Two days later, Joe woke up after a night of shitty sleep. The cause could be attributed to a lot of reasons, but the biggest probability was a light-brown-eyed vixen he couldn’t get out of his head.

The night before, he and Kylie had eliminated another apprentice. He’d tried to go alone, but true to form, she’d insisted on going with him. She’d also insisted on once again disguising herself, a black wig this time, short and straight, with moody emo makeup that made it hard to concentrate, but she hadn’t wanted to jeopardize his efforts if it came down to them needing her to be unrecognizable.

It’d have been a lot easier if she’d just agreed to stay in the truck.

Or better yet, at home.

But Kylie wasn’t much of a pacifist. Not in this and not in life, as he’d learned by just watching her go at everything that was thrown at her with all she had. If he hadn’t already learned it by watching her at work or with her friends, he’d have learned it by kissing her.

Kylie gave everything her all, especially passion.

It made him want her in his bed. And as explosive as he knew they’d be together, it wasn’t all sexual. He’d known almost since that first kiss that she was someone worth going after. He’d been doing his damnedest to keep his emotions out of it, but he’d failed.

Spectacularly.

At this point, he was starting to realize that he was incapable of denying himself her. Or resisting her, proven by how she was the only one who could shake his legendary control. He was getting tired of fighting it.

But at the moment he had a job to do and nothing came before a job, which he said to anyone who asked how things were going. And people asked. Archer. Lucas. Molly. Everyone asked.

They were curious as hell about his feelings for Kylie. “It’s business,” he kept saying until he was blue in the face.

A lie, as nothing regarding his feelings for her was businesslike. This wasn’t good, as he’d promised himself she was only a distraction, an amusing, fun, sexy distraction, but nothing more. But even if that had been true, he couldn’t go there with her. She wasn’t exactly the type to hook up with him for one night and release some of this undeniable tension. And even if she was, they wouldn’t act on it because things would eventually go bad—they always did—and that meant Archer would kill him. Assuming, of course, that Elle didn’t get to him first.

Besides, he was busy cleaning up the streets of asshats and hopefully also cleaning up his karma while he was at it. He didn’t have time for this.

He finally fell asleep just before dawn and then overslept. He hit the office at a run to find Molly in the staff room, making coffee. She handed him a mug along with a sympathetic look. “You’re late. Again.”

“I know,” he said, willing the caffeine to kick in fast and give him grown-up manners.

“You must like having your ass chewed out.”

“Yeah, I live for it,” he said dryly and then turned and found Archer standing there, arms crossed, expression dialed to pissed off.

“Should I be rethinking you as my number two guy?” he asked. “Because if you can’t program a fucking alarm, then we have problems.”

Joe resisted rolling his eyes. “Sorry. Bad night.”

Archer dropped his arms and his bad ‘tude. “Your dad?”

“No.”

Archer looked at Molly, who went palms up. “Not me,” she said. “I’m good.” She paused and then got a worried expression. “Is it Kylie?” she asked Joe. “Did she get another pic from that asswipe?”

“What asswipe?” Archer wanted to know. “And why don’t I know about said asswipe?”

“She wanted it kept quiet,” Molly said. “She had a family heirloom stolen. And now the guy who stole it is toying with her, sending her pictures of the thing in peril. Joe’s on the case for her.”

Shit. Joe sent his sister a thanks a lot glare because Archer hated it when his guys took side jobs without informing him.

“You need help?” Archer asked him.

Joe looked at him in surprise.

“It’s Kylie,” Archer said simply.

All of them cared deeply for Kylie. Well, maybe some of them more than others, Joe thought.

“She need anything from us?” Archer asked.

“I have some research to do, was going to do that after work here.”

“Do it now.” Archer turned to Molly. “Mark him as busy this morning and not to be interrupted.”

Joe nodded at him. “Thanks.”

“Help our girl. You know where to find me if you need anything.”

Which was how Joe found himself glued to the computer in his office for the next few hours. He had a lead on their next apprentice, who’d moved to Santa Cruz. Sixty-year-old Raymond Martinez had changed his name to Rafael Montega, maybe to attempt a mile of the bad debts left in his wake, including a bankruptcy disaster. Rafael wasn’t woodworking anymore. He’d recently begun managing a little art gallery.

Joe sent Kylie a text that he was driving up there after work. “And five, four, three, two . . .” he murmured, smiling grimly when his phone buzzed a return text.

Of course she was. He texted that he’d pick her up after six o’clock.

