For the Tactical Crime Division,

No Case is Left Cold.

When Benning Reeves’s twins are kidnapped, the frantic father knows who can help: the Tactical Crime Division and Ana Ramirez. Even though Ana once shattered Benning’s heart, the special agent is the only one he can trust. But Ana is still tormented by the unresolved case that brought them together years before—a case somehow entangled with Benning’s children. It’s up to the TCD and Ana to discover why…before it’s too late.

NICHOLE SEVERN writes explosive romantic suspense with strong heroines, heroes who dare challenge them and a hell of a lot of guns. She resides with her very supportive and patient husband, as well as her demon spawn, in Utah. When she’s not writing, she’s constantly injuring herself running, rock climbing, practicing yoga and snowboarding. She loves hearing from readers through her website, www.nicholesevern.com, and on Twitter, @nicholesevern

Also by Nichole Severn

Rules in Blackmail

Rules in Rescue

Rules in Deceit

Rules in Defiance

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Midnight Abduction

Nichole Severn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90530-9

MIDNIGHT ABDUCTION

© 2020 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

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I have enough self-awareness to know I worked damn

hard on this book, so I’m dedicating it to me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

About the Publisher

Prologue

They warned him not to go to the police.

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Forcing one foot in front of the other, he tried to ignore the gut-wrenching pain at the base of his skull where the kidnapper had slammed him into his kitchen floor and knocked him unconscious. Owen. Olivia. They were out there. Alone. Scared. He hadn’t been strong enough to protect them, but he wasn’t going to stop trying to find them. Not until he got them back.

A wave of dizziness tilted the world on its axis, and he collided with a wooden street pole. Shoulder-length hair blocked his vision as he fought to regain balance. He’d woken up a little less than fifteen minutes ago, started chasing after the taillights of the SUV as it’d sped down the unpaved road leading into town. He could still taste the dirt in his mouth. They couldn’t have gotten far. Someone had to have seen something…

Humidity settled deep into his lungs despite the dropping temperatures, sweat beading at his temples as he pushed himself upright. Moonlight beamed down on him, exhaustion pulling at every muscle in his body, but he had to keep going. He had to find his kids. They were all he had left. All that mattered.

Colorless, worn mom-and-pop stores lining the town’s main street blurred in his vision.

A small group of teenagers—at least what looked like teenagers—gathered around a single point on the sidewalk ahead. The kidnapper had sped into town from his property just on the outskirts, and there were only so many roads that would get the bastard out. Maybe someone in the group could point him in the right direction. He latched on to a kid brushing past him by the collar. “Did you see a black SUV speed through here?”

The boy—sixteen, seventeen—shook his head and pulled away. “Get off me, man.”

The echo of voices pierced through the ringing in his ears as the circle of teens closed in on itself in front of Sevierville’s oldest hardware store. His lungs burned with shallow breaths as he searched the streets from his position in the middle of the sidewalk. Someone had to have seen something. Anything. He needed—

“She’s bleeding!” a girl said. “Someone call for an ambulance!”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Someone had been hurt? Pushing through the circle of onlookers, he caught sight of pink pajama pants and bright purple toenails. He surrendered to the panic as recognition flared. His heart threatened to burst straight out of his chest as he lunged for the unconscious six-year-old girl sprawled across the pavement. Pain shot through his knees as he scooped her into his arms. “Olivia!”

Chapter One

“Congratulations, Ramirez.” Director Jill Pembrook swiped her index finger across the tablet’s screen in her hands, and the entire network of monitors embedded into the conference table came to life. “You’ve got your next assignment.”

A new case? It had been so long she was starting to think her past mistakes had caught up with her and negatively impacted her profile with the team. Agent Ana Sofia Ramirez bit back her smile as exaggerated congratulations and clapping from two other agents on the team filled the conference room. Her leather chair groaned as she leaned back to study the main screen behind the director, her fingernails skimming the table’s surface. “What’s the case?”

“Abduction of a six-year-old boy,” the director said.

The room quieted, the silence almost a physical presence as the tendons between Ana’s shoulders and neck tightened. Drawing a deep breath, she focused on the monitor in front of her. This was what she’d been trained for—finding the missing—but not a single agent around this table would volunteer for an assignment like this. “Timeline?”

“We’ve been given twenty-four hours. The father is adamant no one but the agent he requested can get involved in the recovery, but the clock is already ticking, and we’re going to use all available resources we have whether he likes it or not. That’s where you come in.” Director Pembrook turned to the largest screen at the head of the conference room, pulling up a map pinpointing a small section of private property a little outside Sevierville, TN. The petite, graying woman with sharp features at the head of the room had been a force to be reckoned with within the Bureau for nearly forty years. She wasn’t a woman to disappoint, and Ana didn’t plan on testing that theory. The director tossed a manila envelope across the table. “You’ll go undercover as a former lover who’s in town visiting and has heard the devastating news his son has been taken. I want you to get close to the father and find out what he could possibly gain from this abduction by keeping us in the dark. Agents Cantrell and Duran will provide support from this location until you say otherwise.”

Maldicion. Damn it.

“If this is a targeted abduction, the kidnappers will have done their research. They might’ve already sifted through the people in the boy’s life.” Ana lifted her gaze to the men across the table from her. Agent JC Cantrell handled surveillance, Evan Duran worked hostage negotiations and Ana did whatever it took to find the missing. Together they made up only part of the Tactical Crime Division, and it looked like they were headed to Sevierville, TN, the last place she’d intended to set foot again. Too many memories. Too much pain. But the thought of passing on this case, when she’d battled so hard to make up for the past, built pressure behind her sternum. “What’s the guarantee my cover won’t be blown the instant I come into contact?”

“That won’t be a problem during this investigation,” Director Pembrook said.

While the FBI had massive resources and vast intelligence relating to criminal activity, they were headquartered in DC. The Bureau had regional field offices in major cities across the country to assist local police when needed, but that left smaller or rural towns with sparse populations without rapid support. More and more, agents and federal law agencies mobilized to remote locations to address large-scale crime scenes and criminal activity. Terrorism, hostage situations, kidnappings, shootings. But with the growing concern and need for ever-increasing response times to these criminal events, the Bureau saw the need for a specialized tech and tactical team, combining specialists from several active units. Together they made up Tactical Crime Division.

“How long has the boy been missing?” As one of the most successful hostage negotiators in Bureau history, Agent Evan Duran saved hundreds of lives over the course of his career by getting more information out of a suspect with as little commitment as possible on his part. If the kidnappers had made any kind of demand, Ana trusted him to mine for the intel she needed to find the victim. “Any demands?”

“Six hours.” Director Pembrook took her seat at the head of the table. “And, no.”

“There hasn’t been a ransom call?” Ana swiped through the file directly from the monitor in front of her. Every forty seconds a child went missing somewhere in the United States. More than 460,000 children were reported missing each year. Of those missing children, almost 1,500 of them had been kidnapped, with most of those reports narrowing the suspect list to a parent or close relative as the abductor. There was a chance the boy’s mother was responsible, which would account for the lack of demands or ransom. Or… Ana froze, paralyzed as she read the father’s name on the police report. “Benning Reeves.”

The boy who’d been kidnapped was Benning’s son, Owen.

“He asked for you specifically, Ramirez.” The weight of Director Pembrook’s attention crushed the air from her lungs. She was the agent Benning had requested. Was that why she’d been given the lead on this case? Not because of her experience in recovering the missing but because she’d actually been intimate with the man keeping the FBI at arm’s length during his son’s kidnapping investigation.

