Page 24 of Trap ’N’ Trace

Her brows rose. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. Angus can be quite a handful.”

“Remy keeps him in line.” The puppy’s eyes remained closed as he continued making little puppy snores. “He does whatever she tells him to do.”

“She really is maternal, isn’t she?” Kat tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, revealing the gold stud at her lobe.

“How’s your shoulder?” If he detected the barest hint that her answer was evasive, he’d drag her to the hospital whether she liked it or not.

“Better. It still aches but I took something for the pain.”

Her eyes remained solidly fixed on his. No shifting up and to the right, a typical indication of deceit. “Good, but there’s something else we need to discuss.”

“Your attire?” Her lips twitched, then she made a point of checking out his abs again. “What there is of it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “My clothes were dirty enough to stand up all by themselves. I walked the property, and we need to talk about your security system, specifically the virtual lack thereof. All you’ve got is a locked gate, but anyone can climb over the fence. A ten-year-old could disarm the alarm.” As he’d done many times to similar systems when he’d been a kid living on the street. “The gate is bad enough. Your house is a castle—literally—but it’s a break-in waiting to happen. The security system at the Haven isn’t much better,” he added. “In fact, it’s the same rinky-dink version you’ve got here.”

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, as if holding back the annoyance she wanted to unleash in his face.

“You need to upgrade the security here, especially the cameras. There aren’t enough of them, and the ones you have look old enough to take Polaroids. The wiring can be cut from the outside, and the entire system looks as if it was installed forty years ago.” She fidgeted with the thin gold chain around her neck, twisting it with her finger and refusing to look him in the eye. “Exactly how old is the system?”

“I appreciate your concern, really, and I’m not trying to be difficult. Despite what you may think, I do understand the dangers.” She rolled her shoulders back. “But if you install cameras everywhere, I’ll feel like eyes are on me all the time, even more than I do already, and I don’t want that. This is the only private place I have left in the world. I can’t lose that. I just can’t.”

Whoa. Hot emotion flashed in her eyes. Fear.

Last night, when she’d been explaining why there wasn’t more hired help on the premises, he’d detected she was holding something back. Now he was dead sure of it.

“Okay. No more cameras,” he said softly. He didn’t like seeing her this way—upset and frightened. The opposite of how security systems were supposed to make a person feel. “All I’m saying is that anyone can walk right into the Haven with a gun or scale the fence and break in here. Right now, the only things stopping that from happening are me and the cop outside.”

She waved her hand in the air. “Do you think I should hire guards to frisk everyone who comes here?”

He really wasn’t handling this well. “Actually,” he added quickly, sorely needing to diffuse things and really, really wanting to erase the look of stark desperation on her face, “I was thinking of snipers with .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the turrets and electrical fencing surrounding the perimeter.” Kat’s eyes went as wide as saucers. “Okay, maybe that’s a little overkill. At a minimum, I’d suggest a moat stocked with man-eating alligators or flesh-eating piranhas. My personal favorite.”

“Ha. Ha.” A smile played at her lips. Lips glossed shimmery pink. “Very funny. Who knew FBI agents have a sense of humor?”

He breathed an inward sigh of relief. “At times, I’m funnier than a stand-up comedian.” A little part of his brain was happy as shit that he’d made her smile.

“A stand-up comedian?” She arched a brow. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Don’t. I have hidden talents.”

Her eyes flared a fraction wider. Yeah, that didn’t come out the way I intended.

The doorbell gonged at the same time his cell phone dinged with an incoming text. Remy barked then leaped over Angus and shot past them into the kitchen. Angus lifted his head, his sleepy eyes staring after Remy.

Raised voices—female voices—shrieked. Dayne hauled ass after his dog.

Sonofabitch. The outside duty officer was supposed to notify him before anyone approached the house. A lot of good it did after.

“Remy, bleiben!” His dog skidded to a stop, her body still tense and ready for action.

Dayne took in the wide-eyed expressions of five people cowering in the foyer. Behind them stood the duty officer. All wore identical looks of shock on their faces because here he was in Kat’s house, wearing nothing but his pants.

Just what he needed. Their thoughts might as well have been written on the wall.

Now it was his turn to blush.

…

Kat rushed after Dayne and Remy, her heart pounding like a snare drum at the Met. Behind her, Angus scampered to catch up.