“I… I don’t have anything,” Brooke said, breathing evenly as she gazed up at the big men standing over her in the conference room. “Scott never gave me anything to hold for him.”

She’d been watching the film that Airman Reynolds put on for her when the doors had opened and a group of men came striding in. They were big. Lethal. She knew them all, however, because she’d either met them at Grace’s or she’d seen them at Buddy’s Bar & Grill on the rare occasions she’d gone there at Grace’s request.

Yes, they were big and scary—but she wasn’t as scared as she’d expected. She glanced at Cade, and her heart felt happy instead of anxious. He gave her strength. She knew that now. She smiled to let him know she was fine. Because she could see the hint of worry on his features, and she wanted him to know it was okay. She was okay.

“He hasn’t given you anything in the past few days? Did you get any unexpected mail?” Lieutenant Colonel Bishop asked. Ghost, she thought. They call him Ghost.

She pictured her desk and all the packages from clients and companies. She had a ton of unopened sample boxes she’d been meaning to get to—but they weren’t from Scott.

“Nothing unexpected, no.” The last thing she’d gotten had been a package the day she’d found Scott’s body. She hadn’t opened it, but it was from a company she’d been expecting stuff from. She’d gotten a call from the front desk, she’d gone downstairs—and come back to find Scott in front of her door. “Wait, yes, he gave me something. But it was just some books I loaned to him a while back. It was, uh, the day I found him.”

The men exchanged glances.

“Did you happen to look inside those books at all, Miss Sullivan?” Ghost asked.

“No. I put the bag on the bookshelf, I think. I didn’t take the books out. I would have put them away that evening, but I never got around to it because I found Scott on the floor. They should still be on the shelf. Or by the chair. Maybe.” She thought about Scott handing her the bag, her walking inside her condo, Max whirling… “Wait, no, they’re still on the entry table. I never got the chance to put them away.”

“What kind of bag?”

“A white plastic bag.”

“Titles?”

She had to think about it. “I only remember two of them.” She rattled them off. That seemed to be good enough for the colonel.

“I’m going to need to send someone to your apartment to retrieve those books, Miss Sullivan. Is that okay with you?”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. Do you think he put something in one of the books?”

“It’s hard to say for certain, but it’s possible.” He said a few more things, things that were hard to process about Scott and his feelings for her. Obsessed was the word that stuck in her head. Brooke couldn’t process it. Not right now.

“What about Amy?” she asked, because she couldn’t forget that Bert’s little girl was being held somewhere by bad men who would hurt her if they didn’t get what they wanted. “When will you rescue her?”

“We have to find where they’re holding her, but as soon as we know that, we’ll get her.”

Anxiety flared in her belly. “You can’t let them keep her. She’s probably scared out of her mind. And then there are her parents. They must be beside themselves.”

“We’re working on it, Miss Sullivan,” Ghost said. “I promise you, we’ll get her just as quickly as we can. If you’ll excuse us now, we have a lot of work to do.”

Brooke knew when she’d been dismissed. She wanted to tell this arrogant man where to shove it, but she also knew that he wouldn’t react. And that would be more infuriating than his dismissal.

Cade winked as he walked out with the others. She was annoyed at everything, and yet happiness glowed inside her at his look. Oh yeah, she was so gone over that man. But how did he feel?

---

Brooke attacked the dough with a vengeance. Grace sat at the kitchen island and watched her, a slightly bemused look on her face.

“You planning to kill the dough or make biscuits?”

Brooke blew out a breath, ruffling the hair that had fallen into her face. “I’m making biscuits.”

“You’re angry.”

“Not angry. Worried. Frustrated. Feeling itchy and edgy and all kinds of things I don’t even understand.”

“So…,” Grace said, lifting an eyebrow. “You and Saint, huh?”

The surge of warmth and happiness she’d grown used to feeling at the thought of Cade flooded her as usual. She smiled at her friend. Cade had brought her over to Grace’s and dropped her off over an hour ago. She’d wanted to climb him and kiss him and fuck his brains out all at the same time.

“Yeah. Silly, right?”

Grace shook her head. “Not at all. I told you these guys are lethal to our resistance. But honey, are you sure you’re ready for this?”

