by Lisa Childs
A twinge of pain struck Parker’s heart. But he wasn’t the only one bothered by the news. Landon Myers looked sick. He and Clint were close—so close that they shared a house in the city.
Clint hadn’t gone there. Landon had already checked. Jocelyn Gerber sat next to Landon. She looked sick, too.
But she wasn’t worried about Clint. She was worried about the witness. “What about Ms. Mendez?” she asked Nikki. “Had she been injured?”
Nikki shrugged. “Like I just told my brother, the SUV came under heavy fire. She could have been.”
Jocelyn gasped. “That is unacceptable. The Payne Protection Agency’s main responsibility was to make sure that nothing happened to the witness—”
Usually Landon was pretty patient, but now he lost his temper. “Do your damn job,” he told Jocelyn, “and you won’t need Rosie’s testimony.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, and her blue eyes looked bright, almost as if she was about to cry. Despite how tough she always acted, Landon had hurt her feelings. “Of course I’ve done my job.”
“Offer those shooters a plea deal to turn on Luther. There are plenty of them in custody, thanks to the Payne Protection Agency,” Landon said with pride. “Even you should be able to get through to one of them.”
Jocelyn glared at him. “Then I need to go down to the jail,” she said as she rose from her chair around the conference table. “We’re obviously wasting our time here.”
Landon grimaced, and Parker mouthed I’m sorry at him. He’d had no idea that Jocelyn Gerber would be so difficult for his friend to handle. Landon got up to follow her out, but he paused at the door and turned back. “Let me know when you find Clint.”
“Do you have any ideas?” Parker asked. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“And I can’t even pick up a signal for it,” Nikki added.
Landon shook his head and turned back toward the door. But then he stopped and swiveled around. “What about his cabin? Did you check there?”
“What cabin?” Parker had never figured Clint for the outdoors type. All he ever remembered him doing was working—first as a vice cop and now as a bodyguard.
“He just bought the place a little while ago,” Landon said.
“He didn’t mention it.”
Landon grimaced again. “Yeah, he probably wouldn’t have said anything about it to you...”
Parker felt a pang. And now he knew what his brother Cooper had gone through when he’d become the boss to his friends. It wasn’t always as easy to maintain that friend relationship when you were suddenly the one in charge. “Why not to me?”
“It’s the cabin Cooper owned.”
“My brother?” As far as Parker knew, Cooper had never owned a cabin, unless he’d been keeping things from him, too.
“Officer Cooper,” Landon said.
The man who’d killed Parker’s father. He shuddered. He’d never intended to go back there. Ever.
“He bought it really cheap from the guy’s estate, which just recently got settled,” Landon said. “It had been in probate for years...”
“Does anyone else know about it?” Parker asked.
Landon shrugged. “I think everybody in vice knew he’d bought it. He’d been trying to buy it off the estate before it even got settled.”
So everybody but Parker knew about it. Of course, Parker had left vice long before these guys had.
“Do you remember where it is?” Landon asked.
Parker nodded. He would never forget. Now he had to go back. He only hoped that when he did, it wouldn’t end as it had the last time—in another death.
Since the shooting at Jocelyn’s house, a heavy pressure had settled on Landon’s chest. It was a mixture of guilt and anxiety—over her shooting and over the shooting at the safe house. That guilt and anxiety had caused him to lash out at her during the meeting moments ago.
And that had only intensified his guilt. He shouldn’t have snapped at her to do her job, but her concern seemed to be just for her case and not for the people who could be out there—hurt, dying even. Then she’d disparaged the Payne Protection Agency’s ability to keep the witness and everyone else safe, infuriating him even more.
She seemed furious, as well, bristling with anger. “Let’s get to the jail, then,” she said as she stomped on her stiletto heels down the hall ahead of him.
He groaned and uttered an apology. “I’m sorry.”
And she whirled around on the tip of one heel to face him. A black brow arched over one of her bright blue eyes. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“For what?” she asked.
“For making that crack about you not doing your job,” he clarified. “I know that you work your ass off.” Actually, her ass was perfect and perfectly displayed in all those tight little pencil skirts she wore with her suits. She definitely needed to change before they headed over to the jail, or she might cause a riot.
Hell, she was causing a riot in his chest right now, as his heart began to pound even harder than it had been since the shooting hours ago.
She sighed. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I know you’re worried about your friend.”
Tension gripped him, tightening his jaw as he gritted his teeth. He could only nod.
“If you want to go look for him while I go to the jail...”
He shook his head now. “You’re sure as hell not going to the jail without protection.”
She snorted. “Like what could happen at jail? There are guards.”
“Guards who must be smuggling phones in to Luther,” Landon reminded her. “Or helping him get messages to his crew other ways. You can’t trust them.”
