Dom combed his fingers through Luci’s hair and she closed her eyes against the need to lean into his touch….

“I’m as good as anyone on the team ever was,” she said, and couldn’t help the note of challenge in her voice. “I can do this.” For the first time in a long while, the stir of something waking deep inside Luci fluttered alive. She’d loved the team. She’d loved saving lives. She’d loved knowing her special skill could make a difference. Or destroy her world.

Dom’s smile canted up slowly, reaching all the way up to his eyes, making them glitter with humor that caused her to feel lighter. He slouched in that sexy way of his, compelling someone unaware of his lethal skill to believe they had nothing to fear from him. He deepened his drawl, letting its smoothness reverberate like a caress. “Then it’s a date, darlin’.”

Pride of a Hunter
Sylvie Kurtz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Joyce—for the support and friendship.

A special thank-you to:

Mary Kennedy—for the forensic psychology help.

Chris Maddocks—for the sniper help.

About the Author

Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.

Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt-making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.

You can write to Sylvie at P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055. And visit her Web site at www.sylviekurtz.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Lucinda Walden Taylor—All the sniper-turned-soccer-mom wanted was a quiet life for her and her son.

Dominic Skyralov—The Seeker knew Luci’s deepest secrets.

Cole Taylor—Luci’s husband; Dom’s best friend. He was dead, but the memory of his death festered guilt in both Luci and Dom.

Brendan Taylor—The son Cole never knew existed and Luci desperately wanted to protect from a life of violence.

Warren Swanson—His goal was to expunge the sins of the soiled.

Laynie McDaniels—She was the first to die for her sins.

Jill Walden Courville—Luci’s sister was Warren’s latest pigeon.

Jeff Courville—The geeky boy reminded Warren of himself.

Joe Bob Grigsby—The escaped felon chose to kill rather than surrender.

Amber Fitzgerald—The fitness instructor softened the prey.

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

In the hours between three and five in the morning, life slowed to a crawl. Her body’s need for sleep had Lucinda Walden fighting to keep her eyes open. She pulled her eye off-scope to blink out the fatigue, then resettled her right shoulder over the rubber butt pad of her rifle. Eye on-scope again, she panned left to right, across the door and windows of the two-story shack in the middle of nowhere in North Texas, checking for activity.

Her job was simple—be ready to kill, but avoid shooting at all cost. Discipline. Control. Restraint.

Sweltering heat, even so early on this August morning, had sweat streaming down her sides, sticking every stitch of camouflage clothing to her skin. Fog, graying everything in its path and rising in tongues off the pond beside the house, gave the run-down place the look of hell.

“Sierra One to TOC,” Luci whispered into the mic resting against her jaw to the Tactical Operations Center. The hostage taker couldn’t hear her, but he was so close in her scope that it seemed as if he should. “I have subject movement. White alpha three.” Back side of the house, first floor, third window. “White male, five foot ten, one hundred and sixty pounds, dark hair and beard. Bare torso, low-slung jeans. Two pistols stuffed down his pants. One rifle cruising for a target. He has the kid on his hip.” Their subject looked like a desperado in a really bad Western.

“Copy, Sierra One.”

Luci tried shutting her mind off to the bawling four-year-old the hostage taker had strapped to his waist like a lifesaver, but couldn’t keep the shine of his tears from invading. Don’t you worry, little one. We’ll get you out safe. That’s what this team does. We save lives.

Hostage negotiations boiled down to building rapport, calming fears and making consequences acceptable. But talking sometimes wasn’t the solution. This hostage taker wasn’t in the mood for rapport. The instinct to save his own sorry hide was putting two innocents at risk. And with three consecutive life sentences to serve, he had nothing left to lose.

The Special Operations Group was twenty-six hours into a situation with the escaped felon. He’d taken his ex-girlfriend and her four-year-old boy as live body armor to buy his freedom once the deputy marshals tasked with bringing him back to prison had cornered him.

Luci was five hours into her second six-hour shift with only snakes, spiders and scorpions for company as she lay in the tall grass on the hill overlooking the house.

And Joe Bob Grigsby, the piece of garbage who’d started the whole thing by flying his coop, had thrown the phone out the window half an hour ago and traded it for a shot of something that had him wired and his hostages blubbering in utter terror.

This couldn’t go on much longer. If Dom couldn’t talk this guy down, then no one could. Which would rev up the assault team. Cole had to be chomping at the bit to knock down the door and kick some butt.

Dom and Cole. The mule and the thoroughbred. Each excellent at his job. Each as opposite as black and white. Each the best of friends. One was her confidant, the other her lover. No, make that her brand-new husband—though no one else on the team knew. The thought of her elopement brought a small smile to her lips. She and Cole and Dom had all competed and bonded in the same training class and, although like tended to mix with like, their odd circle of friendship had endured.

Together, they worked magic.

She’d punched holes through thousands of targets, but because of Dom’s smooth-talking ways and Cole’s take-no-prisoners daring, she’d never had to make that split-second decision to plug a bullet through anyone’s brain stem and end a life. Knock on wood, so far, all of their operations had ended without a shot fired.

“TOC to all units, stand by to copy.” The voice of the Special Operations Group leader boomed through Luci’s earpiece. Something was up. A shot of adrenaline spiked through her veins, brightening the crown of sun spearing through the fog.

“Sierra One, ready to copy.” The other units, assault and sniper, keyed in.

Her father had once told her that a pilot’s life was long hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. A sniper’s life wasn’t much different. Hurry up and wait. The U.S. Marshals Service hadn’t promised her glamour, but they had promised her a chance to prove herself. Four years ago, that had seemed like more than she’d gotten out of life so far.

Twenty-six hours of trying to end a situation peaceably had come down to the next few seconds.

One second. One shot. No second chances. A miss meant a failure. A hit, two lives saved. Are you ready, Luci? Can you do it? Can you take a life? Can you finally prove you’re good enough?

She centered the crosshairs in the scope tube. Her index finger rested on the trigger guard. She looked into the living room, one hundred and ninety yards away, with an intimacy that was deceiving. Joe Bob hadn’t shaved since he’d run. The five o’clock shadow had grown into a short beard. His skin was oily with sweat. His brown eyes were wild and the whites spidered with red. She could almost smell the sourness of his body, the alcohol on his breath, the desperation in his rage-spiked pulse.

“Hotel One to TOC. We’re at Yellow.” The assault team had reached the forward rallying point, the last position of cover and concealment.

“Copy, Hotel One. I have you at Yellow.”

Luci aligned her body with the recoil path, pressed her hip against the ground and spread her knees for stability.

Slow and easy.

She raised the elevation to compensate for the high humidity. With air this still, she didn’t have to accommodate for windage. The crosshairs in her scope fluxed slightly as a wake of adrenaline flowed out of her muscles. She settled back on Joe Bob’s face.

The assault team waited for the order to breach.

“TOC to all units. You have compromise authority and permission to move to Green.”

The group leader counted down the launch sequence. “Three…”

The world blackened and narrowed to that third window on the first floor. To Joe Bob’s crazed face as he buzzed back and forth across the window, brandishing the petrified child like a sack of feed. Just a few more seconds, baby, and we’ll have you out and safe.

“Two…”

Concentrate. Calm yourself. Slow the heartbeat. Her heart pumped with a trained rhythm that fed her brain oxygen but didn’t interfere with her shot. She settled the crosshairs on the tip of Joe Bob’s nose.

“One…”

Then came the pause that seemed to hang in the air forever before the world exploded into action. The assault team, clad in black, blew down the door—no flash-bang devices because of the kid—and raced in. Every move was a well-practiced choreography. “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”

The woman screamed. The child howled.

Joe Bob stopped his mad pacing. He dropped the rifle and stuck a pistol under the boy’s chin.

Luci sucked in air and eased it out.

Committed, she increased pressure on the trigger.

The world shattered, spewing chaos into the air like Fourth of July fireworks.

Her ears rang.

Bodies dropped.

And the ground ran red with blood.

Chapter One

Seven years later

His mind seventeen miles away from where he sat in the basement bunker of the Aerie in Wintergreen, New Hampshire, Dominic Skyralov paid little attention to the morning briefing as he carved a bite out of the almond coffee cake on his plate and washed it down with warm green tea.

