Chapter 108

Just as she was contemplating breakfast in bed, she heard voices. Not Nolan's voice, but the rumbling baritone of multiple men in conversation. Jerking upright in bed, she clutched the sheet to her naked chest. Well, crap. That meant breakfast in bed was out of the question.

Who was here?

She dressed quickly, pulling on denim shorts and a sea-green tank top. Since it was still cool, she shrugged into Nolan's white linen shirt and tied it around her waist.

Nolan wasn’t in the kitchen, but nearly a half-dozen other men were. One was manning the cooktop, with a mound of eggs in one skillet and bacon in the other. Another was pouring out mugs of steaming coffee. A few more had set up laptops on the kitchen table, with cords streaming down to the floor and a wireless modem blinking from a plug.

J.D. was the only man she recognized, so she went straight to him. He nodded a greeting, then introduced her to everyone. She promptly forgot their names, but they were all Carrington Security employees and all had that former-military vibe. He introduced her simply as “Nolan's ex.” But he must have explained their relationship beforehand because the men accepted her presence with a minimum of curious gawking.

“Did I miss something? When did y’all get in?” she asked as J.D. pulled a plate from the cabinet and began loading it with eggs and toast.

“Early this morning.” J.D. held out the plate and she took it, more out of instinct than hunger.

“Isn’t this yours?” she asked.

“Nope. Yours.” He shoved a fork into the eggs. “Rick and Jax were up in Kilbrough. They flew down to Quinley last night and picked up the rest of us.”

Only then did she ask, “Hey, where’s Nolan?” She’d been up for a good ten minutes now and had seen neither hide nor hair of him.

“Out,” J.D. said simply. But he didn’t meet her gaze.

“You mean he’s out dealing with my brother.” Suddenly the eggs tasted less yummy and buttery and more dry and powdery. She set the fork on the plate and nudged it away. Since J.D. didn’t seem prepared to say anything more, she prodded. “I don’t like being handled. Obviously you’re here to take care of me while Nolan goes off to find my brother.”

J.D. kept his face expressionless, but unless she was mistaken, the muscles in his arms were twitching.

“It’s okay,” she said, even though it really wasn’t. “You can be honest. I’m not going to freak out or anything.” Okay, that probably was true. She’d done all her freaking out last night. “I know Nolan's come down here to arrest my brother or whatever.”

“Technically, we wouldn’t be arresting him. We don’t have that kind of jurisdiction. We would just encourage him to return with us, where we’d hand him over to the authorities.”

“What I don’t get,” she continued, “is why there are this many of you to keep an eye on me. Did you bring too many people or something?”

“No.” J.D. seemed to be speaking through clenched teeth. “This is how many people I brought.”

“But that would mean Nolan went alone. That can’t be right.”

J.D. scrubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “It is.”

She sank back against the chair and took another bite of her toast, chewing thoughtfully. So Nolan had found her brother and had gone to pick him up alone. The thought of the two men in her life facing each other down was unsettling.

Andrew wasn’t a big man. Nolan, with all of his lean muscles and his linebacker-width shoulders, probably had sixty or seventy pounds on him. Easy.

Still it didn’t make sense. “Nolan's not a reckless man,” she said aloud. “Why would he go alone? Sure he’s bigger than my brother, so he should be able to ‘encourage’ him into a car with relative ease. But there are so many variables. Why would he risk losing control of the situation? My brother could get away.”

J.D. sipped his coffee with stony silence, but a scowl of disapproval had settled onto his face. She studied him for a minute and then looked around the room again. Nervous energy buzzed in the air. She wasn't stupid. She knew the sort of quiet jitteriness that settled over cops when something bad was about to go down. That’s how this group of men felt now.

Pinning J.D. with a stare, she said, “You know something you aren’t telling me. What is it?”

But if something bad had happened to Andrew, Nolan would have told her.

He wouldn’t have vanished early in the morning and left her here to be babysat by this bunch.

“What is it?” she prodded again. “What’s going on here?”

Finally J.D. relented. “Nolan's not planning on bringing your brother in.”

The answer was so unexpected it took her several beats for it to register. “That’s ridiculous. Of course he is.”

“No, he’s not. His plan is to get the diamonds and let your brother walk.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to.” J.D. leaned forward, pinning her with a stare, and for the first time she noticed the glint of resentment in his gaze. “Before he left for Celestria, we had a plan.” J.D. tapped the table with his forefinger. “Get the diamonds, get the guy, hand both over to the FBI. Everybody’s a winner.”

Everybody, that was, who wasn’t in her family.

“Then we arrive this morning,” J.D. continued, “and the plan’s kiboshed.”

He didn’t say any more, but he didn’t have to. Obviously it didn’t take a genius to see that the change in plans had to do with her and the fact that she and Nolan had slept together.

“Look,” she said. “Whatever’s going on, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Of course it does,” he interrupted. “Andrew is your brother. What other reason would Nolan have for letting him walk?”

“That’s what I’m saying. There’s no way Nolan's going to let Andrew go. It’s not in his nature.”

Nolan had a stronger sense of right and wrong than anyone she’d ever known and his ironclad code of ethics was completely unwavering.

“Letting a criminal walk away would be wrong.” She leaned forward, bracing her hands on the table. “Nolan would never do that.”