The director was right. Her cover wouldn’t be a problem during the investigation.

It was the truth.

Ana swiped her tongue between dry lips. “What about the girl? Olivia.”

“She was taken, too, but local police recovered her minutes after the abduction.” Relief coursed through her as the director’s gaze narrowed, but Ana didn’t have time to crumble under the pressure of Pembrook’s study. Someone out there had taken Benning’s son, and time was running out to get him back. The question was why. As far as she knew, Benning had kept his job as a building inspector for the city all these years, wasn’t in debt and wasn’t the kind of man to get himself mixed up in criminal activity. Assuming this was personal, why would someone target Benning through his children? “They believe she escaped her kidnapper’s vehicle while in motion, but it’s impossible to know for sure until her medical team lets law enforcement interview her. You need to be there when she wakes up and find out what she remembers to help recover the son. Whether the father wants the TCD officially involved or not.”

She nodded. They could at least exclude the twins’ mother from their list of suspects. Lilly Reeves had passed away giving birth to them six years ago. Ana struggled to control the racing pulse at the base of her skull. Benning had asked for her help with this case, but given the last time they’d been in the same room—the same bed—she didn’t understand why. A single phone call had changed everything between them, and he’d moved on. He’d married a woman in town and had children not long after Ana had left. Now she was expected to reinsert herself back into his life in order to find his missing son.

There were far more qualified agents to handle this investigation, agents who hadn’t put their entire career at risk because of one wrong decision. Agents who didn’t have a personal connection to the case. What was she supposed to say to him after all these years? They hadn’t spoken since that night, despite the small part of her that’d urged her to reach out, to reconnect with the only person she just couldn’t seem to detach herself from. She swallowed through the tightness in her throat. No matter what’d happened between her and Benning, she couldn’t let emotion cloud her judgment this time. A little boy’s life was at risk.

“I’ll look into the traffic cameras.” Agent JC Cantrell shoved to his feet, locking light green eyes on her as he stood. Specializing in surveillance operations, the former soldier led most of TCD’s surveillance ops, but whether those ops were completely legal was another question. Right now Ana didn’t care. There was a six-year-old boy out there—alone and afraid. This was what their division had been trained for, what she’d been trained for. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with this case as she had when Benning had been in her life the first time. JC headed for the door, Duran at his side. “With any kind of luck, I’ll have a license plate for you and a location of the getaway vehicle in the next hour.”

“Keep me in the loop and stay close to your phones. I’ll call you if I need you.” Ana pushed away from the conference table to stand, her long, dark hair inherited from her Hispanic father sliding over her shoulder in front of her. Sevierville wasn’t far, only thirty miles southeast of TCD headquarters here in Knoxville, but if she wanted to interview Benning’s daughter before the girl’s medical team gave permission to local PD, she had to leave now. With a nod toward Director Pembrook, she pushed her chair into the edge of the table. “I’ll brief you as soon as I’m finished interviewing Olivia Benning.”

“Be careful, Ramirez.” The director’s voice carried across the conference room, stopping Ana in her escape toward the double glass doors. The weight of those steel-gray eyes drilled straight through her. “I assigned you this case because you have a connection to the victim’s father and he’s made it clear he won’t play nice with anyone else, but don’t let your emotions and that connection get in the way of doing your job.” Pembrook’s voice softened. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else. Understand?”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, but she couldn’t turn around. She couldn’t face the reality of Jill Pembrook’s warning. Gravity increased its natural pull on her body. The backs of her knees shook as a fresh wave of memories penetrated the barrier she’d built over the past seven years. She curled her fingernails into the centers of her palms, and just as quickly as they’d charged forward, she closed the lid to the box at the back of her mind. She’d gotten good at that. Compartmentalizing, detaching herself from feeling the things she didn’t want to admit to herself. Especially when it came to Benning Reeves. But underneath the numbness and denial, Ana understood the director’s advice. Getting Benning’s son home to his family would be her last chance to save her career. She’d failed a victim once. She wouldn’t let it happen again. “Yes, ma’am.”

BENNING REEVES CROSSED the small room for the eighth—or was it the ninth?—time in as many minutes. It’d been almost five hours since he’d woken in the middle of his house, his children gone. And Olivia… He slowed at the side of her hospital bed. Her small body nearly disappeared in the heaping of pillows and blankets he’d packed around her as her chest rose and fell in smooth, rhythmic breaths. The sedative the nurse had given her would keep his daughter unconscious for the next few hours. It was the only way to ensure her brain would get the rest it needed. He smoothed her short brunette hair away from her face. Truth was, the doctors had no idea if her memories would come back. Something about trauma-induced amnesia. Dissociative? She’d barely remembered her brother’s name when she’d been questioned, let alone what’d happened to him after she’d escaped the SUV.

Tremors racked through his hand, and he forced himself to back away for fear of waking her. The kidnapper should’ve made contact by now, given him further instructions or proof of life. His ears rang. He needed to be out there looking for his son, but he didn’t dare leave Olivia here on her own, either. Not after what she’d been through. Heat built in his chest. Someone had broken into his home, knocked him unconscious and taken his children. All because of what’d he found on that construction site.

The fire spread under his skin, and he closed his eyes as the all-too-familiar feeling of instability he’d kept in check all these years clawed for release. Benning unpocketed his phone, the sight of the photo behind the shattered glass immediately drowning the ringing in his ears. His pulse evened as he studied his twins’ smiling faces as they tackled him from behind on the screen. He’d get Owen back. He’d already lost too many people in his life. He couldn’t lose his kids, too.

A surge of awareness hiked his senses into overdrive, and Benning followed it to the hospital room door. Brown eyes ringed with green centered on him, and the world dropped out from under him. She’d come. In the minutes following Olivia’s arrival at the hospital, he hadn’t known who else to call. Or if she’d come back to Sevierville. The kidnapper had warned him not to involve law enforcement before knocking him unconscious, but Ana Sofia Ramirez wasn’t just a federal agent. She’d been everything to him. Before she’d ripped his heart from his chest in the middle of the night without warning.

Her flawless Hispanic heritage intensified the angles of her cheekbones and nose, silky dark hair reflecting the fluorescent lighting from above, just as he remembered. Pressure built behind his sternum—had been for the past seven years—and he wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them in an attempt to release it. “Ana.”

“I came as soon as I heard the news.” She rushed toward him and dropped a duffel bag at her feet. Wrapping her arms around his waist, the woman who’d walked out of his life melted into him, and everything inside him quieted in an instant. The insecurity, the rage, the fear and the failure. Now there was only calm. Clarity. Hints of her perfume—something light and fresh—tickled the back of his throat as he buried his nose against the crown of her head. At five foot five, she fit perfectly against him. Toward the end of their relationship, he’d even believed she’d been made specifically for him. Skimming her chin along his shoulder, she set her mouth at his ear, eliciting a shudder from his spine, and lowered her voice. “The kidnapper could be listening. Pretend we’re two friends randomly coming back into contact, and my team and I will do whatever it takes to get your son back.”

