FEARLESS (8 page)

He crouched down and grabbed an evidence bag from his pocket. Using a pen, he slid the hair tie into it. Examining the scrap of material, he wondered if it was related to Ken Dwyer’s death or nothing more than a forgotten piece left behind days or even weeks ago.

His eyes narrowed as he studied it. Well, if it did belong to Lara they could know soon enough. The long blondish-brown hair wrapped in the band should give them DNA. She’d submitted samples to get her job, so a match, if there was one, would be easy to make.

Until the lab got back to him, he’d focus his attention elsewhere. First thing tomorrow—Martin Coughlin.

Chapter Nine

By the time Pax’s car pulled into a driveway in the historic section of Annapolis, exhaustion had whipped through Lara, leaving her weary to her bones. None of them had spoken and the radio had stayed off on the short drive. Wrapped in a blanket and cuddled up against Davis’s side, her muscles had released all of their tension. Despite being wet and smelling like a sewer, she could barely keep her eyes open long enough to take in her surroundings.

They pulled around a three-story redbrick house and to the garage that sat separate behind it. She didn’t need to see the plaque by the front door to know it was a historic property. It was in the Federal style with a top floor only two thirds the size of the two below. Trees outlined the gravel drive. A bright light burned on the back porch and another attached to the garage clicked on from the motion of the car pulling in.

The place was so bright there was no way anyone could sneak up. She guessed that was the point.

Gravel crunched under the tires, and the car came to a stop. Pax and Davis jumped out a second later. The slamming doors revived her, but not enough that she wanted to race anywhere. She was too busy hoping her legs would hold her when she finally got up. The only way she’d even made it through the past half hour was to block the details of the day out of her mind.

Dead bodies. Explosions. Knives at her throat. She’d left the law firm on the hunt for something a
little
more interesting. But this was way over the top.

Davis opened the door and stared at her. That dark gaze swept over her body and an eyebrow lifted. Even soaking wet and half bent over, he was the toughest, sexiest man she’d ever met.

Somehow he had steered them through tonight’s disaster. And to think one of her main complaints was the emotionless way he dealt with danger. Now she wondered if she’d been wrong. Maybe he needed the distance to survive.

She could accept that. Even apologize for being wrong. It was the rest, the secrets and messed-up priorities, she couldn’t understand and had trouble forgiving.

But none of that mattered now. Not when he was looking at her as if he was two seconds away from dragging her to a hospital.

She knew exactly what he was contemplating in that whacked-out alpha-male brain of his. “Don’t even think about picking me up. I’m not an invalid. I can walk.”

A rare breeze rustled the leaves but disappeared as fast as it had come. Humidity thumped around them and her body grew sticky from the combination of wet clothes and hot air. None of that meant she wanted to be thrown over his shoulder and lifted off the ground.

His lips twitched. “You need rest.”

“So do you. Rest and a doctor.”

He winked at her. “Don’t believe in either of those.”

Pax peeked around his brother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of the ribs and check him out. But we need to get you both inside and showered first.”

“Where are we exactly?” She put out her hand and accepted Davis’s assist out of the backseat.

“The Corcoran Team headquarters.”

Clearly Davis thought that explained everything. “Your new office?”

“Offices are on the bottom.” Pax pointed as he gave a verbal tour. “It’s a residence on the top.”

The last thing they needed was to destroy more of Pax’s property. “Do you live here?”

He laughed. “No. Not really my style.”

Davis scowled at his brother. “We can run through all of this tomorrow. Right now she needs sleep.”

Davis ushered her toward the back door with Pax trailing behind. He whistled, acting as if his boat hadn’t just exploded into a million fiery pieces. His loss put hers in perspective. At least she had a home to go to...eventually.

When they got to the door, Davis stopped and glared at his brother. “You done with the noise?”

“Didn’t like the song?”

Davis shook his head as he pressed his right hand against an oddly out-of-place dark square next to the back door. Then he leaned down and stared into it.

So much for the not-a-spy thing. “What the—”

“Security.” With a hand at her back and a no-nonsense tone to his voice, he pushed her through the doorway and inside.

