“What?” Her word brought his gaze from the back of her hair to her face.

  Frowning, she still seemed to ooze her strange brand of compassion and, as usual, he was like a magnet to its force. He couldn’t keep getting sucked in.

  “You have a Bird of Paradise flower in your hair.” He heard the accusation in his tone, though he hadn’t purposefully put it there.

  Reaching back, she slid her fingers through her hair. “I hid under a wall of them to watch Jerome.” The small delicate orange bloom was still twisted in blond strands. Pulling the burner phone he’d given her from her pocket, she scrolled, tapped and held the screen up to him. An earlier photo of Jerome in the distance, bent on the shore—insignificant except for the obvious orange foliage in the forefront.

  The look in her eye, when he glanced from the screen to her face, dripped with resignation.

  He didn’t trust her. She knew it.

  Pulling the flower out of her hair, he handed it to her. “I was married once.” Not the way he’d ever entered the conversation he’d meant to have. And not Devon Miller information, either.

  He’d have to have Sierra’s Web get Devon married and divorced.

  The rest wouldn’t be in any record. “My father was unfaithful to my mother. It ripped our family apart. I’ve always been a lot like him. Everyone said so as I was growing up, even into my early adulthood. And they were right. I saw it myself.”

  Too much.

  “After I was married, I found myself attracted to another woman.”

  He was looking at her. She didn’t speak.

  “I got out of the marriage, thankfully there were no kids involved, and will never, ever marry again.”

  There. Went around the block, but he got there.

  “Because you were unfaithful.”

  “No.” He glanced at her, saw no judgment in her gaze. Or...hurt or...anything he’d half convinced himself he’d find. “I got out of the marriage before that happened.”

  “And the woman you were attracted to? That didn’t last?”

  “I never told her. Never acted on it.” The whole thing had been a turnoff.

  Her brow showed confusion. If he had to spell it out, he would. “It’s not just you I don’t trust,” he told her. “I don’t wholly trust anyone. Including myself.”

  And that should be that.

  Not quite his usual this can be for now, for mutual pleasure, but I’m not looking for a relationship speech. But the point had been made.

  “I’m not sure how much I trust anyone right now, either.” The softness of her words, the warm look in her eye, hit him before the actual words made it through processing in his brain.

  “You’re trusting me to keep your secrets. To provide you safe lodging.” He spoke without stopping to choose his words. What are you doing? What the hell. He was pushing her to trust him when he’d just told her he didn’t trust himself?

  Sexually. To be faithful. He didn’t trust himself to be faithful to one woman for his entire life. Otherwise...he was a good guy. His entire life was about getting it right.

  “Yeah, I’m trusting you to keep my secrets,” she said, the funny half smile on her lips turning him on. In an obvious way. “And you trust me enough to keep my secrets. To give me a phone and a gun and to let me stay here.”

  That wasn’t trust. His mind instantly refuted her words. He knew better. He’d made well-thought-out calculated decisions.

  He opened his mouth to say so and, “What about you? Are you in a serious relationship?” came out. The other part of the conversation that always happened before sex.

  The shake of her head kept him hard. Not a good sign.

  But he’d had his say. She knew he was never going to be a long-haul guy.

  “There’ve been a couple of guys I thought could eventually get there, but I come with a mother that needs care and an almost ten-year-old sister. That’s nonnegotiable.”

  “The guys you dated didn’t want to sign on for instant, every day, family obligations.” He translated.

  “Right.”

  “Then you weren’t dating the right guys.”

  “That’s what Kyle said.”

  Oh, yes. Her twin. Devon had been so caught up in the immediate drama around him, Kacey’s afternoon activity, another dead body, a cheap rendition of heroin showing up in a movie case...thoughts of her brother had temporarily slipped off his radar.

  Kacey would have already put together that the trouble her brother was in likely had to do with adult films. She didn’t know about the heroin connection.

  And he was not going to tell her.

  Sidestepping that conversation, he said, “I’m not that instant family guy, either.”

  “No kidding...” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. But her eyes were resting gently on his. “And if this conversation is because you’ve somehow gotten the idea that because we got caught up in the adrenaline and passion of the moment last night that I’m going to be expecting a proposal, or even a date, you can relax,” she said, holding his gaze the entire time. “I’m not opposed to finding pleasure in the moment, while we’re caught up here, to help my sanity, but that’s it, Devon. When I get home... I have no idea what I’m going to be facing. But I know for certain, I’m going to be one-hundred-percent focused on Mom and Lizzie...”

  Ironically, words that were meant to comfort him, to assuage his tension, had the opposite effect.

  Devon didn’t ask why. He didn’t want to know.

  Tommy Grainger disappeared completely. Kacey didn’t know him. Would never know him.

  “About that pleasure in the moment,” Devon said, grappling to rid himself of perceptions and feelings that didn’t fit his life—which, by nature, was only temporary.

  He was going to make love to her. Only in the moment, as she’d said.