His insides tightened. Right. Her team. The hug hadn’t been personal, simply a way to get her message across. She hadn’t come because he’d called in a personal favor. She’d come to do her job. But given the fact his kids had been targeted in order to get to him, he’d do whatever the hell she instructed. He just wanted his son back. No matter the cost. He increased the space between them, shutting down the internal reaction to her proximity exploding through him, and cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. My brothers and I are flying in to surprise them, but then I heard about what happened, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Weaving truth in with the lie. He’d read about that, how law enforcement officials, especially those assigned undercover work, trained to remember their stories by inserting bits and pieces of their own lives into their cover stories. Ana did have brothers. Three of them. But as for the wedding anniversary and wanting to check up on him, Benning was sure she’d improvised. Ana pulled her hair back in a tie and turned toward Olivia still asleep in the bed. Her knees popped as she crouched to unzip the duffel she’d brought. In his next breath she straightened with a small black box in her hand and moved toward the bed with the device raised out in front of her. Pulses of green light strengthened on the screen as she moved around the room. “How is she? Any news about Owen?”

She believed the kidnapper was listening. That was what she’d said. Waiting for him to see if he’d call the police? But unless the man who’d broken into his home knew Olivia would escape the SUV and which hospital room she’d be assigned when she arrived, Benning didn’t see how it was possible after Olivia had been checked in. He’d been by her bedside the entire time, only her nurses and doctors coming in and out of the room. “Nothing yet. Olivia suffered a concussion when she escaped the SUV. Doctors aren’t sure if the damage goes deeper than her short-term memory, but they’ll—”

A red light flashed on the device in Ana’s hand, and she stilled. With a quick glance over her shoulder toward him, she reached behind the faux wood headboard of Olivia’s bed and detached something from the back. Swinging her hand toward him, she stepped away from his daughter and held out the miniature circle-shaped piece of metal. She extended her index finger of her other hand in a spiral motion to signal him to keep talking.

Someone had installed a bug in his daughter’s hospital room. Either they knew she’d wind up in this hospital room or—Benning curled his fingers into tight fists as he ran through a mental list of people who’d stepped foot inside this room—one of the people on Olivia’s medical staff had placed the bug while attending to her injuries. He swallowed, tried to keep his voice even as Ana stared up at him. “They’ll run more tests once she’s awake.”

“How are you doing?” She nodded before maneuvering past him to the other side of the room. Dropping the bug into the glass of water at Oliva’s bedside, she searched the rest of the room, not seemingly interested in his answer.

“It’s been a long night,” he said.

The light on her detector remained green. Physical relief smoothed her expression as she pocketed the black box into her knee-length coat when she was finished, and a hint of the woman he remembered returned. “The rest of the room is clear. They won’t be able to hear anything now. I’ll be sure to get the bug to one of the agents on my team. There’s a chance we can trace it back to its owner and find out who took your son.”

And there she was. The federal agent he’d fallen for the instant she’d walked onto that construction site seven years ago interviewing anyone on his crew who might’ve known about the disappearance of a local teenage girl. Benning latched on to the handrail of his daughter’s hospital bed in an attempt to keep himself in the moment. “Assuming the man who took him is the same one who planted that bug.”

But what were the chances the two weren’t connected?

“Yes.” She nodded toward him, her voice flat, unemotional, and his gut clenched. “You’re bleeding. Has someone looked at that cut on the back of your head? I can stay with her—”

“I’m fine.” It was a lie, but he wasn’t about to leave Olivia’s side. She’d already been through so much; he didn’t want her waking up without him in the room. He tracked Ana’s every move with an awareness he hadn’t experienced since the night she’d left Sevierville all those years ago, noted the slight bulge beneath the left side of her jacket. Her service weapon. He’d imagined confronting her so many times, memorized what he’d say, how she’d react. None of it included him asking for her help, her armed with a gun or one of his children missing.

She’d made her choice. She’d decided her career was more important than what they could have together and had run off to save the world. He’d stayed here, and in the wake of losing her, he’d made the stupidest mistake of his life. He’d rebounded. When Lilly told him about the pregnancy, he’d married her, worked at building a real family together for the sake of their twins, despite the lack of love between them. It’d been nothing more than a one-night fling the night he and his late wife had gotten together, but that one night had changed the course of his life. Benning tucked his hands in his jeans. “Ana, I know why you left, but—”

“All that matters right now is getting your son back.” Moving around the end of the bed, she hauled the duffel bag into an empty chair, her bangs hiding the dark shadows in her eyes. “That’s why you requested me to work this case, isn’t it? This is what I do.”

Right. He’d read the articles splashed on the front page of The Mountain Press, watched the interviews on the major news channels. According to the media, her recovery rates were the highest in the Bureau. When it came to finding the missing, Agent Ana Sofia Ramirez was the best. Right now he needed the best to find his son. He’d shut down the urge to reach out to her over the years, telling himself she’d left for a reason and he was the last person she wanted to hear from, but as far as he was concerned, she would always be unfinished business. “The guy who broke into my house, the one who took my son. I think he’s tied to one of the construction sites I inspected—”

A red dot centered over her heart, and Benning lunged.

A gunshot exploded overhead.

Broken glass hit the bottom of Olivia’s bed and sliced across the exposed skin of his arm. Pain shot up his wrists as they landed hard on the cold tile. Her sharp exhale rushed across the sensitive skin under his chin and beard, and his heart shot into his throat.

Rolling him off her, Ana pushed to a crouch, her service weapon already in hand.

A familiar scream pierced through the settling silence.

“Olivia.” He crawled toward the bed, trying to keep as low as possible. Sunlight reflected off bright blue eyes matching his own as he leveled his gaze with the mattress, and he wrapped his hand around hers. The bruising along his daughter’s wrists and arms had darkened over the past few hours, but even more terrifying: someone had taken a shot at them. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”

“Daddy.” Her whisper tore through him.

Ana pressed her back against the wall beside the window, then straightened to crane her head around the windowsill. “We have to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving her.” His phone vibrated in his pocket. He extracted his cell as Ana turned hazel-green eyes onto him. The number was blocked. Warning tensed the muscles across his shoulders. This was it, the call he’d been waiting for. Locking his gaze on Ana’s, he tapped the screen to answer, then put the call on Speaker. “Who is this?”

“I warned you about involving law enforcement, Mr. Reeves,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Now your son is going to pay the price for your mistake.”

“Let me talk to him. Let me talk to my son.” No answer. Benning tightened his hold on Olivia’s hand, his breaths coming shorter and faster. “Let me talk to my son!”

The call ended.

Chapter Two

No payment demand or instructions. No proof of life. Whoever’d taken Benning’s son wasn’t following typical patterns for an abduction. Which meant this was more than a simple kidnapping. They wanted to hurt Benning, manipulate him. Or they wanted something from him. The question was why.

Ana scoured the parking lot two more times. A gunman couldn’t fire a shot into a hospital without exposing himself, but there was no movement. Nothing to give her an idea of who’d pulled the trigger, or if they were still out there. She locked her grip around her weapon and turned toward Benning. Either way they were sitting ducks in this room. “Get her out of the bed. We’ve got to move.”

He shook his head. “Olivia’s not going anywhere. She needs rest. Her head—”

“You see these bruises around her wrists? How thin they are?” She closed the distance between her and the side of the bed opposite him. Ana flipped his daughter’s hand over as gently as she could. “There’s not enough skin damage for them to be caused by a rope or handcuffs. These are from zip ties, Benning. Someone bound her wrists while she was in that SUV, and she tried to get free, but she’s not strong enough to get out of them herself.”