There was a pinprick of annoyance in her soul. But she understood where her bestie was coming from. “Even if I’m not, it’s too late. I’m in love with him.”

Grace’s eyebrows rose. “You’re sure? You haven’t known him all that long.”

Brooke rolled out the dough and gave her friend a significant look. “Seriously? You were with Garrett for how long before you fell for him?”

“About forty-eight hours,” Grace mumbled.

“Exactly.”

Grace ran her finger around the rim of her glass. She drank grape juice while Brooke had a barely touched glass of wine sitting nearby. “But honey… do you know how he feels?”

Brooke frowned because that right there was the fly in her soup. She had no idea how Cade felt. He hadn’t said. To be fair, she hadn’t told him either. They’d said things to each other about how this was different from anything they’d felt before, but they hadn’t quite taken the leap to actually declaring their love.

So maybe he didn’t love her at all. Maybe he felt responsible for her in a way. Maybe he was giving her what she wanted in the hopes of healing her, but his feelings weren’t engaged the same as hers.

She had no idea. Maybe she should have said something to him when he’d kissed her in his truck before delivering her to Grace.

“I know he cares,” she said and then felt like an idiot. It was such a nonanswer. The kind a lovestruck girl gave when she had no idea if the man she was obsessed with felt one-tenth the same.

“That’s good,” Grace said softly, and Brooke knew her friend was trying not to say what she really wanted to say.

“Just say it, Gracie,” Brooke told her.

“There’s nothing to say. I just hope he feels the same as you do. Because you deserve a man who’s crazy for you and treats you right.”

As opposed to a man who was just crazy for her but didn’t care what she wanted. She was still reeling from the revelation that Scott had been obsessed with her. Obsessed was the word Ghost had used, and she’d been turning it over in her head ever since. Cade hadn’t contradicted it when she’d looked to him for reassurance. On the ride over here, she’d asked him what Ghost had meant.

“Scott Lloyd was convinced you were his soul mate, I think. He was planning to ask you to marry him at some point.”

Brooke hadn’t understood it at all. She’d never given Scott any hints she felt anything for him. But she had gone on more than one date, though she’d known after the first one that nothing was going to happen. When she’d said that to Cade, he’d told her to stop.

“It’s not your fault, Brooke. None of this is your fault. He made bad choices, and he made choices that he tried to justify to himself by using you as an object to be acquired—but he was wrong, and you can’t let yourself feel bad for that.”

So she was working out her frustrations on this dough and trying not to feel guilty because Scott had done bad things while using her as a justification for it. She still didn’t understand why the men in the cartel had taken Bert’s daughter though. Cade’s face had grown blank when she’d asked.

“I’ll explain it when this is over. For now, you just hang out with Grace and I’ll let you know what’s happening when I can.”

She hadn’t liked that answer at all, but there was no arguing with her badass Special Operator boyfriend.

Boyfriend? Yeah, she kinda liked that. Though a small part of her thought it wasn’t a strong enough word.

“Cade has treated me right,” she said to Grace as her friend watched her over the marble expanse of the island. “More than right.”

“Have you slept with him yet?”

So many emotions in that question. Slept? That was not at all the word to describe what they’d done—multiple times—just last night and this morning. But this was her best friend in the world, and she wasn’t going to withhold information. Grace hadn’t done that to her once since she’d fallen for Garrett.

“Yes. And it was magnificent,” she said, unable to contain the broad smile that broke out over her face.

Grace’s eyebrows lifted again. “Wow. I didn’t think… You haven’t been with anyone that I know of in two years. Have you?”

Brooke felt guilty that she’d kept so much from her friend. She shook her head. “There were things I didn’t tell you about that night when I was taken.” Grace’s face fell, and Brooke rushed over to put an arm around her and squeeze her tight, all while trying not to get flour all over her. “It’s okay, sweetie. None of it was your fault, and that’s why I never told you. Because I knew you would think it was. One of the men—he didn’t rape me in the conventional sense, but he put his fingers inside me and threatened me. It’s not your fault and it’s not Garrett’s fault and I’m going to be pissed as hell if you start thinking it is.”

“I had no idea,” Grace whispered, her voice clearly strained as tears shimmered in her eyes.

