What the hell had he done?
Landon hadn’t just crossed the line with Jocelyn Gerber; he’d trampled all over it. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. His assignment was to protect, not to fall for her. Not that he was falling.
He had no time for love. No time for a relationship. And he couldn’t afford any distractions right now, not with Luther Mills trying to get away with murder.
Landon had spent too many years trying to bring Luther to justice to help him escape it now. If something happened to Jocelyn, there was a damn good chance that Luther would not be convicted.
Like Spencer Dubridge, Landon believed the person who’d shot up her house was someone she worked with, someone who knew where she lived.
They were at her office at the district attorney’s now. While she sat behind her desk, speaking on the phone, Landon stared out the window in her door, watching people watch them. He recognized the two guys he’d met, but they weren’t the only ones taking an unnatural interest in him and Jocelyn.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” Landon told Jocelyn, but he said it more for those standing outside her office than for her benefit. When he jerked open the door, he startled a young man who jumped and lost a folder he was carrying.
Landon bent down to help him pick it up and noticed the guy was shaking. “I’m sorry,” he told him, then narrowed his eyes and asked, “Are you okay?”
The young man nodded. “Yes. I just—I just had to bring them to Ms. Gerber. I’m a paralegal.”
Landon took the folder from his hand and promised, “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
A sigh slipped through the young man’s lips and he murmured a grateful “Thanks” before rushing away.
Just as he’d told her, Jocelyn was scary as hell. Even scarier to Landon now that he’d had sex with her. He’d never felt anything as intense as what they’d shared. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what it had been, and before he’d been able to figure it out, her cell had blared out an alarm.
It must have been her wake-up call for work—since she’d scrambled to get ready to come into the office. But it had been Landon’s wake-up call to remind him that keeping her safe was his job—not seducing her.
But he wasn’t exactly sure who had seduced whom. She’d seemed to want him as badly as he’d wanted her. As he still wanted her...
His hand shook, and the folder nearly slipped from his grasp. He glanced down at it and noticed it was a dossier on her coworkers. Despite her arguing that nobody in her office could be Luther’s mole, she must have had her doubts, or she wouldn’t have asked the young paralegal to compile the information for her.
No wonder the kid had been so nervous. He hadn’t wanted any of his coworkers to know that he’d helped her investigate them. He shouldn’t have been the one doing it. Landon was the one who needed to help her, not just to keep her safe but because he personally wanted to deal with whoever the hell kept shooting at them.
So, after making sure his backup bodyguards were within sight of Jocelyn, Landon continued down the hall toward the employee break room. He wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but he approached the pot a few other people loitered around. Mike Forbes and Dale Grohms glanced up at him with feigned surprise. They’d been close enough to her office to overhear him telling Jocelyn where he was going.
He smiled as he reached for a cup and the pot. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Morning?” Dale asked. “It’s a little later than that now.”
“That’s because Jocelyn was late this morning,” Mike Forbes said. “What’s up with that lately? Your fault?”
Landon chuckled. “What makes you think I have anything to do with it?”
“You’ve become her shadow lately,” Forbes said. “And I’m not buying the boyfriend act. Who are you really?”
“You don’t know?” the young paralegal asked from where he stood behind the men. “He’s a bodyguard with the Payne Protection Agency.”
Had Jocelyn had the kid investigate him as well as her coworkers? How did he know who Landon was? Landon studied the kid now, wondering if he’d been more nervous over running into him than he’d been over having that folder on him. Had he met the kid before, back when he’d been working vice?
Could he be one of Luther’s crew or at least an indebted customer? He narrowed his eyes and studied the kid—even while he felt everyone else studying him.
“Is it true?” Grohms asked. “Are you her bodyguard?”
“I’m a bodyguard,” Landon admitted. There was no point in denying what they could easily find out on their own.
“Why does Jocelyn need a bodyguard?” Dale asked.