He took a step back. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he let her go.” She steadied her attention on him, tried to keep the warning out of her voice as much as possible. Benning was a smart man, but sometimes the fear of losing a child hazed over a parent’s ability to string reality together. “Whoever took her, whoever took Owen? They wanted Olivia to be found. They wanted you in this room and planted the device we found to ensure you followed whatever instructions they’d given you the first time they contacted you.” She studied his expression for any hint she’d hit the nail on the head, and her heart rate spiked as he flinched against the accusation. She was right, and the phone call he’d received seconds ago confirmed it. The kidnapper had warned him not to involve law enforcement, on threat of harming his son, because they weren’t finished with Benning. “They knew exactly where to find you. Do you really want to put Olivia’s life in more danger by staying here, or do you want to save both your daughter and your son?”

One breath. Two. Benning grabbed the near-empty IV bag, then scooped his daughter gently into his arms. Olivia’s small body fell limp against his muscled chest as she continued to combat whatever sedative her doctors had put in that IV. He rounded the end of the bed, those bright blue eyes settling on her. Warmth shot up her neck and into her face as the veins in his sinewy arms fought to break through skin. He hadn’t changed much over the years since she’d last seen him, but there was a new roughness to him, a strength that hadn’t been there before and she couldn’t look away. “Do whatever it takes to get her out of here. Okay? She’s the only one who matters.”

“I’ll get you both out of here. I give you my word.” The adrenaline rush increased her focus. She’d memorized the layout of the hospital before she’d left Knoxville. There were three exits from the second floor, not including the windows, but they’d take the stairs at the back of the building in case the shooter had stuck around. She headed toward the door and intercepted his path into the hallway. Adjusting her grip on her weapon, she pulled open the door a crack and studied both ends of the hallway. Lucky for them, Olivia’s room was positioned in the corner, the closest to the stairs. Somehow, her kidnapper had gotten access, left the listening device and escaped without notice. Which meant they weren’t dealing with an amateur. “Stay behind me. Use me as a shield if you have to.”

“Okay.” His voice dropped into graveled territory, as though he was fighting to keep the inflection out of his words.

She twisted her chin directly over one shoulder. “As soon as we’re safe, you’re going to tell me why someone would target your kids to get to you and who exactly was on the other end of that phone call.” Because unless he trusted her, his son might not make it home alive.

She moved into the hallway, shouts hiking her nerves into overdrive. The officers assigned to sit on Olivia Reeves until she woke up would’ve heard the gunshot, but she and Benning couldn’t wait around to give their statements. There was no telling how far the abductor would go to ensure they weren’t connected to attempted murder and kidnapping charges. Or how many people they’d hurt along the way. She cleared the hallway, the lights reflecting off the white tile bright. Nodding toward the exit to their left, she maneuvered Benning and Olivia past her. “Stairs.”

She followed close on his heels through the door as uniforms came around the corner down the hall. Carefully closing the stairwell door behind them, they descended the stairs and pushed through the maintenance exit on the first floor until crisp winter air brushed across the exposed skin of her neck. Swinging her weapon up, she swept the parking lot. No movement. Nothing to suggest an ambush, but she wouldn’t let her guard down until Benning and his daughter were safe. “Black SUV five stalls back. Go.”

They crossed the parking lot at a jog, but every cell in her body screamed warning as movement registered off to her left. She had only a moment to react. Ana shoved Benning and Olivia behind the nearest car with everything she had. Gunfire ripped across the asphalt. A bullet cut through the thick fabric of her coat as she fired back at the masked shooter taking cover behind a vehicle two rows over. Once. Twice. Olivia’s scream pierced through the thud of her pulse behind her ears, but Ana couldn’t focus on that right now. Both hands around her weapon, she centered herself behind a parked vehicle between her and the shooter and pulled the trigger three more times, but it was too late. The shooter was already climbing behind the wheel of a black SUV. Maybe even the same vehicle used to abduct Owen and Olivia. In the span of two breaths, he fishtailed out of the parking lot and disappeared down the street.

Hijo de…

“I think it’s safe to say my cover is blown.” Her exhales crystallized in front of her mouth as she turned back toward Benning and his daughter, the girl’s hands locked over her ears. Her fingers tingled with the urge to comfort the six-year-old, but Ana chose to reholster her weapon and positioned her coat over the fresh wound in her side before Olivia saw the blood. The girl had already suffered so much. She didn’t need more material for her nightmares. “Let’s get her in the car. We can’t wait around for the shooter to come back and finish the job.”

Hauling Olivia into his chest, Benning straightened and secured his daughter in the back seat of the SUV. His mountainous shoulders and arms were massive compared to the girl’s small frame as he brushed something from Olivia’s chin, his whisper inaudible to Ana less than two feet away. He was careful of his daughter’s injuries, caring, and Ana fought against the sudden tightness in her throat. There’d been a time she’d imagined him treating their future children’s scrapes and bruises like he’d done with Olivia. Her throat threatened to close, and she turned away from the visual to dislodge the string of thought. She’d buried that future the second she’d snuck out of his room that night.

“Are you okay?” Benning closed the door, his focus on Ana, and her entire body heated as though he’d physically trailed a path down across her clavicle bone. He closed the small distance between them, reaching out, but she dodged his attempt to touch her. His expression fell, his hand falling to his side. “I thought you’d been hit.”

“I’m fine.” Lie. The pain crushed the air from her lungs. She’d most likely need stitches—maybe a surgeon—but she couldn’t worry about that right now. They were vulnerable out here in the open. Targets. Blood trickled into the waistband of her slacks, the ache the only thing keeping her in the moment. He had every reason to hate her for what she’d done, but right now the way he looked at her, as though she were the only woman in the entire world, weighed heavy on her chest.

It’d be so easy to fall back into old habits with him, to remember the way his entire face lit up when she walked into a room, the promises of forever he’d whispered into her ear from between the sheets, how happy they’d been simply curled up in front of the fireplace. It’d be easy to become attached to the man she’d walked away from, but she’d come back to Sevierville for one thing: to find Owen Reeves.

She couldn’t do that without the truth.

Ana clamped her hand to her side, awakening her pain receptors all over again, and wrenched open the driver-side door. Every minute they wasted out here was another minute Owen was in the hands of his kidnapper. She wanted to bring him home. Needed to. “Get in.”

Benning rounded the back of the SUV as she settled into the front and pushed the ignition button to start the engine. The interior filled with his wild, pine-and-dirt scent as he climbed inside, and she breathed a bit deeper, held on to it as much as she could in an attempt to dull the pain in her side. She’d missed that smell, a combination of soap and outdoors. Missed him.

“You can’t go back to your house. The shooter could be waiting for you there.” She maneuvered the SUV out of the hospital parking lot as sirens echoed down the street. The officers who’d been stationed to watch Olivia had called in backup, and while Owen Reeves’s kidnapping fell under federal jurisdiction, they’d need all the help they could get. Ana hit the call button on the steering wheel, the line connecting almost instantly.

“Calling for help already?” JC asked. “This wouldn’t be about Sevierville PD reporting shots fired at LeConte Medical Center, would it?”

“You read my mind. We’ve got an unknown shooter in a black SUV, no plates and local PD closing in on the scene.” She pressed her foot against the accelerator, the weight of Benning’s attention increasing as they sped from the hospital. “Think you could take care of that for me?”

“I live to serve.” JC’s laugh fought to lighten the tension tightening down her back, but Ana had a feeling that as long as Benning was involved, nothing would help. “I checked the traffic cams around the time of the kidnapping. There’s no sign of the getaway vehicle. I’ve got IT working their magic, but someone brought down the cameras beforehand or knew where they were positioned so they could stay clear. We’ve got nothing.”

