Ruthless

Chapter Four

Fifteen minutes later, Pax created a false trail. He doubled back and looped around, using skills he learned long before reaching adulthood, when he’d been trying to hide from Davis after curfew and downing more beer than his dimwitted teen brain could handle. With the road behind him clear except for the usual summer traffic, Pax eased his death grip on the steering wheel and let his shoulders slump back into the seat.

He eyed up Joel and Kelsey in the backseat of the SUV. They sat on opposite sides of the vehicle, with Kelsey pressed tight against the door, her head resting on the glass.

Pax, usually comfortable with silence, felt the need to say something. “I’m hoping this next part of the plan goes better.”

Joel smiled but his attention never wavered from his scan outside the window. “We have a plan?”

“Not exactly what I wanted to hear,” she mumbled.

Pax eased his foot off the gas and tapped the brakes so he could make the steep turn into the driveway behind the Corcoran Team property. The bounce under the wheels had his leg shifting and his back teeth grinding together.

The ride through slim streets, historical and perfect for the charming look of the tourist town, made the trip bumpy. The constant lookout for following cars kept his focus off the road just long enough for him to hit every stupid pothole between Kelsey’s shop and the team headquarters.

She rested a hand against the window. “This looks like a house, not a workplace.”

Pax understood the confusion. On top of the emotional roller coaster, he drove her deeper into the heart of the historic section of Annapolis and straight up to a house sitting amid tall trees. It was a federal-style standalone and a bit imposing the way it soared three stories into the air, except for a small portion, about a third, of the top floor that functioned as an open porch area—which they never used because the site would leave them too exposed.

“Don’t worry,” Joel said. “It’s a home on the top and office on the bottom.”

Pax was done talking and ready to find a bottle of painkillers. “Let’s go.”

He slammed the car into Park the second he pulled into one of the open garage bays at the back of the office property. He had the door open and jumped down, hoping to walk off the big band thumping in his thigh.

The small white stones that paved the space between the separate garage and the redbrick building crunched under his shoes and further threw off his balance. Much more of this and he’d be back on crutches, and he vowed to burn those as soon as he found out where Lara had hidden them.

Lara Bart Weeks, his brand-new sister-in-law and the absolute best thing ever to happen to his big brother, Davis. He was two years older and even now off enjoying the end of his honeymoon while Pax handled the coffeehouse mess.

Not that this job was supposed to blow.

Pax had been ordered to desk duty until his leg healed. The only reason the boss let Pax handle the assignment was he threatened to shoot out the surveillance screens in the office if he had to sit there and do paperwork for one more minute. That led to a low-risk operation, a stakeout of the coffee shop. Just sitting and eating doughnuts.

In some ways, it was an easy stakeout because no one expected Sean to seek out his sister. Nothing in their relationship suggested he would, not when he was deeply mired in trouble. And boy was he. But Sean had surprised them all.

They’d gotten halfway across the open space of the yard when Connor Bowen slipped out the back door of the house and stood on the small porch, just under the overhang. He wore black dress pants and a long-sleeve blue dress shirt, and managed to blend in despite being totally out of place in the relaxed summer environment.

But that’s who he was. After years in the field doing work and traveling to places Pax could only guess about, Connor craved air-conditioning and a desk.

“So much for the idea of resting the leg,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared Pax down. Being only seven years older didn’t keep Connor from looking every inch the in-charge boss man.

Kelsey stopped biting her lower lip and came to a halt in the clearing. Her arm shot out and she grabbed Pax’s. “You really are injured?”

Connor’s eyebrow lifted. “You can’t tell?”

Joel snorted as he passed them all by and went straight to the back door. “I need food and the bathroom, and not in that order.”

“Knock yourself out.” Connor shifted to the side to let Joel pass, but then he restaked his ground. Legs braced, arms folded and hovering by the door as if to say anyone who went in had to go through him first.

Pax got secrecy and understood the operation, but they were blown. There was no way to salvage this assignment as set up and feed Kelsey some line about being legitimate agents who just happened to stumble into her coffee shop in time to rescue her.

Pax doubted any sane woman would buy the story, and he knew Kelsey was far too smart to go there. Combine that with her survival instinct, which appeared to tick in the expert range, and their options for handling this in a quick and easy manner decreased significantly.

