RELENTLESS

by HelenKay Dimon

  He debated going inside and seeing if he could get Jocelyn to touch him again when Connor and Detective Willoughby headed up the backyard from the garage. Willoughby talked and Connor nodded his head. That usually meant Connor was collecting information, not giving it.

  Once they hit the back porch, Connor broke the silence. “There was no identification on the dead guy.”

  “Figures.” Ben wasn’t surprised. The team rarely got that lucky.

  If he had to guess, he’d say the attackers were professionals. Hired guns. That made it more and more likely he was the target, and all the blame for the deaths and injuries fell on him. He endangered Jocelyn. The realization hollowed him out.

  “Gotta say, I’ve had better nights.” Connor blew out a long breath. “Would have made things easier if we found a license.”

  The detective’s gaze, wary and a bit defensive, traveled between Ben and Connor. “Anything you two want to tell me?”

  Ben had loads of questions, and once he’d finished sizing the detective up, he might ask a few. Until then, he could only go on what he could see. Fortysomething and smooth. Maybe a bit too slick. If this Glenn had once been a beat cop, those days were long behind him. He looked more like television’s idea of a detective. Dress pants and a gold watch. Made Ben wonder what kind of car he drove.

  He made a mental note to have Joel run a check. “Like what?”

  “I’ve been on the job for three months and despite your business’s reputation and yours—” the detective shot Ben a quick look “—I’ve never met any of you until tonight, and now I’ve seen you twice in a few hours.”

  Connor screwed up his lips. “Weird how life works.”

  “Suspect,” the detective said. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  Something they had in common. Neither did Ben. “They happen.”

  “I’m going to need statements from everyone in the house. They answered some questions, but we’re not done here.”

  If the guy planned to make his career on this case, Ben vowed to shut it down. He already had reporters looking to him for the next headline and former NCIS friends who wouldn’t take his calls. He vacillated between being invisible and being infamous, and he didn’t like either extreme.

  If it weren’t for Corcoran, he’d totally lose it. Connor had taken him in when the NCIS case ended and Lara no longer had to look over her shoulder for danger.

  The whole team knew the story about how his boss had turned out to be a killer and a liar, but none of the guys put that on Ben. He’d worried they would see his choice to testify against his boss as a breach of office loyalty and not trust him to back them up. But they’d all made clear their support and given him to understand that they would have played it the same way.

  Loyalty was not the same as sanctioning corruption. They got that. It was a shame his dad, the admiral, saw it differently.

  But there was nothing Ben could do about the divide in his family tonight. The immediate goal was to figure out if the attacks now related to his decisions back then.

  And he would ferret it all out but he needed some breathing room away from this detective to do it. “This was a home-invasion attempt. Very straightforward.”

  The detective folded his arms in front of him. “I’m beginning to wonder if any dealing with you is going to be that simple.”

  Ben had to give him that one. “Probably not.” Since the distrust already ran pretty high, Ben decided they might as well add to it. “Did we mention there’s a guy in the garage?”

  The detective’s head shifted forward. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sure I told the officers,” Connor said.

  Ben would bet money he hadn’t. Delay was the only way to question the attacker without interference.

  Corcoran ran under the radar. Part of their success relied upon being able to get in and out of situations without bureaucratic red tape. Not that the few minutes of questioning helped. The guy was not talking.

  “One of the attackers survived.” And Ben was starting to regret that. “So far.”

  If possible, the detective’s mouth dropped even farther into a flat line. “We’re going to have a talk about this.”

  “What?” Connor asked.

  “Your team’s decision making and protocol and how private companies aren’t equal to law enforcement or immune from the law.”

  There was a time when Ben had bought into that kind of argument. Then he had stood on the wrong side of one of the “good guys” and realized the line between right and wrong needed to shift around sometimes.

  “Your choice—a lecture or an interrogation,” he said to the detective.

  “I plan to do both.”

  Ben blew out a long breath. “Lucky us.”

  * * *

  IT WAS WELL AFTER two in the morning before Jocelyn saw Ben again. She’d sewn him up and insisted he rest. Naturally, he went outside. Headed right for that garage and the man tied up out there. The only thing that kept Jocelyn from crawling out of her skin as she waited was seeing that police detective come out with Ben on one side and the bound man on the other.

  That was twenty minutes ago. She still hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs. And she listened for them. Kept her door open, careful not to wake Lara and Davis down the hall.

  She paced the space between the chest of drawers and the end of the bed. Much more of this and she’d wear a hole right in the pretty cream-colored carpet.

  “Hey.” Ben poked his head in the doorway. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  She almost knocked against the wall mirror. At the last minute she managed to stifle a scream. Barely. “You’re the one who should be resting.”

  For six feet of muscle, he sure could sneak around. He wore sneakers, and the stairs hadn’t so much as given the smallest creak as he came upstairs.

  He tipped his head to the side and shot her that sexy smile that made her toes curl. “Still a little keyed up, so I walked the family room for a few minutes and rechecked the locks and alarm.”