Which meant the kidnapping had been premeditated. This was the work of a professional.

Benning ran one hand through his hair, leveraging his elbow on the passenger-side door. Frustration played clearly across his expression, and in that moment her instincts said there was more to this investigation than a simple kidnapping.

“Thanks, JC. Sevierville PD is about to bag a listening device I found attached to the back of the girl’s hospital bed. I need you to see if you can trace it back to its owner. Call me if you find something.” She ended the call, checked the rearview mirror for any vehicles behind them, then slammed her foot against the brakes. The seat belt pressed into her chest as her body weight shifted forward from momentum.

“What are you doing?” Benning straightened, braced against the dashboard. Pushing his dark, shoulder-length hair behind one ear, he turned on her. “The shooter could be following us.”

“You brought me into this investigation by requesting me specifically, but I can’t do my job if you’re keeping information from me. I think now’s a good time to tell me who took your son, don’t you?” Heated rubber filled her lungs, clearing his scent from her system. She faced him. “The kidnapper contacted you before that call in the hospital, didn’t he? He warned you not to involve the police, so you thought if you reached out to a former acquaintance who happened to be an FBI agent, he wouldn’t know. The listening device, the rifle shot through the window… This guy is a professional, Benning, and he has targeted you. What does he want?”

He stared out the windshield. Seconds ticked by, a minute. Pressure built behind her sternum the longer he took to answer, but when he turned that bright blue gaze to hers, her gut said she wasn’t going to like the next words out of his mouth. “He wants the skull I found.”

“A HUMAN SKULL?” she asked.

Snowflakes drifted across the windshield. January temperatures tunneled through his shirt, but the memories of what he’d found—evidence of what a killer had done—generated enough heat to haunt him for the rest of his life. Someone had kidnapped his twins and taken a shot at Ana through the window of his daughter’s hospital room. Because of him. He couldn’t keep the truth to himself any longer. “A woman approached me two weeks ago on the site of one of the buildings I was inspecting. She offered me fifty thousand dollars to give a residential project the go-ahead, but the crew had cut too many corners. There were sections of framing missing. The plumbing wasn’t up to code.” Benning smoothed his palms down his jeans, blood crusted on the underside of his fingers. Olivia’s. Glancing toward his daughter in the back seat, he studied the perfect curve of her mouth as she slept—anything to distract him from the fact he’d almost lost her less than six hours ago. And that her brother had been taken. “I couldn’t ignore any of that, so I said no. Told her I suggested she hire a new crew to do the job right before the city came in with a lawsuit.”

Ana’s uniquely enthralling eyes—the ones he’d dreamed about for years—softened. “What happened after you gave her your answer?”

“I couldn’t get past the thought that she’d bribed inspectors before. She seemed…comfortable with the approach, so I started looking into the company’s past projects.” He shook his head. “I found settlement paperwork between Britland Construction and tenants who’d been injured or left homeless because their buildings weren’t up to code. Years’ worth, with millions of dollars at stake, but the problems were only getting worse, and somehow their projects kept getting approved by the city. I wanted to know why.”

“You started investigating on your own.” Ana leaned back in her seat, her expression smooth. How was that possible? How could she pretend nothing had happened between them—that she hadn’t torn his life apart—and keep herself so…detached?

“I went to the police. They brought the woman in for questioning, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Britland had sent her to bribe me. Her lawyer threw around so much weight, the investigating officers couldn’t even verify she worked for them. Dozens of families were being hurt every year because of this company’s negligence and greed, and I couldn’t let them get away with it. I’m the only inspector the city has, so when Britland needed another project across town inspected, I added the job to my afterhours schedule last night. I ripped open one of the main walls to check the electrical.” He dug his phone out from his pocket and swiped to a photo he’d hidden in the cloud. “That’s when I found this.”

Ana took the phone from him, her fingers brushing against his, and everything inside him fired in a heated chain reaction. She’d always had that effect on him; had always been able to take total control of his body with a single touch, but despite the fact he’d been the one to bring her back into his life, he couldn’t give in to those feelings now. Now he had to get his family back. That was all that mattered. “That’s most definitely a skull.” She brought the screen closer to her face. “We won’t be able to narrow time or cause of death without my forensics team getting their hands on it, but that hole in the frontal bone looks like a gunshot wound.”

He’d thought so, too.

“I called the police as soon as I found it, but before my call connected, someone shouted at me from behind. I turned around to find a gun and a flashlight pointed at my face. I thought the guy was site security, so I explained who I was, and why I was there and offered to show my work order, but when my eyes adjusted, I noticed the ski mask.” His heart rate picked up as a fresh wave of adrenaline dumped into his veins. “He said he’d wished I hadn’t found the skull, and that he was sorry. He had his finger on the trigger, and I knew then he was going to shoot me for what I’d seen, but then an actual security guard ordered him to lower his weapon. The shooting started, and I just grabbed the skull and ran.”

“You said he was wearing a mask. Did you pick up on any other characteristics? Anything we can use to identify him?” she said. “An accent, tattoos, scars, clothing, the color of his eyes?”

“No, none of that.” He shook his head.

She handed the phone back, seemingly determined to avoid physical contact this time. “Where’s the skull now?”

“Safe.” He hit the sleep button on the side of his phone. “At first, I didn’t think Britland could be responsible. It’d be too obvious. There was a paper trail linking the payoffs to the victims, and the skull I found had been drywalled inside their own building, but as soon as I left the site, I knew I couldn’t go home. At least not right away, in case the guy in the mask decided to follow me.” Rage burned through him. He should’ve been more careful. Should’ve taken the skull straight to the police. He cleared his throat as his eyes burned. “My nanny—Jo West—was supposed to drop the kids off for a sleepover at a friend’s house, but she called me saying Owen had been sick for the past few hours, and he wanted me to come home.” Now his nanny was missing. “When I got to my house, I hid the skull in an old, unfinished brick fireplace my dad had started building when I was a kid, but when I got inside the bastard was already in my house. I fought him off as long as I could, but I couldn’t stop him. He hit me from behind almost the second I walked through the front door. When I woke up, my phone was vibrating in my pocket, the house was quiet and Jo and the kids… They were gone.”

Now the SOB had his son.

“He warned me if I involved the FBI or police, I’d never see my kids again, said I had twenty-four hours to turn over the skull before he’d start hurting them.” He hadn’t been fast enough, strong enough. But with the evidence he’d recovered, he was going to expose them all. He’d make sure they never hurt his family again, never hurt anyone’s family again. “I know what I’m asking you to do, Ana. I know you don’t want to be here, but these people went after my family. You’re the only one who can help me find my son before it’s too late.”

Pain throbbed at the base of his head in rhythm with his racing heart rate.

“Then it’s a good thing I came into town for my parents’ surprise wedding anniversary.” The hardened exterior she’d hidden behind the moment she’d stepped into his daughter’s hospital room cracked as one corner of her mouth lifted into a smile. She put the SUV back in gear and pulled into traffic. “There’s a safe house the FBI has secured outside of town. You and Olivia can stay there while I collect your bodiless friend from the fireplace. After that, our forensics unit can run dental and DNA for an identification and hopefully trace the victim back to the kidnapper. If he wants the evidence so badly, there’s a reason. I’m going to find out what that reason is so we can get your son back.”

