“It’s great.” He held out a hand, and she sank down beside him. “I know what you’re trying to accomplish here, and I respect that. Stop worrying that I’m judging you.”

Resting her head against his shoulder, she did her best to mentally shake off the day. “Today sucked.”

“Yes, it did.” He sifted his hands through her hair, disrupting her French twist and making a mess of the strands at the edge of her neck. But who cared? She wasn’t leaving again tonight. “Any news?”

“None. No leads from the MPs down there. I guess there’s no security cameras in that parking lot. And people were in and out all night. Combine that with the fact that nobody saw the inside of the bus after about four that afternoon until the early morning next morning, and there was a disgusting amount of time available for whoever to make their move.”

He was quiet awhile. “Could have been one of their boxers.”

She snorted.

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Figured out how to spin it yet?”

“Since it happened so far out from here, I’m hoping we can all just play the It Didn’t Happen game and move on.” She snuggled tighter into his embrace. “Tell me something.”

“Like what?” His voice was thick, as if fighting off sleep.

“About you. Your family. You know about mine, so tell me about yours.”

He didn’t respond, and for the longest while she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then he murmured. “I didn’t have any brothers to show me how to put in a deadbolt.” Then he sighed, and she knew he was gone for the night.

*   *   *

“SON of a bitch!”

Greg came awake with a start, and promptly rolled off the bed and landed with a thud on the floor. His legs flailed and he found himself completely trapped in a pile of bedding. “What the . . . Reagan? Did you set a trap or something? What the hell is going on here?”

She stormed in, sexy with a short robe on, her hair in a messy bun and no makeup. Her legs were tanned and long under the robe and she was barefoot. She tapped one foot next to his head. “No, I did not set a trap, Gregory. Get up.”

He struggled, fought and finally waited for her to help him untangle his legs from the girly bedding. Seriously, who needed this much lace on anything? Once he was free from captivity, he sat on the floor, arms locked around his knees and his back to the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“This.” She handed him the morning paper she’d tossed on the bed before assisting him, then slid down to sit beside him. “How do they already know?”

“This,” Greg quickly found out, was an article—more like opinion piece—about the ruined bus from the day before. The newspaper had taken the vandalized bus story and run with it, adding in some color commentary about the previous “tragedies” that had befallen the Marine Corps boxing team thus far. Was this an indication of what was expected when someone put that many trained killers—WTF?—together and encouraged them to beat each other bloody? Was this inevitable? Or maybe the violence and horrifying nature of the sport had spawned a vigilante of sorts out to right the wrongs created by this bloodthirsty pairing of military and “sport.”

It was signed by their all-time favorite asshole journalist, David Cruise.

“This guy,” Greg said with a sneer, “needs a new hobby.”

“This guy,” Reagan said, taking the paper back as he started to wad it up, “is making my job impossible.” She smoothed the paper down. “We have a leak.”

“I know.” That hit him right in the gut. He’d wanted, so very badly wanted, for this to be unconnected. For the acts in the gym to be the work of a crazy pack of unruly teens. For the whole thing to blow over so they could focus on the team, on the sport, on the challenge ahead. And he wanted to delude himself into believing the bus was vengeance from the team from Paris Island, completely unrelated.

But this sealed the deal. The asshole was one of them.

“Maybe,” he said, grasping at straws, “someone from the MPs here leaked. When you called them, maybe someone talked and—”

“They don’t know yet.” She sighed and pushed some hair behind her ear, staring at her primer-painted wall blankly. “I never called them. I had planned to stop in today and give them the rundown in person but . . .” She let her hands lift and fall again in a helpless gesture that looked so very wrong on his strong, independent Reagan.

“We’ll figure it out.” He pulled her close, let her rest her head on his shoulder for a moment. “We’ll get there.”

She sighed and burrowed in a little tighter. “Can I tell you a secret?”

He kissed her temple. “Always.”

“I’m afraid of getting fired,” she whispered.

The way her breath hitched at the end, as if she were swallowing back tears, gutted him. “No, baby, you won’t get fired.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, because I won’t let it happen.” He had no clue how, but the promise sort of just spilled out, and he knew in that moment he’d do almost anything to keep it. “First we—”

“Stop,” she said quietly. “Please, just for a minute . . . can you not fix it? For a minute, just let me be scared and hold me and not do or say anything logical for sixty seconds?”

Wrapping his arms tighter around her, he murmured, “Yeah, sure,” and let her cry for a minute. After the tears slowed, he waited until her breathing had caught up to his, mimicking the rhythm of his chest rising and falling. And he knew the storm was past.

“Better?” he asked against her hair.

“Thank you.” She nuzzled his neck. “You can fix it now.”

He chuckled. “Oh, can I?”

“I know you can . . . but it’s mine to fix, I guess.” She sighed and sat up straight. He instantly hated the distance between them. She grabbed the paper behind her and stared at it a moment. “What’s this guy’s deal, anyway? He’s got a personal vendetta against the team.”

“Maybe that’s for you to find out.” He stroked her hair once more, then stood. “I need to get dressed for practice.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” Following his lead, she started picking out her clothes for the day. “I’ve got to grab a shower first. Will you be here when I get out?”

“Nah, I’ve gotta hit up my place for clothes. I’ll take off.” He kissed her briefly, then longer until she melted against him. One bare foot rubbed against his calf, and he was half-tempted to toss her on the bed and work out their frustrations together.

But they both had work. Work centered them, and he knew she’d feel worse if he made her late. So off to work they both went.

With his promise echoing in his head.

*   *   *

REAGAN sat in the lobby of the reserved, surprisingly small office of the Jacksonville newspaper. It wasn’t a large publication, and online media had eaten up a great deal of its readership as she’d come to find out. Each year, the paper seemed to shrink in terms of staffers. Perhaps their rabid reporter was working on a sensationalistic angle because of fear of being let go.

Not that she excused his choices. No way. But she could definitely understand the flames of failure licking at your heels.

“Ms. Robilard?” David Cruise stepped out from a hallway and looked surprised. He wore a pair of perfectly pressed pants, shiny shoes, and—to her surprise—a T-shirt instead of collared shirt or suit jacket like he had when at the gym interviewing the team. “I hear you’re here to see me?”

“Yes, I . . .” She blinked, then picked up her bag. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”

His eyes darkened, and she could see his mouth twitching behind his beard. But he led the way through a general work area with cubicles to what she assumed was a generic conference room. The lack of noise was disconcerting. Where were the staffers running around with coffee or the journalists barking into phones demanding quotes for articles? It was nothing like what she’d expected, based off movies and television. The few individuals who were there seemed very relaxed, and it was mostly empty.