Relentless

She wanted to sit down, maybe pass out for an hour or two. Exhaustion hit her out of nowhere and the relief at knowing everyone in the stairwell was fine had her breath hitching in her chest.

The attacker had gotten away. Stumbled right out into the afternoon sun without anyone grabbing him. The fact made her temperature rise and a wave of heat hit her face, but her biggest concern was for Ben. The way Connor stared at him, she guessed he was concerned, as well.

Once again Ben had protected and rescued. Stepped right into the line of fire. For her. He had a new set of bruises and injuries to prove it. If he wanted to convince her to take a temporary leave of absence, this sure did it.

She could go a lifetime without watching Ben scramble down the stairs as he wrestled with an armed maniac. The image would haunt her dreams.

He had tumbled and fought, without any care for his own safety. Even bloody, he had gotten back up and tried to catch the attacker. Only concern for the innocent people standing there had stopped him.

Yeah, he was nothing like Ethan Reynolds. He’d proven that over and over, and she finally got it.

And she had never wanted to sleep with Ethan, but she wanted Ben.

“Someone want to walk me through this again?” the detective asked even though she and Ben both had set out the whole scenario. So had the victims on the stairs and the security guards who had rushed to the scene. The hospital had finally settled back into its normal rhythm again.

Everyone agreed a guy dressed in black had fled the scene. For whatever reason, Glenn Willoughby didn’t accept that as the full truth.

“Guy with gun attacked.” Ben breathed in deeply, then wrapped an arm around his middle when he tried to exhale. “He got away. End of story.”

The detective stared at Ben, hesitating and giving him the silent treatment for what felt like an hour, before he looked at her again. “Ms. Raine, I’m thinking this all connects to you.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

“Ben.” She said his name in warning at the same time Connor did.

This was not the time to take on the police. She didn’t like the detective, either. Something about the ever-present smirk and the know-it-all looks. Then again, she wasn’t a fan of police in general. The idea of them, she loved. The reality of what she’d faced made her question the ones she’d seen on television and in movies.

The dislike seemed to run both ways. Detective Willoughby had made his position clear on Corcoran and his feelings on outside companies getting involved in crime solving, which Ben assured her was the normal reaction.

But the detective also stared at her when he should have been looking at other things. Not in a sexual way. More as a sneer.

He put his hands on his hips. “Any reason someone would want to kill you?”

“We’re working on that,” Connor said.

That had the detective aiming his furious gaze in Connor’s direction. “I believe I explained to you that this is police business.”

“She’s one of us.” Ben delivered the words without blinking. He could barely stand up straight, but his steely gaze all but dared the detective to challenge.

Willoughby did anyway. “What does that mean?”

She wondered the same thing.

“We’ll protect her,” Connor said, backing up Ben.

The detective’s smirk rose to full wattage as he turned to face her again. “And who are you protecting exactly?”

Jocelyn felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Slam right to the floor, taking most of her insides with it. The room buzzed and she would have gone down if Ben hadn’t grabbed her arm and leaned her against his warm body.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Care to tell them, Ms. Raine?” The detective lifted an eyebrow. The dare was there in his voice and his expression. “I’d call you by your real name, but I don’t know it.”

The bomb dropped. No one moved. Connor spared her a quick glance but Ben didn’t react at all to the cryptic information.

No way would she let this guy, this detective she didn’t know and who took far too much pleasure in her discomfort, set the terms for her reveal. The news was private and terrible and something she wanted to forget. It would not become a line in his report or something he could play with to try to get the upper hand.

She lifted her chin. “Jocelyn Raine is my real name.”

That wasn’t a lie. She’d changed it legally. A closed-door, filed-under-seal case in another county, but she’d gone through all the legal channels once she was guaranteed the information would be almost impossible to find.

“What did it used to be?” the detective asked.

And she knew the guarantee about privacy had been blown. If this guy knew, Ethan might know. The reality of what that meant sent a tremor of fear shaking through her bones.