She put her hand above her eyes and squinted against the sun as she looked Connor over. “Who are you … or am I not allowed to know that, either?”

“I take it from that response things didn’t go well this morning.”

Pax hid his smile. Connor knew exactly how the mess unfolded at Decadent Brew. He was tied in to the communications link, ran the unexpected removal of Kelsey from back in his office while watching his bank of monitors, and by now had placed the right calls and talked to the right people to keep the Corcoran Team’s name out of this and ensure the gas leak story led the news.

That was the job. He was the handler. The guy who made it all possible behind the scenes.

“Connor Bowen, my boss.” Pax put a hand low on her back, thinking to steer her inside. There was no need to stand out in the open and invite gawking.

She didn’t move. “And what exactly is your job again? All of you, any of you, any response would be welcome.”

Connor opened the back door. He threw out an arm and motioned toward the house. “We’ll explain inside.”

She hummed. The tune was quiet, almost as if it kicked on as her brain began to spin, but Pax could hear it. As a fellow under-the-breath singer, he recognized the almost imperceptible sound. And he’d heard it from her before when she made intricate coffee drinks for other customers while he waited in line for his.

He didn’t know what her humming meant or why she did it, but the idea of having some extra time with her to figure it out … well, he didn’t hate the idea.

Before he could push or try another attempt at issuing an order he knew she’d ignore, neither of which he wanted to do with her in this tenuous state and Connor standing right there watching, she moved. She hesitated before stepping inside, stopping to stare at the out-of-place dark square on the wall next to the back door.

A retinal scan and a handprint reader. Admittedly not the usual office setup, but he doubted she knew what she was looking at and since Connor had clearly disabled it remotely when he stepped outside, Pax didn’t have to give a demonstration now.

She pointed at the pad. “More secrets, I guess?”

The woman didn’t miss much. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Not so far.”

KELSEY TRIED TO take it all in. She’d expected a fancy high-tech room filled with gadgets. She got an open kitchen, complete with blue cabinets and a huge farm sink. No food on the counters, unless you counted the two half-empty chip bags.

The really strange thing was the overabundance of coffeemakers. Not fancy ones. Normal coffeemakers … all four of them. The sight made her wonder how many people worked here, if any were women and if they ever ate regular meals. It also made the shop owner part of her think they should pay for her to provide better beverages.

A swinging door led to a wide-open space. A double room, probably what should be a combination living and dining room, but in this case housed desks and computers in individual work spaces. Closed cabinets with locks lined the far wall, and a conference room table sat in the middle of everything.

Everywhere she looked she saw television monitors, some big and some small. One looked as if it piggybacked traffic cams, with images flickering from intersection to intersection. Another showed a front door, she guessed to this address.

On the one across the room … wait.

She headed for Joel. He sat slumped in a chair, running his hand through his dark hair, with his feet on the countertop and a mug of something she guessed was coffee in his hand. Peeking over his shoulder, she watched people scurry around out front of Decadent Brew, the place where she worked and lived and worried about losing almost every day.

A couple tested the doors and then stared at the sign with the posted hours. Being closed, knowing what the loss of income and product could cost her later, had a lump clogging Kelsey’s throat. Heaviness tugged at her muscles, and she had to fight the urge to sit down.

Everything she owned, all she was, centered on that building. The dark, strangely spooky building. The lights were off and something—she leaned in closer and studied the scene, maybe drapes of some sort—covered the windows.

She spun around and met Pax’s emotionless gaze. “Is this your doing?”

“Mine, actually.” Connor walked in, carrying a pot of coffee. He set it in the middle of the table on a tray surrounded by unused mugs.

It was all so normal yet so wrong.

“Where is everybody?” Pax dropped into a chair and blew out a long breath. He stretched his right leg out in front of him as he massaged his thigh.

She wasn’t sure what caused the injury, but she believed it existed. She was about to ask him about it when she sensed a gaze on her. A quick glance at Connor and she caught the small shake of his head.

