PRAISE FOR LISA RENEE JONES
“Jones’s suspense truly sizzles with an energy similar to FBI tales with a paranormal twist by Julie Garwood or Suzanne Brockmann.”
—Booklist
“Intoxicating, intense, and deeply seductive.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) on Escaping Reality (RT Book Reviews Award for Best Romantic Suspense, 2015)
“Darkly intense and deeply erotic, each new reveal involving Chris and Sara leaves you raw and restless, emotions running high as you wait for the next obstacle. These books are an addiction!”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) on No In Between
“Passionate, all-consuming.”
—POPSUGAR
OTHER TITLES BY LISA RENEE JONES
DIRTY MONEY
Hard Rules
Damage Control
Bad Deeds
End Game
Poison Kisses (Seth’s stand-alone story)
WHITE LIES
Provocative
Shameless
TALL, DARK, AND DEADLY
Hot Secrets
Dangerous Secrets
One Dangerous Night
Beneath the Secrets
WALKER SECURITY
Deep Under
Pulled Under
Falling Under
CARELESS WHISPERS
Denial
Demand
Surrender
THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN
Escaping Reality
Infinite Possibilities
Forsaken
Unbroken
INSIDE OUT
If I Were You
Being Me
Revealing Us
His Secrets
Rebecca’s Lost Journals
The Master Undone
My Hunger
No In Between
My Control
I Belong to You
All of Me
THE KNIGHTS OF WHITE
The Beast Within
Beast of Desire
Return of the Beast
Beast of Darkness
Demon’s Seduction
Captive of the Beast
Beast of Fire
VAMPIRE WARDENS
Hot Vampire Kiss
Hot Vampire Seduction
Hot Vampire Touch
WEREWOLF SOCIETY
Wicked Werewolf Night
Wicked Werewolf Secret
Wicked Werewolf Passion
ZODIUS
Michael
Sterling
Kel
Damion
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2018 by Julie Patra Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503900318
ISBN-10: 1503900312
Cover design by Damon Freeman
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SNEAK PEEK: LILAH LOVE NOVEL
CHAPTER ONE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
There is blood in the ocean.
I don’t notice it at first, but then, most people don’t. It’s called denial. We refuse to see what we eventually have to cope with, or perhaps even confess. For the innocent, they don’t expect the brutality of the actions required to take a life, so they simply cannot process the inconceivable. For the guilty, it’s all about denying your own ability to do such a thing, and denial can be a slow, brutal sword that carves you inside out. Though there is another class of people that are more animal than human. Those so sick, so demented that they feel a fleeting joy from death and then seek more joy by doing it again. And again. You won’t find guilt in their eyes. You won’t find remorse. There are times when I’ve felt like one of those animals, but then the guilt starts again.
But you see? There is no remorse. I’m not sure what that says about me.
And so I walk on the beach, not seeing what is there, and it’s like so many other walks along East Hampton’s beach. Cool sand between my toes. The taste of salt on my lips. A gust of wind lifting my long brown hair from my neck. I see it happening, like I’m above the scene, looking down. Like I’m dead and that other person on the beach is alive. Sometimes I can almost hear that wind whisper my name, too: Lilah. Lilah. As if it’s calling me to a place it knows I must travel, but I continue to refuse. It is a gentle, soothing caress of a whisper—a seductive promise that acceptance will bring relief, even forgiveness.
The wind lies. It always lies.
But then, that’s why it wants me. Because of my lies. Because it knows how they haunt me. It knows my secrets when no one else knows. Only that’s a lie, too, and I blink to find the only other person who does know in the distance and closing in quickly.
He walks toward me, graceful and good-looking, his suit ridiculously expensive, the wet sand beneath his black lace-up shoes impossibly smooth everywhere he steps. But then he’s a man who easily convinces people he walks on water, so why not sand? A man whose accomplishments are second only to his arrogance, while his charisma is just one of his many weapons. He can kiss a woman and make her crave more—he certainly did that to me—but I remind myself that this does not make me naive, as he also has the power to utter only a word and have grown men follow him. He is the picture of perfection that very few see is framed with broken glass. But I see. I know things about him no one else knows.
Like he does me. And therein lies the problem.
Rejecting him, I turn away from his approach, facing the ocean, a new dawn illuminating the sky, a strange red spot tainting the deep blue of the water. It begins to grow, and grow some more, until the lifeblood of someone gone and possibly forgotten spills through it like oil set on destruction. Blood is now everywhere. There is nothing else but it and the guilt that I’ve tried to deny.
