Instead she narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t for public consumption. Can we go someplace more private?” When he didn’t budge, she hissed a curse. “Why did I even bother? I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” She spun and took two steps toward the door.
And collapsed.
“Isabella!” Jacob caught her on the way down. When the others surged forward to help, he swept her up into his arms and tried to brace himself against the feel of her lithe, toned body against his chest. “Stand down, I’ve got her.”
“That’s the chick we saw behind the Secretary of Defense,” Tony said. “The one who made you miss the Bull.”
“No kidding.” Jacob carried her to the stairs and started up with no real plan.
“Has something happened to Louis Cooper?” Cameron Murphy asked, his voice carrying the weight of leadership and surprising Jacob, who hadn’t even noticed the boss’s arrival.
“You’ll know as soon as I do.” But the thought of it grabbed at Jacob’s guts and wouldn’t let go. If the Secret Service had been protecting Cooper, it was because he was in danger.
And given that Cooper’s protection agent was unconscious half an hour away from the resort—
It didn’t look good.
Chapter Two
Isabella couldn’t believe she’d fainted. How embarrassing. Worse, she was pretty sure Jacob had seen her hit the floor.
But that was nothing compared to the ultimate shame. She’d failed her protectee. She made a small sound of distress and clamped her eyelids shut against the remembered images.
“I know you’re awake.” Jacob’s low, half-familiar voice seemed to come from far away, making her aware of the yielding surface beneath her and the sense of being in a quiet space amid action. “You said you wanted to talk privately. So talk.”
She wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone. But she had come to him, not the other way around, and she still couldn’t talk herself out of the logic.
Within an hour of the attack, she’d found herself kicked out of Cooper’s chalet and cut off from all the official options. Refusing to give up on her duty, she’d decided she needed an unofficial option. And Jacob Powell, ex-Special Forces airstrike pilot and current high-stakes bounty hunter was about as unofficial as it got.
More importantly, from what she’d heard over the years—not that she’d been keeping tabs on him, of course—having him on her side was like having an entire private army at her disposal. That, more than anything, had compelled her to make the drive to the bounty hunters’ headquarters in the mountains. If she could have avoided this awkward reunion, she would have. But duty—and failure—had made it a necessity.
So she opened her eyes and shoved herself upright on the couch in one smooth move that left her head reeling and her stomach fisting on a slap of nausea.
God, she hated percussion bombs. She’d caught the edge of a relatively mild flash-bang during training and her ears had rung for a week. The one in the chalet had nearly flattened her. Then LBJ had finished the job with one blow of a gun butt.
By the time she’d come to, it had all been over. Secretary Cooper had been unconscious, tied to a dining room chair.
And Hope and the twin girls had been gone.
Kidnapped.
“Isabella.” Jacob’s voice softened on the word, sending a spear of pain straight through her chest. “Talk to me.”
Because he was why she’d turned away from the airport and headed into the hills, she opened her eyes. And nearly closed them again.
He stood across the small office, shifting from foot to foot. When she’d thought of him over the years—and she’d thought of him as little as possible—her memories had been of constant motion and unflinching intensity. That hadn’t changed.
But other parts of him had. He was bigger than she remembered. Not taller, though at five-eleven, he’d always topped her by a good four inches, but broader. More solid. More muscular—and the Jacob she remembered had been plenty muscular to begin with.
Remembering those muscles, and the masculine skin that covered them, she twisted to put her feet on the floor, clutching the edge of the leather-covered sofa cushion for balance.
Jacob frowned. “You should stay down. You’re pretty banged up.”
“I’m fine.” In reality, she had a hell of a headache, but Cooper had begged her not to alert the resort’s medical staff. She glanced at Jacob. “I need your help.”
He stilled. “What happened?”
She fought the urge to close her eyes again, to block out the things she’d seen once she’d regained consciousness. The quiet chalet. Louis Cooper tied to a dining room chair with a message written across his naked chest in his own blood.
Images of failure. Of danger. Of a possible national crisis in the making that she was forbidden to speak of.
But damn it, she wasn’t going to let something like this happen. Not on her watch.
So she kept her eyes level on his and saw his body vibrate with the need to pace, to do something. Or maybe that was her body? How could she be this near him after all these years and not feel the pull?
She couldn’t. That was the simple answer. Just looking at him warmed her stomach and tightened her throat, and not only from the memories, but from his sheer presence. He seemed to fill the office, dominate it, possess it. If she could have turned and run, she would have. But Hope and the girls needed her help and Jacob was her only hope, damn it.
She took a breath, swallowed and said, “Louis Cooper’s family was abducted from the Golf Resort five hours ago.”
The sentence crushed her, as though saying it out loud made it more real. She half expected Jacob to shout at her, to panic, to tell her she was no damn good—because that was what she’d told herself, and that was the hair-trigger temper she remembered.
But he merely nodded and watched her from across the room. “Tell me everything.”
Something broke inside her, loosening the band around her heart. She almost told him how gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly scared she’d been when she’d seen Louis Cooper’s body tied to a chair, limp and covered with blood.
She, who was never, ever, scared.
But telling him that would be leaning. Leeching. All those needy, greedy things he’d accused her of when they’d broken up and she’d realized that the things she’d seen as togetherness, as love, he’d seen as her being controlling. Clinging. Unstable.
Like her mother.
And, blast it, where had that come from? That whole mess was ancient history.
Isabella jammed her eyelids down, scrubbed vicious circles along her temples and shoved the memories clear out of her mind. She was a different person now. He was a different person. They couldn’t come at this from where they’d been back then. They needed to start fresh. Special Agent to local law, though he wasn’t technically the law.
Hopefully, he was still interested in justice.
“I was assigned to protect Secretary Cooper. He and his family have been threatened because of the Lunkinburg situation.” She glanced over and saw by Jacob’s faint nod that he followed the politics. He was standing across the room, back to the door as though he wanted to be anywhere else. The index finger of his left hand—he was ambidextrous in all ways that counted, she remembered with a faint wash of heat—twitched against his thigh. The rest of him was still, though