Blake. Handsome, strong Blake. Blake with his rugged good looks, his jet-black hair, his bright green eyes and that golden skin…sexy Blake.
Fierce Blake.
Off-limits Blake.
Because her bastard of a boss had been right about one thing. Blake did have a hard-on for her. She’d noticed his attraction. It would have been impossible to miss. An attraction that she more than felt, too. But he was her partner. You didn’t screw around with your partner. That was against the rules.
She’d always played by the rules.
And she’d still gotten screwed.
“This isn’t on you,” Blake gritted out.
Actually, it was. The dead man’s blood was still on her clothes because she’d run to him after he’d blown off half his face. His blood was on her—and the deaths of those three women? She knew her boss was going to push those her way, too. Before he was done, she’d be some rogue FBI agent who’d gone off the playbook—and he’d be the shining superstar who’d somehow managed to stop the Sorority Slasher.
Blake stepped into the elevator. Ignoring her request. The doors closed behind him, and his hands curled around her shoulders. “The profile was off. You’re not God. You can’t predict everything.”
“I don’t want you touching me.” Her words came out stark and hard. Not at all the way she normally spoke to Blake.
He blinked, and, for an instant, she could have sworn that he looked hurt.
“Let me go.” She didn’t have time to choose her words carefully. She was about to break apart, and his touch was sending her closer and closer to the edge.
His hands fell away from her. He stepped back.
“I’m not dragging you down with me.” She licked her lips. “You still have a chance here. You just had the bad luck to get teamed up with me.”
“I don’t think it’s bad.”
“Trust me, it is.” Her heart was racing far too fast in her chest. “Just walk away.” What had Bass called her? A sinking ship?
The elevator dinged. Finally, she was at the parking garage. Maybe she’d be able to get out of there without the reporters catching her. She stepped toward the elevator’s now open doors, but Blake moved into her path.
Her head tipped back as she stared up at him.
“I want to help,” Blake said.
There he went being the good guy. “Then let me go.”
“Sam…”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” She wouldn’t, but, right then, she would have said anything to get away from him. Blake pushed her buttons. She’d always suspected he would have made for an amazing lover—and with her control being as shaky as it was at that particular moment, Samantha was afraid she would cross a line with him if she didn’t get out of there.
Once you cross some lines, there is no going back…
A muscle flexed in Blake’s square jaw, his green eyes gleamed, but he got out of her way.
She rushed past him. Nearly ran—and she didn’t stop, not until she reached her car.
* * *
WHEN IT CAME to drinking, Samantha had always had an extremely high tolerance for alcohol. That had come, she suspected, courtesy of her dad. A tough ex-cop, he’d been able to drink anyone under the table.
So she sat in that low-end bar, on the wrong side of DC, and she studied the row of shot glasses in front of her.
“I knew I’d find you here. You always come to this place when you want to vanish.”
She looked up at that deep, rumbling voice. A voice she knew—intimately, unfortunately. Another line that I crossed a long time ago. And her gaze met the dark stare of Cameron Latham. Dr. Cameron Latham. They’d known each other since their first year at university. Been friends, competitors. They’d gone all through college and graduate school together, earning their PhDs in psychology.
But after graduation, she’d joined the FBI. Samantha had wanted to use her talents to bring down criminals. And Cameron—he’d been bound for the Ivy League and a cushy college teaching job.
And for the college girls whom she knew he seduced. The guy had model good looks, so the women had always flocked to him. Now he had money and power to go with those looks. He’d finally gotten everything he wanted.
He has what he wants, and I just lost what I valued most. Talk about a totally shitty night.
“Guessing the story made the news?” Samantha muttered. This wasn’t the kind of bar that had TVs. This was a dark hole made for drinking.
And vanishing.
“It made the news.” He pulled out a chair, flipped it around and straddled the seat. “You made the news.” He whistled. “That asshole of a boss really threw you under the bus.”
She lifted another shot glass and drained it in a gulp.
“Drinking yourself into oblivion isn’t going to make the situation better…” Cameron cocked his head and studied her.
Her brows shot up at that. “Cam, I’m not even close to oblivion.”
He should know better.
“The case is wrong.” She slammed down the glass. “Allan March is wrong. I don’t buy it. The scene was too pat. He was too desperate. That guy isn’t the one I was after.”
Cameron blinked. “The reporter said plenty of evidence was on hand—”
“Like people don’t get framed?” She laughed, and the sound was bitter. “I know all about that. My dad lost his badge because he got pulled into that BS about setting up drug dealers on his beat.” Though her dad had always sworn he hadn’t been involved in the frame-ups, his protests did little good for his reputation. “People get framed. It’s a sad fact of the world.” She pushed a glass toward Cameron.
