Shot in Darkness
In Darkness Book Four
Heather Sunseri
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Contents
Also by Heather Sunseri
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Desired in Darkness
Desired in Darkness - Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Also by Heather Sunseri
About the Author
Also by Heather Sunseri
PAYNES CREEK THRILLERS
Death is in the Details
Truth is in the Darkness
The Secret is in the Bones
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THE IN DARKNESS SERIES
Exposed in Darkness
Cut in Darkness
Covered in Darkness
Shot in Darkness
Desired in Darkness
* * *
SPECIAL IN DARKNESS STORY
(Sequel to Cut in Darkness)
Free to Newsletter Subscribers
Protected in Darkness
* * *
THE INTERNATIONAL THIEF SERIES
A Thief Revealed
A Thief Consumed
A Thief Obsessed
* * *
THE MINDSPEAK SERIES
Mindspeak
Mindsiege
Mindsurge
Tracked
Deceived
* * *
THE EMERGE SERIES
Emerge
Uprising
Renaissance
The Meeting (A short story)
Shot in Darkness
Heather Sunseri
http://heathersunseri.com
* * *
Copyright © 2017 Heather Sunseri
eBook Edition
Sun Publishing
* * *
This work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review or article.
Chapter 1
Bradley Archer
I checked and double-checked the contents of the trunk of my BMW M5: Glock, Heckler & Koch PSG semiautomatic sniper rifle, ammunition (three clips for the Glock). I was still waiting on what I needed for the H&K, but I had checked this morning: it would be here in time.
My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my back pocket. My mother, calling for the fourth time that hour. I ignored it, again.
My nosy neighbors came walking along the alley behind my house, pushing a stroller. “Hi, Bradley,” the woman sang in her annoying southern accent. “How are you doing tonight?”
She was dressed in yoga pants, a hot pink sweater set, and pearls. I was willing to bet she’d never stepped foot inside a yoga studio. And who went for a walk in pearls?
“It’s such beautiful evening, isn’t it?” she added when I didn’t respond.
Her husband smiled uncomfortably beside her. Why couldn’t he put a muzzle on his wife?
I lifted a hand and waved. “I’m good, thank you.” I flashed them a smile that got me laid most nights, then muttered under my breath, “You stupid bitch. Why don’t you mind your own business?”
“Hey, man.” The husband started toward me, and I very slowly lowered the lid to my trunk. “I’m having some of the guys from work over to watch some football tomorrow night. You’re welcome to join us.”
His wife giggled while touching a manicured hand to her husband’s arm. “We’re making more of an effort to get to know everyone on the street.”
How did they not realize that I didn’t even know their names? We’d been neighbors for more than a year, yet I’d never been to their house, and the only time they’d been to mine was the day after I moved in, when the nosy woman—eight months pregnant at the time and bigger than an elephant—had pushed her way into my kitchen to deliver a disgusting-smelling casserole that I was shoving down the garbage disposal before she even made it back to the sidewalk.
“Thank you. That’s kind of you, but I already have plans.”
“Oh. Well, all right, bro,” the clueless husband said. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.” He pointed down the street, giving me no idea which house they actually lived in.
Whatever was in the stroller fussed, and the woman knelt in front of it and adjusted the blanket. “Looks like somebody’s hungry,” she said in a voice that was supposed to be… I don’t know… cute or something. It annoyed the hell out of me.
She picked up the kid and patted it gently on the back.
“We better get going,” the man said regretfully.
Sorry son of a bitch was so whipped he didn’t know which way was up. I almost felt sorry for him. If I didn’t already have plans to teach some other stupid bitch a lesson, I still wouldn’t have gone to his insignificant party tomorrow night.
I waved to them as the woman carried away the brat in her arms. The sorry excuse for a man followed behind her, pushing the stroller like a good little domestic slave.
After locking my car, I turned and entered the house. It was time to talk to my mom one last time. Just in case tomorrow night’s assignment went terribly wrong.
Chapter 2
Brooke
I pulled down the back alley and into the small driveway where Ty and his partner, James, had lived the past couple of years. Off-street parking was highly coveted in Georgetown, the wealthy and historic neighborhood of Washington, DC, but Ty and James had managed to find a townhouse with a two-car garage in foreclosure. They then spent the next two years completely renovating the property.
Thankfully, since I had agreed to house- and dog-sit while they took a two-week vacation to Key West, they had vacated one of the parking spots for me.
Key West wouldn’t have been my first choice of vacation spots, but it didn’t matter where those two went. They just wanted to spend time together.
