The Blade Brothers of Cougar County

Alec’s fingers tightened briefly before falling away and she missed the connection immediately. She placed a hand on his chest and when she did, both of them went instantly still. Tension radiated from his body. His breathing became shallower. She met his gaze and saw the desire there. Her pulse kicked a little harder and her throat tightened. When she’d reached out for him, she’d intended to ask him to hold her. She’d thought the only thing she wanted from him was to feel safe. But looking into his eyes, she felt anything but that.

Uncertain, Katie dropped her gaze to his throat. Smooth skin. The scent of his cologne reaching her. The open collar of his shirt left a triangle of skin exposed. What would his chest be like? What would it feel like to lay her hand over his heart without a shirt in the way? To feel smooth male flesh beneath her palm instead of starched cotton? Letting her hand drop, she backed away. It took her another second to look at him again.

“I trust you, Alec,” she whispered, but was surprised by just how unsteady her voice was when she said it.

Targeted

Lori L. Harris

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lori Harris has always enjoyed competition. She grew up in southern Ohio, showing Arabian horses and Great Danes. Later she joined a shooting league where she competed head-to-head with police officers—and would be competing today if she hadn’t discovered how much fun and challenging it was to write. Romantic suspense seemed a natural fit. What could be more exciting than writing about life-and-death struggles that include sexy, strong men?

When not in front of a computer, Lori enjoys remodeling her home, gardening and boating. Lori lives in Orlando, Florida, with her very own hero.

Dear Reader,

When I was thinking about the setting for Targeted, the first in a pair of stories about THE BLADE BROTHERS OF COUGAR COUNTY, I knew immediately that it would be Florida. From the very first moment I set foot in the state more than twenty years ago, she has always held a certain mystery for me. On the surface, she’s sunny beaches and sparkling salt water, modern cities with mass transit and sophisticated nightlife. But that’s just the garb she wears, not who she really is.

You have to get off the beaten track to discover Florida’s true beauty—the dark, tea-colored waters of her mangrove swamps, the large expanses of her real estate owned more by the alligators and mosquitoes that inhabit them than the investors who hold title to them. Wide open prairies where cattle graze in knee-high grasses and cowboys still ride out to check on them. And the small towns where a hitching post still stands out front—a reminder that no matter how much we seem to move beyond our pasts, we never fully leave them behind.

Alec Blade and Katie Carroll, the hero and heroine of Targeted, are both attempting to do just that, though, when they move to Deep Water, Florida. They believe it’s possible to file away the unresolved events of their violent pasts. But they learn just how mistaken they are when one of those faceless monsters reappears. Suddenly it isn’t a matter of outrunning the past. Now they have to survive long enough to have a future.

Hang on as Alec and Katie fight for their lives—and somewhere along the way, they’ll discover a passion neither of them has ever experienced.

Warmly,

Lori Harris

I need to thank fellow critique partners Terri Backhus,

Ann Bair and Kathleen Pynn for their unending generosity.

And fellow suspense author Kathy Holzapfel for her devious

mind, quick wit and friendship. Without these four,

writing wouldn’t be nearly the adventure that it is.

And as always, to my very own hero, Bobby Harris.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

As soon as Alec Blade stepped inside Frankie’s Gun and Range, the dull thuds of live rounds slamming into plate steel at a velocity of more than eight hundred feet per second resounded.

The rottweiler that had been dozing at the end of the long display counter climbed to his feet even before the range marshal looked up. The man was somewhere deep in his sixties, on the lean side, wearing a bowling shirt with Frankie embroidered on the chest. His smile was welcoming enough. Until he spotted the telltale bulge of a weapon beneath Alec’s jacket.

He reached for something beneath the desk. “I need to see a badge or a concealed weapon permit.”

“Sure.” Alec handed over the newly acquired State of Florida permit, and while it was being inspected, glanced at the rottweiler that now sat two feet away with pricked ears and watchful eyes.

