Ruthless

by HelenKay Dimon

  He held a hand to his heart and pretended to be offended. “I’m wounded that you would think that.”

  “Gee, what was I thinking?”

  “You have to admit, Kelsey, the timing is suspicious.” Connor motioned toward the coffeepot and started pouring when she nodded. “But to be sure, Joel will do a deeper trace and we’ll double-check.”

  She took the mug and grasped it in a double-fisted clench. “But right now the evidence points toward Sean and this case.”

  “Kingston is someone with the skills and resources to break into law enforcement systems and run illegal checks.” Joel sat back in his chair. “In fact, it’s possible they let him use the programs. He designs the things and is in the intelligence business now. In theory he’s not a threat. His risk level should be low.”

  “Theory.” That one word shifted everything in Pax’s head.

  So much for hanging around and letting her reboot.

  The Corcoran Team had rules and protocols for this sort of breech. Having Kelsey at his side didn’t change any of his core responsibilities. The precautions were there for all of their safety. In this case, Kelsey’s safety was paramount, and that meant a change.

  “Did you have more to add, or are you only repeating after Joel for some reason?” she asked.

  Pax held up a finger. “The risk is low in theory. We don’t know the reality.”

  She sighed as she dropped into the seat next to him. “And why do I think that comment means something bad for me?”

  Not the word he would use. “Bad?”

  “Annoying, then.”

  Pax couldn’t help but smile. “Smart woman.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They stayed at the Corcoran Team headquarters all day, poring over the contents of the box from Sean and deciphering what the men in the room referred to as code. Kelsey thought the lines resembled gibberish. While the guys pored and deciphered, she read up on the Kingston corporation and its off-the-radar but very wealthy owner.

  She asked about a billion questions about the team’s past cases, only about three of which they agreed to answer. Really, that was three more than she expected. The questions mostly kept her mind off her store and the inventory rotting on the counters.

  And that kiss. She dreamed about that one.

  The ongoing discussions also gave her a front-row seat to their logic and problem solving. Their gun skills bordered on amazing, but their intelligence was much more impressive. In the case of Pax, it was off-the-charts attractive.

  And by sitting there she could close her eyes and enjoy the men’s voices and smile over their verbal jabs at each other. Something about being around the three of them soothed her. The ever-elusive Ben even called in and she met him via teleconference. He had a face and everything.

  Not that she cared about any face except Pax’s. Watching him work, seeing him concentrate while his expression turned serious and he poured all of his formidable focus into a project...downright sexy. At one point she’d whispered his name just to have all of that attention shift to her. His eyes, cloudy at first, cleared and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Doubly sexy.

  No question that despite a flip-flopping stomach and concerns about her impending poverty, the day went well. No one tried to kill her or shoot at her. She didn’t fall down the stairs. Amazing how twelve hours of straight terror could alter what you viewed as a good day. Her bar was low enough that surviving warranted a cake and coffee celebration.

  But that was the afternoon. This was now.

  The dark and humid night had taken a turn that started an unwelcome shiver rocketing through her. They walked on the creaky dock at a marina about a half mile from the City Dock. Metal clanged on metal as the boats’ sails whipped around in the warm prestorm breeze.

  With each step, water sloshed and churned. The path below her seemed to bobble and sway as they walked down the lines of slips, almost every one filled with a boat bearing a whimsical name, such as Lady Luck or My Children’s Inheritance.

  She’d clearly forgotten to mention the whole terror-at-the-thought-of-water thing to Pax. She lived in a water resort town and vowed never to go on another boat. She stayed away from the ocean, the nearby Chesapeake and large pools. Well, she did until Pax dragged her here tonight.

  He moved along, his long legs eating up the dock several planks at a time and showing only the slightest limp. She doubted anyone who didn’t know could pick up on the injury.

  Every now and then his foot fell too hard and his weight shifted ever so slightly. She knew because she stared him down with practiced tunnel vision. It was either that or give in to the violent tremors rolling through her.

  Her breath raced up her throat and got caught there. She swallowed it back. “One question.”

  “Hit me.”

  She slid her hand in his and felt her heart hiccup when his fingers tightened around hers. “What are we doing here?”

  “Protocol says—”

  “If one of you is under scrutiny then you separate from the team headquarters to assess the danger. The team is never exposed.” Those words had been drummed into her brain. “Yeah, I got that part this afternoon. Connor isn’t exactly subtle when he launches into the live version of your office manual. That guy can talk.”

  Pax’s warm laughter filled the quiet night. “The type of training he provides and the relentless repetition make us good at what we do. Without it, we’d likely be shot at even more often.”

  “There’s a scary thought.”

  “His lectures can be annoying, but they are effective if for no other reason than you only want to hear them once.”