I parked my car in the garage and grabbed my bag from the back seat. I had brought very little with me, because other than a couple of meetings, all I planned to do was curl up in their basement cinema room, watch Netflix, and order takeout for two weeks.
“Hello,” I called as I entered through the garage.
“Brooke,” Ty called back. “Get your tiny little ass up here. We need help deciding.”
“Deciding what?” I asked as I climbed the stairs to the open-concept living, dining, and kitchen areas. When I got to the top, I stopped short. “Oh, dear.”
I lifted my hand and covered an uncomfortable smile. Their two English bulldogs—Thurston and Lovey—hopped down from a chair to sniff my feet.
“See,” James said. “Look at her face. She agrees with me.”
“She does not. Do you?” Ty squared his shoulders. “Tell us the truth. What do you think?”
“I… I don’t know what to say.” I knelt to rub the dogs’ heads while I st
udied Ty’s full-length wetsuit. It was in neon shades of orange, pink, and lime green. “It’s definitely bright. The sharks are going to love you.”
Ty narrowed his eyes at me. “And you’re supposed to be my best friend.” He turned on his heel and stormed off down a hallway.
I straightened. “Oh, come on,” I called after him, trying like hell to suppress my laughter.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” James walked over and wrapped his arms around me in a hug, then released me. “Now… Both fridges are stocked.”
“Both?”
“Well, yeah. The regular and the wine fridge.”
“I knew you guys loved me.”
He held out a moleskin notebook. “We’ve left you meticulous notes on everything. You’ve got numbers for all the best restaurants that deliver, and the ones with takeout in case you want to walk.” He flipped a page. “If you have any trouble with the dogs, there’s a number for the vet, the backup vet, the dog walker, the doggie spa, and their trainer.”
“Wait… Your dogs have a spa and a trainer? I just might move in here permanently and let you guys take care of me.”
“Girl, I think you’re doing just fine back in Kentucky with your own beautiful specimen of a man.” He slapped my arm playfully. “How is Declan?”
I motioned toward the notebook. “Keep going.” Declan was not a subject I wanted to discuss.
Frankly, I was pretty sure I had ruined everything with Declan. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had been doing his best to convince me to take whatever “thing” we had going a step further.
I was already living with him. Why wasn’t that enough? I wasn’t convinced he understood what a long-term relationship—a life—with me would be like. Didn’t he get that I would make him miserable? That I would never stop searching for the identity of Romeo, my own personal stalker and confidential human source, or for the truth of what had happened to my late husband—a truth I was convinced Romeo knew?
Romeo had been sending me information since shortly after I joined the FBI. Most of the time he provided information that led to solving hard-to-crack cases. But lately, he had gotten a little too close to me, and in some instances, he had even managed to harm me physically.
James stared at me with both brows lifted and his arms crossed. “Mmm-hmm. Okay. You’re not telling us something.” He turned back to the notebook and flipped the page. “Here are the numbers for the neighbors. Only call Beatrice, though, if it’s a major emergency. I’m so mad at her right now, I didn’t even tell her we were going out of town.”
I suppressed another smile. “You guys aren’t leaving the country. I’ll call you if I need anything. But we’ll be fine.” Thurston, Lovey, and I were going to hole up in this house for two weeks, eat ice cream, drink wine, and binge-watch Game of Thrones and old episodes of I Love Lucy, Thurston’s and Lovey’s favorites—next to Gilligan’s Island, of course, seeing as that’s where their names had come from.
James closed the notebook and tucked it onto a shelf between two cookbooks. “I’m just glad to be getting out of town. I’m even more glad to be getting Ty away.”
“You both deserve this.”
“You bet we do.” He walked to the wine fridge and pulled out a bottle of red. “We’ll be leaving before you’re even up tomorrow.”
Just as Ty came around the corner in jeans and a fitted tee, the doorbell rang. “I’ll get the wine,” he said, taking the bottle from James and reaching into a drawer for the corkscrew. “You get dinner.”
“We ordered dinner from our favorite restaurant,” James explained as he headed to the door.
“I’m sorry about the last-minute request,” Ty said to me. “I’m actually shocked you were able to leave on such short notice.”
“It’s no problem. I can work from here, for the most part. And you and I left the fusion center in good hands.” Plus, I had my own selfish reasons for wanting to get out of Kentucky and visit DC.
“How’d Hot Irishman take the news that you were leaving for two weeks?” He poured me a glass of wine.
