A Profiler's Case for Seduction

by Carla Cassidy

  “I noticed there’s a little coffee shop on campus. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Dora Martin?” he asked.

  She gazed at him for a long moment and once again she pulled her laptop tight against her body, as if forming a barrier between herself and the world...between herself and him.

  His breath caught in his chest as he waited for her response, telling himself he could always find somebody else to use for information. Still, he was shocked by how much he wanted her to say yes.

  “I only have a little while before I have to get to the bookstore,” she replied with a touch of hesitation. “But a cup of coffee sounds good.”

  Mark released his breath and felt a natural smile curl his lips for the first time in a very long time. “Great,” he replied. Despite his instant attraction to her his only goal was to use her for information. Maybe he could glean a little more information on the woman at the center of the mystery and the crimes that had plagued this town. And if Dora couldn’t give him any insight, all that was lost was a few minutes drinking coffee.

  * * *

  Dora had found herself half-breathless when the tall, dark-haired man had sat next to her in the theater. Handsome and lean, he’d smelled faintly of minty soap and shaving cream. His dark hair had been slightly mussed, as if he had no idea how attractive he was and didn’t much care. Hot. The man was definitely a hottie, but Dora had quickly reminded herself that men were off-limits to her.

  When she’d walked outside and seen him, the first thing she’d noticed was how the sun danced in his thick, slightly messy hair and that his brilliant blue eyes held a piercing quality that both drew her in and unsettled her.

  He’d shocked her with his offer to buy her a cup of coffee and her initial instinct had been to turn him down, to run as far away from him as possible. No men allowed.

  It’s just a cup of coffee, a little voice had whispered in the back of her head as she found herself accepting his offer. Now, as they fell into step side by side, her tongue was tied in knots.

  He didn’t seem to mind the silence, as he didn’t offer any conversation to break it as they walked toward the nearby campus coffee shop.

  “Nice day,” she finally said.

  He looked at her, as if startled to see her by his side, then gazed around and looked back at her. “It is, isn’t it?” He smiled and a flutter of warmth whispered over her.

  “Autumn is my favorite time of the year,” she said, hoping to keep the conversation flowing.

  “It is nice,” he agreed.

  It was ridiculous that a faint nervous jitter had played in her veins the moment he’d asked her to get coffee. She was a forty-year-old woman, not a teenager, and yet each time she looked at him she felt an evocative heat in the pit of her stomach, a tingle in her veins that she recognized as full-on attraction.

  His facial features were chiseled, with angles and planes that created not only a handsome face but also a face with a slight edge, especially with the hint of dark stubble on his lower jaw.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as they entered the busy coffee shop. He pointed toward an empty two-top table. “Grab us that place,” he said, “and I’ll order the coffees. You like it any special way?”

  “Just black is fine,” she replied. She hurried to the empty table and sat with her laptop case and purse on the floor at her side.

  FBI agent Mark Flynn was easy to spot at the counter since he was taller than the others who stood in line before and after him. Maybe she’d agreed to have coffee with him because he was working in the field that she wanted to make her career. He’d solve the crime and be gone.

  Maybe her decision to make an exception to the rule she’d made about men had nothing to do with the depth in his blue eyes or the chiseled features of his handsome face, but rather because she knew he wouldn’t be around long enough to threaten her self-improvement drive.

  Comforted by this thought, she decided to just enjoy this moment, assured that she wasn’t going back down the dark rabbit hole from where she’d been pulled over three years ago.

  She smiled as he returned to the table with two steaming cups of coffee. He eased down into the chair across from her. “A criminologist,” he said, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation before he’d retrieved the drinks. “I’d say right now you’re in a good place for a little beyond-the-books learning experience with everything that has happened here in the last couple of weeks.”

  Her smile fell away when she thought of the murders and the kidnapping of Melinda. “It’s been a terrible time for everyone. First the kidnapping, and then those poor men strangled and left to be discovered by students. At least Professor Grayson wasn’t killed, as well. But you probably don’t want to talk about your work while you’re enjoying your coffee.”

  He took a sip from his cup and then leaned forward. “So, tell me about Dora Martin. Married? Divorced? What were you doing before you landed here in Vengeance?”

  His gaze seemed to pierce through her, as if he could ferret out secrets by merely looking deep into her eyes. And she had a lifetime of secrets about who she had been, about where she had come from, secrets that she wasn’t about to share with anyone ever.

  “Divorced a long time ago,” she replied. “And before I moved here and began my higher education, I was working as a waitress and going nowhere fast.”

  “It’s admirable that you decided to make a change,” he said encouragingly.

  “Thanks.” She looked down at the tabletop and tried not to remember that it hadn’t really been her who had made the decision that she needed to make a change, but rather two people who cared about her.

  She gazed at him once again. “What about you? Married? Single?”