He didn’t take it. He never drank much, and when he did drink, it was only the best. Expensive wines and champagnes. Jeez, the guy loved his champagne. When they’d gotten their master’s degrees, she remembered the way he’d gone out and bought that fancy bottle of—
“Why would someone want to frame that guy?” His quiet question jerked her from the memory of their past.
She rolled her shoulders. “Because Allan was convenient.” Duh. Wait, duh? Maybe she did need to slow down on the drinks. “An easy target. The custodian who kept to himself. The widower with no close friends. Maybe the perp I’m after wanted the attention off his back, so he tossed Allan into the mix.”
Cameron frowned. “Allan…he killed himself.”
“That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet.” But she would. “I don’t understand that bit. I swear, I actually thought the guy was going to shoot me, but then he turned the gun on himself. Weird as hell.” She reached for another shot glass. The bartender had done such a lovely job of lining them up for her. “Maybe he had a deal with the killer. I mean, Allan had a daughter, after all. One that needs money for college, money for life. And Allan didn’t have any money. He barely had anything at all. Maybe the killer offered Allan money to take the fall. Maybe he was supposed to go out in a blaze of glory.” Her eyes narrowed as she considered this new angle. If Allan had gotten a payoff, then perhaps she could find the paper trail. Follow the money. “But… Allan was a caretaker.” Her voice dropped as Allan’s profile spun in her head. “His nature was protective, so in the end, he couldn’t shoot me. Couldn’t shoot at Blake. That wasn’t who he was.” Her lashes lifted as realization hit her. “He couldn’t attack us because Allan March wasn’t a killer. Instead of shooting us, he turned the gun on himself. The only person he hurt was himself.” Excitement had her heart racing.
But Cameron just shook his head. His hair—blond and perfectly styled, as always—gleamed for a moment when he leaned forward beneath the faint light over her table. “Normally, you know I love it when you bounce your ideas off me…”
Her temples were throbbing.
“But the man had a dead woman at his
feet. That part made the news, too.”
“And no blood on him,” she mumbled. Because that had been bothering her. That was why the scene had been wrong. When they’d first arrived, Allan had been sweating in his white shirt—and there had been no blood on the shirt. Not until Blake shot him. “The vic’s throat was slit—ear to ear—and Allan didn’t have a drop of blood on him. He should’ve had her blood on him.” She pushed to her feet. “I have to make Justin listen to me. I’m not wrong. Allan was just a fall guy. The real killer—”
Cameron surged to his feet. His hand wrapped around her arm. “You can’t go to your FBI boss with alcohol on your breath and a wild theory spilling from your lips.” His voice was grim. “You want more than a suspension? You want to lose the job forever?”
“I want to stop the killer!”
Don’t miss
AFTER THE DARK by Cynthia Eden,
available April 2017 wherever
HQN Books and ebooks are sold.
www.Harlequin.com
Copyright © 2017 by Cynthia Eden
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SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
Harlequin Intrigue
When he’s reunited with Rikki Taylor, the treasonous CIA operative he once loved, lost and was then ordered to kill, Navy SEAL sniper Quinn McBride knows there’s a lot more to what happened all those months ago. Starting with the baby girl she never told him they’d created…
Read on for a sneak preview of
the final book in the RED WHITE AND BUILT miniseries,
BULLETPROOF SEAL,
by Carol Ericson!
PROLOGUE
The sweat stung Quinn’s eyes and he squeezed them shut for a second—just a second before he refocused on his target. Rikki’s beautiful face swam before him in his scope, her red hair standing out like a burst of flame against the emerald-green landscape. Quinn’s hand trembled.
He shifted his sniper rifle to the two North Korean soldiers walking behind Rikki, prodding her forward. They had rifles pointed at her back. Quinn spit the sour taste out of his mouth, along with the mud from the hillside in the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Someone had misinformed the CIA. Rikki Taylor was no rogue operative working with the North Koreans. She was their captive…unless she’d set up this whole scene for cover.
Quinn knew better than anyone about Rikki’s duplicitous nature. But this? Working with the enemy to damage her own government and put her fellow CIA agents at risk?
He had a hard time believing Rikki would endanger agents in the field. Quinn lowered his sniper rifle and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
The trio below him stopped, and one of the soldiers pulled out a bottle of water.
Squinting, Quinn scanned the lush land where the borders of North and South Korea met—a no-man’s-land where hostility and mistrust haunted the verdant beauty—not to mention the scattered land mines. This mistrust permeated his pores, had him doubting his mission, a mission he should’ve refused once he’d discovered the target.
He would’ve had to have come up with a good reason to refuse an assignment from the navy—even after that untraceable text he’d received. He could’ve tried the truth, but then he would’ve come under suspicion. Then his pride had taken over and he had to prove that he could carry out the assignment, prove his professionalism and dedication.