“That’s all, gentlemen.” Sebastian Falconer, head of Seekers, Inc., closed the top file in front of him. The briefing was ending, and Dom wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the subject of his quandary. “Check your PDAs for updates.”

Dom pulled what was left of the almond coffee cake on the platter toward him. “I need a word with you.”

Falconer nodded and leaned back into his chair, the picture of patience.

Sabriel Mercer, dark and brooding, peeled himself off the shadows of the wall and left without a word. Nothing new there. Dom often wondered what had scarred the man so deeply he couldn’t trust himself to speak.

Noah Kingsley halted his swift unplugging of snakes of wires attached to his various computer accessories. Looking from one man to the other, he snapped his red suspenders and said, “I’ll get his later.”

Hale Harper, usual glower in place, gathered his notes. “Hang on, Kingsley. I need some information from you.”

“Follow me to my parlor.” Kingsley waggled his eyebrows.

Liv, Falconer’s wife, poked her head through the door, blocking their escape. Her short chocolate-brown hair looked wind-tousled and her blue eyes gleamed with mischief. “All done?”

Falconer’s whole body relaxed as if he’d inhaled a powerful tranquilizer and a smile invaded his stern face. When it came to his wife, their fierce leader was a push-over. “All done. Coming in?”

“Um, no. I need to borrow Gray.”

“Me?” Grayson Reed halted midstride on the far side of the room as if he’d been frozen by a photographer’s flash.

“Uh-oh,” Kingsley teased as he slipped by Liv. “You’re in trouble now.”

“You’re getting married in a month,” Liv said, displaying a neat row of white teeth.

“I am.” A goofy grin took over Reed’s toothpaste-commercial smile and warmth flooded the silver steel of his eyes. Even the sideways mention of his fiancée, Abbie, turned Hollywood veneer into soap star mush. “Oh, God, I am.”

Harper exaggerated a shiver. “Man, I feel for you. I’d rather face a felon in a dark alley than sit through the torture of picking out china patterns.”

Dom couldn’t help the tickle of envy at Reed’s happiness. He’d imagined he’d have himself a team of rug rats by now. That’s what happened when someone stole your heart and didn’t give it back. You found yourself alone, wanting what you couldn’t have. Especially now, when he was about to reopen a wound best left alone.

“Weddings don’t plan themselves, you know.” Liv grabbed the stunned Reed’s shirtsleeve and pulled him into the hall. “We have a lot to do and not much time. Abbie’s upstairs, waiting. How do you feel about pumpkin and cranberry?”

“Um, they make good pies?”

“Color schemes, you silly man.” Liv’s laughter faded as she and Reed climbed the stone stairs up to Liv’s sunny office.

Once Liv disappeared, Falconer swiveled his black leather chair to face Dom. “What’s on your mind?”

“I found our target.” For the past six months, Dom had been tracking down a hit-and-run groom. The scam was swift and efficient, leaving heartache and ruin in its wake. The guy wooed divorcées, married them, drained them of all assets, then disappeared, taking on another identity and starting all over again somewhere else. His marks didn’t even know they’d been hit until it was too late.

After the con artist’s last foray, the bride, Laynie McDaniels, distraught by her losses, hanged herself in a motel room closet. She’d spent the past seven months on life support and had recently died. Her parents, Austin high society, feeling the authorities weren’t doing enough to capture and punish their daughter’s tormentor, had hired Seekers, Inc. a month after Laynie’s accident to locate the “dirty, rotten scoundrel” and bring him to justice. Circumstances pointed to foul play, but he needed court-solid evidence to back up the gut feeling. “He’s going by Warren Swanson this time. He’s passing himself off as a private detective in Nashua. And he’s about to strike again.”

“Let’s make sure we stop him before he does.”

“We need irrefutable evidence.”

“Uh-uh.”

Dom shoveled coffee cake into his mouth and chewed, trying to stay ahead of his bleak thoughts. Sweetheart scams rarely got prosecuted because who was to say that all hadn’t been given for love and the angry spurned lover hadn’t simply regretted her generosity? Not that many people reported the crime in the first place. Who wanted to admit they had been duped by a lover? The con artist counted on the character flaw of pride to get away and live to perpetuate the scam on some other unsuspecting love-starved pigeon.

Catching this guy would mean riding a delicate balance between putting an innocent woman in danger and making sure they got enough to put the guy behind bars for a good long time. Dom had to make this stop the impostor’s last. Evidence wasn’t a problem. Dom already had a six-inch-thick file with a number of aliases and addresses. What he lacked was proof of criminal intent. “I have a plan.”

“Shoot.”

The plan was simple enough: slip into Marston’s tightly knit community and pose as Luci Taylor’s boyfriend. Once he was close to both victim and con man, he could gather evidence. Dom reached for the mug of tea and drained it as if it were a shot of whiskey. Going in with guns blazing wasn’t going to work with this guy. He was too good at disappearing and reinventing himself. Dom couldn’t risk losing him again. This cover was the best way to snag him. “It requires going undercover to catch him hand in the cookie jar. I need to get close to him, win his trust.”

“I don’t have a problem with that.”

Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a run-of-the-mill operation.

Except for one thing.

“The victim is Jillian Courville.” Dom chewed on the last piece of coffee cake and almost choked on it as it went down crooked.

“Is that a problem?”

Dom stared at the crumbs on his plate and swirled the fork through them. “Jill is Luci Taylor’s younger sister.” Jill was a spoiled divorcée who’d made out rich in her divorce settlement. And Luci? Falconer already knew about the Hostage Rescue Team and the way Cole Taylor had died. Dom looked around for more coffee cake and realized he’d eaten the whole thing without tasting it.

“Ah.” Hands tented over his lap, chin resting on his upraised fingers, Falconer rocked his chair back and forth. “I can send someone else.”

“No, I’ve got this guy’s number.” Dom had seen the havoc the con man had wreaked. Cuffing him was personal by now.

“What’s the problem then?”

“Luci.” Dom would be a reminder of everything she’d left behind, of everything she’d lost. He’d watched her for the past few days. Her routine was her comfort—the mornings spent in her fields, the afternoons in her barn, the mad rush of late afternoons taken up by her son’s needs. The master sniper had turned herself into the picture of a suburban soccer mom. She wouldn’t appreciate him showing up on her front steps.

But making peace and putting criminals behind bars where they could hurt only themselves had been his mission since his seventeen-year-old brother had been killed by a small-time con man. He couldn’t stop now just because his pride might get dinged. “She’s not going to like having anyone mess with her piece of paradise.”

“She doesn’t have to know.”

He’d thought of that, but once he put the plan through its paces, he figured trying to get one past Luci would bring more conflict than it would resolve. She might think she’d left her sniper days behind, but her warrior’s instincts were as sharp as ever. Twice, she’d nearly caught him following her as he’d tried to establish Jill’s habit pattern. “I need her help to get close to Swanson so he doesn’t feel threatened.”

“You can’t have it both ways.”

Dom pushed away the plate. “I know.”

“What can I do to help?”

“I need cover. He’s bound to check me out and it looks like he can do it, too, since he’s got Jill’s numbers all lined up. Leave the football history there for common ground. Swanson’s sporting a Super Bowl ring. Not his, mind you, just part of his cover. A salesman, maybe. That wouldn’t be a threat to him, especially if I’m not so good at it.”

Falconer’s grin slid sideways. “That’s going to be hard to do. You could sell manure to a pig farmer.”

“Aw, shucks, Falconer, I’m just a redneck from down Brazos County way. I couldn’t sell a plug nickel to a leaking dam.”

Falconer chuckled. “I’ll have Kingsley fix you up.”

“I’ll need data support.”

“You’ve got it.” Falconer gathered up his files. “Anything else?”

How about a face Luci wouldn’t hate on sight? “I’ve got everything covered.”

Everything but his dumb heart, and he couldn’t let Luci know she still had it in her back pocket. Not if he wanted her help.

“BRENDAN!” Luci Taylor bowled through the creaking back door of her Victorian fixer-upper, walked out of her garden clogs and into the kitchen without breaking stride. The room was a chaos of half-finished jobs, but she didn’t have time to worry about the cupboard doors waiting refinishing in the barn or the last wall of wallpaper waiting to be stripped. “We’re going to be late for soccer practice.”

