Smart and Sexy (21 page)

“S
o, you lost contact with Noah?” Brody asked Maddie in a voice that had, over the past year, sent three previous assistants running for the hills.

Brody didn’t scare her. Not one little bit. Sure, by turns he frustrated her, angered her, worried her, and turned her on more than any other man ever had, but he never scared her. “Working on it,” she said. She was working on a thousand things at once actually, checking the GPS, dialing her cell, radioing Shayne…It was her particular forte, multi-tasking, and she could do it at work, at home, in bed…

Oh, yes, she was extremely good, even with the big, bad, sexy Brody hunched over her, scowling fiercely.

He’d never say it out loud, but she knew he’d been worried sick about Noah, with good reason. Noah had been to hell and stayed there a good long time. So long, in fact, that none of them had been sure he’d find his way back.

But he had.

Maddie had taken one look at his face after he’d been with Bailey, and she’d known. Bailey had brought him back.

She’d love the woman for that alone.

“Where is he?” Brody asked tightly.

“Still working on it.” She didn’t let her own concern show. One of her little chicks was in trouble, and she’d fix it.

She knew it amused Shayne, Brody, and Noah to no end that she thought of them as “hers,” especially given that she was younger than all of them, but the three men had saved her life.

She intended to return the favor, however needed. Dramatic, she knew, but fact was fact. She owed them her life, and she always repaid her debts.

Now Noah was in trouble. She knew it with every ounce of her being, and not just because he’d fallen off the face of the earth, but because he hadn’t checked in when he’d arrived at the airport after taking the cab she’d arranged for him on the fly, and also because that cab hadn’t yet arrived at the airport.

And worst of all, because he wasn’t answering his cell phone.

“When did you last have him?”

She turned and faced Brody, who stood watching her with that eagle eye he had. It still unnerved her that he, and only he, could tell when she was upset, disturbed, or hot.

He constantly made her all three.

But that was another problem, a private problem. “At the Cabo resort. He was taking Bailey to the cab I got them.”

“Okay. Okay, he’s a big boy. He’ll be all right.”

She knew he was saying this to ease his own mind as well as hers.

“Where’s Shayne?” Without waiting for her, he leaned over her shoulder and grabbed the phone, punching in Shayne’s cell number.

Maddie didn’t move, and because she didn’t, Brody’s broad chest brushed her arm and shoulder. Nobody invaded her personal space, nobody, and yet all she could think was, if she shifted even a fraction of an inch, his arm would brush against her breast.

Twenty-six years old, and the thought made her knees wobble.

Stupid. But she could smell him, some absolutely heart-stopping scent of soap and all man that damn it, made her nostrils quiver. “Excuse me,” she said in the haughtiest voice she could muster. “Personal space bubble being invaded.”

His eyes cut to hers, and he very carefully, very carefully, didn’t move a thing except for the brow that arched in question. “Space bubble?”

She would have scooted back, but that would have given him the edge.
“Move.”

Eyeing her with some amusement, he straightened away from her. “Shayne,” he said into the phone, eyes still on Maddie’s. “Where are you?” He listened while Maddie tried not to squirm. Damn it, she couldn’t keep her mental distance when he was this close.

“Yeah, but Noah isn’t picking up.” He listened again. “Good. Do it.”

“Do what?”

Brody put the phone back into its base. “He’s going to find the cab.”

“Great. Go away, I’ll call you when I hear something.”

He slid his hands in his pockets and stood there, brooding and gorgeous. “Huh.”

“Huh what?”

“Interesting, how eager you are for me to leave.”

“I’m busy.”

“Busy?” he asked. “Or unnerved?”

“Unnerved? By you?
Ha
.”

He smiled, but he did not, as she’d half hoped, stay and argue the point. Instead he did as she’d asked and left, moving toward his office.

“You’re watching my ass as I walk away,” he said without looking at her.

She jerked her gaze off the ass in question, blew out a breath and whirled her chair around. “Am not.”

