“It doesn’t look like anything’s been stolen,” she said, bewilderment plain in her voice. “At least nothing valuable.” She turned to the officers who had followed her upstairs. “This can’t be a coincidence, though, can it?”

“What’s that, ma’am?” the older cop asked.

“I filed another report this afternoon. I went to my brother’s house looking for him. I haven’t heard from him for a few days. And his apartment had been completely ransacked.”

Rixey heard the words as if she’d spoken them through a tunnel. What in the everliving fuck was going on? His instincts lit up all over the place and pointed to one undeniable fact: Becca Merritt was in some sort of worst-case-scenario trouble. And so was her brother, by the sound of the story she was telling the police.

Goddamnit.

Another fifteen minutes passed with Becca answering questions and getting some damn-near useless advice from the cops. Keep your doors locked. Call a locksmith in the morning and get the locks changed. Ever consider a home-security system? Or a dog?

Man’s best friend aside, that back door had been unlocked when Nick had tried it. Knob hadn’t been damaged. Glass hadn’t been broken. And she sure as shit hadn’t left it open, not with the paranoid behavior he’d observed the previous night. Someone had picked the sonofabitch. Bad guy wanted in again, a new lock wasn’t likely to keep him out. Not unless she seriously stepped up the quality of the hardware.

And someone clearly wanted something from the Merritts.

The cops left Becca with some vague pronouncements about what would happen next. If anything. The eighth most dangerous city in America, Baltimore had fourteen hundred violent crimes and nearly nine thousand property crimes, burglaries, and thefts a year—statistics that kept Nick busy serving papers five days a week. And statistics that also meant Becca’s seemingly victimless B&E wouldn’t get a lot of attention from the authorities.

The despairing expression on her face told him she knew it, too. As she thanked the police, Rixey took stock of his late commanding officer’s daughter. Weariness had settled onto her shoulders and dampened the light in those baby blues. Wisps of hair had fallen haphazardly from her ponytail, and exhaustion painted dark circles under her eyes. But Becca Merritt was still a looker—a real sweetheart of a face, curves in all the places women were supposed to have curves, toned but real. And he found her even more appealing for the fact that some seriously stressful shit had gone down here and she’d held it together better than most civilians would.

Nothing was happening to her, not on his watch. And at the moment, his was all the help she was gonna get.

Wasn’t that a pisser.

She closed the front door and flipped the dead bolt, then turned to him.

Before she said a word, he gestured toward the steps. “Go pack a bag. Enough for a coupla nights, at least. I’m getting you the hell out of here. Now.”

BECCA BLINKED. NICK’S expression was dead serious, the intensity of those pale green eyes daring her to argue. God, he’d looked like her worst nightmare as he’d come through her back door earlier—tall, muscled, and armed. A lethal menace all in black. But he’d helped her. And her father must’ve trusted him if they’d fought side by side for so long. Still, she wasn’t going to be ordered around. “Where would I go? This is my home. Besides, I don’t really know you to be going anywhere with you. No offense.” She couldn’t run scared. No matter how frightened she was right now. And she was. Her joints ached from trying to hold it together.

His expression didn’t register any response to her refusal, but his tone turned frosty. “Wasting time, Becca. Go get some things together.”

Screw being scared. Somebody had invaded her space. Anger flooded in behind the fear. She planted her hands on her hips. “I’m not letting some asshole chase me out of my own damn house.”

The skin around his right eye ticked, just the littlest bit. “And what if that asshole comes back in the middle of the night? He didn’t force entry. He picked the lock. Which he can easily do again. And next time, he might not stop at digging through papers.”

She frowned, a dozen weak defenses against his logic springing up even as his words trickled ice down her spine.

Nick rushed in to fill the silence her hesitation created. “Pack a bag. Now. Everything else we can figure out later.”

We? She crossed her arms. “What, so, now you’re helping me?”

He gave a single tight nod.

Yesterday, he refused to even talk to her. Now he wanted to call the shots? What happened in twenty-four hours to bring about this one-eighty? Could she really count on him? “Why? What’s changed?”

He stepped closer, close enough that she could make out the gold flecks in his eyes. “You, being in danger.” His deep voice emphasizing the word you, combined with his intense gaze, spread warmth throughout her tired body. With a sideways nod to the stairs, he said, “Go pack a bag. Or I will.”