“Davis is enjoying his final days in Hawaii, as you know. The rest of the group is cleaning up the mess in Catalina, except for Ben,” Connor said as he poured her a cup of coffee. “Ben is on his way to the hospital to check on your injured attacker. I’ll head out in a second. Sounds like I have a very angry investigator to calm down and a few explanations I need to give.”

Pax slumped down farther in the black leather chair. “I don’t ever want your job.”

Without turning around, Joel saluted with his cup. “Yeah, no envy over here, either.”

The information collected and piled, and Kelsey tried to mentally flip through and analyze it all. The really tall, dark and businesslike one was in charge. If this Connor guy wasn’t the overall boss, he should be because he acted like it and his six-foot-three-or-four height suggested no one mess with him.

The younger, black-haired, scruffy-chinned one, Joel, seemed to be connected to the monitor. There was a brother named Davis roaming around out there somewhere, some guy named Ben and a group of people, she had no idea how many, in California.

It was a lot to take in.

She grabbed on to the back of Pax’s chair while a wave of dizziness crashed over her. With everything that happened during the past hour or so and the rapid-fire confusion bombarding her brain, she was fading. Fatigue crept into her muscles, and the coffee in four pots might not be enough to keep her on her feet and functioning.

As if he read her mind, Connor poured another cup, skipped the sugar and extras, and downed it black. “I’ll get this worked out and then we can figure out our next steps.”

The words snapped her out of the haze that had started washing through her. The conversation replayed and she wondered if they even knew they talked in code. “And the this in that sentence would be what?”

She was treated to three blank stares and a sudden abundance of quiet. Even Pax did a twisty-turny thing to look up and give her eye contact, but no one said a thing. A wall clock ticked somewhere and garbled noises came from the earphones Joel now had around his neck.

If she’d known such a simple question would get their joint attention, she’d have asked one an hour ago.

Connor was the first to move. He sat across from Pax and on the other side of the table from her. “The scene at your store.”

“Is everyone okay?” Pax asked.

“All the good guys are.”

The men were off and running again on a topic other than the one she’d introduced. They offered a snippet of information, failed to explain anything and then moved on. She never knew how annoying that was until now.

She raised a finger, but that did nothing for the balls of anxiety bouncing around inside her stomach. “Um, excuse me?”

Connor smiled. He flashed his soft blues eyes and shot her the I’m-listening stare Pax tended to use on her. Clearly whatever group all these guys worked for taught the same facial expressions in a Pacify-the-Ladies class.

“Your customers and employees are fine,” Connor said. “They think there was a gas leak as cover for a burglary at another store, and you got caught up in it but are fine.”

Even though she heard that sort of thing on the news every night, it sounded ridiculous when applied to her life. Anyone who knew her would expect her store to stay open, or at least for her to be out on the street giving away the unused inventory. Not that all that many people knew her, not with her work hours.

But she didn’t purposely hide in her house. Not anymore.

“Who told people that story?” she asked.

“Me.”

She had a feeling Connor would be the one to pipe up with an answer. “Because that’s your job?”

Pax laid a hand on her closed fist and brought her around to the side of his chair. “Have you seen Sean in the past few weeks?”

She ripped her fingers out of Pax’s hand. As they all continued the male staring ring, her knees went soft and the ground beneath her moved in a rolling wave. Her brain tried to shut out any reference to her brother. At twenty-three he was three years younger and had spent more time than she could count in trouble.

She swallowed and cleared her throat, but the words would not come. It took a good minute before she could force out a question. “You mentioned him before. What exactly do you know about Sean?”

Pax didn’t flinch. Didn’t bother to look guilty or worried. He just sat there rubbing his leg. “Everything.”

“How?”

He made a noise, something dismissive and all male. “Not important.”

She slapped a palm on the conference table and watched his gaze move to it before bouncing back to her face.

She wasn’t trying to make noise. All she wanted was to hold her body upright. “It is to me.”

“Kelsey?”

Connor said her name, but she refused to look at him. She wanted Pax to tell her, to come clean and finally let her know what was happening and who he really was. “No.”

A thundering silence returned to the room. This time even the clock stayed silent.

That was fine with her. Balanced on the table, she could stand there all day. She would if that’s what it took to make her point.

After another moment of ticking tension, Pax exhaled in that women-are-so-tiresome way men did when pushed to talk about something they wanted to ignore. “That’s a shame. Finding him sooner rather than later would be safer for you.”