“Didn’t you hear about the shooting at her house last night?” the kid asked. And now the other men were studying him as intently as Landon was.
They were surprised that he knew, but they didn’t look surprised about the shooting. They’d already known about it. How? Because one of them had been the shooter? Or was it now just common knowledge around the office?
“I don’t envy you,” Dale Grohms said.
Which surprised Landon because he’d thought the guy had a crush on Jocelyn. But of course, now he knew that Landon was just her bodyguard—not her boyfriend. Except after last night—or this morning, actually—Landon wasn’t just her bodyguard.
He wasn’t her boyfriend either. He wasn’t sure what the hell he was but in trouble. Deep trouble...
“Why’s that?” Landon asked.
“You have a very dangerous job,” Grohms said.
“Jocelyn Gerber has a lot of enemies,” Mike Forbes added.
A chill chased down Landon’s back as he realized the other man spoke the truth. Jocelyn did have a lot of enemies. So keeping her safe was going to require all his concentration. He had to redraw that line and make damn sure he didn’t cross it again.
Both their lives depended on him staying focused. He had to protect her. And he had to protect himself, as well.
Jocelyn stared down in confusion at the folder Landon slid onto her desk. “Where did this come from?”
He lifted his broad shoulders in a faint shrug. “Male paralegal. I didn’t catch his name.”
“I didn’t ask him for this,” Jocelyn said. She knew who her coworkers were; she didn’t need a list of names with their addresses, marital statuses and criminal history. Fortunately, not many of them had a criminal history beyond some speeding tickets, and one had a driving-while-impaired charge on his record.
“You should have,” Landon said. “You need to find out which of them is working for Luther.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure it is one of them.”
“You’re not naive, Jocelyn,” he said. “You know it has to be one of them. I would have noticed someone following us to your house. The shooter had to know where you live.”
She shivered. “That doesn’t mean they work with me. Someone in the police department could have found out.”
He tensed, then begrudgingly nodded in agreement. “Maybe...”
“You said yourself it’s possible that someone within the police department got rid of the evidence you and your unit brought me to bring to a grand jury,” she reminded him.
“Not someone within my unit, though,” he said defensively. “We were all determined to get Luther off the streets.”
She hoped he was right. Or the chief had put the wrong franchise of the Payne Protection Agency in charge of protecting the people associated with Luther’s trial. But another department had aroused her suspicions. Not like Landon aroused her, though.
Just looking at him chased away the chill of fear from her as passion rushed through her. He was so damn good-looking. And now she knew how magnificent his muscular body looked with no clothes.
How it felt.
How he’d made her feel.
She barely resisted the urge to wave the folder in front of her face to cool herself off. But she closed her eyes to shut out the temptation that he’d become.
“I think it could be a CSI,” she admitted.
“Wendy Thompson?” he asked with a gasp.
She opened her eyes again. “Not Wendy. She didn’t handle the evidence for those other cases—just this one.” And that was why she’d been able to get a grand jury to indict—because the evidence hadn’t mysteriously disappeared before she’d been able to present it to them.
He nodded. “That makes sense,” he agreed. “But CSIs aren’t the only ones with access to the evidence.”
With the evidence locker in the police department, pretty much every officer had access. And when the evidence was sent to the district attorney’s office...
“I know,” she said. “But let’s start with the CSIs. Let’s talk to the chief.” She could have just called Chief Lynch, but since she didn’t have court today, she needed an excuse to get out of the office. The space was too small to share with Landon for too long.
His scent already filled her head. It was a combination of soap from the quick shower he’d taken mixed with male muskiness. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe in it, breathe in him. And her body tingled with awareness and desire. She wanted him closer, wanted him touching her like she wanted to touch him.
No. They could not stay any longer in her small office. She jumped up from her desk. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t you want to see if he’s available first?” Landon asked.
