Deadly Temptation

But they weren’t glory hounds, either, Logan knew. More than once they’d succeeded where police had failed but they never made an issue of it. When they came across criminal activity in the course of one of their own operations, they handed what they had over to the cops and let them take the credit while they went about the business of protecting Redstone. In that, they’d earned the respect and admiration of law enforcement wherever Redstone operated, an area that covered a large portion of the globe.

And they should have nothing to do with this, he thought, even more suspicious now.

“You have some proof of that?” he asked.

The man nodded. Again he held up his right hand, palm forward, as indication of no malicious intent.

“ID,” he explained as he reached back with his left hand and pulled a canvas wallet out of his back pocket. He flipped it open and handed it over.

Logan studied the displayed ID card. It looked legitimate, with the gray and red Redstone colors and the stylized graphic of the prototype Hawk I jet in the upper left corner. The name on the card read “Tony Alvera,” as he’d said, but there was no indication of a job title or position, just the name and the Redstone address and contact numbers.

“So if I call Redstone personnel, they’ll cheerfully confirm you work there?”

“No.” His gaze shot back to the man’s face. Alvera shrugged. “Security keeps a low profile. Our work is often in-house, so we work out of a different location, and our files are kept separately.”

“So I should just believe you?”

“Your choice.”

He studied the man for a moment. The dark eyes held his gaze levelly, no dodging, no skittishness, just a calm, open response to his suspicions. After the men he’d been dealing with lately, it was a pleasant change. And also told him it was unlikely this man was one of them.

“What,” Logan said carefully, slowly, “does Redstone Security have to do with me?”

“Not us per se,” Alvera said. “The order came from the top, Josh himself.”

“I’ve never even met him,” Logan said. Meeting one of the five richest men in the world wasn’t something he was likely to have forgotten.

“But one of Redstone’s people has met you. And asked us to…look into your situation.”

Logan frowned. “I don’t know anyone at Redstone.”

“You do now. Liana Kiley.”

Logan blinked; of all the names he might ever have expected, that hadn’t been one of them. “What?”

“You do know her, right?”

An image instantly formed in his mind, as if it had been yesterday instead of years ago, of the blue-eyed redhead with a faint tracing of freckles across her nose. A sweet, pretty, girl-next-door type who’d been caught up in an ugly situation, she’d been justifiably terrified, and yet had managed to keep her cool enough to help him end it.

Liana?

He’d never forgotten her. How could he, after what had happened? Not only had they shared that adrenaline-pumping experience, but she had also, amazingly, spent hours with him during those long, pain-filled days in the hospital. His memories of that time were a little hazy, and consisted mainly of hospital personnel subjecting him to various indignities, doctors looking suitably grim, a parade of cops looking even more grim, the knowledge he was likely going to die…and Liana.

Oh, yes, he’d thought of her often. In fact, more than ever since he’d been undercover on this assignment. More than once he’d barely stopped himself from tracking her down, just to see how she was doing. There had been such an innocence about her, something he hadn’t seen much of since he’d gone under. He supposed that was the reason she’d been on his mind so much.

“Back then, she was working for JetCal,” he said slowly.

“She quit. After they got caught funding industrial spying. On Redstone.”

He drew back slightly. “And now she works for Redstone?”

The man nodded. “As of a couple of days ago, yes.”

In spite of himself Logan’s mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Now that sounds like her.”

An echoing smile flitted across Alvera’s face. “I’ve only met her once so far, but I’d have to agree.”

That “so far” irked him, and Logan tensed before he realized it. Then he wondered what the hell that was about. He had no reason to feel territorial about a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years, since the day one month after he’d finally gotten out of the hospital, when she’d presented the Medal of Valor to him at the request of the department. It was good PR, the citizen whose life he’d saved doing the honors, and the fact that she was impossibly cute and sweet only made it more so.

For all the good it’s doing me now, he thought, that medal might as well be a paperweight.

“What does she have to do with this?” It came out abruptly, but he felt like he had to say something. Fast.

