RELENTLESS by Helenkay Dimon Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t like either extreme.
    If it weren’t for Corcoran, he’d totally lose it. Connor had taken him in when the NCIS case ended and Lara no longer had to look over her shoulder for danger.
    The whole team knew the story about how his boss had turned out to be a killer and a liar, but none of the guys put that on Ben. He’d worried they would see his choice to testify against his boss as a breach of office loyalty and not trust him to back them up. But they’d all made clear their support and given him to understand that they would have played it the same way.
    Loyalty was not the same as sanctioning corruption. They got that. It was a shame his dad, the admiral, saw it differently.
    But there was nothing Ben could do about the divide in his family tonight. The immediate goal was to figure out if the attacks now related to his decisions back then.
    And he would ferret it all out but he needed some breathing room away from this detective to do it. “This was a home-invasion attempt. Very straightforward.”
    The detective folded his arms in front of him. “I’m beginning to wonder if any dealing with you is going to be that simple.”
    Ben had to give him that one. “Probably not.” Since the distrust already ran pretty high, Ben decided they might as well add to it. “Did we mention there’s a guy in the garage?”
    The detective’s head shifted forward. “Excuse me?”
    “I’m sure I told the officers,” Connor said.
    Ben would bet money he hadn’t. Delay was the only way to question the attacker without interference.
    Corcoran ran under the radar. Part of their success relied upon being able to get in and out of situations without bureaucratic red tape. Not that the few minutes of questioning helped. The guy was not talking.
    “One of the attackers survived.” And Ben was starting to regret that. “So far.”
    If possible, the detective’s mouth dropped even farther into a flat line. “We’re going to have a talk about this.”
    “What?” Connor asked.
    “Your team’s decision making and protocol and how private companies aren’t equal to law enforcement or immune from the law.”
    There was a time when Ben had bought into that kind of argument. Then he had stood on the wrong side of one of the “good guys” and realized the line between right and wrong needed to shift around sometimes.
    “Your choice—a lecture or an interrogation,” he said to the detective.
    “I plan to do both.”
    Ben blew out a long breath. “Lucky us.”
    * * *
    I T WAS WELL AFTER two in the morning before Jocelyn saw Ben again. She’d sewn him up and insisted he rest. Naturally, he went outside. Headed right for that garage and the man tied up out there. The only thing that kept Jocelyn from crawling out of her skin as she waited was seeing that police detective come out with Ben on one side and the bound man on the other.
    That was twenty minutes ago. She still hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs. And she listened for them. Kept her door open, careful not to wake Lara and Davis down the hall.
    She paced the space between the chest of drawers and the end of the bed. Much more of this and she’d wear a hole right in the pretty cream-colored carpet.
    “Hey.” Ben poked his head in the doorway. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
    She almost knocked against the wall mirror. At the last minute she managed to stifle a scream. Barely. “You’re the one who should be resting.”
    For six feet of muscle, he sure could sneak around. He wore sneakers, and the stairs hadn’t so much as given the smallest creak as he came upstairs.
    He tipped his head to the side and shot her that sexy smile that made her toes curl. “Still a little keyed up, so I walked the family room for a few minutes and rechecked the locks and alarm.”
    Of course he had. Sounded like him, but she refused to let that could-take-him-home-to-mother look win her over. “Did you kill him?”
    “What?” He stepped inside and closed the door