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  Yeah, this wasn’t a junkie looking to steal jewelry. Possibly a professional, though that didn’t make sense. Jocelyn was a nurse, not a field agent.

  Something else was going on here. Ben would figure out the “what” later. Once the man no longer touched her.

  “Step away from her,” Ben said with his voice as steady as the hand holding the weapon.

  The man’s eyes narrowed but his arm tightened against her throat. “Who are you?”

  Confusion and maybe a touch of worry. Ben knew he could use those to his advantage. “Put the knife down.”

  “You don’t seem to understand who’s in charge.”

  “I am.” But Ben needed that blade away from her skin. She already had a nick where a small trickle of blood welled.

  “You shoot me, you shoot her.”

  The man underestimated his opponent. Also a good sign in Ben’s view. Bravado had taken down more than one otherwise strong man. “Actually, no.”

  The attacker ran his nose over her hair and the side of her face. The inhale was deep and exaggerated. “She is lovely.”

  Ben didn’t say a word. Didn’t so much as twitch. One sign of weakness and Jocelyn could get stabbed or worse.

  The man pointed the end of the knife at Ben. “Is she yours?”

  There wasn’t a good answer, not one that would help her, so Ben continued to stay quiet.

  “Ben.” Her soft voice carried a wobble.

  The attacker smiled in a way that promised pain. “Sounds as if the pretty lady knows you.”

  When Ben didn’t respond, the man’s mouth flattened and twisted into a look of pure hate. “Gun on the floor now or I will carve her into tiny pieces.”

  Her chest heaved and a strangled sound escaped her throat.

  Ben watched the light fade from her eyes and knew it was time to act. “Okay, enough.”

  His gaze locked on hers. With a subtle bounce, he glanced down at her arm. Then he did it again. The heavy breathing forcing her chest up and down in rapid movements slowed and she frowned. He hoped she got the hint.

  “Do it now.” The attacker barked out the order.

  Putting his hands in the air, Ben held up his gun. “Let’s stay calm.”

  The attacker waved the knife around, getting far too close to her face. “Stop stalling.”

  “My arms are going down.” Ben hoped that last attempt delivered the message to Jocelyn.

  He had only seconds and a minimal window for error. With his knees bent, he lowered his body and hands toward the floor. The attacker scowled but his focus centered on Ben, right where Ben wanted it.

  He set the weapon on the carpet and watched the other man shift his weight. Right when the tension eased, Ben put his palm near his foot, pretending to push up again.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  In one smooth move, he came up. His second gun slid out of its holder and arced through the air right as Jocelyn smashed an elbow into her attacker’s stomach.

  “Humph.” The man bent over. When he came up again, he roared with a sound of fury that bounced off the walls.

  Ben’s bullet struck the man’s forehead and cut off the sound.

  Jocelyn was tight up against Ben with her arms wrapped around his neck before the other guy hit the floor. Ben looked over her head. The bullet hole and trail of blood told him the attacker was dead. So did the look of horror frozen on his silent face.

  Still, Ben didn’t take any chances. Pushing Jocelyn behind him, he stepped over the attacker’s legs and kicked the knife away. After a quick pulse check, Ben’s heart finally stopped thundering.

  “Is he dead?” Her voice shook.

  When Ben turned around, he saw every one of her muscles quaking. Those eyes were wide enough to swallow her entire face. But she was on her feet and not curled up in the corner. She’d given him the assist without any training or lengthy explanation.

  Man, he was impressed. “You did great.”

  “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Okay, not his favorite response. “You’re probably entitled to, but I kind of wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Looks like I’m too late.” Wearing jeans old enough to be faded near white and a dark beard from days without shaving, Joel stepped in the doorway.

  Before Ben could make the introductions, Jocelyn bent down and grabbed the other gun. As she aimed it at Joel, the barrel bobbled from the trembling of her arm. “I will shoot you.”

  Joel’s eyes widened and his hands went into the air. “Hold on there.”

  “Whoa, Jocelyn.” Ben reached around her and lowered her arm with the softest touch he could manage in a crisis. “This is Joel Kidd—he’s with me.”

  She glanced at Ben over her shoulder and a haze fell over her eyes. “Joel?”

  She should recognize the name from the assignment Ben had been on when he met her. Joel never came to the hospital but Ben had mentioned him. He had talked about him again tonight when he spoke about a friend with a car fetish.

  Joel flashed her a smile. “Ma’am.”

  If she was impressed with Joel and what most women seemed to find irresistible in him, she didn’t show it. She spun around to face Ben again. All the color had drained from her face. “What is going on?”

  That was exactly what he planned to find out.

  Chapter Two

  There were more than eight men in her apartment. Jocelyn couldn’t give an exact number because she stopped counting when Ben’s friends—he called them his team—arrived and the police showed up. Even a stray neighbor or two poked their heads in before being pushed behind the crime-scene tape.

  Officers shifted in and out of her family room. A few took notes and circled every piece of anything left on the floor post-attack. They’d snapped photos and a Detective Willoughby asked her questions until her mind went blank.