“She thinks you’re innocent. In fact, she insists that you are.”

He blinked. “What?”

“She saw the news reports. They upset her. Josh doesn’t like his people upset.”

Something the man had said a moment ago finally registered. “Even someone who’s only been there a couple of days?”

“Family is family. If you’re Redstone, you’re Redstone,” the man said simply. “Josh asked what was wrong, she told him, and here I am.”

“To do what?”

Alvera shrugged. “Help, if I can.”

“And what the hell can you do? The department’s already all over this.”

“I can,” the man said quietly, “start with the presumption you didn’t do it, not by trying to prove that you did.”

The simple answer knocked the wind out of Logan as surely as a solid fist to the gut. That trust, that faith was what he should have been able to count on from the place he’d given twelve years of his heart, life and blood to. Yet when the time had come, they’d turned on him, so quickly he’d still been reeling in shock when some news photographer had grabbed the shot that had been splashed across the local rag.

“Why?” he asked, barely aware that his voice was hoarse. “Redstone’s got no stake in this.”

“We believe in our own. One of them believes in you. It’s not tricky, really.”

Logan shook his head, as if that would help him make sense of all of this.

“I haven’t seen her in eight years,” he said, feeling a bit numb.

Alvera studied him for a moment. “Then perhaps you should,” he said finally. “You know where Redstone is?”

Logan’s mouth quirked. “Every cop in Southern California knows where Redstone is. Josh Redstone does more to support his local police than anybody in the state.”

Alvera grinned. “That he does. In more ways than you even know. I’ll meet you there, at the front entrance.”

The man got back in his car, assuming, Logan noted, that he would follow. And rightfully so, he added to himself somewhat ruefully. Because with barely a few seconds’ thought, he walked back to the parked BMW and did just that.

Hearing the sound of someone approaching her office, Liana expected it was Lilith. She’d sent her boss an e-mail asking for some printed reports she needed to take her computer searching to the next level, and it would be very like Lilith—and everyone at Redstone, she was discovering—to hand-carry them herself rather than delegating a gofer to do it. In fact, Liana wasn’t sure Redstone even had gofers; people were expected to follow through on all phases of their work, and they did it, happily.

When it registered that there were two sets of footsteps, and that neither sounded like Lilith’s light-footed stride, she looked up.

She hadn’t expected to see Tony Alvera again this soon. The Redstone Security agent had come by to introduce himself just hours after she’d had her meeting with Samantha Gamble. He’d explained with a charming grin that it hadn’t been a great leap for Security head John Draven to decide that he’d fit into the world Logan Beck had been frequenting better than the blond, blue-eyed Sam would.

There had been something about that grin and the warmth in his dark eyes that had overcome her natural reticence with strangers and allowed her to tease him back.

“I don’t know,” she’d said, studying his golden skin and the small, rakish patch of beard beneath his lower lip. “You’re a little clean-cut, aren’t you?”

He’d laughed, and she wondered how many women fell at his feet anytime he did.

“I wasn’t always,” he’d told her. “And I’ve got scars to prove it. Josh plucked me off the street when I was a sixteen-year-old gangster, headed for nothing but prison, a lethal injection, or dying in the gutter. The day I tried to rip him off was the best day of my life.”

Liana remembered her amazement at his story, that he indeed had tried to rob at knifepoint one of the richest men in the world, and that man had, instead of surrendering, offered him the chance of a lifetime.

“I don’t know what he saw in me,” Alvera had said, his tone becoming solemn, “but he saved my life.”

Now, as Alvera stood in her office doorway with a smile on his exotically handsome face, Liana wondered how many others at Redstone felt the same way.

“I brought somebody to see you,” Alvera said. “He’s a little confused, I think.”

He stepped aside then. Although she’d already guessed, Liana’s breath still caught in her throat when she saw the man behind him.

Slowly, she got to her feet.

He looks so different, she thought, the change in him even more apparent in person than it had been in the photograph, his once-vivid blue eyes seeming not just shadowed but haunted.

