Love’s Encore
Page 18
His caresses were causing a tickling sensation in her throat and she could barely articulate her answer. “Yes, Zack, I love you. I have ever since the first time I saw you.”
Stroking fingers smoothed the skin from her collar bone to her navel. It was a distracting movement, but she tried to concentrate on what he was saying. “I was like a man possessed when I woke up that morning and found you gone. Pride kept me from going to your friends and asking how to reach you. You had told me you went to school in Richmond, but never mentioned being from Atlanta. I called every Jameson in Richmond and none of them had a daughter, sister, or second cousin named Camille. I was on the wrong track all that time. When I came home, I was unbearable to live with. No one dared cross me for fear of my temper. My moods were volatile—”
“You mean I was the one!” she exclaimed. “I was the woman you couldn’t get over?” When she saw his puzzled expression, she explained about Dearly’s telling her that he had gone through a “black period” over a woman. “I thought you’d gone to Utah to get over your beautiful, lost love and used me to restore your self-image.”
“You are the only woman I’ve ever loved, Camille. And you are definitely beautiful.” He was nibbling her shoulders while his hands stroked her hips and thighs.
“Erica—?” She had to know everything. There would be no more secrets or ghosts between them.
His hands stilled, and he raised his head. He looked away from her for a moment then met her eyes steadily. “I’ve slept with her, Camille, in desperation, but I’ve never loved her.”
“But after our wedding, in the restaurant, I heard you tell her that our marriage made no difference in how you felt about her.”
He chuckled softly. “I told her the truth. My marriage to you didn’t alter my feelings for her. I don’t like her and never did. She is the most selfish, conniving, manipulative woman I’ve ever known. Each time I was with her, I came away sick with myself. Instead of appeasing my longing for you, I only missed your sweetness and innocence more.”
“And these nights that you’ve been going out—”
He laughed. “Jealous, were you?” He kissed her nose. “Well, you were supposed to be. Actually, I spent most of those long, cold nights in the horse barn at the plantation. A couple of nights, I went fishing, and I hate to fish. A few nights, I just parked the car near the river and watched the barges go by until it was late enough to come home. I made plenty of noise so you couldn’t fail to note the lateness of the hour.”
“I never even noticed you were gone,” she said, suppressing a feigned yawn.
“Like hell, you didn’t,” he growled and covered her mouth with a possessive kiss. When they were breathless, he pulled away to look down on her adoringly. “Camille, I love you, but I have a confession to make.” His eyes lit up with a mischievous gleam that she had come to know well. This confession was not going to be a serious one. “I like the dining room.”
She pretended indignation, but reached out to tickle his ribs. “Oh, Zack! You’re exasperating.” She stared up at him, loving him. “You have your nerve bringing me to your bed this way when I wasn’t able to defend myself! And on Thanksgiving morning, too.”
His smile was wicked. “Well, this just gives me that much more to be thankful for.”
“Zack, don’t be irreverent.”
“Besides,” he continued, ignoring her. “I don’t think you really mind, do you?” He was lazily caressing her breasts, watching with fascination as the nipples became aroused under his fingers.
For an answer, she tangled her fingers in his hair and forced his head down to hers. “Make love to me,” she whispered.
“Are you sure you don’t have a headache?” He was serious, but they both laughed when they simultaneously caught the double entendre.
“If I do,” she answered, “I’ll take an aspirin. But later… much later.”
About the Author
Sandra Brown is the author of more than sixty New York Times bestsellers, including most recently Low Pressure; Lethal; Rainwater; Tough Customer; Smash Cut; Smoke Screen; Play Dirty; Ricochet; Chill Factor; White Hot; Hello, Darkness; The Crush; Envy; The Switch; The Alibi; Unspeakable; and Fat Tuesday, all of which jumped onto the New York Times list in the numbers one to five spots. There are more than eighty million copies of Sandra Brown’s books in print worldwide and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. In 2008, Brown was named Thriller Master by the International Thriller Writers Association, the organization’s top honor. She currently lives in Texas. For more information you can visit www.SandraBrown.net.
Look for these Sandra Brown Novels!
Low Pressure
Lethal
Mirror Image
Where There’s Smoke
Charade
Exclusive
Envy
The Switch
The Crush
Fat Tuesday
Unspeakable
The Witness
The Alibi
Standoff
Best Kept Secrets
Breath of Scandal
French Silk
Journalist Dawson Scott knows well the horrors of war.
