by Peggy Jaeger
Her eyes flicked to Ky and the smirk died.
“Why do you keep calling her Cleo?”
Ky regarded their visitor through assessing eyes. Roughly the same height as he, Bannerman’s shoulders were doorway-wide, his arms and torso looking like they were a frequent occupant of a gym. Ky could still feel the force of the man’s elbows against his ribs. It was surprising none were cracked.
Military-cut dark hair framed a wide forehead. His eyes were equally as dark, their expression guarded and closed as he looked across the room at Ky.
“It’s because of the way I wear my hair,” Gemma said for him.
It took him a moment. When the meaning burst through, he nodded. “Cleopatra.”
“He started calling me that one day at the shooting range. It stuck.”
“It fits,” Bannerman said.
“It sucks.”
He grinned at Ky. “She hates it.”
“Which,” Gemma threw up her hands, “is why he refuses to stop. Typical teenage-boy behavior.”
“Yeah, but you love me, admit it, Cleo.”
For an answer she blew a raspberry through her lips.
The good natured banter between them struck a quick spark of envy in Ky.
“As much as I love sparring with you, babe,” Bannerman said, “I’ve got some stuff to go over with Agent Pappandreos.”
“Oh. What stuff?” Gemma asked. “Can I hear it?”
Bannerman shot a quick glance at Ky, a question in his gaze. “Up to you.”
Ky looked at Gemma.
“You know what?” she said. “On second thought, forget it. I’d rather go have a shower.”
He tracked her the entire way up to the second floor.
“She’s easy on the eyes, isn’t she?”
Ky turned to Bannerman. “You’re the second person who’s said those same words to me in the past week.”
Bannerman grinned again. “She’s a good kid. And one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met, especially if you can get past those inch-thick defensive walls she wears like armor.”
“Keane mentioned she has trust issues. I’ve seen it for myself.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t let a lot of people in, and even when she does, she tends to be guarded. I’m glad, though, she decided not to stay. Josh sent me with some intel for you and I’d rather she not hear it.” He pulled out a laptop from a duffel bag he’d brought in from the car, along with groceries and food from Kandy. He’d given Gemma an overnight bag from her sister as well.
“This system is encrypted,” Bannerman said as he booted up the laptop. “Josh figured you needed something secure to work with.”
“I’ve actually got my own.”
He went into the bedroom and brought back the device Theo had given him.
“A friend gave me this before we left DC.”
He’d been planning on doing research all day, but the walk in the woods and then the need to burn off his sexual steam with the punching bag had shoved the idea to the back of his mind.
“Let me see that.”
Ky handed him the laptop. A few quick keystrokes later, and a low, appreciative whistle sailed passed his pursed lips.
“You got this from a friend?”
Ky nodded.
Bannerman’s eyes went to half-mast again as he regarded Ky. “I’d like to meet this friend. This system makes mine,” he chinned his laptop, “look like a second-generation throwback.”
Ky’s lips twitched. “You said you had some intel for me?”
He shifted to his device and typed. “After you got in contact, Josh asked me to do a little digging into Ritandi and his organization.”
“I know everything I need to know about Ritandi.”
Bannerman shot him speaking glance. “I’m sure that’s true. To a point.”
“What does that mean?”
Bannerman shrugged and flicked a hand at him. “Look, you’re a federal agent. You go by the book because everything you find has to be above board and beyond reproach to get an indictment that sticks.”
Ky nodded. “We can’t leave any room for his lawyers to wiggle through.”
“Right. So you go about obtaining info through legal and judicial avenues.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t.”
Ky just stared at him.
“I’ve got…access is the best word,” Bannerman said, “to a whole other level of information. The kind you can’t even imagine exists. The kind, if you wormed your way into, even accidentally, could get you killed.”
“Who are you? Or should I say, what are you?”
“Nothing but a lowly private eye. But once upon a time, well...”
Ky remembered Gemma telling him Rick Bannerman had been a sniper in, “a previous life.”
More than a sniper, he thought. Much more.
“So, assuming you found out something I can’t use legally,” he said, “what is it and how can I use it?”
“I’m going on the assumption the witness Gemma saw eliminated was under wraps and only a very few knew where he was, yes?”
Ky nodded. “Very good, wraps, actually. I haven’t been able to figure out why my agents left the hotel with him that day. They were under strict orders to never leave the floor we’d had him sequestered on.”
“Orders they disobeyed?”
“Apparently.”
“No.”
When he didn’t respond, Bannerman turned this laptop around so Ky could see the screen. “This is the cell phone call log of your dead agent Jackson Hunter from the day of the killings.”
Ky stared down at the screen, speechless. And furious.
“How can you possibly have access to this?”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. Just accept it as a gift, no questions asked.”
“A gift?”
“Yeah. Your witness bought it at what time?”
Ky told him.
“Look at the log. An hour and half before they were killed, Hunter received a text from this number.” He pointed to the screen. “Do you recognize it?”
