Carlo stood before them with the paunchy man, Reggie, as well as an older guy who Max took to be the boss. The old man’s craggy face spoke of age combined with experience—he was clearly a gangster, through and through.

“Who the hell are these people, Carlo?” he asked gruffly.

“These are the two I just spent the weekend with.” Carlo looked Max squarely in the eye and shook his head, his voice deadly serious. “Maxxy boy, you made yourself a big mistake coming here. And bringing Kimberly?” He continued to shake his head. “Bad move, Max. Bad move.”

Max didn’t reply. But Carlo’s words echoed in his heart—bringing Kimberly here had indeed been a monumentally bad move. And had he really managed to trip over a damn waste can? He sighed, worried and tired as hell—it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that they’d been caught.

“I don’t know why you followed me, Max—if you were trying to play the big hero for your wife or what—but I can promise you this. You just got yourself in deeper trouble than you can even imagine.”

“You know what to do, boys,” the boss said then—and as Carlo and Reggie started toward them, Max’s fight or flight instincts kicked in, and he knew this would probably require a little of both.

“Run, babe!” he said.

A few feet away, Kimberly picked up an old black telephone from the desk and flung it at Carlo, dinging him in the head and knocking him back a few steps. Meanwhile, Max found himself wrestling with Reggie, who—stronger than he looked—succeeded in knocking him backward onto the desk. But the position gave Max leverage and he managed to get to his feet even as he threw a right to Reggie’s gut, then a left to his eye.

He saw his cell phone skitter across the floor amid the fight—just as he heard Kimberly’s voice. “Back here, Tate!”

A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that she’d opened a door at the rear of the office, and if she was calling him toward it, it must be more than a closet. Reggie was recovering his balance now and Max just eluded his grasp, circling the desk and dashing through the door, which led back out into the warehouse through a pathway lined with steel drums.

“Run, Brandt—I’ll catch up!” he yelled.

It took a few precious seconds and all the strength Max possessed, but he managed to haul down one of the large 55-gallon drums to send it rolling toward his pursuers. And after a few more steps, he brought a crate crashing down, too, shattering a mountain of dishes in the path.

Max’s heart beat a mile a minute by the time he found Kimberly huddled behind yet another row of wooden containers.

“Don’t make a sound,” he warned her in a near-silent whisper.

Every nerve in Kimberly’s body was tensed and ready for action. Daring to peek around the wall of crates that currently protected them, she spotted Carlo and the old boss man across the way. Now Carlo carried a gun.

“Find them!” the boss exploded. “Now!”

They hadn’t been seen yet, but this was definitely not a good enough hiding place. Obviously thinking the same thing, Max’s voice came in her ear in a barely discernible whisper. “As soon as the three of them get a little farther away, we make a run for it. Follow me.”

She nodded.

Fortunately, their pursuers went in the opposite direction, and a moment later, Max said, “Let’s go.” After which they scurried quietly from their hiding place, ducking between another row of boxes and crates, passing behind a forklift, hand in hand.

That was when an announcement blared over unseen loudspeakers. “Attention. We have two trespassers on the premises. Find them and bring them to my office without delay!”

The voice belonged to the boss and the announcement meant there were more than just the three men in the building with them. Maybe a lot more. Maybe with a lot more guns. Shit—this was bad.

Max yanked her down the row of crates toward the other side of the warehouse until they reached the end of the aisle. When he cursed softly, she glanced up to see that more seedy-looking men had just appeared on the route ahead. A group of four stood conferring in a circle.

And before she and Max could even think about backtracking, they were spotted. “Hey, you there!”

At this, Max took off, dragging her frantically across the floor as she struggled to keep up. She had no idea where they were headed, and no other choice than to simply trust his instincts.

“Hold it!”

“Come back here!”

The voices behind her were close, too close, as she tried to keep up with Max.

“You can’t get away, Max!” That voice belonged to Carlo.

And without warning, Max flung her aside and turned to face Carlo and his henchmen head on. “You want to make a bet!” He leapt behind a mountain of crates then and gave a mighty heave, sending them all falling before the encroaching men, blocking their path with a loud crash of splintering wood and breaking glass.

Then his hand was back in hers and they were running, running, until they came to a large steel door. He yanked it open and she went instantly heartsick to find that it wasn’t an exit, but a large closet.

“In here,” he said anyway.

She rushed in and he followed, shutting the big door behind them, leaving them in the dark. Inside, they both stayed quiet and stood close as their breathing began to slow. She couldn’t help leaning into him, and he rested his back against the cinderblock wall and hugged her, warm and tight and long. No hug in her life had ever felt so comforting.