  “Single and divorced,” he replied with a quicksilver frown that danced across his forehead and then quickly disappeared. “This kind of job isn’t conducive to relationships. During my brief marriage I saw more of my team members than my wife, Sarah.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  He smiled. “Actually, we parted as good friends. I have my work and she has hers as a journalist in Dallas, and we share a three-year-old daughter.” His smile faded and the focus in his eyes grew hazy.

  “What’s her name?” Dora asked.

  He didn’t reply. It was as if he were lost to the here and now, lost to place and time. “Agent Flynn?”

  His eyes regained focus and he straightened in his chair. “Sorry about that. I tend to get lost in my head sometimes, and please, make it Mark.”

  “I asked about your daughter’s name,” Dora said.

  “Grace. Her name is Grace.”

  “That’s nice. So, you’re from Dallas?”

  He nodded. “A little apartment in Dallas is my legal address, but I’m not there very much. I’ll only be here in Vengeance until we wrap up these murders by getting the guilty in custody.”

  She’d understood that the moment he’d identified himself as an FBI agent. In town to do a job and then he’d get back to his life in Dallas, a life that had nothing to do with hers here in Vengeance. Once again she recognized that this was safe...he was safe and wouldn’t screw her up with a single cup of coffee.

  No matter how attracted she was to him, he wouldn’t be around to tempt her into old, bad habits that would derail her. She could never allow that to happen.

  “So, are you also investigating Professor Grayson’s kidnapping?” she asked.

  “We’re all working to seek answers both in the murders and kidnapping case.”

  “Why were you at the lecture this morning?” she asked, curious about his presence in the theater.

  “The topic of sociopaths always grabs my attention. I just stopped in on a whim, but a phone call vibrated my phone and I had to leave to take the call.”

  “Would you like my notes from
the lecture?”

  He smiled at her, the smile that wove heat through her entire body. “I suddenly feel like I’m nineteen again and sharing notes with the sharpest mind in the class.”

  Dora laughed. “Sharpest mind. Wow, I definitely have you fooled.”

  “I doubt it,” he countered easily. “I saw how diligently you were taking notes and it’s not the slackers who take a lecture so seriously.”

  A blush rose into her cheeks as she saw the approval in his eyes. “I take my education very seriously.”

  “As you should,” he agreed, and took another sip of his coffee.

  Dora checked her watch. “I also take my job at the bookstore very seriously since it is part of what pays the tuition, and unfortunately, I’ve got to go.” Although she still had a few minutes to spare she felt the need to escape his disconcerting and gorgeous blue gaze and the sexy curl of his smile.

  She stood and grabbed her laptop and her purse and then lifted the foam cup of the remainder of her drink. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  He also got to his feet. “Thanks for the company,” he replied. “This has been a pleasant break from business as usual.”

  “But it’s time to get back to business as usual,” Dora said briskly. He followed her outside the coffee shop and they stood for a moment on the sidewalk.

  “I’ll guess I’ll see you around campus,” she said. “Thanks again for the coffee.”

  “You’re welcome.” He murmured a goodbye as she turned to head in the direction of the bookstore. She could swear she felt his gaze burning in the center of her back until she turned left on the sidewalk that would take her out of his view.

  Silly, she told herself, gripping her laptop against her chest. She was just being silly because for over three years she’d scarcely noticed the male population around her. Somehow FBI agent Mark Flynn had managed to sneak beneath her antimale radar.

  No harm, no foul, she thought as she stopped beside a trash container. She finished the last of the coffee and then tossed the foam cup into the trash and continued her walk to the bookstore, her thoughts still consumed by the handsome Mark Flynn.

  She hoped his team could not only solve the murders but also find out who had kidnapped and beaten Melinda and then had released her. It made no sense, and to date, nobody had come up with a reasonable motive for what had happened to the professor.

  So far the investigation into the murders had spilled secrets left and right about the three male victims, tawdry tales of bribery and betrayal. They were ugly secrets that had everyone gossiping about who the victims had presented themselves to be and who, in truth, they had been.

  Dora wanted the FBI to get to the bottom of the crimes, but she certainly didn’t want anyone digging around into her life, past or present.

  Her past was filled with shame and regret, a place she tried not to visit in her dreams or thoughts. Her present was still filled with a secret she didn’t want known. Not because it would embarrass her, but rather because it would embarrass one of the two people who had plucked her up from the stinking back alley of her existence and given her a reason to live.

  Professor Melinda Grayson was not only her teacher but also her older sister and her salvation. Dora would turn herself inside out to keep people from knowing that she was related to the esteemed, intelligent professor. She would never want Melinda’s reputation to be tainted by her own past.

  Still, it had been nice for those few minutes to sit across from Mark and feel the stir of chemistry, knowing that it was an attraction that would go nowhere, knowing that she couldn’t afford any more mistakes in her lifetime. She was like a cat who had already misspent eight of the nine lives she’d been given. She wasn’t going to do anything to mess up this final chance.

  Chapter 2

  Mark stood at a whiteboard in front of his team in the conference room they had commandeered on the first floor of the county courthouse/city hall. The room was midsize and filled with the requisite long tables and chairs where his fellow agents now sat looking at him expectantly.