But when he investigates a pair of domestic terrorists, his true ordeal begins…
* * *
Please see the next page for a preview of Deadline
Prologue
Branch, Oregon—1976
The first hail of bullets was fired from the house shortly after daybreak at 6:57.
The gunfire erupted in response to the surrender demand issued by a team of law enforcement agents.
It was a gloomy morning. The sky was heavily overcast and there was dense fog. Despite the limited visibility, one of the fugitives inside the house got off a lucky shot that took out a deputy U.S. marshal whom everybody called Turk.
Gary Headly had met the marshal only the day before, shortly after the law enforcement team comprised of ATF and FBI agents, sheriff’s deputies, and U.S. marshals met for the first time to discuss the operation. They’d congregated around a map of the area known as Golden Branch, reviewing obstacles they might encounter. Headly remembered another marshal saying, “Hey, Turk, grab me a Coke while you’re over there, will ya?”
Headly didn’t learn Turk’s actual name until later, much later, when they were mopping up. The bullet struck half an inch above his Kevlar vest, tearing out most of his throat. He dropped without uttering a sound, dead before landing in the pile of wet leaves at his feet. There was nothing Headly could do for him except offer up a brief prayer and remain behind cover. To move was inviting death or injury, because, once the gunfire started, the open windows of the house spat bullets relentlessly.
The Rangers of Righteousness had an inexhaustible arsenal. Or so it seemed that wet and dreary morning. The second casualty was a redheaded, twenty-four-year-old deputy sheriff. A puff of his breath in the cold air gave away his position. Six shots were fired. Five found the target. Any one of three would have killed him.
The team had planned to take the group by surprise, serve their arrest warrants for a laundry list of felonies, and take them into custody, engaging in a firefight only if necessary. But the vehemence with which they were fired upon indicated that the criminals had taken a fight-to-the-death stance.
After all, they had nothing to lose except their lives. Capture meant imprisonment for life or the death penalty for each of the seven members of the domestic terrorist group. Collectively the six men and one woman had chalked up twelve murders and millions of dollars’ worth of destruction, most of it inflicted on federal government buildings or military installations. Despite the religious overtone of their name, they were wholly without conscience or constraint. Over the relatively short period of two years, they had made themselves notorious, a scourge to law enforcement agencies at every level.
Other such groups imitated the Rangers, but none had achieved their level of effectiveness. In the criminal community, they were revered for
their audacity and unmatched violence. To many who harbored antigovernment sentiments, they had become folk heroes. They were sheltered and were provided with weapons and ammunition as well as with leaked classified information. This underground support allowed them to strike hard and fast and then to disappear and remain well hidden while they planned their next assault. In communiques sent to newspapers and television networks, they’d vowed never to be taken alive.
It had been a stroke of sheer luck that had brought the law down on them in Golden Branch.
One of their arms suppliers, who was well-known to the authorities for his criminal history, had been placed under surveillance for suspicion of an arms deal unrelated to the Rangers of Righteousness. He had made three trips to the abandoned house in Golden Branch over the course of that many weeks. A telephoto lens had caught him talking to a man later identified as Carl Wingert, leader of the Rangers.
When this was reported to the FBI, ATF, and U.S. Marshals Service, the agencies immediately sent personnel, who continued to monitor the illegal weapons dealer, and, upon his return from a visit to Golden Branch, he was arrested.
It took three days of persuasion, but, under advice of counsel, he made a deal with the authorities and gave up what he knew about the people holed up inside the abandoned house. He’d only met with Carl Wingert. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say who was sequestered with Wingert or how long they planned to harbor there.
Fearing that if they didn’t move swiftly, they’d miss their opportunity to capture one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, the federal agents enlisted help from the local authorities who also had outstanding warrants for members of the group and were more familiar with the rugged terrain. The team was assembled and the operation planned.
But it became immediately obvious to each member of the team that Wingert’s band had meant what they’d said about choosing death over capture. The Rangers of Righteousness wanted to secure their place in history. There would be no laying down of arms, no hands raised, no peaceful surrender.
The lawmen were pinned down behind trees or vehicles, and all were vulnerable. Even a flicker of motion drew gunfire, and members of the Rangers had proven themselves to be excellent shots.
The team commander radioed the operations post, requesting that a helicopter be sent to provide them air cover, but that idea was nixed because of the inclement weather.
