by Julie Miller
“Get off me!” She scratched at his face, gouged at his eyes. “Get off!”
“Oh, yeah. This is what I wanted.” He pulled at the folds of her skirt, shoving the silk and petticoats up to her thighs. Bailey twisted, screamed.
“Shut her up!” Regina yelled behind him. “Someone will hear.”
Ignoring the warning, Elliott gave her a command. “Bring my kit.”
Bailey heard Max moaning, footsteps running.
“You should have let me take care of her,” Regina insisted. “I could have made this problem all go away.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Here.” Regina dropped a toolbox beside the mattress. “I hear sirens.”
“Spencer!” Bailey yelled in desperation. “Help!”
A hard slap across the face silenced her plea. Bailey felt her mind sliding back to that night. To this place.
She’d tried to fight. But her head hurt. Her arms were so tired.
Elliott rubbed his hands together and she realized he’d squirted some kind of disinfectant onto them. “Of all the women who have dared to defy me, you have been the most brazen.” He covered the chemical smell with the wretched cologne that sent her straight back to that night.
“Stop. Please,” she begged.
“Brian.” Bailey saw Regina come up behind Brian and touch his shoulder. “The police are downstairs. You have to get out now.”
Police? “Spencer!”
Fight. That’s what you do. You fight.
“Not until I’m finished!” He shrugged off the warning and ripped at the seam of Bailey’s gown. “Calling me out in the press? Picking me out of a police lineup?”
“You raped me!”
“You needed it.”
Bailey had one move left. Groin.
“Brian!”
Her attacker fell onto the floor, writhing in pain, and Bailey rolled off the mattress on the opposite side, pulling down her clothes, pushing to her feet.
“Max, get up! Get rid of her! Brian?” Regina knelt on the floor beside the man she idolized. “Darling?”
“KCPD! We’re coming in!”
A loud pop and the cracking of wood filled Bailey’s ears as she lurched toward the door.
“Spencer!”
“Bailey!”
She caught sight of his red-gold hair. An army followed him through the door and fanned across the room, each targeting a different kidnapper.
“KCPD! Get on the ground! Now!”
A dog’s fierce barking drowned out the words.
Brian Elliott cursed. “Get that slavering dog away from me!”
“You found me.” Bailey rushed forward, needing Spencer’s arms around her now. “Thank God, you—”
Bailey jerked back, stumbling at the sudden shift in movement, as Regina snatched the back of her dress. The taller woman wound her forearm around Bailey’s neck and pulled her in front of her body to use her as a human shield.
Regina must have recovered Max’s gun, or had carried one all along, because there was definitely a hard metal gun barrel pressing into Bailey’s temple.
“Everybody, stop!” Spencer ordered. “B?”
His gray eyes flickered over Bailey’s face, then hardened when they met the threat in Regina’s. But his arms had frozen in the air, his gun cradled between his hands.
“I missed on purpose last time,” Regina taunted. “Thought I could scare some sense into your little girlfriend here.” Bailey cringed as the woman pressed the gun against her cheek. “You let Brian go—” Regina slid the gun to Bailey’s temple “—or I won’t miss again.”
Bailey’s eyes stung with tears at the anguish that lined Spencer’s face. She could see the nightmare in his eyes. But his first love had surrendered. She hadn’t trusted him enough to keep her safe. “I’m not Ellen, Spence,” she said simply, filling her eyes and her voice with all the love and trust she had for him. “You aren’t going to lose me.”
“Isn’t that sweet? Don’t worry, Brian.” Regina ground the gun into Bailey’s temple, hard enough to tilt her head to the side. Brian Elliott was already in handcuffs. But Regina would clean up his mistakes right up to the very end. “I promise Miss Austin will never testify against you.”
It was a promise Regina would never keep.
Spencer fired his gun. Bailey jerked at the first shot. But Regina’s grip on her went slack.
“Get down, B!” Spencer marched forward as Bailey ducked and Nick Fensom pulled her safely out of the line of fire.
Regina pulled the trigger, but her shot went wide. Spencer fired two more times and Regina Hollister crumpled in a heap, dead.
Finally, he lowered his gun. “B?”
“Spencer!” Bailey ran to him. “Spence—”
He claimed her mouth in a kiss that was hot and hard and over far too quickly. But his arm anchored her to his side. She lifted her fingers to straighten the collar that was hopelessly twisted with the hanging tail of his tie. He leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. “We got ’em, sweetheart. The bad guys didn’t get to win.”
They stood there like that for several seconds, his eyes searching her face. Finally, he raised his head, although the arm around her remained. He looked to the other members of his team. “We need to clear the prisoners out of here and secure the scene. Get Annie up here with her kit and call—”
“We got it, boss,” Nick teased. “We can handle a crime scene.” He pulled Max Duncan to his feet and winked at Bailey. “Be gentle with this one, Bails.”
