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“No one gave me anything except Pamela.” Jocelyn held up a slip.

From what Ben could see, it was blank except for the preprinted blocks. “What are we talking about?”

“The first attacker talked about me having something.” The slip flapped when Jocelyn shook it.

Ben remembered the question the first attacker had asked her. They’d all turned it over many times. The team took turns asking her about it, trying to get to the heart of it. Was it something from a patient or doctor that the guy was after? But none of their questions had gone anywhere. “I thought we decided that was some sort of line to throw you off.”

“The last time I saw Pamela, I did some banking and she gave me the receipts. She put them in an envelope, just like she always did.” Jocelyn smiled. “Don’t you see what I’m saying?
She
handed me something.”

“And now she’s missing.” It didn’t take long to put two and two together and figure out Pamela was dead. When Jocelyn kept talking, Ben knew she hadn’t made that leap yet.

“I forgot because it was so mundane, and I assumed the attacker was talking about something that happened at the hospital.” Jocelyn’s voice rose as she talked.

Joel answered her in a whisper. “I’m thinking we can now assume Pamela is dead.”

The color ran right out of Jocelyn’s cheeks. She morphed from excited to pale in a second.

Ben hated the look of defeat he saw on her face. “Joel.”

“Being realistic here.” He shrugged.

Jocelyn waved her hand in front of her face. “It’s okay. I need to know.”

“But do you have any clue where you threw this slip or whatever it was away?” Joel blew out a long breath. “I mean, the chances of finding it are...what?”

“No.” Ben kept shaking his head. “She didn’t throw it away.”

“I have it,” she confirmed.

It took Joel a few more steps to catch up. “At your apartment?”

Still ghostly-white, Jocelyn managed to smile. “At Corcoran.”

* * *

G
ARY
STOOD
AT
the front door, just inside the bank, and watched the Corcoran Team rush out of there. After a tap on his shoulder from Ben, Connor had listened and then hustled them all out of there. The man asked one wrap-up question and they were gone.

Kent rocked back on his heels. “They didn’t act like they knew you. I don’t think—”

“You shouldn’t because you’d be wrong.” Kent didn’t see it, but Gary did.

Kent frowned. “What?”

“Up until five minutes ago, she didn’t know she had the note.” From a few feet away, Gary had watched the realization dawn on her face. She went from mindlessly playing with the papers to holding one up. Her excitement spilled over until one of the men said something and then they mobilized.

She knew. In a few minutes, they would all know. Gary couldn’t control what was in the note from the teller, but he could get his hands on it.

“How do you know what she knew and when?” Kent asked.

Gary didn’t feel inclined to explain to a man who wouldn’t survive until morning. “The look on the woman’s face and the way they ran out of here.”

“The transfer is in a few hours.” Kent looked around but Ed was on the other side of the room. “You promised to let my wife go.”

Whether he promised or not didn’t matter because Gary had no intention of letting that happen. Neither did his silent partner, since Sharon had most definitely seen his partner’s face when he grabbed her. That made her collateral damage.

Yes, the Beane family would not survive the night. They’d die and the attempted bank robbery would be linked back to Kent as an operation gone wrong. Sharon as the innocent victim unaware of her husband’s money issues and schemes. In Gary’s scenario, Sharon found out, a fight ensued and the resulting murder-suicide would stand as one more horrific tale of a marriage on the edge and a desperate man who took a terrible turn.

At least that was where the evidence Gary manufactured would lead the police to believe.

“I have a very small window in which to fix your mess,” he said to the man who would provide access then soon be dead.

“I didn’t—”

“Stop.” Baiting this man proved quite enjoyable. “For Sharon’s sake, you better hope I can do it.”

Chapter Thirteen

Jocelyn drew the envelope out of her purse and put it on the Corcoran conference-room table on top of the files and papers and everything else they had thrown all over the place. She beat back the urge to organize it all. This wasn’t their first job and they knew how to do their work, but still.

Joel grabbed the envelope as soon as it hit the table. “You kept a receipt from more than a week ago?”

