“It’s not advisable to be here when Dawg Mackay arrives either.”

“Who is Dawg Mackay?” The nurse was all but laughing at her. “His name is Jed.”

“You really don’t want to know. Trust me.”

“You’re going to hurt my feelings, sis. That just wasn’t nice.”

Piper came to a slow stop no more than a few feet from the bathroom door when Jed stepped slowly into the room.

His voice was gentle, amused, and patient. The look in his eyes was damned scary, though.

Scary, that was, if her attacker ever had the misfortune to stare into them.

She could see murder in those eyes. As Jed took in the bruised, swollen condition of her face, the hesitancy in her stance as she stood before him, then the livid bruises on her arms, the navy blue of his eyes flickered with a deep, black rage.

Shaking his head slowly, he advanced on her, all lean-hipped, predatory male grace and dark intent.

“How far behind you is Dawg?” Resignation slumped her shoulders.

If she had been on a leash before where her brother was concerned, no doubt it would feel like prison even before they left the hospital.

“Oh, I’d say about twelve hours or so,” he drawled, then leaned close, staring into her wide eyes as he whispered, “He doesn’t know, sweet pea. Want to keep it that way?”

Piper nodded. Oh, God, she really wanted to keep it that way.

“Then you’re going to cooperate, right?” he suggested softly.

Piper nodded again.

To keep Dawg in the dark?

Oh, hell, yes, she would cooperate.

At least to a point.

After all, she’d hate to mar the Mackay reputation for cooperating only when it suited their own interests.

Right now it suited every single interest she could think of, though.

“Good then.” He straightened, his hands settling with airy gentleness just above her shoulders. “Turn around, march right back to that bed, and we’ll just wait for the doctor, shall we?”

She moved for the bed.

“That’s a good girl,” he commended her as Nurse Dade smiled with an awestruck girlishness Piper found nauseating.

Good girl, was she? she thought, sitting back on the bed carefully as she glared up at the smirking, far too self-satisfied Jedediah Booker.

Oh, she’d just show him what a good girl she wasn’t.

As soon as the doctor released her, that was.

SEVEN

Jed hadn’t prayed in years, but as he drove from the small airfield outside Louisville the next evening, he found himself praying for patience.

He’d found a chance to question Bret Jordan and his friends Matthew Grace and Olivia Camfield. From their report, they’d heard Piper screaming in the suite next door and had come to investigate. Her door had been opened and a man they described as a “mountain” had been pounding on Piper as though he intended to beat her to death.

He also had the bastard’s description. The three had been amazingly observant and were able to provide several valuable details in regard to the assailant’s appearance. One of his contacts in the city had made a visit to the hotel and questioned the staff before going to the room and doing the job it seemed the police hadn’t, collecting what evidence of the attack had been left.

And there was the reason for the prayers. Patience wasn’t his strong suit. The second he had Piper safely at home he’d launch his own investigation. God help the bastard who had dared to touch her.

Once the assailant was found, Jed prayed he could keep from attempting to kill him with his bare hands. From showing the “mountain” what it meant to really hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell Dawg where I was?” Piper finally deigned to speak to him, something she hadn’t done since they’d left the hospital unless he’d simply left her no other choice.

“I promised to keep your secrets, Piper; I meant it.” Glancing at her, he drove the truck he’d parked at the airfield the morning before toward Somerset. “I won’t tell Dawg anything I know you’d want me to keep to myself.”

The flight back had been short, but Jed hadn’t wanted to arrive back in Kentucky until well after midnight. He’d spent the day getting her ready to leave and ensuring someone was investigating her reason for being there and why she had been attacked.

He hoped—hell, no, he was praying—that Dawg wouldn’t be anywhere near the inn when they arrived.

She shifted against the leather seats, no doubt trying to find a comfortable position.

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he fought back the anger he was determined she wouldn’t see.

“And that’s why you didn’t call Dawg?” She obviously didn’t want to believe him.

“That’s why.”

Dawg would have charged into New York City with Rowdy, Natches, and no doubt Chaya, Natches’s wife; the chief of Somerset’s police force, Alex Jansen, and Pulaski County sheriff Zeke Mayes; as well as Special Agent Timothy Cranston and Piper’s mother, Mercedes Mackay, ready to kill.

Dawg wouldn’t have left the city until Timothy had buried her attacker. If that attacker hadn’t been found, then Piper would have returned under such heavy guard she would have been smothered before ever reaching Kentucky again.

Silence descended between them, one that stretched until they had nearly reached the exit to Somerset.

“There’s no way to hide the bruises,” Piper stated, her voice low. “Dawg’s going to see them.”

Yeah, he would; there was no way to hide the damage to her face, though thankfully, her left eye was no longer swollen shut.

“What are you going to tell him?” Taking the exit to Somerset off the interstate, he knew Piper’s time was definitely running out.

