by Linda Barlow
Table of Contents
Title Page
Call Me Killer
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
A Note from the Author
FREE BONUS NOVEL
Copyright 2014 by Linda Barlow
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Linda's Bio
Call Me Killer
Linda Barlow
Call Me Killer
by
Linda Barlow
Copyright © 2015 by Linda Barlow
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-941982-92-1
Linda Barlow Books
www.lindabarlow.com
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Author’s Note: The first part of this novel appeared briefly in short story form in an anthology under the title “Color Me Bad.”
Call Me Killer is a full-length romance of 65,000 words. It is a standalone, although other novels featuring some of the minor characters who appear in this book will be forthcoming.
For a brief time only, this introductory edition contains a full-length BONUS novel at the end of Call Me Killer. The Dangerous Hero is included as a special holiday gift to my readers. After the holidays, it will not continue to be bundled together with the ebook version of Call Me Killer.
The Dangerous Hero is not related to Call Me Killer, except that it is set in the same small town.
Blurb
She doesn’t know they call me Killer.
Used to be I could get any woman I wanted...
I had the Harley, the tats, the ripped bod, the badass attitude.
No ties, no commitments, no limits, no worries.
Until a girl I was seeing vanished.
And the whole damn town decided I murdered her.
I became the perp, the creep, the monster, the killer.
Then into my snarled-up wreck of a life comes Rory.
She’s sassy, inquisitive, super-smart and smokin’ hot.
Silly girl believes I’m innocent.
She’s even trying to prove it.
But she’s got no freaking clue what she’s messing with.
She’s not my type.
She’s way out of my league.
So why does my heart clutch every time I nail her?
Why do I keep her trapped in my home, bound to my bed?
I can't quit her.
Now that she’s mine, ain't no way in hell I’m letting her go.
Call Me Killer is a full-length, standalone novel with hot sex, strong language, and an HEA.
Chapter 1
Griff
I didn't know the girl blowing me.
She'd hit on me in the bar, and even though I wasn't in the mood for a chat, I'd gone with it. Not much of a connection, but she was OK looking and she didn't piss me off too bad. I am easily pissed off these days. I didn't care about the girl, but it had been quite a while since I'd gotten laid.
She was the one who started with the caresses on my arm and the coy smiles and the suggestion that we go somewhere more private. We only got as far as my car. She was all over me as soon as we climbed inside.
Now I was half-sprawled over the front seat, one leg jammed up against the steering wheel, the other stretched out toward her side of the car. Her head was bobbing up and down in my lap while her fingers played with my balls.
I had a hunk of her hair in my fist, and I was pulling on it. She didn’t complain. I liked the way she was kneeling there, bent over me, working me. Submissive and obedient, just the way I wanted it. She had a great tongue, and she knew how to use it. Her mouth sucking my dick was hungry and tight.
I yanked her closer and urged her on, feeling the heaviness gather and the pleasure ramp up when she raised her head, still gently squeezing my balls with one hand, stared into my face and said in an excited voice, “You killed her, didn't you?”
I must have groaned in frustration because she dipped back down to her task, but all the pleasure had leeched out of me. I dragged her head away from my genitals and pushed her, none too gently, toward the passenger side door.
“Get out.”
Wiping the moisture off her lips, she acted surprised. “What the fuck, dude? You were almost there, and I—”
I reached across her and opened the door. “Get the fuck out.”
“I didn't mean...sorry if that was too personal a question. I just, you know, everybody says...”
“Now. Get out before I throw you out.”
“But—”
I turned the key and started the car. “Unless you want me to drive you to that place in the woods where I strangled Hadley? You wanna see the spot? It's been a while since I've taken a girl there.”
She took off running before I even finished speaking.
I drove out of the bar parking lot, feeling like I was gonna hurl. My dick had shrunk, and I was cursing myself as I skidded onto the main road. Good thing there wasn't any traffic coming or that might have been the end of me. No big loss to the world.
It had been some time since I'd run into one of those women. The idea of fucking a might-be murderer got them off. I knew they were out there. And they knew where to find me. There were whole websites where strangers who claimed to know something ab
out the case went online and discussed me.
