Exposed (33 page)

“Police have any leads?” Mitch asked.

“They’re working on it.”

He shook his head. “That’s the problem with working nights.”

Maddie bit back a retort. She was determined not to bicker, even though that condescending tone of his grated on her nerves.

“Well, I guess business is good. I see you’ve got a new assistant?”

He nodded at the FBI agent who was standing in the corner impersonating a potted plant. The man had a camera around his neck, but the prop might have been more convincing if he’d managed to snap a few pictures during the course of the evening.

“Yep, booming,” she said cheerfully, scanning the ballroom for a photo op that needed her attention. She turned back to Mitch, and he was giving her a look she recognized.

“So. Where’s Danielle?”

“Another pit stop. You know how it is.”

Being pregnant, he meant.

God, would this night ever be over? Maddie searched for an escape. Her gaze landed on Brian, and her heart lurched. What was he doing here? He stood beside the door to the balcony, with his shoulder propped against the wall. His gaze met hers, and she felt a jolt of heat from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

“So Maddie—”

“Excuse me.” She abandoned Mitch and crossed the ballroom. Brian followed her with his gaze. He had that way of standing, that way of
being
, that was utterly relaxed and yet completely alert at the same time. He’d probably made a good soldier, she thought randomly, and then hated the idea. She could see him being calm and clear-headed in battle but fiercely determined at the same time.

She stopped in front of him just as the band completed a song.

“What are you doing here?” she asked over the applause.

“Starting my shift.”

“But—” She glanced over her shoulder and saw the agent who’d been assigned to her slipping out of the ballroom. “I thought LeBlanc was on later tonight.”

“She had a conflict.”

Something in his tone seemed to challenge her, and Maddie searched his face, trying to read whether he was lying. He’d spent the past two evenings on her sofa, watching ESPN into the wee hours of the night, or maybe
through
the night. She wasn’t sure he’d ever actually gone to sleep. The few times she’d crept past the living room, he’d been sprawled back on her couch, arm tucked behind his head, transfixed by the television. He hadn’t been intrusive. He’d stayed out of her way. But his continued presence was making her edgy. Now that she was caught up on framing projects and housework and e-mails, she didn’t know what to do with herself. The idea of curling up on the sofa to watch sports with him seemed far too relationship-y.

“How’s your arm tonight?”

“Fine.”

His gaze moved down her body and lingered on her black slingbacks. Maddie’s skin heated, and she would have bet money he was thinking about sex.

“Where’s your gun?” he asked.

Or maybe not. Maybe
she
was the one who couldn’t shake the memory of him sliding those shoes off her feet.

“I—” She cleared her throat. “It’s in my camera bag. Why?”

“You should keep it with you.”

His voice was tinged with disapproval, and she started to get defensive but then changed her mind. He was right. Instead of arguing, she led him to the spot where she’d left the equipment and started gathering things up. Brian collapsed her tripod, and she tucked it under her arm like an umbrella.

“You ready? I’m parked out back, by the kitchen.”

“I’m not ready at all.” She glanced at her watch. T minus four minutes. And damn it, now she was doing it. “I’ve got to get set up at the porte cochere.” She started toward the door, but he caught her arm.

“The who?”

“The place where the limo’s waiting.” She darted her gaze to the ballroom entrance as guests started streaming out to line up along the hallway and throw rose petals. “I need a shot of the newlyweds driving away. It’s for the end of the wedding album.”

Brian glanced at doorway, and Maddie could tell he didn’t like the plan. She shook off his arm.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“Stick close to me,” he ordered. “And don’t go outside.”

Maddie tamped down her annoyance as she made her way through the guests flocking down the carpeted corridor. As they neared the foyer, she was relieved to see that the bride and groom hadn’t made their appearance yet, so she still had time to set up the shot. She hurried for the door, but Brian clamped her on the shoulder.

“Hey, I said
inside
.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I need them climbing into the limo.”

“Use your zoom lens.”

Maddie glared at him, but the hard set of his jaw told her it was no use. This was one of those my-way-or-the-highway moments that had been popping up with infuriating frequency over the last few days.

A flash of movement caught her eye, and she spotted the wedding coordinator waving at her from the other end of the corridor. He tapped his watch frantically and held up three fingers.
T minus three! Prepare for liftoff!

The lights flickered. She glanced up at the chandelier, and the room was plunged into darkness. A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

Brian cursed.

“What the—”

“Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her away from the crowd.

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer, simply towed her through the darkness as if he knew precisely where he was going. One by one, cell phones flickered on and penetrated the
black. Everyone was chattering excitedly, but she was moving too fast to catch the words. Brian stopped and pushed open a door. He maneuvered her into a storage closet, then squeezed in behind her. The door thudded shut.

“What—”

“Quiet.”

A bluish glow filled the room as he lifted his phone to his ear. Maddie glanced around and saw that they were wedged in amid stacks of chairs.

“Bruce? It’s Beckman. Where are you?” He listened a moment, and the tense lines of his face sent a chill racing down Maddie’s spine. “I’ll be right there.”

The room went dark again.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

“Where are you going?”

“To see what’s happening. You have your pistol?”

“Wait! What’s going on? Who’s Bruce?”

“Stay here, even if the lights come back on.”

“But—”

“I mean it, Maddie. Don’t move.”

