by Paula Graves
When she lifted her face to his, she was smiling through her tears. “I hear you.”
He slowly lowered his mouth to hers, giving her time to back away if she wanted. The timing was all wrong, but he couldn’t hold back the way he felt about her, letting his lips and tongue convey the complexity of emotions, of love and desire and commitment all tangled into one heady elixir.
She kissed him back, and in every brush of her lips, every stroke of her tongue against his, he felt his love for her returned with equal intensity.
She finally pulled back, ending the kiss, and gazed up at him with the first hint of joy he’d ever seen in her eyes. “I’m going to sleep with you tonight, Jim Mercer. Just sleep.” Her kiss-stung lips quirked. “Sorry about that part.”
He took her hand and led her to the nearest bed, smiling up at her as he sat on the edge and took her hands. “I’m not. I’m not sorry at all.”
Epilogue
Four months was long enough.
Lacey had been busy during that span of time, negotiating a lighter schedule with the network and trying to make her Arlington condo work for life with a two-year-old. And there was Jim, of course, as constant in her life now as he’d promised. He and Katie had healed a lot of her wounds, the ones that had scarred her life when her sister died and a few she hadn’t even realized she had, from a life lived constantly on the edge, looking for something she couldn’t define.
She’d found it, finally, in the one place she’d never thought to look—inside herself. In her absolute adoration for her niece and her deepening, broadening love for the man who’d showed her that true love wasn’t some unreachable, unknowable fairy tale but something constant and real, in good times and bad. They’d married a couple of weeks ago, had run off to a cheesy little wedding chapel in the Smoky Mountains and tied the knot. Jim’s family had been there, as loving and welcoming as Jim himself, and Katie had taken her job as flower girl seriously, carpeting the wedding-chapel aisle with rose petals so thickly that she ran out halfway up the aisle.
She was Mrs. Jim Mercer now. Lacey Miles-Mercer.
She liked it. A lot.
It had been Jim who’d convinced her it was time to go back to Cherry Grove. Whether the house was still there or not, the farm remained, and she needed to make some decisions about it.
“This place looks so different,” she commented as they drove through the middle of Cherry Grove.
“And exactly the same,” Jim said with a grin as they passed the diner and waved at Charlotte Brady, who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store.
Winter had passed and spring was in full flower, the trees thick with their new green foliage and flowers blooming in pots and hedges in front of every building along Main Street.
Lacey found her stomach clenching with nerves as they made the turn down the road to the farm. Here, too, was a world reborn, the grass in the pastureland green and lush. One day, Lacey remembered, Marianne and Toby had planned to buy some horses to graze the pastures. Maybe a milk cow and some goats and chickens to supplement their supply of food.
Everything looked familiar and strange at the same time, but the overwhelming sense that seeped its way into her consciousness was that she was coming home.
She had lived here only a short month, but it had become part of her in a way that caught her completely by surprise.
Wrapped up in pondering what that unexpected feeling meant, it took her longer than it should have to realize that the blackened, ravaged ruin she had been bracing herself to see was no longer there.
In its place stood the half-built frame of a new farmhouse, surrounded by a crew of construction workers hard at work rebuilding the structure that had so recently burned to the ground.
“What...what?” Lacey stared at the rising bones of the new house, then back at Jim. He smiled at her, his hazel-green eyes twinkling with mischievous joy.
“Surprise,” he said.
“How... I haven’t even cashed the insurance check yet.”
“You were going to put that toward Katie’s college fund, so I thought maybe I should find another way to rebuild the house.”
“What other way?”
“You knew when I swept you into an elopement last month there were still a few things you hadn’t yet learned about me. Well, one of them was that I recently sold a piece of land in North Carolina that I’d bought after my first year in the Marine Corps. Since I wasn’t planning on going to college at that point, my mother gave me the savings she and my dad had put away for my schooling, and I bought land to build a house after I got out of the Marine Corps. It was sitting there, undeveloped, for a long time. Until a land developer decided he wanted it for a new subdivision he was planning.” Jim grinned. “Paid a bloody fortune for it. More than five times what I paid for it.”
“And you, what? Used your money to rebuild the farmhouse?”
“It was your sister’s dream. It was supposed to be Katie’s home. I know you have other plans now, other dreams, but I thought at least Katie could have a place that connected her to her parents. If you don’t want to do anything with it, the farmland could be rented out, and we could just keep the house as a vacation spot or something.”
She stared at him, her heart so full she could barely find her voice. “How do you do that?”
He touched her cheek. “Do what?”
“Know what I want before I even know I want it?”