  Of course he had. Sounded like him, but she refused to let that could-take-him-home-to-mother look win her over. “Did you kill him?”

  “What?” He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “You mean the guy in the garage?”

  “Unless there are more bad guys lying around out there?” A chilling thought.

  “What kind of man do you think I am?” All amusement vanished from Ben’s face. Tiny lines appeared around his mouth.

  She thought they might be from stress. No wonder, since the entire evening was an invitation to a heart attack. “I have no idea.”

  “How about thinking I’m the guy who saved you?” He held up two fingers and stepped in closer. “Twice.”

  Without thinking, she moved back. When he frowned, she knew he’d noticed the shift away from him.

  Guilt whirled around her. Despite the gun and the job, he’d never actually scared her. She’d been unsure of him and worried he hid a side that could rear up at any moment, but their date had been so freeing. So fun and relaxed.

  Nerves had made her fold her hands on her lap to keep from fumbling and knocking over a water glass or something equally embarrassing at the table. But his charm and stories of life aboard a ship had made her laugh out loud.

  Truth was she didn’t really know him, and the past few hours had her emotions whipping from grateful to wary. No sane woman fought off a man who saved her life. But the ease with which he accepted violence took her mind spiraling down a dark path.

  She forced her feet to stop moving. “Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk about this and know I’m failing.”

  “You’re just tired.”

  His hands landed on her shoulders and his thumbs massaged her joints. The gentle touch lulled her, reeled her i
n. She wanted to slip into his arms and forget her worries.

  When she felt his breath across her cheek, she blinked. She was practically on top of him.

  With a hand on his chest, she stepped back, breaking his hold. “Ben, I can’t do this.”

  He held up his good hand, as if in surrender. “I won’t try to kiss you. I mean, I want to and without the newest attack I’d planned to tonight, but the timing stinks.”

  She added his cute rambling to the list of things she liked about him. But the “con” list sent up a flashing red warning light she couldn’t ignore. “I mean this, the violence, the shooting. Worrying you’ll lose control and do something crazy. All of it.”

  His hands dropped to his sides. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve lived through this before.” The words ripped out of her, actually felt as if they tore at her throat as she admitted them. “I can’t do it again.”

  “Lived through what exactly?”

  On top of everything, she couldn’t drag that baggage out and paw through it. “Can you stand there and tell me this—the attacks—aren’t because of you?”

  His face went blank. “I have no idea.”

  But she had her answer. He clearly thought he was the cause. She’d seen him for weeks at the hospital as he guarded that other man. Watched him a bit too closely, but she’d seen the practiced look before. Blank meant he purposely wanted to hide his feelings.

  Another con.

  “We went out and I got attacked. We came here and attackers came again.” It sounded pretty obvious when she spelled it out like that. “I’m a nurse who works long shifts and, except for the occasional drinks with the girls, lives a boring life. That’s how I want it.”

  But did she? She’d been repeating the mantra in her brain so frequently for a year that she now wondered if she’d finally fooled herself into believing it.

  The best part of the past few months had been flirting with Ben. At the hospital, on the phone. When he stopped by and just happened to be in the hospital cafeteria getting coffee during her breaks.

  She’d started timing her life around those meetings. She realized that now. The attention flattered her. The thought of not seeing him for days, or longer, started an ache in her chest that weighed down her whole body.

  She knew that made her a hypocrite or a tease, but she couldn’t stop the battle between what intrigued her and what scared her witless. That left only one solution.

  “You’ll get the sense of security back. We’ll figure this out.” This time he didn’t reach out, but his voice dipped low to the soothing level that made all the other nurses sigh.

  “I said no to you five times because I wanted quiet. Peaceful.” The second the words left her mouth, part of her knew they were a lie.

  “Sounds boring.”

  “One date and all this happens. You can see where I’m reasoning out the cause and effect and—”

  “Blaming me.”

  The word stung her. She didn’t mean that. “Not blaming. Connecting the dots.”

  “Same thing.”

  She reached out for the brush on top of the chest because she needed something in her hands. Needed to find a way to keep from twitching because the way her insides jumped all over the place, it was inevitable that would soon show on the outside, too.

  “Some women might find it all thrilling. I find it terrifying.”

  He lifted the brush out of her hands and put it back down. “What are you saying exactly?”

  “Tomorrow I find somewhere else to go. Somewhere safe because I sure don’t have a death wish, but somewhere away from all this.” She rubbed her hands together then wrapped them around her middle. When that felt wrong, she dropped them to her sides again. “And then we end this before whatever is following you makes me collateral damage.”

  “Happy to know you’re concerned about my well-being in this scenario.”

  Everything was coming out wrong. She wanted to drop her head into her hands. Maybe scream for an hour or two to work out all the frustration building inside her. “Don’t you get it? I’m trying to get out before you mean too much.”

  His head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “That’s an excuse.”

