What the hell had happened? Landon still didn’t know. One minute he’d been kissing Jocelyn and the next...
That had been his first mistake. Kissing her. That wasn’t part of his assignment—at least, not when there was no one to witness his acting like her boyfriend. The only person he’d been fooling with that kiss was himself.
He was her bodyguard—nothing else. And he wasn’t doing a very damn good job. Sure, he’d knocked her to the floor. But he should have noticed the person outside before they had even started shooting. Hell, he should have heard the vehicle drive up.
But he’d only heard it drive off, and after that he’d helped her up from the floor, anxiously asking, Are you all right?
She’d silently nodded at him, her blue eyes wide and bright with fear. Are you? she’d asked.
He’d nodded back at her. But we need to get out of here.
I—I have to find Lady, she’d said as she looked around her home office, her eyes wide with terror.
She’s not in here. She didn’t get hit, he’d assured her. She’s hiding. And we don’t have time to look for her. We need to leave. Now.
No. We have to stay for the police.
The sirens had already wailed in the distance. That’s why we have to leave, he’d pointed out. We don’t know who—if anyone—we can trust in the police department.
She’d gasped. But she’d stopping arguing with him. She’d just shoved some things in her briefcase and closed the office door before hurrying out with him.
“Where are we?” she asked as she looked around the house he’d brought her to, which was nothing like hers. The entire place could probably fit inside her living room. It was just two bedrooms, one off the living room and one off the kitchen, with a bathroom in between them.
“This is where I live,” he said.
She pointed toward the gun in his hand. “Then why do you need that?”
“Because other people might know that I live here,” he said.
“Nobody’s trying to kill you,” she said.
It hadn’t felt like that earlier when all those bullets had been flying into her house. It had probably just been one clip, though—from one gun—not like the onslaught Clint and Rosie had faced down at the safe house.
“I’m not the only one who lives here,” Landon said.
She glanced around again. “I thought when you laughed at the thought of being married...”
“That I didn’t have a serious relationship?” he asked. “My roommate is Clint. He’s probably the most serious relationship I’ve had—friendship.”
The women he’d dated hadn’t understood the long hours of being a vice cop. They hadn’t appreciated his being late or missing dates altogether, so those relationships had never gone beyond dating. Not much had changed since he’d become a bodyguard, though. Protecting someone around the clock left even less time for dating.
Maybe that was why he’d kissed Jocelyn.
No. He’d kissed Jocelyn because he’d wondered for years what it would be like. If his lips would stick to hers like the kid’s tongue did to the flagpole in that Christmas movie he and Clint watched every year.
“Clint!” he called out as he moved through the few rooms, checking to see if his friend had come home.
“You thought he might have brought Rosie here?” she asked, and she peered around now, too—looking inside the bedrooms and bathroom.
“He’s too smart to have done that,” Landon said. Smarter than he was. He should not have brought Jocelyn here. He needed to get her somewhere safe. But what she’d said...about the people who knew about the safe house...
No. She had to be wrong. Nobody he’d worked with could be colluding with Luther. They’d all wanted to bring him down just as much or even more than he had. Landon pushed a slightly shaking hand through his hair. A shard of glass nicked his skin before falling onto the floor with a few other pieces.
“You’re bleeding,” Jocelyn said, and she grabbed his hand to inspect the wound.
Her skin was so silky. And as he knew, she wasn’t at all as cold as he’d thought she was. She was warm. Hell, she was hot. So damn hot...
He wanted to kiss her again. Last time he’d done that, though, they could have been killed. The shots fired into the house had gone wild, hitting everything in her office but them. He couldn’t believe the shooter had been one of Luther’s crew. Even the young ones were more familiar with firearms than their shooter had seemed to be.
So it could have been someone else—someone who’d sent one of those other threats she’d received.
“I need to call Parker and the chief,” Landon remarked.
“You need to get a bandage on this,” she said as she continued to hold his hand. “It won’t stop bleeding.”
The blood was just oozing, though—not flowing. “It’s nothing.”
His friend was out there somewhere, according to Parker, bleeding, as well. Landon should have immediately gone out to look for him. But then Jocelyn would have been alone and unprotected in her home when the shooting happened...in her office with all the windows.
He’d thought her house was safe with its high-tech security system. But now he wondered if anyplace was safe. “We need to get out of here,” he said.