His laughter rung in her ears long after he’d shut his office door.

Damn it. Damn him.

Bailey felt the gun against her spine and went utterly still in a world that was in total motion around her: the wedding partiers, the wild, loud music, the hot, humid air.

Utterly. Still.

And looked straight into Noah’s eyes. They’d been dancing, she’d been pressed as close to him as she could get, and she’d absorbed his lovely, oh-so-amazing words to her—
he loved her.
She loved him, too. It sang through her like her breath, her blood, but now she might never get to tell him.

“Vamanos,”
said a rough voice in her ear as a hand closed tightly over her arm.

After that, everything seemed to happen in freeze-frame motion, all in tune to the loud, over-the-top Mexican carnival music.

First, they yanked her clear of Noah.

Noah tried to close that distance, but then he froze, too, and Bailey saw why.

There was a man behind him as well, undoubtedly making his presence known with yet another gun in the back.

A real gun, nothing as silly and stupid as a Bic pen.

Oh, God.

This was it. Her number was up. They wanted her to take them to the money.

This was her last moment with Noah, her last chance to tell him what it had meant to have him in her life, however briefly. How much his support and belief and unimaginably sharp, quick wit had done for her. How she couldn’t imagine being without him.

How she loved him.

She had to tell him that much, she had to.

His eyes had filled with blazing fury and disbelief, and torturous misery that she was going to be taken now, like this, right in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Her vision blurred with the tears she refused to shed. “I love you,” she mouthed, hoping he’d understand,
needing
him to understand.

He did. His eyes flamed, went shiny with the knowledge, and he reached out for her in spite of the gun, in spite of everything, but the men on either side of her simply turned and took her with them.

They made it to the gate, and no one stopped them. Hell, no one but Noah probably even noticed, just as no one had noticed them joining the wild wedding party in the first place.

Then she was shoved into the black SUV and sandwiched by two stern-looking, armed-to-the-teeth men.

Twisting in her seat as they took off, she looked out the rear window in time to see Noah come running out of the churchyard. He barreled over the gate and then skidded to a stop in the middle of the street, staring after her with a look of deadly intent on his face.

But then they screeched around a corner and he was gone from view.

Good, she told herself. He was out of danger.

“Now,” said the man in the front seat, and her blood froze because she knew that voice. When he turned to face her, she gasped. It was the face of a man who’d smiled at her at any number of banal cocktail parties, the face of the man who’d worked closely with Alan, and yet had been able to attack her in her own home.

With a hard swallow, she looked into Stephen’s cold, dark eyes.

“Now, you tell us where the money is, Mrs. Sinclair.”

“Where’s Kenny?” She hated that her voice shook. “I want to talk to Kenny.” He might be involved, but there was no way
he
could look into her eyes and hurt her. She knew this.

Was banking on it.

“Kenny?” Stephen smiled, and a chill ran down Bailey’s spine. “You want to bargain with Kenny?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”

“Why?”

“You really don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“That Kenny didn’t do as I asked, which was a bad decision on his part.”

Oh, God. “Where is he?” she whispered.

“Soon to be dead, actually.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t bring me you, for one. But it turned out he had a better-paying gig all along—the feds.”

Kenny worked for the good guys? Relief, and an almost giddy sense of love, welled up and choked her so that she had to press her hand to her mouth to keep a sob in. Kenny
had
been trying to warn her at the airport. No wonder he’d looked so terrified when she’d run from him. He’d known what was going to happen if they caught her.

“Now,” Stephen said. “Your turn. Where’s the money?”

Her thoughts raced. If she told them the truth, that she had no idea where the money was, then she was dead.

She had to stall. “Little problem with the whole money thing.”

“Wrong answer,” he said, and then there was a prickly pain in her arm, and her world faded to black.

“We’ll get her back,” Shayne promised Noah, who didn’t say anything as he slipped his headphones on and waited for air traffic control to give Shayne the okay for take-off.

He didn’t say anything because he couldn’t speak past the lump of fear the size of a regulation football jammed in his throat.

