The teen glanced from Ethan to the guard and back, then mumbled, “Promise?”
“You won’t get in trouble for smoking in the stairwell,” Ethan said. “At least not this time. After that, you’re on your own.”
“’Kay.” The kid nodded. “So listen, I was in the back stairwell, okay? And this guy came up from the basement wearing a white coat, okay? Only he wasn’t a doctor—his clothes were all wrong and he didn’t have a badge. Besides, why would a doctor be coming up from the basement? Ain’t nothing down there but empty rooms. And he was using a phone, and that’s not allowed in here, right?”
Robert interjected, “What did he say?”
“Something like, ‘Make up your goddamn mind already.’ I didn’t hear the rest because I took off before he saw me.”
“Are you sure he didn’t see you?”
The kid bobbed his head. “Positive.”
Ethan turned to Dr. Eballa. “Where are these stairs?”
“I’ll take you.” As they hurried through the hospital corridors, she said, “He’s right, there’s not much down there. Mostly empty storage rooms we use as overflow during disasters.”
Something chilled inside Ethan. If the white-coated guy in the stairwell had taken Nicole, he might have hidden her down there.
Or he might have dumped her corpse.
He swallowed hard. “What sort of overflow?”
Dr. Eballa pushed through a doorway marked Stairs, then glanced back. “Bodies. Two of the rooms are set up as temporary morgues. We only run the refrigerators when we need the space, though.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed through a set of heavy doors. The corridor was dimly lit. The cement walls were painted a muted green and the floor was white laminate, like much of the rest of the building. But down in the basement, the color scheme didn’t seem soothing. It felt swampy. Ominous.
Tension vibrating through every fiber of his being, Ethan shouted, “Nicole? Are you down here?”
When there was no answer, he strode down the corridor, checking doors as the doctor hurried in his wake. The first two rooms were dark and silent. The window of the third was blurred with condensation, and when he felt the door handle, it was cold to the touch.
Robert and a handful of security officers appeared at the far end of the corridor. Ethan shouted, “In here!” He worked the door handle and shoved through, gut tight with apprehension. “Nicole?”
His heart stopped, simply stopped when he saw the motionless figure strapped to a gurney. Dark curls fanned out from a too-pale face, and her lips were the same blue as the thin blanket that covered her body.
“Nicole!” He skidded to her side and yanked at the straps holding her down. When she was free, he felt for her carotid pulse and nearly shuddered at the feel of her corpse-cold flesh. Then, miraculously, he felt a faint flutter beneath his fingertips. Another.
“Move!” Dr. Eballa hustled him aside. “We’ve got to get her upstairs, stat!”
She turned the gurney toward the door. As she did so, Nicole’s eyelids flickered open. She looked around wildly for a moment, then her eyes fixed on Ethan. Her lips formed the words, Thank you.
Then she was gone, whisked away by the doctor, who snapped orders about heating blankets, warm-water lavages and an ultrasound. Ethan followed, but Dr. Eballa barred him from cramming into the car with the gurney and the security officers. “Meet us up there, you’ll just be in the way.” Then she paused, and said, “I’ll put a guard on the door, and she’ll get the best medical team in the state. God willing, she and the baby will both be fine.”
Then the elevator doors slid shut, leaving Ethan behind. He wasn’t alone, though. He could hear Robert in the cold room, ordering the security officers to seal the scene and call in the PD, and Evangeline stood in the hallway nearby. He saw the knowledge in her eyes when she said, “Let’s head upstairs. You’ll want to be there when they’ve got her stabilized.”
It’s not what you think, Ethan wanted to say. I can’t be a father.
Instead, he turned and headed for the stairs, rubbing absently at his chest where an ache had gathered.
Robert emerged and fell into step at his side. “They’ll secure the room and I’ll make sure the pothead sits down with a sketch artist. I’ll put some men on Miss Benedict’s room. Once she’s conscious, we’ll want the artist in with her, too.” A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for, our chance to nail these bastards.”