He bent to kiss her, a long, sweet, promising kiss that made her head spin and her heart soar. “Because I love you.”
In the car seat behind them, Katie was growing impatient. “Home!” she said in a loud, insistent voice.
Lacey gave Jim a last, sweet kiss and turned to look at the farmhouse rising from the ashes.
“That’s right, baby,” she said. “We’re home.”
* * * * *
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
Pursuing sadistic killers is what former
FBI profiler Samantha Dark does—but this time,
it’s too close to home...
Keep reading for a sneak peek of
AFTER THE DARK,
part of New York Times bestselling author
Cynthia Eden’s miniseries
KILLER INSTINCT
available April 2017 only from HQN Books!
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After the Dark
by Cynthia Eden
THE SCENE WAS all wrong.
The killer—the balding man in his late thirties—the man who stood there with sweat dripping down his face, a gun held in his trembling hand and a dead girl at his feet...he was wrong.
FBI Special Agent Samantha Dark raised her weapon even as she shook her head. She’d profiled this killer, studied every detail of his crime spree. And...
This is wrong.
“Drop the gun!” That bellow came from her partner, Blake Gamble. He was at her side, his weapon drawn, too, and she knew all of his focus was locked on the killer.
They’d come to this house just to ask Allan March some follow-up questions. He’d been one of the custodians at Georgetown University, a university that had recently become the hunting grounds for a killer.
At Blake’s shout, Allan jerked. And when he jerked, his finger squeezed the trigger of the gun he held. The shot went wide, missing both Samantha and Blake. She didn’t return fire. Allan doesn’t fit the profile. This is all wrong—
Blake returned fire. The bullet slammed into Allan’s right shoulder. Not a killing wound, not even close. Blood bloomed from the spot, soaking the stark white shirt that Allan wore. Allan should have dropped his gun in response to that hit, but he didn’t. He screamed. Tears trickled down his cheeks, and he aimed that gun—
Not at Blake, but at me.
“Has to be you...” Allan whispered. “Said...has to be you...”
She didn’t let any fear show, even as the emotion nearly suffocated her. “Allan, put down the gun.” Blake’s order had been bellowed, but hers was given softly. Almost sadly. Put the gun down, Allan. I don’t want to shoot you. This isn’t the way I want things to end.
The FBI had been searching for the Georgetown University killer for months. Following the trail left by the bastard—a trail of blood and bodies. But the trail shouldn’t have led here.
Allan March was a widower. His wife had passed away two years ago, slowly dying of cancer. He’d been at her bedside every single moment. All of the data that the FBI had collected on Allan indicated that he was a dedicated family man, a caregiver. Not—
A serial killer.
“I’m sorry,” Allan whispered.
And Samantha knew what he was going to do. Even as those tears poured down his cheeks, she knew.
“No!” Samantha screamed.
But it was too late. Allan pointed the gun right at his own face and pulled the trigger. The thunder of the gunfire echoed around them, and, a moment later, Allan’s body hit the floor, falling to land right next to the dead body of Amber Lyle, the twenty-two-year-old college student who’d been missing for three days.
“Fucking hell,” Blake muttered.
This is wrong.
Samantha rushed toward the downed man. Her weapon was still in her hand. Her eyes were on Allan. On what was left of his face. Dear God.
* * *
“THE PRESS IS ripping us apart, Samantha! Ripping us apart!” Her boss glared at her as they stood inside the small FBI office. “You were supposed to be the freaking superstar—a profiler who could do no wrong. But your profile was shit. You had us looking for a man who didn’t exist. Three women died while we were looking for the killer you said was out there!”
Samantha stood, her shoulders back and her spine straight, as Justin Bass berated her. Spittle was flying from her boss’s mouth. His blue gaze blazed with rage.
The executive assistant director was far more pissed than she’d ever seen him before. The guy had a temper, everyone knew that truth, but this time... There’s no going back.
Justin didn’t like to look bad. He liked to be the agent in charge, the man with the answers. The suit who handled the press and gloried in the attention he got when his team brought down the bad guy.
“Damn it, Samantha!” Justin snarled, a muscle twitching in his rounded jaw. “Do you have anything to say?”
Did she? Samantha swallowed. Did she dare tell him what she thought? When every single piece of evidence said just how wrong she’d been?
“Take it easy, Bass.” Blake spoke on her behalf. He was at her side, sending her a sympathetic glance. “What matters is that the Sorority Slasher has been stopped.”
The Sorority Slasher. Samantha hated that name. It sounded like something from a really bad horror flick. Leave it to the tabloids to glam up a grisly killer.