It had died down for a few months, but the anniversary of Hadley's disappearance was coming soon, so it was ramping up again. It would be back in the press. The paparazzi would return to town, and Nancy Fucking Whatever-Her-Other-Name-Was would probably try to interview me again. That bitch had been even more persistent than the cops.
Nobody cared that I'd had nothing to do with Hadley's disappearance. That I hadn't killed her. That I missed her, and still, after all this time, couldn't get her throaty laughter out of my head. That I'd never forgive myself for failing to protect her.
Jesus, what a fuckup I was. I brushed my face with the back of one hand and drove even faster, half-hoping to lose control and spin into a tree.
Hadley was dead. Had to be.
But we didn't know for sure. A whole year with no word, no trace, no closure. A year in which my own miserable life had sunk farther and farther down the toilet. Might as well ram a tree or a bridge abutment and end the mess that was my life.
Of course I didn't ram a tree or a bridge abutment. I just drove. I didn't know where the fuck I was going and I didn't care. The highway unrolled beneath my wheels.
At some point it started to storm. I left the windshield wipers off for as long as I could, but the rain kept coming down harder, and I finally had to turn the damn things on. The slap of the wipers was a sound that used to soothe me, but no longer. Now when I heard that slap, that swish, that hiss, I flashed back to the night I'd screwed up so bad that my girl had died.
* * *
It had been raining that night, too. Hadley and I had gone to dinner at an Italian place in the next town. We'd argued, as we often did that spring. Times were rocky. People heard us quarreling, but none of them had been close enough to nail the reason for our disagreement. I remember it well, though. Hadley was cheating on me and I wanted her to stop.
It's not what you think, though. We weren't exclusive; never had been. It wasn't the cheating that I was sweating about. It was the risks she was taking, which were freaking me out.
Why Hadley had ever started up with me to begin with, I still didn't know. This had puzzled the police, too. Not to mention her friends and family. Those crime websites had gone nuts over the incongruity of a rich college girl from an old New England family hooking up with a scruffy townie like me.
I didn't go to either of the fancy local colleges, Whittacre or Penshurst. Much less to the even fancier ones around Boston, an hour away. I worked construction for my uncle's company and took night courses when I could find the time and the money.
Yeah, I had dreams. I'd have loved to spend four years at a good college, worrying about nothing more serious than booze, football, and frat parties. I’d had the grades in high school, but I hadn't been born into that cushy life. My father ran off with another woman when I was five and my big brother Sean got blown to bits in Afghanistan trying to rescue some aid workers who’d been captured by the Taliban.
Whatever was left of my mom's heart broke when she lost Sean, and she went about her life and her job—she worked as a hairdresser—with a grim, joyless determination. I hated that, but what could I do for her? I could never take Sean’s place in my mom’s life. I didn’t have my older bro’s talents or his ability to make Ma laugh.
The news that I was the main suspect in an unsolved disappearance/probable murder just about killed my mom. Not only did it shame and embarrass her in our small town, where everybody knew each other’s business, but it also left her worried about what the hell was going to happen to me if the cops ever proved anything.
They didn’t, though. But not for lack of trying.
I met Hadley at a party at her college in the beginning of her school year. It was a little more than a year and a half ago.
I was working as a waiter, one of my part-time jobs, passing out trays of shit like stuffed mushrooms and mini-quiches on the grassy lawn of Penshurst Quad. The college was welcoming back the students, the professors, and a bunch of well-heeled parents.
I hated them all on sight. I had to work two jobs and go without booze and cigarettes while I tried to scrape together enough cash to take night courses at one of the cheaper state schools. I wanted—can you believe it—to learn criminology, and maybe crime scene analysis. I loved those TV shows about that stuff.
Maybe one day I could be an investigator or even—crazy fantasy alert—go to law school and be a criminal prosecutor. I wanted to solve crimes, not commit them.
There were some hot girls at that party, but I wasn't interested. Rich chicks, not my scene. But Hadley was different. Not that she looked different, except for her fiery-red hair, which was unusual in a crowd full of bleached blondes and color-enhanced brunettes. The clothes, the hairstyle, the jewelry, that was all rich-girl standard. But the mischievous glint in her eyes when I presented her with the first canapé was something else.
“You don't belong here,” were her first words to me.