Water and snow kicked up alongside the SUV as they headed out of the city, Main Street passing in a blur. In this quiet, Smokey Mountain town of less than 20,000 residents, there wasn’t much in the way of scandal and crime, but when it hit, it hit hard and left a wake of grief behind. Plowed streets disappeared under a new layer of snow, the trees growing thicker as they headed southeast along the highway. Oliva’s soft snores and the high-pitched clearing of slush beneath the tires coaxed him to relax, but he couldn’t ignore the strained silence between him and the woman who’d amazingly put herself in harm’s way for his daughter. “Thank you for taking the case. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“No need to thank me.” Thin lines around her eyes deepened as though she was in the middle of an internal battle of some kind. “This is my job. This is what I’m trained for.”

Was that all this was to her? A job? His gut clenched. He should’ve known better; should’ve realized reaching out to her wasn’t going to change anything. He should’ve had enough sense to let the past die, but he hadn’t been able to stop the loop of what-ifs since that morning he’d woken alone in his bed. Until he caught sight of the stain of blood pooling on her slacks. Benning jerked forward in his seat. Hell. She’d gotten shot, her wound had been bleeding this entire time and she’d kept it to herself. “Damn it, Ana, you’re hurt. Pull over.”

“I said I’m fine. It’s been six hours since your son was taken. If we get stuck out here, we’re not finding Owen before the deadline.” The muscles along her throat worked to swallow. Her left arm hung limp at her side, her free hand gripped so tight around the steering wheel her knuckles threatened to split the translucent skin. “Besides, I’ve survived a lot worse than a bullet wound. Tell me about Owen.”

A lot worse? What the hell did that mean?

Hesitation gripped him hard, but he couldn’t argue with her logic. Every minute they were on the run was another minute his son didn’t have. “He hates peanut butter. Won’t go near the stuff. All he wants to do is sit on his tablet and watch those stupid videos online of other kids playing with toys, but I let him because it makes him happy.” Adrenaline from the shootout at the hospital drained from his veins the longer he talked about Owen. “The kid can’t go anywhere without the blanket I bought for him while Lilly was pregnant with them. Sleeps with it every night, takes it with him wherever he goes. Except school. That’s where I had to draw the line.”

That damn blanket was still right where Owen had left it in the middle of the living room floor during the abduction. His son must’ve dropped it when the kidnapper had rushed him out the door. Only now Benning wished he would’ve brought it with him, had something to hold on to of his son’s. A minute passed, maybe more.

“I’m sorry about Lilly. I wanted to…reach out, but I wasn’t sure after what’d happened between us…” She cleared her throat, redirected her attention out the driver-side window. “Has it been hard? Not having her around?”

He let her words settle, focusing on the topic of his late wife.

“At first.” He couldn’t really remember single moments of the first few months of the twins’ lives. It’d been a blur of diaper changes and spit up, of having to take a leave of absence until he’d found the right nanny to take over, of trying to make sense of being a single father. Of trying to forget about the rookie federal agent who’d extracted herself from his life as quickly as she’d appeared. He studied the snow as it melted against the hood of the SUV. “My entire world got turned upside down. I had to start thinking of things like formula temperature, not being able to sleep for more than an hour at a time and which diapers worked better for girls compared to boys. To be honest, I still don’t know what I’m doing or if I’m making the right choices for them.” He scratched at the spot of dried mud on his jeans as heat flared into his neck and face. “Guess I should be grateful I got to do any of that stuff… Lilly didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” Sincerity laced her words. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s okay.” He’d healed from that wound a long time ago. “Lilly and I both knew what we were getting ourselves into, and we’d both accepted the possibility that we might not be able to make it work. We agreed what’d happened between us was a mistake, but I can’t say I regret what came out of it. I wouldn’t have Owen or Olivia if it wasn’t for her.” He twisted toward Olivia. “What about you? Got someone waiting for you when you head back to Knoxville?”

The idea she’d found happiness with another man—someone other than him—built pressure behind his sternum, which didn’t make sense. She’d been the one to drive the wedge between them. What she did with her life after that shouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but there she’d been, always emerging when he failed to distract himself or had a few minutes alone.

“No. The cases I work, the things I’ve seen…” Ana shifted in her seat, flinched against an invisible pain he couldn’t see. She slowed the SUV on approach to one of the side roads off the highway up ahead. She turned that hazel gaze onto him for a moment as she maneuvered the vehicle up the long, winding drive to a cabin set a little less than an eighth of a mile back on the property. In an instant he was the man completely smitten with the rookie fresh from Quantico who’d been working her first missing persons case in Sevierville. “It’s impossible to find the light when I have to spend all my time walking through the dark.”

Chapter Three

Trees surrounded the property from every side, cutting them off from civilization. Ana climbed the short set of stairs leading up to a covered porch, old wood protesting under her boots. Nobody would be able to find them out here, and with the Smokey Mountains interfering with cell signals and transmitters, she, Benning and Olivia would be completely on their own.

Using the key she’d been given by Director Pembrook before leaving Knoxville, she pushed her way inside. Met with a spacious living room, pale stone and open ceilings, she dropped her duffel at her feet. The alarm panel to her right screamed for attention. She keyed in the code, also provided by the director, and moved to shed her coat. Pain registered as she pulled the heavy fabric from her shoulders, her T-shirt crusted to the wound. Securing the property—that was all that mattered right now. Then she could worry about digging the bullet from her side and recovering the evidence Benning had removed off that construction site. Heat brushed across her arms and neck as Benning carried his still-sedated daughter and her IV through the door. “You can put Olivia in one of the bedrooms over here. The fridge is fully stocked if you’re hungry. I’ll have someone on my team check in with her doctor about the head trauma protocol.”

The girl had lost a lot of color in her face, her elvish features more gray now. Abducted, hospitalized, shot at. Ana could only imagine the nightmares coming when Olivia drifted off to sleep, and her heart lurched in her chest. To go through so much pain, at such a young age… It’d stay with her the rest of her life. Just as it’d stayed with Ana since she was that age.

But she had the chance to make sure that pain didn’t tear Benning’s family apart as it had her own.

“Thanks.” He moved past her, the muscles along his neck and back flexing with every step as he headed around the short wall separating the entryway from the hallway. Smells of cinnamon and apples filled the space, but it would take a lot more than a few air fresheners to clear Benning’s naturally intoxicating scent from her lungs. She’d been wrapped in a protective bubble with him for the past two hours inside the SUV. She wasn’t sure if she could ever get him out from under her skin, but she’d keep her distance. His son’s life depended on it.

Infierno. She forced herself to focus on the injury, peeling back the thin fabric of her T-shirt. To prove he didn’t have this gripping hold over her. The bleeding had slowed, but the risk of infection out here was high. They were miles from any hospital, and with the bullet still inside, every move on her part only caused more damage. She had to secure the perimeter before arming the alarm system, then she could worry about the hole in her side. Sliding one arm back into her coat, she hissed as the pain increased.

“Where are you going?” That voice. His voice. Even after all these years, it hiked her pulse higher and heated her insides. How was that possible? She’d buried her feelings for him a long time ago. She’d moved on, healed. Four words out of his mouth shouldn’t leave her wanting more.

