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Several minutes ticked by. I had no idea how long the four of us would stand there, but I didn’t want to move and bring everyone’s attention back to me.

“I’m done,” one of the two huge men muttered. “I didn’t see anything. Fuck Hawkins, I work for Shapiro.”

“Me too,” the second guy agreed, and they both turned and headed back to the suite. They both had to step over the prone figure of Tyler Hawkins to do it, and it would have been funny if I weren’t still freaked out. Seeing my chance to get out of there, I bolted toward the elevator.

“Wait.”

At the tone of his voice, the command in it, I stopped, even though every part of my brain was screaming at me to run.

As my savior strode toward me, a sudden smile broke on his face, and the way he held out his hand, I found I could breathe again.

“You handled yourself nice,” he complimented me, warm hand closing around mine as he stepped in front of me, staring down into my eyes.

The fact that I had to tilt my head back to keep the man’s gaze told me that he was bigger and taller, and this close, I was dead if he decided he wanted to hurt me. “How do you know?”

“I watched.”

“How?”

“Camera.”

Asking more questions could be fatal, so I stopped and just held his hand.

“Conrad Harris,” he said, and I noted his sparkling iridescent green eyes.

I caught my breath. I had not really seen him when I was in fear for my life, but I noticed then, when he smiled, that the man was gorgeous.

“Who are you?”

“Trevan Bean.” I managed to get out my name.

He let go of my hand, put his on my shoulder, and steered me the rest of the way down the hall. At the elevator, he asked me where I was going.

“I dunno.”

“So, you wanna eat?”

I looked up at him, thinking about what was smart and what was not. “Yeah, let’s eat.”

He nodded. “Cool.”

And that I had not second-guessed his motives, I came to find out, was a very good thing. Because it was not that he was a bad man or a good man, he simply was. He was contracted to do a job, and that was all. He protected you, killed you, or left you alone based on who was paying him to make a choice on your behalf. The man was not particularly emotional, violent, or compulsive. He was just Conrad. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and he was there in my bedroom, watching me and Landry sleep, he said, because it calmed him. By the same token, sometimes he simply disappeared in the middle of a conversation. I would turn around and he’d be walking away from me. He confessed to me “why?” when I was really drunk one time and he didn’t think I’d remember.

“Sometimes just breathing the same air as you soothes me, and sometimes I get this overwhelming urge to snap your neck. When I want to see you, I see you; when I want to kill you, I walk away. Some people I don’t walk away from, T, so never let anyone tell you that you’re not special. You are very fuckin’ special.”

I always remembered that line of his, the fine line he walked that at any time, at any point, he could stumble over. He was very dangerous and very loyal, and I liked him more than he really knew. I realized, too, that everyone in my life was slightly insane.

“SIR?”

Looking up, realizing I had been daydreaming, I found a nurse squinting at me. “Sorry, um, Benji Matthews? He was brought in a couple hours ago, I think.”

Her expression went from irritation to sympathy in seconds. She reached out, put her hand over my right one, which was sitting on the counter. “Let me get the doctor for you.”

“Oh, no.” I felt the air rush out of my body. “No no no.”

She looked so sad.

I tried to breathe. We weren’t even that close, Benji and I, not even what you would call friends, but I felt responsible. I had put him in Ellis Kady’s sights.