Tamed
She shifted so they could both look down. “He’s waking up.”
“Good.” Shane moved her back, just far enough that the attacker’s hand no longer rested next to her foot. “I have some questions for him.”
Funny, but all she wanted was to see the guy dragged out of her house and locked up. The why mattered, but seeing the guy’s presence triggered a constant shaking inside her. “Any chance we could handle those at the police station?”
“I want to question this guy without an official report.”
That sounded like one of those things Holt said and she tried to ignore because she did not want to know. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Shane took a step in the downed man’s direction and his eyes popped open. “You have two minutes to tell me who you are and why you’re here.” Shane aimed his gun at the attacker. “Or do you need an incentive?”
“Shane, please.” The only thing she wanted less than to hear about Shane’s work plans was to watch them in action. She understood the need for hard talk—even violence—to combat evil, but she did not want to witness it firsthand. She’d had enough of that tonight.
“Go wait outside for the police.” He never broke eye contact with the attacker. They’d launched into a staring contest and neither of them moved.
She wanted Shane safe. She also wanted him to stay out of jail, so she was not leaving, no matter how much relief flooded through her at the thought at being outside in the fresh air and away from the injured attacker. “No way.”
Shane shot her a quick glance before returning his attention to the guy on the floor. “I need answers. He has them.”
The attacker lifted his head but didn’t say anything. His fingers moved on the carpet and sent Shane’s gaze bouncing.
He held out a hand in her direction even as his focus remained on the attacker’s prone form. “Stay back.”
She didn’t have any intention of getting closer. The exact opposite, actually. She took one step and backed into a chair. She could add her calf to the list of injured body parts.
She swore as she glanced down. The room started spinning in slow motion. The attacker’s foot hooked around hers and he pulled. Her knee buckled as the air whizzed under her. Prone one second, the attacker moved with record speed the next as he jackknifed into a sitting position.
Shane’s hand brushed her forearm as he made a grab for her, but the attacker proved to be a second faster. He wrapped an arm around her legs. She fell and her weight came down in a rush. The next time she inhaled, she lay on top of the attacker, her back against his front, with the fire poker balanced on her neck, keeping her locked against him.
“Drop your gun.” Those were the first words the attacker had spoken since Shane raced through the back door.
Her breath rushed out of her as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. The shaking inside her morphed into waves of panic. Tension filled the room and seemed to have Shane’s arm locked as he pointed the gun just past her head at the attacker.
“I said drop it.” The pressure against her neck closed in, choking off what little air moved through her, as the attacker spoke. “Do it or I kill her.”
“No.” Shane didn’t offer anything else. Just that.
The attacker tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white. She could see his skin right by her face. His arms shook as he pulled in. The light began to fade on her.
No way was she going out like this, in her own home while Shane watched. She flailed, shifting her weight and elbowing as she pushed and kicked.
Shane said something, but she couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t hear anything. Could barely think.
Movement flashed in front of her. Shane went from looming over them to shifting to the side. A bang echoed through the room, right by her face. She felt the attacker shudder behind her. His hold tightened for a fraction of a second, then slipped away.
Her ears rang as Shane reached down and lifted her to her feet. She tried to turn and see what was happening as she rose, but Shane’s arm blocked her. Her body came to a halt and her head rested on his shoulder as her leg muscles gave out. She glanced over his arm and spied the blood on the floor around the attacker’s head, before she quickly closed her eyes again.
Shane had shot the guy.
The realization hit her and her stomach flipped. The trembling moving through her had her teeth chattering. “Did you...”
His arm tightened around her waist as his hand brushed up and down her back. “Yes.”
The soothing gesture threatened to suck her in. She fought off the comfort and pulled back so she could look up at him. “You mean you killed him.”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t deny it or try to pretty up the words. Part of her appreciated the clear voice and the sure way he spoke about his actions, without justification. But part of her hated how easy it all seemed for him.
“Are you okay?” With his hands on her shoulders, he turned her body until his shoulders stood between her and an unwanted view of the death below her.