“No. Whose is it?”
“That, I can’t answer. It’s an untraceable number and believe me, I tried. The only thing I can tell you is when I pinged the towers connecting the call, I got bounced through a shitload of routers. The closest I can come to figuring out the origination point is somewhere in DC, New York, or Philadelphia.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. It could be anyone who called him, from his wife to another agent at the bureau.”
“True, but it’s a mighty big coincidence your agents were barred from leaving the hotel for what? Six weeks or so? And then ninety minutes after one of them gets this text, they’re out the door and dead. Makes you wonder.”
Ky had to agree.
“Any thoughts, then, on why they left?”
Through pursed lips, Ky said, “None.”
“My guess, if you want to hear it, is someone told them it was okay to take Calafano from the hotel.”
Ky shook his head. “No one had the authority to do that. No one but me. And I certainly didn’t give permission for it. Every meal had been ordered in and eaten in the suite we had him secured in.”
“Interesting. Who knew where you were keeping Gemma after she was attacked?”
“The remaining agents on my team, my superior, and the agency director.”
“No one in justice?”
“No. Since we obviously had a leak, I figured the less people who knew her whereabouts, the better. Why?”
Bannerman typed again for a few seconds. When he was done he turned the screen back to Ky. “This number,” he said, indicating the one on the screen he was referring to, “comes up four times on the ASA assigned to the case.”
&nbs
p; “Barly?”
“Yup. All the calls were made after you had Gemma in seclusion.”
“Do you know whose phone the calls were made from?”
Bannerman sat back and lowered his chin, his gaze targeting straight to Ky’s. He got the impression he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Yours.”
Ky’s mouth fell open.
“It’s a number personally registered to you.”
“That’s impossible.”
Bannerman nodded. “Josh felt the same way when I told him. That’s the only reason you’re still sitting here—alive.” He said it as if they were discussing what to have for lunch: calmly, without any inflection in his voice.
“If he thought for one minute you were a danger to his sister-in-law,” Bannerman continued, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Gemma would be with me on a flight back to New York while your body rotted in the woods.”
Ky believed him.
“So, it looks like someone’s setting you up for a fall, son.”
Chapter Twelve
Gemma stepped from the shower, wrapped a towel around her body, and swiped the steam off the wall mirror.
The image reflected back at her looked exactly the same as it had that morning. On the outside, she hadn’t changed one bit.
On the inside was a whole different story.
How in the name of all that’s holy could one kiss affect her so powerfully, change her so completely, and leave her so bamboozled that all she could think of was when could she kiss him again?
Because she really did want to kiss him again. Really. Kyros Pappandreos’s kiss had been like no other she’d ever received.
His lips had been soft, like a newborn’s skin, when they’d trailed along the edge of her jaw, and at the same time hard, solid, and demanding as they took total possession of her mouth.
She could have stood in the kitchen, just kissing him, for the rest of her natural life.
She trailed a finger across her mouth as she stared at herself.
Well, that was a bold-faced lie.
She didn’t just want to kiss him. She wanted to do a lot more. A whole lot more. Like strip him naked and eat him alive.
Gemma shook her head. The image of Ky pummeling the punching bag in the garage, shirtless, his perfect body bathed in sweat, muscles flexing and extending, shot to the front of her mind. She’d wanted to lick every drop of that sweat off every place it touched his sun-kissed skin.
And then start all over again at the top.
Without even seeming to, he’d stripped all her self-imposed defenses raw as if he’d stripped her naked before him. Gemma never let a man make the first move, sexually. She was always the instigator, taking control of the situation, guiding it, and deciding what she’d allow to happen. She had to be the one in control. If the events that took place during her high school days had taught her anything, it was this.
But Ky had made the first move today without ever asking, and she’d allowed it, which was mindboggling to begin with. What made it even more so was that she hadn’t resisted or pulled away. She’d let him assume control and had been a willing participant in the most sensual, fiery, and intoxicating embrace of her life. When his hands cupped her butt and pulled her straight up against what she knew was a major league erection, all she could think about doing was jumping up and wrapping her legs around his waist to get all that length and heat against her own roaring inferno. If Rick Bannerman hadn’t made such a dramatic entrance, she could imagine she’d be doing a lot more than kissing Ky at this moment.
A whole lot more.
A quick glance at the bedside digital clock and she saw it was only nine o’clock. Still early, but she was tired, both in mind and body. She pulled on a clean T-shirt and some yoga pants from the suitcase Kandy had sent with Rick, and made her way down the stairs, guided by heated voices.
“I don’t know how this is possible,” Ky was saying.
“It’s not easy, but it certainly can be done. Any hacker worth knowing has the access and capability to—”
“What’s not easy?” Gemma asked.
Two sets of eyes trained on her. One pair was flat and as unreadable as always. The pair that resembled a calm ocean had turned stormy, filled with fire and rage.
“What are you guys talking about?”
