Forbidden by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

and concentrated on pushing the cart a little faster. “They told me she was dead.”
    Leo’s right brow lifted, such a familiar expression of surprise and sudden comprehension dawning that itsoothed Jackson a little for having to say it out loud. It was the first time he’d spoken of it in nearly a week, of how they’d taken her away from him … and erroneously so. Though, to be fair, everyone said Docia had died. If not for the freezing cold temperature of the water … What was it the doctor had said? “You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.”
    And when he had seen Docia in the trauma bay, even he had believed there was no way she could survive what he was looking at. He too had lost faith in his sister and had thankfully been proven wrong. He would never make that mistake again. He would never give up on her again.
    Leo gripped the rear of the cart, his knuckles turning white with the strength of it, a reflection of the icy hardness entering what should have been very warm, very dark eyes. In fact, Jackson had seen him shut off this hardness quite easily when he was doing the second thing he liked best … charming women.
    The thing he did best was hurting humans that he felt, according to his personal code and morals, deserved it. Oil and vinegar. The cop and the mercenary. Well,
Leo
called himself “private security,” a problem solver. But if it walked like a badass and quacked like a badass, it was Leo.
    “You want me to talk to some people?” Leo asked him.
    The statement was fraught with danger. Leo’s version of talking to people was very different from Jackson’s acceptable ideas of talking to people. He liked Leo, and as long as they didn’t cross paths professionally, he was willing to live and let live and not ask too many questions. Not that he ever shut off being a cop. If Leo confessed to an inexcusable crime, they both knew Jackson would be on him like white on rice. So … they enjoyed a strange friendship that always walked the line ofknowing each other better than anyone else did and yet … not.
    “Information is always welcome,” Jackson said carefully. “But—”
    “Relax, boy scout,” Leo scoffed, reaching out to cuff him hard on the side of the head. “I’ll try not to kill anyone in the process.”
    “Leo,” Jackson said warningly.
    Leo simply grinned at him, giving him a bright “What?” expression as he dropped a can of sardines in the cart.
    “Sounds to me like the SPD hasn’t got shit,” Leo pointed out. “I know people who know people who are going to know more than that and they are going to want to talk to me far more than they will the rest of you boy scouts.”
    “Probably because you scare the piss out of them,” Jackson muttered.
    “Hey, you don’t wear a gun on one hip and a Taser on the other because you want people to think you’re not serious,” he pointed out.
    Of course, Jackson had seen Leo use both a Taser and a gun on various occasions. The difference between them was that Leo was less apt to remember there were rules governing his behavior with either of those weapons. Still, Leo had a point. He always did. If he’d been a mindless thug, Jackson would have found it easy to section him off in his mind as a criminal and be done with him, but damn him, Leo was too clever for his own good. But when it came down to it, they both had jobs that threatened them with reasonably short expiration dates if they weren’t careful.
    And when faced with Docia’s safety both imminently and in the past, he felt his usually staunch principles start to waver.
    “Not one word,” Jackson warned after a minute,pointing a finger at him like some kind of kindergarten teacher. “Not so much as a peep about you breaking any laws in this information gathering of yours, Leo. I mean it.”
    Leo smiled, his eyes gleaming with mischief and that warm, charming
thing
that won over so many of his female conquests.
    “I promise,” he said, “you won’t hear a