“I need to make sure the security measures are up and running.” A wide expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows revealed miles of wilderness, mountains and snow. If anyone had tracked them here, those trees would be the perfect cover, but safeguards had been put in place once the FBI had seized the cabin from its last owner. Cameras, motion-activated lights, heat sensors. All of it could’ve been compromised over the past few weeks of heavy snowfall. She’d check every single one of them before leaving Benning and Olivia on their own. They would be safe here, but the tension tightening the tendons between her neck and shoulders hadn’t lessened. It was one thing to come back to Sevierville to find a missing boy. It was another to hole up in a safe house with a former fling for as long as it took to find that boy. More than that, she needed distance, needed to clear her head—of him. Dropping the magazine from her weapon, she counted her remaining rounds and slammed it back into place. She holstered her gun. “Shouldn’t take too long. I’ll brief my boss while I’m out. I should be able to get a team to the scene at your house in the next hour or so.”

“Ana, wait.” Her name whispered from his mouth, but she couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t allow him to see the battle she forged to keep her expression smooth. “I need you to understand something.”

Six words. That was all it took for that small glimmer of hope she’d held on to to burn through her, but she couldn’t afford to give it oxygen. It infiltrated the invisible barrier she’d built over the course of the past seven years, uninvited, and threatened to break through her control. Their relationship—however powerful it’d been—was over. She’d made sure of that when she’d transferred back to Washington, DC, without telling him.

“My kids are all I have, and I will do whatever it takes to protect them and to get my son back.” One step. Two. He shortened the space between them until that hint of pine teased her senses again. “Even if that means throwing a wrench in the FBI’s investigation.”

What the hell did that mean?

“You requested me to work this case, Benning, to recover your son. That’s exactly what I’m going to do, but if you want the person who took him to pay for what they’ve done, you’re going to have to trust me.” Turning toward the front door, she huddled inside her coat to head back out into the cold. Where she belonged, an outsider looking in. Not with Benning. Not with his daughter. This was just another case. Once upon a time, they’d talked about having a family of their own, but this one wasn’t hers. They never would be. She’d meant every word during the drive out here. She’d dedicated her life and her career to finding the missing and that decision had ended their relationship. Attachment to each and every victim and their families was only a distraction to that cause. She’d learned that the hard way. Seven years ago she’d let those emotions get the best of her. She’d made a mistake, and a victim had paid the price. “You should get some rest. You and Olivia have been through a lot.”

A wave of dizziness directed her shoulder into the nearest wall.

“You’re not going anywhere.” A strong hand threaded between her arm and the uninjured side of her rib cage and spun her into a hardened wall of muscle. She pressed against his chest, but Benning’s massive body wouldn’t budge. He’d put on more muscle over the years, the ridges and valleys fighting to escape his long-sleeve T-shirt. She imagined it’d partly been due to the fact he lived on the outskirts of town, on the property he’d inherited after his parents passed away. Calluses on his palms spoke of working the land with his bare hands. He was so much bigger than she was at over six feet; stronger, too, but he’d never used that strength to intimidate her. It wasn’t part of his genetic makeup. He released his hold on her, giving her a chance to retreat, but she was paralyzed. Frozen in place with him so close. “You’re bleeding through your coat.”

“Comes with the territory of getting shot.” Pain lightened through her nerve endings as though reminding her she had yet to pull the slug from her side. Right. With the rush of adrenaline from the shootout and every cell she owned tuned to every cell in his, her body’s priority had been pushed to the back of her mind. Then again, she wouldn’t be able to do her job if she bled out in the middle of the safe house.

He maneuvered her toward the dining room table. “You got a first-aid kit somewhere in this place?”

“Should be under the kitchen sink.” She pulled one of the chairs away from the table and collapsed into the seat, hand clamped to her side. Sweat slid down her spine, her heart pounding at her temples. It’d been two hours since she’d been shot. Looked like her body had decided it wasn’t going to be ignored any longer.

In seconds Benning returned with the red-and-white box, set the case on the table and settled into the chair beside hers. “Get rid of the shirt.”

“I can stitch myself.” She reached for the needle and thread inside the kit.

“I know you can, but you took that bullet for me and Olivia.” He took the supplies from her hand. “The least I can do is help get it out of you before you lose consciousness.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” At this point she wasn’t sure she cared.

“Owen needed stitches last year after running headfirst into that old fireplace on our property I should’ve knocked down years ago. My sewing skills seemed good enough for him.” Cold worked across her skin as he cleaned away the excess blood with alcohol pads in efficient strokes.

“Do six-year-olds usually have strong opinions about head wounds?” she asked.

“He was more concerned about the fact the gash would leave a scar.” Silence descended between them, every move made, every brush of his fingers against her skin, every breath he took, pinging on her radar. Loose strands of hair hid his face, but she didn’t have to see him to know what was going through his head right now. She’d memorized his tells a long time ago. “Why did you come back here?”

“You don’t remember? You requested me to work this investigation.” She studied the deep lines set around his mouth. Not much had changed about him over the years. He was still handsome as ever, but there was a heaviness in the set of his eyes now. The same man she’d left behind sat mere inches away, but the past few years had left him weathered, battle torn. Rugged. He’d taken on the sole responsibility of raising his children and keeping his inspection business afloat. She couldn’t imagine the amount of pressure that’d been thrust onto his shoulders practically overnight when he’d lost Lilly and ended up with two small newborns to care for alone. But the way he was looking at her now, the way her body responded to his touch… It was just the two of them. The investigation, their shared past, it all fled to the back of her mind. “Or did the man who broke into your house hit you harder than you thought?”

“You could’ve handed it off to one of the other agents on your team. The FBI has an entire division dedicated to this kind of thing.” Benning discarded the bloodied wipes, then opened a fresh package and cleaned the oversize tweezers he’d set out a few minutes ago. Standing, he unbuckled his belt, bringing her attention to those powerful thighs wrapped in denim. “But you took this assignment anyway.” He handed her his belt. “Here, bite down on this.”

Ana clenched the leather between her teeth as he pried at the edges of the wound with the head of the tweezers. She forced herself to keep her body relaxed, but the pain got the best of her after a few seconds. Ana screamed against the fire scorching through her side as he fished the bullet out of her. In seconds Benning discarded the slug onto the kitchen table. She shut down the primal urge to lean just a bit closer, to touch him for some warped sense of comfort, and spit out the belt.

“Does it matter?” Deep down she knew the answer. Why she’d taken the case when she could’ve pushed it off onto another agent. It had nothing to do with redemption. “Finding victims is what I’ve been trained for, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get your son back.”

He nodded, threading the needle from the kit. After stitching the edges of her injury together in quick rows, he taped a fresh piece of gauze to her side and cleaned up the bloody mess she’d left behind. He stood over her. Bigger, more intimidating than he’d been a minute ago. “I know you will. Because if you can’t, the bastard who took Owen is going to wish he’d killed me last night.”

HE SMOOTHED THE backs of his knuckles across Olivia’s forehead. The swelling where she’d hit her head—presumably when she’d jumped or been pushed from the kidnapper’s SUV—had gone down, but she was still fighting against the sedatives the doctor had given her. Red flannel and pale bedding surrounded her small form on the queen-size bed. The saline bag attached to her IV had been emptied within the last hour, and he carefully unscrewed the connection, then wrapped her hand—needle and all—with gauze at the direction of her doctor’s message. With only two beds in the massive cabin, he and Olivia would be bunking together, but he couldn’t sleep. Not with Owen still out there. Alone. Afraid. His eyes burned as thoughts of how this investigation could end filled his head. If Benning handed over the skull he’d found in that building, what were the chances his son’s kidnapper would let Owen go free? What would stop them from ripping Olivia’s brother from her life?