  “I’m being realistic.”

  “You’re being a coward.”

  In a blink, guilt turned to fury. Anger washed over her, heating her skin everywhere it touched. “How dare—”

  “Let’s try this.” Without warning, he stepped in close with his hands on her hips. “I’m going to kiss you. If you don’t want me to, you need to say so.”

  This far away she could smell the soap on his skin. Something clean and fresh. If she reached out, she could brush a finger over that sexy scruff on his chin.

  And he asked permission. It was all too much for her wavering self-control to handle. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. She was pretty sure she’d forgotten how to do both. She may have nodded and she certainly didn’t remember putting her hands on his forearms.

  But she felt the kiss.

  His head dipped and his mouth brushed over hers. Soft at first, gentle and undemanding. Then the second pass, bone-shattering and intense. Deep and full of need. His lips crossed over hers and a hand went to her hair. It drove on, unlocking something deep inside her that she’d shut down and forgotten.

  When they broke apart, all she could do was stare into those rich green eyes. “Uh, wow.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll figure out date number two.”

  Chapter Five

  Gary Taub sat in his top-floor office in the nondescript office building away from the historically protected houses and expensive yachts associated with Annapolis. His business, Worldwide Securities, required anonymity and more security than a hundred-year-old town house with its faulty wiring could offer.

  He looked around. The place might be new and state-of-the-art, but it was drab. If his wife were still alive, she’d drag in photographs and paintings. But he’d lost her a year ago to improperly diagnosed stomach cancer, six months after losing his brother to carelessness.

  Without Marilyn’s touch, from the unadorned beige walls to the beige carpet, it could be any office in any corporation, anywhere in America. The only nod to the subject matter of his work was the presence of three computers lined up around the utilitarian metal desk.

  He’d set up the surroundings this way on purpose. The only way to hide what happened here was to make it boring, forgettable. He’d been conducting the same work, moving the money around, for ten years. No need to change his operation now.

  And he knew how lucrative silence could be. He had the expensive modern waterfront home a few miles away to prove it. He’d earned it. As a businessman he demanded perfection—in his clothes and his technology. He thought it would be obvious he expected the same of his employees.

  For the first time since he took his seat, Gary stared across the desk at Colin Grange, the man who had served as his security manager for over two years. Fifty and suffering from the syndrome where his pants got lower and his stomach got thicker every year.

  But his credentials, first in the military and then with a defense contractor, made him the perfect choice for this position. So long as he didn’t go soft or fail in his planning. Unfortunately, this time he had.

  “How hard is it to grab a woman who lives alone and maybe weighs a hundred and thirty pounds?” Gary asked.

  “There was a man there.”

  “I am aware.” Gary had been receiving reports all night. He’d gone home and come back because the phone kept ringing. An attempt to remove the woman from her house, then a second attempt at some other residence in Annapolis.

  Turned out Ms. Jocelyn Raine, reported loner without many friends or any family, had a savior. Finding that out after the fact
ticked Gary off.

  “Then you understand how we couldn’t—”

  Gary blocked the excuse with a simple raise of his hand. “I was told she was single.”

  Overprotective boyfriends tended to muck up everything. The body count was already two too high.

  Gary had spent the past hour retracing every step and making sure nothing could tie the dead men littering the houses of Annapolis to him or Worldwide.

  He’d been careful and neither man knew about Gary or the reason they were being paid, other than to grab the woman. Still, that left a loose end or two. And from Gary’s experience, someone always tugged on them.

  “Explain.” That was all he said. Colin had been with him long enough that he should have been able to pick up on the fury behind the word.

  “At the apartment...this guy came out of nowhere.”

  Apparently Colin thought it was his job to sit in a car and watch. “And why didn’t you step in and subdue him? I assume he wasn’t so large that he was immune to a bullet.”

  Colin touched the two pens lined up at the edge of Gary’s desk blotter and rolled them between his fingers. Even picked one up and twirled it around. “It was a losing battle.”

  When he toyed with the more expensive of the set, Gary slapped his hand against the pen and flattened it on the desk again. “Maybe I’ve failed to impress upon you how important this job is.”

  Colin jerked and withdrew his hand. “No, sir.”

  “I have two men down and another in police custody. Independent contractors, yes, but you can see where that might be a concern for me.”

  “I can get her.”

  The clock was ticking and Colin picked this time to be incompetent. Gary figured he’d need to handle that problem, but he wanted this job done first.

  They had three days. Exactly three.

  “There was nothing in the apartment?” he asked even though he’d watched the video surveillance of the search.

  “No.”

  “Then first, take care of Jacobsen before he talks. Make it look like a suicide while in police custody or whatever will call the least attention to his death. Use our contacts for that. Clean up after. Delete files. You know the drill.” Not that Gary trusted this sort of thing to his staff. He’d erased what he could find. He doubted anything else existed, but he needed Colin to think it was a matter of life and death—his own—if anything was found.