“Beautiful dog. Does he have a name?” Alec asked.

“Teddy Bear.”

Alec guessed the dog’s weight to be in the one-fifty range, most of it in the massive head and jaws, the thick, muscled neck. “Interesting choice of a name. Sort of like calling a Great Dane, Tiny.”

“My wife named him as a pup. It fit back then. Teddy, give the man a smile.”

The dog’s heavy dewlaps drew back to reveal a very impressive set of teeth. It was like looking into the eyes of a sociopath. The mouth said one thing; the eyes said something far more deadly. Intent on keeping both hands, Alec left them resting on the display case.

Satisfied, Frankie passed back the permit. “Any relation to our new police chief?”

Sensing his services weren’t needed, the rottweiler wandered back to a spot at the end of the counter and plopped down.

Alec returned his wallet to his back pocket before answering. “Brother. I was told he was shooting here.”

The man checked the log book on the counter. “In the sixth bay. I got a spot next to him open.”

“No, thanks. Is he alone in there?”

“No. Got a lesson going in bay three, but it should be over in a few minutes.” Frankie grabbed a form from the pile next to the cash register. “Even if you’re not shooting, you’ll need to sign the waiver.”

He pointed to the signature line beneath several paragraphs of small print. His blue-tinged nail bed suggested the beginning stages of lead poisoning, a fairly common problem for people who owned and ran indoor ranges.

“You can read it if you want, but it just says you won’t hold it against me if they cart you out of here on a gurney. Or in a body bag.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Alec took the pen.

“And you’ll need eyes and ears.” Frankie retrieved shooting glasses and earmuffs from a box on the floor behind him and laid them on the counter.

After putting on both, Alec opened the heavy door separating the store from the range, and the noise escalated. Since leaving the FBI nearly a year ago, he hadn’t had a reason to visit an indoor facility, but the scent of cordite was still familiar, as was the strong percussion of a forty-five caliber round ripping through paper before flattening against the back wall.

The first bays were empty, the lights off, and the target hanger waiting for paper. The third contained a well-dressed business-type woman working with an instructor. From the look of it, it wasn’t the first lesson for the good-looking, twentysomething blonde.

His brother was at the end and in the process of emptying his weapon in rapid fire. When the chamber locked open, Jack ejected the empty magazine from the Colt and, after lowering the gun to the weapon rest, reloaded one of the three magazines in front of him. The blue-gray haze of spent gunpowder lingered in the dimly lit space.

He wasn’t as tall as Alec, only six foot to Alec’s six-two, and there was little in facial features or coloring to suggest shared DNA. Jack was blond, blue-eyed to Alec’s darker coloring.

There was more than six years between them, enough so that they hadn’t been close growing up. Alec’s fault, of course, since he was the older sibling. Even the death of their parents four years ago hadn’t narrowed the gap. He regretted the distance, as he regretted so many things these days. Part of the reason he’d relocated to Cougar County was to mend their relationship. That, and he’d had nowhere else to go after he’d buried his wife.

Jack looked up and saw Alec. “Been there long?”

“Just got here.”

Jack thumbed the last round into the magazine, and then pressed the button to recall the target.

“Planning to shoot a few?”

“No. I went by the office, and your dispatcher said you usually stopped by here on Wednesday nights.”

“Wanda did?” Jack loaded the second magazine. “Suppose I’ll have to change my schedule, then.”

“Why?”

“Because I like some degree of privacy.” Jack replaced the paper target, sent it out to the fifteen-yard mark. “And I’m sure you’re very aware by now that, in a town the size of Deep Water, it’s hard to come by.”

Soon after he’d relocated to Deep Water, with its brick streets and quaint shops, Alec had learned that Southern towns were not the place to go if you wanted privacy. At one time Deep Water had been Cougar County’s seat, a destination for wealthy Northerners looking for a place to winter. Today it was a town that had been forced to find ways to reinvent itself after an interstate highway had suddenly put it off the beaten path.