Dawg had all but haunted Mercedes and Timothy, demanding to know whether Piper had called her mother yet. Elijah, Jed’s partner, had called earlier in the afternoon to report Dawg had contacted several agents at the surrounding airports and had her name run for flights out.

He’d told her earlier about the conversation he’d overheard between Mercedes and Dawg, as well as the fact that Dawg was questioning everyone he could think to question about her whereabouts.

“You can’t hide this from him, Piper,” he warned her when she didn’t answer him.

“I know I can’t,” she answered wearily.

The tiredness in her tone coincided with that unfamiliar tightness in his chest—something he experienced only with Piper.

“He’s been beside himself with worry,” he told her. “Christa’s accused him of running headlong into a stroke as he attempts to protect all of you.”

“If he would just wait until we need protecting.” Frustration immediately tightened her body as she pushed both hands through her shoulder-length black hair before clenching them in the deep waves.

God, he would kill to feel all that lush, warm silk against his body. Against his thighs as her lips parted and his dick pierced the heated dampness beyond. That particular portion of his body throbbed in painful hunger as the need for her began to grow impossibly.

Impossibly, because he hadn’t believed he could hunger for her more than he already did.

Impossibly, because she was hurt, bruised, and no doubt the last thing on her mind was sex. She was definitely exhausted. She’d slept the whole of the flight, waking only as the plane taxied to the private hangar DHS leased.

“Why won’t he wait until we need him, Jed?” she questioned with hurt anger. “Why can’t he just let us live a little bit?”

“Because he’s seen the monsters.” Jed knew exactly why. “He knows what’s out there, Piper, and the nightmares haunt him now—the fear of not protecting the four of you, of being off guard and missing a threat, gives him nightmares. That’s why he’s driving himself to a stroke. That’s why he has trouble letting you live your life. Because he knows that in that one moment that you relax your guard, that’s when the monsters strike and attempt to steal everything you love in life.”

“Did they steal something you love?” she asked.

How had she guessed there was more to his life than he’d allowed her to see so far?

“Not quite.” Glancing at her, he saw the need in her eyes—not a sexual need or a physical hunger.

She needed to see more of him than he’d allowed so far.

Intimacy. That connection that had the ability to bind two people together or tear them apart.

“No one knows I have a sister.” He had to force himself to share with her something that even Timothy Cranston was unaware of.

“You hide your family.” She nodded as though it made sense.

“Well, my mother hid me from them first,” he admitted with a flicker of amused remembrance. “She didn’t want my father to know about me, didn’t want me to be threatened by his career in covert intelligence or his enemies. Father knew about me, though. When I was old enough, he found me, and drew me in like he does so many others and gave me one task: Protect my sister.”

He could laugh about it now; at the time, it hadn’t been nearly so funny.

“You say that as though it were an impossible task,” she observed curiously.

“You would have to know Mary Elizabeth to be amused,” he said with a grunt. “She taught me a long time ago that you can’t surround those you love in bubble wrap and expect it to work. First they burst the bubbles; then they find an escape route. Once they escape, they don’t tell you where they’re going or why.”

Piper watched as that crooked little smile she loved touched his hard lips and gleamed in his dark blue eyes.

“You tried to surround her in bubble wrap then?” she asked. “Guess you learned the hard way, huh? I wish you could teach Dawg and my cousins the fact that it simply isn’t possible to lock us away until it’s time to bury us.”

“That’s your job, sweetheart.” He sighed as she watched him, her gaze meeting his for the second he glanced at her, yet feeling the effects of the amused heat in his eyes for that tiny moment in time.

“How is that my job?” She couldn’t imagine teaching Dawg anything. The man gave stubborn a bad name.

“Most sisters start when they’re babies,” he admitted. “But you’re on the right track. Live, laugh, have fun, and go head-to-head with him whenever you have to. But don’t disappear on him again, Piper. Do it again, and next time I promise I’ll help him find you.”

“And what makes you think you can find me if Dawg can’t?”

“Because Dawg doesn’t want to admit you would actually leave the state without telling him,” he pointed out as guilt flayed her once again. “I don’t have that problem. I saw you leave the inn when you snuck out. I heard the car stopping just down the road. I knew why you were doing it, though. I didn’t follow; I didn’t run a check on the car. I went back into my room and stared up at the ceiling the rest of the night, wondering who was the man you left with.”

The man?

Piper almost smiled. She could hear the probing question he was doing nothing to hide.

“It wasn’t a man,” she admitted. “It was the sister of a friend giving me a ride to the Louisville train station. I tried to cover my tracks so Dawg wouldn’t follow me.”

He nodded once.

“It didn’t work out so well.” She sighed, completing the thought.

“No, but I’m going to assume the circumstances were unusual,” he stated.

“How the hell do I know?” She still didn’t understand why, who, or what. “One minute I’m waiting on a bellhop and a ride to the train station, and the next second I’m being pounded on, then waking in a hospital with a concussion and so many bruises that breathing hurts.”