“I can’t find my shoes.” The small voice came from somewhere in the front. She suspected the living room where her six-year-old son had surely parked his butt before the forbidden television. Her five minutes of picking basil leaves had turned into an hour of weeding, and he’d taken advantage of her distractibility.

Luci stuck her hands under running water and washed off the rich garden dirt with a homemade cake of rosemary soap. “They’ll be much easier to find once you turn off the TV.”

“Aww, Mo-om.”

“Come on. We have to pick up Jeff.” Jill’s carnival committee meeting was running late—as usual. On the positive side, if Jill hadn’t called requesting a ride for her seven-year-old son, Brendan might have missed practice altogether. Again. Luci still had summer’s unstructured time on her mind and, one week into school, she hadn’t quite gotten into the fall routine yet. She had to learn to wear a watch and not let time get away from her. Other moms managed to keep a regular schedule. She should be able to also.

“Do we hafta? He’s such a baby.”

Like a six-year-old was all grown-up. Luci transferred the cell phone from her sweatshirt pocket to her purse, then collected the storage bag of oranges she’d quartered earlier from the fridge. “He’s your cousin and you’re to be nice to him.”

“He’s a dork.”

“A dork who fixes your computer games.” That Jeff wasn’t athletic wasn’t his fault. His talents had a more intellectual bent—something she’d wished for her own son. To her utter devastation, Brendan had inherited his father’s craving for risk. She’d spent enough time at the local emergency room to be on a first-name basis with both first-shift and second-shift personnel.

Luci strode into the living room, flicked off the television and urged her son off his nest of plush pillows and toward the kitchen. Maggie, the brown-and-blond mutt seemingly put together from spare parts, jumped off the couch with a guilty look and slunk into the kitchen, wagging her tail warily. Luci didn’t have time to care about dog hair, so ignoring the transgression seemed best for her sanity at the moment. “Come on, Brendan. Your shoes are by the door where they belong.”

“Can we stop at the playground on the way home?”

“Not today.” Luci ruffled her son’s shock of dark hair.

“How come?”

“We don’t have time. I have a batch of pesto to get ready for the country club restaurant by tomorrow morning.” Not to mention the herb logs or the herb vinaigrette. And that didn’t take into consideration the gardens that needed cleaning up or the goats that needed feeding and milking on a regular basis. She loved all of it, really she did. She just needed a few more hours every day to make it all work out.

“Aww, Mo-om.”

“Aww, Bren-dan.” She grabbed her purse and the bag of orange sections. The dog danced all around her, wound up by the buzz of energy Brendan and their lateness created. Surveying her son, she noted the shin pads loosely cuffed around his lower legs and mouth guard dangling from a finger. “Do you have water?”

Brendan lifted his Nalgene bottle from the deacon’s bench by the door. “And my ball.” He scooped the black-and-white ball out from under the bench with his sock-clad foot.

“Let’s go.” She slipped on a pair of felt clogs, grabbed the cleats, opened the back door and shooed out the dog.

Just as Brendan maneuvered the ball out the back door, the strangled sound of the bell on the front door rang. Not now. She snagged her van keys from the horseshoe-shaped holder by the door. “Get in the van and wait for me. Don’t touch anything. And we’re not taking Maggie, so don’t let her in.”

As Luci pounded to the door, she juggled everything in her arms to free a hand. She opened the door, ready to put her ill-timed visitor off. Whatever word had meant to cross her lips remained locked in her voice box.

“Hi, Luce. Can I come in?”

The sight of Dominic Skyralov, big as life and broad as a bull, knocked her back two steps and seven years. His blond hair had darkened to caramel. But otherwise, nothing much had changed about the smooth-talking cowboy. His blue eyes still matched the well-washed denim of his skin-hugging jeans, still could read right through her, still made her want to confess her deepest sins. He’d been her best friend for four years. Then everything had changed. Now the sight of him called back her darkest memories and the nauseating disorientation that came with them.

“No.” She hung on to the brass doorknob as if it could save her from the flood of pain that rushed through her. “You can’t come in.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, trying desperately to break apart the image of blood, of horror, of Cole dead on the floor, of red staining the dirty boards of that bleak North Texas shack. “I’m on my way out.”

Dom nodded. A good-old-boy gesture that was as part of him as his inbred politeness. “I’ll come back, then. When would be good for you?”

Never. Her ears rang. Her vision narrowed and blackened. Oh, God, no. Him coming back would make this even worse. She’d have all the time in between to relive her worst nightmare over and over again. Cole falling, bleeding, dying. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. “Say whatever you have to say and leave. I’m in a hurry.”

“It’s a nice place you’ve got here.”

“No, Dom, don’t.” Her voice strained between clenched teeth. “I know how you work. Put your subject at ease, then slip in the punch. Just get to the point, okay?” She couldn’t take his smooth negotiator’s voice, that slow Texas drawl, chipping away at her calm until he found her soft spot and bored in for the kill.

“There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry. I need you to help me gather evidence and provide me with some cover.”

Why don’t you just take a knife and twist it in my guts? “You are not bringing trouble here. Do you hear? You are not bringing trouble to this family. You are not bringing trouble to this community.”

“He’s engaged to your sister.”

The soft punch of his words knocked her breathless. “Now I know you’re lying. My sister isn’t seeing anyone.”

Then Luci remembered Jill’s bubblier-than-usual voice this morning as she’d issued a dinner invitation for Saturday and added she had a surprise. Luci had assumed Jill had scraped up another blind date to force on her. Jilly, what have you done? “I’m leaving now. And when I get back, I don’t want to see you or your truck in my driveway. Is that understood?”

Another nod. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t leaving. His big body became an iceberg she feared wouldn’t melt away until he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish. “Thing is, Luce, whether you want it or not, trouble’s here and it’s not me. The last woman this con man married died. You don’t want that for Jill. As much as you two rub each other raw, you love her.”

He shrugged as if he weren’t ripping the world she’d worked so hard to create to shreds, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. But he did. Dom had always cared too much. That’s why she couldn’t bear the sight of him. “You want to see trouble go away, Luce. You want your neat little life to go on. Then you need my help.”

Shaking her head, she snorted. That was just like him, turning this whole thing on her, making it her fault, her failure. She didn’t need this. She was already serving her time in hell. She was doing her penance. She deserved her small corner of peace and security. And even if she didn’t, Brendan did.

“I’ll take care of Jill myself. Goodbye.” Heart pounding, tears clawing up her throat, she slammed the door in Dom’s face and ran out the back door to the minivan where her son waited unaware that a monster worse than any video game’s had just invaded their bright little world.

Chapter Two

The horror Dom had resurrected by his presence clung to Luci’s skin like a disease and had her even more distracted than usual. At every stop sign, at every red light, her mind conjured up images that flowed and mutated in nightmarelike exaggeration from Cole’s dead body, lying in that forsaken shack in Texas seven years ago, to the possibility of Jill’s body, lying in a pool of blood in her own home. How could Dom do this to her? He knew her secret, had to know it still ate at her and always would, no matter how far she’d run from it.

Her family was all she had. She couldn’t let anything happen to them. And the last thing she needed was Dom there in Marston reminding her of her guilt.

By the time Luci reached the recreation fields on Depot Road, the lot was filled and she had to squeeze her minivan in a slot that was too small. To make things even more stressful, practice turned out to be a game and Howie Dunlap, the coach, wasn’t too happy that Brendan, his star player, was late. Luci refrained from pointing out he was lucky they’d showed up in the right place.

Entreating Jeff to come out of the van and put on his cleats took another ten minutes of trying patience. The boy wasn’t an athlete and knew it. He played soccer only to please his mother and spend time with Brendan, whom he adored. And although Brendan often complained about his cousin’s klutziness, he always included him in whatever game they played and bopped anyone who tried to make fun of him. Not Luci’s favorite manner of conflict resolution, but explaining why this method was the last resort fell short of logical to Brendan when it solved his problem so neatly.

The moms were already gathered along the sideline, the brisk breeze barely moving their styled locks. They sat in a row, roosting and clucking, on their folding red canvas chairs like brooding hens. Only Luci’s blue chair stood out. She didn’t see the point of buying a new color chair every time Brendan graduated teams.