Alec took the target his brother passed to him. “Not bad.” There was a nice grouping in the chest region. He pointed to the head shots. “You’re pushing these.”

“You think you can do better?”

Raising his hands in a gesture of surrender, Alec took a step back. Even if he’d had the time, he wasn’t about to get into a pissing contest with his brother. That was part of the problem in their relationship. Too much of the wrong kind of competitiveness in recent years.

“Didn’t think so.” Jack closed up the box of ammo he’d been loading from and placed it in the bag at his feet before jumping to the question of why Alec was there. “Did the postcard come?”

Alec shoved his hands into his pockets. “No.” It wasn’t a subject that he wanted to pursue.

Once a month, for the past eleven months, starting the day after the murder of Jill Blade, a postcard had arrived from the UNSUB—the unknown subject—with one word typed on it: REMEMBER. The postcard was always the cheap variety that could be purchased almost anywhere, but the typewriter that had been used and the postmark changed each time.

Jack seemed to gauge Alec’s reaction to this change in pattern.

“Do you think the fact you didn’t get one means something?” Jack asked.

“Sure. The post office screwed up. The UNSUB’s in prison. Or he’s dead. Or he lost track of time.”

“Or maybe he’s grown tired of the game,” Jack said quietly.

Alec chose to ignore the observation. Perhaps because he couldn’t bear to contemplate the possibility. Though it was painful to get them, if the cards stopped coming, what then? With viable leads drying up, the cards were the only tie he had with Jill’s killer. And perhaps his only hope of seeing him behind bars.

And capturing his wife’s killer, seeing him brought to justice, was the reason he’d left the Bureau and the reason he got up most mornings.

Jack placed a second pistol case on the shooting bench. A SIG-Sauer. Even as a kid, Jack had collected toys.

“So why were you looking for me?”

The door between the range and the store opened briefly as the woman and instructor left.

“I got a phone call about an hour ago,” Alec said. “I’m heading out of town.”

“A consulting job?”

After leaving the Bureau, he’d opened a company that dealt with post 9/11 security. He’d expected to generate enough business to pay the bills while he hunted Jill’s killer, but because of his expertise and his security clearance, he’d had more business than he could handle alone.

“No. Not a consulting job. The detective on Jill’s case is interviewing a suspect they’re holding in connection with a rape and he wants me to sit in tomorrow morning.”

Jack frowned. “Does he look good for Jill’s murder?”

“No. But he claims to have information. Probably just looking to cut a deal.” Alec suspected it was another dead end, but he couldn’t afford to ignore a lead.

Jack wiped his hands on a towel. “So you just came by to tell me you were leaving town?”

“Yeah.” Alec had never bothered in the past, which made it awkward as hell now. He’d spent so much of his life coming and going, never filling in anyone—including his wife—on his actions.

Early in their marriage, when Jill had pressed him to talk about his work, he’d made the mistake of giving in to her demands and telling her too much about a case. For several weeks afterward, though she’d tried to pretend it hadn’t changed things between them, he knew it had. She’d seemed almost reluctant to let him touch her. And he’d desperately needed that connection to keep him human.

After that, he’d been more careful with what he shared. He’d talk about investigations and cases and court trials, but never about the atrocities, nor about decayed bodies, nor about mutilated women or murdered children.

Jack slid a magazine into the SIG-Sauer, chambered the first round. He shifted his right foot forward and brought the weapon up into the Weaver position, his index finger resting lightly alongside the trigger guard.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you into a little head-to-head brotherly competition? I win, I get the details of your date tonight. Nothing personal. Just whether you have a good time. Whether she’s a good conversationalist.”

Alec felt irritation kick in. He knew he shouldn’t be annoyed with Jack. But these days he found himself feeling a lot of things, including isolation, that he didn’t want to. Perhaps that was why he’d impulsively asked Katie Carroll out.