“Logan.” She was barely aware of saying it until she heard it herself, just above a whisper.

Alvera said something about leaving them to it and left. Neither of them watched him go.

Logan Beck took three steps toward her, stopping in front of her desk. He stared at her, and she found it oddly difficult to breathe. It seemed forever before he at last spoke. And when he did, his voice was harsh and matched that haunted look in his eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“All of a sudden I’ve got Redstone Security on my tail. Alvera said you put them up to it. Why?”

“I’m trying to help,” she said.

He gave a low, humorless chuckle. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t waste your time.”

Liana studied him for a long, silent moment. Had he truly given up? Or was he just still in shock over what had happened to him, and hadn’t yet begun to fight back? She had to believe the latter; the Logan Beck she’d met that day would never give up so easily.

“It’s my time to waste,” she said firmly.

He looked startled. She supposed he was; she’d changed a bit since that day in the bank.

“Liana,” he said, at last using the name she hadn’t been certain he even remembered, “there’s nothing you can do.”

“Maybe there’s nothing I can do myself. But Redstone is a different story.”

“I know their rep,” he acknowledged. “But there’s no reason for them to get involved.”

“Apparently I’m reason enough,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “Alvera said you just started working here a couple of days ago.”

“Yes. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Not a great way to start a new career, dragging your new employer into a corruption investigation of a crooked cop.”

“You’re not a crooked cop.”

He drew back slightly, staring at her. “You sound awfully certain.”

“I am.”

“Liana—”

“I know you didn’t do it, Logan. You couldn’t.”

He made a low sound that was almost a groan. “Don’t, Liana. Don’t waste your time, don’t risk your new career.”

“Are you saying you don’t need any help? That you trust—what is it?—Internal Affairs? You trust them to clear you?”

He laughed, this time harshly. “Hardly.”

“Then let me help.”

She saw a muscle along his jaw jump, then set. “Don’t,” he said, his voice cold now. “Don’t even try.”

Liana stared at him. What had happened to the hero she remembered, the man who had shown a courage she’d only seen once before in her life? How had he ended up so beaten, so broken? She hoped his wife—what had his fiancée’s name been?—was keeping a close eye on him.

“It’s my decision,” she said.

He stared at her. She saw something flicker in his eyes for the first time, some tiny glimmer of light. Hope? she wondered.

For the first time since the startling realization that Redstone truly meant to help him, Liana was certain he needed that help.

Chapter 4

“Who’d have thought it?” Logan murmured almost under his breath.

“Thought what?” Liana asked, finally coming out from behind the desk. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a light green sweater that hugged her curves without being blatant, just as he would have expected. Part of that girl-next-door thing, he thought, along with the sweet smile and the big blue eyes.

“I should have known,” he said hastily, veering off a path he didn’t want to travel. “The woman who did what you did that day in the bank isn’t one to shy away from a losing fight.”

She frowned. “You’re the one who took that crazy guy out.”

“I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t put yourself in his line of fire and rolled that chair at him.”

He knew he’d never forget that moment. They’d been huddled in a corner, him pulling his off-duty weapon from its ankle holster, assessing the situation and looking for a way out, her exhibiting an odd combination of fear and anger. One bank customer was already dead, and he’d known there would be more bodies if he didn’t do something. The thought that one of them might be this beautiful, innocent, girl-next-door type was more than he could take.

When he’d whispered to her to stay down, that he was a cop and he was going to try for the suspect, she’d turned those big blue eyes on him with a level gaze that had surprised him.

“Would a distraction help?” she’d asked.

He’d tried to keep her from doing it, but she wasn’t having any of that. The suspect had fired again, this time wounding a teller, and he’d known he had no choice. He quickly edged to the corner of the counter, then nodded at her. A split second later she’d scrambled forward to shove a heavy office chair out into the suspect’s path, drawing his attention and his fire; the back of the chair was shredded by high-velocity rounds. In that instant Logan had stood and taken his one chance to down the shooter in the bulletproof vest, a shot to the head.

