by Liliana Hart
Glass shattered from across the room and she was left with no time to react. One minute she was praying for a quick death and the next her killer was laying crumpled on the ground behind her. She was frozen in shock, and the reality of what had happened didn’t begin to set in until Jax came over and began to untie her.
“Oh, God,” she wept. “Shane?” She grabbed Jax’s arm as soon as her hands were free. “He’s still alive?”
“Alive and well,” he assured her. “But I’d give him another couple of minutes before he makes it over here. He’s not as young as he used to be.”
Rachel laughed through her tears. “I need to see him. Don’t let anyone take me away until I see him.”
“He’d kill me if I tried,” Jax said. “No offense, honey, but you’re not looking so good right now. Maybe you could make your reunion a quick one so we can get you to the hospital.”
“Ambulance is on its way,” one of the other men called out. “Along with the FBI. Should be an entertaining couple of hours.”
***
As soon as the bullet left his rifle, Shane knew he’d made a direct hit. He barely took the time to disassemble his rifle and put it back in the suitcase before he was running back into the hotel. He rode the twenty floors down with agonizing impatience and ignored the stares of the desk clerks as he ran through the lobby and out the doors.
Traffic was light outside and he ran across Michigan Avenue, dodging taxis and other vehicles until he stood in front of Angelo Valentine’s high-rise. He barely noticed the bodies that littered the floor on the inside or how smoothly the elevator ran as he rode his way to the top. All he could think about was Rachel. She was alive. And if she’d have him he’d make sure she stayed safe for the rest of his life.
The elevator doors opened and he ran onto the floor he’d just minutes before been looking at through his scope. He ignored the congratulations from his team members and searched for Rachel. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and Cutter was looking over her bruises.
Suddenly he found himself unsure what to do. How to react. But then Rachel opened her eyes and looked straight at him as if she’d sensed him there all along. She held out her hand to him and he knew exactly where he belonged. Beside her. Forever.
Shane went to her and the sight of her beautiful face, so swollen and battered, made his knees weak and his trigger finger itch to kill the bastard one more time.
“Oh, baby,” he said, taking her hand. He didn’t know where else to touch her that wouldn’t cause her pain.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I thought you were dead.” Fat tears gathered at the corner of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I was so afraid, but when I thought I was going to die you were the only thing I could think of. And then you saved me.”
“Ssh,” Shane said. “Try not to talk. I know it hurts.”
She nodded at him. Shane heard the stretcher being wheeled off the elevator and knew his time alone with her was short. He took a breath and prayed she’d understand what she meant to him. “It was you, Rachel, that saved me,” he finally said. “I’m not whole without you, and you’ve managed to do something I thought was impossible.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You’ve chased the nightmares away. Love has that ability.” He didn’t move as the medics came and kneeled beside them. He had one last thing to say. “I love you, Rachel Valentine.”
Epilogue
Rachel Valentine was a new woman.
Her dark hair was shorter now, a shiny cap that framed her face, making her eyes seem impossibly large and her cheekbones more prominent. Looking in the mirror every morning still gave her system a jolt, but she knew she would adjust as time passed.
With her new hair had come a new name, a new past, a new position at the community library, and a little white house with three bedrooms and a rose garden in Bakersfield, Indiana. She’d at first thought being so removed from the city would drive her crazy, but she was starting to think maybe she really was a small town girl at heart.
The important thing was that she was still alive.
Entering the Witness Protection Program had been her only option after the FBI had taken possession of the list and started making arrests. There had been a small hope inside her that her father’s acquaintances wouldn’t blame her for turning them in, but the hope she’d harbored had quickly been destroyed. Rachel had suffered a broken jaw and countless bruises thanks to Carrie, and she hadn’t been out of the hospital a day before the first attempt was made on her life. If Shane hadn’t been there to push her out of the way of the speeding delivery van, the mob contract that had been put out on her would have been easily fulfilled.
Rachel knelt in the grass in front of the small flower garden she’d planted in front of her new home and pulled weeds mindlessly while her thoughts wondered. Her driver’s license might claim she was Karen Smith, and two years might have been added to her twenty-six, but she would always be Rachel Valentine on the inside. It was important for her to remember who she was. Where she came from.
Rachel told herself every morning that the sacrifices she’d made were all worth it. She wasn’t a selfish person by nature, so she understood that anyone who was involved in her life—friends and lovers alike—would always be in danger as long as she remained a Valentine.
But God, how she missed Shane. There was an emptiness inside her that only he could fill. It had been months since she’d last seen him, and even then it had only been in passing as they’d both been swept away by FBI agents to give separate statements. The man in charge of the Witness Protection Program had thought it best she get established in her new life as quickly as possible, so she hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to Shane or tell him she loved him one last time. Not saying goodbye was something she’d always regret.
The sound of gravel crunching under tires made her pulse quicken, but she brought her head up slowly and watched as a white pickup truck pulled into her driveway. The fear that someone would find her hadn’t lessened over the months she’d lived with her new identity. She couldn’t imagine it ever would.