  Because the moment was all a make-believe guy like Devon had to worry about.

  * * *

  They had sex—in Devon’s bedroom in front of motion detectors, not cameras. They ate chicken and vegetables, sitting as homeowner and rescued guest, not close, not touching.

  And then had sex again.

  In her room.

  She didn’t care if he had a kiss on tape to remember her by. Kind of liked the idea, really.

  But respected his insistence that no part of their physical relationship would be recorded on tape.

  It kind of endeared him to her more...the way he was holding their time in bed together sacrosanct.

  They did dishes midevening. Took a shower together, and without either suggesting a word, both gravitated back to his room.

  Touching Devon, being touched by him, took her so completely out of herself, she had no fear, no worry—just pure euphoria, for an hour at a time. Wanted to doze and wake with him next to her and do it all over again, for the rest of the night.

  Morning would come. Trouble would be there waiting.

  If she could just get...

  Half-asleep, she thought she heard his phone vibrate on the nightstand next to his bed. He’d left it there with his gun. Picked them both up every time he pulled on his shorts and left the room. Either bedroom. And laid them right next to him again when he disposed of the shorts.

  It was like clockwork with him. Ingrained habit. His phone that only vibrated—she was thinking different rhythms. Like ringtones. And that gun. It made her sad. The idea that the man so mistrusted everyone in the world around him that he couldn’t separate from the device that held his surveillance screens and gun that he believed kept him safe.

  The only things within his power, his control, to protect himself...

  And like clockwork, he was sitting up, phone in hand, staring at the screen.

  “Are there deer?” she asked drowsily. She’d spent enough time in the laundry closet to know how much wildlife he caught on his screens—most particularly at night. “You should sell some of that footage,” she said then, groggy with sexual satiation and the sleep that had been about to overtake her. “You could make a video and put it up online.”

  It took her a second to realize he wasn’t listening. Setting down his phone, he pulled on his shorts and T-shirt.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I have to make a call,” he told her, leaving the room. She was already in her own shorts, pulled her shirt over her braless chest when she heard the front door open and shut.

  He must have had a text, not a surveillance notification.

  Ten o’clock at night...she’d bet it was from Rachel. The immediate wave of resentment quickly passed as, fully awake, Kacey removed her arms from her shirt, put her bra on, and then, after her shirt was back in place, her tennis shoes.

  Were her kidnappers back? Had something happened?

  Was someone in the bar, or on the streets close by, selling movies?

  Why did he always have to talk to Rachel in private?

  Before she could get outside with Devon, or have it dawn on her that if she was welcome in the conversation he’d have made the call in the cabin, he was pocketing his phone and heading back to the door.

  The intensely focused look on his face as he came in struck terror within her. He looked at her but didn’t connect. Not even a little bit.

  “When your brother filed the missing person’s report, he gave the police your hairbrush. A common request during such investigations, for identification in the event a body is found.” She nodded, couldn’t breathe.

  Had a body turned up?

  But its DNA wouldn’t match her hairbrush. It couldn’t. She was standing right there.

  Devon knew that.

  “Sierra’s Web got access to that DNA. It was a match for the blood on the knife you turned in.” His chin trembled a bit with tension as he watched her.

  “You think I cut myself and then turned in the bloody weapon?” He’d been over every single inch of her body. Thoroughly. Other than the cuts on her ankles, which he knew firsthand came from the ropes with which she’d been tied up, he knew there were no injuries that could possibly have been made by a fixed blade knife...

  And it hit her. She was a twin. Had a twin. Who’d have similar DNA. He hadn’t said an identical match. Just a match.

  “Kyle...” She felt the blood drain from her face, the energy seep from her body, as she stared at him. “They stabbed Kyle...”

  While she’d been standing at her window upstairs in the dark, watching shadows in between her house and their mom’s. Horrific thoughts tumbled one after the other. Had Kyle pulled the knife from the wound, thrown it in the bushes, to run after the men who’d attacked him?

  He’d been able to run. And had sounded fine when she’d talked to him on the phone...

  The worst of the devastation came to her when, ready to break with worry, with the weight of her imploding life, she looked back up at Devon. And saw the cold question gazing at her from those expressive blue eyes.

  There were no witnesses to her having been in the dark in her upstairs bedroom window, watching the argument between Kyle and those men that night. “You think I stabbed my own twin? And then made up the story of the argument and turned in the knife saying I’d just found it? To turn suspicion off from me?”

  For a second, she couldn’t even comprehend the idea. Felt like she might sink to the floor in a puddle.

  But the backbone her father had given her—and Kyle—held her upright.

  She had to think. Not feel. Provide solution. Not need.

  Devon was just...being Devon. He didn’t trust anyone. Not even himself. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said those words earlier that night. He’d been deadly serious.

  He knew himself. His failings.

  And Kacey finally understood why the man had sequestered himself alone in the desert. Because of the lottery win, yeah, she got the trust ramifications that came from such a windfall. And his father’s having been framed. She got what had made him the man he was.