But he wasn’t sure where they should go. Dare he trust the others? He knew for certain it hadn’t been any of them outside her place shooting at them. Any one of them would have hit them. They were that good of shots.
And even better people.
No way. He wasn’t going to let her distrust of his team affect him. They were his family. The only family he had.
“I need to call Parker,” he said, “and find out where I should bring you.”
“Home,” she said. Then she glanced around. “My home.”
“This place not nice enough for you?” he teased. He knew it wasn’t much. But he and Clint worked so much that they didn’t need much.
She tensed again, as if she thought he was insulting her. “I wouldn’t have the house I do if my parents hadn’t bought it for me,” she said. “I was happier in my apartment downtown, and that was much smaller than this.”
He believed her. She would have gone for the convenience of having a place close to work over the grandness of her big house. But she’d moved to make her parents happy.
He had seriously misjudged her. And he felt so bad about it that he couldn’t argue with her. But he wasn’t going to bring her back to her house either. “Your place isn’t as safe as your parents thought it would be,” he pointed out. “We need to put you in a safe house.”
“Because that worked out so well for Rosie Mendez?”
He flinched.
“C’mon,” she said, and she tugged him—not toward the outside door, though, but toward the bathroom. “We’ll put a Band-Aid on this and then you can call Parker.”
And he remembered why her coworkers found her threatening and annoying. She was bossy and controlling. Now he knew the reason why she was...because of how she’d lost her beloved grandparents.
So he let her tug him along with her, and something tugged at his heart, making it ache in his chest. It had to just be sympathy.
Nothing else.
He would never fall for anyone like her—whatever her reasons for being bossy and controlling.
Jocelyn stared down at her hand, which was smeared red with his blood. An image flashed through her mind of the last time she’d had blood on her hands. And her knees weakened and wobbled. She swayed slightly and might have fallen into the sink if strong hands hadn’t closed over her shoulders and steadied her.
“Are you okay?” Landon asked.
She looked up at him. He was so big. So strong...
So heavy. She could remember the weight of his body lying atop hers, pressing her down to the floor, protecting her. He could have been killed.
His blood was on her hands because it was her fault he’d been hurt. “Thank you,” she murmured.
She couldn’t remember if she’d done that yet.
His brow furrowed. “For what?”
“For saving me,” she said. “You reacted so quickly.”
He grimaced. “I shouldn’t have had to react,” he admonished himself. “I should have noticed him getting close to the house before the shooting ever started.”
But he’d been kissing her.
And she hadn’t wanted him to stop—even when the shooting started. She was losing her mind. Maybe she had been working too hard—like everyone always told her she was.
But with so many criminals on the streets, she felt as if she still wasn’t working hard enough. That she wasn’t doing enough. That wobbly feeling in her knees began to spread, making her tremble. Landon’s arms wound around her, pulling her against his chest.
“You’re not okay,” he said.
She couldn’t stop shaking. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” she murmured. She hated this weak and helpless feeling.
“You’re in shock,” he said. “I should take you to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, even though she didn’t feel that way. She felt so strange—so unlike herself. So out of control...
“You’re not fine,” he said. He drew back and stared down at her, into her eyes.
And she shivered at the intensity of his stare. It was as if he was peering right inside her, as if he could see something no one else could.
“You’re scared,” he said.
She tensed as she realized that she was.
“That’s good,” he said. “You should be. You should have been after receiving those threats. And knowing that Luther’s determined to take out everyone involved in his trial, you should be very afraid. I was worried when you weren’t.”
“Is that why you thought I was working for him?” she asked. “Because I didn’t seem scared?”
“That and all those times you failed to get indictments,” he said.
Frustration gripped her. But she wouldn’t defend herself again. That only made him think she was unwilling to accept the responsibility for her losses. She shrugged it off. “I don’t know... Maybe I could have done more.”
“Not without the evidence,” he said.
“We need to look into that,” she said. “Find out where it went. But first we need to find Rosie.” She could not lose her eyewitness to the murder Luther had committed. He often didn’t carry out his dirty work himself.
Even when he wasn’t in jail, he usually sent out his crew instead...as if he didn’t want any blood on his hands. But it was still there, no matter what he did.