“Late again, Luci.” Sally Kennison, in her perfectly pleated trousers and polished loafers, looked down her long nose as Luci struggled to free the chair from its carrying case. “You really ought to treat yourself to a watch.”

“Goats don’t run by a clock.” Luci had to let pop out the one wrong thing to remind the country club set that she was an outsider who worked a lowly farm for a living. Hard to believe she’d once had iron control over every cell of her body. But August always shook her up and shredded her focus. Getting back in sync took more time every year.

Sally’s perfectly manicured nails waived down the sideline. “Yes, well, you obviously aren’t late because you took the time to clean up. Sit downwind, please.” A few of the other moms sniggered and the gossip turned back to who was doing what to whom. Luci tuned them out and focused on the kids.

On the field, two teams of six- and seven-year-olds mobbed the ball and somehow moved it up and down the field. Pacing each of the sidelines, the two coaches barked suggestions that were mostly ignored as the kids concentrated on kicking the black-and-white ball toward the goal.

At halftime, Luci distributed the orange slices and the kids turned them into orange-peel smiles.

That’s when Jill showed up, hurrying in high-heel-induced ministeps toward the field. As Luci watched her baby sister, Dom’s voice came back to haunt her.

There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry.

The last woman this con man married died.

He’s engaged to your sister.

Jill couldn’t take another heartache. Not after the way John Jeffery Courville the Second had left her for an older woman. She was just now rebounding from the messy divorce.

Jill had the pert and sassy disposition of someone who would appear young even when she was gray and wrinkled. Her hazel eyes tilted up and crinkled at the corners as if she were always smiling—even when she cried. Her blond-highlighted brown hair was cut in a bob she styled up or down, depending on her mood. Today, she’d had the carnival committee meeting, so she’d gone for the messy bun look—half intellectual, but still showing she could have fun. Her beige linen pants were too light, her strappy heels too high for soccer field sidelines, yet somehow, Jill pulled off the look and fit in more with the Marston mommy-crowd than Luci did with her jeans and sweatshirt.

One of life’s little jokes.

Jill fit in without trying; Luci never could, no matter how hard she tried. She should just stop caring, but somehow she couldn’t.

She’d robbed Brendan of his father. She’d do everything she could so Brendan could have as normal a childhood as possible. She’d come back to Marston because her sister and her parents lived there. She’d grown up there. She felt safe there, even living on the periphery. And she wanted this safe, secure, small-town life with roots and family and community for Brendan. She wanted to raise her son out of the shadow of violence that tainted her past and had stolen part of his future.

“Who’s winning?” Jill asked, plopping down her red chair, which opened for her as easily as an umbrella.

“It’s a tie. One each.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

“How was the carnival committee meeting?”

Jill cringed and shook her head. “Who would have thought that putting on a one-day fund-raising event at an elementary school would take such sharp negotiating skills? If we pull this off by next weekend, we’ll be lucky.”

Luci hooked an ankle over a knee, going for the relaxed look. “Hey, so I hear you have a new boyfriend.”

Jill snapped up straight. “Who told you that?”

Shrugging, Luci pretended rapt attention at the game. “Sally Kennison.” A small lie, but one Jill would believe. Everyone knew that Sally Kennison somehow funneled every scrap of gossip in town and dispersed it as freely as dandelion seeds.

“How could she possibly know?” Jill asked, narrowing her gaze at the woman in question, who was too busy gossiping to notice the deadly look spearing her.

“So, are you?” Luci asked, keeping an eye on Brendan’s forward rush and her peripheral vision on Jill. Luci might have lost proficiency with a weapon, but other skills remained.

Jill stuck out her bottom lip. “Well, there goes my surprise.”

“I thought your surprise was another blind date for me.”

Jill snorted in an unladylike manner. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Luci.”

“Tell me about it.” Lately her world had seemed to spin totally out of control. And Dom’s arrival, with his warnings of doom and gloom, certainly did nothing to slow down the crazy tilting. “So, who is he?”

Jill’s face transformed into pure sunshine. “Oh, he’s the most wonderful guy.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

Jill giggled, making her look twelve. “It was such a coincidence. I met him at the club.” Meaning the Marston Country Club on Flint Bridge Road, where all the who’s who went to be seen. The only time anyone saw Luci there was when she delivered her organic vegetables, herbs and sauces—at the rear entrance, of course. “He was meeting a client for lunch and we literally ran into each other.”

A five-alarm warning jangled in Luci’s head. Oh, Jilly, how could you fall for the oldest trick in the book? “How long ago was that?”

Jill cheered Jeff on, even though he was just standing on the field, pushing up his glasses and watching the ball roll by. “A couple of weeks ago.”

“So, tell me more.” Luci kept her voice light, curious and panic free, even though the panic was digging needles in her chest.

“He’s a dream. A real gentleman. He’s a private investigator. Isn’t that just so fascinating? You should see his office. It’s right on Main Street in Nashua, and he has it fixed up like a movie set.”

The better to play you with, Jilly. What was she going to do? If she tried telling Jill she was being conned, Jill would simply turn on her and accuse Luci of jealousy. “So I get to meet him tomorrow?”

“Yes. Mom and Dad’ll be there, too.”

Great, just what Luci needed—more criticism.

“Warren’s going to grill some hamburgers for the kids, then he’ll make some salmon steaks for the adults.”

Oh, no, he was using downright dirty tactics to worm his way into Jill’s heart. A man who could cook. Jill’s soft spot. He was showing her he could take care of her every need. “Can I bring anything?”

Jill’s nose wrinkled up in a cute, sassy way, as if she’d expected Luci’s offer all along. “How about one of your apple tortes? Warren loves apples.”

Luci cleared her throat at the sickening display of gush. With any luck, Warren’s next apple pie would come courtesy of the corrections system. “Okay, sure.”

Brendan kicked the ball straight at his cousin, giving him a chance to get into the play.

Jeff aimed his foot at the ball, managed to clip it with the side of his cleat and fell down hard on his backside. The referee blew the whistle. The coach trotted onto the field and helped Jeff up. The crowd clapped. Once on the sideline, Jeff made a beeline for his mother.

“I fell down.” Jeff sniffled and held up his arms. Jill, who’d jumped up when Jeff fell, crouched down to his eye level and let her son wrap his grubby arms around her pale pink cashmere sweater.

“I saw that.”

“Brendan passed the ball to me, and—” Jeff hiccuped.

“And I saw you kick it right back to him. That was a good play. Way to be a team player!”

Jeff pulled away from Jill, smearing dirt on the collar of her sweater, and beamed. “Yeah. I made a play.”

Jill pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at Jeff’s grass-stained knee. “You’re having fun, right?”

He nodded. Jill kissed his cheek, leaving behind the red imprint of her lipstick. “Well, that’s all that matters.”

She patted his bottom and urged him back toward his team.

“So what else do you know about this guy?” Luci asked and tried very hard to sound as if the answer didn’t matter. “What’s his name again? I mean, it seems like he came out of nowhere.”

“It wasn’t nowhere.” Soiled handkerchief held between two fingers, Jill swiveled her head looking for a place to dispose of the offending square of material. “I told you. I met Warren at the club. I ran into him when I was late for a meeting, then Amber Fitzgerald introduced us. You know her. She runs the fitness center on Marketplace Road.”

“Amber isn’t exactly known for her stellar taste.” She reminded Luci of a little drab brown mouse.

Jill pinched her lips, as if she were holding back a comment, then said, “Warren moved here last month from Florida, if you must know. The last hurricane tore down his office and he decided to move up north instead of rebuilding.”

“He might regret that come January,” Luci muttered. More likely he wouldn’t even be here, if Dom was right. He’d be long gone with all of Jill’s assets. God, Luci didn’t want Dom to be right. How would Jill support her son? How would she get over another betrayal? Luci wanted everything to stay as it was, even if it meant she’d always be banned from the country club dining room and sniggered at by the other moms. At least everyone she loved would remain safe.

“Well, that’s why we have airplanes,” Jill said. “We can vacation somewhere warm.”

Already Jill saw herself and Warren as a couple. Not good. The guy was moving fast. Another sign of a con man. Dazzle and disappear before the stars in the mark’s eyes faded and she quite knew what had happened to her.