  Now they trampled over every inch of her floor as Ben talked with them, pointing from the door to the couch and explaining things she couldn’t hear. They must have mattered to him because he kept up a steady stream of talking while two uniformed officers listened and nodded now and then.

  Ever since Ben escorted her out of the fray and to the barstool in her kitchen, she hadn’t moved. She didn’t think she could move. Her bare feet balanced on the bottom rung, frozen despite the humid night. Ben had put a sweater over her shoulders but she couldn’t feel the material against her skin.

  The sirens had stopped wailing but the rumble of conversations continued all around her. She heard a clatter and creaks and looked up to see a crew in blue jackets file in with a gurney. There were evidence bags and a huge red stain under the head of the unknown man sprawled on her floor.

  Something inside her brain started circling, around and around, and she almost fell over.

  “Hey.” Ben stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the chaos and holding her steady with hands on her forearms. “You okay?”

  If anyone but him, any voice but that soft, reassuring tone, had asked the question, she might have lost it. The calm demeanor only held so long. With the adrenaline rush gone and the shock of what could have happened settling in, her mask slipped. She felt raw, as if someone had flipped her inside out.

  She managed a half smile. It was forced, but she tried. “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “Probably not.” A policeman tapped Ben on the shoulder and he waved the officer away.

  Suddenly desperate, she grabbed Ben’s hand and pulled him back to face her. Through everything, he kept her centered. Focused.

  His arrival had given her hope. He had sent her the signal when he needed her to fight off her attacker. Then he had saved her with a single shot.

  For a woman who had seen so much pain and death on the job, it was the terror she’d experie
nced in her home this second time that threatened to break her apart. Smash her right into pieces on the floor.

  After all those months of learning to handle her anxiety and dealing with the newfound issues of needing everything just so, she was plunged back into a cycle of spiraling fear.

  But he, a guy trained to kill, the exact type she should have run from, had proved to be a lifeline. She searched her mind for the right words. When nothing came to her, she went with something heartfelt but simple.

  “Thank you,” she said as she squeezed his hand.

  He leaned in as those intense eyes softened. “You saved yourself. You called and left the line open, which let me know you were in danger. You nailed him in the stomach when I needed the distraction to get the upper hand.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “No, you used your head.” Ben warmed her hand in both of his with a gentle rubbing. “Without your fast thinking, this would have turned out differently.”

  “So, the urge to heave up my dinner will pass?”

  He chuckled, rich and as soothing as a sweet caress. “Eventually.”

  A tall man with black hair and startling bright blue eyes walked over. He wore khakis and a polo shirt. Not a police officer but definitely in charge. Everyone certainly acted as if he was. He also looked familiar. Jocelyn knew the face, but the waves of exhaustion crashing over her now made finding the memory impossible.

  He spared her a quick glance before launching into conversation. “You’re going to need to do an inventory, but nothing obvious is missing.”

  Ben dropped her hand but rested his palm on her shoulder. “Jocelyn, do you remember Connor Bowen?”

  Relief battled with the need to close her eyes as she leaned against Ben. The pieces from the past few months fell together—the hospital and the coma patient. Endless rounds of questions about when the man would wake up and how quickly the nurses could clear the floor if needed. “He’s your boss.”

  Connor held out his hand and gave hers a shake. “That’s how I like to think of it.”

  “No overturned drawers. Electronics are all here. I saw some jewelry.” Another man walked up, reading from a list and ticking off each item. “The bedroom is painfully neat.”

  Yeah, that described her. Painfully neat. She decided to remind the guy she was sitting right there before he said anything embarrassing about how her underwear sat in stacks arranged by color. “Hello.”

  Ben pointed at the newcomer. “And this is Davis Weeks. He’s basically the second in command at the Corcoran Team.”

  She remembered the company name. Sort of.

  “Ma’am.” Davis nodded, then launched right back into the rest of his speech. “There’s no identification on the guy. There’s a chloroform-soaked rag on the floor, so he came prepared and likely didn’t expect a fight.”

  A bone-crushing tremor shook through her. “He tried that first, then went with the knife.”

  Ben swore under his breath. “The important thing is he didn’t hurt you.”

  Scared the crap out of her, but didn’t really touch her, unless you counted the small nick and the nasty bit of manhandling. His smell, the threats and the sick glee he took in saying them would stick with her for a long time. But as a critical-care nurse, she’d seen real injuries, blood spurting and watched as the life drained out of patients. Using that scale, she was pretty lucky.

  She kept repeating that, hoping she’d come to believe it.

  “You must have messed up his burglary plans,” Connor said. “Good for you.”

  “No.” The word slipped out before she could think it through, but she knew she was right. This went beyond taking a television or rummaging through her wallet for cash.

  Ben stared at her with narrowed eyes. “What are you saying? Did you know him?”

  “No, but he said he wanted me to give him something.”

