“What’s the dog’s name?” Shane asked after a minute.

Nick and Jeremy looked at her, then each other, and burst out laughing.

“What?” Shane asked. “What’s so funny?”

She just shook her head, glad to see them moving past the fight.

The guys apparently needed the release, because they quickly moved on from laughter to sputtering hysterics. Jer was actually crying. And every time Nick managed to get himself under control, he burst out again.

And man, that laughter was deep and throaty, so damn sexy. The dimple was carved a mile deep into his cheek, and laugh lines curved up from the corners of his eyes. She wanted to grasp his face in her hands and kiss him until he was panting and gasping for breath for an entirely different reason.

“Here’s what you need to know,” Becca said, distracting herself from the urge to jump Nick just as the dog returned. “Her name’s not Cujo, it’s not Killer, it’s not Tripod, or Three-Speed, Trinity, Skippy, Hoppy—”

“Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy . . .” Jeremy managed, cracking himself up again.

“It’s also not Shiiiii-looooooooh,” Nick mocked.

Oh, my God, they were all the way over the deep side. Becca rolled her eyes and stepped back inside.

“Uh, okay,” Shane said as they started upstairs, the Rixeys having now devolved into teenaged giggles. Who knew two such big guys could make those high-pitched sounds? “What about Eileen?”

“What?” Becca said, frowning at Shane. “You’re just as bad as—”

The uproarious laughter from behind her made her turn around. Nick had taken a knee on the stairs, and Jeremy was hanging on the railing.

“Ei . . . Ei . . . Ei-leen,” Jeremy gasped. “Get it? Perfect.”

“No, not perfect. Her name is not Eileen.” Becca bit back a smile at their hysterics.

Nick heaved a deep breath and opened his mouth. Not to speak, but to sing. “Come on, Eileen. Oh, I swear what he means, at this mooo-ment, you mean eeeverything.”

Becca put her hand on her forehead and gaped. Nick Rixey was down on his knees singing an eighties anthem to her while laughing and holding his stomach. And it was the sexiest freaking thing she’d ever seen or heard. Even around the ridiculous hilarity, there was no question the boy could sing.

And then the other two idiots joined in.

Out of nowhere, a howling sounded. Becca looked around and found the dog sitting at the very top of the steps, head back, snout pointing to the ceiling, howling in long, loud ahwoooos like she was singing with them.

The door to the gym swung open. “What in the fucking hell?” Beckett asked, Easy and Marz coming out right behind him.

Shaking her head and succumbing to laughter herself, Becca started up the steps. “I broke them. Sorry.”

Beckett eyeballed her like she had three heads. Right. Because she was the crazy one in a roomful of men singing, “Toora, toora, to loora, ay,” at the top of their lungs.

“Hey,” Marz said, sinking into a crouch. “This is my kinda dog. What’s it’s na—”

“No, no, don’t say it!” she said.

Behind her, all three men said, “Eileen” in chorus.

“All right, Eileen.” Marz scooped her into his arms and stood up. She licked his cheek. “You and me are going to get along just fine.” He looked over his shoulder. “Now, come on in, assholes. I’ve got us a plan.” He disappeared inside.

Becca’s shoulders sagged. “Her name’s not Eileen,” she called, but she had a sneaking suspicion that none of them heard her as they all bustled into the gym in a rush.

TEN MINUTES LATER, everyone had calmed down and they stood in the back corner of the gym around Marz’s makeshift computer desks, fashioned out of two eight-foot-long folding tables positioned to form an L. Becca scanned her gaze over his setup.

He had three laptops hooked to a series of cables and boxes she couldn’t identify, plus the smallest printer she’d ever seen. Charlie’s hidden note and the gang booklet lay open near one computer, and pages of notes and printouts lay this way and that. An empty pizza box sat on the floor behind the desk, and a row of diet Coke cans added a splash of color to the array of electronics. It looked like the desk of someone who had worked in this space for years.

