Page 5 of Critical Strike

“Come on, come on,” she murmured.

Just as Claire stepped out of the elevator, an announcement boomed over the loudspeaker that the building was being locked down due to a possible outside security threat.

She pushed through the elevator doors to the garage before they had a chance to seal her inside, racing toward her car. Once inside, Claire forced herself to drive at a reasonable speed out of the garage and onto the street.

Only after she’d made it onto the interstate did she finally feel like she could afford to breathe.

She’d made it out.

But she knew she was far from safe.

Chapter Two

Luke Patterson rubbed his face and stared at the tall stack of paperwork covering most of his desk. Closing his eyes, he took a long sip of coffee.

Unfortunately, when he cracked his lids, all the papers were still there.

He sighed. “Damn it.”

San Antonio Security, the company he’d started with his brothers five years ago here in their hometown of San Antonio, really needed to hire an office manager. The business—everything from bodyguard-type work to situational awareness and weapons training to private investigation—had grown exponentially over the past few years. And rightfully so. Among the four of them, the Pattersons had years of background in both the military and law enforcement.

And they had all learned early on in their lives how the world really worked. How to reads situations and people, how to use people’s weaknesses against them when needed.

Having to turn away clients was a good place for a business to be. Buried under paperwork...not so much. But if it meant Luke could work with the three people he trusted most in the world—his brothers—then he’d take it.

He grabbed the top sheet from the most offensively large pile, ignoring the chiming from the bell on the office’s front door. Even if he wasn’t in paperwork purgatory, no one would expect Luke to meet a client entering the office. Brax liked talking to people, which was why his office was near the front.

Luke was the opposite. He was too gruff, too impatient with people to deal with them on a regular basis. Even Weston, quiet as he was, or Chance, always inside his own head, was better suited to talking with clients than Luke was.

A tap on Luke’s open office door a few moments later made him glance up. Brax stood there, a smile playing on the edges of his lips.

“Please tell me that’s the fire marshal and we’re all being ordered to abandon the building, saving me from this.” Luke gestured to his desk.

Brax only smiled wider. Despite the fact that the two of them could be as different as night and day, they were closer than Luke had ever believed possible. Their time together in the army probably had a lot to do with it.

Then again, Luke was equally tight with Weston and Chance, who had skipped the military in favor of careers in law enforcement.

“Someone’s here to see you.” Brax tilted his head toward the front of the office. “She asked for you by name.”

Luke sat straighter. “Who?”

No one ever asked for Luke, especially not women. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a date. He blamed it on the business growth, but the truth was he hadn’t found a woman he’d felt like he could open up to—one who could even understand his past, much less accept it.

Brax glanced over his shoulder at someone down the short hall. “He said come on in.”

“I didn’t—”

The rest of the sentence died in Luke’s throat as a delicate blonde woman walked into the office, her big blue eyes pinned on him.

He knew her immediately. “Claire.”

“Luke.” Only one word, but her voice trembled as if she barely had the strength to say his name.

Scratches covered her arms, and she held a big gray cat close to her chest.

The scene was painfully familiar. As a kid, she’d been scratched and bruised way too often, and she’d never gone anywhere without her stuffed cat.

“Looks like you got yourself a real cat.” The words were out before Luke gave himself the chance to think them over.

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