He’d lost her.

Shayne had moved in with a welcome swiftness, but not swift enough.

The black SUV had vanished into thin air.

But he knew where they’d gone. Straight to the airport to haul Bailey back to Burbank, to the house that had been beneath their noses all this time.

Precious.

Jesus, he couldn’t believe it.

Now they were in a race to save Bailey’s life. They’d run up against resistance at the Cabo airport, unable to stall two private jets from getting airborne.

If Bailey was on one of them, which his gut said she was, then every moment that ticked by counted. They sat on the strip waiting for their go, Noah grating his teeth, his gut tight with fear. Because once they got Bailey to the Burbank house, once she located the money—or not—her life was as good as over, and he could scarcely breathe at the thought of not getting there in time to help her.

Finally they were approved for take-off, and when they got to altitude, Shayne glanced over. “I wish you’d say something.”

“Fly faster.”

Shayne smiled grimly and did just that while Noah contacted Maddie. “What have you got for me?”

“You were right, two jets got through ahead of you,” she said. “They’ve both been air bound for approximately thirty minutes. Nothing else, and nothing after you, so one of those two is her.”

“Where are they heading?”

“Working on that.”

“If it’s Burbank—”

“If it’s Burbank, we can bring the local authorities into it.”

“Do it.”

“Okay, I’ll report back with where and when they land.”

That had to be good enough, but it sure didn’t feel like it. For the second time in a year, he’d failed someone who’d trusted him.

He didn’t know if he could live with that. Or how to.

But he knew how to live with the knowledge that she loved him. She’d looked him in the eyes, her own shimmering brilliantly with emotion, as she said it, too.

I love you.

He hadn’t heard a single one of those three words out loud because of the music—which was going to headline his nightmares for years to come—but he’d caught every single one in his heart. He rubbed the organ right now because it ached like hell, and had been since she’d been ripped out of his arms.

Bailey loving him was his very own miracle. Now he had to make another miracle happen; he had to get her back.

“She’s going to be okay,” Shayne promised. “They won’t do anything to her until they figure out she can’t deliver, and by then we’ll be there.”

Maybe they wouldn’t kill her, but they sure as hell could hurt her, and everything within him tightened as he wondered where she was right this moment, if she was holding up.

If they touched one single hair on her head, he’d tear them apart.

Slowly. “Thing is, I think she
can
deliver.”

Shayne looked at him in surprise. “What?”

“She figured out where the money is.”

“No shit?”

“She knows where it is, and if they get there with enough lead time—”

“What about the brother? Kenny, right? You said you thought he was in on it. Was he there today? Did you see him?”

“At the Burbank airport. He was trying to get to her.” Noah chewed on that for a while, then radioed Maddie. “Can you locate Kenny?”

“Hang on.”

Noah pressed his lips together and waited until she came back.

“Got him,” she said. “Apparently he tracked you down, but you haven’t been answering your cell.”

“I’ve been out of range.”

“Yeah, well, he’s unhappy that you managed to lose Bailey’s protective tail for her. I guess some of those guys you’ve been ditching were the good guys. He’s frantic to talk to you.”

Noah’s gut couldn’t possibly clench any tighter. “Does he have Bailey?”

“No, and he wasn’t happy to realize you don’t either. He says, and I quote, ‘if anything happens to her, I’m coming after you and kicking your ass.’ He’s fed, Noah. He’s working to nail Alan’s investment partners. They’re trying to get them for fraud, extortion, and a whole long list of other stuff.”

“Why didn’t he say so sooner?”

“He was under cover and trying to protect Bailey at the same time, without tipping off the bad guys.”

“Well, he did a hell of a job of that, didn’t he?” Noah looked at Shayne. “I think I underestimated the brother.”

“I hate it when that happens.”

Noah’s head hurt. “Can you work your magic and patch him through to me?” he asked Maddie.

“Stand by.”

What else could he do.
“Shit.”

“You know, we probably don’t pay her enough,” Shayne said.