“We’re the fucking FBI,” Justin said, stopping to slap his hands down on his desk. “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”
Her temples were throbbing. She knew exactly who they were.
“Someone has to take the fall for this one. Three women died because you were wrong. You were wrong, Samantha. The superstar from Princeton. The woman who was supposed to change the face of profiling. FBI brass shoved you down my throat, and you were wrong.”
She made her jaw unclench.
“You’re taking the fall for this one.” Justin nodded curtly toward her. “Consider yourself on suspension.”
Samantha almost took a step back. Her lips parted—
Don’t take the job from me.
“What?” Blake was the one who’d given that shocked cry. It was Blake who sounded furious as he snapped, “You can’t do that! Samantha is the best—”
“Yeah, right, you think I don’t know about the hard-on you have for her, Agent Gamble?” Justin fired right back. “You two never should have been partners. So take some advice, buddy. Save your own ass. She’s a sinking ship, and you don’t want to go down with her.”
Her boss was a bastard. Lots of men she’d met in the FBI were arrogant assholes. Blake? No, he was a good guy, and that was why she respected him so much.
“Leave your weapon here,” Justin ordered her. “And your badge.”
She unsnapped her holster, walked slowly toward his desk.
My profile was right. I know it was.
She put her gun on his desk, but when she reached for her FBI badge and ID, Samantha hesitated.
“You know, we found pictures of all the victims at his place.” Justin’s voice was flat. “Souvenirs that he kept.”
“Trophies.” It was the first thing she’d said since coming into his office. “Not souvenirs, they’re trophies.” Serial killers often kept them so that they could relive their crimes.
“Shoved in the back of his closet, under the guy’s winter boots.” Justin shook his head. “Dropped like they didn’t matter, and you spent all that time telling us we were looking for a cold, methodical killer. One who wanted to push boundaries and study the pain of his victims. One who wanted to see just how well matched he’d be with authorities. A smart killer, a damn genius. Fuck me, Samantha, Allan March barely graduated high school!”
And that was just one of the many reasons why he was wrong.
Her fingers had clenched around her ID. “Did you ever think...” Her voice was too soft, but it was either speak softly or scream. “Did you consider that maybe Allan had been set up?”
Justin’s hands flew up into the air in a gesture of obvious frustration. “He shot himself! Killed his damn fool self when he blew off half his head! If that doesn’t say guilty, then what the hell does?”
Her drumming heartbeat was too loud. “He could have killed himself for a number of reasons.” Reasons that were nagging at her. He’d lost his life savings battling his wife’s cancer. Extreme financial hardship? Hell, yes, that could lead people to suicide. It could—
Justin yanked the ID from her hand. “Get the hell out, Samantha. You are done. I won’t have you talking this shit in my office—and you sure as hell better not plan on stopping to talk to the reporters outside.”
“Director Bass—” Blake began angrily.
“Don’t!” Justin threw righ
t back at him. “Not another word, unless you want to be giving up your badge, too.”
No, Blake wouldn’t do that. The FBI was his life.
She kept her spine ramrod straight as she walked out of the office. When she reached the bull pen, she heard the whispers—from the other FBI agents there, from the cops who’d come to team up with them. Everyone was staring at her with confusion in their eyes.
She was wrong. She screwed up. She let those women die.
This was all going to be on her. Samantha clenched her hands into fists.
She made it to the elevator. One step at a time. Her spine was starting to hurt.
She slipped into the elevator. Pushed the button to go down to the parking garage. The doors were starting to close—
“Samantha.” Blake was there. Shoving his hand through the gap between the doors, trying to get to her.
She shook her head. “No.” Because she couldn’t deal with him right then. He pulled at her emotions, and she already felt too raw.
Blake. Handsome, strong Blake. Blake with his rugged good looks, his jet-black hair, his bright green eyes and that golden skin...sexy Blake.
Fierce Blake.
Off-limits Blake.
Because her bastard of a boss had been right about one thing. Blake did have a hard-on for her. She’d noticed his attraction. It would have been impossible to miss. An attraction that she more than felt, too. But he was her partner. You didn’t screw around with your partner. That was against the rules.
She’d always played by the rules.
And she’d still gotten screwed.
“This isn’t on you,” Blake gritted out.
Actually, it was. The dead man’s blood was still on her clothes because she’d run to him after he’d blown off half his face. His blood was on her—and the deaths of those three women? She knew her boss was going to push those her way, too. Before he was done, she’d be some rogue FBI agent who’d gone off the playbook—and he’d be the shining superstar who’d somehow managed to stop the Sorority Slasher.