“I keep everything.” She snatched it back and waved it in front of him from across the table. “Sometimes being a woman on the edge helps.”

Joel frowned. “Excuse me?”

She turned to Ben at his position next to Connor at the end of the table. For some reason she wanted Ben to be the one to see it first. “Here.”

“In your purse.” Ben shook his head. “No wonder the guy couldn’t find it at the house. Also makes sense we missed it. I’d never think to tell a woman to dump her purse. Seems like a surefire way to get my butt kicked.”

“We will from now on,” Joel said.

Connor rested his hands on the back of her chair. “I’m not sure I knew she had it here.”

“I keep receipts in my purse and reconcile every Friday. I was attacked before I could.” It sounded crazy when she said it out loud.

Never mind how smooth and perfect they fit together and how she had them lined up inside the envelope with not one edge sticking out. Just when she thought she’d come so far, she ran smack into evidence she had some work to do.

Ben shot her one of his sexy smiles. “I love your need for order.”

One look at that mouth and her bones melted. After living with the anxiety as a curse for so long, she had her first moment of clarity. Maybe this one time he was right and it saved her. “Right now I do, too.”

She glanced down at the words on the paper. The last two stood out to her as if they were set off in flashing lights.

Worldwide Securities transfer. Sharon kidnapped.

He read the words and Jocelyn jumped in with the first question. “Who is Sharon?”

“Kent’s wife.” Joel sat down and started typing. “Let’s see where she is.”

Jocelyn glanced at Ben. “More kidnappings.”

“Yeah, I know.” The sadness in his eyes translated to a vibration of anger in his voice.

After a series of ultrafast clicking, Joel made a noise. “Hmm, not good.”

“What?” Connor asked.

“A teacher who, from what I can see here, is out on unexpected temporary leave. Kent said she’s very ill.”

“Funny how he forgot to mention that fact.” Ben blew out a long breath. “Guess her being gone explains his constant sweating.”

That made three women—Pamela, this Sharon and her. Jocelyn’s chest ached at the thought she might be the only safe one. “So, someone is planning to take money from the bank? I still don’t get it. They were in the bank and didn’t steal anything.”

“It all comes down to Gary Taub, owner of Worldwide and our sudden visitor this afternoon,” Ben said.

Joel kept typing. “Thought that seemed a bit too smooth.”

“So did he.”

Ben’s dislike for the guy had been immediate. He didn’t exactly hide his feelings, with all that grumbling at the bank. Jocelyn had chalked it up to his protective instincts and having someone break through their security barrier thanks to Ed. Now she wondered if Ben’s anger went deeper. The instant hate could have something to do with his innate ability to sense danger.

If so, she wanted to know. “What was this Gary guy doing? Why walk in and risk giving himself away?”

Ben shrugged. “More than likely checking us out.”

“Then we should be fine.” One business guy against all of them. Add in Pax and Davis, and Jocelyn tried to imagine how quickly Gary would go down. Then she noticed the three of the guys in question staring at her...waiting. “Oh, come on. This team is scary. What sane person would take you all on?”

Joel burst out laughing. “Thank you, I think.”

“Let’s go through the blueprints, construction grids, anything that could connect these two buildings in physical ways.” The usual stern thread moved through Connor’s voice but the look on his face came off suspiciously like a smile. “Anything on the bank security tapes?”

Joel shook his head. “All wiped clean. The most recent is from three weeks ago.”

“What did Ed and Kent say about that?” Ben said as he took the seat next to her.

“They can’t explain it.”

In a few moves, they all shifted into their regular chairs, her next to Ben and Connor at the head. It was so natural that she wondered if they secretly practiced the maneuver.

With the head seat came the power, and Connor immediately stepped into the role. “Maybe this Gary person can.”

“You think he’s planning a bank robbery?” she asked, because she still couldn’t wrap her head around the attacks being separate from the pile of money that sat in the bank safe.

