Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  She closed her eyes as she remembered what she’d seen—all the blood. “They were killed during the course of a home invasion robbery. Tortured...” She shuddered, and now his arms tightened around her. He pulled her close to his chest. “The thieves must not have believed they didn’t have much money or jewelry in the house. As rich as they were, they were smart, too. They kept their valuables in safety-deposit boxes in banks.”

  “Were you there?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. But I found them.”

  “Oh, my God. How old were you?”

  “Sixteen,” she said. “I just got my license and drove my new car over to show them. They’d bought it for me.” She shuddered again. “The door was open. I shouldn’t have gone in.”

  Because she’d never gotten those images out of her head. He hugged her closer, and his hand stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry...”

  Her breath escaped in a shaky sigh. But she pulled back. “It was a long time ago,” she reminded him.

  “But you don’t ever forget something like that,” he said. “I still remember my first crime scene.” He shuddered. “And I didn’t even know the victims. I couldn’t sleep until we arrested their killers. Were your grandparents’ killers ever arrested?” He wasn’t a cop anymore, but he still thought like one.

  She nodded. “It took a few years for them to be found. And a few more years for the trial. But they were convicted and sentenced. They killed four more people before they were put away, though.”

  More families had been devastated like hers had been. Like Rosie Mendez was by her brother’s murder.

  “That’s why I do what I do,” she said. “I have no need for money or for a job title. My only need is for justice.”

  “I’m sorry,” Landon said again. And she knew he wasn’t offering condolences now, especially when he cupped her face in his palms and tipped it up to his. “I’m sorry,” he said again, “for ever doubting you.”

  “I doubted you, too,” she said.

  His lips curved slightly into a weak grin. “You don’t anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “I don’t have a story like yours. I didn’t go through the kind of tragic loss because of violence like you did.”

  But he’d endured loss all the same. It didn’t matter how his family was gone—just that they were gone. All of them. At least she had her parents still, no matter how crazy their overprotectiveness sometimes drove her.

  “Do you have any siblings?” she asked him, hating the thought of him being all alone.

  He shook his head. “Nope. I’m the only child of only children.”

  She winced, feeling for him. “So you have no family. You’re on your own now.”

  He chuckled. “Not at all. I have family.”

  She gasped as a horrible thought occurred to her. “Are you married?”

  He didn’t wear a wedding band, but then, plenty of married men did not, especially when one of the requirements of their job was to occasionally pose as someone else’s boyfriend.

  Laughter rumbled in his chest, pushing it against her breasts. “Hell, no!”

  Maybe he shared her views on marriage, as an unnecessary distraction.

  “My family is my coworkers,” he said. “They’re my friends.”

  She felt a pang now. She had family—her parents, who loved her so much. But she had no real friends. She admired and tried to emulate her boss, but Amber Talsma-Kozminski was not a friend. She wasn’t like the girls who’d worried about Jocelyn after her grandparents had been murdered. They’d been concerned about how much she’d changed. Then they’d begun to complain about how she wasn’t fun anymore and eventually they’d stopped trying to talk to her.

  When she’d lost her grandparents, she’d lost her innocence—that part of herself that had believed that all people were inherently good. She knew better now.

  She knew there were monsters like Luther Mills in the world who had no conscience, who felt no empathy when they took the lives of others. And sometimes those monsters were not that easy to spot.

  Like the people who’d murdered her grandparents. One of them had been a teenager who’d mowed their lawn. Her grandmother had fed him cookies, and Jocelyn had had a crush on him. But then, she’d just been a kid herself, so she couldn’t feel too bad about missing his true nature. She’d learned to be more careful now about whom she trusted. Maybe that was why she had no friends and rarely dated.

  “Are you sure you can trust your friends?” she asked him.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said, “with my life.”

  “What about the witness’s life?” she asked.

  “Clint would gladly give up his life for Rosie Mendez’s,” Landon said with pride in the man who was obviously the closest of his friends.

  “What about the others?” she asked. “Would they die to protect the person they’ve been assigned to?”

  His mouth curved into a slight grin, and he chuckled. “I’m not sure about Keeli and Detective Dubridge. She might kill him herself.”

  During the meeting, Jocelyn had heard how the detective had talked to her—how he’d called the petite blonde Bodyguard Barbie. She wasn’t entirely sure she would blame Keeli if she did kill him. But Jocelyn needed his testimony to corroborate what Rosie had told him at the scene of her brother’s murder.

  “Keeli aside, everyone else feels the same way I do about our assignments. We would willingly risk our lives to protect our principal.”

  She tilted her head and studied his handsome face. “You would?”

  He nodded. Then his gaze slipped down to her mouth and he murmured, “I hope that’s all I give up for you, though.”

  “What else is there?” she asked.

  But she knew. His heart. She felt a twinge in hers now, too. That had to be fear, though—just fear. Then her heart began to pound—fast and furiously—as he lowered his head to hers.