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, as if wondering if she could trust him. Hadn’t he proved himself yet? Hadn’t he shown her that he wasn’t working for Luther any more than she was?
“I know you would rather be going with Parker to that cabin to look for Clint,” she said, “than going to the jail with me.”
He couldn’t deny that he was worried about his friend. But Clint wasn’t the only one he was concerned about. After the shooting at her house, he was stressed about her, too, and worried about how he had nearly failed to protect her.
That weight on his chest pressed down even more, stealing away his breath. And he shook his head. “My job is to protect you.”
But she was more than just an assignment to him. He wanted to keep her safe because he was beginning to care about her.
Before, he’d thought they’d had nothing in common—because he’d suspected she worked for Luther—but now he realized they had too much in common. All either of them cared about was work, protecting people from criminals. Since he hadn’t been nearly as effective as he’d wanted as a vice cop, he’d switched to being a bodyguard. But he was worried that he might not be any more effective as a bodyguard—if he let her distract him again.
It was better that they keep infuriating each other than caring about each other.
Sympathy tugged at Jocelyn’s heart. She knew how it felt to lose someone you loved, and Landon clearly loved his roommate. They were more than just coworkers; they were obviously very good friends.
She was already anxious for Parker to find Clint and Rosie alive and well. But now she didn’t just worry about that because of the case. She worried about him because of Landon, because she didn’t want him to lose someone else he loved.
He’d already suffered enough loss and no longer had any family left in his life. Still standing in the corridor outside the conference room, they had to step aside as the others walked past them.
“I’ll find them,” Parker told Landon. “I’m also bringing in Logan’s team to help with backup, so everybody will have extra protection.”
“We’re fine,” Landon said. “Even Dubridge didn
’t think the shooting at her house had anything to do with Luther or his crew.”
Parker narrowed his eyes as he looked speculatively at Jocelyn. “You have someone else after you?”
“Yes,” she replied, and she felt her defenses rising again. They really thought so little of her. “Despite what Landon thinks, I win more than I lose, so I’ve sent a lot of people to prison. They’re usually not very happy about that.”
But she knew none of those people would have been able to find her very easily or at all since she and her parents had been so careful to hide her home address. No. It probably had been someone from her office—the real someone who was working for Luther Mills. But her pride was already stinging too much for her to admit that they were all probably right about there being a leak in her office.
Parker nodded. “Doesn’t matter who’s after you. You need extra protection.”
Landon sighed. “You’re right.”
“I thought you’d already left for the jail,” Parker said. “So Logan’s guards were going to catch up with you on the way there.”
“We’re heading there now,” Jocelyn assured him as she walked with him down the hall. “I will talk to those shooters and get one of them to turn on Luther.”
Following behind them, Landon snorted. And her sympathy for him ebbed.
“You really don’t think that I can do my job,” she murmured as she stopped at the outside door and turned back toward him.
“I think it’s going to be hard to turn anyone against Luther,” he said. “Especially after he killed Javier Mendez for becoming an informant.”
“It was your idea for us to go there,” she reminded him.
Parker uttered a ragged sigh and shook his head. “Why the hell can’t any of you get along?” he wondered aloud.
They could. It was just safer—for both of them—if they didn’t. But she doubted Landon was about to admit that any more readily than she was.
“I can’t stay to mediate this squabble,” he said. “You two are going to need to work this out on your own.”
“Go,” Landon urged him. “Find Clint and Rosie.”
Parker nodded and headed out the back door to the parking lot. Landon caught the door and looked around outside before letting her exit with him. All of the black Payne Protection Agency SUVs looked alike, and there were several of them since some of the other bodyguards had stayed behind in the conference room.
Landon must have noticed it, too, because he murmured, “Parker shouldn’t be heading there alone,” as one of those black SUVs drove out of the parking lot.
“Maybe some of his brother Logan’s team is meeting him at the cabin,” she suggested. Since Parker seemed adamant about everyone else having backup, she doubted he would go anywhere without some of his own.
Landon released a shaky breath and nodded. “You’re right. I’m sure they are.”
“And I’m sure Clint is okay,” Jocelyn said. “He probably just doesn’t know who to trust.”
She knew the feeling. Could someone in her office really have fired those shots into her house? Have tried to kill her?
She shivered, and not just because of the cool night air blowing around them, tangling her hair across her face.
“He knows he can trust me,” Landon said. Then he reached up and pushed her hair back from her face. “And you can trust me, too.”
She drew in a shaky breath. She wanted to be able to trust him—to believe, like Detective Dubridge did, that no one working at the Payne Protection Agency was also working for Luther. But she was scared to trust the wrong person.
Maybe it was safer just to trust no one at all. That was probably what Clint Quarters had decided, why no one had heard from him. Or the alternative was that he was dead—and Rosie didn’t dare to trust anyone.