Outside, footsteps finally faded and gradually she began to feel that they were safe, at least for right now. Her heartbeat slowed as she began to relax for the first time since they’d come into this building.

And then Max’s strong hands began to move, slow and still ever-so-comforting, roaming her shoulders and back. It felt too good to her, and she let her fingers curl slightly into his shirt as sensation trickled to her breasts, and then to her panties below.

But when he began to pull her closer, his caresses growing slightly deeper…when the only sound was that of their breath growing gently labored…Kimberly realized they were on the verge of descending into a desperate, slow-burning passion that could only escalate. As his touch skimmed deliciously over her hips and then higher, higher, his palms grazing the sides of her breasts, she came to her senses. “Max,” she whispered.

“What?” he murmured, one hand stopping at the side of her breast, beginning to cup her there, his thumb stroking across her nipple, through her bra.

The exquisite sensation made her back arch as the juncture between her thighs spasmed. “Wh-what are you doing?” It came out too breathy.

His own voice sounded raspy, and sexy as hell. “Touching you.”

Her response to him was impossible to push down—always had been, and that made protesting considerably harder, yet… “Max, are you crazy? Think about where we are. We’ve…we’ve got to figure out what to do.”

With a slow, heavy sigh, he lowered his hand. “You’re right. Damn—I’m sorry, babe. I was…a little out of my mind.” He ran one hand back through his dark hair in the shadowy light that had gradually grown around them as her eyes adjusted.

“It’s okay,” she said, palms still at his chest. She could feel the beating of his heart “But we’ve gotta keep our heads here.”

He nodded. And then they went silent—his grip suddenly tightening on her waist when voices could be heard again nearby.

“Where the hell could they be? They didn’t just disappear into thin air.”

“All the entrances are guarded, so they couldn’t have gotten out.”

The voices faded to obscurity nearly as quickly as they’d been detected, but the words Kimberly and Max had heard were enough to tell them they’d have to stay where they were—for who knew how long.

He released a heavy sigh and lifted a consoling hand to her cheek. “Looks like we may as well get comfortable, babe.”

* * *

The closet was even larger than Max had realized—and was actually more of a storage room. Narrower at the front by the door, it widened in back, a compartment veering off to the left packed with boxes. He moved just enough of them so that he and Kimberly could barricade themselves behind them and be out of sight should anyone come in.

Now they sat side by side, their backs against the wall. Everything around them was quiet—but Max could only assume the place was being searched from top to bottom. While he held out hope for escape, he didn’t feel great about their chances at this point.

“I’m sorry, Kimberly,” he felt compelled to say.

She turned to look at him through the shadowy air, the only light that which seeped under the door. “Sorry? For what?”

“Sorry you’re in this mess with me. Sorry I didn’t make you stay outside. Sorry I kicked over that wastebasket.”

“Let’s get something straight here, Max. I’m in this mess with you because it’s my job to be. I know you don’t have much faith in me professionally, but there’s nothing you could have done to make me wait for you outside.”

There were things he wanted to say, things that lingered on the tip of his tongue and wanted to spill out. I’m glad it’s you I’m here with, babe. Good P.I., bad P.I., none of that matters now. I never allowed myself to miss you, but being with you these last two days have made me realize how much I did. But he only sighed instead, maybe still not quite ready to admit the truth to himself—and then he reached out to take her hand. “Kimberly, tell me about…the Carpenter case.”

Kimberly nearly went numb. He’d said it slowly, like it would be as hard for him to hear as it would be for her to tell—but he was giving her the chance now, the chance to finally explain what had happened on that ill-fated day.

She took a deep breath and tried to think where to begin.

“Well, I found out my mother was dying on the day I blew the case,” she started. From the corner of her eye, she saw his gaze swing around to land on her, but she kept talking. “She called me around noon to tell me she’d been diagnosed with cancer, stage 4. She’d known something was wrong and had been seeing doctors and getting tested without telling me, because she didn’t want me to worry. I wasn’t supposed to meet with Margaret Carpenter until later that afternoon, so I was taking it easy in my apartment—letting her assume I was at work. So after the call, I rushed out the door to go be with Mom—and my cat got out into my building’s common hallway.”

“Misha?” Max said, stunning her once more by recalling a small detail about her life, even if it was only her cat’s name.

She nodded. “I’d already locked my door, and I was frazzled and not thinking straight—but I saw my neighbor, Mrs. Baines, coming in, and she said she’d catch Misha and take her to her place. I figured I’d get her when I came home before going to meet Margaret. Nothing really mattered besides seeing my mom right then, you know?”