  His mouth had just brushed across hers once when gunfire rang out, so loud that the windows rattled. Then the glass shattered as bullets broke through the windows.

  Landon pushed her to the office floor and covered her body with his. And she had her answer. Yes, he would give up his life for hers.

  As the gunfire continued to ring out, she only hoped that he wasn’t about to die now. But with so many bullets striking the house, sending shards of glass raining onto them and the floor, she doubted he could avoid getting hit.

  * * *

  Chief Woodrow Lynch was not happy. He had still not found the leak within his department or within the district attorney’s office. Hell, he couldn’t even get a handle on the guards at the jail. Some of them had to be helping Luther. The drug lord had to be communicating with his crew somehow because they kept coming after the people associated with the trial.

  The witness had barely survived all the attempts on her life. There’d been some issues with the evidence technician, as well. More threatening photos sent to the judge and even a break-in at his daughter’s apartment.

  And now the prosecutor.

  But Woodrow wanted to keep that quiet. He hadn’t even told his wife. Yet. Of course, he hadn’t seen her yet. The minute he got out of his vehicle and stepped into the house, she would know that something else had happened.

  Hell, she probably already knew. Penny Payne-Lynch had an eerie sixth sense in which she just knew things were going to happen before they actually did. Well, she knew when bad things were going to happen.

  So she probably knew.

  He drew in a deep breath, bracing himself to push open the door and step onto the driveway. But his cell vibrated before he could reach for the door handle. “Chief Lynch,” he said as he accepted the call.

  It could have been his wife calling him from inside the house, wondering what was taking him so long to get inside, but it was
n’t her number on his screen. He knew he’d seen it before, but he hadn’t added a contact in his phone for the person. “Hello?”

  “Chief,” a female voice said. “This is Amber Kozminski.” She sounded breathless. Maybe she’d gone into labor. Even though she was the district attorney, she wasn’t trying Luther’s case because she’d been ordered to bed rest weeks ago.

  “Is everything all right?” he anxiously asked her.

  “You tell me,” she implored him.

  “About...?” he asked. His wife had warned him not to upset the heavily pregnant woman. Penny had emotionally adopted the woman’s husband and brother and sister-in-law even though their father had been accused of killing her first husband years ago. She pretty much adopted everybody she met but was especially protective of the Kozminskis. Amber wasn’t supposed to know about the threats to everyone involved with the trial. She wasn’t supposed to worry at all.

  But she sounded very worried. “Chief! I need to know if Jocelyn is all right.”

  So she had heard. How?

  He’d been trying to keep it so quiet. And even if Penny had, with her uncanny ability, figured it out, she wouldn’t have told Amber.

  “How did you hear about what happened?” he asked, because it was clear that she’d heard.

  “What does that matter?” she asked.

  “It matters,” he insisted. “A lot...”

  Because he was trying to contain that damn leak. The dispatcher had passed the report of shots fired at the ADA’s home on to him directly—because he’d had Jocelyn Gerber’s address flagged. And he’d sent out his most trusted detective to investigate those claims.

  So who had called Amber? Which one of them?

  “Somebody in my office called me,” she said. “They told me there was a shooting at Jocelyn’s house. I need to know if she’s okay.”

  She wasn’t the only one who needed to know that. He hadn’t heard back from his detective yet. Or from Landon Myers...

  Had he and the assistant district attorney survived that shooting?

  CHAPTER 7

  What the hell had happened? Landon still didn’t know. One minute he’d been kissing Jocelyn and the next...

  That had been his first mistake. Kissing her. That wasn’t part of his assignment—at least, not when there was no one to witness his acting like her boyfriend. The only person he’d been fooling with that kiss was himself.

  He was her bodyguard—nothing else. And he wasn’t doing a very damn good job. Sure, he’d knocked her to the floor. But he should have noticed the person outside before they had even started shooting. Hell, he should have heard the vehicle drive up.

  But he’d only heard it drive off, and after that he’d helped her up from the floor, anxiously asking, Are you all right?

  She’d silently nodded at him, her blue eyes wide and bright with fear. Are you? she’d asked.

  He’d nodded back at her. But we need to get out of here.

  I—I have to find Lady, she’d said as she looked around her home office, her eyes wide with terror.

  She’s not in here. She didn’t get hit, he’d assured her. She’s hiding. And we don’t have time to look for her. We need to leave. Now.

  No. We have to stay for the police.

  The sirens had already wailed in the distance. That’s why we have to leave, he’d pointed out. We don’t know who—if anyone—we can trust in the police department.

  She’d gasped. But she’d stopping arguing with him. She’d just shoved some things in her briefcase and closed the office door before hurrying out with him.

  “Where are we?” she asked as she looked around the house he’d brought her to, which was nothing like hers. The entire place could probably fit inside her living room. It was just two bedrooms, one off the living room and one off the kitchen, with a bathroom in between them.

  “This is where I live,” he said.

  She pointed toward the gun in his hand. “Then why do you need that?”