She didn’t see a reason to lie, so she didn’t. “Not really.”
“He would have killed you.” Shane sounded so sure.
His conviction fueled hers. That fast, some of the haze cleared. “I know.”
“Makena, I—” He broke eye contact and glanced toward the front of the house.
She heard it, too. “Sirens.”
“Now we have a problem.” Shane stepped back.
“Now? As opposed to two minutes ago?”
“Don’t panic.”
That comment almost guaranteed she would. “I doubt that.”
“The police are going to come in here and act like I’m the suspect.” He offered the explanation as he unloaded his gun.
“What?” She needed Shane right where he was. Not down at a police station. Not in danger. But that wasn’t her only concern.
A new wave of panic crashed over her. The police could not go through her house. There were papers, folders and files they could not see. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d have to explain, and she couldn’t. Not to them. Maybe not even to Shane.
He set his weapon on the table with the bullets next to it. “To be safe I’m going to get on my knees and—”
She grabbed on to his arm and fought to keep him on his feet. “No, I need your help.” A frantic clawing ripped through her insides. “There are things here.”
The sirens wailed and lights flashed outside the window. She could make out the shadows of people outside, likely neighbors gathered to see what was happening. There would be police and possibly press at some point.
None of this could happen.
Shane’s hand went to her shoulder, then up to touch her hair. “Talk to me.”
“The police can’t go near my safe.” She’d locked everything away in anticipation of Shane’s visit. Gathered up every shred of evidence and hidden it. She knew if she’d left out even a piece of paper, Shane would sniff it out. She’d been so careful. And now...
His eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“I’ll explain later.” She had his arm and started pushing and shoving him in the direction of the bedroom. “You just need to keep them away from the safe.”
A banging started. Sounded like the side of a hand pounding against her front door. Then the doorbell dinged once, and then a second time. The noise hit a crescendo as her panic rose and whipped up around them.
“I’ll keep the focus on me.” He motioned toward the front door. “Go let them in.”
“What about—”
“You’ll explain it all later.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t have time because the front door crashed in. Chaos exploded around her as uniformed officers piled into her small family room. She turned back around to say something to Shane, but he’d disappeared.
Her glance dropped and she spied him on his knees, right near the body. He had his hands hooked behind his head, but the police kept shouting. They knocked him down on his stomach as they wrenched his arms behind his back.
“No, he’s not—” A policeman pulled her back before she could rush in and move everyone off Shane.
Shane turned his head to the side and looked up at her. “Call Connor.”
Her brain scrambled. “My cell doesn’t work.” She shook her head, trying to remember where she put it or why that information even mattered.
“They probably blocked the signal. Try again.” He glared, as if willing her to listen. “We need Connor.”
Connor Bowen, the owner and head of the Corcoran Team. The man with power and connections. She knew one thing: if Shane needed Connor for reinforcements, they were all in trouble.
Chapter Three
Shane tried not to stare at her. Being in the same room with Makena always resulted in the same reaction. His heart rate kicked up as fast as his common sense took a nosedive. The black hair, usually pulled back with those sexy curls hanging down by her ears. The dark eyes and hints of the heritage passed down from her Japanese mother.
The long legs and trim body...everything about her set his blood boiling. So beautiful that she tested every vow he’d ever made postdivorce about keeping relationships light and sex only. He wanted her every minute and fought off the attraction with every cell and every muscle.
He tore his attention away from her and watched his team as he stood in the middle of her family room with activity buzzing around him. Cam and Connor had arrived. Connor had walked through the door and immediately started doing what he did best—he ran the whole show. Came in with a cover and ordered people, all while silently wrestling control away from whatever poor schmuck thought he ran the crime scene.
Cam, along with Holt, formed the three-man traveling team for Corcoran. Cam showed up to help because that was what Cam did. No questions asked, he rushed in and provided support. Many times that included flying a helicopter. This time he stood on the other side of Makena, across from Shane, and made sure no one got near her.