“I know. And I still wasn’t going to say a word to you about it, but I think—well, I think this thing with Cade has made me realize just how important it is to be honest about everything. It’s part of the healing process, and you’re my best friend in the whole wide world. I only kept it from you because I knew you’d blame yourself.”

Grace caught Brooke’s floured hands and squeezed them, uncaring about getting the white stuff all over her pretty clothes. “Yes, of course I would have! Hell, I still feel like you got dragged into that because of me—and I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’ll tell you like Cade told me—when people choose to do bad things, it doesn’t matter if they use you as a justification, it’s not your fault. You didn’t make those choices. They did. Did you know, when your brilliant mind did what it did at the lab, that there were people willing to kill for your research? And that they’d target your friends and family? No, of course not. And once you did know that people would kill for it, you did the best you could to keep it out of enemy hands. Which you were successful at.”

“I wish I’d never discovered that damn virus! I’ve always felt that if there’s a global pandemic, it’ll somehow be my fault.”

“It you hadn’t discovered it, someone else would have. And now that the virus is there, you have people working on vaccines. That can’t be a bad thing.”

Grace sniffed. “Well damn, here I just made this about me when it’s about you and what you went through. I’m sorry he did that to you, Brooke. And that you’ve been suffering for so long.”

“I shouldn’t have let it fester. I should have at least told my therapist, which I did not. I know, I know,” she said when Grace looked shocked. “I shut it down completely. I thought if I pretended that part didn’t happen, then I could deal with it on my own when I learned how to deal with the fear of someone coming in my house and getting me. But I never did.” She shrugged. “But Cade told me I needed to tell the doctor. And he’s right.”

“You told him what happened?”

“Please don’t be mad I told him before I told you.”

Grace shook her head. “I’m not. I’m just… Wow, I had no idea there was anything between you two. Not like this.”

“I hope there’s something between us.” She bit her lip and glanced at the giant clock on the wall that was part of the French-country decor. “I can’t help but worry about him, you know?”

Not that she’d told Grace what was really going on with Scott or Amy Lewis or the cartel. The reason she’d given Grace for coming to stay with her tonight was that Cade had to be at HOT and Brooke didn’t want to stay home alone yet.

Grace smiled softly. “I definitely know. Garrett has been gone for over two weeks now. It never gets easier. I think I hoped—no, I know I hoped when Daddy got elected that Garrett wouldn’t be allowed to go anymore. He fought for the right to stay with his unit though. How can I try to take that away from him? Or demand he give it up? I can’t.”

Brooke went back to her dough, rolling it out so she could make biscuits. She didn’t know why she wanted to make biscuits, but she found it soothing to play with the dough. Not that she’d offered biscuits in her bakery, but she had offered scones. Similar. Sort of.

“No, you can’t. And I guess I can’t either. Not that Cade and I are at that stage. But it scares me to think of what he does.”

Grace’s look was a little sad, a little too knowing. “Yes, it does.”

Brooke’s stomach was a hard knot cowering in her abdomen. “You never really let on, you know that? I mean I knew, based on my experience with HOT, but I didn’t really know. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense.” Grace stood and came around the island. “Okay, let’s stop talking about the bad stuff and get these biscuits in the oven. The girls are coming over, and we’ve got to get ready.”

Brooke’s heart skipped. When Grace had told her she was inviting some of the HOT women over for dinner, Brooke hadn’t been sure she wanted that. She still wasn’t sure. But Grace had already invited them, so there was no backing out now. It wasn’t that Brooke didn’t know them or like them, but her feelings about Cade were still so raw that she wasn’t quite done processing them. How would she hide her fear and worry while they were here?

Her cell phone rang and she jumped on it, flour, lard, and all. It took a couple of tries, in which she smeared her screen with sticky dough, but she got the call answered and held the phone to her ear while her heart pounded.

“Cade?”

“Hi, angel. You doing okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“Doing good. We’re still working on this thing. I might not be in touch for a while. Just wanted to let you know that.”

Brooke gripped the phone tight, goose bumps prickling her skin. “Okay.”

“Gotta go, angel. Think of me tonight.”

“I will… Cade?”

