“I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has done an official count. I don’t know how many of the serving staff survived. Presumably some of them weren’t in the part of the building that collapsed. I think about thirty or forty people who were in the ballroom survived. But I’m not positive.”

“So maybe this guy is contacting them all.”

“But how would he know to get in touch with you?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard. Your new address is on record. He’d look at the other people on the street and I’d pop up. I’m a former SEAL, that’s on the record and I am on the record as an employee at ASI, which is a well-known company. Very aboveboard. He’d add two and two. Even if I didn’t know you well, it would make sense for him to contact me and ask me to keep you safe. Maybe he’s making his quiet way down the list of survivors. We’ll know soon enough. He’s asked for someone from the FBI to be in the office tomorrow.”

“The FBI?” This was getting more and more strange.

Joe slid down in the bed, taking her with him. She was on her side and he was curved around her.

He was also erect, but he wasn’t prodding her with it, or asking for sex. He kissed her shoulder gently. “I think we’ll be getting some answers tomorrow, but I also think you need to rest. It’s 4:00 a.m. and we should get up around 7:00, so that only gives you three hours to sleep. See if you can manage it.”

“I don’t think I can,” Isabel said, then yawned.

“Uh-huh.” Joe kissed her shoulder again. She could see his face above her, smiling down at her. “Just try. Close your eyes for a minute.”

Oh man, he didn’t know just how hard she tried to get back to sleep after a nightmare. It was impossible. She’d just lie awake, tense and frightened, until the sky outside her bedroom window started to lighten, and she’d get up to start another exhausting day.

“It doesn’t work.”

“Try,” he coaxed. “Just for a minute. For me.”

“Make me,” she said, her voice suddenly low, suddenly husky. In a flash, a switch had been thrown. That massive male body surrounding her, that enormous erect penis against her back...All those intense emotions evoked by the nightmare morphed in an instant to desire. There had never been another mechanism for her to deal with the aftermath of the nightmares before. Just silence and the endless hours of the night. But now—now there was the world’s greatest distraction wrapped around her.

“What?” Obviously Joe didn’t operate like she did, emotions flipping from one extreme to the other. He had to keep up.

Isabel turned her head to smile at the dark male face above hers. “I need help getting to sleep. So either you warm up some milk for me or make love to me. Your choice.”

He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them his gaze was fierce.

“Put like that,” he said. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He turned her gently on her back and mounted her. There was no other word for it. His hands were gentle. She could see the effort that gentleness was costing him in the taut tendons of his neck, but the movements were pure sex, pure animal. His thighs separated hers and he slid into her with an ease that astonished her. She was ready for him, though. Needed him, even, and her body knew that before her mind did.

And oh, God, when he entered her she was infused with heat and strength. Sex was this, too. Elemental, primal. Heat and power entering her as much as his body entering hers.

His mouth covered hers and he started moving and there was nothing but heat and blinding pleasure and the animal comfort of his body in hers.

Chapter Nine

“This doesn’t look like the right part of town for corporate headquarters,” Isabel said as they cruised through the Pearl.

She was right. It was a funky part of town, formerly full of warehouses and railroad yards and now gentrified but artsy. No high-rises, no corporate buildings.

“Just wait,” he said as he turned onto the street where the back entrance to ASI was. He didn’t want to say anything because he wanted to see how she reacted to the business’s premises.

“Okay.”

Joe shot her a glance. She looked rested. Thank God. That nightmare

had shaken him to the core. She’d been mewling and moaning, thrashing in the bed. It had been a monster nightmare. He’d kept calm but what she’d told him could only mean one thing. Her memories were returning in the form of dreams. Nightmares. And if Mystery Man was right, she was remembering something that was worse than a terrorist attack. Mystery Man wanted the FBI because he suspected homegrown terrorists. Worse. Homegrown terrorists who might be connected to the government. At least 9/11 had been carried out by foreigners.

And Isabel was smack in the middle of it. So Joe was not going to let her out of his sight until he had a clearer understanding of what the fuck this was all about.

He circled round a high redbrick wall until he came to a big gate and pressed the accelerator.

Isabel gave a half cry that was strangled as the gates slid open quickly. Every ASI operative had a special transponder installed in his or her vehicle. Joe loved it and loved that he was working for a cool company. Going to be working for a cool company.

“Magic.” He grinned as he drove into a well-ordered compound with parking spaces and a large, attractive brick structure to the side.

It was only faced with brick. It was actually made of steel and concrete and was unbreachable. Inside was the ASI armory and a spectacular thing it was, too. Besides weapons, it also held the very latest in military-grade gear. It was like their very own playground only made of steel, not sand.

But ASI was not the only company in the compound. Midnight’s wife, Suzanne, had a design company, too, so not only was the compound a gearhead’s wet dream, it was also spectacularly beautiful. Joe was sure they were the only aesthetically pleasing security company in the country.

“Wow.” Isabel looked around. “This is where you work?”

“Will work,” Joe grunted as he parked the car. “When they give me the go-ahead. And you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Well this is already fantastic. There’s more?”

He just smiled as he exited the vehicle and helped her to the ground. He let her look around because it was worth it.

The vehicles and the armory were ASI, but everything else was Suzanne’s. What had once been the loading dock for her grandparents’ shoe factory was a carefully landscaped area neatly divided up by brick-lined sections of planters. There was a series of arches planted with climbing ivy, a small Zen garden, elaborate outdoor lighting, even a couple of stone benches around a little fountain.

Of course what the ordinary admirer wouldn’t see was the motion sensors, the NV and infrared vidcams hid in the greenery, the outer wall that was built in a way that would mitigate debris even in the case of a perimeter breach explosion...

As a matter of fact, Midnight and Suzanne were working together to provide extreme high-tech security solutions that incorporated design elements, too. That business was starting to take off.

Joe touched a small key fob and the door to the building opened too.

He enjoyed Isabel’s pleasure at the sight of the long corridor. Being a chick, she’d probably appreciate it better than he did. All Joe knew was that he loved entering the building, loved the physical premises. If you put a blowtorch to his bare feet, he’d also admit to loving his teammates and his bosses.

He was one lucky son of a bitch.

Joe held out his arm and Isabel took it with a smile. It was like she was made to walk these halls, her natural habitat. She was as classy as the decor.

When they walked into ASI’s offices, Felicity and Lauren rose, smiling, and proceeded to make an enormous fuss over Isabel. The sounds of the women’s voices filled the room as Metal gave an ironic one-fingered salute with his index finger and Jacko refrained from giving his usual one-fingered salute, only with a different finger.