Connor broke away from the detective and headed over to the Corcoran semicircle. “We have one dead attacker.”
“Thanks to Shane,” Cam said.
“You would have done the same thing.” Every member of the team would have put his body in front of Makena. Forget about her being innocent, though that counted as a good answer. She was Holt’s sister, and no one touched the people the team members cared about.
“Probably.” Cam shrugged. “I’m betting I would have used more finesse. Maybe been quicker about it.”
Shane knew Cam was joking...or engaging in what Cam thought qualified as joking. Making sly comments meant to break the tension. If Shane hadn’t walked in on some guy manhandling Makena, watched as the guy tried to choke the life out of her, he might be more in the mood to be soothed. But not right now.
“The guy intended to kill me.” The rough edge to Makena’s words was hard to miss.
Cam’s smile suggested he didn’t. “Then I definitely would have killed him, too.”
Shane was about to remind her about Cam’s odd sense of humor when Connor broke in. “Now that we have that settled.”
An officer behind Makena knocked into her. She jumped. Looked two seconds away from screaming but somehow managed to bite it back.
Shane could not help being impressed. She didn’t deal in danger as they did, yet she’d stayed calm. She’d listened to the informal training they gave her and kept fighting no matter what. She never let down her guard. Those smarts and that strength had kept her alive.
She cleared her throat as she visibly brought her nerves back under control. Most signs vanished. All but the way she rubbed her hands together in front of her until her skin turned red. “What about my neighbors?”
No surprise her mind went there. Shane had checked on that first thing. “They weren’t home.”
Her shoulders fell as she blew out a long breath. “I heard a shot...or I thought I did.”
She wouldn’t like the answer, but Shane offered it anyway. “Killed the dog.”
Cam swore under his breath. “That sucks.”
An awful situation, but the death toll could have been so much worse and Shane remained grateful it wasn’t. “At least it wasn’t a person.”
“I like dogs.” Cam moved out of the way as the ambulance crew brought in the stretcher.
“Is this what you guys always talk about on a job?” Makena watched every move as the crew lifted the still body and locked the stretcher in place. Her voice shook and a certain sadness moved in her dark eyes.
Shane wanted to make it better. Fought the urge to go to her, put an arm around her...test his control to its very limit. But he would do it for her. Or he would have done it if the audience didn’t consist of Cam and Connor and what looked like six police officers filing in and out of the house as the detectives talked in the corner.
Unable to think of the right thing to say, Shane went with the one thing that might help. “He’s trying to calm you.”
Her eyes narrowed as her head turned and she stared at Cam. “Really?”
“He’s terrible at it. Makes you pity Julia, doesn’t it?” Julia White, the love of Cam’s life. The reason Shane now hesitated when he called in a favor or needed backup as he played a hunch.
“The office is working on background on the attacker.” Connor talked over all of them. “Preliminary reports are he had a record. Petty stuff.”
“Are we sure that’s it?” Shane glanced around, from the discarded fire poker to the magazines strewn all over the floor. Despite the battle, most of the furniture and other stuff in the room remained intact. But the man was still dead. “If so, it looks as if he escalated this time.”
Connor nodded as he retrieved his cell from his back pocket. “We need to call Holt.”
“No.” Makena put her hand over the phone. Looked as though she tried to tug it out of Connor’s hands.
Connor pulled it out of reach. “Excuse me?”
Before she said a word, Shane knew where this was going to go. Holt had met Lindsey during a job. She had grown up in a cult but possessed an inner strength. Holt hadn’t stood a chance against her. He fell in love in the equivalent of a week. He’d spent two months going back and forth from his house in Maryland to hers in Oregon, but he was on his way back home and bringing Lindsey with him for good this time.
“He needs to stay with Lindsey.” Makena spoke slowly, as if she were explaining a big idea to a small child. “The only way he’ll do that now is if he doesn’t know this happened.”
Connor waited until she finished. “That’s not an option.”
The stretcher rolled by and Shane moved the group to the side to stay out of the way. He also lowered his voice as the rumble of conversation in the room died down. “It actually is.”
