Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Cynthia Cooke. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Dead Sexy is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC

Visit our website at
www.DeadSexyBooks.com

Edited by Anna DeStefano and Nina Bruhns

Cover design by Liz Pelletier

ISBN 978-1-62266-922-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition May 2012

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Town Car, Glock, UPS, Ka-bar, H&K, Expedition, El Dorado, Volkswagon, Chevy, Girl Scout.

This book is dedicated to the Dead Sexy editors, Nina Bruhns, Anna Destefano, and Vicki Wilkerson for their above and beyond commitment, friendship, and support. And to my partner in crime, Dorothy McFalls. I couldn’t have done it without you all!

Chapter One

Genie Marsters perched in the bulletproof glass-encased crow’s nest at the top of her desert home and watched the UPS truck barrel toward her down the long dirt road. A plume of dust kicked up behind it. This wasn’t good. Only one person knew where she lived, and he wouldn’t send her a delivery without warning her first.

The driver pulled to a stop amidst a cloud of sand and hopped out of the truck. He stared up at her circular retreat built high on stilts. No one could get in without her knowing it. Other than the trap door above her, the steep flight of stairs leading to her front door was the only way in or out of her sanctuary
—
her tree house without the tree.

She descended the ladder out of the crow’s nest and stepped into the loft that doubled for her bedroom, then continued down the stairs to the main floor. She rested one hand lightly on the front door, glanced through the peephole and waited for him to approach. She cleared her mind, opening herself to any impressions she could read from him once she opened the door. She’d spent most of her life trying to ignore the empathic abilities she’d been born with, to fit in with normal people. To
be
normal. Now, she knew better. The three Marsters girls would never be normal. Some advantages you just had to embrace.

The UPS guy—male, approximately thirty-years-old, six-foot, blue eyes, blond hair, lean and mean with massive, muscular thighs—climbed the stairs to her front door. Could be he liked to take care of himself. Could be he wasn’t a UPS driver.

Genie pulled her Glock out of a sconce on the wall next to the door and checked the magazine. She slipped it into the waistband of her favorite black pants at the small of her back, fluffed her hair then opened the door. She faked a wide, flirtatious smile. “Good morning,” she greeted, a touch too loud, a touch too cheery, while her gaze dropped to the small box clutched in his grasp.

Small. Printed address. Too much of his hand covered the type for her to be able to read who’d sent it.

The man smiled back, showing a mouthful of perfectly straight, obviously whitened teeth. “Morning ma’am. You have quite a place out here.” He shifted, trying to peek around her.

Genuine curiosity or something more? She reached with her thoughts, trying to read him, but couldn’t. His mind was shut tight. He gestured down the steep staircase that led to his truck below. “Don’t believe I’ve ever seen a house on stilts in the desert before.” He took a step forward into her personal space while once again trying to peer into the octagonal room behind her. Only this time he wasn’t so subtle about it.

She didn’t move an inch, letting him hover close enough that she could smell his cologne. Something cheap. “Cool, isn’t it?” she said, raising her voice an octave and tipping her head flirtatiously to the side. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. With her blond bombshell looks, she’d learned early on that if she threw in a touch of ditz, men tended to be easily distracted and to seriously underestimate her.

Most men that is. But not Kyle.

The UPS driver grinned, 100-watts of dazzling brightness, and suddenly he was more interested in her than in her house, which was exactly what she’d wanted.

“You all alone out here?” he asked, his light blue eyes twinkling. Eyes that almost looked like Kyle’s, but they weren’t quite as vibrant or as dark.

“Why? You offering to keep me company?” she asked, shaking off the image of deep blue that instantly filled her mind and soured her heart.

His eyelids lowered to half-mast, eyes darkening as his gaze dragged slowly down her body. Heat and desire rolled off him
—
she felt it like a ten-ton truck barreling down on her, moving through her and making her tingle.
Everywhere
.

For an insane moment she was sorely tempted. It had been a long time since she’d had large, strong hands on her skin. Not since before the explosion.

Not since Kyle.

She shook off the impression and closed her mind. She no longer wanted to absorb his feelings, or accept a psychic reading of his emotions. “Do you have something for me?” she asked coolly.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, hitching up his pants.

She looked pointedly at the box he held in his hands and raised her brows.

He followed her gaze. “Yeah. Right.” He handed her the small package and the electronic ‘DIAD’ clipboard.

She spied her father’s name and address printed on the shipping form. More than anyone else, her father would
never
send anyone to her house without warning her first. She frowned, scrawled her name across the DIAD device and handed it back to him, then quickly shut and locked the door.

