Her breath was coming out in shaky pants, and something had tightened in her gut. Something she couldn’t begin to identify. “So—so—”

“So all we can do now is keep looking. We’ll have to try to dig deeper.”

Her knees almost buckled. She grabbed at a shelf to steady herself.

“You okay?” Jack asked, looking concerned, and he reached out to give her his arm.

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My mom and I were so sure it was him.”

“Well, it really looked like him. And it still could be. Don’t take him off the table as a suspect yet. You know him better than I do. What do you think? Is he capable of doing something like this?”

She nodded, staring at a spot in the air.

“Capable? Yes. Likely? I just don’t know.”

“We’ll start checking into his supervisor. He’s retired now, but still around. We might be able to turn something up. If you’re okay where you are, you might be able to help us get some of the information we need. But we need to do some more work before I can tell you where to look. Whatever happens, you need to be careful.”

“I will.”

“As I mentioned the first time we talked, I don’t think what you’re doing is very smart.”

“It’s not smart.” Her voice sounded a little breathy.

Jack’s eyebrows lowered. “Shit. You like this guy, don’t you?”

She stiffened with a quick inhale. “I do not like him.”

Jack shook his head. “Just be careful. I’ve heard he’s a lady’s man, but men like him aren’t safe. You don’t get to the position he’s in so young without trouncing people who are older, more qualified, and who have better experience. And trouncing them usually means using some unsavory methods. Even if he’s not a murderer, I don’t think he’s a nice guy.”

“He’s not a nice guy. He’s not nice at all.” She spoke the words with absolute conviction.

Whatever else Caleb was and had done, he would never be nice.

“All right. I can’t stop you from doing what you want to do. Just be careful and keep in touch as much as you can. I’ll touch base in the normal way if I find something. You better get going.”

“Yeah,” Kelly agreed, shaking off her distraction of before. She needed to pull it together and not let the mortifying revelation she’d just had unravel her. “Thanks for everything.”

“Sure thing.” Jack stepped forward suddenly when the door to the workout room opened, and pressed her back against a wall so it would look like they were talking intimately when one of the residents walked in wearing workout clothes. After verifying that the person was harmless, Jack nodded wordlessly toward the door and followed her out.

The hall was empty, and she shook her head when she saw a particular expression on his face. “You love all this subterfuge and sneaking around, don’t you?”

Jack chuckled appreciatively. “Of course. I never get to do it anymore. You wouldn’t believe what my job is like now. So much paper shuffling and calling people up, giving them jobs to do. That wasn’t why I got into the security business.”

The corner of her mouth quivering, Kelly replied, “I thought maybe packing a weapon made you feel all manly.”

“That was it.” His eyebrows twitched. “Of course.”

Jack’s expression was so amused and self-deprecating that Kelly surprised herself by laughing out loud—then surprised herself again by feeling self-conscious at the warm, responsive flicker that appeared in Jack’s eyes.

A month ago, she’d be after this man without another thought. She would have made sure they fucked before the day was over. And it was troubling—deeply troubling—that she liked him a lot but had absolutely no interest in fucking him.

Clearing her throat, she pushed the thought aside, gave Jack a little wave, and started for the elevator.

In the silence, she could no longer keep an even more troubling revelation at bay.

It was true. It was horrible, but it was true.

She didn’t want Caleb to be guilty.

Chapter 9

Caleb slammed down his coffee mug in a futile expression of his absolute frustration.

Unfortunately, the mug was halfway full, and the impact sloshed hot coffee over his hand.

Growling in annoyance, he pulled his hand away, waving it in the air to dry and cool it.

It was almost five o’clock, and the whole day had passed on an equally exasperating keel. Only very occasionally, on the worst days, did he keep drinking coffee all day long like this.

He’d just hung up with his investigator, and there was still little progress on looking into Kelly’s background. After the one lead he’d gotten last week about the Russian gang in Baltimore, they’d run into a dead end.

At Caleb’s sharp, impatient comment, the investigator had been trying to explain to him just now that they had to rely on word of mouth or documented evidence. There was little documented evidence of any of Kelly’s relationships, and the Russians were, for obvious reasons, a closemouthed community.

Caleb hadn’t taken the reasoned explanation particularly well. He’d laid the man out in his coldest tone, the one that made his staff want to run and hide.

He turned his desk chair so he could stare out through the wall of windows in his office. His view of the DC cityscape was enviable, but he wasn’t even seeing it at the moment.

The tension at the back of his head was almost unbearable, and he raised his hand idly to rub at it.

If Kelly would just tell him who the man was, he could take care of it for her.

Maybe it sounded foolish—thinking he was in any position to take care of a Russian mob boss—but money and contacts could go a long way. Maybe law enforcement had their hands tied, because they were bound by legal restraints.

Caleb wasn’t. He had the number of a guy who cleaned up messes—no matter what the messes were. Caleb could have Kelly’s mess cleaned up for her, without the slightest twinge of his conscience. He’d done it before, and in this case he’d do it with pleasure.

But he could only help if she gave him a name.

He picked up his mug and brought it to his lips, but the coffee was lukewarm now so he put it down without taking a full swallow. He kept rubbing his neck, picturing Kelly’s face if he could tell her that she’d never have to worry about the bastard threatening her again.

“Mr. Marshall.”

Caleb heard the voice with one part of his mind, but it didn’t register immediately.

“Mr. Marshall.”

This time, the words sunk in. He blinked a couple of times and twirled the chair around to see Linda standing in the doorway of his office. She’d obviously just knocked and spoken to him twice.

“Oh, sorry,” he said with a rueful smile. “I was out of it.”

“I apologize for interrupting,” she said, although she had nothing to apologize for. After working for him for fifteen years, she still wouldn’t call him anything except “Mr. Marshall.” “Did you miss the call to Jim Strait?”

Caleb made his brain focus and realized he was supposed to have called someone fifteen minutes ago, a call that had been scheduled for three days now. Linda had even reminded him of it five minutes before he was to make the call.

But then the investigator had called about Kelly, and he’d completely forgotten about everything else.

He stifled a groan. “Shit. I totally forgot. Can I call him now?”

“His assistant said that he had another meeting at five, so we’ve rescheduled for tomorrow, if you don’t mind fitting it into your lunch slot.”

“That’s fine. Thanks.”

Caleb massaged the sore muscles of his neck and wondered what was happening to him. He was never absentminded. He never let anything distract him from his job.