  “I won’t even ask where Connor learned all those undercover skills, since you’d never tell me anyway.” Her nerves kept zapping but the frequency lessened when she heard the mumble of conversation and a stray booming laugh in the distance.

  She peeked through the bobbing boats and over the rows to a double-decker boat with lights that outlined its deck. People moved around and hung near the sides. She couldn’t make out faces or even the sex of some from this distance, but she knew fun, and that crowd sounded like fun.

  “Good call on the too-much-information-about-Connor issue. He’s not an oversharer in general and even less so when it comes to his work past. It’s part of what makes him good at his job,” Pax said.

  “I figured it was a need-to-know thing like everything else about you guys.” The calmer mood broke into a wild-frenzy panic inside her when she heard a splash. She jerked back and scanned the water.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A completely irrational fear of big fish. “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  Something slipped up and out of the waves and then disappeared again. She kept an eye on the spot, waiting for a repeat performance. “Back to my original question. What are we doing at the marina?”

  “We need to stay overnight somewhere until the facial recognition thing works itself out.” He guided them to the right and steered them past an older couple walking back toward the shore.

  She wanted to follow those two to dry land. To anywhere that wasn’t here.

  “I thought we were going to a hotel.” She strained to remember the conversation.

  All that talk about an alternate location. Pax had her pack a few things, most of them belonging to Connor’s wife. Even now Pax carried the bag over his outside shoulder.

  “We’re staying on a boat. Not mine because it’s gone. It wasn’t moored here anyway. It was at another marina, but that cover is blown.”

  No matter how many words he said, her reaction was the same—no way.

  She stopped under a light and nearly had her arm ripped off when it took him a few more steps to realize he walked alone.

  H
e turned around, one hand already on the gun she knew he carried. He scanned the area and the smile downshifted into a serious scowl. “What’s going on?”

  A horn sounded in the distance. The droning matched the heaviness tugging at her. “We have a problem.”

  The bag fell off his shoulder and hit the deck. His gaze landed everywhere but on her as his gun swept across the landscape. “What did you see?”

  The water rippled and the creature made a second appearance. It stayed up for a few beats and then slid under again. The sight had icy fingers clawing at her insides. “First, what was that?”

  He lowered the gun. “Wait, what are you...did you see someone or not?”

  “I’m serious. Right there.” She pointed at the spot where the malformed head stuck up a second ago. It would come up again. It had to or Pax would think she lost her mind.

  “It’s water, Kelsey. The night makes it look more ominous, but it’s nothing but the wind kicking up.”

  “I’m talking about the big mound that keeps popping up.” She ventured a few inches closer to the side of the dock but shifted her weight to her back leg to keep from falling in. “I’m thinking monster fish, shark or a distant relative of the Loch Ness Monster.”

  He slid his gun back into the holster under his arm. “Okay, fill me in on what’s really going on here.”

  As if she was going to tell some big hero dude about her small fears. Talking made it sound so much sillier, so she forced down the anxiety screaming through her and tried to step around him. “Just asking a question. Let’s keep walking.”

  He caught her arm. “Uh, Kelsey?”

  She tried to tug her arm loose but Pax held on. He didn’t move, either. If the raised eyebrow was any indication, he didn’t intend to.

  Fine. Humiliation it would be. “The water makes me crazy.”

  “Crazy?”

  “Like makes me want to crawl out of my skin.”

  “Okay.” The light above them cast strange shadows around them but the stunned look on his face was very visible. “Are we talking water in general or—”

  “The salty, dead-fish smell. The constant movement. The fear of drowning. Add it all together and it’s taking all of my control not to double over.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think it’s the wide-open space and lack of control I’d have in there, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. I haven’t taken the time to explore the fear in depth. Avoiding it is easier.” This wasn’t the first time she’d threatened to lose a meal, but this time he handled it better. Seemed to ignore the possibility completely.

  Little did he know the real threat was her bursting into tears. Unless Pax had some male gene the rest of his species missed, the weeping thing could be the one issue to bring him to his knees.

  “You’re really afraid of water?” he asked.

  The word was so small for such a big source of paralyzing panic. But she refused to be embarrassed about this. Maybe if she carried a gun and could shoot the sharks, it would be a different story.

  “I am, which makes me a very smart woman. The ocean is huge, and humans are tiny by comparison. You do the math.”

  “Sorry I didn’t ask first.” He wiped a hand through his hair. “Honestly, I didn’t even think about it.”

  “Because you’re not afraid of anything.”

  He blew out a breath and then picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder again. “Wrong.”

  Right.

  “Name one thing.” She inched away from the edge and closer to him. If she fell in, she wanted him with her. That way she had a shot at going out of this world with one last kiss.

  “Lara gets motion sickness, so I know boats aren’t for everyone. I just assumed with the way you were raised...” He screwed up his lips and made a face. “Guess not.”

