by Lisa Childs
“He might have killed you,” she said. And she didn’t know how she would have survived that. It had been hard enough on her when he’d broken their engagement. But if she lost him forever...
She needed to feel close to him—as close as she felt when they made love. So she pushed his coat from his shoulders and reached for the buttons on his shirt. She needed skin to skin—needed to feel his heart beat against hers.
He must have needed it, too, because he pulled off her sweater and pushed down her pants. Standing before him in her bra and panties, she shivered at the cool air. But the heat of his gaze warmed her as it moved over her like a caress.
He tipped her chin up and lowered his mouth. He kissed her gently at first, just sliding his lips across hers. Then he deepened the kiss.
She clung to him—with her lips and her hands. She slid her palms down his chest. Muscles rippled beneath her touch. She tackled his belt buckle next, pulling it loose. Then she unclasped his pants and reached for his zipper.
His erection pushed against the fly, against her fingers. He groaned as she released him. As she touched him, he touched her—moving his fingers beneath her panties. As he continued to kiss her, deeply, sliding his tongue inside her mouth, he slid his fingers inside her.
She’d been tense when he left—worried and on edge. Another kind of tension filled her now, making her breasts ache and her stomach muscles clench. She needed a release—the kind only he could give her.
He unclasped her bra and let it drop to the floor. Then he touched her breast, teasing the nipple as his fingers stroked her most sensitive spot. The ache intensified.
“You’re driving me crazy,” she warned him.
And she wanted him just as crazy. She moved her hand up and down the length of him, stroking him. But his control was stronger than hers. He didn’t snap. He only groaned.
Then he lifted her and laid her on the bed. He stripped off her panties, but instead of sliding inside her, he moved down her body. He kissed her breasts and teased her nipples before skimming his lips over her stomach to the mound between her legs. His tongue flicked out, teasing that spot he’d already made almost painfully sensitive with his fingers.
She arched off the bed. As he flicked with his tongue, he slid his fingers inside her. And she came.
He pulled back. Maybe that was all he’d wanted—to give her pleasure. But then he rolled on a condom and joined her on the bed. He lifted her legs and pushed gently inside her. She wanted him as crazy with desire as he made her. So she touched him—everywhere she could reach. She kissed his shoulders and his arms. She trailed her fingers down his back and over his butt.
She arched and writhed, driving the rhythm to madness—driving herself to madness. The tension wound tightly inside her—demanding release. She nearly sobbed over the exquisite torture. Then he thrust again—deeply. And her body shuddered as pleasure overwhelmed her.
He joined her, thrusting again before his body tensed. While he came, he didn’t relax. His arms were hard yet, as he wrapped them around her and held her.
She hadn’t been the only one afraid he might not come back. He must have felt that way, too. But still he’d taken the risk. He’d put himself in danger for her. Maybe for their son’s sake. Maybe because he’d only been doing his job.
Or maybe because he cared more about her than he was willing to admit.
* * *
Garek stood nervously inside the condo, near the front door—as if he might need to make a quick getaway.
It was late.
Milek had left Amber alone in bed so he could talk to his brother. But Garek had yet to talk. Milek glanced back toward the bedroom. Would she awake and notice him gone? Would she go back to packing to leave him?
“I don’t have time for this,” he said. “Say whatever you wanted to say...”
“You’re pissed at me for having Nikki play that recording for Rus, for telling him about your meeting,” Garek said.
Milek shook his head. He wasn’t mad about that. He understood why his brother had brought in the federal agent. Nikki probably hadn’t been happy about calling her half brother, though.
Garek studied his face. “Then you’re pissed at me for having Nikki tap your phone?”
That wasn’t the only reason he was upset, but he nodded. He couldn’t believe they’d invaded his privacy like that. He knew his family had been worried about him ever since Amber’s fake death. But they’d gotten even more nervous when he’d started acting differently after Rus told him she and their son were alive.
“It was a good thing I did,” Garek said defensively. “I can’t believe you went off alone to meet a killer.”
“You can’t believe I shook your tail,” Milek said, and his lips twitched as a smile threatened. Usually he loved one-upping his older brother—especially since he hadn’t had much opportunity.
Garek narrowed his eyes. “How’d you get so good?”
“I was trained by the best,” Milek said. He loved his brother; that was why he was so hurt. Not over his having Nikki tap his phone but by the look on Garek’s face when he and Rus had burst into the nightclub. He could understand Nick looking at him like that. The guy trusted no one.
But his brother...
“You might be better,” Garek begrudgingly admitted.
Milek shook his head. “I didn’t keep Frank Campanelli alive.” He’d been too late to save the hit man.
“He wasn’t a client,” Garek said. “He was a killer.”
“You thought I did it,” Milek said. “You thought I shot him.”
Garek tensed.
“I saw it in your eyes...” The same look Garek had had when he awakened fourteen years ago and found Milek standing over their stepfather’s dead body.