I buried my nose into it, taking in the rich scent and pretending to concentrate. I knew any wine James and Ty had chosen would be delicious, and I didn’t care what it smelled like, but it was a good excuse for not answering the question.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Disappointment registered on his face.
I calmly set the glass on the concrete countertop, pulled out one of the barstools, and sat. “No, I didn’t. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I told him from the beginning I wasn’t ready for any kind of romantic commitment. That I might never be ready.”
Who was I kidding? I had committed to Declan the moment I’d agreed to live in his house. But last night’s conversation had caught me off guard, so when Ty’s and James’s dog-sitter had canceled on them at the last minute, I had jumped at the chance to head to Georgetown. I even scheduled a couple of meetings in DC as I drove, so it wasn’t like I was just running away. One of those meetings was with Anya Bhatia, a college friend who had agreed to do a little analyst work based on data I had collected from Romeo. She claimed she might have information for me, but wished to speak in person. So this was really a legitimate work trip. Or so I told myself.
Of course, I wasn’t about to tell Ty about the lead on Romeo. If Ty thought, for even one second, that I was chasing Romeo leads alone, he would cancel his and James’s trip, and James would never forgive me. Hell, I wouldn’t forgive me. I knew I couldn’t let Romeo run my life, but he had hurt me so many times. And if there was a chance that I could put a stop to it, and discover information about Teddy’s death at the same time, I had to.
Ty took a sip of wine; his eyes seem to dissect everything about me.
“What?” I said. “Just say it.”
“No. Who am I to say anything about who and when you commit to a relationship again? You tried your best and gave that gorgeous and kind man a chance. You were living with him, for crying out loud. If he for some reason turned out to be less than perfect for you, you would know. So, what did he do? Try to get too close too quickly? Want you to spend all your time in that big ol’ mansion of his? Make you go out to dinner too much? Make you talk about things you didn’t want to talk about?”
“No, none of that.” I reached for the wine again and swirled it in my glass, staring at it. “Everything was going fine, until…”
“He pressured you, didn’t he? To talk about Teddy? That’s why you took off without telling him.”
I cocked my head, getting leery of Ty’s line of questioning. “No. I told him bits and pieces, but he never pushed for more.” In fact, I had been honest with Declan about one of the most painful moments in my entire life, and he had been incredibly supportive.
“I guess you just got a horrible feeling about him then? I mean, no one’s as perfect on the inside as they are on the outside, like Declan appears to be. I should have known that the more you got to know him, the more you’d find wrong with him. Good for you for getting out before you got sucked into one of those hard-to-get-out-of relationships.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I know what you’re doing. It’s not going to work.”
“Oh yeah? What am I doing?”
“You’re trying to make me feel guilty.”
“Now you’re just being silly.” He waved a hand. “Only you have the power to let yourself feel guilt. If you made the right decision by shutting Declan out of your life—which you did by not bothering to tell him you were leaving town—then have the guts to trust that it was the right decision. Don’t blame me—your best friend—for saying what I think out of my love for you.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, don’t hold back now. Tell me what you really think.”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Scared.” I set my wine in front of me. “Scared of what?” My voice climbed an octave involuntarily.
“Scared that you’ve finally found the one man who will love you unconditionally. You’
re scared that he’s learning everything there is to know about you, yet loves you despite those things. And, Brooke, you’re terrified that Declan will end up exactly like Teddy.”
I blinked several times.
“What’s going on in here?” James asked as he re-entered the kitchen and set bags of what smelled like Italian food on the counter.
“Ty here was just telling me how scared I am. Apparently he doesn’t like the decisions I’m making when it comes to men. Thinks I’m incapable of managing my own love life.” I slipped off of the barstool, poured myself more wine, and scooped up my glass. “You guys start without me. I need a few minutes.” I picked up my bag and took both it and my glass of wine to the guest bedroom.
“Brooke, please don’t go. I’m sorry,” Ty yelled after me.
“Give her a few minutes,” James said as I climbed the stairs.
The guest room was decorated in shades of gray; the en suite bath was of matching, dark gray tile. I took my toiletry bag and my wine into the bathroom, and after splashing cold water on my face, I stared at myself in the mirror.
I didn’t like what I saw.
My face was pale. The whites surrounding my dark brown eyes were bloodshot, and my hair hung in a stringy mess after a long day of driving.
Though I had avoided looking at my phone for the last couple of hours, I now pulled it from my back pocket. I had zero missed calls and two text messages. Both texts were from Marti: one inviting me to have drinks tonight, and a second saying sorry, she had forgotten I had left town for a couple of weeks.
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