Another fifteen minutes passed with Becca answering questions and getting some damn-near useless advice from the cops. Keep your doors locked. Call a locksmith in the morning and get the locks changed. Ever consider a home-security system? Or a dog?
Man’s best friend aside, that back door had been unlocked when Nick had tried it. Knob hadn’t been damaged. Glass hadn’t been broken. And she sure as shit hadn’t left it open, not with the paranoid behavior he’d observed the previous night. Someone had picked the sonofabitch. Bad guy wanted in again, a new lock wasn’t likely to keep him out. Not unless she seriously stepped up the quality of the hardware.
And someone clearly wanted something from the Merritts.
The cops left Becca with some vague pronouncements about what would happen next. If anything. The eighth most dangerous city in America, Baltimore had fourteen hundred violent crimes and nearly nine thousand property crimes, burglaries, and thefts a year—statistics that kept Nick busy serving papers five days a week. And statistics that also meant Becca’s seemingly victimless B&E wouldn’t get a lot of attention from the authorities.
The despairing expression on her face told him she knew it, too. As she thanked the police, Rixey took stock of his late commanding officer’s daughter. Weariness had settled onto her shoulders and dampened the light in those baby blues. Wisps of hair had fallen haphazardly from her ponytail, and exhaustion painted dark circles under her eyes. But Becca Merritt was still a looker—a real sweetheart of a face, curves in all the places women were supposed to have curves, toned but real. And he found her even more appealing for the fact that some seriously stressful shit had gone down here and she’d held it together better than most civilians would.
Nothing was happening to her, not on his watch. And at the moment, his was all the help she was gonna get.
Wasn’t that a pisser.
She closed the front door and flipped the dead bolt, then turned to him.
Before she said a word, he gestured toward the steps. “Go pack a bag. Enough for a coupla nights, at least. I’m getting you the hell out of here. Now.”
BECCA BLINKED. NICK’S expression was dead serious, the intensity of those pale green eyes daring her to argue. God, he’d looked like her worst nightmare as he’d come through her back door earlier—tall, muscled, and armed. A lethal menace all in black. But he’d helped her. And her father must’ve trusted him if they’d fought side by side for so long. Still, she wasn’t going to be ordered around. “Where would I go? This is my home. Besides, I don’t really know you to be going anywhere with you. No offense.” She couldn’t run scared. No matter how frightened she was right now. And she was. Her joints ached from trying to hold it together.
His expression didn’t register any response to her refusal, but his tone turned frosty. “Wasting time, Becca. Go get some things together.”
Screw being scared. Somebody had invaded her space. Anger flooded in behind the fear. She planted her hands on her hips. “I’m not letting some asshole chase me out of my own damn house.”
The skin around his right eye ticked, just the littlest bit. “And what if that asshole comes back in the middle of the night? He didn’t force entry. He picked the lock. Which he can easily do again. And next time, he might not stop at digging through papers.”
She frowned, a dozen weak defenses against his logic springing up even as his words trickled ice down her spine.
Nick rushed in to fill the silence her hesitation created. “Pack a bag. Now. Everything else we can figure out later.”
We? She crossed her arms. “What, so, now you’re helping me?”
He gave a single tight nod.
Yesterday, he refused to even talk to her. Now he wanted to call the shots? What happened in twenty-four hours to bring about this one-eighty? Could she really count on him? “Why? What’s changed?”
He stepped closer, close enough that she could make out the gold flecks in his eyes. “You, being in danger.” His deep voice emphasizing the word you, combined with his intense gaze, spread warmth throughout her tired body. With a sideways nod to the stairs, he said, “Go pack a bag. Or I will.”
The image of those big hands rooting through her panty drawer sprang into her mind’s eye. Butterflies made a quick loop around her stomach. “Fine.” She couldn’t help Charlie if anything happened to her, so she walked past Nick toward the bottom step, hoping he didn’t see the pink she suspected colored her cheeks. Three steps up, she felt movement behind her. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.
He was right there.
She hadn’t heard him move. Just . . . sensed his presence. Her gaze flicked over him. The man had some damn broad shoulders under that black jacket. “We’re doing the buddy system?”