But then he and the guys got held up on a job. One of their clients’ cases had gotten moved up on the board as needing immediate attention. The client’s very successful company had grossed close to fifty-five million dollars in the past year and was in the process of trying to sell itself to another entity.

Unfortunately their client discovered by accident that he was being embezzled. He’d been having lunch with a banker friend, who’d thanked him for opening a new business account at his bank and making such a large initial deposit.

The client freaked because he hadn’t opened any such account. He’d immediately reported the embezzlement to the police, who’d been slow to mobilize. That’s where Hunt Investigations had stepped in.

Yesterday, Archer had sent Joe and Lucas in to snoop around. They’d discovered the client’s receptionist was opening the mail and passing client checks to her partner-in-crime. This partner then filed a fictitious business statement, which enabled him to open a bank account in the client’s name and deposit the monies into his own account.

Joe had notified the bank and told them to let Hunt Investigations know when there was activity on the account. Almost immediately after, the suspect called the bank to ask why they’d not cleared a $55,000 check. Joe told the bank to tell the guy to come in and sign the check to get the funds. Joe and Lucas were parked outside the bank when the partner parked right next to them.

Unfortunately, somehow he smelled a rat, jumped back in his car, and took off, with Joe and Lucas in hot pursuit. Joe was driving and Lucas was on the phone with both law enforcement and Archer when the suspect started shooting at them.

Needless to say, the shooting ramped up police interest in a big way. They’d eventually caught up with the gun-toting rat and arrested him, but the incident had involved a lot of extra hours of reporting.

Joe hated reports.

In the good news department, the embezzler had been caught and Joe and Lucas had secured a very nice bonus for Hunt Investigations from the pleased and relieved client.

But it was nine o’clock that night before Joe got to Kylie’s place. He stood on the porch and once again remembered the other night, how he’d felt watching Gib come out of her apartment obviously in possession of a key, and his own over-the-top reaction.

Because he’d wanted it to be him.

Just as he lifted his hand to knock—since he didn’t have a damn key—he heard Kylie cry out from inside.

In five seconds he’d broken in and had his gun out. Sweeping his gaze across the room, he found Kylie on asleep on the couch, clearly in the throes of a bad dream. He quickly cleared the room and the rest of the apartment before coming back into the living room to crouch at her side. “Kylie,” he said softly.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, voice thick with tears, and for a minute Joe’s heart stopped because . . . she wanted him to stay?

He dropped to his knees and took one of her flailing hands in his. She squeezed it tight and pressed it to her heart. “Grandpa, please don’t die.”

Well, hell. All those of years living with his dad and then his own experiences in the military had taught Joe the dangers of waking someone up without warning. But this was Kylie and she’d been reduced to heart-wrenching whimpers, so he scooped her up into his arms and sat on the couch with her in his lap. “I’ve got you, Kylie.” He brushed a kiss to her damp brow. “You’re safe. Wake up now.”

At the sound of his voice she instantly came awake. He could tell by the sudden stillness of her entire body and how she stopped breathing. Pulling her in closer, he kept his mouth at her temple. “You okay?”

She let out a shuddery sigh and relaxed into him, pressing her face into the crook of his neck as she nodded. He didn’t believe it for a second, but sometimes one had to fake it to make it, so he let her have that one. “Bad dream?”

Face still buried against him, she nodded again. She had one arm around his neck, the other clutching something.

A photo.

Shit. He pried it from her fingers. It was the penguin, perched on the edge of a bonfire this time, tipped as if it was about to fall in. He started to get up, but she tightened her grip and he relaxed back into the couch, willing to give her whatever time she needed to compose herself. He held her close with one hand, using the other to pull out his phone to access the app that would bring up the feed of the security camera he’d installed outside her door the last time she’d gotten a delivery.

The camera recorded only when there was motion, so he could zip straight to any action, as he’d been doing two times a day since he installed the camera. He ran quickly through, pausing at the first action sequence—a cat chasing a bird.

And then a shadow arriving on the porch, time-stamped to several hours before.

Male.

Bulky.

He wore a hoodie sweatshirt and kept his face averted as he shoved the manila envelope into Kylie’s mail slot before vanishing into the night.

“I got a new pic,” she murmured, face still planted against him.

“I see that,” Joe said calmly, but he wasn’t actually calm at all. He was furious—for her.

“It upset me,” she said.

“Of course it did.”

“No,” she said, and then paused. “I mean it upset me because it showed the penguin near a fire.”

And he got that too. “Because of the warehouse fire.”

“Yes. It’s the setup. It’s a play on how he died.”

“But he didn’t die in the fire,” Joe said. “He died two days later when he succumbed to his injuries in the hospital.”

