Page 19 of Critical Strike

Control. He took several deep breaths. His men waited, silent, probably wondering if and when he would explode in rage. How was the girl a step ahead of them? She was nothing! One single girl who all but faded into the background. He hadn’t recognized her face upon examining her ID badge and the photos compiled by his team after her escape. She might as well be no one, a nonentity.

Yet she’d managed to escape. Again.

“Why did she go to San Antonio Security?”

“I spoke to Arellano after the visit to their office but he didn’t have anything concrete about that.” Brooks exchanged another shrug with Masters. “They’re either good liars or they were telling the truth.”

“The truth being...?”

“That they didn’t know her.”

“It was probably a last-ditch effort on her part,” Masters added, eager to sound insightful and useful after delivering bad news. Ballard was not a man who took bad news easily. “One of the guys from the agency was on TV recently and it upped their visibility. Otherwise, they were all firm on not knowing her or anything about why she came in.”

“There’s no connection between her and the firm’s partners?”

“None that Arellano could find, and you know how thorough he is.”

Motivation would do that to a man. Find the right pressure point, and the impossible suddenly became commonplace. Ballard doubted the detective would leave a single stone unturned.

Though that certainty did little to help at the moment. There was still the problem of the girl, where she’d gone and whether she was receiving help. She had to be.

If ever there’d been a poster child for solitude, it was that girl. A lifelong loner. For her to reach out to anyone meant she was desperate. She knew the stakes. Her awareness, her watchfulness spoke of understanding as well.

There had to be an end to her resourcefulness.

Brooks cleared his throat. “What direction do you want Arellano and Fisher to take?”

“I want eyes on their office, these Pattersons. Ears on their phones, as well. Whether there’s any connection or not, now that she knows we’re able to find her, she’ll look for any port in a storm.” Masters nodded and left the office, presumably to pass the word to the detectives overseeing the police aspect of this unfortunate dustup.

“What next?” Brooks asked, standing at the ready. Ballard knew through experience that his right-hand associate was up for anything. No request was too large, nothing too far outside the realm of what he was willing to do—like for instance, the Julia problem.

Ballard tented his fingers beneath his chin, staring at the wall over the man’s shoulder, seeing the entire situation laid out before him. Like a chessboard, the pieces were already in play. He saw the various parts of Claire’s small, uneventful life. The people from her past whom his men were already watching in case she ran to them.

It wasn’t enough to wait for her to make a move.

She had to be forced into one.

Yes, it was all so clear. Put his pieces in place, wait for her to make one move after another. No matter what she decided, he would be ready.

A smile spread slowly as everything fell into place. “It’s time to turn up the heat under our target,” he decided. “Make it so she has nowhere to turn without being noticed. Remove whatever sense of security she still possesses.”

“And how do we do that?”

His smile widened. “Oh, that won’t be difficult.”

ITONLYTOOKa second for Claire to remember where she was when she woke up the next morning. It took longer when a glance at the clock told her she’d been asleep for nearly thirteen hours.

Even before Julia’s murder, she hadn’t slept this soundly. One look at the man sleeping upright in the chair next to the bed told her why. Her subconscious had trusted Luke to protect her.

The way he’d always protected her.

She sat up, the bed frame groaning as she moved. In an instant, Luke was awake, his brown eyes trained on her.

“Sorry,” Claire whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

It couldn’t have been comfortable sleeping in that chair, but he stood with no stiffness and with two steps, was at the side of her bed. Claire’s breath hitched in her throat. His eyes were serious, face drawn tight, but when he touched the back of her hand, the gentleness there made her head spin.

“Feeling better?” Luke drew his fingers back way too soon.

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