Safety Breach

“Why now?” Eric repeated. “Well, duh. Because it’s nearly the anniversary of your daddy’s death. Which I’m sure you remember in nth detail. I’ll bet Gemma remembers it, too.”

They did. It was impossible to forget that in only three days, it would be a year since their lives had been turned upside down. And apparently Eric was going to make sure they recalled it by giving them a new set of grisly memories to go along with it.

Kellan tried to fight off the images from that night, but they came anyway. The storm with lightning slicing through the sky. Ironic that it was the lightning that had given him glimpses of what was going on. Just flashes of the horror that had started before Kellan had even gotten on the scene.

When Gemma had figured out too late that Eric was a serial killer the FBI had been after for years, she’d called the sheriff, Kellan’s father, Buck, and he’d told Gemma to wait, not to confront Eric until he got there. Instead, she’d attempted to stop Eric when he tried to leave. Eric had then taken Gemma and her best friend/research assistant, Caroline Moser, hostage. Kellan’s father, Buck, and another deputy, Dusty Walters, had gone in pursuit, only minutes ahead of Kellan who’d gotten the call after them.

His dad and Dusty had come upon Eric’s vehicle that had skidded off the road because of the storm. The accident had happened in front of an abandoned hotel with the mocking name of Serenity Inn. A crumbling Victorian mansion with acres of overgrown gardens and dark windows that had looked like darkened eye sockets. Eric had forced the women at gunpoint onto the grounds, and Dusty and his father had followed.

That’s when Kellan had arrived.

Just in time to hear the crack of the gunfire, and then seconds later, he’d seen his father lying, bleeding—dying—on the weed-choked, muddy ground.

Kellan had ordered Dusty to call for an ambulance and stay with Buck while he went in pursuit of Eric who had slipped into the house with the women. Because of more of those flashes of lightning, Kellan had seen Eric shoot Gemma in the shell of what had once been the grand foyer. He’d seen her collapse, and while he was saving her life by stopping the blood flow, Eric had escaped with Caroline in the dark maze of rooms, halls and stairs. Kellan hadn’t even managed to get off a shot for fear of hitting Caroline.

For all the good that’d done.

While Kellan had been saving Gemma, Eric had shot through one of the windows at Dusty, killing the deputy instantly. Kellan hadn’t known it then, but his father was already dead.

Later, they’d found Caroline’s blood in one of the rooms. No body though. No Eric, either. Just a dead sheriff and deputy who’d been doing their jobs and an injured profiler who hadn’t done her job nearly well enough.

“You screwed up the investigation,” Eric went on. “You didn’t get things right when it came to solving your father’s murder.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You killed him. I got that right.” Kellan snapped. Then, he reminded himself, again, that Eric liked playing the tormenter, and what better way to do that than by implying that Kellan had botched something as important as the investigation that followed the murder and Gemma’s attack?

“You need to take a second look at the details of your father’s case. The devil is in those details,” Eric went on. “That’s what this warning is all about.”

“Warning?” Kellan questioned. “You had someone shoot at us. That’s more than a warning.”

“My man didn’t hit you, did he?” Eric said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

In the distance, Kellan heard a welcome sound. Sirens from the responding police officers. Now, he had to hope that the cops’ arrival didn’t cause the gunman to open fire again.

“Time’s running out,” Eric added, which meant he’d likely heard the sirens, too. “Gotta go.”

Of course, he wasn’t staying around for this. And his hired gun must have felt the same way because Kellan saw him run from the window.

Getting away.

That was better than trying to gun them down again, but Kellan hated that the shooter would escape. Kellan wanted to chase down the idiot and make him pay for what he’d done. But that would mean leaving Gemma—and she’d then be an easy target for Eric.

“One more thing,” Eric said. “My advice would be for you to run because things are about to get very...loud.”

Eric ended the call, and it didn’t take Kellan long, just a couple of seconds, for him to realize what was about to happen.

“Cover us,” Kellan shouted to his brother.

He hooked his arm around Gemma’s waist, dragging her to her feet, and with her in tow, Kellan started running toward the unmarked cruiser. Good thing, too.

Because behind them, Gemma’s house exploded into a fireball.