Jill stalked to the green garbage barrel by the parking lot and dumped her linen handkerchief.

That’s when Luci noticed the truck. Big, bold and Aggie burgundy. Obviously, her days as a sniper hyper-aware of her surroundings were long gone if she’d managed to miss a truck like that following her.

Luci tried her best to ignore Dom and his truck with its smoked glass, but her gaze kept drifting to the parking lot. Every sight of him would remind her of danger, of death, of everything she thought she’d left behind after Cole had died. Risk was no longer part of the equation of her life. She didn’t want it back.

But there was no point pretending Warren hadn’t already established a toehold in Jill’s life. The trick was making sure he didn’t get the rest of the foot in. She still had a few contacts. She’d verify what Dom had told her and make sure Jill wasn’t hurt.

“I know how much J.J. hurt you when he left,” Luci said once Jill had returned. “You wouldn’t mind if I ran a background check on Warren, would you?”

“Oh, no.” Jill shook a finger at her. “You are going to leave Warren alone. He’s a good man, and I don’t want you ruining this for me. What is it with you anyway? Why can’t you ever be happy for me?”

“Of course I’m happy for you, Jill. But you’re my little sister, and I don’t want to see you hurt again.”

“Warren would never hurt me.” Jill’s face turned soft and besotted again. “He cares for me. He takes care of me. He gave me this.”

Jill plucked a small gold chain from under her sweater. A thumbnail-size diamond glittered in the afternoon sun, nearly blinding Luci with its brilliance. “He says it reminds him of my smile.”

Cubic zirconium, no doubt. “It’s, um, pretty.”

“It’s beautiful, and I’d love it even if it was paste.”

Oh, God, Jill was in deep already. Warren was giving her gifts, gaining her confidence. How soon before he started asking her for money?

Jill lifted her chin and wrinkled her nose in that cute way she did when she was trying to hold back a smile. “Did you know you should check your credit report every year? You know, in case someone has bad information or is trying to steal your identity.”

“Really?” No, no, no, Jilly, you didn’t fall for that, did you? Now he has all your financial information at his fingertips. The better to rob you blind with.

“Yes, and everything’s just fine.”

Of course it was. If it wasn’t, Warren would have moved on to fatter prey. Luci glanced at Dom’s truck and cursed him for plopping this mess in her lap.

Jill craned her neck in the direction of Luci’s preoccupation. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s who?”

“The guy in the burgundy truck.”

“An old friend.” Luci had given up hunting a long time ago. But she couldn’t just stand by and watch her sister be used and tossed aside. She had to do something. “He came to town unexpectedly.”

“What kind of old friend?”

“Just a friend, Jill.” At her sister’s pout, Luci softened her tone. “Can I bring him to dinner on Saturday?”

Jill smirked. “But of course, Lucinda Louise. It’s about time you found yourself a boyfriend.”

“He’s not a boyfriend. Just a friend.”

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say. Bring him.” From the middle of the field a whistle shrilled and a thunder of cheers rose. “Looks like the game’s over. Meet you at The Leaning Pizza?”

“Can you take Brendan for me? I’ll meet you later.”

“Sure, take your time.” Jill glanced at Dom’s truck and slanted Luci a knowing smile. “If you’re not there by the time we’re ready to leave, I’ll just take Brendan home with us.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Jill brushed at the dog hair decorating the front of Luci’s sweatshirt. “Luci, you have to loosen up a bit.”

Luci pantomimed a stringless puppet. “I’m so loose I can’t keep track of time.”

“Not that kind of loose.” Jill tilted her head to one side, meeting Luci’s gaze. “You need friends. You need fun. You need—” she leaned forward, cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered “—sex.”

The sizzling sound of the word kicked Luci’s midriff with an almost forgotten punch. “That is not the answer to everything.”

Especially not with Dom. He knew too much about her. He’d seen the black mark on her soul. He’d once been a friend. But he could never be a lover. And Luci certainly hoped Jill’s relationship with Warren The Worm hadn’t progressed to that intimate stage.

Jill waggled her eyebrows. “But it sure makes everything rosy.”

Luci barely managed to swallow her groan. So much for that hope. Warren had obviously wowed Jill in bed, too.

Jeff and Brendan pounded their way toward their parent. Each grabbed one of Jill’s hands and started dragging her toward her Lexus SUV. “Come on, Mom.”

“Come on, Auntie Jill. It’s pizza time!” The DVD player was the big pull for Brendan wanting to ride with his aunt to the post-game party.

Jill pretended helpless worry at her captors’ strength. Head thrown back, laughing, she let the boys lead her away. “Guess I’d better go. Take your time.”

“Come on, Mom,” Brendan called over his shoulder.

“I’ll be there in a bit. Be good for Aunt Jill.”

Jill’s retort was lost in the confusion of little boy rambunctiousness.

Dragging her uncooperative folding chair behind her, Luci reluctantly made her way to Dom’s truck at the edge of the now near empty parking lot and rapped her knuckles against the passenger’s side window. The tinted glass wound down silently and smoothly.

Her heart rate doubled as his face appeared. The soft blue of his eyes was filled with compassion, as if he truly understood the depth of the wound on her soul and the toll his presence was taking on her. He’d loved Cole, too, and Cole was the one thing they could never discuss if they were to make it through until Jill’s predator was behind bars. “We need to talk.”

DOM REACHED ACROSS the truck’s cab for the passenger door handle, but Luci clamped a hand around the door and held it firmly in place. She stood there, not saying anything, the wide yawn of the years gaping black and empty between them, a burned-out territory neither of them wanted to revisit. Too much guilt. Too much regret. Too much helplessness.

“Luci—”

“Show me everything you have on this guy who’s preying on Jill.” Luci’s green eyes were scowling slits. Spikes of ripe wheat hair stuck out from the long braid twisting over her shoulder. He couldn’t decide if the redness of her cheeks was due to the coolness of the breeze or the heat of her anger.

“Most of my files are back at the office.”

“Talk then. That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”

The negotiator was always the man in the middle, and that seemed to have been Dom’s position from Day One. He was the middle child, the go-between for his parents and his brothers. The third wheel between Luci and Cole.

And now he was the outsider who was coming between two sisters.

“I’ll talk, Luce. Question is, are you ready to listen?”

Her lips tightened into a straight, hard line. “He conned Jill into giving him the information he needed to run a credit check on her.”

Dom didn’t like seeing a thin shell of the bright, vibrant woman he’d once known. “He’s moving faster than usual.”

Swanson had already gained his mark’s confidence and was stepping up to the next stage. Soon he’d start asking for money. A bit here to tide him over while he waited for a check to come in. A bit there while he waited for a client to pay a bill. And Jill, flush with the soft and fuzzy blanket of new love, would gladly fork it over.

“Usual?” Luci asked, frowning as if she had a headache. “How many times has he done this?”

“I’ve managed to track down four. Jill is number five.”

Luci closed her eyes and swallowed hard. How much was it costing her to hold herself together? The years had deepened the lines of sorrow around her eyes, but hadn’t diminished her beauty. Something about the softness of her features, the fullness of her lips, the grounding green of her eyes made him want to sigh, snuggle close and surrender. His chest filled with a constricting ache he dispatched with a cough.

“Jill’s a sweet girl, you know.” Luci picked at the weather stripping of the window. Once, saving the innocent had been as much a part of Luci’s mission in life as it was his. But this situation and his presence here kicked Cole and his death square into the present and punted pain deep into her soft green eyes.

“That just makes it easier for him.”

Luci nodded, a resignation. “Walk me through what he’s done.”

Dom didn’t like to see defeat weigh her down like this. She’d already suffered so much. He wanted to make this as easy for her as possible, but wasn’t sure how when she’d made it so clear there was no room for him in her life and never would be. He pushed the door on the passenger’s side open. This time, she let him. “Sit a spell, Luce.”

She hesitated, then climbed into the cab, folding her long legs as far away from him as she could. Her knees pressed close together. Her hands cupped the worn-down white ovals on the knees of her jeans. Her gaze centered on her lap, as if even looking at him was unbearable. How often had he dreamed of those legs, of that hair, of her? She smelled of peppermint and something else, rosemary, maybe. He forced himself to lean away into the window rather than forward to sniff at the intriguing scent and the complex knot of emotion she tied in him.