“This explanation should be interesting,” Cam said under his breath.
“Makena can stay with me.” Shane ignored Connor’s lifted eyebrow and the stunned expression on Makena’s face, though he thought she could play her shock down a bit. “For protection.”
Cam cleared his throat. “Uh-huh.”
“Protection?” Connor asked at the same time.
Shane decided to ignore both of them. “We need to move her to a safe location while we confirm this guy’s identity and figure out why he had her contact information, because that suggests more than a burglary gone wrong.”
“And you’re volunteering to be her bodyguard.” Connor hesitated over each word, not bothering to ask it as a question. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I’m standing right here.” Makena rolled her eyes. “And I’m a grown-up who should be part of this conversation, in case you gentlemen missed that fact.”
Shane could fight his team or Makena, not both. “Someone sent men after you and we need to know why.”
“Because of Corcoran, I assume.” Connor glanced at the detectives. “I’ve ordered a lockdown just to be safe.”
“That sounds bad.” Makena bit her bottom lip.
“My wife is not a fan of the protocol,” Connor said. “No one on the team is, since it involves being trapped inside and having the women in our lives skip their regular schedules. Not exactly an easy task since they fight every minute of it.”
Makena snorted. “Good for them.”
“Easy for you to say.” Cam whistled. “Julia is going to be ticked off.”
Shane jumped back in before the conversation devolved into an us-versus-them battle. “You guys handle the lockdown and I’ll handle Makena.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Oh, really?”
Okay, that was a miscalculation. He knew that tone. Dreaded that tone. “Your safety.”
“Right.” Cam nodded. “That’s what you meant.”
Connor shifted just enough to bring everyone’s attention snapping back to him. “I’ll give you a twenty-four-hour reprieve on calling in Holt.”
That was not going to go over well. Shane started a mental countdown. Ten, nine, eight...
“Don’t I get to decide?” Makena asked.
“No.” Connor’s smile faded as fast as it came. “In the meantime, I need to go finish my ‘Homeland Security is taking over’ speech.”
“That explains the uniforms.” Makena’s gaze roamed over Connor’s vest.
Shane liked the Homeland ones. There was a certain subtlety to the white lettering on the dark material. Better than the FBI. The team had them all. Whatever the job called for, they were ready.
“I wear this, I flash paperwork and give out a phone number that rings in the office of a very important man, and we control the crime scene. No questions asked, which is what we need right now.” From anyone else the comment would have come off more egotistical than realistic. Somehow Connor sold it.
Not that Makena was easy to impress. “That’s a lot of power.”
“I can be trusted.” Connor winked and then walked away, forging a path as policemen shifted out of his way.
Cam waited a second, then followed. “I’m going to watch.”
A crowd formed around Connor as he rapid-fired questions. Shane appreciated the distraction. Because it left him alone with Makena at least for a few minutes. Enough time had passed. He wanted answers.
“What’s in that safe?” He’d kept the police interest off the bedroom and whatever Makena had locked in there, but he wanted to know.
She shushed him. Actually shushed him. “Not now.”
He wanted to insist, but as his mind ran through the events of the past few hours, he couldn’t bring himself to put her through one more thing. Not that they could wait long. Not with gunmen on the loose and a dead body being taken to the morgue. “Your time is running out.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Meaning?”
His temper. He’d had enough game playing during his marriage to last him forever.
With a hand on her forearm, he steered her out the front door to the porch. Neighbors milled around the yard, shadowed in the police cars’ headlights. Darkness had fallen and a cool breeze carried the smell of the nearby river up to the cottage.
He ignored all of it and concentrated on her, making sure to drop her arm as soon as he could. Touching her just tempted him, and right now they had serious business to figure out. “You are way smarter than I am. You know what I’m saying.”
She leaned in and dropped her voice to a low whisper. “Can you get it out of here without raising questions or causing a problem?”
