HelenKay Dimon - Traceless

Shane frowned as he touched his ear. “Davis?”

Holt followed suit and did a comm check. When he shook his head, she knew they’d somehow lost contact with the Maryland office. The way Cam and Connor crowded around her only highlighted the potential new danger.

“What happened?” she asked, amazed at how small and quiet her voice sounded.

Connor motioned for Cam to pocket the phone. “Everyone stay on guard. Could be nothing.”

The shaking in her bones suggested otherwise. If she shook any more her teeth would rattle. “Or it could be something, like a blocked signal.”

She knew just enough to be frozen in fear. There were devices, ways to keep people from communicating on an internal system. Ways to cut people off and make them more vulnerable.

“We’re going to assume the signal was momentarily lost.” Holt swore when a stray piece of wood from the broken door crunched under his foot. “Okay, let’s run through this. There was nothing on the guy outside or the one on the porch. No ID or obvious markings.”

She knew he meant tattoos and markings. More than once the team had tangled with some nasty international gang types during kidnap recovery, so the team clearly thought that was a possibility here.

There was no good answer, but trained mob assassins struck her as one of the worst possibilities. She rushed to give the team as full a picture as possible so they could assess. “There were four men here earlier.”

Connor froze in the act of typing something into his black watch. “What?”

The news she was about to deliver would get them all moving. It wouldn’t go over well but evading was never the answer with this group. “Actually, there were seven men altogether. Six back at the charity office, including the leader, when they took me. Then when I woke up—”

“They knocked you out?”

She nodded because the red wash of anger on Connor’s face and mumbled profanity she heard from the others said enough. She didn’t need to add to whatever was happening inside of him—or any of them—with more words about that.

“When I got here, I heard another voice,” she said. “A guy behind me, so I couldn’t see him. He seemed to be calling the shots and the one the leader from the attack on the charity office answered to.”

“We still have four hanging around at the charity. Or we did. They could be mobilizing and on the way here by now,” Shane said.

Holt nodded but his attention never wavered from whatever he watched outside. “We should assume that.”

“There are men over there now?” Panic surged through her all over again. She had protection. She had them.

“Were, but probably still are.”

Shane’s confirmation was enough for her. She turned back to Connor, made him focus on her over the emotions spinning through him. Touching him was like touching stone. Anger vibrated off of him as he held his body stiff.

She worked to keep the worry out of her voice. “We need to warn Marcel and the others to stay away from the office. I don’t want anyone else dragged into this, whatever it is.”

“Marcel is...?” Cam asked.

“Marcel Lampari. He runs the charity she’s working for.” Connor didn’t break eye contact with her. “He’ll be fine. Go back to the part about the other men who attacked you.”

This subject, Marcel, was a sensitive one. She knew Connor blamed Marcel for so much. When she worked overseas years ago and masked gunmen intercepted a vaccine shipment with her on board, Connor and his group got her out. That’s how they met. In a mix of adrenaline, heat and terror, which she should have seen as a sign of how their marriage would run.

But they’d put the kidnapping incident behind them long ago and fallen in love. Only one topic remained and bubbled up every so often to wallop them. Back then Connor unloaded on Marcel for his poor security and vulnerable distribution channels. The charity had fixed all those issues since then but Connor’s distrust of Marcel never faded.

Connor believed Marcel viewed her as more than a fellow worker. That he would leave his wife if Jana showed any interest. She never picked up on whatever Connor saw in Marcel and the man never made a move, but the attraction was very real in Connor’s mind and he didn’t try to hide it.

When she’d had to get away she’d wrestled with the idea of coming to Utah, fearing it would hurt Connor even more to have her leave and go to Marcel. But she had nowhere else to turn. She’d lost her father when she was twenty and her mother a decade before that. Her life with Connor had been so insular and her need to get away so desperate that without really thinking it through she ran right to the one man sure to infuriate Connor.

She never meant to betray him. She loved Connor and would never cheat on him, but in her haze she messed up. Only two weeks before, Connor confronted her about Marcel during one of their weekly telephone calls and Connor’s anger bubbled over. He told her his patience had expired and started a countdown to come get her. She’d hung up on him and now that decision haunted her.

If they had any chance of making their way back to each other they had to work out the Marcel issue, but now was not the time. “Connor, please.”

A charged silence lit up the cabin. Even Holt gave a quick look over his shoulder to see what was happening in the center of the room.

Connor finally broke the quiet but did nothing to hide the fury shading his voice. “Cam will warn everyone.”

Him not blowing up qualified as a small victory because this topic changed his otherwise steady personality white hot. She took that as a positive sign.

With one last glance at the photos on the cell, the pieces came together in her head. “Not that long before you guys crashed in, there were four people here with me. These two plus the one you talked with on the phone and another.”

“How did two get away without any of us seeing them?” Cam asked.

Connor continued to stare at her as he took Cam’s cell out of her hands. “Good question, but we’re talking about people with skills. These aren’t petty thieves. These guys look like professionals and the guy on the phone specifically asked for me.”

Shane blew out a long breath. “The news just keeps getting better.”

Her heart hammered and the thumping of the beat in her ears had her inhaling in an effort to calm down. She didn’t know what would happen next or how they would get out of the cabin, so she said one of the things she absolutely needed to share. “Thank you all for coming.”

“There wasn’t a chance we wouldn’t.” Cam reached over and squeezed her hand. “And not just us. We had to keep the Maryland team from heading out here, too.”

“You’re one of us.” Shane treated her to a wink before looking away again.

Connor moved into her line of sight. “Yes, you are.”

Some of the anxiety pinging around inside of her faded. “Connor, I need you to know—”

He put a finger over her lips. “We have a lot to talk about, and we will because I am done living like this, but all of that has to wait until you’re safe.”

She wanted to spill it all. Tell him how much she still loved him and spell out all of their problems and make him talk through each one with her.

Forget about the presence of his men and the danger. If this was it, if this was how it ended, she wanted him to know she had never stopped loving him and never would. He was hers forever.

But the closed look on his face and slight shake of his head told her this was not the time. Certainly not the place. “Okay.”

He touched her cheek. “Did you recognize the voice or face of the man who talked to me on the phone?”

“No.” And she had tried. She’d turned over every memory and all the bits Connor shared of his life before her.