“You were the only one there who had the nerve to do something. They should have given you that medal.”

“I stayed mostly behind the counter,” she said, her tone pointed. “You’re the one who stood up and gave him a shot at you to get him before he killed anybody else.”

“And if I’d done it better, I wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital for three weeks.”

“That’s not what your lieutenant said,” she retorted. “He said your shot was perfect. It was just bad luck that the robber was able to keep firing as he went down.”

Logan winced inwardly even now, eight years later, remembering the wild spray of bullets from the automatic weapon as the killer collapsed on the bank floor. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hit until Liana had reacted, going pale and leaping toward him. He’d been startled when she’d touched him, only understanding when she shouted at someone to call for paramedics and he saw blood flowing over her fingers. His own blood.

“I thought you were dying,” she said softly, as if her thoughts had followed the same track as his. Maybe they had; you didn’t go through something like that without having the events seared deep into your memory.

“If you hadn’t slowed down the bleeding, I might have,” he said, voicing the gut-level knowledge he’d carried since that day.

“I wish I could have done more.”

“You did more than anyone.” It flashed through his mind then, the moments after he’d realized he was going down, the moments when he had thought just what she had, that he was dying. He remembered her holding him, whispering encouragement, telling him help was coming as his blood soaked her summer dress. “You stayed with me.”

Her expression changed, as if she was surprised he found that even worth remarking on. As if there had been nothing else she could possibly have done. For her, perhaps there hadn’t been.

“I remember you talking to me,” he said. “When everything started fading away, I could still hear you.”

He regretted the too-telling admission the moment the words were out. But then she gave him a soft smile that warmed him ridiculously and made him forget everything else.

“I didn’t even know your name. That was the strangest thing, all I could think of was that I didn’t even know your name.”

He heard the catch in her voice, as if she were feeling an echo of the emotions of that long-ago day. Another memory sliced through his mind then, of looking up at her as he lay on the bank’s cold tile floor, feeling everything slipping away. She’d been crying. For him, a stranger, tears had been streaming from those blue eyes.

He tried to shake off the image, but it clung stubbornly. The effort made his voice gruff again.

“We never got around to that.”

“No, we didn’t.”

They had chatted, though, in the surface way two people in line did when things were moving slowly. He remembered thinking that he’d always preferred blondes, like Lisa—the name barely stung anymore now—but a redhead like this would make any man look twice. She wasn’t flashy, or blatant, but had the quiet kind of beauty that lasted.

It had only been afterward, when he’d been flat on his back in the hospital wondering why he was still alive, that they had really talked.

“How’s your father?” she asked.

Startled, he said more bluntly than he should have, “Dead.”

She paled, then pink color rose in her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said quickly, “I am. I didn’t mean to say it like that. You just caught me off guard.”

As quickly as that she accepted the apology with a nod. “What happened?”

“Cancer. Pancreatic. Five years ago. He was diagnosed and then gone in six weeks.”

“Logan, I am so sorry. He seemed like a nice man, when I met him at the hospital.”

Nice wasn’t a word he’d have used often about his old man—they’d butted heads too often—but he knew Charles Beck could be charming when he chose to be. And he’d apparently chosen to be to Liana Kiley.

“He…liked you, too,” he said after a moment.

And that, he thought, was the understatement of the century. He’d never forget his father coming into his hospital room after meeting her and saying, “Now there’s a woman!” And he’d continued with comments like that, suggesting any man who didn’t snap up a woman like Liana was a fool, until Logan had finally told him to shut up about it, and her.

He’d written it off to his father’s dislike of Lisa—he’d said from the beginning that she was all show and no staying power, and had, maddeningly, been proven right—and been even more determined to make his relationship with Lisa work. For all the good it had done him.

“It’s just as well,” he muttered. “At least he’s not here to see his only son go down in flames.”

“He wouldn’t believe it, either,” she said firmly. “He was so proud of you.”

He smothered a snort of disbelief. “Proud? Not hardly. He gave up on that the day I told him I was going to be a cop instead of stick around and run the family construction business.”