“Out!” Spencer ordered.
Pike Taylor led Brian Elliott out the door and Nick followed.
Spencer started to say something. But with Regina Hollister’s dead body in the room—or maybe because he didn’t quite know what to say, either, now that the threat to Bailey had been neutralized and there was no need for a relentless cop to protect her anymore—he touched the cut on her cheek and sighed.
Next, he holstered his weapon and shrugged out of his jacket. Like the true gentleman he was, Spencer draped it around her shoulders and took her by the hand.
He led her down a flight of stairs and they made a bracing dash to his SUV. After killing the emergency lights, he turned on the engine, cranked the heat and pulled her into his lap so he could capture her mouth in a deep, potent kiss. Bailey wound her arms around his neck, riding the deep rise and fall of his chest—answering him touch for touch, kiss for kiss, until they were generating plenty of heat on their own.
When they came up for air, Spencer framed her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. “I know you want to change the world and doing something meaningful and take care of yourself. Those are mighty big dreams for a man to compete with. But I need you, B. Please let that be enough.”
Bailey stroked her fingers across his lips, quieting the raw urgency in his voice. “You do love me, don’t you, detective?” she asked, feeling one little bit of uncertainty. “Don’t let me be the only one feeling this way.”
Spencer pulled her back to his chest, tunneling his fingers into her hair. “Yes, I love you. I want to marry you. I know with the rape, you need recovery time. And then everything you’ve been through this week, and the trial to deal with. I’m a patient man. I’ll give you all the time you need, all the space you want until you’re ready to say yes.”
“Yes,” Bailey answered without hesitation, snuggling into Spencer’s arms, feeling safe, strong, perfect. “Y
es.”
* * *
WHEN DWIGHT POWERS called her name, Bailey released her grip on Spencer’s hand. She walked past the defense’s table, looking beyond Kenna Parker’s stoic expression to meet Brian Elliott’s hateful, condemning eyes.
But Spencer’s steady, granite-colored gaze was there for her when she turned to face the courtroom. His engagement ring was on her finger. She stepped into the witness’s stand beside the judge’s bench and raised her right hand.
“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Bailey answered, “I do.”
* * * * *
Coming in 2014
ONCE A COP
The next thrilling romantic suspense novel from
THE PRECINCT
by USA TODAY Bestselling Author Julie Miller
Only from Harlequin Intrigue
Keep reading for an excerpt from COLD CASE AT CAMDEN CROSSING by Rita Herron.
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Prologue
Sixteen-year-old Tawny-Lynn Boulder gripped the edge of the seat as something slammed into the back of the bus and sent it careening to the right, skimming the guardrail.
Tires squealed, the driver lost control and sparks spewed from the sides as they swerved back and forth. Screams from the other girls on the softball team echoed around her. Glass shattered.
She glanced sideways as she struggled to keep from pitching into the aisle. The ravine loomed only a few feet away.
Her body bounced against the seat as the bus rolled. Her sister, Peyton, cried out as her head hit the roof of the bus. Someone’s shoe sailed over the seat. A gym bag clumped down the aisle.
Peyton’s best friend, Ruth, clawed at her with bloody hands.
Then the bus was sliding, skidding, skating toward the edge of the ravine. Metal screeched and gears ground as they broke through the railing. For a terrifying second, the bus was suspended, teetering on the edge of the cliff.
More screams and blood flying. Then the vehicle crashed over the edge of the embankment, plunging downward into the ravine below.
“Peyton!” Tawny-Lynn cried.
The force threw Peyton over the seat. More glass rained inside as the bus slammed into a boulder.
Her head hit something, her shoulder ramming into the opposite side of the bus. For a moment, she lost consciousness.
Seconds or maybe minutes later, she stirred, her body aching, her leg twisted beneath a gnarled metal seat edge. She searched for Peyton, terrified she was dead.
They’d had a fight earlier. Stupid sister stuff.
She wanted to make up.
Suddenly smoke began to fill the bus. She struggled to free her leg, but she was trapped.
Someone was crying in the back. But the other screams had subsided.
She managed to raise herself and look into the aisle.
God, no... One of the girls wasn’t moving.
And Peyton and Ruth, where were they?
The bus rocked back and forth as if hanging on to a boulder. The smoke grew thicker. Somewhere through the gray haze, she saw flames shooting up toward the night sky.
She coughed and choked, then everything went dark.
Chapter One
Seven years later
“Your daddy is dead.”
