Shayne was on the floor. Blood soaked the area around him, and his friend wasn’t moving. A gun was a few inches from his open palm.

Stephen Brushard was there. The guy had changed one hell of a lot from the picture that Brodie had seen, but he still recognized him. His eyes were the same—even if his face was a haggard shell of the man he’d been. Brushard had his gun aimed at Jennifer. Jennifer...bleeding, hurt, her face so pale and her eyes so desperate as she looked at Brodie with hope and horror plain to see on her beautiful face. She was struggling against her binds, and he saw her kick free of the ropes around her legs.

“Stay away from her!” Brodie yelled.

Stephen laughed. “I don’t have to get closer. She can die right here.”

The hell she could. “Drop your weapon!”

“That’s what the dirty cop said, too,” Stephen taunted him. “Guess how that ended?”

The guy’s weapon was pointed right at Jennifer.

“Are you trying to decide,” Stephen asked, “if you can kill me before I kill her? I mean, even if you get the shot off at me first...won’t my finger just spasm around the trigger and I’ll still wind up killing her? Are you thinking about that? Are you realizing that you can’t do any—”

“Roll!” Brodie roared.

Jennifer rolled her body.

Brodie fired. The bullet sank into Stephen’s chest. The man fired then, his bullet exploding from the weapon as his finger jerked on the trigger.

But Jennifer was still rolling away from Shayne’s still form. Stephen’s bullets just blasted into the cement floor, missing her.

Davis rushed in behind Brodie—even as Stephen fell to his knees.

Carefully, Brodie closed in on his prey. A big circle of blood was blooming on Stephen’s chest, but the guy was still alive. And he still had his weapon.

“Drop your gun,” Brodie said again.

Stephen’s head tilted back. His eyes were wide, blazing. “She...dies...” He tried to lift his gun again.

Brodie fired.

This time, Stephen’s body hit the floor.

“No,” Brodie said softly. “She doesn’t.”

Davis ran around him and kicked the guy’s gun away.

Brodie knew Brushard wasn’t a threat to anyone, not anymore. He turned his back on him and ran toward Jennifer. “Sweetheart?” He caught her shoulders and lifted her up. She was bleeding and shaking, and the terror he felt seemed to claw him apart.

“Just like...before...” Jennifer whispered. “Rushed in...to find me...”

Her hands were cuffed behind her. Where were the keys? “What did he do?”

“Knife...” Her lips trembled. Tears leaked from her eyes. “Didn’t think I’d...see you again...”

“He’s dead,” Davis said flatly, and Brodie heard his footsteps shuffle closer.

Brodie pressed a hard, frantic kiss to Jennifer’s quivering lips. “Like I would have let you go.” Never. He shoved the gun into the back of his waistband. Then his hands slid over her. There was so much blood on Jennifer. Too much. He lifted her into his arms, holding her close against his chest, his heart. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

He put his forehead to hers and tried to breathe.

“Sorry...” A hoarse whisper.

With Jennifer in his arms, he turned and saw that Davis was now bent over Shayne. His friend’s eyes were cracked open. Davis had his hands on Shayne’s chest, and he was trying to halt the terrible blood flow.

“Didn’t mean...for them to die...” Shayne managed. “Not...them...”

Brodie saw Davis’s body tense. “Did Stephen Brushard kill our parents?”

“N-no...”

“Did you kill our parents?” Davis asked, voice hoarse as he kept applying pressure on the wound. Kept trying to save the man who’d been a friend to them both for so long.

Who they’d thought had been a friend.

“No...”

“Do you know who did?” Davis demanded. “Damn it, tell us!”

Sirens screeched outside. Doors slammed. Footsteps pounded toward them.

Shayne whispered something to Davis.

“What?” Davis demanded. “What?”

But Shayne wasn’t saying anymore. Davis kept pushing on his chest, ordering the man to talk.

Cops burst into the garage. Brodie just held Jennifer tighter. To him, she was the thing that mattered most right then. Not finding his parents’ killer.

“I can’t lose you,” he said.

He turned away as the EMTs rushed in to work on Shayne. He carried Jennifer out of that garage. Hands reached for her, but he was the one who put her in the ambulance. He couldn’t let her go.

He laid her on the stretcher. Pushed her hair away from her cheek. A young EMT with blond hair and nervous hands quickly started inspecting Jennifer’s wounds.

“You keep saving me...” Jennifer whispered as she looked up at Brodie. “That’s a...habit you have.”

He bent, pressed a kiss to her lips. That bastard Brushard had shot her and used his knife on her. He could see the injuries now as the EMT tried to assess her. In that instant, Brodie wanted to kill the man all over again.

“Didn’t I tell you before?” he whispered back to her. “You can always count me on.”

She tried to smile for him, and that sight broke his heart.

The heart that was hers. Did she know it was?

The ambulance’s siren echoed around them.

“I love you, Jenny,” he said.

Her eyes widened. She shook her head.

“I. Love. You.”

His fingers twined with hers. “And I’ll say it over and over, for the rest of my life.” A life that wouldn’t have mattered much at all if he’d gotten into that garage too late. If he’d lost her...

No.

“Sir, are you coming with us to the hospital?” the EMT asked. “Or are you staying at the scene?”

He didn’t look away from Jennifer. She needed him. And I need her. It didn’t matter if the secrets he wanted were in that garage. The woman he loved was right in front of him. “I’m coming with you.”

The ambulance started moving.

“I love you,” he told Jennifer again, and his hold tightened on her.

* * *

DAVIS WATCHED AS Detective Shayne Townsend was loaded into the back of an ambulance. The EMTs were working frantically on him, but he wasn’t responding to them.

Davis knew a killing wound when he saw one—hell, he’d seen plenty during the field as a SEAL. Shayne wasn’t going to survive. The friend he’d known for years... Hell, Shayne was already gone.

And he took his secrets with him.

“Davis!”

He turned at the shout, and Davis saw his brother Grant running toward him. But the cops had just put up a band of yellow police tape, and they tried to keep Grant back.

Grant’s gaze fell on the body that was being wheeled out. A body that was carefully covered. Pain flashed on Grant’s face right before he shoved at the cops and snarled, “My brothers were in there! My—”

Davis hurried toward him. “That’s not Brodie. He’s fine.”

Grant sucked in a sharp gulp of air. “Where is he?”

“He went to the hospital with Jennifer.” His twin’s face had been so terrified as he held Jennifer, clutching her tightly against his chest.

“Is she...is she going to make it?” Grant asked carefully. Grant would understand just how terrified Brodie felt. Davis had watched Grant go through a similar hell when the woman Grant loved, Scarlett, had been attacked months before.

“I think so.” She’d better survive. He wasn’t sure what Brodie would do without her.

I don’t want to find out.

Guilt already ate at him. It was his fault that Jennifer had been taken. He’d known how important she was to his twin, but when the threat had been at hand, he hadn’t protected her.

Instead, Jennifer had saved him. He owed her now, more than he could ever repay.

“Shayne is the one who won’t make it.” Davis fought to keep the emotion from his voice. “I think the shot... It was too close to his heart.” The ambulance was racing away, but Davis knew the doctors wouldn’t be much good.