“Of course.” He spoke quietly and squeezed her hand. And she tried to let it buoy her as she sank deeper into all the bad memories of that day.

“When I got to her house, we both cried and it was…well, rough is an understatement.” She had to take a deep breath and steel herself to go on. “I wanted to stay with her and even thought about calling Margaret to reschedule, but Mom insisted I go on and do my job. So I headed home to change and when I got there—” her throat seized up, but she swallowed hard and forced the rest out, “—Misha was lying in the street. Dead.”

“Aw, babe,” he murmured.

It struck her funny that the memory of her dead cat came closer to causing tears now than the part about her mother, but—like then—it was the culmination of the events happening all at once that had the ability to make her feel so weak and helpless.

She took a deep breath and forged ahead. “Apparently, Mrs. Baines had trouble catching her—Misha was always afraid of strangers—and when one of the other tenants left the building, Misha ran out the door and got hit by a car. I picked her up and lay her on the sidewalk and cried until Mrs. Baines came out with a shoebox and helped me put Misha inside it. And then I pulled myself together and got ready to go meet Margaret.”

Now Max was running his thumb lightly back and forth over the top of her hand. “You should have cancelled with her, Kimberly,” he said sweetly.

“I know that now.” She sighed. “Believe me, I know it. But at the time, I was on auto pilot—still reeling from the news about my mom and just pushing my way through the day, trying to get to the end of it, I guess.

“So I went to Margaret’s house, ready to work. But Margaret…well, despite what she did, Max, she was a very sweet woman. She immediately saw that something was off and asked me what was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t tell her, but I truly liked her, and I had to tell her something—and you always taught me that it’s best to stick as close to the truth as possible when undercover. So I told her about my mother, and about what happened to Misha, too. Of course—” she stopped, rolled her eyes, “—I had to make up a stupid story about Misha being my friend’s cat and not my own, or Misha would have been there with me at the bungalow. Having to lie in the middle of all that didn’t help. But anyway, Margaret listened to me, and I knew she really cared, and it helped.”

She paused again, readying herself for the next part—since this was the part Max had really asked her to tell him about. “Then her son came in.”

“Our client,” Max said.

She nodded, hardly caring about that fact. “I could tell immediately that Margaret was afraid of him. Like I’d told you before, he was gruff when he spoke to her. He didn’t even knock on the door of her little house—just barged right in. And he ignored me completely. I was already so upset that seeing how he treated her made me angry.

“Margaret was clearly living on a shoestring, something I started thinking about while her son was there, and it helped me get back in a working frame of mind. After he left, I finally got down to business. I talked about the money she wanted to invest—and I casually asked her where she’d gotten it. She told me that she’d saved a little here, scrimped a little there. I said, ‘Your son doesn’t help you out with the bills?’ And she said, ‘No, I only have what I get from Edgar’s social security.’

“And then—then I noticed these bruises on her arm, mainly because they were like fingerprints, like someone had grabbed her too hard. I asked her about them. And she blushed and looked away and started fiddling with the doily on the table next to her. When I pressed her for an answer, she finally admitted that her son had done it. She told me they’d argued and he’d pushed her. She tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but I couldn’t see it that way.

“And that’s when I cracked, Max. I quit caring about the case and started caring more about Margaret. And I told her the truth about why I was there, why I had gotten to know her. I told her everything.”

She barreled ahead now. “I know it was wrong. I know it was stupid. And I regret it more than anything I’ve ever done. It was the biggest mistake of my life. It cost me my job. And worse, it cost you yours and you had nothing to do with it.” She turned to face him in the shadows then, surprised and comforted that he still held her hand, even now. Their faces were close. “I know this doesn’t help or change anything, but I’m so very sorry, Max. I was so wrong to let my emotions get in the way of what I was there to do, and I’m so sorry for all the harm it caused.”

She waited then—for him to turn cold, or at least cool. That’s how it had been on the day they’d gotten fired. And it was how he’d reacted a few days ago when she’d tried to explain. Now she finally had explained, and it suddenly hit her—it wasn’t a very good excuse. Her emotions had gotten in the way? How utterly lame. How completely unprofessional.

“I understand,” Max said softly then, slowly, as if amazed by his own words.

But he couldn’t have been anymore amazed than she was. She drew back slightly, regarding him with utter astonishment. “You do?”

Beside her, he gave a short nod. “Maybe I couldn’t have understood it before, even if I had let you explain it all to me. But I can understand now because I’m guilty of the same thing, guilty of bringing my emotions into this case.” He lowered his voice. “Emotions for you.”