He’d learned to trust his gut, and it was upheaving on this one.

  He’d avoid all contact with the girls. Neve could always be heard from halfway down the hall, at least, and if they got close to Alice’s room, he’d slip into the bathroom before they saw him.

  Plan in place, he was barely in the door of the spacious, warm and somewhat elegant reception area before he saw Theresa. He’d known her office was there, but hadn’t expected to get lucky and have her sitting at her massive desk with the door open.

  She stood, giving him a full view of the black jacket and short skirt covering her delicious-looking curves. Professional dress had never been a particular turn-on for him before. Nor had auburn highlights in messy buns, but his body was sending a new memo.

  At thirty-six.

  He didn’t have time to reject the message, but with his shirt hanging over his fly, he could ignore it. Refuse to listen.

  Discipline himself so the body didn’t have a say.

  “Ezra, can I see you for a moment?” she asked, politely, all business. The warm gaze peering at him from those expressive dark eyes seemed to carry a much more personal note.

  Since he was there to speak with her as much as see his aunt, he took the invitation as an omen that his gut had been correct in terms of needing more time to watch over her safety from the Fitzgeralds.

  Which honed his nerve endings to the edge, and gave him need for a plan, too.

  In her office, with the door open, but with no one else in the lobby, she stood just inches from him, her face turned up toward his, and said, “I owe you an apology for my waspishness on Saturday.” Eyes wide, filled with concern, and that constant hint of reaching out with her heart, she didn’t blink as she continued, “Seeing Mark’s parents again unnerved me. And with you there, and them attacking my right to have you there... I overreacted, and I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” The words came. He didn’t approve of having uttered them.

  “What could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

  The conversation wasn’t supposed to be on the course it seemed to be following. It was supposed to be serious, but only in terms of the threat she might be facing, and his ability to help alleviate it to some extent.

  “For letting you ditch me so easily,” he told her. Theresa compelled his honesty. “I took the route of least resistance, and while I’m here to see my aunt, I also came to see you. To talk about...”

  Frantic dog barking erupted, cutting him off.

  “Charlie!” Theresa cried out as, together, they hurried in the direction of the memory-care unit from which the barking was emitting.

  Swiping a card rather than having to type a code on the keypad as Ezra would have had to do, she was on the unit and heading toward Charlie’s anxious-sounding alerts coming from behind a closed resident door. Moving past Theresa, Ezra ran the length of the hall, skirting a couple of people in wheelchairs set along the wall, heading straight for the back exit.

  Charlie locked in a room...

  The back door was set to an alarm—he’d noted all details the week before, when he’d been taking stock of security measures for his aunt’s safety. An alarm hadn’t gone off.

  The door was closed. But a quick glance at the sensor had his blood raging. A kitchen magnet covered the sensor, triggering the alarm to think the door was closed even if it wasn’t. The door was set to prevent confused residents from wandering out alone, unattended, not to keep people from leaving the building in case of emergency. With the slide of a security bar and a hard shove, he had the door open.

  And saw a flash of metal through the trees along the road behind the home. The Fitzgeralds’ truck? He hoped to God he was wrong.

  Pulling out his phone, he was connecting to the police by the time his gaze fell to a bush just outside the door.

  Claire’s new horse book.

  The so-serious little six-year-old had let them know she’d been outside that door.

  * * *

  She saw Charlie. Mrs. Wright, the room’s occupant. Not her daughters. Gaze darting frantically around the room, Theresa didn’t see Claire or Neve anywhere!

  Her heart practically clogged her throat as she tried to speak to the elderly resident who was hard of hearing, and she couldn’t get Charlie to stop barking, so she ran for the private bath attached to the room, hoping the girls had disobeyed orders not to use the patient facilities.

  The small room, including shower, was empty. Blood pounded through her so rapidly she couldn’t feel. Could hardly think. Ran out of the room, desperately searching, and saw Ezra coming toward her, his phone in his hand.

  And a look of deep sorrow...

  “Noooo! No.” She toned her wail down to a command. “No,” she said, shaking her head. Charlie, quiet all of a sudden, stood beside her. Ezra strode to the room where the dog had been shut in.

  “Did you see anyone come in here?” Ezra asked the woman sitting in a chair by the window, but Theresa shook her head.

  “She can’t hear, and doesn’t comprehend enough to...” She broke off, panic rising so high within her she started to see stars.

  “You need to put the building on lockdown.” Ezra’s voice called her back from an abyss. Commanded her action. “When I was here last week, I read that there are protocols for that, in case a memory-care patient goes missing...”

  “Yes,” she cut him off. “Yes.” Pulling a phone from her pocket, she pushed speed dial to tap into the building’s rarely used intercom system, ordering all personnel to instigate an immediate lockdown. No one was to leave the building. She barely had the wherewithal to remember to assure everyone that there was no immediate danger.

  That told staff that they were dealing with a possible resident escape, one or two people in a troubled situation, as opposed to a multiple life-threatening situation.