Chapter Three (#u8757b407-d5b3-5821-ae6b-f2fa092a480e)

Gemma clutched her hands into fists to try and stop herself from shaking. It didn’t help, but maybe it made it less noticeable to Kellan who kept glancing at her while he carried on his phone conversations.

She hated feeling like this—with the nerves and fear all tangled in her stomach. But what she hated even more was that Eric and his hired gun had gotten away. She had no doubts, none, that they’d be back.

And this time, they might actually kill them.

“You need to put some distance between us,” she told Kellan.

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, either. She’d repeated variations their entire time at the Austin Police Department. However, Kellan was doing the opposite of distancing himself, because he and Owen were taking her to Longview Ridge. Something she’d been opposed to the moment Kellan had told the Austin cops what he had planned for her.

Gemma agreed with him about her needing protective custody while the Justice Department figured out how her WITSEC identity had been breached, but going “home” had enormous risks. Still, here they were on the interstate, heading to the very place Eric would expect them to go.

Owen was behind the wheel of the unmarked cruiser, and Kellan was next to her on the back seat. Both were keeping watch while they got updates on the investigation. There was also an Austin patrol car with two cops behind them just in case things turned ugly. Eric likely wouldn’t be able to set explosives along this route, but he could perhaps cause a car accident.

“Eric will keep coming after me,” Gemma repeated when Kellan finished his latest call.

Just saying that caused the sound of the blast to echo through her head. And she could feel the effects of it, too, since the debris flying off the explosion had given Kellan and her plenty of nicks and cuts. None serious, but they stung, giving her a fresh memory of how close they’d come to dying.

Everything she owned was gone, of course. Not that she’d had anything of value. The place had felt, well, sterile. A lot like her life had for the past year. The only real loss of her personal things was her purse and phone. Now she had no cash or credit cards—which meant she had to rely on Kellan to help her. At least for a little while. But once the marshals were cleared of having any part in the WITSEC leak, Gemma needed to call Amanda to see about arranging a safe place she could go.

If there was such a place, that is.

Since Kellan didn’t even react to her reminder about Eric not stopping, she gave him another one. “You could get caught in crossfire, or worse, the way you did at my house.”

That got a reaction. He gave her a look that could have frozen El Paso in August, and he tapped the badge he had clipped to his belt.

“That badge didn’t save your father,” she snapped, but she instantly regretted the mini outburst. There were enough bad memories floating around them without her adding that one. “I’m sorry.”

He was back in no-reaction mode and turned his lawman’s gaze to keep watch out the window. Gemma watched, too. Not out the window but at Kellan.

Mercy, that face. It still got to her. Still tugged and pulled at her in all the wrong places. Sculptured with so many angles and tinted with just a hint of amber from his long-ago Comanche bloodline. Those bloodlines had blessed him with that thick black hair that he’d probably never had to comb. It just fell into a rumpled mane that he hid beneath his cowboy hat.

There was nothing rumpled about his body. It was toned from the endless work he put in on his family’s ranch and the rodeo competitions he still did. Once, she’d seen him take down an angry bull that he’d roped. All those muscles—both the bull’s and Kellan’s—locked in a fierce battle. Dust flying. Hooves and feet digging and chopping into the ground. The snorts from the bull, the grunts of exertion from Kellan.

Kellan had won.

He had literally taken the bull by the horns, brought it down and then calmly walked away. Gemma thought that was the way he handled lots of things in his life. Not women, of course. He did take what he wanted from them. But never forced or even coerced. He took simply because it was offered to him.

Gemma knew plenty about that because once she’d offered herself to him. And he’d taken.

He glanced at her again, maybe sensing that she was playing with memory lane, and she got a flash of those incredible eyes. That had been the first thing she’d ever noticed about him. Sizzling blue or stormy gray, depending on his mood. Right now, his mood was dark and so were his eyes, but she’d seen them heat up not from anger but from the need that came with arousal.

Arousal that she had caused.

It hadn’t been one-sided back when they’d been eighteen, and she’d willingly surrendered her virginity to him on the seat of his pickup truck. She had no idea who’d been on the receiving end of his virginity, but she’d been thankful for whomever had given him enough practice to make that night incredible for her. One that had become her benchmark. She was still looking for someone who could live up to him.