-gorgeous type—and got it, too, which had always burned Chas a bit—but this girl was more real-looking than that.
She was extremely petite, and...cute. Not model gorgeous. At most, she was pretty in that wholesome-kid-sister kind of way. She’d probably be a bit invisible in the crowd. Like Chas.
Like his Amelia had been before she’d been killed.
Chas would have seen a woman like her, would have wanted a woman like this Shannon Toliver. She was just the type Chas had always preferred. If he lived in a world where he wasn’t so deliberately invisible.
He kept reading links.
He watched a short video of Agent Toliver giving a press conference—dated a few months back—and smiled at how sweet she sounded. How smart. There was definite intelligence in her words, and humor. It was the unstated humor that had him smiling. And had him playing the video a few more times.
Once his business was done, he might just look up this co-worker of Ezra Hahn’s for himself. It would be easy to do. The laptop he played on was the best the government could afford.
He’d stop by and watch her. Make certain she was ok after the hell she’d no doubt just been through.
The news was saying the woman had foiled a terrorist attack.
He’d walked away with it and a half dozen other tools of his particular trade. No one had bothered stopping him.
He checked his watch. It was time.
He’d have lunch with Geoff. Get the answers the other man had. Then he’d make the next move in his plan.
He right-clicked the video of Agent Shannon Toliver and saved it to his hard drive, as well as the photos of her and Ezra after they’d been rescued.
He blew the first photo up, selected her face, and copied the image. It was so simple for him to do. He studied every feature of her face, committing her to memory. Just the same as he did every target he’d ever been hired to kill. The skills were intrinsic now.
She was beautiful in that real kind of way that actually mattered in this world.
He would have to find out more about her. See just how Ezra felt about her. It wouldn’t be a strain to watch for her while he waited for his latest assignment.
TWENTY-TWO
EZRA FORCED HIMSELF to breathe, take stock of how he actually felt. Parts of him ached, but nothing he hadn’t experienced before. Mostly, he needed to sleep, eat, and take some damned pain killers. Cam’s fiancée Kyra had different ideas. She flat out told him that he was being admitted, as per standard procedure. He’d like to see where that was written, but he knew better than to argue with her. She’d just write the procedure up right there in front of him—, whether he liked it or not.
He just grunted at her. Then she hugged him before she left to go sit with Shannon. He’d always liked Kyra. Even more so now that she was with Cam.
Cam, who was currently sitting in Ezra’s hospital room, making wisecracks while Ezra changed into the sweats and T-shirt Cam provided. There was no way in hell he was getting into one of those hospital gowns—even if Cam’s loaner shirt had Bugs Bunny on it.
Kyra had told them that Shannon was going to be fine but had been admitted for observation. She was being kept three doors down.
It shouldn’t have seemed so strange, having her out of his sight. After the last few days of watching her for hours on end, it did. His skin itched. He wanted to actually get his eyes on her. He needed to see her. He’d cleaned himself up in the shower—he was not getting a sponge bath like an octogenarian—before pulling on the clothes. Cam was stirring a bowl on the tray the dietary tech had brought in. “You really should eat this. Oatmeal is so good for you.”
Ezra’s stomach growled. But, damn it, he hated oatmeal. “What else is there?”
“Eggs. Dinosaur, I think. They certainly look old enough to be from Barney. It’s hospital food. You can never really tell.”
“Quit playing with my food, you idiot.” He’d eat first, then go check on her.
He just needed to see her once before he could sleep.
“Just making certain it’s safe for consumption, man.” Cam’s expression turned serious. “You scared the shit out of us, Hahn. You know you’re not supposed to do that.”
“I’ll try better next time.”
“You do that. You going to be ok for a few? I need to go find the little woman. Make sure she’s had her dinner before I take her back to the hotel and tuck her into bed. Leina is going to sit with Shannon for a while tonight. I thought about staying, babysitting you for the night.”
“Get out of here. I’m fine.”
“Nuh-uh. You and Toliver get guarded. By real agents, not my favorite IA chick.”
Cam pulled out his phone and texted someone. A moment later, he got a reply back. “Jones and Jones are actually going to pull guard duty tonight, apparently. You...want Max...or Jac? I know who I’d prefer...but...”
Ezra laughed, even though it hurt his busted face a bit. He knew who he’d prefer, too. The curvy redhead was a quieter agent who didn’t make a whole lot of demands on a man. He’d actually taken her to dinner twice in the past year. Just ca
sually. He’d kissed her once, but it hadn’t resulted in anything other than that. For either of them.
Her big, brown-haired partner had a far larger presence. And not just because he was almost as tall as Ezra’s six-five and outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. Ezra had no doubt the other man was about to become his new roommate for the time being.
Hell, he’d prefer both Joneses would park themselves outside of Shannon’s room.
It had been her those bastards had wanted, after all. And there were more of them out there.
If he had his gun and wasn’t hurting like a sonofabitch at the moment, that was exactly where he’d be.
Cam left to track down his fiancée when Max knocked on the door. Ezra didn’t like being babysat, but he got it. Standard procedure. Kyra was a stickler for it. Everyone usually gave Kyra what she wanted lately. He looked at Max. “I need to take a walk. Be back in five.”
“Like I’m going to let you go anywhere without me? We looking for ladies? I’m a great wingman. Just ask Jac.”
Ezra smirked. Sure he was. Anyone wanting to get close to Jac Jones had to get past her slightly over-protective partner. The way Max glared at any man who dated his partner told its own story. “Sure you are. That’s why you showed up when I took her to dinner?”
“That was purely coincidence. I had no idea she was going to be there that night or I never would have brought Lara there.” Max winced. Lara Campbell was a unit psychiatrist assigned to PAVAD. It had turned into a night of them all just hanging out. Not much of a date, but it had made Ezra realize he and Jac were just friends.
“Sure.” Ezra had his theories. Something about the way the other man looked at Jac. He’d seen it before.
“So, where we going? I saw a pretty nurse on the first floor. We can head down there. See if she has a friend—for you. We can give her a wounded warrior story. Bet she’d eat that right up.”
“I know where we can find a few ladies who’d understand us completely. Three doors down.”
“Isn’t that Toliver’s room?”
“Yes.” Ezra didn’t say anything else. And he knew Max had no doubts before he’d even asked who was in that room.
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