  But she’d already known both of those things.

  What she hadn’t realized was that he was broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed. He knew it. And would never, ever be a man who could give a woman what Kacey had just then realized she so very much wanted from him.

  A future.

  Chapter 22

  There was no organ tissue on the knife. Just skin and some blood. The blade hadn’t gone deep. A warning from those with whom Kyle had been working? Or the result of an amateur who, when it came right down to it, couldn’t bring herself to stick it to her brother and so had only ended up with a surface wound? He was a cop. Had to keep his mind open to all possibilities, palatable or not, and let the evidence tell him the truth.

  As soon as Kacey turned her back and went into her room, Devon went to bed. Slept a few hours and then showered and left for work. He didn’t make coffee. Or make any attempt to see or speak to his houseguest.

  He needed distance. Had to make certain he maintained clarity. He and Rachel had spent months infiltrating marina society, becoming locals. They’d learned things. Made small buys, testing to find them inferior to the recipe they were seeking. Finally had a contact who they suspected moved large amounts of the heroin they were after. Had just had a small buy of it confirmed. Were ready to move in for bigger buys, showing the money to do so, but needing to know more about the operation before they made the spend. They were on the cusp of infiltrating the right organization and bringing a successful close to their mission. They could take down Belen. And someone else would just move into his place. But if they could just get in far enough to know how the drugs were traveling away from the river and ending up in Virginia, they could shut down a lethal, nationwide chain claiming the lives of teenagers.

  He couldn’t let a woman get in the way of his successful completion of the job.

  Had that been what had happened to his father?

  Had Hilton lost sight of what was going on around him? Lost clarity? No way his dad would ever have knowingly turned dirty, but had things slipped by him because he’d been distracted by sexual desire? Making it easy for someone to put contraband in his vehicle and frame him for something he hadn’t even known was happening?

  Sierra’s Web had talked to a lot of people about Hilton Grainger over the past months. The partner in charge of everything science related, Glen Thomas, had his lab of experts going over what physical evidence they—and Tommy—had been able to access from ten years before, which hadn’t been much. Because the framing had to have been an inside job, they had to tread carefully where the Las Vegas police were concerned.

  Sierra’s Web had a contact there—a detective they’d helped on a case—and while Sierra’s Web had been able to irrefutably verify that there hadn’t been enough hard evidence to definitively prove that Hilton Grainger had been a crooked cop, they hadn’t yet been able to pinpoint that he hadn’t been.

  Devon used his time on the water that morning, taking a young family of five on a beginning rafting trip, to clear his mind. To ground himself.

  And to keep an eye on river traffic and shoreline—as he’d been doing every day he’d worked since he’d signed on for his job as river guide. And for weeks before that, too, out on the water in his kayak.

  When thoughts of Kacey crept in, he shoved them away. Focused on a shadow in the water. Or started conversation with his clients.

  He never told her that her twin hadn’t been badly hurt.

  He should have done.

  “Hey, Charlie, you enjoying your first time on a raft?” he asked the seven-year-old son of the family in his craft.

  Saw the boy’s nod. Heard the conversation between family members that ensued. Responded with nods of his own, and smiles. Not really taking any of it in.

  He didn’t watch his surveillance screens, either. His phone would vibrate if there was activity on any of the outside cameras, including around all windows and doors. Intruders couldn’t get in—and houseguests couldn’t go out—without him knowing about it. Just as they couldn’t penetrate his property without a vibration happening against his leg. And a notification from Sierra’s Web, as well. As long as his phone remained still, the place was secure.

  Kacey was free to leave. If he got notification that she vacated the premises, he was not going to stop her. She wasn’t under arrest.

  End of his circles of control and concern.

  He’d just checked himself on the thoughts, found himself in good standing, as he pulled into the dock. Wished his passengers a good rest of their vacation when he saw a man—average height, athletic, blond, come out of a public restroom by the marina and disappear around the back of it.

  The clandestine movement got his attention, but the brief glimpse he’d had of the man’s face sent his radar humming at top speed. He’d seen a few images of Kyle Ashland. And had been harboring a woman who looked a lot like him for the past few days.

  Making a beeline to the boat storage area behind the restroom, he got there in time to see the man out on the guest dock, jumping into a small motorboat. He snapped a picture with his phone. Didn’t get enough to make a positive identification on his own, but he sent it to Sierra’s Web. With their software, they’d be able to match the image to others they had of Kyle Ashland and find out if facial, head or body parameters matched.

  Devon didn’t need to hear back from experts to know that Kyle Ashland had been at the marina. And had left in a hurry.

  Had he been looking for his sister?

  Meeting up with Kacey’s kidnappers?

  It couldn’t be coincidence that the man had shown up.

  Or that two men were dead—one buried in a crate that had had wrapping from a movie case in it similar to one that had been filled with drugs. And the other killed just after hiding a crate identical to the grave of the first.

  And Kacey had been in possession of one of those movies.