“I need to get back to my son soon. Just give me the Cliff’s Notes on this guy.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “You have half an hour.”

Chapter Three

Dom reached back and pulled an envelope from behind his seat. He shuffled photographs, then handed her the top picture. The air in the cab had grown unbearably warm. Luci dragged her sweaty palms over the thighs of her jeans before she accepted the first bit of concrete proof that Jill was in danger.

“The first victim was Katheryn Chamber, twenty-six, from Seattle, Washington,” Dom said, the rhythm of his voice soothing in spite of the harsh nature of his subject. “She was a dot-com millionaire, divorced with a seven-year-old son. Her blond husband went by the name of Wade Bilski and passed himself off as a U.S. Marshal. She met him on a day cruise to Canada and married him within a month. A month later, he left her with nothing, except her house and the stock that was in her son’s name.”

Dom plucked a second photograph from the pile and slid it across the seat. “The second victim was Sharlene Vardeman, twenty-nine, from San Diego, California. The bulk of her wealth came from the division of assets after her divorce from a Napa Valley winery heir. She also had a seven-year-old son. She met Wesley Ripp at a naval hospital charity function and married him within a few weeks. Her bald Navy SEAL left her before the end of the honeymoon. All she had left was her house, her son and whatever investments she’d had in her son’s name.”

A third photo arrived in her hands. She fumbled the pass with fingers that suddenly seemed too thick to move.

Dom cleared his throat. “Victim number three was Carissa Esslinger, twenty-seven, from Portland, Oregon. She inherited her wealth and managed to keep most of it after her divorce. She also had full custody of her seven-year-old son. Wayne Edgeman, her redheaded SWAT officer, pulled her out of her crushed car after a traffic accident while he was off-duty. Three weeks later, they were married. Five days later, he was gone and so were her savings and investments, except for those in her son’s name.”

Dom passed over a fourth picture. It weighed down her palm as if it were made of lead.

“Laynie McDaniels, twenty-nine, victim number four, had the misfortune to bump into Willis Morehouse at one of her parents’ parties,” Dom continued. “He was a visiting guest brought along by an invited guest. The border agent with his black hair and dark eyes swept her off her feet while they danced. The oil heiress gave him everything he wanted, except what was in her seven-year-old son’s name. When he left her, hours after their return from their honeymoon, she chased him down and ended up dead.”

Victim number five was Jill. And Luci already had a feeling where that story was heading. “Laynie McDaniels was the first woman to die after being scammed.”

“We’re floating around two theories about her death,” Dom said, all business, as if they were back in a briefing room. That’s what she’d wanted wasn’t it? To keep this whole situation on a professional level?

“One,” he continued, “is that she feared her parents’ reaction to the squandering of her wealth and she ended her life rather than deal with the shame. Because the medical examiner’s findings were inconclusive, the cops investigating the case felt the evidence pointed in that direction. The second theory is that she found her husband in the motel room where a maid discovered her hanging body and that he killed her.”

“You told me she was killed, so you’re siding with theory number two. Any evidence?”

Dom shook his head, his jaw tightening with frustration. “None that would impress a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. If Swanson was there that night, he did a good job cleaning up after himself.”

“What about forensics at the scene?”

“An empty bottle of water in the wastebasket with Laynie’s prints on it. At least a dozen unknown fingerprints. A common, everyday shirt button that could have belonged to any of the room’s previous occupants.”

“Who booked the room?” Luci asked, her mind trying to go back to a time when this kind of questioning was second nature.

“The registration was in another woman’s name. Paid in cash.”

“Could be anybody, then.” Luci scanned Laynie’s photograph. Laynie’s dark brown eyes sparkled with joy and kindness—like Jill’s. Luci bit the inside of her cheek pensively. She couldn’t say why, but she was sure Laynie wouldn’t have abandoned her son that way. Too cruel for such a soft woman. “Which brings me back to why did he kill her?”

“If we knew that, we’d be ahead of the game. Maybe she just couldn’t let go and he felt he had to take that drastic measure to cut her off and move on.”

Something didn’t sound right. Luci flicked her braid over her shoulder. “What if she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see? He took a different name with each woman. What if she’d discovered something about his next identity? What if that’s the reason she ended up dead? If she could tell police who he was going to be next, then he couldn’t afford to let her blab. What showed up between the time her husband disappeared and the time she was found?”

“She never woke up from her coma. We never got to talk to her personally. Everything in her file, we got secondhand from her mother and her friends. I’ll let you read the interviews.”

Aware of the heat discharging from Dom’s body, she studied Laynie once again, wishing the dead woman could speak. “Did anyone look into her phone records?”

“Of course, we traced them back. Cell and landline. All her calls were to her mother. None after her teary call, saying that Willis had disappeared. We looked at her credit card purchases and came up with a gas receipt. Nothing else.” Dom handed her four other photographs—men this time.

Luci lined up each “husband’s” photo in a row. Warren had managed to keep the photographer far enough away that details were hard to extrapolate. “There’s just enough difference to make you wonder if it’s the same person or someone he happens to resemble.”

Dom’s hand brushed hers as he pointed out the differences. The heat of his skin jolted through her.

“The hairstyles and color change,” Dom said. “So does the weight. These are things he can easily manipulate.”

“But some things stay the same.” Luci frowned and focused on the photos. She didn’t have time to let herself get distracted by Dom and the shipwreck of emotions he seemed to raise from her. Jill’s future depended on her figuring out the key that unlocked Warren’s secrets.

“His eye color,” Dom said. “He could use colored contacts, but for some reason, he doesn’t. And each woman also described an Alpha Omega tattoo on his left pec.”

“Hard to hide a tattoo from someone you’re intimate with.” Luci shuddered. Intimacy. Warren had gotten Jill into bed quickly and easily. “Is that part of his pattern? Using sex to dull any alarm bells that might try to ring?”

“It’s worked five times so far.”

Luci spread each photo of the various incarnations of Warren on the dashboard. Below, she placed a picture of his victims. “None of the women look similar. They range from tall to short, from plump to skinny, from blond to brunette.”

“He’s more interested in their investments than their looks.”

“But still, there has to be some reason he picked them.”

“Opportunity’s a big part of it.”

Luci twirled the end of her braid between her fingers. “But he seems to make his own opportunities—the cruise, the party. He bumped into Jill at the country club. He has to stalk them ahead of time to know where they’re going to be, how to run into them in a way that doesn’t spook them.”

Dom raked both hands through his hair. “He likes water, so he heads for cities near the water. Bigger cities give him the cover to pop up in those places and make it look like fate.”

“That doesn’t fit Austin. Yes, it’s a city, but it’s not near water.”

“Laynie’s parents have a home on Galveston and a big yacht to cruise the gulf. That’s where he met her.”

The calm measure of his voice softened the jagged edges cutting hers, made her want to lean on him. She tried to ignore the buzz that heated her blood whenever his arm or his hand brushed close to her.

“Okay,” Luci said, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, forcing herself to focus on Warren. “So he likes water. Why? What does it mean? That he was brought up near water? Jill said he was from Florida. Is that his home base?”

“Or his base of operations.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The Social Security numbers.” Dom listed them. “They all have the same first three numbers. What state do you think that prefix belongs to?”

“Florida?” she guessed.

He nodded once. “They’re all real. They all belong to the name listed.”

“I see dead people?”

Dom’s rough bark of laughter rolled inside her like summer thunder. “No, they don’t belong to dead people—just made-up ones.”

“Okay, so he bought the Social Security numbers along with the rest of his ID in Florida or from someone with Florida connections. Florida’s a big state with a lot of shoreline. How are we going to find his point of operation?”

Dom huffed out a breath that hinted at his frustration. “We’ll keep combing the haystack until the sun hits the needle.”

That would take time Jill didn’t have. Somewhere in this information was a clue she was overlooking. Luci was sure of it. “Other than their large bank accounts, all the women had one other thing in common. A seven-year-old son.”

Dom’s mouth tightened. “The young child is part of his pattern. We’re thinking that he sees the woman having a child as making her more vulnerable, an easier mark.”

“Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. Look at the pattern. Not just any young child. Always seven-year-old boys. Never a girl. Not six or eight or twelve. Always seven. There has to be a reason.” Luci swallowed hard. The importance of that fact scraped her throat raw as it went down. “Jill has a seven-year-old boy.”

Keeping his voice calm and cool, Dom told her how he’d followed the con man’s footsteps from Texas, the place of his last con, along the coast to Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, waiting for a chance to catch him in the act. “He’s armed, Luci. He hasn’t used a weapon yet, but I’ve seen him carry.”

She blew out a breath, just as if she were getting ready to squeeze a trigger. She’d tried to outrun herself, but beneath the harried suburbanite there still hid an expert marksman. He just had to remind her she’d once loved the hunt for justice.

“Do you know who he really is?” she asked, staring out the window as if she were scouting for the enemy.

“No. I’m still trying to work back to that.”

She shifted her attention to his face. Her braid slinked forward over her shoulder like pale gold silk. The heat of her gaze burned all the way to his gut. He forced his shoulders to relax, his face to remain neutral, his pulse to slow.

An orange-streaked sky blazed behind her. The breeze ruffled the rough shear of the bangs that framed her eyes. His fingers itched to brush the strands back, to tangle with the wispy softness of her hair. He slipped his fingers beneath his thighs and waited.

“So what next?” she asked, gaze flicking back out the windshield of the truck.

The rules of negotiation were simple enough: know your opponent, understand the challenge, introduce new alternatives, set the rules and go for the agreement. He knew Luci, all right, knew what made her tick, what made her laugh, what made her cry. He understood that after Cole’s death she’d tried to reinvent herself, that nothing could be the same. So he had to concentrate on her love for her family, on her worry for Jill, on her need to preserve her personal circle of safety. He had to make sure he gave her the opportunity to suggest alternatives. Working indirectly would work better with someone strong like Luci. And he somehow had to get her to agree to let him step back into her life, even though every minute in his presence would remind her of Cole and the way he’d died.

“Well, here’s the stickler,” Dom said, keeping his voice flat. “Even with a file full of this guy’s predation, there isn’t a D.A. in the country who’ll want to take on the case unless I can prove he had criminal intent going in. Now you and I know that all he sees in Jill is dollar signs, but the D.A. feels the court will see only a fighting couple disagreeing on distribution of wealth. Not much sympathy for either party there from a jury. No D.A. will take on a case he doesn’t feel he can win.”

“If they can’t get him on the scam, why don’t they get him on identity fraud?”

Dom shrugged. “He doesn’t steal his IDs. He builds them. Here, too, I need proof of criminal intent to defraud.”

She flipped her braid back with a quick jerk of her hand. “So you’re saying there’s nothing we can do.”

“There’s plenty we can do, but we’ll have to be imaginative about it. Now if I come in and confront this guy with accusations, no matter how many pieces of paper I can pull out of my file to prove my point, what do you think’s going to happen?”

Luci waved about an invisible magic wand. “Presto, change-o, gone.”

“Right. And I’d have to start all over again. So here’s my quandary. How do I get close to a man who doesn’t want to get close to anyone but his pigeon?”

Gaze narrowed, she still scoured the soccer fields and the edge of oaks and pines beyond as if she expected some sort of monster to pop up. “You play his game. You get someone else, who isn’t seen as a threat, to introduce you.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

A muscle rippled on Luci’s tension-tight cheek. “And that’s me.”

“I need to get close to him, Luce. If I show up as your friend, he won’t suspect I’m on his tail. He’ll buy my presence and my attempt at friendliness. And if I stop him now, he won’t hurt anyone else.”

“How’s that going to work? If he’s as good as you say he is, won’t he just look you up and know you’re lying? After all, Jill says he’s a private detective.”

“Not the way I’ve got things set up.”

“Are you using a pseudonym?” The skin on her knuckles was getting redder, the tips of her fingers whiter.

She may want to pretend she didn’t care, but she did. And not just for Jill; for Swanson’s possible next victim, too. “Easier to use my own name in this case because we have football in common. Gives us a starting position for conversation. Nothing shows I don’t want to. What he’ll find is that I’m an insurance salesman from Houston. He’ll see I was just transferred to Holliday & Houghlin in Nashua.”

“Won’t he find a real estate deed for your current residence?”

“Nope, it’s under a corporation name. On paper, Dominic Skyralov doesn’t own a thing. Even this truck is a brand-new rental.”

“So where am I supposed to say you’re staying?” Her voice was pricklier than a bed of cacti.

“Well, darlin’, that’s where imagination comes in.”

Eyes wide with panic, she jerked her head in his direction. Old hostilities bubbled up and spilled over. “No, absolutely not. I’m not inviting you to stay at my home. I have a young son to think about. That won’t work.”

Dom slung an arm carelessly over the back of the seat, trying to keep his body relaxed and nonthreatening. “Swanson’s last mark is dead.”

“Then stay with Jill. She’s the one in danger. Not me.”

“I don’t think Swanson’d be too happy about that. He seems like the jealous type, especially now that he’s so close to his prize.”

“So how do I explain your presence in my home?”

Dom shrugged. “We’re old friends, and you’re letting me use your couch until I find a place to settle down. She’s at the falling in love stage—everything is rosy and perfect. He’s a good talker. Look at what he’s already talked her into doing and he bumped into her only two weeks ago.”

Watching Luci struggle with the conflict of hatred and love, of duty and fear, pulling her in two directions, cut hard. The last thing he’d wanted was to hurt her.

“Okay,” she said, “come with me to dinner on Saturday.”

Relief sagged the tense muscles of his stomach. “That’s all I want, Luce. A chance to stop him before anyone else gets hurt.”

She reached for the door and pushed it open. “Tell me what information you need. I’ll get it for you while you talk to him.”

“I’ll need Jill’s identifiers and the number of any account he could deplete. I’ll have our computer expert put a flag on them. We’ll be able to tell when he starts pilfering and catch him red-handed.”

“Okay.”

She started to scoot out and he held her back, the warm feel of her sweatshirt a treat for his fingers.

“Saturday dinner,” she said, a cloud of pain dulling the green of her eyes. “That’s all I can commit to right now.”

“Well, darlin’, at this point, I’ll take anything I can get.” Even if it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy him.

Her clogs crushed the gravel as she exited the truck. She looked him up and down. “Do you own anything other than jeans? My parents’ll be there, too, and they don’t approve of denim.”

He let a grin bloom on one side of his face. “Tell you what, I’ll even shower and shave. It’ll be nice to see your folks again.” The only time he’d met them was at Cole’s funeral—not the best of circumstances. They’d probably forgotten the handshake and condolences. Cole had had so many friends, in and out of the Marshalls Service.

She shut the door, and letting her walk away, even after such a short time, hurt all over again.

After a few steps, she turned back, the ghosts of the past flitting in her eyes. “I was just getting over August, Dom. Why’d you have to come back?”

Dom stared at her eyes, reflecting his own demons back at him, then glanced away like a guilty man. Because August still weighed on his conscience, too. Cole’s death was his fault and he couldn’t bear the thought of her in pain again over someone she loved—or that he couldn’t be the man to comfort her. “To keep you safe and happy, Luce. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

DARK SURROUNDED HER, sucked at her, dragged her under. Her breath rasped in her ears. Sweat stuck T-shirt to skin, holding her prisoner in that airless black beneath the sheets. The more she fought, the tighter the bonds got, the thinner the air got. The smell of cordite and blood stung her nostrils, pinched her lungs. The ring of discharge scrambled her brain.

But even as she fought the dark, she pleaded for its protective cover. It never listened. The darkness always cleared, bringing soul-ripping pain that doubled her over with nausea.

Man down! Man down!

Cole. Right there in her scope. So close. So far away. His brown hair sticky with red. His brown eyes wide with surprise, lifeless. His blood a halo around his head. Dead.

Keeping him safe had been her job and she’d failed. When it had really mattered, all the training, all the practice, all the preparation had fallen short.

A fraction of a second. A millimeter of space.

And the man she’d loved was gone.

Her mistake. No matter how she looked at it. Her fault.

She’d proved in the most graphic of ways she wasn’t good enough.

She’d thought of giving up, of letting the darkness take her along with Cole, but Cole, with his life-lived-to-the-utmost wish, would have disapproved. Then there was Brendan, the tiny seed there in her belly.