  Except...multiple lives... Oh, God. The Fitzgeralds might not be violent, but if they’d actually kidnapped her girls...

  “The police are on their way,” he said next, striding purposefully toward the window. As though troops would be coming through it at any moment. But what about her girls?

  She ran for the door. Intending to search every room, every closet, under every bed until she found Claire and Neve...

  “I’ve already searched the rooms on this unit,” Ezra said. “Can you check security tapes? I know cameras aren’t in individual rooms, but they’d show us hallway activity, right? And outside?”

  Yes. Absolutely. “Of course,” she said, tearing out of the room, down the hall, past employees—who, under lockdown protocol, were standing at their assigned doorways—off the unit and over to her office, not sure if Ezra was even behind her.

  It didn’t surprise her when she pulled up the live feed on her computer and his face lowered right next to hers in front of the screen. For a brief second, it comforted her.

  Until the blue truck flashed up on her screen from the top right camera image. Then all she knew was stone-cold fear.

  * * *

  “They’ve taken them to prepare them for the nuclear blast.” The wealth of terror, and of certainty, in Theresa’s tone grabbed at Ezra’s gut. “Oh my God, what are they going to do with them?”

  He didn’t have that answer. And couldn’t think as emotion poured through him. Her emotion. His.

  Until another glance at the blue truck galvanized the man he was into action. “They aren’t going to do anything to them,” he told her with a bit of his own certainty. “Their goal is to save them, right?”

  The fact that some unstable family members had been known to take the lives of their loved ones with the thought that they were saving them hit him hard.

  He didn’t share it.

  “Their goal is to hide them away in their bunker that’s underground God knows where and train them to live like animals, with survival the only thing on their minds...” Panic filled her words, raising her tone as she spoke, and he could see her falling in on herself, literally bending her head, her back.

  “Hey.” With a hand at her chin, and another at her back, her lifted her head until she was looking him in the eye. “They need you right now. They need you to not give up believing that they’ll be okay. They need you to find them. Because I can guarantee you, they’re believing you will.” The words flowed naturally, a sergeant talking to the troops that became family to him.

  And when she nodded, he felt more like the sergeant he knew himself to be. Capable of remaining calm. Aware. And outthinking the enemy.

  The front door opened and Chief Lawson walked into the lobby outside Theresa’s office door, followed by suited and then uniformed men. A glance out the window showed Ezra the entire road up to the home filled with police cars. Theresa saw the number of law enforcement filling her lobby and turned to Ezra, her gaze begging him for something.

  Without another thought, he stepped forward, spoke to the man who’d danced with his mother at his brother’s wedding. Spoke as though he and Chief Lawson actually really knew each other. As though he had a right to demand help. To speak and be heard in a professional sense.

  And within minutes, a BOLO was out on the Fitzgeralds’ blue truck, and an Amber Alert was being issued for Claire and Neve. Theresa looked shell-shocked by the speed with which everything was happening. Ezra wanted it all to happen faster.

  Officers, detectives, janitors and other personnel who weren’t preventing residents from leaving their rooms went over every inch of the place, making certain the girls weren’t there, and then while some law enforcement started taking personnel and resident statements, others checked out means of entry and exit.

  Ezra stayed with Theresa. He wasn’t going to slow things down by getting in the way, but he did tell the chief, who relayed the message over his radio, that the point of exit was at the rear of the memory-care unit and the point of entry, Ezra believed, was the window in Mrs. Wright’s room.

  “She likes fresh air,” Theresa said slowly, as though in a daze, standing in the middle of a circle of officers. Ezra, from right behind her, felt her shudder. “I never thought an open window in a senior home would be cause for a security breach. None of the residents on that particular wing are capable of getting the screens out, let alone climbing out of a window. We keep the more agile memory-care patients on a different hall because they need different stimulation and different types of caregiving...”

  She was rambling. He was grateful no one interrupted. Those who had immediate jobs to do were doing them. And she was distracting herself, whether she knew it or not.

  He’d seen the jimmied screen the second he’d entered the resident’s room.

  He’d seen Aunt Alice, too, sleeping in her chair as he’d stridden past her partially opened door. Resident families would be notified of the breach. His family.

  He had to get to work. To figure out where the Fitzgeralds were going and stop them from getting there without endangering the girls.

  And he couldn’t walk away from their mother, couldn’t leave her there trying to be a rock and floundering. She’d already lost one man who gave her strength. Had already lost too much. And not that he was a man in her life, but she’d turned to him in her time of greatest need.

  His immediate response, the emotional one that drove his actions, shocked the hell out of him. As did the livid anger burning through him every time he thought of Claire leaving her book outside that door—a very smart and desperate cry for help—an action generated by fear for her life.

  And also a sign that she held hope that she’d be rescued.

  He cared—in a way he didn’t understand and with a force he didn’t recognize. Something he could ponder some other day when he was out in a desert hole spending hours waiting for the enemy to fall into a trap. Or working out in the gym during mandatory downtime.