She blinked in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“Because I researched it.”

“Wait.” She stared at him. “You researched him? Did you research me too?”

“I research every job I take. It’s why I’m so good at what I do.”

“Right.” She nodded, scooting back away from him, making herself comfortable in a small ball on the far end of her couch. “I’m a job. Somehow I keep forgetting that.”

“Okay, not what I meant.”

“You researched me,” she whispered to herself.

“Yes.” Joe drew a deep breath and held eye contact as he gave her the rest. “And there’s something else. I put a security camera outside your front door. Motion sensor detection.”

She gasped. “You what?”

“I wanted to make sure you were safe and also hopefully ID whoever was doing this at the same time.”

“And?”

“And what?” he asked.

“I thought maybe you’d want to apologize for the camera thing.”

“No, because I’m not sorry,” he said.

She stared at him and he blew out a breath. “Okay, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said. “But not for the camera itself.”

She studied him and then nodded. “Did you get anything?”

“Not until tonight.” He showed her the feed. “Recognize him?”

“I can’t tell.” She shook her head. “He’s smart. He kept his head down and the hoodie up.” She slid him a look. “What did you learn about me? When you did your research?”

“Mostly stuff I already knew.” That she’d been raised primarily by her grandpa because they’d been teenagers when they’d had her and hadn’t been up to the task. A fact that’d been proven the time that a four-year-old Kylie had been found in the street in the middle of the night, having walked out the front door after being scared awake from a bad dream and finding out that she’d been alone in the house. Her dad hadn’t been in the picture by then and her mom had gone out for the night.

That’s when Kylie’s grandpa had stepped in and taken her. She’d grown up and attended an art high school where she’d showed big promise. The tragic warehouse fire had happened the summer following graduation.

Afterward, she’d taken a year off from school, then gotten her AA before entering in her chosen field. She’d worked for herself on her own for a short time before going to Reclaimed Woods.

She was looking at Joe and then suddenly she broke eye contact. “The dream I just had . . . It reminded me that there’s something I haven’t told you about, either. Something I wasn’t sure I was going to tell you at all.”

“Okay.” He tried to meet her gaze, but she wasn’t having it.

“It’s something I’ve never told anyone,” she said.

He got up and moved closer, sitting right next to her, and ran his hand up her back and into her hair, trying to soothe her. “You can tell me anything.”

She gave a mirthless laugh.

“Anything, Kylie.”

She shook her head. “You’re going to think different of me after you hear it.”

Gently he pulled on her ponytail until she looked at him. “Listen to me,” he said. “I’ve done and seen shit that would make your hair curl . . .” He spared a glance for her wavy hair and smiled. “More than it already is.”

She gave him a small smile but shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“I do understand,” he said. “I was an asshole punk when I was younger. And then in the military . . .” It was his turn to shake his head. “So trust me. There’s nothing you can tell me that would change my mind about you.”

“It’s my fault.” Her eyes filled with tears, but not a single one spilled over. “It’s my fault my grandpa died.”

He shook his head. “The fire was deemed an accident by the arson investigator,” he said. “It’s believed that possibly a soldering iron caught fire. Your grandfather was soldering some copper pieces onto a dresser but no one was listed as at fault.”

“I was the last one to use the soldering iron,” she said. “Which makes the fire my fault.”

“That wasn’t in the reports,” he said.

“No, because when my grandpa was transported to the hospital, he was awake. He told the police and firefighters that he was the last one to use the iron. I don’t know why.” She closed her eyes. “It was me. Which means the fire was all my fault.”

His heart squeezed tight. “Kylie, no. It wasn’t—”

“Yes! It was!” She jumped off the couch and scrubbed her hands over her face. “And on top of that, I lost everything that was his. I have nothing of my past except that penguin, and I want it back.” She grabbed a sweatshirt and yanked it over her head. “You said you had a lead on another apprentice. We doing this or what?”

“Yes,” he said carefully. “But it’s late and you’re upset. Maybe we should try this again tomorrow—”

“No,” she said. “Nothing matters except the penguin. I want to know whatever the hell you’ve found out.”

All he wanted to do was haul her back into his arms and hold her, but that yearning was his own problem. He’d bent his rules, changed his ways for her from the very start. They should probably talk about that, but she’d had enough emotional upheaval for one night. “I located Raymond Martinez,” he said. “He’s changed his name. He goes by Rafael Montega now and he’s managing a small gallery in Santa Cruz.”

She blinked. “Why would he change his name?”

“Let’s go find out.”