Max saw the dark smudges under her eyes and finally noticed her rumpled clothes. “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you?”
“All night.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“Samantha…” He stood, and she tilted her head back to stare up at him.
“When I found you,” she stopped, swallowed, “you weren’t moving. You were in your apartment, everything was dark, and, oh, damn, I was afraid I was too late.”
His fingers curled under her chin, and he bent down to kiss her. A deep, open-mouthed kiss. A kiss to tell her that, hell, yeah, he was alive; she wasn’t too late. They weren’t too late. The need had his body tightening. A dull ache thudded behind his temples but he ignored it. Nothing would have made him release her then.
Nothing.
He drew her closer against him. Not like he could hide the arousal he felt in that paper-thin hospital gown, and not like he wanted to try either. When she was near, he wanted.
His hands settled against her hips, and his fingers touched the soft swell of her ass. He loved her ass. Loved touching her. Being with her.
She stayed with me all night.
When was the last time anyone had done that for him? When was the last time anyone had cared?
“Max…” She turned her head away. He pressed a kiss to her throat and heard the sigh of her breath. “Max, Nathan Donnelley is missing.”
“Donnelley?” His hold on her tightened as he struggled to remember. “I… called him. Wanted him to come and see about Quinlan.” Because his brother hadn’t wanted to get checked out at the hospital. Quinlan’s wounds had started to bleed again, and he’d been worried, and—
Nothing.
“The doorman remembers Donnelley coming up to your place, and video footage showed him sneaking out.” Her voice seemed strained. “He took the stairs out, used the service exit.”
“Why?”
“Because it looks like he drugged you.” Her brown eyes glinted with a steady fury. “His fingerprints were on the glasses in the den, and one of those glasses had trace amounts of Rohypnol in it.”
His brows shot together. “Roofies? The bastard gave me roofies?”
“Only your prints and his were on the glass. We matched Donnelley’s because he was in the system from his time in the military.”
Samantha handed him a bag, one with fresh clothes inside. His clothes. Another agent must have brought them from his place.
“The SSD believes all of the victims were slipped drugs, possibly roofies, by their abductors.”
He dressed quickly as he tugged on the jeans and shirt. “You’re saying,” he spun back to face her after he shoved on his socks and shoes, “what? That Donnelley was involved in the kidnappings? In Quinlan’s kidnapping?”
Her gaze never faltered. “You tell me. The man drugged you, he’s missing, and yesterday, he emptied out his bank accounts.”
That bastard had been with his family for years. “He-he treated my mom. He-he found her… She’d taken too many pills…” Donnelley had been grief-stricken. Tears had coursed down the guy’s face. Tears. And now the guy was screwing them all?
“Quinlan’s missing, too.”
That froze him.
“Hyde personally checked the videos. There was no sign of him leaving your building.”
“He didn’t just vanish!”
“No.” Her shoulders squared. “But I saw the position of those cameras, and if you wanted to get away without being seen, you’d just have to carefully time your movements.”
His breath rushed out.
“You said you called Donnelley to come and take care of Quinlan. Did the two of them talk alone?” she asked.
The throbbing in his temples got worse.
“Did they, Max?”
“I can’t remember.” Oh, but he wanted to remember.
“I was coming to your place, and the reason I was there…” Her hands balled into fists. “Beth Dunlap didn’t commit suicide. The ME said that both of her wrists were cut so deeply that the tendons were severed. She would’ve had no control over her fingers. That means she wouldn’t have been able to hold the knife, much less manage to slice her other wrist open.”
Someone else had slashed her.
“The room was staged to make it look like she’d gone crazy, wrecked the place, and then killed herself. But the wounds don’t match with that scenario, and the techs found drops of her blood in the hallway.”
No. He knew where this was going.
“The splatter angle indicates she was standing up, maybe trying to flee.”
And someone had dragged her back into that room and killed her.
“Your brother was at the scene when we arrived.”
His eyes closed for a moment.
“Max, your stepbrother told us that he’d just arrived back at the house, but two men from the bomb squad swear that when they checked out his car…”
Max opened his eyes and stared at her.
“His hood wasn’t warm. If he’d just arrived, it would still have been hot.”
Dammit.
“When Frank died,” she continued, “Quinlan stood to gain a fortune.”
Max shook his head. No, no, there had to be another explanation. All those other men, the wounds on Quinlan’s body… “He was cut, slashed all over. His hand—”
“Sometimes, you’ll do anything if the end reward is important enough.” She gazed into his eyes, and a soft sigh escaped her. “There’s something else you should know. We found unidentified blood in the alley where Veronica James was killed.”
“And you think it’s Quinlan’s.”
The faintest of nods. “Your brother refused to give us a DNA sample when he was in the FBI office.”
Quinlan’s words seemed to echo in his head. What’s it like to kill a man? It was sure starting to look like little brother already knew.
“We have an APB out for him now, and for Donnelley. Until we find them,” she exhaled, “you’re under 24–7 FBI protection. You and the surviving victim, Curtis Weatherly.”
“You really think they’re going to come after me?” They—who were they? Some nameless ass**les? Or his brother and Donnelley?
“I think we got lucky at your place. And I think we need to be ready for anything.”
Guess “anything” included his stepbrother trying to kill him.