  He had two weeks until then. And if the girls weren’t found before then...if they were in captivity for fourteen days... He shook his head. Fourteen days of being held in a bunker for what their grandparents perceived to be their own good...

  No. He’d die before he’d let that happen.

  Die to save his own from suffering. That was what he’d signed up for at eighteen, and he’d never looked back.

  The girls weren’t his to call his own. Their mother wasn’t really even something as official as a friend.

  Didn’t matter how he felt.

  He wasn’t on the job. Didn’t have an assignment. But he was going to move hell if need be to use his skills and bring those little girls home.

  The powerful emotions prompting the actions would have to come under scrutiny at a later time. Every minute those girls were out there was another moment they might remember in the future. Another moment they could be emotionally or mentally scarred.

  Lord knew Claire was already carrying heavy burdens of fear regarding the damned blast actually happening that was more a figment of someone’s imagination than any real and valid threat. Because the threat was guarded against. Things were in place. Had been for many years. Things he hadn’t been able to explain to a six-year-old.

  As he waited for Theodore Lawson to get off a call, Ezra put a hand on Theresa’s back, at the base of her neck. More like a heating pad for relaxation than anything else.

  An attempt to help her hold on.

  While his mind spun.

  Lawson was taking too long.

  “The police have everything handled here,” he told her, not wanting to leave her, but not being able to just stand there any longer. “And there are things I can be doing, things my family can be doing...”

  “Do them.” She looked him straight in the eye. No questions asked.

  He nodded and headed out to his Jeep.

  Chapter 9

  The second Ezra left the lobby of the senior home, Theresa started to shake. Her mind jumbled, bringing her images of Claire crying, Neve yelling, the girls hugging each other on the back seat of a truck. Without car seats.

  Did they have seat belts on?

  She saw them in an underground cave of mud with such pitch-blackness at night that Claire would wet the bed. Would there be beds there?

  Oh, God, would the girls feel sun on their skin? Be warm enough?

  Would they sleep with guns beside them?

  Stop it! She stomped her foot and noticed several of the officers moving to and fro throughout the lobby stopping to glance at her.

  Just when she thought one might lead her away, Ezra was back in her line of vision. “I’m assuming I can use your office to set up in?”

  “What?” Set up in. She replayed the words. Or they replayed themselves. He was...staying?

  “Yes!” she said then, too quickly, adding, “Of course.”

  Where was her calm? Her coping abilities? She’d nursed the father of her children through a debilitating end. Had worked, too, so they’d have money to pay his bills and still provide for the girls. She’d seen things she’d never expected to see. Had buried the man she’d expected to spend the rest of her life with.

  She was not going to fall apart when their daughters needed her.

  And...she didn’t have to do it alone, either.

  As she stood in the lobby, the only unmoving being, it seemed, just existing there like a statue surrounded by urgency, she saw Ezra in her office. Behind her desk. Typing on her keyboard.

  And then he came out again. “I need your password.”

  Something she never gave anyone. “Cleave1!” she said without hesitation. “Capital C.” Giving him access to a part of her she never gave to anyone. Ever. Not even Mark had known her passwords.

  Weird, probably. But...

  Was she really going to stand there and think about password habits? While everyone else moved with greatest energy to find her children?

  “Claire and Neve combined in a word of promise. I will cleave to them forever. Exclamation because they are the most magical part of my life. And 1 because they both are my firstborn,” she said, following Ezra into her office.

  Giving no indication as to whether he’d heard or not, Ezra sat at her desk, his fingers flying on the keyboard, his gaze intent on the screen. He picked up his phone, pushed one button, waited a brief second and said, “Okay, now what?”

  He typed, his eyes narrowing on the screen. And then, “Got it,” and hung up.

  “There are things my siblings and I can do faster,” he said as he typed and moved the cursor with her mouse. “Dom’s an FBI agent,” he said. “I’ve got clips from surveillance cameras, and Dom’s tracking phones for GPS coordinates,” he said as he continued to move the mouse on the pad.

  And suddenly, Theresa was behind him. Focused. With a resurgence of the toughness that had seen her through bad days, she studied images as they appeared. And when Ezra turned the seat so she could sit with him, she did so without hesitation, right there on one of his thighs.

  There was nothing sexy about the move.

  But it affected her more than she’d ever thought possible for a simple physical contact. It was like he wasn’t just at her back, he was a part of it. In that moment, he was a part of her. Warmth to warmth. The panic, the fear...he shared it.

  And in the sharing, there was strength.

  * * *

  The second he pulled Theresa onto his knee, Ezra knew he’d made a mistake. He’d pulled Naomi down to his knee tons of times when they’d been younger and he’d been teaching her things on the computer.

  Theresa was most definitely not his little sister.

  And he had no business treating her as though they were...something together. But he didn’t have time to worry about any of it, either.

  She stayed seated. He kept working. Aware of her. Of wanting her there. For more than just that moment. But not focused on any of that. More desert-hole stuff. The times in foreign deserts when he contemplated life.