He snorted softly, and the leaves on the branch tickling his nose stirred. Prove to whom? His old man?
The group on the ground was on the move again, and Quinn took up his position. His rifle weighed on his shoulder like a lead block. His breath came out in short spurts.
Usually before he dropped a target, a deadly calm descended on him. Now his heart raced and his trigger finger twitched. In this condition he’d be lucky to hit that boulder twenty feet away.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and blew it out through puckered lips. He swallowed. He shifted. He braced the toes of his boots against the rock behind him.
Then he refocused. He put Rikki Taylor in his crosshairs for the last time.
Rikki licked her lips, and Quinn could almost taste their sweet honey on his own tongue. She tossed her fiery hair over one shoulder.
Quinn blinked, and in the split second of that one blink, Rikki had attacked one of the guards, going for his weapon.
Quinn needed no other proof. He tracked his rifle to the other guard, lined him up and took the shot. The soldier jerked once and dropped to the ground.
Quinn swung his scope back to Rikki’s struggle with her captor, and his heart stuttered. The soldier had possession of his gun, and Rikki had fallen to the ground, out of sight behind a clump of bushes.
As Quinn watched through his scope, blood pounding in his ears, the North Korean soldier shot his weapon into the bushes.
In a fury, Quinn zeroed in on the man who’d just shot Rikki, but before he could even take aim, Quinn came under attack from a hail of bullets.
Taking down the other soldier had revealed his position, and now he was outnumbered and outgunned. He rolled to his back and scrambled down the hillside like a forward-moving crab. He scuttled behind a row of trees and started breaking down his rifle.
Dragging himself up and wedging his back against a tree trunk, he stuffed his gear into his bag and then swung it onto his back.
He lunged forward onto his belly and army-crawled his way through the forest to the tunnel that would take him back to South Korea and the designated pickup point.
What would he tell his superiors? He did end up with mission success. Although it wasn’t his bullet that had done the job, he had neutralized the target—Rikki Taylor.
They’d been wrong. They’d all been wrong. Rikki had not been working with the enemy.
And now that Quinn was responsible for her death, his life wasn’t worth living.
CHAPTER ONE
Sixteen months later
The footsteps echoed behind her on the rain-slicked pavement. Rikki stopped and spun around. Silence greeted her as she peered down the dark, narrow street.
With her muscles coiled tightly she continued, and her tag-along followed suit. As she began to turn again, the footsteps, two sets, quickened and two bodies rushed her.
The glint from a knife flashed in the night, and Rikki finished her turn with her feet flying. She kicked the assailant with the knife in the gut, and he doubled over, his weapon clattering to the cobblestones.
The other man yelped in surprise and before he could recover, Rikki swept up the knife from the ground and wielded it in her attacker’s face.
“Get lost, or I’ll slice you from chin to navel. Yu done know?”
The man’s eyes widened so that the whites gleamed like two orbs. His friend groaned from the ground.
Rikki growled, “And take him with you.”
He held up one hand and grabbed his buddy by the arm with the other, dragging him to his feet. “Eazy, nuh.”
“You take it easy and get moving or I’ll call the police.”
The two hapless muggers took off, and Rikki pocketed the knife. The streets of Jamaica, even in the tourist trap of Montego Bay, turned deadly after dark, but Rikki had more to fear in her own country right now.
She slipped into the alley where an orange light swayed in the breeze, sidling along the walls of the ramshackle building. She ducked under a tattered blue-and-white-striped awning and rapped at the window.
A curtain stirred. Rikki stepped sideways into the weak light to identify herself.
A wiry man opened the door and hustled her inside as he poked his head into the alley and looked both ways. “Where’s your ride?”
“I walked from the main street.”
He shook his head. “Dangerous place for anyone to be walking, especially a girl like you.”
Rikki hid her smile behind a covered cough. “I’m okay. Are you Baily?”
“The one and only.” He double-locked the door behind them and twitched the curtain back in place.
“Do you have everything ready?”
“Come with me.” He crooked one long finger in her direction.
Rikki followed him through a single room where an old woman sat in front of an older TV, the blue light flickering across her lined face. She didn’t acknowledge Rikki’s presence or even move a muscle.
Baily shoved a dark curtain aside and waved Rikki into a small room. He pointed to a green screen and said, “Stand in front of that. I’ll get your picture first. Everything else is ready to go.”
As she took a step toward the screen, Baily tugged on her sleeve. “Business first.”
Rikki pulled a wad of cash from her pocket. Those thieves on the street would’ve hit pay dirt with her, well, except for the fact that they’d picked a CIA operative, trained in self-defense and street fighting, as their target.