Special Ops teams from local, state, and federal agencies were mobilized, but they would be driving to Golden Branch, and the roads weren’t ideal even in good weather. The team was told to stand by and to fire only in self-defense while men in safe, warm offices debated changing the rules of engagement to include using deadly force.
“They’re playing patty-cake because one of them is a woman,” the commander groused. “And God forbid we violate these killers’ civil rights. Nobody admires or respects us, you know,” he muttered to Headly, who was the rookie of the team.
“We’re feds, and even before Watergate, ‘government’ had become a dirty word. The whole damn country is going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re out here freezing our balls off, waiting for some bureaucrat to tell us it’s okay to blast these murdering thugs to hell and back.”
He had a military background and a decidedly hawkish viewpoint, but nobody, especially not he, wanted a bloodbath that morning.
Nobody got what they wanted.
While the reinforcements were still en route, the Rangers amped up their firepower. An ATF agent took a bullet in the thigh, and from the way it was bleeding it was feared his femoral artery had suffered damage, the extent of which was unknown, but on any scale that was life-threatening.
The commander reported this with a spate of obscenities about their being picked off one by effing one unless…
He was given the authorization to engage. With their assault rifles and one submachine gun, in the hands of the wounded ATF agent, they went on the offensive. The barrage lasted for seven minutes.
Return fire from the house decreased, then became sporadic. The commander ordered a cease-fire. They waited.
Suddenly, a man bleeding from several wounds, including a head wound, charged through the front door, screaming invectives and spraying rounds from his own submachine gun. It was a suicidal move, and he knew it. His reason for doing it would soon become apparent.
When the agents ceased firing, and their ears stopped ringing, they realized that the house had fallen eerily silent except for a loose shutter that clapped against an exterior wall whenever the wind caught it.
After a tense sixty seconds, the commander said, “I’m going in.” He levered himself up into a crouch as he replaced his spent cartridge with a fresh one.
Headly did the same. “I’m with you.”
Other team members stayed in place. After checking to see that they were loaded and ready, the commander crept from behind his cover and began running toward the house. Headly, with his heart tightly lodged in his throat, followed.
They ran past the body sprawled on the wet earth, took the steps up to the sagging porch, and then stood on either side of the gaping doorway, weapons raised. They waited, listening. Hearing nothing, the commander hitched his head and Headly barged in.
Bodies. Blood on every surface, the stench of it strong. Nothing was moving.
“Clear,” he shouted and stepped over a body on his way into an adjacent room, a bedroom with only a ratty mattress on the floor. In the center of it, the ticking was still wet with a nasty stain.
In less than sixty seconds from the time Headly had breached the door, they confirmed that five people were dead. Four bodies were found inside the house. The fifth was the man who’d died in the yard. They were visually identified as known members of the Rangers of Righteousness.
Conspicuously missing from the body count were Carl Wingert and his lover, Flora Stimel, the only woman of the group. There was no sign of the two of them except for a trail of blood leading away from the back of the house into the dense woods where tire tracks were found in the undergrowth. They had managed to escape, probably because their mortally wounded confederate had sacrificed himself, taking fire at the front of the house while they sneaked out the back.
Emergency and official vehicles quickly converged on the area. With them came the inevitable news vans, which were halted a mile away at the turnoff from the main road. The house and the area immediately surrounding it were sealed off so evidence could be collected, photos and measurements taken, and diagrams drawn before the bodies were removed.
Those involved realized that a thorough investigation of the incident would follow. Every action they’d taken would have to be explained and justified, not only to their superiors but also to a cynical and judgmental public.
Soon the derelict house was filled with people, each doing a specialized job. Headly found himself back in the bedroom, standing beside the coroner, who was sniffing at the stain on the soiled mattress. To Headly, it appeared that someone had peed in addition to bleeding profusely. “Urine?”
The coroner shook his head. “I believe it’s amniotic fluid.”
Headly thought surely he’d misheard him. “Amniotic fluid? Are you saying that Flora Stimel—”
“Gave birth.”
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
A Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
>
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
About the Author
Also by Sandra Brown
A Preview of Deadline
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Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1981 by Sandra Brown
Excerpt from Deadline copyright © 2013 by Sandra Brown Management, Ltd.
Cover design by Emily Weigel/Faceout
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Originally published in mass market paperback by Warner Books
First ebook edition: May 2014
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.