just need to vanish, and if that happened—cash would be vital for her survival.
“You’re on the first floor,” he said, a faint line between his dark brows. “The lock on that window is broken.” He stabbed a finger toward the left.
The lock was broken? Unease tightened like a knot in her stomach. The lock hadn’t been broken when she’d first checked in to the room. She knew because she had double-checked all the locks there.
Brodie’s hand dropped back to his side. “Anyone could get in here.”
She headed for the window. The lock was smashed all right. Maybe someone already has been in here. “I promise that lock was fine earlier.”
He swore.
She’d been aware of the furious energy surrounding him ever since that hit-and-run. There’d been no license plate on the car, at least not one that she’d seen, though Brodie had been able to easily identify the car as an older-model Mustang. He’d called the cops and spoken with a Detective Shayne Townsend. Brodie had told her that Shayne was a friend, someone he could count on to help him out with her case.
No uniforms had come out to the scene in order to talk with them, though. Instead, Brodie had bundled her into his vehicle and gotten them away from McGuire Securities.
“Is anything missing?” He pointed to her bag. “You need to check.”
Right. She dropped the cloth back in the bathroom and hurried toward her luggage. Jennifer opened up the bag and—
This time, Brodie’s curse made her flinch.
Her clothes had been slashed. A black-and-white photo lay on top of the clothes, a photo of her. One that had been taken near the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.
Someone had used a red marker and written across that photo. Two stark words: I know.
She didn’t touch the photo. Jennifer knew they could send it to the cops, to that Detective Townsend, and get it checked for fingerprints.
“What does he know?” Brodie asked, voice gruff.
Jennifer backed away from the bag. “I have no idea.” She looked up to meet his stare. The rage glittering in his gaze had her sucking in a quick breath. “Brodie—”
“You’re coming home with me.”
That didn’t sound good. Or maybe it did. But she shook her head. “I’ll just get a new room. We can turn this over to the cops, and—”
“I’ll get Detective Townsend down here with his crime scene team. If the intruder left DNA or fingerprints, he’ll find it.”
“You...you trust him?” Her experience with cops hadn’t exactly been stellar so far. Back in New Orleans, they’d pretty much thought that she’d had a breakdown after the alley attack, that she was just imagining the stalking.
I’m not imagining anything.
“Shayne Townsend is a friend. We can count on him.” He pulled her farther away from the bed. “But you aren’t staying here. Your stalker is watching this hotel, watching you, and I’m not just going to leave you alone so he can attack.”
The stalker had followed her from New Orleans. Had he been right behind her that entire time? On all those long twisting roads? Goose bumps rose on Jennifer’s arms. She’d actually thought that she might be able to just leave the guy behind in New Orleans, but, obviously, she wasn’t going to be that lucky.
“You can stay at the family ranch,” Brodie told her. “My brothers and I installed the security system there. There is no safer place, and I promise, no one will get to you there.”
Her gaze slid back to her luggage. A life shouldn’t be destroyed so easily, yet Jennifer felt as if that were exactly what this man was doing to her. Systematically destroying her life.
“There’s plenty of space at the ranch,” Brodie continued in that deep rumble of his. “So you don’t have to worry about me...getting too close.”
Just like that, her eyes were back on him.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I want you safe. I can keep my hands off you.”
She’d never thought otherwise.
“Come with me,” Brodie said. “Trust me to protect you.”
Brodie McGuire. The years had carved him into an even more dangerous, powerful man. He was big, easily over six foot three, with wide shoulders and a solid build that told her the guy was definitely no stranger to a gym.
He was handsome, almost ridiculously so with that hard, square jaw, that perfect blade of a nose and his green eyes. And the man had dimples. Dimples. They flashed when he smiled, and that smile of his made her stomach flip.
He was a threat to her, in so many ways, but he was also the one man who’d never let her down. The one man who could actually keep her alive.
Even if he didn’t know all her secrets.
“Come with me,” he said again.
She nodded.
* * *
JENNIFER WESLEY WAS making a deadly mistake. She thought that an ex-lover could protect her?
She was wrong.
He had her in his sights, and he wasn’t about to let her vanish.
There would be no escape. No mercy, either.
He watched as Jennifer and Brodie McGuire left the run-down hotel. Brodie was right beside Jennifer for every step she took, his body tense, protective.
Jennifer had certainly blinded that man to her true nature.
Brodie needed to be more careful. If he didn’t watch it, the ex-SEAL might just find himself targeted, too.
You don’t want to die for her.
Because Brodie didn’t even really know the woman he was protecting. She wasn’t some sweet, lost innocent.
Jennifer Wesley was a cold-blooded killer.
He had her in his home. Some of the desperate tension that Brodie felt should have eased since they were safe, but it hadn’t. If anything, the tension within him just seemed to be growing worse.
He’d called his friend Shayne Townsend again—Brodie and the Austin police detective had been friends for years. He knew he could count on Shayne and his team to search Jennifer’s hotel for prints and trace evidence.
He and Jennifer were in the main ranch house. A place that he and his twin brother, Davis, had completely renovated. Sometimes, the house seemed to be filled with ghosts.
And other times,