Jocelyn could understand that, but she didn’t want Landon to have lost his friend. Even though she struggled to bring herself to trust him completely, she did care about him. Maybe too much...
He must have cared, too, because he began to lower his head to hers. But he was moving too slowly, so she rose up on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. Then she moved her fingers to his nape to hold his head down to hers as she kissed him deeply.
He groaned, and his hands moved to her back, clutching her close—but then within seconds, he was pushing her away and shoving her down. And just as her body hit the asphalt, she heard the shots ringing out.
Someone was shooting at them. But Landon hadn’t hit the asphalt with her. Instead, he’d drawn his weapon and was returning fire.
“Get down!” she screamed at him, afraid that he would be hit. She had just uttered the words when he dropped to the ground. And she knew that she’d probably warned him too late.
He must have already been hit.
Chapter 10
Landon grimaced at the sight of the jail. “We should be going to the hospital,” he said. “Not here.”
“You said you weren’t hurt!” she exclaimed as she turned in the passenger’s seat of the SUV and studied him over the console.
“I’m not,” he said. “But you are.” He stared at the torn sleeve of her suit jacket. The skin visible through the tear was scratched and swollen and oozing blood. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “You might need stitches.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. Thanks to you.”
He was the one who’d hurt her. The shots had missed them both wildly. The vehicle from which they’d been fired had moved fast—too fast for the driver to take any real aim at them. That was why Landon hadn’t been hit.
She probably would have been less injured had he not pushed her down. But when he’d heard the vehicle pulling into the lot Parker had left, he’d instinctively known there was going to be trouble. Fortunately, he’d heard the motor and opened his eyes.
Or he might have just gone on kissing her...until they were both dead. Because if he hadn’t reacted, the shooter might have just stopped the car and shot at them. Then he wouldn’t have missed. But he’d been driving fast, so fast that Landon hadn’t gotten a good look at the driver or the vehicle.
He shook his head. “You could have been killed.”
“We don’t know that he was shooting at us,” she said. “He could have been expecting someone else to be coming out of the Payne Protection Agency.”
“He could have been.” But Landon suspected he had been shooting at them. At her.
So had the other bodyguards when they’d rushed out to the lot at the first sound of gunfire. Nikki Payne-Ecklund hadn’t wanted them to leave the agency, but Jocelyn had insisted on being brought here, to the jail.
She really thought she might turn some of Luther’s crew against him. She’d never been successful at that before Luther had murdered Javier Mendez. He doubted she would succeed now. But because he had suggested it during the meeting, he had to support her.
So he’d driven her here. He hated the thought of her being inside the jail, though. And he hated it even more when he wasn’t allowed into the small visiting room reserved for meetings with lawyers.
“We’re right here,” one of the guards said.
That was the problem. The guard was probably working for Luther just like his young crew member had been when he’d ambushed Clint and Rosie at the safe house.
“Nothing will happen to her,” the older man assured Landon.
He was not reassured.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked.
The guard shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t think the chief of police and the district attorney’s office have figured out that someone on the inside is helping Luther?”
“On the inside?” the guard asked, as if he didn’t understand.
Landon figured he didn’t just understand but that he probably knew exactly who
was helping Luther Mills. Like probably himself.
Landon was not going to budge from outside the door. But that door was steel and the walls solid concrete. If Jocelyn was screaming inside the room, he wouldn’t be able to hear her. He would never know—until it was too late—that she had needed his help.
Jocelyn glanced around the hotel suite where Landon had brought her after the jail. She’d wanted to go home, to her own house, to her cat.
He’d assured her that he’d shut the feline into the laundry room, where her litter box was, and that he’d given her plenty of food and water.
Besides her cat, what Jocelyn wanted most was her bathroom. She needed a shower, and not just because Landon had knocked her down in the parking lot. She needed a shower to wash away all the comments the perps had made when she’d tried to talk to them.
The things they’d called her...
The suggestions they’d made to her.
She shuddered.
“That bad?” Landon asked.
She tensed with defensiveness. Her parents were always trying to get her to quit her job. They didn’t understand that she just didn’t want to be a prosecutor; she needed to be a prosecutor. “Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” he asked.
“Don’t tell me that I shouldn’t be doing this job,” she said. “That I’m not equipped for it.”
He stared down at her, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Why the hell would I say that?”
“My parents do all the time,” she said.
“Then I guess they don’t know you very well,” he replied.
A tightness she hadn’t even realized she had in her chest eased now.
“You’re tough,” he said. “You can handle anything.”
That tightness turned to a warmth that spread throughout her chest. “I’m glad you realize that.”
“You’re tough,” he said. “But you’re not invincible. That’s why we came here instead of back to your house.”