She peered out the peephole, waiting impatiently until she heard his retreat down the stairs, then with two fingers pushed aside the blinds and peered out the front window. He eased his muscular self into his truck and drove down the road. She replaced the Glock in its sconce.

She picked up her satellite phone and hit the speed dial number for her father’s island estate in the Puget Sound, knowing it was a risk to call his home, but taking the chance anyway. If someone was monitoring his phone lines, they could pinpoint her location within minutes. She was crazy to be taking this chance after everything she’d done to ‘disappear.’ But something was not right.

The phone continued to ring on the other end. Three times. Four. Five. After the sixth ring, she stared down at the number in the display, making sure she’d dialed correctly. Her father had a staff. Someone was always there to answer the phone. His housekeeper, Mary, or even the gardener. Dread tightened Genie’s grip on the receiver. She disconnected the line.

Something was wrong at the estate.

She stared at the box.

Something was wrong with her dad
. Carefully, she placed the package on the table, and then hurried to the closet and took down a black plastic carrying case. She flipped the latches, opened the case, hooked up the portable RTR-4 x-ray device it held, and scanned the package. No power source. No bomb.

She went to the nearest drawer, pulled out her Ka-bar and gingerly sliced through the packaging tape and opened the box carefully with the tip of her blade. A large diamond-shaped crystal necklace sat nestled within burlap. Her eyes widened as she stared at the crystal. The last time she’d seen it, she’d been twelve. When she and her sisters, Cat and Becca, had been told their mother had been in a car accident. That she was dead, and she wasn’t coming home.

As they’d held one another and wept, their father had held up the necklace by its delicate gold chain and assured them that, like the crystal in their mother’s necklace, he would always be there to watch after and guide them. They could be certain of that, and certain of him and each other.

She’d believed him. So had Becca and Cat. And yet, somehow they’d all gotten lost.

Genie now held the crystal up to the light. Prisms of color bounced off the walls. For a second she let her finger graze the cold hard surface of the stone. An image of Becca immediately popped into her mind, laughing, her long blond hair flying in the breeze. Pressure pushed on the back of Genie’s eyes and she pinched the bridge of her nose to stop it. This was no time for sentimental reminiscing. She stuffed the necklace into her pocket and dug through the box. Nothing else was in it. No note or explanation for why her father would suddenly send her the necklace.

Except the obvious. He was no longer around to watch out for her. She was on her own.

She paced back and forth. What should she do? She knew what she
wanted
to do, but it was dangerous. Foolish. But since he hadn’t answered the phone, it was the only way she could be sure her father wasn’t in trouble. She couldn’t hide out here in the desert if he needed her.

She climbed the stairs into the loft and pulled a backpack off the top shelf of her closet and threw a couple changes of clothes into it. She had to go to her father’s estate and see for herself. It would take her at least twelve hours to get to the island. If she could even get on a flight.

“Damn,” she muttered. She couldn’t wait that long.

She sat on the bed and picked up the phone again. Her dad had assured her it was untraceable, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure. If Dad was in trouble, what else might be wrong?

She called the direct line of Josh Cameron, her old team leader and an associate of her father’s in the National Counter-Terrorism Agency—known to everyone as the CTA—her teeth gnawing away her patience as she waited for him to answer.

“Cameron, here.” His tone was tight, which meant he had a stranglehold on his nerves. Something
was
going down.

“Cameron, what do you know about my father?” she demanded, not bothering to identify herself or waste time on pleasantries.

He paused. Another thing he’d always done whenever he needed a moment to choose his words carefully.
Damn
.

She stood, pacing back and forth, quickly covering the length of the small room. “Tell me,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’m not sure yet, Genie. We haven’t been able to get hold of him.”

Her stomach flip-flopped like a flapjack on a hot griddle. She was used to being alone, she liked being alone, because she knew her dad was always there
—
her back-up, her protector, her confidant. Nothing could happen to him. It just couldn’t.

But it had.

She took a deep breath to squelch the panic rising within her. She couldn’t lose him, too. Not after her mother, and Kyle, and—

“Trust me,” Cameron said. “We’re looking into it.”

Trust me
. She almost laughed out loud.

She was the daughter of the ex-director of the most secretive agency in the U.S. Government. Lies and deception were the name of the game. She’d learned a long time ago that trust was not a word to bat around easily. Trust was something to be earned, to be valued.

To be lost.

Embrace who you are, but never reveal. Never trust
. Her father’s words whispered through her mind, reminding her that by calling Cameron she’d made a rash decision based on emotion, and rash decisions could get her killed.

She didn’t trust Cameron. She didn’t trust anyone. Not after what had happened to her sister, Becca.