She shook her head. “If he’s not, we’ll talk to Wendy Thompson and see if she has any suspicions. We should check on her anyway. With the witness missing, Luther will probably focus all his attention on taking out Wendy.”
If anything happened to that evidence or the evidence tech, Jocelyn’s case against Luther would be in serious trouble. Landon held the door for her, and when she passed him, her body reacted to his closeness—her pulse quickening, her skin tingling—and she knew she was already in serious trouble.
With him...
For years, there had been speculation that someone in the district attorney’s office was working for Luther. Some people even suspected it was Jocelyn. The real spy grinned at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
That was perfect. He would have to figure out how to frame her for it. But first he had to get rid of her—because he worried that she would figure it out first.
She was too damn smart.
And she worked too hard.
Or she had until this bodyguard had started protecting her. Of course, she’d been a little busy trying to stay alive to worry about work. That was why he couldn’t stop trying to take her life—it kept her from tearing his apart.
And if she was dead, she could never discover the truth. He watched as they opened the door from the district attorney’s offices and stepped into the parking garage. When he’d seen the bodyguard standing at her door, he’d figured they might be leaving, so he’d rushed to the parking garage and started the vehicle he’d rented a few days ago.
He hadn’t wanted to risk anyone seeing his. He pulled his hood tighter around his face and adjusted his dark glasses. He didn’t want to risk anyone seeing him either. But he had to take the risk of trying to kill her again.
The longer Jocelyn lived, the more likely she was to discover his connection to Luther Mills. He had to kill her and her bodyguard, too.
He couldn’t wait until they got into the SUV. He’d tried to follow the bodyguard before, but he drove too damn fast. They would get away from him if they got into their vehicle.
Fortunately, he’d had his rental running beforehand. He’d already pulled out of his spot and gotten into position. So the minute they stepped away from the door to the building and headed across the parking area, he gunned his engine and bore down on them.
There was no way they could outrun him. No way they could escape him.
The man was definitely a bodyguard—with the quick reflexes and protective instincts. He shoved Jocelyn between two parked cars and jumped just as the rental’s bumper neared him. Instead of striking the bodyguard or Jocelyn, the car struck those other cars. Metal crunched and screeched.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, cramming into that small space between those cars. Either they would crush Jocelyn and her bodyguard or his rental car would.
But the bodyguard surged up from the ground to which he’d fallen with Jocelyn. His arm was outstretched, the barrel of his gun pointed at the windshield, and he began to fire.
He ducked as the windshield shattered, but he kept his foot on the gas. He needed to take them out, needed for them to die. The shooting stopped, and he glanced up, peering through that broken windshield.
And finally his front bumper struck the concrete half wall of the parking structure. Either they were beneath his car or the ones he’d crumpled, or they’d gone over the wall.
He grinned. Either way, they were dead.
And he needed to get the hell out of there before he was caught. He shifted into Reverse and tried backing up. Those other crumpled cars caught on his, metal catching and twisting, rubber burning.
But it wasn’t just the other vehicles he had to worry about escaping. People had rushed up behind him, a security guard and a couple of burly men he’d noticed inside the building. More bodyguards?
They began to fire at his vehicle as they advanced on him. But finally his car jerked free of the wreckage. The back bumper struck one of the men, sending him flying back into another one—knocking them both to the ground.
He shifted into Drive now and accelerated, careening around corners as he headed all those stories down to the exit to the street. He sped up as he neared the garage exit and crashed through the gate at the end. It wasn’t as if he could have used his parking pass. That would have been traced back to him.
He had to make sure that nothing could be traced because now he wouldn’t just be facing conspiracy or aiding-and-abetting charges. He would be facing murder charges.
Jocelyn Gerber had to be dead. There was no way she or her bodyguard could have survived a fall from the fifth story of the concrete parking structure.
He waited for a flash of guilt or regret or something...but he felt nothing but triumph. Of course, if he’d had a conscience, he wouldn’t have started working for Luther Mills in the first place.