“Can’t sleep?” Her voice slid through him, stretching into the deepest parts of his mind to chase back the uncertainty clawing at him from inside. Ana’s boots echoed off the hardwood floor as she closed the distance between her and the end of the bed. She’d gotten rid of the stained clothing, her shoulder holster and weapon stark against her white T-shirt, and in an instant, he had his answer. Ana. Ana would stop them from tearing his family apart. Just as she stopped so many others. She studied Olivia in the bed, then handed him a steaming mug of dark liquid.

“She’s hogging the bed.” The ceramic burned the oversensitized skin of his palms, but he only held the mug tighter. To keep him in the moment, to feel the pain. To remind himself that no matter how she still might affect his biological reactions, Ana was here to work this case and nothing more. He took a sip of his coffee. Decaf. “Unless you’re willing to share?”

The idea drilled down through his core, eliciting too many tempting visuals.

“I think you felt me up enough getting the bullet out of my side.” Her smile—the one he hadn’t been able to forget after all these years—flashed wide, and his nerve endings caught fire. This right here. This was one of the reasons he’d fallen for her in the first place. The quick banter, her jokes. No matter how dark the situation, she’d always had the ability to lighten the mood, and the hollowness that’d carved straight through him the moment he’d learned she’d left him ebbed for the first time in years. Maneuvering around to his side of the bed, she pulled up a chair. The lamp beside his daughter’s bed reflected the natural sheen of Ana’s long, dark hair as she rested her heels on the edge of the mattress beside his. Would it still be as soft as he remembered? “I briefed TCD on the latest developments of the case. The director is sending two agents to your property to oversee processing the crime scene. Good agents, who know what they’re doing. With any luck, they’ll have something we can use to identify the man who took your son and where he’s keeping Owen.”

He didn’t have to look at his wrist to see how many hours were left until the deadline the kidnappers had given him. It was as though the countdown clock had become part of his consciousness. Always there. Always ticking off the seconds one by one. Owen had been taken close to nine hours ago. The man who’d broken into his house had given him twenty-four to hand over the skull and any other evidence he’d uncovered before his son paid the price for his mistake. Would the agents sent by Tactical Crime Division be able to process the scene at his house before time ran out?

That all-too-familiar sense of instability rocked through him.

“I need to hand over the evidence.” Benning shoved to his feet, his entire body buzzing with the need to take action. He should be out there looking for his son, doing whatever it took. Not holed up in some safe house imagining all the ways this investigation could go wrong. Placing the coffee mug on a side table, he scraped his fingernails across his scalp, shoulder-length hair caught between his fingers. Long stretches of trees and mountains on the other side of the massive floor-to-ceiling wall of windows increased the isolation growing inside. The sun had started dipping behind the Smokey Mountains. They were running out of time. Everything—the kidnapping, the shooting—it was all on him. “None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t started looking into Britland Construction. I should’ve left it alone. I’m the one who’s supposed to be responsible for him. I promised him I would always keep him safe, and now Owen’s out there in the hands of a possible killer because I wanted to play detective.”

“You and I both know once you hand over that evidence, the person responsible for taking your son won’t let you or your family walk away. You’re too much of a risk.” Her voice dipped to soothe the rough edges of anxiety tearing him apart from the inside. Movement registered from behind, and he turned to find her setting her own mug on the end table beside the bed. She closed the empty space between them without a single sound, taking special care not to wake Olivia. She motioned toward the bed with the crown of her head, but he couldn’t look away from her, couldn’t ignore the sudden shift in her expression. “Do you see that beautiful little girl there? She’s alive because of you, Benning. You protected her from getting shot in that parking lot, and you tackled me to the floor in her room before the shooter could take me out. Neither of us would be here if it weren’t for you.”

She was right. Turning over the evidence wouldn’t guarantee Owen’s release, but his insecurity—the need for action—pricked at the back of his neck. “I want to be the one out there, looking for him.”

“I know, and I know it doesn’t feel like you’re doing much, but I promise you, you are exactly where you need to be.” Raising her hand, she settled it on his forearm. Heat and electricity coiled together in a dangerous combination that traveled down his spine. Tantalizing hints of her perfume nudged at the raw memories he’d tried to forget, and it took everything inside him not to give in. “We’re going to get your son back. Together.”

Her confidence, combined with her hand still on his arm, slowed his racing heart rate, and suddenly he was more aware of her than ever. Aware of the way her bangs settled along the curve of her cheeks, the way the swell of her lower lip was slightly fuller than the top and how the brown in her eyes had seemingly deepened over the past few minutes. She was a strong, intelligent, confident woman who’d committed herself to saving the lives of strangers on a daily basis, not to mention she was one of the most intense people he’d ever met. Admirable. Honest. Observant. Everything he thought he’d wanted in a life partner. Gravity pulled his gaze to her dark red fingertips resting against his skin. Until she’d left without a word. “Tell me why I had to find out you’d requested a transfer to Washington after you’d already left.”

She let her hand slip away, the burn of her touch chased back by the cold penetrating through the wall of windows on his right. Diverting that mesmerizing gaze of hers toward his daughter in the bed, she took a step back. “Benning, we don’t have to do this now.”

“I was afraid you were dead.” The admission tore from him. The hollowness he’d struggled to fill had been increasing every second since the moment she’d walked into that hospital room, and he couldn’t take it anymore. “I called the police, the hospitals, the FBI, anyone who might’ve been able to tell me where you were or what’d happened to you. I looked for you for three days, Ana, with no phone calls, no messages, no emails or texts.” He forced himself to take a deep breath before their conversation woke Olivia. “I woke up, and you were just…gone. I want to know—”

“Because my partner found her body.” A hardness etched into her expression, her voice dropping into level territory. No emotion. No infliction. In an instant, the woman who’d joked with him a few minutes ago disappeared. Nothing but the cold, distant, detached federal agent he’d believed her capable of being all these years.

Confusion gripped him hard. “Whose body?”

“Samantha Perry,” she said.

He’d heard that name before. Why did it sound so familiar? Somberness overcame him, his hands relaxing at his sides. Recognition flared as snippets of memory of his and Ana’s first meeting rushed to the front of his mind. The first time he’d set eyes on her, she’d been partnered with another agent, but while Benning couldn’t remember her partner’s name, he could never forget Samantha Perry. Hell. “The teenage girl you’d come to Sevierville to find.”

“They found her in the corner of an alley between two restaurants in Knoxville, discarded like a piece of trash three months after she disappeared.” Her eyes remained steady on his, but almost absent, distant in the way she never blinked. “I was assigned to find her. I promised her family I would find her. She was an innocent fifteen-year-old girl who’d been taken from school by a janitor named Harold Wood who worked there, but we couldn’t prove it. We searched his house, his car, the entire school. There was no sign of her, of her clothing, DNA, nothing, but her best friend swore she’d seen him on campus the day she went missing. The only proof that could’ve nailed that bastard to the wall was if her body turned up, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I needed to find her alive, but I was too late. I failed her.” Ana unfolded her arms, her gaze suddenly alive, the muscles across her shoulders hard. “She died because I let myself get distracted. With you.”

His stomach dropped. A distraction?

“The minute I got that call from my partner, I swore to myself I would never let my emotions cloud my judgment again. So yes, I requested the transfer, and as soon as I got it, I left.” She took a single step toward him. “Because every minute I wasn’t focused on finding Samantha Perry was another minute she’d been tortured, violated and alone.” Her expression smoothed as though she couldn’t hold back the exhaustion and effects of blood loss anymore. Defeated. “I can’t live with the weight of another life on my shoulders, Benning. Even for you.”

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