“Logan, he was proud of you. He told me so.”

He blinked. “What?”

“He told me that he’d been horribly disappointed at the time, but that he had to admire you for standing up to him and going after what you wanted.”

“He…told you that?”

“He did.” She reached out then, put a hand gently on his arm. “And that he’d come to be very, very proud of you. He was afraid you were going to die before he had a chance to tell you.” She frowned then. “In fact, he did tell you. I heard him talking to you as I left the room.”

“I don’t remember.”

“It was only the third day. You were pretty out of it.”

And you were still there, he thought, while my supposed fiancée couldn’t be bothered. Not once did she set foot in that hospital room.

He quashed the thought; Lisa’s desertion was old news. She’d passed it off, the few times she’d called him, as a pathological hatred of hospitals. He’d let it go, telling himself he understood. But he’d seen the looks in the eyes of his fellow cops, when they realized the woman he’d been living with and was set to marry hadn’t even visited him when his survival was in doubt.

“How’s your mother?” he asked hastily, feeling a bit ridiculous talking about such things but needing to get his mind out of the old rut. “And your little brother?”

“Not so little anymore,” she said with a smile. “He’s a freshman in college now.”

He remembered the antsy boy at the awards ceremony. He’d guessed he was about ten or eleven, and apparently he’d been right. He’d commented then on the age gap between them, and Liana had laughed and called him their parents’ excuse for teasing her unmercifully; it had taken them fifteen years to recover from her enough to try again, they’d always told her.

“Mom’s doing as well as she can, I think,” Liana answered his first query then. “She’s on her annual Christmas trek to visit my aunt in Iowa. Mostly she leads a quiet life, her garden, her friends, and she works part-time at the library. She still misses my father horribly.” She gave a sad little smile and lowered her eyes. “You don’t lose a hero and go on easily.”

He knew she wasn’t exaggerating about the hero part. Her father, James Kiley, had indeed been just that, a hero hailed across the country some twenty years ago when he’d risked his life and suffered burns that scarred him for the rest of his days pulling survivors out of the inferno of a plane crash.

“You lost him, too,” he said softly, something in that sad smile reaching a part of him he’d thought numbed for good.

She looked up at him then, and he saw the shimmer of unshed tears. “Yes,” she said. “And he left me forever wondering about the nature of such men, who would die for people they don’t even know.”

She didn’t add, “Like you,” but he heard it as clearly as if she had. And it hit him then, hard.

So that’s what this is all about. She’s got a bad case of hero-worship, because of what happened that day.

The realization that there was a simple, concrete, understandable reason for why she wanted to help him made him relax a little. This, at least, was more comfortable than the tangle of confused feelings he’d been wrestling with since Tony Alvera had unexpectedly dropped her name back into his conscious thoughts.

What wasn’t so comfortable was the small, niggling sense of disappointment he felt.

Liana didn’t know quite what to think. She’d assumed her visceral reaction to seeing his photograph in the paper was simply shock at the accusations against him. Whenever she’d thought of him—and that had been all too often—she’d assumed the rush of feeling that flooded her had been gratitude. Spiked, she had supposed, with a healthy dose of the admiration she always felt for anyone who had committed the kind of heroics he had, but nothing more complicated than that.

But now she wasn’t sure. He hardly cut a heroic figure now; he looked tired, edgy and beaten down. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and with hair now down almost to his shoulders he looked like a biker in that leather jacket, or perhaps a bad-boy rock star the morning after a wild night. Hardly her type. And yet she couldn’t help wondering about the way her pulse leaped, and how the air in the room had seemed thinner from the moment he’d walked in.

“Liana,” he said, and she took a quick breath at the sound of her name in his voice. “Look, I appreciate the thought, but there’s really nothing you can do.”

“Me, maybe not. But don’t underestimate Redstone. I did a lot of homework before I took this job. You wouldn’t believe some of the things Redstone Security has accomplished, the criminal cases they’ve cracked while working on their own cases.”