Nate came to betray me.

She’d trusted him, worked side by side with him for so long. She’d been trying to protect him, but he’d been in the hunt for her all along. It was really true... Her former life had been nothing but a lie.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the sink. She wasn’t going to let Nate see her tears. She wasn’t going to let him see her pain at all. So she stood in that bathroom, and she didn’t make a sound as the tears fell. Those tears...they were for the friend she’d thought she had. They were for the life that had been hers for too many years...a life that was dead and buried now.

When the tears were done, she swiped her hands over her cheeks. Her eyes gleamed in the mirror. There’s still too much pain there.

She pinched her cheeks, trying to bring back some color. Never let them see your weakness.

That had been Nate’s advice, the first day that she’d been paired with him. She’d been so nervous. Her legs had been shaking like crazy. But he’d smiled at her, tapped her on the chin. Told her...

We’re in this together. An old pro and a rookie... They’ll never see us coming.

And they hadn’t.

Just as... I hadn’t seen Nate’s betrayal coming.

“Jennifer?” Brodie called. A light rap sounded on the door. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” Her voice was too flat, but at least it didn’t tremble. One more swipe of her hands over her cheeks, and then Jennifer turned away from her reflection.

Her head was pounding as Jennifer opened the bathroom door. Brodie was waiting in the hallway, and he straightened when he saw her. “You okay?”

No. She wanted to collapse some place, but Jennifer made herself nod. “I’m fine.”

“The hell you are.” Then he was wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. She wanted to sink into him and pretend the nightmare around her wasn’t real.

But it is. And I can’t escape from it.

“You don’t have to go in there,” he said as his arms tightened around her. “Grant and Sullivan can handle the interrogation. They’ve got backup coming. I called in Shayne Townsend.”

Shayne, right, he was the Austin police detective that she knew Brodie had contacted before.

“He’ll be here within twenty minutes—”

“I need to talk with Nate.” She pulled back as she stared up into his eyes. “I have to face him.” She’d face Nate and his betrayal head-on, even if it ripped out her heart. “I can get to him—I know I can.”

Brodie’s face was grim. “He wants you dead.”

Apparently, there was a line of people who did. She eased away from him and immediately missed the reassuring warmth of his body. “He’s not getting what he wants.” But she would get her answers. “He knows the man who is after me. I’ll get him to talk. I’ll get him to tell me everything he knows.”

“You’ll play nice with him—is that it?” Brodie asked her.

No, there wasn’t going to be anything nice about what was coming.

“Fine,” he said softly. “But if he doesn’t talk, then my brothers and I will get our turn with him. I assure you, there won’t be anything nice about the way we play.”

She believed him.

Brodie shook his head. “You’re trembling.”

Nate betrayed me. When would the pain from that blow lessen?

But how she felt didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, not then. She and Brodie both needed to be safe. They needed the threat gone. “I want to talk with him now,” she whispered as she stared up into Brodie’s eyes.

His sigh was rough. “Fine. But you need to know...whatever he says in there, whatever he reveals, you’re safe, got it? I will be with you every moment, and I need you to know that you’re safe...with me.”

Her hand lifted, pressed lightly to the stubble that lined his jaw. “I already do know that.” Why else would she have come to Austin in the first place? She’d always felt safe with Brodie. He was the one who shouldn’t feel safe with her.

“I’m staying by your side,” he told her, voice gruff. “Every moment,” he said once more.

“That sounds like a good idea to me.” By her side—that was exactly where she wanted him to be.

“First, though,” Brodie muttered, “I need this.” And he kissed her. A soft, light caress of his lips against hers.

Tears stung her eyes again. She leaned into him, let that kiss linger. Her lips parted beneath his, and Brodie deepened the kiss. He seemed to savor her, and she just needed him. So much. The kiss had passion, but it also had...more. Emotion seemed to swell in the air around her, and there was a tenderness, a care to his touch that had her whole body tightening.

When he pulled back, his hand lifted. The back of his hand slid over her cheek. “I don’t like to see you cry.”

She hadn’t realized that the tears had escaped. She should have been more careful, but she’d been lost in him for a moment. “Brodie...”

A door opened down the hallway. Grant stuck his head out and frowned at them. “Are you two all right?”

She was shattering on the inside, but Jennifer managed, “Yes.” Brodie was at her side as they walked down that hallway and as they headed into Grant’s office.

Nate had been handcuffed to a chair. He sat there, glaring at her when she walked into the room. Grant moved to stand on Nate’s left. Sullivan, looking like an even rougher, angrier version of Brodie, stood positioned at Nate’s right.

“You’re going to let them do this to me?” Nate shouted at her as he yanked at his cuffs. Each wrist was handcuffed to the chair. “After all I did for you?”

Brodie was right at her side, just as he’d said he would be. “What you did for me?” Jennifer repeated, head shaking. “We worked together because we were assigned that job.” She tried to take slow, even breaths. Tried to look as though she were controlled, when really her heart was racing like mad in her chest.

“I could have let them kill you in the Middle East! I’m the one who called in the favors. I’m the one who got lover boy over there—” Nate’s eyes flashed at Brodie “—to go in and save you.”

Brodie’s shoulders rolled. “That’s lie number one.”

Nate tensed.

“We’ve been doing some digging of our own,” Grant murmured, never moving from his guard position near Nate. “You see...we have quite a few government contacts, too.”

Jennifer didn’t know if Brodie and Grant were bluffing or not, but the quick break in Nate’s expression told her plenty. Her stomach knotted. “You didn’t want to save me. You wanted to save yourself. You were afraid that my captors might break me, and I’d tell them about you.”

He glanced away from her.

“I wouldn’t have done that to you,” she whispered, and the words were the absolute truth. “I would have protected you.”

His gaze was directed just over her shoulder. He won’t look me in the eyes. “Nate!”

He jerked. “You don’t know what you’d do if the right pressure was applied. No one ever knows, not until it’s too late.”

She stepped toward him. “Is that what’s happening? Is someone applying pressure to you now?”

There were monitors to the right of Grant. Security feeds that showed different interior and exterior shots of the building. She saw Grant glance over at them. A man had just appeared in the feed on the lower right.

“Detective Townsend is here,” Grant said with a slight roll of his shoulders. “Sullivan, go let him in.”

Sullivan gave a curt nod and slid from the room.

Nate laughed. “A cop? What’s a cop going to do? I haven’t broken any laws! He can’t do a thing to me!”

Brodie’s glittering stare raked Nate. “You’re working with the man after Jennifer. You already admitted that you called him.”

Only the guy pulling Nate’s strings must have realized that they weren’t falling for his trap. He hadn’t shown at the parking garage.

Nate’s mouth clamped closed. Then his lips twisted. “There a law against making a phone call?”