  Kelsey got caught on the Lara reference and the rest of the comment zinged by before she could process it. Time to back up. “Care to finish that sentence you left there in the middle?”

  “Your father used to sponsor a boat racing team. He owned sailboats.”

  For a few seconds at a time she could forget they didn’t have a normal relationship, that Pax didn’t know every last detail about her messed-up past. But he did.

  Still, there were some things that likely didn’t make it into a list of facts in some government file. “My terror was the subject of endless enjoyment to my father.”

  “I see.” Pax’s expression stayed blank.

  She tried to read him but couldn’t. After a quick check of the party boat to make sure the music and laughter went on, she turned back to Pax. “What does that mean?”

  “This, the water thing, it all connects to your father.” Pax shrugged. “Makes sense.”

  She refused to let this be some sort of father-induced phobia. “It’s about being afraid of dying.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  For some reason, his automatic-understanding reaction lit a match to her fury. Anger poured over the trembling fear, bringing heat back into her body. “Yeah, I know it’s okay.”

  After a tense minute of rocking boats and clapping water, he pivoted and faced the shore and small store at its edge. He held out a hand to her. “Come on. We’ll find another sleeping solution.”

  Here she was raging and hovering right on the verge of yelling, and he took it. So clear and calm, so utterly accepting of her craziness.

  All the indignation rushed right back out of her, leaving her shoulders curling in on her. “That’s it?”

  His squinting eyes and flat lips could be described only as a look of confusion. “What, did you think I was going to throw you in the murky waves and watch you panic?”

  Actually... “You wouldn’t be the first one to do so.”

  He swore under his breath as he stared at his shoes and shifted his feet. “I want to beat almost every member of your family.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t anger she was feeling right now. Light and relieved, drained and excited. “That’s strangely sweet.”

  He gave her an I’ll-never-understand-women frown. “I love sailing. I love the water.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly, as if he was reading it from a card. Not that she was surprised by the admission. He’d mentioned his destroyed boat about a thousand times in thirty-six hours. She knew all about Davis and Lara hiding on it before someone packed it with explosives.

  “I picked up on your water fetish.”

  “But you being comfortable is more important than a boat or the water. I want you to be somewhere you feel safe, and if it’s not here we’ll go.” No fanfare. No big scene. He just said the words and watched her as he spoke.

  Her nerves jangled with a certain awareness from the minute they pulled into the marina parking lot. Before the tingling signaled disaster. Now it lit with a spark of life. His words, his support, turned the dread weighing down every step across the dock into something fresh and clear.

  “Well, that’s just about the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” And that was not an exaggeration. It took all her self-control and a good sniff of the dank water to keep her from climbing on top of him.

  He shot her a shy smile. “I have skills.”

  And he kept dragging more and more out to impress her. “You’d give up sailing for me?”

  His head bent to the side and one eye closed as his gaze drilled into her. “That sounds like you plan to stick around after we save Sean and get you back to work.”

  The words were out and she couldn’t call them back. Smart or not, she’d made it clear this wasn’t some sort of adrenaline-fueled temporary thing. She planned to see more of him...on dry land. “I’m finding you hard to get rid of. You seem to have staying power.”

  “You can count on that, sweetheart.” His hand slipped thro
ugh hers again. They’d taken two steps when his body froze. “Hold up.”

  The last words came out as a whisper and sliced through her with the force of a knife. Her gaze traveled over the scene in front of her. Boats on each side and a long dock to the few buildings sitting there just on the edge of the parking lot on the shore.

  The boats moved. The docks moved. A few people in the distance moved to their cars. Nothing else seemed to move.

  “What is it?” Not that she really wanted to know.

  He shuffled them behind a sleek racing boat and ducked down, taking her with him. “Two men. Black suits.”

  The idea was so awful she pretended not to notice how close his foot was to the edge of the dock. The tip of his sneaker actually hung over.

  No matter where he stood she couldn’t take another gun battle. “No.”

  “Stay calm.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in tight to his side. “I need you to trust me.”

  The light swayed above them from the force of the light summer wind. She took that as a bad sign. “I do.”

  She balanced her palms against the dock to keep from falling forward. The header almost happened anyway when he slipped the bag off his shoulder and lifted it up and onto the front of the boat they were using as a shield. The bow bumped against the front of the slip as the small waves pushed it forward and back again.

  Some people probably liked that sort of thing, found it soothing. She was not one of them.

  “We are not getting on that boat.” Her throat burned from her effort not to scream the words.

  “The men are walking down the floating dock on the other side of this one and have been moving in closer. If they keep going, this area is next on the search.”

  “Maybe they aren’t looking for me.”

  “How many guys wear black suits and hang out at the marina at night? It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

  Fear shook every cell in her body. “I can’t do this.”

  Any of it. Terror froze everything inside her until she could barely breathe.