“Yeah, angel?”

“I…” She swallowed. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too, angel.”

The line went dead. Brooke had to remind herself to breathe. Then she turned and pasted on a smile. Grace was frowning.

“Everything okay, Brooke?”

“Yep. Just fine. Let’s get busy on the shrimp and grits, okay?”

They worked on the food for another hour, and when it was all hot and piping and perfect, the HOT women showed up. There was Evie Girard, without her kids who were with their nanny; Georgie McKnight; Olivia Blake; Lucky MacDonald; Emily Gordon; Sophie Daniels; Annabelle Davidson; and Christina Marchand. The other women—Gina Hunter, Victoria Brandon, Miranda McCormick, Ivy Erikson, and Kat Mendez—were unable to make it this time.

They crowded around the table, eating and talking for hours. Brooke felt like one of them, though they didn’t know she was involved with Cade because she’d asked Grace not to say so just yet. But if and when that happened, she knew she’d love being a part of their sisterhood. They made this life seem so normal, so doable. If they could deal with their men being gone for long stretches, so could she.

By the time the last cupcake was eaten—because of course she’d baked cupcakes after she’d made biscuits—and the last cup of coffee was consumed, it was almost ten o’clock in the evening. They said their goodbyes with hugs and promises to do this again soon.

When the house was empty, Grace yawned and stretched. “Ordinarily I’d suggest we watch a movie together, but I’m beat.” She frowned. “In fact, I’m beat quite often these days.”

“Pregnancy hormones,” Brooke said. “You know that.”

“Yes, I do.” She sighed. “Still, I guess I’d thought it might be different for me.”

“Why? Because you’re a hotshot scientist?”

Grace snorted. “Something like that.” She stretched, putting a hand on her back as she did. “Good night, Brooke. I love you and I want you to be happy.”

“I love you too,” Brooke said, hugging her friend. “And I am happy.”

Grace left her alone in the downstairs. The house was quiet because the Secret Service had their own area and stayed out of the main living quarters. Brooke went and got Max to take him out in the yard for a last run.

A guard nodded to her as she let Max off the leash. She felt safe here, and yet she also felt helpless. Amy Lewis was out there somewhere, scared and alone, and Cade was preparing to head into danger in order to rescue her.

All because Scott had been a criminal asshole who’d fooled Brooke with his bumbling gee-shucks ways.

Her cell phone rang and she glanced at the screen before answering. It wasn’t Cade though, but it was still important.

“Bert? Have they found Amy?”

The man on the other end of the line burst into tears. “No, not yet.”

Brooke’s throat ached. “They will. I know they will. You just have to have faith.”

“I’m trying… Miss Sullivan, please, I need your help. It’s Shelly…”

Brooke’s heart skipped a beat. “What can I do for Shelly?”

“She’s losing hope. I need you to talk to her.”

“Put her on the line.”

“No, please. She needs to see your face, Miss Sullivan. You’re the only one she’ll believe.”

“But I don’t know anything…”

“She trusts you. You’re honest, and you’ll talk her off the ledge. Please.” He broke down, and Brooke’s throat closed up.

“Where are you?”

“We’re at the IHOP.” He told her the name of the street. “If you could just come by and talk to her.”

Brooke squeezed her eyes shut. Cade had told her not to leave Grace’s house. She didn’t want to leave Grace’s house.

And yet it wasn’t far to the IHOP. She owed poor Shelly Lewis that much, didn’t she? She could get a taxi, pop over, and be back in an hour. IHOP was a public place. A taxi wasn’t, but so long as the Secret Service put her in it and took down the information, no taxi driver would think of raping her. On the way back— Well, maybe she could get Bert and Shelly to drop her.

“Okay,” she said, her throat still tight. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

---

They’d been at this for hours now. Cade rubbed his eyes and cracked a yawn. Hacker sat at the computer, the blue light glowing in his face, his concentration not ebbing at all. They’d gone to Brooke’s place and retrieved the books. There’d been a flash drive tucked into one of them.

Cade had been angry when they’d discovered it. The motherfucker had put Brooke in danger, not only with his dealings with the cartel but also by using her to hide the evidence. He hadn’t been subtle in his obsession, which meant he’d painted a target on Brooke’s back too.