“He’s next door to the bank, which appears to be the epicenter of whatever’s happening there.” Ben punctuated each word with a thump of his finger against the table. “I’m willing to bet that balcony leads to Worldwide somehow.”

Joel paged through the papers and flipped the blueprints out and on top. “Not that I could see.”

“What do we know about him or the company?” Ben asked Joel.

“Wealthy financial guy. High-end brokerage. Lost his wife to cancer and a brother in a freak accident overseas. There’s no one else as far as I can tell.”

“So, we’ve got a guy with nothing to lose. That’s the worst kind.” Connor snatched a folder off the desk behind him and opened it. “We missed something. I want it found in the next thirty minutes. Call Davis and Pax and get them in on this by video conference.”

Ben was too busy swearing under his breath to look at anything. “Fine, but in thirty-one minutes I’m taking Jocelyn to the garage.”

“Sounds dirty,” Joel said without lifting his head from the blueprint study.

As if they had an extra few minutes to check out a car. But when no one explained, Jocelyn went searching for one. “Uh, why?”

Ben’s head came around and he stared at her. “Gun practice.”

The intense look shot right through her. His mood shifted to serious and the heat in his eyes told her not to argue. This wasn’t sexual, as Joel joked. This was more like an order. For the first in a long time, the tone didn’t make her throw up a solid emotional wall in defense.

“We’re going to shoot cars?” she asked when he didn’t cough up another answer. Leave it to Ben to go quiet all of a sudden, just when she needed more information.

“It’s not really a garage.”

Again he stopped and again she had to poke him until he said something helpful. “What is it?”

“A weapons depot of sorts—and you’re not going to shoot. We’d need a range and we can’t get to one without further endangering you. The plan is to work on aim, show you how the weapons work, get you comfortable holding one.” Ben laid it all out, then leaned back in his chair.

It was as if he waited for her to scream or have a fit. She half expected those feelings to rush up on her, but they didn’t. Anxiety bubbled inside her as it always did but the overwhelming need to flee didn’t hit her. She chalked that up to progress.

Probably also had something to do with the emotional free fall she’d been in for more than a week. That had one source—Ben. He smiled, he frowned, he spoke to her in a quiet whisper or he clenched his jaw, like he was doing now, and her heart performed a happy little spin.

He’d gone from potential date to bodyguard and now to the man she wanted in her life. The change smacked into her as her breath whooshed out. This was more than a free fall—it was a falling-for-him kind of thing.

She shoved back from the table and almost put her head between her knees. Would have if she didn’t have an audience.

When he frowned at her, she knew she wasn’t hiding the realization all that well but suspected he thought she got nauseous at the idea of guns. Not at all. She got it now. Sometimes the good guys needed to be armed.

Right before he could say something, she collected her jangling nerves and forced out a question. “And why do I need these gun skills?”

Connor broke in. “He needs you to be ready.”

Okay.
That didn’t answer anything. “For what?”

Ben’s hand hit the back of her chair and he spun her so that she faced him. “Anything.”

* * *

T
WO
HOURS
LATER
Ben watched Jocelyn massage her palm with her opposite thumb. She’d followed every direction without arguing or passing out. When he first mentioned the guns, he thought she’d slide right under the conference-room table. Not now.

No way was he going to resist kissing her. Seemed wrong what with everything brewing around them and her obvious distress, but the need started backing up on him and he wanted a release.

“You’re pretty amazing.”

She glanced up at him. Her bright smile came a beat later. “You’re not bad yourself.”

He put the last of the guns in the locked cabinet and closed the false wall. When he leaned back against the workbench, she stepped right into the space between his legs. It was as if the woman was made for him.

He curled a piece of her soft auburn hair around his index finger. “Strong, beautiful, smart.”

“You are a sweet-talking man.” Her fingers fiddled with the buttons on his shirt. She unbuttoned the top one and traced the collar of the white T-shirt underneath.

If they weren’t standing in the middle of a pile of weapons, he’d be stripping that sexy tank top off her right now. He settled for something more G-rated. “I’d rather be the man you’re kissing.”

