“Your father sent me to look for you.” That smile widened. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question.”
“Did you really answer mine?”
Cam laughed. “She has you there, man.”
Joel nodded in the direction of her hand. “Is there a reason you’re carrying a knife, or is the plan to stab the helicopter?”
She glanced down, then back at Joel. “Are you worried it’s meant for you?”
“I take it you two know each other pretty well,” Cam said.
The conversation kept jumping around. She’d only remembered the knife when Joel mentioned it. The burning from where it pressed into her palm suddenly hit her.
Then Cam’s comment grabbed her attention.
“Joel didn’t tell you who I was to him?” She wanted not to care, but the hurt swallowed up her indifference.
Cam looked from her to Joel and back again. “Let’s just say I’m thinking he left out some important pieces about your joint past.”
“Hope.” Joel snapped his fingers and brought the focus back to him. “The knife?”
She stared at it in her hands. “What about it?”
“Why are you holding it as if you’re ready to attack?”
She couldn’t come up with a reason to stall and certainly had no reason to lie. Not about this. Not to him. “Someone was following me.”
Both men leaned in closer, all amusement gone from their faces. Cam’s mouth opened, but Joel was the one who barked out a question. “What?”
Now that she had their attention, she decided to spill it all. “And I think one of my executives might be dead.”
Chapter Two
Joel called up every ounce of his practiced control to stay calm. Before he’d joined the Corcoran Team, a private security organization out of Annapolis, Maryland, that specialized in risk assessments for companies and governments, this sort of thing would have had him spinning and drilling her with questions.
Connor Bowen and the rest of the Corcoran Team had taught him the importance of patience and holding still for the right opening. Without those skills, the high-priority, under-the-radar kidnap and rescue missions they conducted would fail. Because when you worked outside the legal parameters and without a safety net, mistakes couldn’t happen.
After a lifetime of kicking around in the intelligence field, Joel knew he’d finally landed in a place that felt right. He’d buckled down, used his tech skills to fill in after the last tech guy left and tried to forget about her. Hope, his greatest weakness.
Now he seriously considered telling Cam to get lost for a few minutes, though he doubted the guy would budge. Not when he was staring as if he’d never seen a woman before and was hanging on every word of the discussion.
Joel couldn’t really blame Cam on the gawking part. Hope looked as good as Joel remembered. Better, even. The long dark brown hair and near black eyes hadn’t changed. From the dimple and girl-next-door hotness to the tanned legs and smokin’ petite frame, he found her almost impossible to resist.
Add in her smarts, competency with weapons and near fearless determination when she wanted something and he’d had no choice but to dump his job and move to the next state to keep from falling deeper into her. Or that’s what he’d rationalized at the time.
But right now he worried more about the danger that appeared to be haunting her. “Say that again.”
She cleared her throat. “I have a missing executive.”
Joel had no idea what that meant. “You said dead a second ago.”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping that was an exaggeration.”
Well, that cleared up...nothing. He glanced over at Cam.
He shook his head. “Got me. I have no clue.”
“Hope.” Joel reached out to touch the hand with the weapon in it and felt the subtle tremor running through her. Yeah, forget how comfortable she looked hanging around outside, something bad had happened and she was throwing off the desperation vibe.
His protective instincts kicked into high gear. He folded his hand over hers and slid the knife out of her palm. Not an easy task since she had a death grip on it.
Moving nice and slow, he eased the blade back into its case at her waist as he rubbed his thumb over the deep creases on her palm. “Where is this executive?”
“His name is Mark Callah.”
“Okay.” Joel didn’t dig too deep for details. Not yet. “Where is Mark?”
“I have no idea since I lost him.”
Cam grunted. “She’s giving you a pretty logical answer, actually.”
“I got up this morning and he was gone from camp.” She tugged free of Joel’s hold and rubbed her hands together. “I headed for this clearing to use the sat phone and realized some guy was following me. Then your helicopter—”