And suddenly he is behind me, his hand on my shoulder, and I shiver with that touch. He did this. He spilled this blood.
Only … no. That doesn’t feel right. I think … I did this.
I wake from one of my freak-show nightmares, which I thought were finally over, to a dark room, my cell phone ringing on the nightstand and my body aching from the need for sleep.
“Rich,” I murmur, sh
oving against the big, hard body that has managed to drape over mine. “Get off. My phone’s ringing.” He doesn’t move, which is a problem that reaches beyond this moment and more directly to us working in the same field office and hopping into bed together. “Rich, damn it.”
He gives a groan and rolls in one direction while I go the other and grab my cell, glancing at the caller ID. It’s the local PD. “Special Agent Love,” I answer.
“We’ve got a body off the Santa Monica Pier and need your assistance,” the man on the line says. “Early-morning jogger made the discovery and called it in.”
I glance at the clock, 5:00 a.m., and wonder what idiot jogs at four in the morning, in the dark, on the beach, but this isn’t my job anyway. “That’s the local authority’s territory. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“You are Special Agent Lilah Love, correct?”
“You knew that already,” I say irritably, and since this clearly isn’t going away easily, I sit up, preparing to fight for my need to sleep.
“Then you’re requested by name. Director Murphy sent the directive.”
My boss is meeting me there? This is more than me lending my profiling skills to the locals if he’s joining me, and my exhaustion fades into concern. “I’ll be right there.” I end the call and throw off the blankets, grimacing when I realize I’m wearing Rich’s shirt, which is not sending him the noncommittal message I need to send after dodging last night’s “talk.” But it smells good, the way he always does, I think as I push myself onto my feet and stumble toward the bathroom.
Stepping into the tiny bathroom, I scrape my foot on a cracked tile and grimace, then take up residence at the equally tiny, ancient sink and grab my toothbrush.
“When are we going to finish that talk we started last night?”
At the sound of Rich’s voice, I start brushing my teeth, making sure I’m as incapable of talking about moving in with him now as I was when we were having sex last night. “Lilah,” he says impatiently, my reprieve lasting all of ten seconds.
I glance over at him through the long drape of my messy dark-brown hair to find him leaning on the doorway. Naked. The man is all kinds of blond, hard-bodied goodness, but still. Good grief. “Why don’t you have clothes on?” I ask, though I’m not sure he can understand me with my mouth full of foam.
“I’m serious, Lilah. We’ve been hot and heavy for six months. We need to have this talk.”
“You’re naked,” I say, yanking the toothbrush from my mouth, since clearly he didn’t hear me the last time. “I’m not talking to you naked.” I go back to brushing my teeth.
“You aren’t naked. I am.”
“Aren’t you funny,” I say, turning on the water and rinsing my mouth, and since he’s still standing there when I’m done, I face him. “I’m serious, Rich. You’re naked. I have a dead body waiting on me. The two do not compute. Now is not the time.”
“You’re one of the top FBI profilers in the country,” he states. “You always have a dead body waiting on you. Which is why we never talk.”
I turn and press my hands to the sink, showing the white ceramic more interest than it deserves, while his naked body might deserve more than I can afford to give it right now. “Everyone has their fetishes, I guess.”
“You don’t like dead bodies. Why do you say shit like that?”
Because I want to scare you off, I think, and I might actually really freak him out if I insist I do have a fetish for dead bodies. Of course, as logical as Rich is, he’d know it’s because they help me catch killers. Instead, I just say, “I’m getting dressed.” Hoping he takes a hint and does the same, I turn to walk into the closet. Thankfully, his sound of frustration is followed by a shift in the air that tells me he’s finally gone to dress. Wishing for the shower I don’t have time to take, I yank a pair of faded jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt from their hangers, get dressed, and then lean on the wall to pull on black combat boots.
All of three minutes later, I reenter the bathroom to find Rich back in the doorframe, and while he’s not naked, his low-slung black jeans aren’t doing much to cover his assets, which I really want covered right now. I toss him his shirt, which he catches and pulls over his head. Seizing the momentary distraction I’ve created, I head back to the sink to wash my face, brush my hair, and contemplate how washed-out my pale skin is without the makeup I’d prefer to be wearing right now. I’m a girl. I like being a girl despite this job, and I pretty much fucking love how that, mixed with my “potty mouth,” as my mother would call it if she were alive, confuses the hell out of people.
Ready to get out of here for more reasons than one, I step to Rich and he doesn’t budge, his big body blocking my petite one. “So about that apartment,” Rich says. “You’ve been in Cali for two years. This place is the size of a Cracker Jack box, and it’s a dump, Lilah. It’s time to make a change.”