Landon released her. But the bathroom was so small that his body still touched hers as he reached around her and turned on the water in the sink. First he put his hand, that was still bleeding, under the faucet, and then he put hers under it, washing away his blood.
A little sigh of relief slipped through her lips. That was always the hardest for her—to see the blood in the crime-scene photos.
Landon looked at her again, like he was looking through her. “It’s good to be scared,” he told her.
She snorted. “Yeah, right...”
“I was worried when you weren’t because it’s hard to protect someone who doesn’t realize they’re in danger,” he said. “Or they know, and they don’t care.”
She flinched. She’d fallen into that second category. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“That Luther would try to kill you? I know it’s difficult for you to accept, but someone in your office is working for him,” he said.
She released a ragged sigh. She couldn’t deny that it might be true. With Luther, really anything was possible. “But why try for me now?” she asked. “Why not wait until closer to the start of the trial?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want to risk a postponement that would leave him in jail longer.”
That was true. If she was killed now, there was time for another assistant DA to get up to speed on their case.
“I don’t know...”
“I don’t know if it was Luther behind the shooting either,” Landon admitted.
And she was relieved that he shared her doubts.
“You have all those other threats,” he said. “It could have been any of them.”
She’d thought those threats were empty. That was why she hadn’t reported them to the chief. But now she realized that had been stupid. She’d been stupid. Like Landon had pointed out, it was smarter to be afraid. Then she would be careful.
She wasn’t just afraid for her life anymore, though. She was afraid for her heart, too.
That was fear Landon must have seen when he’d looked so deeply into her eyes. She was afraid she was starting to fall for him.
But then he tensed and drew out his weapon. “Shhh...” he said, even though she hadn’t been about to say a word.
She listened, though, to the sound of their breathing and the creak of a door opening. Someone was here.
She doubted it was Clint Quarters. He wouldn’t have risked bringing Rosie here, where other people would know to look for them. No. This was someone either looking for Rosie and Clint or for her and Landon, to finish what they’d started—to finish them off.
Where the hell had everyone gone?
Were Rosie and Clint dead? A dead man couldn’t drive, and Luther had learned that Clint had driven away from the ambush. But that hadn’t been the only ambush that evening...
Someone had shot up the assistant district attorney’s house. He punched in the number for the person he figured had done that.
“Hello?” the caller greeted him curiously. He wouldn’t have recognized the number. Luther kept having to change cell phones—kept having to destroy the ones that might have been traced back to him.
“What the hell did you do?” he asked.
“Do?” the person innocently asked. Too innocently.
“I heard about the ADA getting shot at,” Luther told him. “I did not give the order for that.”
What the hell was happening? Why was no one listening to him? At least his source at the police department was keeping him informed—had let him know about the call of shots fired at the ADA’s house and about the break-in at the judge’s daughter’s apartment.
He just wanted eyes on Jocelyn Gerber and the judge’s daughter, Bella Holmes. He didn’t want either of them dead. Yet.
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted, drawing the attention of a guard passing his cell. But the guard only glanced back at him once before turning around and acting as if he hadn’t seen a thing.
Nobody saw what he was doing. So how had the damn chief of police gotten wind of his plan to take out everyone associated with his trial?
“I didn’t hit her,” the man finished. “She and the guy she calls her boyfriend are fine.”
“Boyfriend?” Luther snorted. That bitch was too uptight to have a lover.
“Big guy—light brown hair, brown eyes.”
“Landon Myers.” Had to be Landon.
“Yeah, I think that’s his name,” the guy replied.
Luther chuckled. The former vice cop could be pretty damn uptight, too. “He’s her bodyguard.”
“He’s going to fail,” the guy replied.
Luther opened his mouth to reiterate his order to keep Jocelyn alive for now. But then he thought about it.
He needed the judge’s daughter alive. He couldn’t use threats against her to influence the judge to rule in his favor if she was dead.
But it didn’t really matter to him when Jocelyn Gerber died.
He uttered a ragged sigh. “When you get the chance, do it,” he agreed.
The guy chortled. “I’ll get the chance soon. Very soon.”
As Luther clicked off the cell, he felt a moment’s regret. Jocelyn Gerber was so gorgeous, it really was a shame that he wouldn’t be able to look at her much longer.
But then he shrugged off that regret. It would be good to have at least one person dead that he wanted gone.