When Brian returned to the closet fifteen minutes later, he found Maddie sitting on a chair, legs crossed, in the pitch dark. She jumped to her feet.

“What happened?”

“Power surge.” He grabbed her camera bag off the ground and picked up the tripod.

“
Power surge
. That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

She dodged past him into the hallway and rushed to the foyer. Guests were milling around, talking. She stopped and stared down at the flower petals strewn across the floor.

“I’m parked in back,” he reminded her.

The look she shot him was venomous. She strode past him down the hallway and into the kitchen. He followed. The room was even steamier than it had been earlier, when he’d made his initial walkthrough of the facility. Half a dozen workers were lined up at sinks, washing dishes with big hoses. The employee exit was propped open with a milk crate, and several waiters in tuxedos were having a smoke. Brian snagged Maddie’s arm before she reached the door.

“Hold up.” He moved her behind him and stepped out to scan the vicinity around the exit. Then he put his hand on her back and guided her to the Taurus parked in the loading bay.

Maddie slid into the car without comment as Brian dumped her equipment in the backseat.

So she was pissed. Okay. He probably should have gone to retrieve her sooner, but he’d wanted to confirm that the power outage was nothing more than a technical glitch. He scanned the surrounding area now as he walked around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel.

Maddie stared straight ahead as he backed out of the loading bay and headed for the service drive that connected with the highway. He darted another glance at her, but she refused to look at him. He took out his phone and called the head of the country club’s security to tell him he was leaving the premises.

“Bruce, I take it?” she asked when he hung up.

“Yeah.”

Her phone beeped from the backseat, and she hauled her camera bag into her lap to dig through it. She checked the text message and then muttered something and looked out the window.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said through clenched teeth. Brian waited for the dam to burst. It wasn’t going to be pretty. Clearly, she was ticked off.

Well, so was he. A lack of sleep, a lack of sex, and—most of all—a lack of progress in the investigation were making him crazy. Despite today’s breakthrough, the task force still didn’t have an arrest warrant for Mladovic. Brian tried to conceal his frustration as he navigated his way across town.

This case sucked. Providing security for a woman he craved like oxygen sucked. Standing on the sidelines and watching her ex-husband hit on her sucked.

But what sucked more than anything was his deep-rooted fear that he was going to fail again and that Mladovic was going to hurt another innocent person with complete impunity, and this time, it was someone Brian cared about.

And hey, while he was thinking about it, another thing that sucked was that he’d somehow developed a thing for a woman who’d made it abundantly clear she only wanted to be his “friend.” He was doing his dead-level best to go along with that scenario, hoping in time she’d see how wrong-headed it was. He was trying to be patient, hoping she’d start taking him seriously instead of treating him like some error in judgment that she’d
made after a few too many drinks. But patience had never been his strong suit, and his supply was quickly running out.

Brian pulled into her driveway and parked at the very end, a short distance from the back door. She stalked up the porch steps and had the door unlocked before he could catch up to her. She silenced the beeping alarm with a few jabs of her finger and turned to face him.

“This arrangement isn’t working.”

He deposited her tripod on the floor beside his overnight bag. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Because it’s working great for me—just so you know. I’ve had about five hours of sleep the last three days. And my coworkers are all over me because you’re being such a pain in the ass.”

“
I’m
being a pain in the ass?”

“Yes.”

Her cheeks flushed as she glared at him. “How, exactly?”

“You want a list? Fine.” He tossed his keys onto the counter. “You’re one of the few living witnesses in a federal investigation, but you refuse to recognize that fact—”

“We’ve been over this already.”

“—which makes things a hell of a lot harder for people providing security for you.”

“If you guys would make an
arrest
, I wouldn’t need security.”

“The day after being
shot
by someone probably working
for our chief suspect, you insist on going into work. Meaning some member of the task force—namely, me—has to chauffeur you around.”

Her eyes flashed. She didn’t like that description.

“Then, after spending another night on your couch, I get up in the morning, and you assure me you’re going to spend your Saturday doing laundry. So I go into the office to catch up on all the shit I’ve been neglecting, and what happens? I get a call from the agent assigned to you, who was supposed to spend the day running down leads on his computer but instead spent it shuttling you to and from your office—”

“I told him he didn’t have to come! He insisted. Which is ridiculous. The Delphi Center has better security than most military bases.”

Brian edged closer and glared down at her. “Ever hear of taking a vacation day? Or staying home on the weekend? Ever think of trying to make our job easier instead of harder?”

“What about my job?” she countered. “Who do you think’s going to pay my bills if I decide to bag work and miss all my deadlines?”

“Then tonight,” he said, ignoring her, “three separate agents try to talk you out of going to a freaking
wedding
with four hundred people, where security is guaranteed to be a nightmare. But do you listen? No. And look what happened.”

“Nothing happened! They blew a fuse. So what? And then you stuffed me into some closet and made me screw up my job.”

“I have a job to do, too, Maddie. And you’re making it damn near impossible.”

She took a deep breath and fumed up at him. “Why don’t you just admit what this is about?”

“What is this about?”

“Jolene Murphy.”

He scowled.

“She got grabbed right from under your nose, and now you’re paranoid about me.” She paused, searching his face. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re terrified of dropping the ball again, so you’re not being logical.” She swept her arm out. “Don’t you see what this is?”

“What?”