But there was no coaxing the head trip away. He'd have to wade through his memories before he could go forward, before he could save them both from whatever game tightened around the farmhouse like a noose.

"Bring it," he hissed out, taunting his mind to do its worst. If he'd survived the agony to come back to her, he could relive the horrors inside his own head. All they were was figments. Unlike the very real, very vulnerable woman upstairs who needed him.

She needed him. He'd be damned if he didn't give her everything he had and ten times more or he'd die being put to the task.

A sharp noise clattered through his mind. Oddly familiar but he was swimming up through the clawing hands of memory that jerked him backward into unconsciousness. He fought until his hand curled around something plastic. He had the phone shoved to his ear, only vaguely aware words were forming off his lips. He blinked. Bright shafts of sunlight made him wince as he closed his eyes and curled back onto the lumpy couch.

"Yeah? This is Finn."

"Brother, good morning to you too. I assume you haven't had much chance to catch up with the lady of the household regarding our security mission for the day, given your groggy voice and that groan thing you do when you're annoyed?" Finn did that same noise, beating his fist into the pillow behind his head. "Time to see the sunshine. I'm coming over for specs and to discuss the plans. Let her know."

Tucker clicked off his side of the call before Finn could utter a word to the contrary. He sat up and swore his bones creaked like an old man while he inwardly assessed the number of steps it'd take to make it from the living room to the coffeemaker. No sounds from above him. Either Delila was awake and up to her usual routine or she'd taken his advice to heart taking a day of rest. He scoffed rolling his tight shoulders. There was only one set of odds he'd place a bet on—and he wasn't sure there was enough time for coffee if he wanted to find Delila before Tucker came roaring back on his Harley.

Except looking for her would be pretty rough, given that he wasn't allowed off his front porch without her guiding hand. He swore under his breath, hanging his head with a few deep inhales that were supposed to be cleansing. But they mostly only served to spike his emotions up another notch. She shouldn't be out there alone. Day or night, she couldn't act as if everything was normal in her routine when it'd been shoved sideways and shredded until there were holes as large as Swiss cheese. Even without the cover of darkness, he knew the threat still existed. It never truly went away. A finger was merely the beginning of their twisted game and the sooner he got her on the same wave length of understanding and assessing their mutual threat, the better off they'd both be in the long run.

The odds were good that if he could locate the phone number for the outside line at the shelter, he could probably get a hold of someone. If not Delila, maybe her secretary. As a next move, he didn't have anything better because Tucker needed an escort across the grounds, and Finn needed Delila back where he could see she was safe.

He abruptly stood, shoved the crippling pulsation of overworked muscle away, and shuffled toward the kitchen. Maybe she kept a magnet or something tacked to the fridge with the number. There was little chance she was using his old landline number. She'd probably had some fancy, secret hotline number added onto the bill so that women had a certain amount of privacy when asking questions about the shelter.

By the time he was halfway down the hallway his legs were twitching with tiny volts of agony. He'd still done better than during the three months of physical therapy they'd required before he was allowed to leave the base. His fingers clamped down on the side of the wall as he leaned his hip against the safe harbor. As much as he wanted to sit, the rest wouldn't do him any favors. Confrontation was an all or nothing game. Either he could work without his cane or he was as useless as he felt. With a swift shake of his head, his gaze searched the kitchen as the midday sun speckled through the large windows over the sink.

He'd forgotten the coffee maker was in the middle of a war zone.

Nothing had been touched since they'd left it last night. Everything was as it had been after the police had trooped out with their creep of a sheriff in tow. He stopped scanning for a brief second as he noticed the card stuck to the fridge with a magnet clip—Open Arms, Open Hearts with a phone number in silver filigree at the bottom of the card. There wasn't any time to savor the small win. He dug out his phone from his pants pocket, dialed, and shoved it to his ear. He made it a third of the way down the hallway before a feminine, chirpy voice picked up on the other end.

"Hello, how may I help you?"

"This is Finn. I'm staying over at the main house with Delila. Is there any way I could speak with her, please? It's urgent."

"Let me go check for you."

Somehow he doubted it was his imagination when the woman's professional demeanor slipped into a warier tone. Good, Delila was spreading around the news of the murder to her staff. They'd be on their guard for anything out of the ordinary and everyone needed to be on the lookout for anything that could lead them back toward the sicko.

He knew she wasn't stupid enough to brush off any kind of threat, but keeping everyone alert was their best bet. Even if it meant a few nights without sleep and a couple extra baseball bats under their beds. Finn's mouth tightened at the thought of Delila nearly accosting him last night. With her hair caught up in the breeze, eyes bright with danger—he'd never seen anything so threateningly beautiful. But then, she'd always been a match for him.

He let out a sigh before the horrid call waiting music clicked off. For a second, he held his breath. A little worried that somehow the lurid train of his thoughts would seep through the phone line until his house mate would know he'd fallen into an uneasy sleep last night contemplating her curves and how her body had morphed over the last ten years. God, he was crushed, mutilated even, but he wasn't stupid. Not after the slap of realizing exactly what beauty he'd missed out on all these years ago to assuage his sense of duty and honor.

"Finn? What's going on? Robin said it was an emergency?" Delila's voice trickled through the phone sounding as if she were out of breath. "Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," she exhaled through the phone and he couldn't help the guilt that tightened his gut. "Tucker's coming by, he's on his way now to fit for security and I need someone to keep him company as per your rules. I didn't want him to set foot on the property without an escort and I had no way of leaving the house to warn you."

"Oh, okay. Sure." There was a pause where she seemed to be weighing her options. "Give me a second."