“You’re right. This place is tiny, a point driven home by the fact that you’re presently suffocating me. I need something bigger, and if it came with a toilet that doesn’t require me jiggling the handle every time I use it, that would be a plus.”
“I’m glad you agree.”
He’s glad I agree? Okay. That didn’t go as planned. He’s not registering what I’m telling him. I see it in his face, and I need to shut up before I dig myself in deeper. “Move, Rich. I need to go.”
Still, he blocks my path. “I have a long-term lease and a toilet that doesn’t need to be jiggled,” he says. “It’s not your fancy Hamptons place of old, I’m sure, but it’s a step up from this shit hole. Move in with me. I want to wake up and look into those gorgeous brown eyes of yours every morning from now on.”
Yep. Officially screwed this up big-time. “Did I mention I have a dead body waiting on me? And Murphy?”
His brow instantly furrows. “Murphy’s meeting you?” He backs away. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m clueless,” I say, walking to the chair in the corner of the bedroom and slipping the satchel I carry to all my crime scenes over my head and chest.
“If Murphy’s at the crime scene,” he says, “we’re taking over.”
“Most likely,” I say, and not about to invite more conversation, I leave it at that and make my way to the door for my escape. But frustratingly, Rich steps in front of me.
“Move in with me,” he repeats, his hands coming down on my shoulders. “I’m crazy about you.”
“I’m not a relationship kind of girl.”
“What do you call what we’re doing?”
“Sex. Friendship.” I’m confusing him and I think me, too. I should have left out the friendship part, except I do like him. Quite a lot actually. Frustrated at myself, I add, “I don’t know.”
“You just described a perfect relationship, Lilah. That’s what we all want. Sex and friendship in one place.”
Note to self: friendship is a really bad word with men. “Look. Rich. I mean, you’re like the perfect Cali surfer dude: gorgeous and sweet, but—”
“Surfer dude and sweet? Holy fuck.” He drops his hands from my shoulders and scrubs one of them through his longish, curly blond hair. “That’s how you see me?”
I hold up my hands. “No. God no. I’m sorry. See? I suck at this stuff.” I toughen my voice to make sure he knows how serious I am. “You’re an all-American G.I. Joe badass. You would die for just about anyone. You are amazing, Rich. Absolutely fucking amazing. Too good for me. I’m the one that’s the problem. I have issues. Big issues. That’s why I don’t do commitment.” I shove a strand of hair from my face. “And I can’t do this now. You know I can’t do this now.”
His jaw sets hard and he gives me a disgruntled, reluctant nod. “Go. Deal with Murphy.”
I don’t argue. I step around him and dart for the living room, pausing in the doorway long enough to say, “Lock up when you leave. Sick fucks love me.” I take off for the front door.
“What the hell does that make me, Lilah?”
“Th
e exception,” I call out, and he has no idea how true that statement rings.
Thanks to that early-Wednesday-morning jogger getting us all out of bed at the crack of dawn, I travel from my Los Feliz neighborhood to Santa Monica in thirty minutes, which would be unheard of any other time of the day. Parking my gray Ford Taurus in a lot near the beach is just as easy. I step out of the car, slip my FBI badge over my neck, fight a gust of September seventy-something wind, and head down the sidewalk toward the pier. Weaving my way through the now-sleeping perpetual carnival of the boardwalk, I make a beeline for the Ferris wheel certain to lead me to the end of the pier. Turns out, the growing crowd around the yellow tape on the nearby beachfront does the job just fine.
I approach several uniforms and show them my badge. “Who’s the detective in charge?” I ask.
“Oliver,” one of them tells me.
Great, I think, moving on along the sidewalk. That man hates me. I’ve made it all of ten feet across the sidewalk, about to hit the sand, when I hear, “Special Agent Love.”
At the sound of Detective Oliver’s voice, I grimace and turn to find the fortyish “Gray Fox,” as the ladies on the force call him, joining me. And yeah, I guess he’s good-looking. If you like the stereotypical, cigarette-smoking, perpetually-wrinkled-suit-wearing good cop with a bad attitude.
“Detective.”
“Are you going to do a better job for me this morning than you did two days ago?”
And here we go. “It was a professional hit, Detective Oliver,” I say tightly. “You don’t just get a read on him, or her, with a snap of your fingers.”
“You didn’t get me a read at all.”
“This isn’t a thirtyish perp with two kids and a dog you can track down in the suburbs. There are papers written on this shit. They don’t fit profiles.”
Murder Notes (Lilah Love Book 1) Page 1