Instantly furious, Ethan grabbed his boss and slammed him up against the green-painted wall. He crowded close, levered an arm across Robert’s throat and got in his face, growling, “Stay the hell away from Nicole. She’s not a break in your case, she’s not bait, and she’s not a pawn in one of your spy games.”
The big man didn’t give him the satisfaction of struggling. He merely narrowed his eyes. “Then what is she?”
Ethan didn’t hesitate, knowing the lie was a necessary evil. “She’s mine.”
Chapter Four
Evangeline arrived in time to see Ethan release her husband and stalk off, climbing the stairs two at a time.
Robert muttered a curse and smoothed his shirt cuffs even though the garment was hopelessly wrinkled and stained. The small, fastidious detail reminded her of the man she’d fallen in love with seven years earlier, back when she’d been with the FBI and Robert had been trying to get PPS off the ground. He’d helped her find the truth about her parents’ deaths, and he’d changed her life by bringing her into his business and his world—or so she’d thought. These days, it was all too clear that he’d let her in only so far, keeping other pieces of himself hidden away.
Now he turned to her, his expression dark and complicated. “Were you coming to rescue me from Ethan or have him hold me down while you took a few swings?”
“I hadn’t decided.” She crossed the distance separating them, but kept her attention on the stairs, where Ethan had disappeared. “He’s never mentioned Nicole.”
“Is that a problem?”
His clipped tone had her glaring. “You think I have something going with Ethan?”
He looked away, a muscle bunching at the corner of his square jaw. “Two years is a long time.”
For a split second she thought he might be trying to confess an indiscretion of his own, but there was none of that in his expression when he finally looked back at her. There was only sad resignation, as though he’d already decided the answer for himself.
Anger flared quickly, at him, at the situation, and she snapped, “I know exactly how long you were gone, Robert. Worse, thanks to exactly one stinking phone call, I knew you were alive and hiding out. Do you have any idea—” She broke off and gritted her teeth. “Never mind. We’ve been around this barn a few times already. I hate that you shut me out rather than trusting me to help, and you figure I should be grateful because everything you did was for my own good, to keep me safe. We’re at an impasse.”
They’d been at loggerheads for weeks now, ever since the first blush of their reunion had worn off. Worse, she wasn’t sure there was any way for them to get past this issue. He was a stubborn Brit and she wasn’t big on second chances in the absence of a damn good apology, which she had yet to hear.
“I thought you were dead when I first saw your office. I thought—” He broke off and looked away. “I wanted to kill the murdering sod who’d pulled the trigger, followed by the bloody bastard behind it all, and then myself, because I don’t want to live another day without you.”
Her heart turned over in her chest at the banked violence in his voice, at the raw grief that pressed up into her own throat, the desire to throw herself into his arms, forget the past and only look forward. But early in her life, when she’d lost her childhood to the foster system in the wake of her parents’ murders, she’d learned that wanting something wasn’t enough, especially in the absence of honesty and trust, so she hardened her heart and said, “Now you know how it
feels not to know whether the person you love is alive or dead.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, lowering his voice to a growl when a trio of uniformed police officers emerged from the nearby elevator and headed for the crime scene.
“I know.” Evangeline took a step back, away from her husband. “You want things to be like they were before you left, but it doesn’t work that way. We’ve both changed. Hell, I ran your company.”
“Is that what this is about? Take the damn company. It’s yours, I don’t care, just so long as we can get past this and I can have my wife back. So I can have my life back.”
He cursed and dragged a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, leaving it spiky. His torn, soiled clothes and disheveled hair made him look sexy and dangerous. Tempting.
Forcing herself to stand her ground, she shook her head. “It’s not about the company, Robert, it’s about you not trusting me and not letting me be an equal partner in our marriage.”
“I trust you,” he said, but they both knew his actions over the past two years said otherwise.