There was muffled noise. She must have cupped the land line with her palm. Finn blew out a large breath and walked back over toward the couch finally giving into the cushions being a better place for his ass than the hard ground once he lost his support propped against the wall. When he got off the phone he'd hand tailor a workout regimen to go with his physical therapy exercises. It would help him stay the course while he gathered more information on Delila's suspects list.

"Sorry, Finn?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm coming to the house with Robin, we'll be there in a few minutes and she's agreed to show Tucker around the place while I handle some other business that can't be put off." He nodded and realized she couldn't see him. "There's hot coffee and leftover muffins from Robin's donut run this morning, you want? She always brings in little treats..." As if she knew she was going to start babbling, her sentence faded off.

"I would appreciate it. The kitchen, uh,—"

"Yeah, I know. I consider it out of commission too."

He was going to begrudgingly admit it was a long way to walk, but her explanation filled in the blank fine and it saved face. The silence stretched between them. Neither of them spoke, but he could imagine she had the murder scene pictures in her head as clearly as they shone in his thoughts too. Thank God, he'd at least spared her the sight of the finger.

"I'll be there."

One second her tremulous voice was in his ear and then there was silence. Finn quickly went to work remaking her couch as it had been before he'd slept on it. All that needed to be fixed was an old quilt and a few throw pillows, but the idea of keeping her house a mess left him irked. By the time she set her first foot in the door, followed by the soft chatter of a stranger's voice, he was sitting upright on the couch with his cane leaning across the end of it.

"Hey." Delila offered a half-hearted smile as she handed him a foam cup of coffee and a box of donuts that he balanced on his lap. "This is my friend and co-worker Robin, Robin this is Finn."

"Lovely to meet you."

He shook her hand out of habit, too busy blinking back the image of a petite, brunette bombshell to really concentrate on anything social. Her long hair was done up in a braid coupled with a short black skirt suit that was accented by a giant hunk of light blue jewelry around her neck. She also teetered on the largest high heels Finn had ever seen on a woman. He didn't want to be rude, but the girl packed a bad ass punch. Tucker was royally screwed. He stifled a laugh imagining his twin brother attempting to handle such a piece that was right up his alley.

"Glad to see you have good friends," Finn commented absently, taking in the dark circles under Delila's eyes as she rested her hip against the door jamb. He frowned weighing the stress that must be on her shoulders. But he wouldn't ask her how she was doing in front of other people. She had too much pride to give him the truth. "Good coffee. Thanks for breakfast, Robin."

"My pleasure."

His small compliment really did seem to bring her joy because she beamed before stepping out into the hallway with a pointed look in Delila's direction. He could practically smell a setup. But if it was the woman's way of taking her mind off the happenings of last night, Finn had no problem indulging her fantasy—at least if it meant toying with Delila and getting her mind off it too.

"Want one?" he held out the open box for her inspection.

"No thanks. I haven't eaten much." She patted her stomach, stare darting around the room with a thick swallow he'd have a hard time missing.

"Did you sleep okay at least?"

"What do you think?" she softened the harsh words with a half-smile that dug straight into his chest cavity for his heart. "Are we all set here? Because I have to get back."

Finn put down his coffee, brushing crumbs off his jeans. He put one foot in front of the other with barely any visible strain until he was standing an inch away while he framed her curves with her back flat against the wall. Her fingers clenched into small fists, defiance searing through his chest where she refused to meet his eyes.

"You okay? Really?" he gruffly asked, battling with the need to tip up her chin so he could gage her flushed face and maybe take in a little bit of her rage, so she could let it out.

"No," she bit out while her body closed him off as if there'd been a wall between them. "How can anyone be okay after that? I'm waiting for the sheriff to call me back with DNA results before I can break the news to Ms. Lopez. How do I deliver news like that to a woman I've worked with for so long? Her niece might have been violated by a murderer, all to get back at me for some crazed vendetta. Whoever did it took a direct blueprint from my parents' murder-suicide, down to the damn pantyhose my mother used to wear..." Delila took a sharp breath, almost a sob if she would have let it out.

He reached for her hand and she pressed back into the navy wall. He drew back, chest tight, fingers flexed at his sides as if he still had her in his grip, and despite that it wasn't her heat that radiated beneath his hand.

"I'm sorry," her voice was tremulous even while her back was held up with the steel rod of her pride. "I'm so, so sorry and none of it will change the fact that I turned someone down for help and now they're dead. How do I live with myself?"

When she finally looked up at him, her blue eyes shimmered with tears, and he forced his hands into his pockets to keep from running his rough thumb down her pale cheek. Finn was no newcomer to heavy burdens. Or choices one wished they could take back. But nothing he could say to her would offer any false sense of comfort, not until the threat had been entirely erased from her life.

"We have to fix it. We have to make it right," Delila choked on the words, looking past him.

"Sometimes there's no way to erase the bad things. We only have to live with them."

"That's unacceptable!"

Her sudden rage prickled across his skin as a few hot tears coursed down her cheeks and she shoved them away with a rough brush from the back of her hand. "I won't let the fear back into my life, Finn. I can't. Not again."

Finn didn't tell her fear was his constant companion and that it never truly left for good, only hovered below the surface waiting to come screaming back. That wasn't the conversation she needed to hear from him. He opened his mouth to give her something, anything as a reason to keep going—

His phone vibrated off the table breaking their concentration as they both glanced toward the noise.

"You better answer it." Before he knew what had happened, she'd ducked around him, and shot up the stairs.

"Son of a..." He cracked his neck and took the phone off the coffee table. "What?"

There weren't going to be any apologies for whoever was on the other end of the line.