Rachel stayed kneeling in the grass, but her hand grabbed the small .22 revolver she habitually carried in her pocket. She placed it on the ground beside her and waited patiently, prepared for whatever might happen. The sun was shining brightly and kept her from seeing her visitor clearly, so she brought her hand up to shade her eyes and watched as a large man got out of the truck.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered and started to stand, but her knees gave way and her heart continued to hammer in her chest.
Long, deliberate strides headed in her direction and she forgot all about the revolver within her grasp. Denim clad legs knelt in the grass beside her, and a shiny, silver Sheriff’s badge was passed briefly in front of her face.
“Ma’am? Are you all right?”
Rachel’s expression turned to one of confusion as she looked at the badge again and then slowly brought her gaze up to look into a pair of familiar dark eyes.
“What? How?” she asked, dazed.
“The name’s Quincy Ford. I’m the new Sheriff in Bakersfield. I was just driving through town and saw you as I passed by. I knew immediately that I had to stop and find out who the beautiful woman tending her roses was. And then I thought since I’m new in town that maybe we could grab some dinner, or make love or spend the rest of our lives together. In no particular order.”
Rachel’s breath caught on a sob and she threw herself into Shane’s arms, kissing him with months worth of pent up passion and taking them both to the ground. She shuddered as his lips devoured hers and moaned as he ran his hands over her body. She became greedy in her wants and forgot where they were. Who they were. Only that they were together at last.
“Maybe we should take this inside, Sugar. I’d hate to have to arrest myself for public indecency.”
Rachel choked out a watery laugh and reluctantly loosened her grip. Her face heated whe
n Shane stood up and she saw his shirt was completely unbuttoned and his hair was sexily mussed. She took the hand he offered her and they walked into the house, thankful that none of her neighbors had witnessed her temporary insanity.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Rachel said, leaning against the kitchen counter. Shane sat down at the kitchen table, but she was too restless to mirror him, afraid if she took her eyes off him he’d suddenly be gone. “What are you doing here? How did you find me? What about your business? Your life?”
“I told you to trust me, Sugar. I’ve still got plenty of connections, and I decided I’d much rather be with you than alone in New Orleans. You are my life. I wanted to be here sooner, but there were a few details that had to be seen to first.”
Rachel noticed the shadow that came over Shane’s face and wondered what she’d missed over the last few months. “Can you talk about it?” she asked.
“I decided to put Jones in charge of my business and signed everything over to him. He’s in bad shape. I barely recognized the man, and I’ve known him most of my life. He’s harder, tougher, if that’s even possible, and you can practically see the violence simmering under his skin. There’s no more humor or sarcasm, and I can’t really say I blame him. I’ve been where he is, and nothing but time can make things better.”
Shane rubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “Jones spent more than a month in the hospital recovering from the bullet wound in his chest, and the day he was released from the hospital, the FBI decided he was the one they were going to hold accountable for this whole mess, not Director Shaw, as it should have been. The public and the media wanted a scapegoat, and he was the only one available who wasn’t there to defend himself. The man’s a war hero, and his entire career has been reduced to less than nothing.”
“What did he do?”
“There was nothing he could do. Nothing I said in my testimony made any difference. They’d already made up their minds. Jones is acting like nothing’s wrong, like it’s just business as usual, but I know him too well. The country he’s almost died for on more than one occasion has betrayed him, and I’m not sure it’s a wound that can be healed.”
Rachel didn’t bother to mention that the wound Carrie had dealt to Jones’s heart might be even harder to heal.
“I handed my agency over to him without giving him a lot of say in the matter,” Shane said. “It was all I could do for him. All he’d let me do. He’s not ready to face things yet. The rest of the team will check on him from time to time, and he knows my place now is here with you.”
“And now you’re the new Sheriff of Bakersfield,” Rachel said, shaking her head.
Shane nodded. “And you’re the new librarian who’s giving the city council headaches with all your new ideas. I’ve already been warned about you. Part of the reason it took me so long to get here was I was waiting for the old Sheriff to retire. My former director at the Washington FBI office pulled a few strings to make sure the job was mine.”
“And are the sheriff and librarian going to live happily ever after?”
Shane dug around in his pocket and pulled out a little black box, flipping open the lid and setting it on the table. The sight of it was enough to make her sit down across from him. The diamond inside and what it signified brought a sense of rightness over her. Contentment. The horrors of her past were going to be replaced with a future—a future filled with happiness and love and family.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Shane said. “We’ve come close to death and saved each other, in more ways than one. I love you, and I can’t live the rest of my life without you. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled as he slipped it onto her finger. “And I also remember you mentioning something about eating dinner and making love. In no particular order.”
“We should definitely eat dinner later. I’m assuming you have a bed in this place,” he said, pushing his chair back and coming to stand in front of her. Rachel squealed as he scooped her out of the chair and into his arms, and her heart flipped in her chest as she saw the heat in his eyes.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to make love to you again,” Shane said, “so I hope you don’t have any plans for the next three or four days.”