Gemma noticed Rick slant a look at Ky, who hadn’t taken his eyes from her since she entered the room. The same possessive glare she’d seen in them when he’d kissed her was there again. The one that told her she should run for the hills, only her feet weren’t listening.
Oh my.
“Your brother-in-law and Bannerman have been looking into how Ritandi discovered where we were keeping you.”
Gemma looked at Rick. “And?”
“Before I answer that, I want to ask you another question,” he said to Ky.
“Go ahead.”
“You called Josh from DC after you’d been attacked while moving Gemma to another location, right?”
“Yes.” Ky’s lips were pressed together so tight, Gemma barely heard him.
“So, again, who knew where you were relocating her? The same people as before?”
“No. I notified the agents I wanted assigned to the house, my boss, and the two agents who were in the van with us. That’s it.”
“No one else?”
“No, why?”
Rick didn’t answer him. “You need to give me all their names so I can run a comparison. Then we can get a bead on who’s setting you up.”
“Setting him up? What are you talking about?” Gemma asked.
Succinctly, Rick told her what he and Josh had discovered; all the while Ky was focused on her face, watching her.
“Well that makes no sense,” she said when he was done. She turned to address Ky. “If you were involved in this, you had more than enough chances to get me out of the way. Why run with me if you were planning on killing me anyway? It’s dumb.”
“Maybe not,” Rick said.
When they both looked to him, he shrugged. “In a twisted sense, it might be brilliant.” He turned his gaze to Ky and narrowed his eyes. “If you are involved, what better place to keep an eye on Gemma than while she’s in your care. A few feigned attempts on her life, a few location switches, and then suddenly, bam! She dies and you can’t be suspected because you’ve done everything in your power to keep her alive. It’s a tragedy she’s dead, but nothing points to you.”
Gemma crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side, her lips pulling down at the corners. “That’s just stupid. You just said these phone calls point to him.”
Rick nodded.
“So if they do, then he’d be suspected. That blows your theory to crap.”
“Only if the calls were discovered,” Ky said.
Rick shot a finger at him. “Right. It’s safe to say whoever orchestrated this is going to pin Gemma’s death on you. Especially—” he stopped and cast a quick glance at her.
Gemma knew immediately what he’d been about to say. She turned to Ky. “Especially if you die, too. Because then you couldn’t defend yourself against any allegations or charges. You’d be guilty after the fact.”
The air in the room chilled and Gemma squeezed herself tighter.
“So,” Rick said again, “who hates you enough to want to kill you and destroy your reputation in the bargain?”
* * *
It was a good question.
Ky stood and walked to the kitchen, head spinning. He grabbed some bottled waters from the kitchen and handed one to Gemma when he returned. A little shock sparked through him when his fingers skimmed hers and by the way she sucked in a fast breath, he knew she’d felt it, too.
“Ritandi is, of course, the name that heads the list,” he said, sitting. “I’ve b
een a bug up his ass for three years. When I arrested Calafano I could practically hear him screaming.”
“So it makes sense, then, he got to somebody in the bureau, maybe even on your team.”
Ky sighed. “Unfortunately, it does.”
He was still having a great deal of difficulty thinking any of the men he’d handpicked for his investigative team could be involved. He’d worked side by side with these men for over three years. He knew their families, their kids’ names. He’d worked diligently to establish their trust and confidence in him as their team leader. To suspect one of them may be something they weren’t, well, it was hard to imagine.
His gaze lifted to Gemma. She stood opposite from where he sat, the water bottle in her hand, a look of quiet introspection on her beautiful face. He’d give his right nut to know what she was thinking.
And his left one to take her in his arms again and disappear into her.
“Listen kids, I’m beat.” Bannerman rose and stretched. “I’ve been on the road since late last night without any sleep, so I’m heading up. Get me those names and we’ll start fresh in the morning, ’kay?”
Ky nodded.
Rick stopped, kissed Gemma on the forehead and swiped a finger down her cheek as he’d done earlier. “Get some sleep, Cleo. You’re looking haggard.”
It took every bit of control Ky could muster not to drag her away from him.
Gemma stuck her tongue out at Bannerman, and said, “I love you, too, old man.”
With a chuckle, he jogged up the stairs. It was in that moment Ky realized the man would be sleeping in the room next to Gemma’s. The room with one of the king-sized beds.
When Gemma turned her gaze back to him, her eyes narrowed. “What?”
Ky waited a beat. “You and Bannerman?” He cocked his head.
“Yeah?”
Ky just lifted his brow, his question clear.
“Me and Rick? Good Lord, no!”
“You two seem pretty…in sync.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
Ky bit the inside of his cheek.
Gemma sighed and rubbed her hands along her thighs. “He’s like an older, totally annoying brother. The kind you love and who’ll stick up for you in a fight, but who you really can only take in small doses because he’s such a pain in the ass most of the time.” She shrugged and added, “We’ve worked together on a few surveillance cases. I told you that the day we met.”