  The team had changed in the three weeks since the bodies had been discovered. Agents had been pulled off this particular crime when a grave of twenty skeletons of young men had been discovered just outside Oklahoma City. Richard Sinclair was the agent in charge, but he ran a fairly loose ship and rarely yielded his power over the others.

  For a moment, as Mark stared at the five agents at the table, his brain blanked on everything except the silky look of Dora Martin’s hair sparking in the sunshine the day before and the mysteries he’d sensed in the depths of her dove-gray eyes when she’d been so vague about where she’d come from and what she’d been doing before winding up in Vengeance, Texas.

  “Earth to Mark,” Agent Lori Delaney said drily, pulling him from thoughts of Dora and to his task at hand.

  “Sorry,” Mark said, and raked a hand through his hair as if the gesture would banish any further thoughts of Dora. He turned toward the whiteboard where photos of the three dead men were taped. Beneath their photos was information about each man written in Mark’s precise handwriting.

  “Sheriff Peter Burris,” Mark began, intending to go through all the facts they knew about each of the dead men for the hundredth time since they’d been called out on the case. He tapped on the picture of the dead man. It was a crime-scene photo, the burly sheriff barely recognizable after having been strangled and buried in his shallow grave.

  “He was found with a note card on his body that read Liar. We now know that Peter Burris was a dirty lawman who was blackmailing Senator John Merris among other illegal activities. At the time of his murder he was married to Suzy Burris, an accountant who has since been cleared of having anything to do with her husband’s death.”

  Mark slid sideways to tap his index finger on the second photograph. “Next victim is David Reed, with a note card that labeled him a cheater. He was a sports writer, known to be a playboy. He had a drug problem and was into the illegal sports betting scene. Although he was married to Eliza Harvey, we know that he was having affairs at the time of his murder.”

  “I definitely would have killed him if he were my husband,” Lori Delaney quipped, making the other agents laugh.

  They quickly sobered as Mark continued. “Eliza was our number-one suspect until she was cleared, which brings us to victim number three, Senator John Merris, who was labeled as a thief by the card the killer left on his body. We all know now that the good senator was a nasty piece of work who siphoned millions of dollars from the Dawson Exploration Oil Company and padded his own bank account at the same time he put hundreds of people out of work.”

  “It’s almost like our killer did the world a big favor,” Agent Donald Thompson muttered, under his breath but loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

  “They were all dirtbags, but they were still murdered,” Lori replied. “And I want this killer brought to justice.” She was an intense young agent with dark hair and eyes. Mark knew this was the biggest case she’d worked on in her short career.

  “All three men were killed within a twenty-four-hour period of time and each of them had been strangled or suffocated,” Mark continued. “As we know, what few leads we’ve managed to get have led us nowhere. There is no question that these men were all killed by the same person or persons, and strangulation is a particularly intimate form of killing, but we have yet to tie these three victims to any one person to make a connection.”

  “We’re working on it,” Agent Larry Albright replied with a weariness Mark knew the whole team felt. So far this had been one of the most frustrating cases Mark had worked. He couldn’t get a handle on the killer, none of them could even agree on a specific motive.

  Certainly the three dead men all had their share of unsavory secrets, but murder usually uncovered secrets of one sort or another. Nobody was exactly w
hat they portrayed to the outside world.

  So far their investigation had run in all directions, focusing on enemies a state senator might have, and who might hate a playboy cheater and, finally, why somebody would kill a dirty sheriff. Each of these people could have faced the consequences of their crimes in a courtroom, but instead the ultimate judgment had been meted out by an unknown person or persons.

  The FBI had no idea specifically where the men had been killed, only that, within a twenty-four-hour period, each of them had been strangled and buried in shallow graves on private land adjoining the college campus.

  Mark knew the other men and woman on his team were leaning toward a vigilante scenario...one or two people getting rid of the dishonest, the disloyal and the mendacious in one single twenty-four-hour killing spree.

  He finished up going over the particulars of what they already knew and what they needed to know, and the group of agents dispersed and left the room. The only one remaining, as Mark began to set up video equipment, was the senior agent Richard Sinclair.

  Agent Sinclair was the oldest on the team, a veteran who had seen all the ugly that the world had to offer in his many years in the bureau. He was also the person Mark felt closest to on the team.

  “Going to view them again?” Richard asked as he once again sank down at a chair at the table.

  “And again and again,” Mark replied. He set the video screen so that both he and Richard could watch the “movies” about to play. After loading the DVD into the recorder, he took a seat next to Richard, the remote control in his hand.

  “You know that most of the others think you’re crazy about this,” Richard said, his voice deep and full yet holding no judgment. “They believe you’ve become obsessed and refuse to see reality.”

  “I know, and that’s okay. I’m just following my instincts. If I’m wrong then all I’ve wasted is my own time. There are plenty of others to do the rest of the investigative work. I’ve got to follow through on my gut, right or wrong.” He turned to look at Richard, seeking not approval but rather simple acceptance.