Yeah, he still didn’t get it. “I mean, no, we’re not going to play it this way.”

“Excuse me?” Pax’s eyebrow ticked up and the last signs of the charming guy with the love of black coffee disappeared.

“You know about me, and apparently my brother, and I don’t even want to know what else. Until I understand what’s happening and where you all fit in, I’m not saying another thing.”

“There’s a limit on what we can divulge,” Joel said from the relative safety of the other side of the room.

As if she was going to accept that nonsense excuse. “Then take me to the police. I’m sure they’ll want to question me about this supposed theft you made up.”

Pax’s cheeks rushed with color and his fingers dug deeper into the arms of his chair. “No, they don’t.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

The finger lock on his chair didn’t ease. “We were hired to watch over you.”

“By whom?”

Connor was already shaking his head. “We can’t tell you that, but we can say we’re the good guys and we’re here to keep you safe.”

“Because you would tell me if you were the bad guys?”

Joel chuckled. “We should check her injuries and Pax’s, maybe get her a change of clothes and some food.”

“I don’t need—”

“Good idea.” Pax struggled to his feet.

When his body started to fall again, she put an arm around his waist and held him up. A backache settled in a second later as she wrenched her muscles and locked her knees and arms to support him. He braced his hands against the table and leaned on her.

She looked up, thinking to ask Connor for help, and saw the strain across his face. More than that, worry. These men might work together, but their bond went deeper. She wanted to curse them all for making this situation so hard on her. They expected her blind faith and gave nothing in return.

She thought about it another second and decided that wasn’t true. They gave her protection, but she still wasn’t clear on why she needed it.

If Pax had just stood up without trouble or had the courtesy to stay seated, she would have kept fighting him. Thanks to the mention of her injuries, every muscle and cell inside her started to ache. Talk about the power of suggestion.

But the real problem was Pax.

Her gaze traveled over him. Over the way he kept weight off his right leg and the cut along his cheek. If the clenched jaw were any indication, he was in pain. She was confused and angry, but the guy who stormed in to save her, protected her from a crushing fall and killed for her looked unsteady on his feet and ready to drop.

It was the wake-up call she didn’t want but couldn’t ignore. She swallowed back the rest of her questions and fell deep into appreciation mode. She didn’t know him but she owed him.

She faced Connor and skipped over the stuff she wanted to know to the stray comment that caught her attention. “You have women’s clothes here?”

His white-knuckle grip on the edge of the table tightened. “My wife’s.”

Now, there was a bit of news she didn’t see coming that sent her gaze zipping to the thin band on Connor’s finger. “Where is she?”

“Out of town.”

Yet another person not there. That appeared to be the norm around this house … or office … or whatever it was. “Fine. If someone checks Pax’s injuries, I’ll clean up, then you can all decide that I deserve to know more and start talking.”

Pax snorted. “Wrong.”

Before that minute she’d forgotten she held on to him. She gave his waist a reassuring squeeze and then dropped her arm. “That’s the only solution I’ll accept.”

Joel glanced at Connor. “Told you.”

He nodded. “You’re right.”

They’d lost her in all the partial sentences. “What are you two talking about?”

Joel shot her a huge smile as he stood up. “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of Pax.”

“You’re qualified?”

If possible that smile grew even wider. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t agree to the schedule.” Pax practically snarled when he said the words.

Tough.

This time Connor stood. Something about the way he moved had all eyes focused on him. “I do. The lady is—”

“Kelsey,” she said.

Connor gave her a nod. “Kelsey is right. Pax gets treatment, she gets changed and a once-over for injuries, and we meet back here in thirty. No arguments.”

Pax pushed off the table and stood up straight. His large frame wobbled but he didn’t fall this time. He didn’t match his friends’ smiles with one of his own, either.

When he looked at her, his mouth had fallen into a flat line. “One thing you should know.”

Dread tumbled through her. “What?”

“We control all the doors and windows, so there’s no way for you to escape once you’re up there.”

Honestly, the man was clueless. She’d turned that corner when a third attacker showed up and a bullet whizzed by her head. “Why would you think I would try?”

“Experience.”

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