The room whizzed by her, but she thought she saw a country kitchen with a farmhouse sink and blue cabinets. The six-burner stove had that made-to-look-old style about it. The place was homey and warm, complete with a bowl of fruit on the scarred wood table.

No way did the Weeks brothers live here. They went for straightforward and simple. This place had a woman’s touch, a realization that had Lara’s brain blinking back to life.

Pushing through the kitchen door, they stepped into a large open room filled with desks and computers; large cabinets lined the far wall and a conference-room table sat in the middle. No one needed to explain this part. It was work central.

“Rough night?” The voice came from the far corner.

Lara followed it and saw two men stationed in front of a huge screen watching the scene at the marina. She checked the corners for news-channel markings. Nothing. The picture was clear and aimed from slightly above. Lara was pretty sure she was seeing a private inside camera loop.

“Impressive,” she said under her breath. All eyes turned to her.

She immediately regretted the whispered word. By the stunned expressions she guessed she looked like the wrong end of a zombie apocalypse. She ran a hand through her hair and gave up when she snagged knot after wet knot. Add in the blanket and what she feared was a pound of mud caked to her face and you got one scary-looking woman.

A terrific first impression.

The man who had spoken used a remote to turn down the volume. He stood like they all did, feet slightly apart and hands deceptively hanging by his sides but more likely just within inches of a weapon. It was as if all these guys had taken a class in appearing formidable and in charge.

Davis waved the concern off. “We’re fine.”

She thought he should speak for himself. She was not fine.

Pax scoffed. “I’m not.”

“You have insurance,” Davis said.

With all respect to the discussion about “things,” she had something bigger in mind. “Then there’s the part where we almost died. Again.”

Pax smacked his lips together. “Sorry.”

The man with the remote stepped up. All six foot three or so of him. The dark hair and blue eyes combination worked for this one. A smile opened his handsome face and the scruffy beard gave him a bit of an edge.

Something about the way he held his body, shoulders back and sure of his place in the room, made her think he filled the leadership role of the group. He was muscular but not as filled out as Davis. Still, it was as if these Corcoran men all came off the same shelf. They had the lethal look down.

“I’m Connor Bowen.” He pointed to the fourth guy in the room. “The tired one with his head in the pot of coffee is Joel Kidd.”

Yep, a matching set. The last one looked younger than the rest of them, probably in his twenties. And he took the scruff thing a little more seriously. The grungy look matched the black hair and near-black eyes.

Then he nodded to her, and she saw a touch of scoundrel in him. “Ma’am.”

Because Davis didn’t bother introducing her, she took over. “I’m Lara Bart and, honestly, I’ve had better days.”

Connor nodded. “We know.”

“What?”

“Your name. We know who you are.” His smile grew even wider. “What can we do to help? Tell us what you need.”

A bed and something to make me sleep for about a month.
She was tired enough to drop but feared what she’d see when she closed her eyes.

She’d experienced horrifying trauma before. It had taken months for the memory of the pain and terror to dull. This time she wanted to race through it and put all the death behind her.

“In addition to the promise that I can get through the next twelve hours without being shot at?” Because, really, she’d pay good money for that promise at this point.

Joel shrugged. “That’s asking a lot.”

Connor talked right over him. “We’ll certainly try.”

She glanced at Davis but he just stood there. His shoulders were stiff and the strain showed across his cheekbones. He likely wanted to launch into work mode and she was messing up his schedule.

She was more than happy to duck out. “Then I’ll settle for a shower and a change of clothes.”

“I can run out and get you something.” Pax’s keys jangled as he grabbed them out of his pocket.

“Don’t bother,” Connor said. “Jana has something Lara can wear until we can get her something else.”

That explained the look of the kitchen. Lara wondered if the upstairs had the high-tech industrial look of this space or if it more mirrored the kitchen’s feminine style. She was hoping for the latter. “Jana is?”

Connor’s smile turned a little sad. “My wife. She’s out of town.”

It didn’t take years of training to know there was something else at work there, but Lara was too tired to ask. Besides that, she refused to judge relationships. Some of her friends had done that to her with Davis, questioning if his work trips were really about work, and she’d hated it. “You sure your wife won’t mind?”