Because Bert Lewis knew that Scott was obsessed, and he’d no doubt shared that knowledge with the men who’d paid him for information. Which meant they could reasonably expect that Brooke might have knowledge of where Scott Lloyd had hidden his information.

Cade hadn’t told Brooke about Bert. He hadn’t been able to do it, not when she’d been through enough shocks recently. If he’d had to tell her that her favorite security guard was responsible for allowing criminals unauthorized access to the building, it would have crushed her. She had enough to worry about knowing that the cartel had Bert’s daughter.

Bert and his wife were currently sitting in a DEA field office, waiting for news about their daughter. Since Bert’s involvement in the scheme was murky at best, he wasn’t being charged with anything. Yet.

Ivy Erikson was working the case from that side, which meant Viking was here with them, waiting for a go order if the SEALs were needed. He was the liaison between the DEA and HOT at the moment. The whole damned thing was a clusterfuck, and Cade couldn’t wait for it to be over.

He wanted to get Amy Lewis to safety, and then he wanted to spend the next couple of days in bed with Brooke.

Hacker was still working on the files. Lloyd had encrypted his information with something a little better than your typical household encryption, and Hacker was busy running his programs, trying to break in.

“Not much longer,” he said when he looked up and caught Cade’s gaze.

As soon as they had the information on where Lloyd had sent the weapons, they’d have something to negotiate with. At least until they could figure out where Amy was being held so they could go and rescue her.

And then they needed to mop up the cartel’s men in the US because if they didn’t, Brooke—and Bert, though Cade wasn’t too inclined to give a shit about him right now—would never be safe. It pissed Cade off to think of how Lloyd had dragged Brooke back into a world of shadowy players and illegal transactions. The very things she’d never wanted to experience again, and he’d thought nothing of pulling her into his world. Pulling her into danger.

“Halle-fucking-lujah,” Hacker said about five minutes later, both fists pumping in the air.

Cade was on his feet. “You got it?”

“I’m in. Need to sort it all out, but the information is— Wow, this shit is detailed. Yeah, I’ll find where he stashed ten thousand semi-auto rifles before we’re done.” Hacker was scanning the documents as he scrolled. “Jesus, this dude was sitting on millions in illegal sales revenue if this is anything to go by.”

Cade went to look over his shoulder. Malcolm “Mal” McCoy whistled as he looked over Hacker’s other shoulder. “Damn. How many guns did he shuffle for those guys? And how much did he skim for himself without Black Eagle knowing?”

Viking strode into the room with Harley, who’d gone to get him once Hacker broke into the files. The tall blond Navy SEAL looked fierce.

“You’ve got enough to bury those motherfuckers?”

“Yep, it’s all here. It’ll take someone with more patience than I have to parse it out, but there’s enough here to interest the DEA and ATF for quite some time.”

“I’ll call Ivy.”

Cade glanced up. “Nothing from the Espinozas?”

“Ivy said that Bert got a call, but it wasn’t them. It was his supervisor at his regular day job.”

“So no more demands then.”

“Not yet.”

Cade scraped a hand over his head. “I don’t like any of this. It’s not adding up. They take the little girl, tell Bert to find those files, but then don’t call back to demand anything else in hours? Why not?”

“That’s a good question,” Viking said. “But we won’t know anything until he hears from them again.” Viking’s government-issued phone rang. “Hey, baby.”

Cade and the others watched him, wondering if the cartel had made contact with Bert Lewis. But the look on Viking’s face wasn’t encouraging. In fact, it set the alarm bells in Cade’s gut to ringing like they’d been swept up in a tornado.

“Yeah,” Viking said grimly. “Thanks, honey. Gotta go. You too.”

“What happened?” Cade asked, his gut churning with apprehension.

Viking looked pissed and distressed all at once. “Bert was lying. The call he took wasn’t his supervisor at all. It was Andreas Lopez… He made another call after he got off the phone with Lopez. I’m sorry, Saint,” he began, and Cade’s world started to crack in two. “He called Brooke and told her he needed her help. She left Grace Spencer’s house an hour ago. Shit, man, I’m sorry. But they’ve got her. The cartel took her.”