Tawny-Lynn gripped the phone with sweaty palms, then sank onto the bench in her garden. The roses that she’d groomed and loved so much suddenly smelled sickly sweet.
“Did you hear me, Tawny-Lynn?”
She nodded numbly, fighting the bitter memories assaulting her, then realized her father’s lawyer Bentley Bannister couldn’t see her, so she muttered a quiet yes.
But the memories crashed back. The bus accident. The fire. The screams. Then half the team was dead.
Somehow she’d survived, although she had no idea how. She’d lost time when she’d blacked out. Couldn’t remember what had happened after the fire broke out.
But when she’d woken up, her sister and her friend Ruth were gone.
She’d been terrified they were dead. But the police had never found their bodies.
They had escaped somehow. Although half of Camden Crossing thought they’d fallen to foul play, that the accident hadn’t been an accident. That a predator had caused the crash, then abducted Peyton and Ruth.
Just like a predator had taken two girls a year before that from a neighboring town.
Bannister cleared his throat, his voice gruff. “He was sick for a while, but I guess you knew that already.”
No, she didn’t. But then again, she wasn’t surprised. His drinking and the two-pack-a-day cigarette habit had to have caught up with him at some point.
“Anyway, I suppose you’ll want to be here to oversee the memorial service.”
“No, go ahead with that,” Tawny-Lynn said. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to come.
Wouldn’t have wanted her near him.
Like everyone else in town, he’d blamed her. If she’d remembered more, seen what had happened, they might have been able to find Peyton and Ruth.
“Are you sure? He was your father, Tawny-Lynn.”
“My father hated me after Peyton went missing,” Tawny-Lynn said bluntly.
“Sugar, he was upset—”
“Don’t defend him,” she said. “I left Camden Crossing and him behind years ago.” Although the crash and screams had followed her, still haunted her in her dreams.
A tense heartbeat passed. “All right. But the ranch... Well, White Forks is yours now.”
The ranch. God... She bowed her head and inhaled deep breaths. The familiar panic attack was threatening. She had to ward it off.
“You will come back and take care of the ranch, won’t you?”
Take care of it as in live there? No way.
She massaged her temple, a migraine threatening. Just the thought of returning to the town that hated her made her feel ill.
“Tawny-Lynn?”
“Just hang a for-sale sign in the yard.”
His breath wheezed out, reminding her that he was a heavy smoker, too. “About the ranch. Your father let it go the last few years. I don’t think you’ll get anything for it unless you do some upkeep.”
Tawny-Lynn glanced around her small, cozy apartment. It was nestled in Austin, a city big enough to support businesses. A city where no one knew her and where she could get lost in the crowd.
Where no one hated her for the past.
The last thing she wanted to do was have to revisit the house where her life had fallen apart.
But her conversation with her accountant about her new landscape business echoed in her head, and she realized that selling the property could provide the money she needed to make her business a success.
She had to go back and clean up the ranch, then sell it.
Then she’d finally be done with Camden Crossing and the people in it for good.
* * *
&
nbsp; SHERIFF CHAZ CAMDEN glanced at the missing-persons report that had just come in over the fax. Another young girl, barely eighteen.
Gone.
Vanished from a town in New Mexico in the middle of the night. A runaway or a kidnapping?
He studied the picture, his gut knotting. She was a brunette like his sister, Ruth, had been. Same innocent smile. Her life ahead of her.
And according to her parents, a happy well-adjusted teenager who planned to attend college. A girl who never came home after her curfew.
They thought someone had kidnapped her just as he’d suspected someone had abducted Ruth and Peyton after that horrendous bus crash.
Not that New Mexico was close enough to Camden Crossing, Texas, that he thought it was the same sicko.
But close enough to remind him of the tragedy that had torn his family apart.
The door to the sheriff’s office burst open, and he frowned as his father walked in. Gerome Camden, a banker and astute businessman, owned half the town and had raised him with an iron fist. The two of them had tangled when he was growing up, but Ruth had been his father’s pet, and it had nearly killed him when she’d disappeared.
“We need to talk,” his dad said without preamble.
Chaz shoved the flier about the missing girl beneath a stack of folders, knowing it would trigger one of his father’s tirades. Although judging from the scowl on his aging face, he was already upset about something.
Chaz leaned back in his chair. “What is it, Dad?”
“Tawny-Lynn Boulder is back in town.”
Chaz stifled a reaction. “Really? I heard she didn’t want a memorial service for her father.”
The gray streaks in his father’s hair glinted in the sunlight streaming through the window. “Who could blame her? Eugene Boulder was a common drunk.”
“Guess that’s how he dealt with Peyton going missing.”
Unlike his father who’d just turned plain mean. Although he’d heard Boulder had been a mean drunk.