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movement she’d made had opened a gap between the lapels of her nubby-textured robe. It exposed an expanse of pale skin and the fragile structure of her collarbone.
    He’d always been a protector—it had been the lure of the FBI—and it was something he’d accepted about himself years ago. So Linda should be just another victim to him, just another one of those he was driven to keep safe. But he’d never felt this…pull toward anyone he’d rescued, or anyone he was charged with keeping secure. Not even Jessica Chandler and her family.
    He was going to shut it down, right now, because it was unnecessary and distracting, and had nothing to do with the promises he’d made.
    Take care of Linda and Ricky.
    Put a stop to Jason.
    The woman was still smiling at him from across the table. He could smell her, damn it, the same scent that drove him crazy in every room she’d been in. It was flowers and sunshine and a freshness that he would only bruise and darken with his big hands, foul moods and ugly family history.
    Shoving back his chair, he stood.
    She stood, too. “Emmett?” she asked, a frown between her brows.
    See? He was already marking her, marring her, taking away her smiles.
    He was better off alone. Ryan should have extracted the promise to care for Linda from someone else.
    â€œEmmett?” Linda asked again.
    He ran a hand over his hair. “My brother…” Tell her, he urged himself. Tell her that his vow to find his brother super-ceded everything. It was what he should do, because it would be safer for all of them. Leave this house and go on the hunt for Jason. Linda would find someone else, someone kinder, more lighthearted, less lustful, to help her make coffee and to shop for groceries and to ease the ache of not connecting with her child.
    She put her hand on his arm. “Are you worrying about him? I heard you moving around last night. Is Jason the reason you couldn’t sleep?”
    Emmett stared down at the pale, slender fingers resting against the darker skin of his forearm. He’d hated the feeling that Jason was controlling him. But now… Now he was at Linda’s mercy, too. There was no denying it.
    He wanted to be the one for her. For right now, anyway. Until she was better prepared for her new life. Just until then.
    He found himself covering her hand with his free one. He couldn’t help himself. “I don’t want to think of my brother at all,” he said, realizing that was true, as well. “I just want to kiss you.”
    And without her permission, his head bent toward hers. Without her permission, he sank into another kiss.
    And didn’t mind the loss of control at all.
    Â 
    Holding a cheap disposable razor, Jason Jamison, aka Jason Wilkes, smiled at his reflection in the cracked mirror over the cracked bathroom sink in the crappy motel in a crappy small town not all that far from Red Rock. While he was accustomed to better surroundings, the knowledge that his little brother Emmett was certain to be shaking in his boots and stewing over Jason’s whereabouts this morning was too damn good not to savor.
    A loner and a loser, that was his brother Emmett. A sanctimonious do-gooder who had never possessed the true Jamison vision. His other brother, Christopher, hadn’t, either. Jason had hated that Boy Scout Christopher since they were kids and mainly ignored the younger Emmett. But now that Chris was finally out of his hair—thanks to Jason’s decisive, fatal action when St. Christopher had tried to talk him about of his plan of revenge against the Fortunes—asshole Emmett was now in his sights.
    And Jason was a damn good shot.
    Handling guns was one of the things he’d been taught by his grandfather, Farley Jamison.
    The other was how the Fortune family had cheated Farley, and thus Jason himself, out of a powerful place in politics. Years before, Kingston Fortune, Farley’s half