Cole hadn’t known. She barely had.

For a while, she’d only gone through the motions, been nothing but a living dead. Dom’s voice, always Dom’s voice, calm and cool, trying to talk her back into the horrid world she’d created.

Her husband was dead. His child grew in her womb. So she did the only thing she could; she ran.

She ran from city to city, looking for something, anything that would connect her to a sense of support. But every time she’d thought she’d found salvation, it crumbled beneath her feet, leaving her weaker than before. She couldn’t outrun the ghosts. They chased her everywhere—her mother’s reproach, her husband’s bloody body, her friend’s hypnotic voice.

Then Brendan was born and she’d had to find a higher level of functioning for his sake. Moving from place to place had made no sense. So she’d come home. The farm and its constant need for toil had saved her.

Living still hurt. But she was holding her little world together and Brendan was growing up into a happy boy with a zest for life as big as his father’s. She would do everything in her power to keep him safe.

A glance at the clock’s red numbers showed her she’d gotten a few hours’ worth of sleep. She tossed off the sweat-dampened sheet and blanket. Four in the morning wasn’t that early. From experience she knew sleep was done for the night. Lying in bed would mean sleeping with ghosts.

Bleary-eyed, she made her way to the bathroom with its sea-colored tiles and crawled under the showerhead, letting warm water wash away the sticky filaments of her nightmare.

She had enough goat’s milk left over to cook up a batch of soap. Might as well get started. She had the pesto, herb logs and vinaigrette she’d made last night to deliver later this morning. Maybe she’d make an outing out of it and take Brendan out for pancakes at The Sugar Barn. Then she had the breeding for Fanny, Faye and Fiona, her dairy goats, to arrange, the green manure to sow in her gardens and the greenhouses to finish setting up. Not to mention the torte she’d promised to bake for Jill’s shindig this afternoon. If she were lucky, she’d be tired enough to sleep again tonight.

Luci buffed her body dry with a towel, left the bathroom and slipped on a sweatshirt and work jeans. Her head pounded in a drum that beat in time to the queasy roll in her stomach. Work would take care of that; it always did.

Before going downstairs, she peeked in on Brendan. Maggie, sleeping at the foot of the bed, lifted her head and banged her tail against the footboard in a way that said, “Guilty as charged. Can I stay?”

Brendan was lying sheets akimbo as if he’d fought off an army of dream monsters. Cole had been like that, too, active even in sleep. With his eyes closed, her son looked like his father—spikes of dark hair, a ready-to-smile mouth, a stubborn square chin that told the world he knew what he wanted and no one was going to get in his way. The only thing Brendan had inherited from her was his green eyes. His looks made forgetting Cole impossible. But none of her guilt would taint her son if she could help it.

Without turning on a light, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen, where she slipped on her barn clogs and grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill. Outside, September chill wriggled its fingers into the weave of her sweatshirt, raising goose bumps. Soon, the first killing frost would come. She had a lot of work to do before then.

As she stepped into the yard, more than the coolness of the night shivered down her spine. Something or someone had disturbed the equilibrium of her farm’s peaceful atmosphere. She flashed her light around the yard, but could see nothing out of place.

Reverting to old technique, she turned off the light and edged her way to the barn in a toes-to-heel stride that kept her footfalls near silent. The well-oiled barn door slid smoothly on its runners. She knew the location of every shadow, every scent, every movement. Finding the one out of place didn’t take long. She moved in on it, slowly but surely.

Dom.

He slept on a bed of straw in the empty stall near the enclosure the goats shared. Fanny and Faye ignored him, but doeling Fiona seemed intrigued by the hair she couldn’t quite reach through the wooden planks with her tongue. Wrinkles pleated his forehead, as if his sleep wasn’t any more restful than hers. Was Cole haunting him, too?

Was the menacing growl of Dom’s truck what had started her dream? Why was he here? Hadn’t he caused enough trouble for one day?

The sight of Dom there, his big body lax in sleep knocked her back as if someone had pulled a carpet from beneath her feet. Memories seeped through the wall of pain her mind fought to keep up. Dom’s soothing voice. Cole’s bright laugher. The friendly kidding, the easy camaraderie that turned into fierce support when needed. How often had she woken up to find Dom sacked out on the couch, looking just like this?

No one had wanted her on the team, least of all Cole. But Dom had played negotiator from the start and, somehow, the three of them had become the best of friends. Those four years on the team were the best in her life and part of her yearned for that easy companionship.

For that brief reprieve in time, she’d belonged.

She clutched the flashlight more tightly in her hand. Don’t go there, Luci. That’s not the answer.

She flicked the switch on the flashlight and shone its light in Dom’s face. “What are you doing here?”

Dom jolted upright, ready to defend himself, then relaxed when he realized whose voice had roused him from a deep sleep. “I should’ve known you’d find me.”

He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the bright light. “What are you doing up so early?”

Why don’t you sit a spell, Luce, tell me what’s on your mind? How often had Dom said that to her with his molasses drawl? How often had she done exactly that? Sagged into the comfort of his broad chest and cried her eyes out, spilling out her sad secrets while he listened without reproach? I’m trying to outrun nightmares. You should know that by now. But he was the last person she needed to share these dark dreams with. “This is a working farm. I work.”

“Not usually this early.” He rose, brushing straw from his jeans.

She flashed the light back into his eyes. “You’ve been watching me?”

“I had to weigh, Luce,” he said, taking the flashlight from her hand and resting it on top of the stall wall. “I had to figure out which would hurt you less, breaking my promise to you or working around you to try to help your sister.”

That was one thing about Dom, he was a man of his word. After he’d coached her through Brendan’s birth, and while she was still swimming in post-partum hormones, she’d made him promise never to see her again. He’d kept his word these past six years. Even with felons, he went with truth as often as he could. Using people wasn’t his style. He wanted everyone comfortable and happy.

That wasn’t apt to happen this time. Jill was going to get hurt, and nothing would ever quite be the same. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re entertaining my goats with your snores.”

He wiped one hand over his mouth as if reluctant to admit the truth. “Guilt. I let you down. I need to know you’ll be okay.”

Guilt she could understand. She sagged on a bale of straw outside the stall, the wooden wall still between them, and clasped her hands around one knee. “I talked to Renwick last night.”

Picking up the phone had taken much more courage than Luci cared to admit. After her less-than-cozy chat with her old boss, she’d stayed up past midnight, too hyped up on adrenaline and worry to find her way around to sleep.

“That couldn’t have been easy. Especially after the way he treated you.” Renwick had not been amused by Luci’s and Cole’s secret wedding. Rules strictly forbid family from working on the same team.

A note of hurt cracked the low, slow richness of Dom’s voice. “You thought I’d lied?”

“I—” Her shoulder lifted in a hesitant jerk. Sharing Brendan’s birth with him had bonded them in a way that had scared her. Turning to him then had been a moment of weakness she couldn’t repeat. The last thing she’d needed was a reminder of her failure every day of her life. The sight of Dom would always pull along the memory of Cole. She wasn’t strong enough to endure that torture. “I had to hear it from someone else.”

“Fair enough.”

She picked at the hole starting to fray on the knee of her jeans. “How’d Warren—or whoever he is—find Jill?”

“Her divorce probably made the papers. The Walden and the Courville names often make the society pages. She makes an easy target.” Dom leaned his forearms against the top of the stall and looked down at her. “I’ll do this however you want, Luci. I won’t let you or your sister get hurt.”

She could kid herself that the past didn’t matter. But it did. Every day she lived with that truth. She had to wash Cole’s blood out of her eyes every morning before she could put on her mom-skin for Brendan. And every time she looked at her son’s dark hair and smiling face, guilt pinged in her heart. She’d taken his father from him. He’d missed out on what fathers and sons did together, those manly rituals a woman could never hope to understand. J.J., Jill’s ex, was a good father to Jeff, but he’d never wanted to include Brendan in their father-and-son times.

Every instinct sharpened and honed by grief shouted that allowing Dom to stay was a mistake. Another vivid reminder that her son was growing up without a father. But her arrogance had already cost her the man she loved. She couldn’t risk her sister’s life because of pride. For Jill, she’d endure the torture. “The guest room is off the living room. I’ll get you some clean sheets.”

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