  “Because other people might know that I live here,” he said.

  “Nobody’s trying to kill you,” she said.

  It hadn’t felt like that earlier when all those bullets had been flying into her house. It had probably just been one clip, though—from one gun—not like the onslaught Clint and Rosie had faced down at the safe house.

  “I’m not the only one who lives here,” Landon said.

  She glanced around again. “I thought when you laughed at the thought of being married...”

  “That I didn’t have a serious relationship?” he asked. “My roommate is Clint. He’s probably the most serious relationship I’ve had—friendship.”

  The women he’d dated hadn’t understood the long hours of being a vice cop. They hadn’t appreciated his being late or missing dates altogether, so those relationships had never gone beyond dating. Not much had changed since he’d become a bodyguard, though. Protecting someone around the clock left even less time for dating.

  Maybe that was why he’d kissed Jocelyn.

  No. He’d kissed Jocelyn because he’d wondered for years what it would be like. If his lips would stick to hers like the kid’s tongue did to the flagpole in that Christmas movie he and Clint watched every year.

  “Clint!” he called out as he moved through the few rooms, checking to see if his friend had come home.

  “You thought he might have brought Rosie here?” she asked, and she peered around now, too—looking inside the bedrooms and bathroom.

  “He’s too smart to have done that,” Landon said. Smarter than he was. He should not have brought Jocelyn here. He needed to get her somewhere safe. But what she’d said...about the people who knew about the safe house...

  No. She had to be wrong. Nobody he’d worked with could be colluding with Luther. They’d all wanted to bring him down just as much or even more than he had. Landon pushed a slightly shaking hand through his hair. A shard of glass nicked his skin before falling onto the floor with a few other pieces.

  “You’re bleeding,” Jocelyn said, and she grabbed his hand to inspect the wound.

  Her skin was so silky. And as he knew, she wasn’t at all as cold as he’d thought she was. She was warm. Hell, she was hot. So damn hot...

  He wanted to kiss her again. Last time he’d done that, though, they could have been killed. The shots fired into the house had gone wild, hitting everything in her office but them. He couldn’t believe the shooter had been one of Luther’s crew. Even the young ones were more familiar with firearms than their shooter had seemed to be.

  So it could have been someone else—someone who’d sent one of those other threats she’d received.

  “I need to call Parker and the chief,” Landon remarked.

  “You need to get a bandage on this,” she said as she continued to hold his hand. “It won’t stop bleeding.”

  The blood was just oozing, though—not flowing. “It’s nothing.”

  His friend was out there somewhere, according to Parker, bleeding, as well. Landon should have immediately gone out to look for him. But then Jocelyn would have been alone and unprotected in her home when the shooting happened...in her office with all the windows.

  He’d thought her house was safe with its high-tech security system. But now he wondered if anyplace was safe. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  But he wasn’t sure where they should go. Dare he trust the others? He knew for certain it hadn’t been any of them outside her place shooting at them. Any one of them would have hit them. They were that good of shots.

  And even better people.

  No way. He wasn’t going to let her distrust of his team affect him. They were his family. The only family he had.

  “I need to call Parker,” he said, “and find out where I should bring you.”

  “Home,” she said. Then she glanced
around. “My home.”

  “This place not nice enough for you?” he teased. He knew it wasn’t much. But he and Clint worked so much that they didn’t need much.

  She tensed again, as if she thought he was insulting her. “I wouldn’t have the house I do if my parents hadn’t bought it for me,” she said. “I was happier in my apartment downtown, and that was much smaller than this.”

  He believed her. She would have gone for the convenience of having a place close to work over the grandness of her big house. But she’d moved to make her parents happy.

  He had seriously misjudged her. And he felt so bad about it that he couldn’t argue with her. But he wasn’t going to bring her back to her house either. “Your place isn’t as safe as your parents thought it would be,” he pointed out. “We need to put you in a safe house.”

  “Because that worked out so well for Rosie Mendez?”

  He flinched.

  “C’mon,” she said, and she tugged him—not toward the outside door, though, but toward the bathroom. “We’ll put a Band-Aid on this and then you can call Parker.”

  And he remembered why her coworkers found her threatening and annoying. She was bossy and controlling. Now he knew the reason why she was...because of how she’d lost her beloved grandparents.

  So he let her tug him along with her, and something tugged at his heart, making it ache in his chest. It had to just be sympathy.

  Nothing else.

  He would never fall for anyone like her—whatever her reasons for being bossy and controlling.

  * * *

  Jocelyn stared down at her hand, which was smeared red with his blood. An image flashed through her mind of the last time she’d had blood on her hands. And her knees weakened and wobbled. She swayed slightly and might have fallen into the sink if strong hands hadn’t closed over her shoulders and steadied her.

  “Are you okay?” Landon asked.

  She looked up at him. He was so big. So strong...

  So heavy. She could remember the weight of his body lying atop hers, pressing her down to the floor, protecting her. He could have been killed.