Just as I was about to get pissed off, she added, “Where you belong is naked on your back with me sitting atop you, riding you hard.”
I probably should have been pissed off at that, too—what was this, sexual harassment—but, fuck, I was young and the image aroused me.
When she winked at me and said, “Sorry. It's just that you have such nice muscles in your arms, so I started imagining how built the rest of your body must be.” Then she held out her hand as if to an equal and added, “I'm Hadley. What's your name?”
So I told her. Before the party was over, she'd given me her number. I almost didn't call. What was the point? But I kept remembering that merry, come-on look in her eyes. She seemed like a girl who really enjoyed life, so what the fuck, why not take a chance?
We started hooking up the next week. She didn't care that I was a townie, that I worked construction, that I'd been in trouble a lot as a teenager and wasn't exactly primed for a bright future.
In fact, she accused me of having a big old chip on my shoulder. “You live in the fucking U S of A. You can do anything, be anything. Try living in one of the poorer nations in Africa and then come complain to me about your lack of opportunities.”
She was right, of course. She was planning to be an international aid worker when she graduated, and she had a head full of ideas about all the great things she wanted to do with her life. She was brimming with enthusiasm. It still seems impossible to me that such a larger-than-life spirit could be extinguished from this Earth.
She loved sex, too, and she would do anything, try anything. She was sexually adventurous and, in that respect, she lived on the edge.
That's what I was upset about the last time I saw her—her dark edge. I liked the rough stuff, too—she had gotten me into BDSM, but some of the things she wanted to try were dangerous. When I wouldn't do them, she hung out with people who would. Some seriously sketchy people. I tried to get her to stop, but no way was she taking advice from me.
Our evening ended early on the night she disappeared. She told me to drop her off at her apartment. And no, she did not want me to come in.
As soon as she stepped out of the car, I slammed off, pissed, wheels skidding on the wet pavement. I drove around for a while, just like I was doing tonight. The rain was torrential, and there was a storm inside me, too.
Bursting with unspent energy, I stopped to pick up a six-pack to help me mellow out. I knew the dude who was working at the convenience store where I bought the beer. Not well, but enough to shoot the shit for a little while. We discussed the Red Sox's chances for a winning season, and the guy remembered it later when the cops questioned him.
After that I went home. I logged into this computer game I play and hung out with some MMO friends, which also helped my ass later. Then I went to bed.
I was alone for the rest of the night, feeling sorry for myself and mad at Hadley. It was not until afterwards that I felt guilty. I'd dropped her off without even checking to make sure she'd gotten safely inside the dark apartment. I h
adn't called or texted her. I hadn't made sure she was safe.
I hadn't protected her. That was the worst. I could almost hear my dead brother scolding me: you’re not a man if you can’t protect your girl.
Sometime that night Hadley had vanished, and to this day, no one knew what had happened to her.
Chapter 2
Griff
Without really paying attention, I'd driven to the outskirts of Boston. I didn't know where the fuck I was going—sometimes I just like to drive. But the fuel tank indicator lit up, reminding me that cruising without purpose wastes money.
I exited the highway and drove around looking for an open gas station. The neighborhood was crappy, but I didn't care. I almost wished some freak would try to carjack me so I could beat his head in.
I found a gas station, pulled in, entered my one lousy credit card that was always close to maxed out, and started pumping gas. The rain was brutal and the pump island didn't offer much shelter.
I noticed, without paying much attention, that an argument was going on at the next island. Man's voice, girl's, heated debate, punctuated with curses. Couldn't see them through the slashing rain. I wanted to get as much gas as I could afford and hop back inside my vehicle where it was dry.
I had just stashed the hose and climbed in when something streaked toward me through the rain and crashed into the side of my car. The passenger side door jerked open. Before I could react, this skinny, soaking-wet girl flung herself inside, spraying me with rainwater as her long stringy hair flew all over the place.
She whipped her head around, looking for a split second at me then back at whatever she was running from.
“Drive!” she screamed. “What are you waiting for? Put your foot on it and get me out of here.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Someone or something beat on the outside of the car, and I started the engine reflexively. There was another crash as an object that looked like a shovel slammed against the side of my car. I stomped on the brake, and was about to leap out and attack whoever was damaging my car, but the girl grabbed my arm.