The image of those big hands rooting through her panty drawer sprang into her mind’s eye. Butterflies made a quick loop around her stomach. “Fine.” She couldn’t help Charlie if anything happened to her, so she walked past Nick toward the bottom step, hoping he didn’t see the pink she suspected colored her cheeks. Three steps up, she felt movement behind her. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.

He was right there.

She hadn’t heard him move. Just . . . sensed his presence. Her gaze flicked over him. The man had some damn broad shoulders under that black jacket. “We’re doing the buddy system?”

“I’m going to do a quick sweep for bugs while you’re packing.”

“Oh. As in . . . Oh.” Unease shivered over her. Becca hadn’t even thought of that. At the top, she broke left into her bedroom and turned on the lights. Her gaze scanned over the place where she’d slept the past four years—the dresser, the bed, the night tables. Had the intruder come in here? The idea made her want to strip her unmade bedclothes and throw everything in the wash. She shuddered.

“I’ll start in here,” he said, following her in. “And then you can pack while I sweep the office.”

Nodding, she watched him go to work, starting with the disassembly of the handset on her phone. Detached and methodical, he worked quickly, confidently. Though he seemed to be paying no attention to her personal things lying around the room, she couldn’t help but wonder what he thought.

The guitar Scott had prized sat on a stand in one corner. Paperback books and framed pictures of her family crowded the nightstand along with her alarm clock. A crystal dish dominated the center of her dresser, filled with seashells she’d collected over the years—one for each trip to the beach she’d ever taken going all the way back to her childhood. Pieces of jewelry she hadn’t bothered to put away lay loose on the dresser near her mother’s jewelry box—hers now. She never gave these things a second thought. Did he wonder what kind of woman they added up to?

He checked each of the lamps, then crouched next to her nightstand. Using a tool he produced from his pocket, he removed the plate from the outlet. He poked around for a moment, screwed the cover back on, then repeated this process on the only other accessible outlet and the light switch box. Competence rolled off him in oddly appealing and tangible waves that kept the threatening anxiety from washing over her.

“Just pack essentials for tonight, okay?” Nick said as he made for the hall.

She blew out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Yeah, okay.” From the bottom of her closet, she retrieved an overnight bag and tossed it on her bed. Moving around her room, she gathered clothes, scrubs, a couple of favorite sleep shirts, and a few days’ worth of panties and bras, including her favorite pale yellow satin and white lace matching set. Just because wearing it made her feel good, and pretty. Had absolutely nothing to do with the hard-bodied warrior prowling around her house right now. Because that would just be crazy.

Right.

After piling everything on the bed, she pushed her door closed. She’d been in these scrubs so long she was about ready to burn them. As she stripped, her pulse kicked up. Nick was ten feet away in the next room. What if he barged in? Ridiculous heat rushed over her skin, like her body didn’t think that was a completely bad idea. She tugged on a pair of jeans and grabbed a yellow Henley. There. More human already.

She chucked the dirties into a basket in her closet and made for the bathroom.

Nick’s gaze landed on her the moment she opened the door. Man, those light eyes with the chocolate brown hair made a killer combination.

“Find anything?”

“Looks clean. Need more equipment to know for sure.”

Small victories. But, after the day she’d had, it was better than nothing. “Okay, well, I’m almost done,” she said, feeling like she needed to say something as she passed him in the hall. The bathroom light revealed the toll the day had taken. She leaned into the mirror. A dark red scrape filled the space between the end of her left eyebrow and her hairline, just above her temple. She soaped up a washcloth and cleaned the injury, wincing at the tender sting. Antibiotic cream went on next. The rest could wait. With Charlie missing, it hardly mattered how messy her hair was or how bad she yearned for a hot shower.

The feeling of being observed skittered over her skin, pulling her gaze to the right. Nick’s big body seemed to take up the entire landing at the top of the steps. The black jacket, cargo pants, and boots—not to mention knowing he had a holster strapped around those big shoulders—gave off a paramilitary vibe, making him look like the soldier he’d once been. He wasn’t obviously watching her, though her father had always had the ability to see out of the back of his head. No doubt Nick was the same.