“If you had,” Garek said, “it would have been self-defense. Like last time...”
Milek shook his head. “Frank’s gun was still in his holster. It would have been murder.”
“The guy’s been trying to kill you, trying to kill Amber and your son...”
“I didn’t do it,” Milek assured him—even though his brother had never asked. Apparently he’d just assumed the worst. “You don’t have to justify actions I didn’t take.”
“I’m sorry,” Garek said.
But Milek waved off the apology. He wasn’t certain what would have happened, had he found Frank Campanelli alive. He wasn’t certain what he would have done had the money he’d brought not been enough for the hit man to reveal who’d hired him.
He might have beaten the information out of him. And the last time he’d beaten someone, that person had wound up dead.
Chapter 15
Logan hadn’t interrogated a suspect in years, but he felt all of his old methods coming back to him. The long pause before asking a question. The unblinking stare. The blank expression to reveal none of his personal opinions.
They weren’t in an interrogation room. They were in the dining room of Milek’s condo. But Amber Talsma sat across the table from him as so many other suspects had during his time as a River City detective. Unlike those other suspects, however, Amber Talsma knew exactly what he was doing.
Her lips curved into a slight smile. “I see why you and Stacy fought for so many years before finally admitting how you really felt about each other.”
His lips twitched but he refused to smile—even at the mention of his beautiful wife and their previously tempestuous relationship. She was in the bedroom—playing with the nephew whose death she’d mourned for a year.
He was still angry with Amber over letting his wife suffer. But because he was a father, he also understood her doing whatever necessary to protect her child.
“You’re tough, Logan,” she said. “You’re also wasting your time.”
He was protecting he
r, too, since Milek had left the condo to meet with his brother. Logan felt a shiver of unease. While he loved his brothers-in-law like his brothers, he didn’t entirely trust them. He had only Milek’s word that Frank hadn’t told him who hired him.
The hit man hadn’t revealed his client during the phone conversation Nikki had recorded, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been able to speak when Milek arrived alone at the nightclub. Maybe he’d made a deathbed admission.
“I’m not wasting my time,” he said, “if it helps us figure out who is after you.”
“I’m sure Agent Rus showed you the list of suspects I already gave him. Those are the only names I can think of—the suspects Gregory and I prosecuted together.”
Logan allowed a crack in his detective mask and sighed. “Nick spent a year trying to find a connection between one of them and the Ghost.” And despite how stubborn and determined his brother could be, he’d turned up nothing.
“Frank Campanelli was a professional,” she said. “While he’s been credited with many murders, it’s never been proved who hired him.”
Logan let a groan slip out. “I tried,” he murmured, remembering one of his biggest frustrations from his years on the force. Knowing someone had killed and not being able to prove it. “There was this doctor...”
She leaned forward and asked, “The one who had his malpractice case thrown out when the witnesses died?”
He nodded.
“I was going to prosecute the malpractice case,” she said. “I was pushing to increase the charges to manslaughter, though. The guy was drunk. He shouldn’t have been operating. The anesthesiologist and surgical assistant were going to testify to his condition...”
“Until they wound up dead.”
“It was too great a coincidence,” she said. “It had to be Dr. Gunz.”
Logan nodded again. And something else occurred to him. “Frank had a gunshot wound.”
“That’s what killed him,” she said.
“Not that gunshot wound,” Logan said. “Milek got him in the shoulder in that hotel parking lot. Someone treated that gunshot wound—stitched him up...”
And maybe a doctor’s stitches were like fingerprints. “I need to call Nick.”
She nodded, and there was a spark in her green eyes. “I hope you can link Dr. Gunz and Campanelli.” But that wasn’t all she hoped. It was obvious she wanted to be the one who finally brought the doctor to trial.
But in order to do that, she needed to stay alive.
* * *
“My mother-in-law wants to meet you,” Stacy said.
Amber knew Penny Payne was more than a mother-in-law to her friend. Even when everyone thought Stacy’s dad had killed her husband, Penny had cared about the Kozminski kids. She’d become a surrogate mother to Stacy because the woman who’d been her mother hadn’t deserved the honor.
“I would love to leave here,” Amber said. But only if it was safe. Despite Campanelli’s death, it wasn’t safe. She sighed. “But I don’t think anyone from Payne Protection will allow that.”
Until the person who wanted her dead was behind bars, Amber was the one imprisoned. The condo was beautiful. But she needed fresh air and sunshine that didn’t come through reinforced glass.
The sunshine had nearly cost her dearly, though. If Campanelli had been any closer when he’d fired those shots...
Milek might have been killed. Or any of the other people she’d come to care so much about...
Stacy’s extended family felt like hers now.
“Nobody would let you leave,” Stacy agreed. “And nobody thinks Penny should visit you here, either.”
As much as they all loved and protected each other, they loved and protected the family matriarch even more. “They don’t want her in danger.”
“No.”