“If I didn’t offer she’d kick my...” Connor cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

Davis nodded to her. “Go ahead and shower.”

He’d suggested exactly what she had in mind but it was the way he’d said it. Like an order. With an edge of dismissal.

Those days were over. “No.”

“Excuse me?” The words carried a menacing thread. Davis was not a man accustomed to being questioned.

She was convinced that summed up what went wrong in their relationship. She never rolled over, but she’d let him get away with too much. Asked too few questions. Now that they weren’t even dating, her tolerance for the tone was gone.

Ignoring their audience and her usual need to make a good first impression, because she’d blown that with the hair-wrapped-in-seaweed thing, she launched into the tirade that had been building since she’d hit that first guy with a lamp this morning. “This is not going to be one of those situations where the little lady leaves the room so the men can talk. I’m in this. Don’t want to be, but I am. If you talk about the case, I’m here.”

“I like her.”

Davis practically growled at Joel over the comment before turning back to Lara with his full angry-man persona in place. The tick in his cheek was new and drove home his tenuous hold on his control. “You’re going to get sick.”

“Hardly,” she said, even though she feared he was right. To prove her nonexistent point she let the blanket fall to the floor. “It’s still over ninety degrees outside and it’s two in the morning.”

Pax whistled as he slipped into one of the conference-room chairs. “She got you there.”

Davis’s gaze dropped down her body. The heated stare had her squirming in her skin. But she refused to check and see what he was seeing. If her shirt was plastered to her or a piece of garbage from the water hung off her shirt, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want anything to ruin her stand.

Davis held up a hand. “You’ll get mad over this—”

“Then don’t say it.”

“—but the truth is there are things you can’t hear.”

The whirling in her head sped up then popped. “A man got gutted in front of me. We can pretend this is about your job, but I still think it’s about mine.”

Connor cleared his throat. “I tend to agree with her. She was conducting an emergency interview for a pretty important NCIS position. A lot is at stake here for Martin Coughlin. We don’t know what Wasserman planned to say but he sure was hot to say it.”

“Makes me wonder what this guy Coughlin is trying to hide.” Joel grabbed a file from the desk behind him and threw it on the conference table. It slid to a stop in front of Pax. “And I think we should find out.”

“You all know about my interview?” She regretted the question as soon as she said it.

Never mind the confidential nature of her job—of course they knew. She’d filled Davis in out of necessity and he’d told Pax. It was like a covert-operative gossip circle. The news and theories likely spread among this group within minutes.

Pax winked at her. “We’re on it.”

There was a low rumble of laughter in the room. They shifted and filed into seats around the table. It was as if the tension had snapped and they felt safe to move again.

All but Davis. He stood stiff and still a few feet away from the conference table. “You’re all forgetting the most important point.”

Pax glanced up from the file. “Which is?”

“No one but the people in this room and a very few in the Department of Defense with the right clearance and a need-to-know have any idea about Pax’s boat.”

“May she rest in peace,” Pax mumbled. Added a few profane words, too.

“Our financials are not available to just anyone.” Davis folded his arms in front of him. The simple move, along with the monotone quality to his voice, had everyone snapping to attention and looking at him. “Our list of assets is confidential and buried deep. If the attacker found it, and it looks like he did because I know I wasn’t tailed on the drive to the marina, someone handed it to him.”

The theory made sense, but Lara wasn’t convinced. When she closed her eyes she felt the storm brewing around her, not him. She truly believed whatever guilt he had about dragging her into this was misplaced. “You’re still certain the attacks are about your work?”

“I think someone leaked the boat information and my house address to your attacker. The same someone who knew that you had ties to me and suspected you would come to me for help. My fear is someone came for me and decided the best way to get to me was through you.”

The comment sat there for a second. Joel and Connor stared at her, probably realizing for the first time she was the ex. And wasn’t that just great? She could only assume she didn’t come out well in Davis’s version of their breakup.

“We haven’t been together for eleven months,” she said because they were likely all thinking it.

Joel rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

The air shifted again and she wasn’t sure why. “What?”