He took a seat in the center like a king holding court and dropped the puppy—whose name was definitely not Eileen—to the concrete floor. “Beckett and Shane filled me in on today’s field research, and I’ve scanned most of this book on the Church organization and done some additional research of my own. We are talking some bad-ass shit here.” He looked around the group. “Don’t let the word ‘gang’ make you discount their level of organization, their strength, or their discipline. In the past two years they have destroyed, disbanded, or absorbed three other gangs, expanding their territory substantially. They run eighty percent of the heroin trade in the city, do a fair amount of arms dealing, and appear to have a lot of officials in their pockets. The Church has a sophisticated recruitment system in place and a constant inflow of members. This is organized crime with a capital O and a capital C.”

“Man, I didn’t know shit could be stacked this high,” Shane said.

“Got any good news for us?” Nick asked from next to her. At least she wasn’t the only one who seemed to think the situation seemed more and more impossible. Her stomach flip-flopped when she imagined what their odds were against an organization like that.

“For operational purposes, maybe,” he said, waking up the laptop with the largest monitor. Some of this equipment they’d bought today, but some he’d brought with him. “We’re working on the assumption that the tattoo Becca saw on her assailant belongs to a Churchman. Yes?”

Becca nodded, so frustrated with herself that she couldn’t be definitive when so much hinged on that damn tattoo. “I’m pretty sure, but in fairness I can’t say with total certainty.”

“Mind if I see that?” Jeremy asked, pointing toward the gang booklet. Marz passed it over.

“The fact that the hotel maid associated Charlie’s abductors with being heroin dealers adds another piece of circumstantial evidence,” Nick said.

Marz nodded. “Agreed. Well, then, I propose this lead is worth investigating further until we have something more to go on. It’s gonna take me a while to see if I can work this bank info. Everyone good with that?”

Easy held out his big hands. “You know where I stand. If there’s a chance this is who has Charlie, it makes sense to learn everything we can as soon as we can.”

“I’d rather be doing something than sitting around Fort Living Room,” Shane said. “Besides, we need to figure out the link between this gang and Merritt, assuming there is one.”

Beckett nodded, crossed his big arms, and leveled a thoughtful gaze at Marz. “We’re on board. What is it you have in mind?”

Anticipation sent a shiver down her spine. She glanced to Nick, so appreciating his reassuring smile. She couldn’t begin to express how grateful she was that he was with her in this.

Derek was suddenly a flurry of activity. His fingers flew over the keyboard in front of him for a moment before he shoved a pile of papers aside to clear space on the desk. He slapped down four pieces of paper. “Church has four known front businesses.” He tapped his pointer finger against each sheet as he spoke. “A barbershop, a shipping business and storage facility, a storefront church, of course, and a strip club.”

“How original,” Easy said, leaning in with the other guys around the table’s edge to see what the pages said.

Becca glanced to Jeremy, who’d hung back beside her to study the book like he was trying to catch up to speed. He gave her a small, crooked smile that told her to hang in. It was pretty clear he and Nick were cut from the same good-guy cloth.

Marz pointed to the laptop monitor and shifted sequentially through live images of buildings, headlights flashing across the screen as cars passed by. “I found traffic cameras that give us a visual on three of the four. The barbershop is in the corner of a strip mall, and I haven’t been able to find an eye in the sky on that. Yet.”

“Shit, dude, is there anything you can’t hack?” Beckett asked, admiration clear in his expression.

“Heh. I live for challenge. I propose we put boots on the ground and check each of these out. At the very least, we can plant the electronic surveillance devices we picked up this afternoon and acquire firsthand info on interior physical layout, guard presence, and any special security systems you might be able to identify. Maybe one of you can sex up a waitress at the club and see if she’s heard anything about a missing guy that might’ve found himself on the wrong side of the Churchmen.” He aimed a smile at Shane, and everyone else’s gazes slid his way, too.

Shane’s answering grin was smug as all hell. “You know I’d make any sacrifice for you assholes.” Becca bit back a laugh, but then her mind conjured Nick doing the sexing up of some scantily dressed dancer . . . and that was so not funny.

She studied Nick’s strong profile, jaw tense, eyes narrowed, shoulder muscles bunched. Every inch of him was all business, and it was so sexy. The thought of anyone else’s hands or lips on him didn’t just make her jealous, though her brain buzzed with displeasure. Despite how recently they’d met and how much they still had to learn about one another, her soul looked at this harshly beautiful man and thought, mine. It wasn’t even a conscious thought, really, more a reaction to the intense connection this crazy situation had forged between them. Not to mention a bone-deep wish. She wanted him.