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he needed to waste energy doing.
THAT S WHAT I thought, Kat said. Looking back toward the stairs again, she realized she was alone.
As big as Beckett freaking Murda was, how the hell did she not hear him leave?
Damn Special Forces guys. Her brother Nick had the same ability. Scared her half to death
sometimes. Thank God for their middle brother, Jeremy. Most of the time, Jer gave off a happy vibe
you could feel coming from a mile away.
Kat smiled at the thought, settled into a comfortable position, and turned her attention back to the
view outside the window. The streets were eerily quiet, which wasn t an accident. Though her
brothers had bought a building in the city s derelict and partly abandoned old industrial district, the
real explanation behind the ghost town she was looking down on was a series of roadblocks a police
ally of Nick s had somehow orchestrated. Kat had tried to stay out of the specifics, because she
hadn t wanted to know the details if they potentially veered into the illegal.
Which was damn near a certainty. She had come to visit her brothers at Hard Ink five days before,
and pretty much the whole time she d been here had walked a fine line between wanting to help them
with this crazy situation and freaking out about the illegal nature of what they were doing. Not that the
guys weren t justified in defending themselves and doing whatever it took to clear their names, but
she had become a lawyer for a reason. Growing up, Nick was the risk taker, the guy who ditched
college weeks into his senior year to join the Army. Jeremy was the artistic rule breaker. And she had
been the rule follower.
Almost like checking a series of boxes, she d gotten straight A s all through school, served as the
president of all her clubs, got into the best colleges and busted her ass to become managing editor of
her law review. Even as early as high school, she d known she wanted to go into the law. Because
law represented justice and order and righteousness. Those ideals had spoken to her, drawn her to a
career fighting what she thought was the good fight.
Four years into working at the Department of Justice, she still believed that was what she and the
good people she worked with tried to do. Problem was, sometimes a big gulf existed between what
they tried to do and what the law allowed them to achieve. And she d never realized just how
all-consuming the career would be. Twelve-hour days at her desk were her norm.
Kat surveyed the run-down neighborhood outside the window. Baltimore might ve only been about
thirty miles from D.C., but right now she felt about a million miles away from that desk.
Down below, the street beside Hard Ink was literally blocked by the pile of rubble that had slid
down into the road when part of the building collapsed early Sunday morning. Just looking at the pile
of bricks and cement and twisted beams and broken glass made Kat s heart race, because she d been
on top of that building when it went down. Her brothers and several others, too. In her mind s eye she
saw the rooftop fall away from under Jeremy s feet. He and two other guys started to fall, and she d
screamed. And then Nick was there, grabbing Jeremy s hand and hauling him up from the breach.
Kat s breath caught and she blinked away the sting suddenly filling her eyes. The image of Jer
falling and the thought of him being gone had haunted her dreams every night since. Because she
could ve lost Jeremy.
Which made her glad her oldest brother had spent years in SpecOps and knew what the hell to do,
because she couldn t lose her brothers. And given the impossibly crazy situations she d encountered
since arriving at Hard Ink, she was well aware that losing them was a possibility. Because Nick and
Jeremy were in the very gravest danger.
It all stemmed from Nick s team s fight to restore their honor against powerful and not fully known
enemies. A fight that apparently had so much at stake that her brothers building had been attacked by
armed soldiers who had a rocket launcher. A freaking rocket launcher!
And, if that wasn t enough, the men they were likely fighting against and probably the very ones
who had attacked were the subject of a series of investigations her office had been working on for
the past nine months.
It was something she d only become certain of over the last twenty-four hours, as Nick s team s
investigation into a cache of documents from their now-deceased Army commander had begun to shed
light upon exactly what and who they were up against. Kat was glad for the alone time today,
because her brain was a conflicted mess. Should she maintain her professional ethics and protect her
security clearances by keeping her mouth shut? Or tell Nick and his team exactly what her office was
doing and share what information she had that could help them?
She d promised herself to decide today while she had some time to think.
And she had thought that coming to see her big bros would be the relaxing getaway it normally was,
one that would distract her from her own problems namely Cole, the ex-boyfriend who couldn t
seem to get it through his thick skull that she was really done with him. Down below, she saw Beckett
dart across the street between the buildings. With his muscles, square jaw, and fathomless blue eyes,
the guy was pure, raw masculinity personified. Her body couldn t be near his without reacting on
some fundamentally hormonal level. Her heart raced. Her nipples peaked. Her stomach went for a
loop-the-loop.
Before he disappeared around the corner of the Hard Ink building, he glanced over his shoulder and
looked up. Kat was a hundred percent sure his eyes landed on her, even though she sat mostly
shielded behind the brick of this old warehouse. Because her body jangled with a sudden awareness.
And then he was gone.
She rolled her eyes. Freaking ridiculous to get so worked up over a man whose favorite form of
communication was the grunt. And who made a habit of ignoring her when she spoke to him. And
who d pulled a gun on her without even bothering to ask her name. Couldn t forget that.
Whatever. He probably just got to her because he was so unlike the men with whom she normally
spent time. Whereas her colleagues at Justice tended to be serious, buttoned-up, and lower key,
Beckett radiated an intensity she didn t quite understand. It certainly didn t have anything to do with
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