“We do need the practice in calling out each others new names,” Rachel said thoughtfully. She nipped his ear with her teeth, and took pleasure in his indrawn breath and the way her touch made him stumble as he hurried to get to her bedroom. “But I have to go to work at some point. The city council might get suspicious and start snooping around to see where I am.”
Shane laid her down on the bed and kissed her softly—reverently—memorizing the feel of her lips against his. “I’m the Sheriff,” he finally said as he broke off the kiss. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”
She laughed and opened her arms to him, accepting the weight of his body on hers. “My hero,” she said.
Here’s an excerpt of DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS,
Book 1 in the J.J. Graves mystery series by Liliana Hart...
Available Now!
Chapter One
Fourth generation mortician. That’s a lot of dead bodies.
I thought I’d be proud to carry on the family legacy, but that was before I knew the job would be hell on my social life. I mean, who wanted to date a woman who drained blood on a regular basis and whose scent of choice was embalming fluid?
Sure, I got a little lonely sometimes. It mostly happened when I was preparing a body in the middle of the night instead of snuggled up next to someone warm with a pulse. But dead bodies were my business. And I hated every fucking minute of it. I never wanted to take over the family funeral parlor. I wanted to be a doctor. Well, technically, I was a doctor, but I preferred to be one for the living.
My parents died early last year, and the gossip and scandal involved would have broken someone with a lesser constitution, but I’d managed to hold my head up. Mostly. It was because of my parents that I’d had an impromptu career change. The only thing I had left of them was the crumbling old Victorian I grew up in and Graves Funeral Home—believe me, it was a hell of a legacy.
I had little choice but to resign my job at the hospital, pack my bags and move back to Bloody Mary, Virginia—population 2,902. The good thing about owning a funeral home in Bloody Mary was that hardly anyone ever died, despite the rather macabre name. The bad thing about it was I had a shitload of student loans to pay back and not a lot of income.
Did I mention the budget cuts?
Ahh, my life was simple before the budget cuts. The mayor’s decision to be more fiscally conservative left King George County without a coroner. So, I, J.J. Graves, in a moment of temporary insanity, volunteered for the job. In all actuality, I was strong-armed into taking the position out of a sense of duty to the community and the guilt of tarnishing my family’s good name. Well, tarnishing it any more than it already was.
Which brought me here. Alone in my bed in the middle of the night. My bedroom so cold white puffs of breath clouded above my face every time I exhaled because I couldn’t afford to crank the heater above 65 degrees. My toes wiggled and fought for release beneath the nubby covers I’d tucked under the mattress too tightly, and goosebumps spread across the top of my skull and tightened the skin so much that it felt as if the follicles might snap off.
I’d been wide awake for more than an hour, thinking of my family, what was left of my legacy, and how much my life in general sucked. Not for the first time, the thought entered my mind that it wouldn’t be so terrible if I just packed a bag and left everything behind me without a word to anyone. I didn’t have any family to worry over my disappearance. No children to leave belongings to. Sure my friends would miss me for awhile. But eventually the people who’d watched me grow up would only have passing thoughts about that Grave’s girl whose parents killed themselves. All the while I would be starting a new life. Hopefully someplace warm.
But like I always did, I imm
ediately dismissed the thought. It took more courage than I had to start over and leave everything familiar behind. I needed something in my life besides a half-assed career and a mountain of debt. A man would be nice. A man who’d be willing to have sex would be even better. But chances of that happening were somewhere between negative four and zero. Not because Bloody Mary didn’t have its fair share of men, but because I was just picky. Bloody Mary wasn’t exactly teeming with single males under the age of forty who had health insurance and all their own teeth.
I huffed out another white puff of breath and rolled over, punching my pillow and clearing my mind of all thoughts that didn’t involve counting sheep. I’d had trouble sleeping since I’d moved home. Maybe it was because the house was empty and made weird noises and my imagination assumed the cold blasts of air and the rattling pipes were the haints of all my ancestors shaking their heads in pity. Or maybe it was because the mattress was old and lumpy. Who the hell knew? But I’d learned to function on just a few hours of sleep when I was in medical school, so I was used to having bags under my eyes and skin that looked like it never saw the light of day.
The silence of the house smothered me—a heap of decaying wood and rotting shingles that crushed me with the weight of neglect and responsibility—so I burrowed under the covers, searching for peace of mind and the comfortable spot on the mattress that always seemed to elude me. I’d almost talked myself into getting up and starting a pot of coffee when the phone warbled on the bedside table.
I cursed out a mumbled, “shit” in surprise and flailed under the covers so my sheets resembled something along the lines of a straight jacket. My pulse jumped and throbbed in the side of my neck, and each pounding beat marched through the synapses of my brain until I became lightheaded with something I recognized as fear. I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath.