“I can’t,” Nick said. “We can’t.” He nodded to Becca.

Jeremy turned to her, and she saw in his face the moment it clicked. Her stomach squeezed. “The Church has your brother?” When she didn’t answer fast enough, he plowed forward. “What are the cops doing?” His face went pale. “Oooh, shit a fucking brick.” He dug his hand into his hair and flicked at the piercing on his lip. “This is why your team is here?”

Nick gave a tight nod.

“Why . . . what are you . . . ? I—”

“Cops involved in this are dirty, Jer. And that’s the last fucking thing I’m telling you.” Nick slipped the pages from his brother’s hand.

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t deserve to know you’re playing Rambo out of my house?”

Becca rose, guilt sloshing into her stomach. She hadn’t just crashed into Nick’s life, had she? What if she’d brought danger right to Jeremy—and Jess’s—doorstep? Ears back, tail down, the puppy came to the doorway behind Jeremy and whined. After a moment, she laid down with her head on her paws against Jer’s foot.

“You deserve to know it all. But the less you know, the better. So you’re out.” Nick slashed a hand through the air, as if the debate had been decided.

Jeremy shook his hair out of his eyes and glared. “I’m not some fucking kid, Nick. I’m a thirty-one-year-old man. At the very least, you should’ve told me so I could keep an eye out for any kind of trouble. I may not be a soldier, but I could help—”

“You’re right. And maybe I should’ve said something more sooner, but we didn’t really know what we might be dealing with until this evening. And we’re still not a hundred percent sure. You’re not a kid. But here’s what you are: you’re a businessman, you’re an employer, you’re a homeowner. You have things to lose and people who count on you.”

“And you don’t?”

Nick stepped back and tossed the papers to the seat of a chair, then scrubbed his hands through his hair. They both had the tendency to do that, and she might’ve found the similarity endearing if it hadn’t been a reflection of their shared frustration right now. “A lot fucking less than you.”

The bottom dropped out of Becca’s stomach. He didn’t think he had anything to lose? Her and whatever they were or weren’t aside, how could he think that about himself? If Jeremy hadn’t been there, she would’ve run across the room, grabbed his face, and told him—

Jeremy’s hands fisted. “You sonofabitch. You and Katherine are the last family I have on this earth. Don’t you dare talk about yourself as if it wouldn’t matter if something happened to you. It would matter to me.”

At the strain in Jer’s voice, tears pooled in Becca’s eyes, and she looked to the ceiling to pinch them off.

Nick’s shoulders sagged and his voice had a sudden strain to it. “Jeremy—”

“I remember what it was like to get that phone call. You know, the one that said my big brother was in critical condition in a hospital following surgery to repair multiple gunshot wounds to the back. Been there, done that, burned the motherfucking T-shirt. I couldn’t do anything about that. I couldn’t help. But this? Now? I can. And you’re goddamned straight gonna let me.”

For a few tense minutes, they faced off across the room, arms crossed over their chests, pale green eyes narrowed and blazing. She wondered if they had any idea how similar they looked or, really, how much alike they were as men. Both strong, both protective of those they cared about, both stubborn to a fault. In that instant, Becca realized she didn’t just like Jeremy, she cared about him, too. And she could’ve hugged him for the way he cared about Nick.

She released a breath and stepped toward them. “Please don’t fight. I’m sorry,” she said, voice tight, sadness parked at the back of her throat.

“I don’t want to fight,” Jeremy said, expression stormy. “And don’t feel like you have to apologize, Becca. I’m not mad at you. If my brother was missing, I’d go to hell and back to find him, too.” Eyebrow arched, he eyeballed Nick. “But I also don’t want to be shut out.”

“Jesus, Jeremy,” Nick said, scratching at the scruff on his jaws. “I’m trying to protect you. Simple as.”

“It’s a flawed premise, bro. If this situation gets worse, you don’t think that has the chance of affecting me whether you tell me all the details now or not?”

“God . . . damnit.” He pounded a fist on the roll-away tabletop. “Shit we’re doing, we are breaking the law. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“You’re my brother,” Jeremy said.

“And you’re mine.”

“Knock, knock,” a voice said from behind Jeremy. He jerked around as Shane stepped alongside him. “Sorry to interrupt. Uh . . .” Shane glanced between the Rixeys. “When you’re done down here, we have some things we wanted to talk about.”

For a long moment, the tension was so thick it almost changed the physical composition of the air. Nick shook his head. “Shit, I didn’t want this for you.”

“And I appreciate that,” Jer said, crossing the room. “But brotherhood is a two-way street. You have to let me walk it with you.”

Nick blew out a long breath that ended in the word, “Fuck. All right.” He shook his head. “All right. Then let’s go see what’s up.”

“No regrets, remember?” Jeremy knocked his fists together side by side, and for the first time, Becca saw what the block lettering on the backs of his fingers said. Reading across his knuckles from his right pinkie to his left, the letters spelled out N-O-R-E-G-R-E-T. Sometime she’d ask him the story behind that tattoo.

The air was suddenly lighter, easier to breathe, and Becca had the sense that whatever had just passed between them was bigger than this moment, this conflict, this situation. Nick just nodded.

As the guys moved around the space turning off lights and making sure everything was locked up, Nick gave Jeremy the quick highlight reel of the past days’ events to bring him up to speed. She hovered at the door with Shane, waiting for them to finish.

“They okay?” he asked, genuine concern shaping his handsome face and filling his intense gray eyes.

“I think so. I don’t know. I didn’t realize Nick was trying to keep Jeremy out of it.”