“I don’t want anyone in danger because of me, either,” Amber said, and tears threatened, stinging her eyes. She’d nearly lost Milek more than once. She wouldn’t take a chance with anyone else. “Maybe you shouldn’t have visited.”
“Logan will keep me safe,” Stacy said with full faith in her husband.
Amber envied that—just as she’d envied the love between Garek and Candace.
“He’ll keep Michael safe, too,” Stacy added.
“Of course.” Uncle Logan treated the little boy as if he was his own.
“So you wouldn’t mind if I took him with me?”
Amber had missed something. “Where?”
“To see Penny.”
“You want Michael to meet your mother-in-law?”
Stacy smiled. “Yes, he will love her. And he’ll get to see little Penny again. Her grandmother is watching her.”
Amber’s mother had died of breast cancer when Amber was in law school. Her father had died a few years later from heart disease. Amber figured it had just been broken from losing her mother—the love of his life. Amber had understood that pain when Milek broke their engagement. She’d never thought she’d be able to give Michael the family he deserved.
But her son had a cousin now. He had aunts and uncles. He still didn’t have a father. Milek had yet to broach that conversation he’d claimed he wanted to have about their son. Usually when they were alone they made love—giving in to the passion that always burned so bright and hot between them.
Amber nodded. “Of course you can take him.” He wasn’t in danger when he wasn’t with her. Maybe she should have left him behind a year ago—left him with Stacy then for protection. He would be safer without Amber than with her.
But she hated letting him go—even for a short visit. Her arms ached from the hug she gave him before he walked out the door with Aunt Stacy and Uncle Logan.
“I can send Cooper or Parker inside,” Logan had offered.
But she’d refused. For the first time since she’d opened that envelope of photos Frank Campanelli had taken, she was actually alone.
She needed the solitude. She needed to be able to think. To remember who she was.
She hadn’t been a lawyer, a real lawyer, for the past year. Until Logan’s interrogation earlier, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. How she needed it...
Maybe it was because she finally felt like a lawyer again that she needed to investigate. Not that she suspected Milek of anything nefarious.
She believed he had nothing to do with Gregory’s murder. Or Frank Campanelli’s...
But she wanted to check out his place—to see if she could find some clue to the secrets she was sure he was keeping from her. Why had he broken their engagement?
How could he make love to her the way he did if he didn’t care about her?
He had to have feelings for her. It couldn’t be all one-sided.
She knew there was nothing in his bedroom; she’d spent too much time in it to have missed anything. But there was another door down the hallway past the room in which their son slept. It looked like a back door. But it didn’t open to the outside. It couldn’t. The warehouse was big and only a portion of it had been converted to the condo. What about the rest of it?
She stopped in front of that door. The access code was written on the panel beside it. Not in Milek’s handwriting. The scrawl was bolder—sloppier. Garek’s.
Her heart rate quickened when she read the number. The date Milek had proposed to her. If he’d regretted proposing—as he’d told her—why would he have wanted to remember it?
Her fingers trembling, she punched in the code, and the door slid open. Cold air rushed over her. This area of the warehouse hadn’t been converted. But it wasn’t the garage. That was on the other side. What was back here?
She moved through the open area until she found another door. There was no lock here; it wasn’t even shut tightly, so she pushed it open.
Sunshin
e poured through the skylights in the metal roof—illuminated the space. Dust danced in the light. Nobody had been here for a while.
But she could see what it was used for.
Paint spattered the concrete floor. It was dry. Like the paint on the canvases leaning against the walls. They covered every wall except for the area where he’d put a desk. Only a few papers sat atop it.
She walked over to find what he kept here. Some old receipts for paint supplies and a few sales. And a review. She picked up the yellowed paper and read. There is an angry energy in the brushstrokes and colors Koz uses in his work. If the rage in his paintings was ever unleashed, he could prove a danger to himself and others.
She gasped at the reviewer’s audacity. It was one thing to judge the art. But to judge the artist?
Why had Milek kept such garbage? She rummaged through his desk but there were no other reviews—none of the ones she had kept in a scrapbook for him. Those reviews raved about his brilliance—about his use of vibrant colors to express emotion—to bring his art alive.
Why keep the one bad review and ignore all the good ones? She looked at the article again. Was the reviewer someone he knew? Respected?
She didn’t recognize the name. But she recognized the date—the day Milek had ended their engagement. Had that review had anything to do with it?
Had he actually believed he could be a danger?
Metal creaked and groaned. It might have just been the roof. Or the walls...
Or the wind blowing around outside. Amber shivered. It was cold in here. But the chill Amber felt was within—because she didn’t think those noises were the weather or the warehouse. But a real danger...
* * *
“Frank’s money must have been running low,” Garek commented as he pushed open the door to the studio apartment. It had taken him only seconds to pick the lock.
But then, a notorious assassin like the Ghost wouldn’t have had to worry about security. Nobody would have dared sneak up on a man who’d killed so many.