by Addison Fox
“It’s too dangerous.” The mouth that had been artfully kissing her mere moments before was now set in a hard, immovable line.
“I don’t want to argue with you about this but I need to get to my things.”
“Liam! Open up.” Kensington’s voice echoed from the other side, her orders punctuated by several rapt knocks on the door.
“Later, Kenz!”
“It’s important. I already know Isabella’s in there. There’s a robe on the back of the bathroom door. Put it on and then let me in.”
Isabella fought the momentary mortification at Liam’s heavy head shake and his glance toward the ceiling as if praying for divine intervention. Also recognizing his sister meant business, Isabella scrambled for the bathroom and found the robe in the exact place Kensington had described.
“What do you want?” Liam’s terse words were met with the clip of efficient heels on hardwood.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“We have several at the moment.”
Isabella fought the urge to stick her tongue out at Liam and his dry observation as she walked back into the room. “What’s going on?”
“Campbell and I have been keeping tabs on anything and anyone we can possibly associate with you.”
Hard, choppy waves filled her stomach and Isabella laid a hand on the wall for extra support. “Who else was hurt?”
“Bradley Armstrong.”
“The editor?”
“Yes. He and his wife were found murdered in their home this morning.”
A terrifying sense of cold began to spread from the center of her body out, almost as if the roiling waves in her stomach had sprouted ice caps. “No.”
“I’m sorry, really I am.” Kensington kept talking but Isabella felt as if she were listening to the words from a great distance as the room rushed around her, spinning faster and faster.
Bradley was dead? Along with his wife?
She’d only met him a handful of times, but he’d always impressed her with his good-natured attitude and ready excitement for science.
And his clothes.
“He wore a bow tie.” At Liam and Kensington’s matched confusion, Isabella added. “Every day to work. Someone always remarked on it when his name was mentioned.”
“Come on. Let’s sit down.” She didn’t want to be handled—didn’t want to show weakness at the news someone had died because of her—but Liam’s strong hand clasped around hers was too big an enticement.
“How did it happen?”
Kensington pulled a slender cane chair from a small writing desk in the corner of the room and sat down opposite them. “Jack’s been running down everyone he knows in the NYPD to see if he can get some answers. So far it appears routine on the surface to the cops but...”
“But we know it’s about me.”
Kensington nodded. “That’s what we believe.”
Everything they’d learned in the last week cycled through her mind, thoughts flashing in a morass of images. The lab. The files. Daniel.
Daniel.
Everything they’d learned pointed toward Daniel at the center of it all, but she knew him. Had worked with him.
Was it possible she’d spent over a decade of her life with a man capable of murdering a husband and wife in cold blood?
When the situation had centered on some sort of misguided revenge against her it was hard to believe, but to think him capable of a cold-blooded murder of two people?
It didn’t add up.
“Let me get dressed and then I’d like to see what Campbell’s discovered on the program files he’s been running.”
“I’ll have him fire everything up.” Kensington stood, her gaze shooting toward Liam as if she weighed her words before she spoke. “We’re committed to your safety but I think we need to bring the police in. This job has gone beyond protection detail or basic investigation.”
“Hell no.” Liam stood and went toe to toe with his sister. “We promised her we’d protect her and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“I’m not suggesting otherwise, but it’s time we involved the police.”
“Like you and Jack involved the damn police while you traipsed through the Italian countryside?”
“This is different.”
“That’s a load of crap and you know it.”
“We all discussed it and it’s for Isabella’s safety. The police need to know what they’re up against and we’ll get a lot further if we help them figure out how to solve the murder of the Armstrongs.”
Isabella stood, unwilling to sit on the sidelines and watch the emotional Ping-Pong match play out before her. She was done with sitting on the side. Done being a casual observer or allowing others to take care of her.
She needed to see this through.
“Of course I’ll talk to the police. They deserve to know as much as I can tell them.”
“We can keep you safe.” Liam turned from his sister, his ire and focus now fully tuned toward Isabella. “That’s what you hired us to do and damn it, I’m seeing this job through.”
“Then work with me. Take me to my apartment so I can get my things. My notes. All the pieces that will help the police catch whoever is doing this.”
Kensington slipped out, leaving the two of them to their argument and Isabella was grateful for the privacy.
The blazing ire that stamped itself all over his face wasn’t going to be assuaged by simple platitudes or her pleading that she needed to step in and handle this. But she’d make Liam see reason.
It was the only way she could live with herself.
* * *
“Why are you so against bringing the police in?”
Isabella’s question was simple but Liam knew there were no simple answers. Just like he knew he was being irrational to want to keep the police at bay. “They’re outsiders and they’ll make you vulnerable. You don’t know who’s behind this. Who’s on their payroll. Here we control the situation.”
Isabella laughed, low and hollow. “Right. Because we’ve been so in control up to now.”
“We’ll crack this. Campbell’s been working the technology end and we’ll get this figured out.”
“And how many more people have to get hurt? We were lucky the other day the lab was so empty or innocents could have been killed. And now Bradley and his wife? He was a good man. A good journalist and someone who believed in science and he was killed for it. Over my work.” The anger that blazed across her face, heating her cheeks a vivid pink, vanished as she dropped onto the edge of the bed. “And all because of my vanity.”
“This isn’t about vanity or anything else you might want to blame on yourself. This is about someone with a grudge and an appetite for destruction.”
“But I sit at the center. My work and what I was so insistent on proving. It’s my father all over again.”
“Enough! You are not your father!” Anger shot the words from his lips like bullets. He saw Isabella’s eyes widen in shock but he pressed on. “You didn’t go into your work with ill intentions. Or to sell your knowledge to the highest bidder. You’ve worked to figure out how to make life better for people.”
He slowed, the anger morphing into the very real acknowledgment that she was special. Different. And her gifts made the world a better place. “I know I didn’t see any of that at first. I was harder on you than anyone and I was prepared to act as judge and jury before hearing your side.”
Silent tears slid down her cheeks, the only acknowledgment of his tirade. He sat and pulled her into his arms, her slender shoulders shuddering with the pressure of her grief.
“You can say it’s not the same. Can say I’m not to blame like he was, but my father’s work killed innocents. He has that blood on his hands as he rots in some milita
ry prison.”
He held her hands in both of his, willing her to understand. “Your hands are clean. And through your work, people will be healed. You can’t even begin to think it’s the same thing.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to each of her palms. “It will never be the same.”
Chapter 17
Liam resolutely ignored the itch at the back of his neck as he and Jack flanked Isabella up the front stoop of her apartment building. Jack had already dispatched one of his men who’d sent back the all-clear, and a second stood out front standing guard with Finn.
“We get in and get out.”
Isabella’s sigh was loud and long and he took it as an irritatingly good sign. “You’ve said that about eight hundred times since we started this trek a half hour ago.”
“Then let me say it eight hundred and one. In and out.”
When all he got for his troubles was an eye roll, Liam had to tamp down on the heavy bark of laughter that welled in his throat. Where was the mousy woman who’d stood on his grandparents’ front porch in the pouring rain?
Had she ever really existed? Or was it simply another facet of a personality he was endlessly intrigued by?
The mercenary who’d gone into the apartment first stood by the open door and Isabella practically ran down the hall toward the entryway.
Jack’s low laughter had Liam turning around after watching her disappear through the door. “What?”
“I think this family incapable of spending time with mild-mannered individuals. You know, maybe you could have brought home a woman who would prefer to spend her day quietly knitting sweaters.”
“I didn’t bring her home.”
Jack’s cocky grin never faded. “Could have fooled me.”
Liam ignored the not-so-subtle poke and attempted to deflect. “My grandmother knits a mean sweater.”
Jack’s grin flashed over to good-natured. “So noted.”
He thought about the real question that lurked underneath Jack’s ribbing. The Steele family did nothing easy. Did it make for a more exciting life? Living along the edge of danger and making decisions on the fly.
He’d always thought so, but observing his siblings over the last few days, coupled with the time with Isabella, and he’d been forced to acknowledge the truth. His seemingly full life had quite a few empty spaces.
And if he wasn’t careful, those spaces were likely to swallow him up.
This job was the perfect example. Here was a change from his normal assignments and it wasn’t until faced with a helping hand and friendly camaraderie from his future brother-in-law that Liam had even realized it. He lived life on the fringes, assessing motives and threats on a daily basis. It jaded a man, no matter how hard one fought it and somewhere deep inside he knew that.
Had known it for a long time, allowing a small piece of his soul to wither away as he shut out any sense of entanglement. With women, certainly, but with his family as well.
“She’s rather amazing. A lot more goes on in that brilliant head of hers than I think even she realizes.” Liam keyed back into Jack’s words, the man’s dark gaze expectant.
“She’s terrifyingly brilliant.”
“She’s handled this situation like a champ. Scared, but pushing forward no matter the cost.”
“Do you think we can stop this?” For the first time, Liam gave voice to the small kernel of unease that had dogged him from the start of the job.
Maybe it was Jack’s long-term position in the world of the security trade or his increasing status as a trusted family member, but Liam knew he didn’t really care. All he did care about was someone who could back up the raw screaming itch in his gut that kept warning him something was just out of reach.
Lurking.
“We can stop it. But it’s not easy. Whoever is behind this has some skills. The fire at the lab, triggered remotely?” Jack let out a heavy exhale as they approached Isabella’s open door. “The person behind this has the chops. And they’ve got an ax to grind at the same time.”
“Her mentor?” The thought had been rolling for a while and no matter how many times he tried it on for size, Liam felt like something didn’t fit.
“He’s the most likely.”
“It doesn’t play for me. I get that the facts add up, but it just doesn’t play.”
“For what it’s worth,” Jack slapped him on the back before stepping through the door, “it doesn’t play for me either. So we’ll keep digging until something starts to whistle a tune.”
It was funny, Liam though as he crossed the threshold. He’d never gone looking for a partner before, always preferring to work jobs on his own. Quite without realizing it, he’d managed to acquire seven.
Pushing his musings from his mind, he crossed the threshold of Isabella’s apartment, immediately struck by the warmth inside the small space. Colorful throw pillows. A bright red couch that dominated the living room. Vivid slashes of primary tones on strategically placed paintings dotting the walls.
For a woman who chose quiet tones in her wardrobe, her home was the embodiment of the opposite.
The subject of his thoughts barreled out of her bedroom, a lock box in hand.
“You keep your notes in there?”
“Here, there and everywhere. I’ve got several drives in here I’ve culled together over time.” She worked the lock, flipping open the lid to reveal several neatly stacked portable hard drives.
“This is all your work?” Jack’s voice was incredulous as he pointed toward the box, lifting one of the small drives roughly the size of a deck of cards. “It all fits in here?”
“This is part of my work.” A small smile flitted around her lips and Liam thought it was yet another testament to her spirit that she found a way to still smile and make jokes. “The majority of the calculations took place on a super computer and I wouldn’t keep the core of my research in a lockbox I bought at the drug store.”
“Are the final calculations in here?” Liam took the hard drive from Jack, and turned it over to look at it before placing it back in the box.
“Nope.” She patted her chest, then slipped a small thumb drive from her bra. “I’ve got it right here.”
* * *
Edward walked through the still-smoldering ruins of the lab, his building security badge clipped to his jeans. No one had stopped him, but he had prepared his story all the same.
He was an administrator who had a responsibility to explain the damages to their benefactors. If that didn’t work he figured he’d start boring whoever asked him to leave with stories of academic fundraising and then hightail it out of there.
But no one had stopped him. No one even seemed to care.
It was that last piece that had angered him more than he’d expected. The lab was the source of a major scientific discovery and the slobs who walked up and down the surrounding streets were clueless.
Freaking clueless.
He picked his way clear of the debris and entered the building that stood opposite. The two buildings were linked by an underground tunnel and if he’d managed the fire correctly, the passageway would be untouched.
Which made it perfect for what he had in mind.
* * *
True to her word, Isabella had packed quickly but refused to head back to the living room just yet. By her guesstimate, she had about fifteen minutes before Liam got so antsy it overtook him and he ushered her from the building.
In the meantime, she had to make as much use of the time as she could. She knew someone had been here—knew it to the very depths of her being—and she needed a bit of time to figure out who it was.
Daniel had only visited her apartment a couple of times, his lack of mobility and increasing dependence on a wheelchair making it hard for him to get around much. But even without a detail
ed layout of her place it wouldn’t be hard for him to know where to look. They’d talked over the years how to keep their files secure, especially from possible natural disaster. It was Daniel who had suggested she keep her electronics in a lock box. And the fact hers had lain untouched at the back of her closet indicated he wasn’t the one rooting through her home.
Or so she hoped.
It was her working hypothesis, but she knew there was still a sizeable margin of error as well. Her apartment had been invaded, but was done with a neat precision not many could pull off.
“Hey.”
She whirled around to see Liam standing in her doorway. “I need a few more minutes.”
“I’m not rushing you out.”
The busy morning had pushed their night together to the back of her mind but the time with Liam was hardly forgotten. Instead, she knew those memories would be like a chocolate she’d take out and unwrap later when she could savor it.
A rather effective attempt at compartmentalizing—or so she thought—until she caught sight of him, standing about a foot from her bed, all tall and rangy and gorgeous.
He’d traded the morning’s slacks for a sturdy pair of faded jeans and the casual look was even more attractive than the pressed black wool.
Everything about the man was attractive. Mind-numbingly so.
“Did you find anything?”
“No, but I know someone’s been in here.”
“Just like your hotel in London?” Where the average person might have made a joke or offered up a smirk at her precise behavior, his question held no censure or judgment.
Just fact.
It was so simple, really. Elegant. And in that moment she knew the utter simplicity and the raw power of love.
“You believe in me.”
“Of course I do.”
“I mean, all of me. Even the goofy parts.”
His jaw hardened and his eyebrows narrowed over those incredible blue eyes. “There’s nothing goofy about you.”
“There’s plenty goofy about me.” Without waiting or second-guessing herself or wondering if she should or shouldn’t, she moved up against him and placed her hands on his cheeks, pulling him down for a kiss. “And I love you for accepting me anyway.”