“How did you find out about that?”

“I heard it from one of the deputies who heard it from one of Katie’s coworkers.”

Katie waited tables at Alligator Café where he had breakfast most mornings. She had a quick smile, but he’d recently learned that she wasn’t quite the open book that she wanted people to believe she was. In addition to waiting tables, she was a well-known Miami artist.

Jack lowered his weapon. “Of course, with the way you’ve been watching her all these weeks, it doesn’t really come as a surprise.”

“It isn’t really a date,” Alec said.

Jack grinned. “If you ask a woman out and it involves food, it’s a date.”

“Doesn’t matter what you call it because my flight leaves at nine thirty tonight, so I have to cancel.”

The smile fading, Jack placed the gun on the rest again. “A morning flight wouldn’t have done just as well? Hell, even one a few hours later tonight?”

“It’s just pizza and conversation. She’s new in town. I’m new in town. No big deal.” Alec wondered why he felt compelled to tell his brother anything. Next time he’d just leave a message on his voice mail.

“Wrong. It’s the first time you’ve made any attempt to join the living.” Jack’s mouth flattened. “I was happy for you. You were actually going to share the twentieth of the month with a live woman instead of a dead one.”

Controlling his irritation this time wasn’t nearly as easy, but Alec managed.

When he remained silent, Jack’s expression turned more troubled. “I’m sorry if that sounds cruel or cold. I don’t mean it that way. You know how I felt about Jill. But the interview’s not until tomorrow. Change your flight. Go out with Katie tonight. Get on with your life.”

Alec took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s not do this, okay?”

Turning away, he headed for the door, feeling dissatisfied. Not just with his brother and their relationship, but with everything. He’d made a career out of hunting down the worst kind of men. Human predators that killed for the sheer sport of it. But when it came to tracking down his own wife’s killer, he couldn’t get the job done. He’d failed Jill while she was alive. And he was failing her now.

“Jill loved you, Alec. She’d want you to move on.”

Alec paused and looked back. “Let’s not pretend we have any inkling what the other one needs. Maybe if you had been where I’ve been…”

“You’ve forgotten where I’ve been, haven’t you?” Jack immediately went back to firing his weapon. As if Alec was already gone.

Jack had spent five years undercover in Atlanta. A hard life where you were cut off from everything and everyone. It was their single shared characteristic. Their inability to achieve any kind of real intimacy with another human being. Alec recognized it in himself, but he suspected his brother was still in denial.

Bottom line, though, they were brothers. And they were all the family either one of them had. As adults, they should be able to find some middle ground.

Instead of leaving, Alec waited until Jack had emptied the gun. “I’ll call you when I get back. Maybe we can get a beer.”

Jack hesitated as if he debated saying more, but then settled for a simple, “Sure. A beer.” Jack tucked his weapon into his shoulder holster. “Since you’re not interested in Katie, I think I’ll give her a call while you’re gone. She’s a good-looking woman. And she has the air of mystery about her that I find appealing.”

Alec knew what Jack was trying to do. He gave his brother a wry grin that said it wasn’t going to work. “Jealousy is a pointless emotion based on insecurities.”

Jack didn’t return the grin. “Yes. But at least it is an emotion.”

KATIE CARROLL opened her front door just after six forty-five. She did her nightly battle with the door lock—a task made that much more difficult because she was carrying dry cleaning on one arm and a bag of groceries on the other. Of course, it didn’t help that she was in a hurry and had less than thirty minutes to wash and dry her hair and straighten the place before her date arrived.

Even though Alec Blade had been drawing her into more and more conversations over the past few weeks, she’d still been surprised this morning when he’d asked her out.

When she’d finally wrestled the key free, she turned and clicked on the porch and foyer lights, and then closed the door behind her.

But as soon as she turned the dead bolt, she felt her pulse accelerate, felt the sharp tingling sensation climb her spine. Please, not again. It had been weeks since she’d had an anxiety attack. Long enough that she’d thought she was over them.

The familiar tightness in her chest intensified, until it felt as if she was trapped inside a burning room, and the searing, thick air had been robbed of oxygen. Sweat trailed down her rib cage. She held the plastic dry-cleaning bag and grocery sack in front of her like armor.

Closing her eyes, she fell back on the mantra the psychologist had helped her create at her last appointment. “I am safe.” She paused, focusing on what she’d just said before moving on to the next affirmation. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” She concentrated on drawing air into her lungs, too, this time. “Because I won’t allow it to happen. Because I am in control.”

Logically, Katie recognized that she had nothing to fear. That there was no one out to get her. But panic attacks weren’t based in logic.

“I am safe. Nothing’s going to happen to me,” she repeated until slowly, her breathing returned to normal, and she managed to release her hold on the sack. It took nearly another minute before she could make herself move from in front of the door.

As she did, she glanced into the living room and immediately froze. The front drapes were drawn. Had she left this morning without opening them? Had the fact that they were closed registered subconsciously? Was that all it had taken to set off the attack?

Then she spotted the envelope propped on the mantel. Her landlord. She should have known he’d show up when she wasn’t around. He’d done the same with the bad plug in the bathroom. He’d come while she was at work. When she’d come home that night, she’d found his pliers on her unmade bed.

The next day she’d purchased and installed chains on all the doors. She couldn’t keep him out when she wasn’t here, but she damn well wasn’t going to have to worry about him walking in on her.

She ripped the envelope down and removed the note inside.

YOUR LEASE REQUIRES YOU TO GET WRITTEN APPROVAL BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES TO THE PROPERTY!!

KITCHEN LEAK WILL REQUIRE A FEW PARTS. BE BACK NEXT WEEK. PLEASE KEEP DRAPES DRAWN DURING DAY AND THERMOSTAT OFF UNLESS YOU’RE HOME.

ELECTRICITY IS EXPENSIVE!

Irritated, she tossed it down. Did he really consider the door chains a change to the property? That was one thing she wouldn’t miss when she moved. Her landlord. He really creeped her out at times.

When she turned on the lamp at the end of the sofa, she noticed just how dusty the table was. After using her hand to clear the worst of it, she examined the other pieces of furniture. Two equally hideous reproduction side chairs from different Louis eras flanked the drab olive sofa, one end of which had become the depository for her collection of art catalogues.

She hadn’t had anyone over since she’d moved in, so hadn’t given much thought to how ugly the room was.

Either she could straighten up the room, or she could take a quick shower. Suspecting her date would be more impressed with a female who didn’t smell like a diner—grease and raw eggs—she headed for the kitchen.

Katie jumped when the kitchen wall phone rang as she walked past. Considering how few people had her number, it would have to be her parents. If she answered it, there would be no shower. With each unanswered ring, her guilt-index crept higher, until finally she hung the dry cleaning on a hook just inside the door and reached for the phone. Just as the ringing stopped.

Relief rolled over her. She’d tried, right? And she could just call her folks later. With the time difference, they’d still be up when she got home.

Enough light followed her from the living room into the kitchen that she didn’t bother to turn on the overhead light in the small room. The curtains for the window over the sink were in the washing machine, and she didn’t like the idea that anyone could stand outside and watch her movements.

After quickly unloading groceries onto the green-tiled counter, she grabbed a plate for the cheese and crackers. The soft tap of water against the sink bottom forced her to cross to the kitchen sink. Darn drip. If anything, it was worse.

She set the wine bottle on the counter and gave the faucet handle a hard turn. Leave it to her landlord to be so darned eager to conserve electricity while wasting water.

Behind her, the floorboard creaked. The old flooring under her feet gave slightly. Her lungs tightened as with sudden clarity, she realized she wasn’t alone. Worse, that she hadn’t been alone from the moment she’d walked in tonight.