Shane nodded. “If I had a brother, I’d have done the same damn thing.” Something flashed through his expression—something dark he quickly masked.

“You have any siblings?” she asked.

A storm moved in over his face, furrowing his brow and making the angles of his face severe and unforgiving. “No.”

It was the most loaded use of that two-letter word she’d possibly ever heard. But everything about his demeanor said, “Topic closed,” so she let it drop. “I’m going to take the dog out before we go upstairs,” she said, patting her hand against her jeans.

“We’re done anyway,” Nick said. They made their way into the stairwell, and Jeremy double-checked that the door to Hard Ink locked behind them.

Becca pushed out the far door and let her girl do her business. The guys stepped outside with them. “You can go up. We’ll be right there,” she said.

“Air feels good after being inside all day,” Jeremy said. Becca couldn’t have agreed more. A soft breeze shifted the cool night air around her. The soft caress on her arms was relaxing, like it was blowing the difficult parts of the day away, just right on off her body.

“What’s the dog’s name?” Shane asked after a minute.

Nick and Jeremy looked at her, then each other, and burst out laughing.

“What?” Shane asked. “What’s so funny?”

She just shook her head, glad to see them moving past the fight.

The guys apparently needed the release, because they quickly moved on from laughter to sputtering hysterics. Jer was actually crying. And every time Nick managed to get himself under control, he burst out again.

And man, that laughter was deep and throaty, so damn sexy. The dimple was carved a mile deep into his cheek, and laugh lines curved up from the corners of his eyes. She wanted to grasp his face in her hands and kiss him until he was panting and gasping for breath for an entirely different reason.

“Here’s what you need to know,” Becca said, distracting herself from the urge to jump Nick just as the dog returned. “Her name’s not Cujo, it’s not Killer, it’s not Tripod, or Three-Speed, Trinity, Skippy, Hoppy—”

“Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy . . .” Jeremy managed, cracking himself up again.

“It’s also not Shiiiii-looooooooh,” Nick mocked.

Oh, my God, they were all the way over the deep side. Becca rolled her eyes and stepped back inside.

“Uh, okay,” Shane said as they started upstairs, the Rixeys having now devolved into teenaged giggles. Who knew two such big guys could make those high-pitched sounds? “What about Eileen?”

“What?” Becca said, frowning at Shane. “You’re just as bad as—”

The uproarious laughter from behind her made her turn around. Nick had taken a knee on the stairs, and Jeremy was hanging on the railing.

“Ei . . . Ei . . . Ei-leen,” Jeremy gasped. “Get it? Perfect.”

“No, not perfect. Her name is not Eileen.” Becca bit back a smile at their hysterics.

Nick heaved a deep breath and opened his mouth. Not to speak, but to sing. “Come on, Eileen. Oh, I swear what he means, at this mooo-ment, you mean eeeverything.”

Becca put her hand on her forehead and gaped. Nick Rixey was down on his knees singing an eighties anthem to her while laughing and holding his stomach. And it was the sexiest freaking thing she’d ever seen or heard. Even around the ridiculous hilarity, there was no question the boy could sing.

And then the other two idiots joined in.

Out of nowhere, a howling sounded. Becca looked around and found the dog sitting at the very top of the steps, head back, snout pointing to the ceiling, howling in long, loud ahwoooos like she was singing with them.

The door to the gym swung open. “What in the fucking hell?” Beckett asked, Easy and Marz coming out right behind him.

Shaking her head and succumbing to laughter herself, Becca started up the steps. “I broke them. Sorry.”

Beckett eyeballed her like she had three heads. Right. Because she was the crazy one in a roomful of men singing, “Toora, toora, to loora, ay,” at the top of their lungs.

“Hey,” Marz said, sinking into a crouch. “This is my kinda dog. What’s it’s na—”

“No, no, don’t say it!” she said.

Behind her, all three men said, “Eileen” in chorus.

“All right, Eileen.” Marz scooped her into his arms and stood up. She licked his cheek. “You and me are going to get along just fine.” He looked over his shoulder. “Now, come on in, assholes. I’ve got us a plan.” He disappeared inside.

Becca’s shoulders sagged. “Her name’s not Eileen,” she called, but she had a sneaking suspicion that none of them heard her as they all bustled into the gym in a rush.

TEN MINUTES LATER, everyone had calmed down and they stood in the back corner of the gym around Marz’s makeshift computer desks, fashioned out of two eight-foot-long folding tables positioned to form an L. Becca scanned her gaze over his setup.

He had three laptops hooked to a series of cables and boxes she couldn’t identify, plus the smallest printer she’d ever seen. Charlie’s hidden note and the gang booklet lay open near one computer, and pages of notes and printouts lay this way and that. An empty pizza box sat on the floor behind the desk, and a row of diet Coke cans added a splash of color to the array of electronics. It looked like the desk of someone who had worked in this space for years.

He took a seat in the center like a king holding court and dropped the puppy—whose name was definitely not Eileen—to the concrete floor. “Beckett and Shane filled me in on today’s field research, and I’ve scanned most of this book on the Church organization and done some additional research of my own. We are talking some bad-ass shit here.” He looked around the group. “Don’t let the word ‘gang’ make you discount their level of organization, their strength, or their discipline. In the past two years they have destroyed, disbanded, or absorbed three other gangs, expanding their territory substantially. They run eighty percent of the heroin trade in the city, do a fair amount of arms dealing, and appear to have a lot of officials in their pockets. The Church has a sophisticated recruitment system in place and a constant inflow of members. This is organized crime with a capital O and a capital C.”