  All three of them swore that time, but Ben said it the loudest. “Sick jackass.”

  Bile rushed up her throat at the thought, but she choked it back. “No, not that. Like, hand him something. Something he thought I had in my possession.”

  Squinting and closing one eye, she tried to push out the visual images of the terrible things that could have happened and focus on the attacker’s words. But they wouldn’t come to her. With all the panic bouncing around in her head, she didn’t have room for much else. She wondered if she’d even remember the names of all the men she’d met tonight by this time tomorrow.

  “Excuse me?” Connor asked the question in a rough tone. “Go back a second and explain.”

  She rubbed her forehead and tried to ignore the three sets of eyes boring into her. “He kept asking me to give him something.”

  Davis made a quick note in his small notebook. “What?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “He never said.”

  They all wore matching frowns. Except for a bit of feet shuffling, they stayed quiet. The room whirled with activity behind them. It was like riding around and around on a carousel with all the noise and sights blurring around her.

  Finally Ben turned to Connor. “Our phone connection was on during most of the attack. Have Joel play back the tape and you might be able to pick up something in the background. Whatever is on there was enough to have me jumping out of the car and heading for the apartment.”

  Davis nodded. “I have your car keys, by the way. You’re lucky no one stole it with the way you left it.”

  “Like I care about a car right now.”

  The conversation leaped to a point that had her gaze bouncing between them. “Wait, go back. What tape?”

  “Office protocol. All of our calls are taped in the event of an issue like this one.” Connor made the comment as if it explained everything. As if it made sense.

  The idea was like a whack to the center of her chest. She dealt with a high level of stress in her job, life and death all the time, but she never worried about being shot. At least not until she’d met Ben. “You mean this sort of thing happens to you guys a lot?”

  “I wouldn’t say a lot.” He threw it out there and they all nodded.

  Her head threatened to implode as she worked through all the facts. “And you tape everything. Even private calls?”

  Davis frowned at her. Shot her one of those “how could you not be following?” looks men sometimes gave when they thought they were making perfect sense.

  Wasn’t that annoying?

  “We only listen if there’s trouble,” he said.

  “Who are you guys exactly?” Her voice rose and more than one head turned to look at her, including Joel, who shot her a wide smile.

  Ben answered, “The good guys.”

  Again with the cryptic comments. That one explained even less than the last ones about the attacks and the tapes. Still, she was alive, and that meant she was willing to cut them some slack and ignore the more controlling parts of their personalities.

  But only some. “Right now I’m inclined to agree, but maybe more information would help.”

  Ben opened his mouth but Connor started talking first. “The Corcoran Team.”

  These men needed some work on the concept of sharing. “And?”

  “We’re a private group. We assist in kidnapping rescues and conduct threat assessments, sometimes for the government and sometimes for businesses...and others.”

  She wasn’t sure he’d actually explained. If anything, she was more confused. And there were some scary words in there. “By ‘assist’ and ‘conduct’ do you mean you do those things legally?”

  Davis shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

  Now, that was convincing. She almost rolled her eyes. “Do you think this was a kidnapping? Someone wanted me or some poor woman this guy thought was me?”

 
Connor looked over at the police milling around and nodded a hello to Detective Willoughby before turning back to her. “We don’t know yet. Maybe.”

  Ben blew out a long breath. “A little tact might be a good idea.”

  “No, it’s okay.” She meant to wave him off but accidentally brushed her hand against his where it lay on her shoulder. Then she kept it there, letting him fold his fingers over hers. “I’d rather have the truth.”

  Connor looked from her face to her hand and back again. “We’re not sure what that is yet. I’m just happy Ben was close by to step in.”

  “I would guess Ben was happy, as well,” Davis said.

  She decided to ignore that but she did glance over. A strange whirring took off in her stomach when she saw Ben staring back at her. This time fear had nothing to do with the tingling sensation.

  She cleared her throat. “So, when you were at the hospital, you were guarding someone you thought might get kidnapped?”

  He sucked air through his teeth, making a hissing sound. “Uh, not quite.”

  “He was guarding a killer to make sure his killer buddies didn’t take him out before we could question him,” Connor said, filling in the gaps left by the silence.

  “Well, then.” She had no idea what to do with that bit of information. She settled for ignoring it. That was then and she had enough to deal with right now.

  Ben shook his head. “Again, Connor. Tact.”

  “Ignoring that, to the extent I can, how did this guy get into my house? I have double locks and...” Davis smiled at her. Connor stared at the floor. She got the distinct impression he was trying not to laugh. “Now what?”

  “You want to tell her?” Davis asked Ben.

  This couldn’t be good. “Someone should.”

  Ben turned her so that she saw only him. “Locks are easy to pick. You really need a specialized security system if you want a true warning system and a chance to get away or get help.”

  Her stomach plummeted to the floor. All those hours spent checking and rechecking the locks. Those nights she slept in the stale air because she was afraid to drift off with the windows open. None of it mattered because any sicko or criminal could just jimmy them open and walk right on in.