He didn’t even know what it was. He’d been to the house many times and didn’t remember a safe. That probably meant a small one, which made his task easier. No way could he load a heavy safe on his back and get it out of there without questions.
“I’ll be able to take the contents out.” He made the distinction but didn’t know if she picked up on it or not. “And when I do I plan on looking through whatever is in there, so don’t even bother arguing about that.”
She linked her hand under his elbow. “I should be able to do something to convince you not to invade my privacy.”
The words skidded across his senses. She didn’t mean...couldn’t mean... “Don’t do that.”
Her dark eyes filled with confusion. “What?”
Doubt kicked him in the gut, but he ignored it. “If that’s the kind of offer I think it is—”
She shot him a frown that suggested she was just about to kick him. “Oh, please. It was an honest comment.”
“Before someone tried to kill you tonight, you would have just had to ask and I would have left your personal life alone.” That wasn’t quite true. His job provided him with the ability to check out certain details. If he thought she was in trouble, he would not have hesitated to rush in and help out. “But now that I know you’re in danger and hiding something, the chance of you winning this battle is zero.”
“You don’t play fair.” She waved a hand between them. “Whipping out that whole bodyguard, good-guy thing.”
He had no idea what that meant, so he skipped over it. “Can we carry the contents?”
“Yes.” The answer came quickly and didn’t sound all that convincing.
But that didn’t change the plan. He only had one real play here, and it depended on keeping Connor away from the usual full-house search. “We grab whatever this is, head to a dark and quiet place I know to get something to eat, and you tell me what the big secret is.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You can eat after all that’s happened?”
The woman latched on to the damnedest comments. “I can always eat.”
“How is that possible?”
Shane couldn’t remember the last time a situation had robbed him of his appetite. If it didn’t mean more hours in the gym, he’d eat even more during the day. “I’m not exactly small.”
She leaned against the porch railing. “Oh, I know.”
She did it again. The husky tone. The potentially provocative phrasing. Much more of this and he’d hustle her out of there and do something really stupid. “Makena.”
Silence screamed between them. After a few seconds she lifted her hands as if in mock surrender. “Fine. Sneak stuff out, eat and talk. Got it.”
He could stick to that plan. He had to if he wanted to remain sane. “There, was that so hard?”
“Actually, yes.”
A weight lifted off his shoulders. “Well, you better get used to it.”
“The bossiness, the need you have to get your way—which?”
“All of it. Because for the next day, I’m all you’ve got.” And for some reason, that made him feel infinitely better.
Chapter Four
Shane hadn’t issued an empty threat. Makena could actually feel the time running out as she sat in a tucked-away corner booth of a diner she’d never heard of. Never mind that they were on her turf. Even with the out-of-control way he drove, he lived more than a half hour away. She spent all of her time in and around Chestertown. Yet he’d driven maybe fifteen miles and found some dive she never even knew existed. Drove right to it, so he definitely knew it was there.
“The owners don’t spend a lot on lights.” She squinted in the dark, trying to make out the faces of the diners sitting nearby but giving up. The smell of French fries and cheese lured her in. If the food tasted half as good as it smelled, she’d be back.
“It was just paperwork.” He leaned an elbow on either side of his plate and ignored his hamburger. “That’s what had you all twitchy.”
Sounded as if Shane wanted to jump right into work and the safe and her secrets. No. Thank. You.
She held up her sandwich. “It’s actually grilled cheese.”
He flattened a hand against the fake-wood table. “I know you’re thinking you can drag this out, throw off my concentration.”
She let the cheese stretch in a string before breaking it off and popping it in her mouth. “I’m hoping.”
“No.”
Energy pounded off him. Every line of his body suggested he’d nip and pick at this until he got his answers. The intense stare. The stiff shoulders. That determined punch to his voice.
She gave up and dumped the sandwich on her plate. “You do understand this has been a rough night, right?”
He frowned. “I guess. Sort of.”
She thought about kicking him under the table but leaned in, dragging her body halfway across the table toward him, instead. “Did you miss the part where a guy died on my floor?”