Her hand slipped up his neck to the back of his head. “We can make that happen.”

With a gentle pressure, she brought his head down. Not that it took much to get him going. The start of an erection pressed against his fly and air hammered in his lungs. There wasn’t a moment he didn’t want her.

A loud beep came right before Joel’s voice broke into the heavy breathing. “How is it going?”

Ben’s head dropped right before their lips met. He looked up and shot his teammate a death glare. “Apparently it’s not going to happen this second.”

Joel smiled as he looked from Ben to Jocelyn. “Did I interrupt something?”

“No,” she said but she didn’t jump back or out of his arms.

That was the only thing keeping him from lunging across the room and strangling Joel. “Yes.”

She let her hands slide down Ben’s chest. When she turned around to face Joel, Ben caught her with one finger hooked through her belt loop. He was fine with her staying close. Plus, she hid a bulge that Joel would give him crap about for days if he saw it.

“What’s up?” she asked with the amusement still evident in her voice.

“A missing fourteen feet.”

Maybe it was a sign of what was going on when Joel burst in, but Ben couldn’t make sense of the comment. “Excuse me?”

“Checked the blueprints and compared to the photos I took inside the bank and the ones I have from outside on the street. Did a bunch of measurements—”

Ben smiled. “Of course you did.”

“—and there’s something between those two buildings, between the bank and Gary’s place.”

“Maybe the bank’s safe.” Jocelyn shifted as if she planned to step away.

With his hands on her hips, Ben pulled her back against him.

Joel shook his head. “No, this is on the second floor, above the safe.”

The beeping returned. Only this wasn’t one long squeal to signal the lock being disengaged. This was a motion detector.

She stiffened. “What is that?”

This time Ben let her pull away. The shot of adrenaline killed off the last of the sexual desire brewing inside him. It sputtered right out as he unlocked the cabinet behind him and grabbed the silencers and vests.

“We’ve got company,” he said as he turned her around and put the Kevlar on her. Then he opened her palm and put a small gun in it. “Good thing you’re a quick learner.”

She stared at the weapon where it lay in her hand. “All this because someone’s at the door of the house? Maybe just ratchet down the testosterone and tell whoever it is to go away.”

Ben hadn’t put up the garage windows. Metal shutters covered every entrance but the door. From the outside, they looked like part of the wall. Nothing out of the ordinary. From the inside, complete armored protection.

Joel reached under the cabinet at the far side of the four-berth garage and a monitor flashed on. Darkness had begun to fall but the security system found the heat signatures. The images adjusted, moving in click by click. The closest camera pinned them at the house’s back porch.

“No cookie-selling there.” Joel pointed at the man near the kitchen door. “This one? He’s not visiting. That’s a gun he’s holding.”

Jocelyn leaned in close and squinted at the screen. “More attackers. You’ve got to be kidding. Here?”

“Looks like we scared dear ol’ Gary,” Ben said and Joel nodded.

“What?” She seemed to be having some trouble taking it all in. She turned around in the open space as the familiar look of fear crossed her mouth and her eyes glazed. “You think he sent commandos.”

“We meet him and suddenly we have people with guns stalking this place. Nobody followed us back here, so yeah, I blame Gary.” Joel clipped on a shoulder holster and put his usual gun in it while he held the one with the silencer.

She shot him a “you’ve lost your mind” glare. “How do you know no one was behind us?”

“I know.”

Ben decided to spare her the car speech from Joel. The man knew his vehicles and could maneuver through the streets with ease. He also had a sense when he was being followed and didn’t think twice of circling around for hours to lose someone. “It’s one of Joel’s specialty areas. It would be hard for someone to tie this property to the team, but if you have skills and access to the right databases, it’s not impossible.”

“Connor might want to work on that.” She pulled her cell out of her front jeans pocket. “On that topic, shouldn’t we warn him there are two guys on his back porch?”

“Oh, he knows.” No sooner had Ben made the comment than a light in the house’s kitchen went on.