“Come on,” she said. “Ever since my name turned up on that list you’ve been trying to marginalize me.”
His eyes glinted with building fury. “I’m not marginalizing you, I’m protecting you, and if you don’t see the difference, you’re—” He clicked his teeth on whatever he’d been about to say, retreating behind the calm, cool facade she thought of as his spy face.
“I’m an FBI-trained agent who neither wants nor needs protection.” And here we are again, Evangeline thought. Back at that same old impasse. She was suddenly tired beyond words and her injured arm throbbed with the beat of her bruised heart. Tears stung her eyelids, a weakness she could ill-afford if she wanted to prove herself to the man who mattered most. Not wanting him to see, she turned away and headed for the stairs. “On that note, I’m going to speak with Ethan’s friend. If anything, her abduction says we’re not the only ones who think she saw whoever blew up the office.”
Evangeline started up the stairs, part of her foolishly hoping Robert would call her back. When he didn’t, a single tear broke free and tracked down her cheek.
WHEN NICOLE regained consciousness this time, she knew exactly where she was—back in her hospital room—and what had happened to her—some guy had grabbed her and tried to turn her into a Popsicle.
What the hell was going on?
She looked for Ethan before she could stop herself, before she could remind herself he’d wanted nothing to do with her or their baby.
Yes, he’d rescued her from the cold room, but then again he was a professional bodyguard; she’d learned that much from the Prescott Personal Securities Web site, along with the fact that he’d mustered out of the military a year or so before he’d joined PPS. A Google search had pulled up little else, which either meant he was relatively baggage-free, or that his baggage wasn’t the sort that made it onto the Web.
“And why the hell are you worrying about him when there are more important things going on?” She said the words aloud, partly for emphasis, partly to test her voice, which came out audible but scratchy.
Because, a small voice said inside her, guy problems are normal. Being nearly killed twice in one day isn’t.
“Do you talk to yourself often?” a female voice asked from the doorway.
Nic winced and turned her head in that direction, and was relieved to see Dr. Eballa rather than…well, just about anyone else who might’ve been there. At least the doctor was a neutral third party. Because of it, Nic dredged up a smile. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. I just usually check to make sure I’m alone first.”
“I think we can forgive the lapse, given the day you’ve had.” The doctor crossed the room and touched her wrist in the same habitual move she’d used before, part reassurance, part pulse check. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.” Nic emphasized the word with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Exhausted, in fact.”
“That’s not surprising. You should shut down for a bit and let the healing begin.”
Nic couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice when she said, “Do I have to stay here?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Dr. Eballa said, surprising her. “Medically, I’m willing to discharge you. But ethically, I need to be sure you’ll be safe.”
“I don’t know—” Nic began, but broke off when a small group appeared in the doorway of her hospital room, with Ethan in the lead.
He announced, “Miss Benedict will be under the protection of Prescott Personal Securities until her attacker has been apprehended.”
Nic narrowed her eyes at him. “I appreciate it, but I’m not a client.”
When Ethan didn’t answer, a fit-looking man in his late fifties stepped forward. His tattered clothes said he’d been in the PPS offices when the missile hit, and his air of authority indicated that he ranked. “I’m Robert Prescott, founder of PPS,” he said confirming her guess in a voice that held a faint English accent. He nodded to a blond woman in her late thirties, maybe early forties, who was wearing a sling and a faintly sulky expression. “My wife, Evangeline. You already know Ethan, and these other two are Detectives Riske and Montenegro.”
Nic wasn’t sure which detective was which: one was a dark-haired woman who walked with an aggressive swagger, the other an older black man with wise eyes and white-frosted hair beneath a Colorado Rockies baseball cap.
“Don’t worry, Miss Benedict,” Robert Prescott continued. “We’ll take care of everything. There’s no reason you should suffer because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His eyes searched her face. “We’re pretty sure that man grabbed you because you were in the elevator at the time of the attack. We’re hoping you might remember something that could lead us to the perpetrators.”
“I told Ethan before that I don’t remember anything about the first attack. I don’t even remember being in an elevator,” she said slowly. “But I can certainly describe the man who took me out of my room.”
Robert nodded. “Then we’ll start there.”
He stood so the female detective could have his chair. She sat and pulled out a small PDA, which she flipped open and activated with a few touches of a plastic stylus. Then she said, “Detective Shelia Riske, recording an interview with Miss Nicole Benedict.” She reeled off the date and location before she focused on Nic. “Miss Benedict, could you please walk us through what happened earlier today?”
Nic thought for a second, trying to line up her memories in some sort of coherent order. “Ethan had just left my room, and all I wanted to do was go home. I figured if I could make it to the bathroom on my own, I’d be able to convince the doc to spring me. I was halfway across the room when the door opened and a stranger came in…”
ONLY A sheer effort of willpower kept Ethan leaning against the wall as she described what had happened. He wanted to pace and growl, wanted to be out of the hospital, tracking the bastards who’d set their sights on PPS.
Before, he’d been only peripherally involved in the TCM matter. He’d been off on a string of bodyguard assignments during the first stages of the investigation, when Jack Sanders, Mike Lawson and Cameron Morgan, three of the best operatives PPS had in the field, had connected a string of murders to TCM, a mega company run by billionaire Stephen Turner. With Stephen married to Robert Prescott’s first wife, Olivia, and Robert’s estranged son, Kyle, working high up in the company, the ties between the conglomerate and Robert—who’d been presumed dead at the time—had seemed too strong for coincidence.
Still, it hadn’t really been Ethan’s problem. He worked for PPS because Evangeline had recruited him and the lifestyle was a good fit, but he was more of an independent contractor than part of the team. He’d stayed on the edges of the investigation, moving even further into the background when veteran PPS agent John Pinto and rookie Lily Clark brought Robert back from Cuerva Island, where he’d been hiding out and investigating his own death.
Robert returned
with solid evidence that his ex-mentor and former business partner, Clive Fuentes, had tried to kill him because he’d gotten too close to one of the lucrative but highly illegal schemes Clive was running under the legitimate business operations at PPS. Robert’s investigation had also uncovered a link between Clive and the shell company used to broker the TCM oil-rights-leasing scheme that had led to the murders being investigated at PPS. Clive, however, had disappeared, leaving them unsure of whether he was involved in the attacks, or whether he’d been killed along with a half-dozen of the original oil-rights investors and Lenny, a PPS computer tech.
Lenny’s death had hit close to home, but even then Ethan had held himself apart, thinking it wasn’t his fight. Rationally, he knew it still wasn’t his fight, except that Nicole had been coming to see him when she’d gotten caught up in the danger. That made him responsible.
The child she carried made him doubly responsible, whether he liked it or not.
“Thanks,” Detective Riske said, warning him that he’d missed most of Nicole’s report. “I think we have what we need.” She saved her notes on her handheld and stood. “We’ll be in touch to schedule you with our sketch artist, and I’ll match your description to some head shots we’ve got on file. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Judging from her tone, she wasn’t holding out too much hope on that, which Ethan had to second. So far, the PPS investigators hadn’t gotten any lucky breaks on this investigation. Each time it seemed like they were starting to make headway, things took a turn for the worse.
Detectives Riske and Montenegro exited, talking in the clipped shorthand of longtime partners. That left Ethan, Robert and Evangeline, along with the question of how to keep Nicole safe when every last PPS operative was needed in the field.
“We have a safe house,” Robert said, his thoughts clearly paralleling Ethan’s. “You can take Miss Benedict there for a few days. Maybe she’ll remember something we can use.”
“Call me Nicole, please,” Nicole said from the hospital bed. With deep purple shadows beneath her eyes and the faint smudge of a bruise on one cheek, she looked too lovely, too vulnerable to be caught up in something as ugly as the TCM mess.
Classified Baby Page 4
