Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 1 of 2 (20 page)
Read Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 1 of 2 Online
Authors: Delores Fossen
“I want you.” Jericho snapped her to him. Kissed her. Not exactly a chaste kiss, either.
She smiled when he finally broke the kiss so they could catch their breath. “I want you, too.”
That was a good start, but it wasn't quite enough. So, Jericho kissed her again. He wanted to remind her of what had brought them here.
And it wasn't just the attraction.
It was something much, much more.
He took out the blue rock. The one she'd used when she asked him to marry her. Or rather, when she'd told him that was the way things had to be. Now, he dropped it into the palm of her hand.
“I'm calling in the marker,” he said. “I'm in love with you.”
Tears watered her eyes, but he was pretty sure they were happy ones. She kissed him. And she was very good at it. Jericho felt himself go warm and then hot in all the right places.
Including his heart.
“Jericho, I've been in love with you most of my life. All of my life,” she added.
Now it was his turn to smile. Probably a goofy one, but it was genuine. Laurel loved him.
He brought her closer to him and spelled out the rest of his wish list. “I want you and Maddox. I want this marriage and our family to be real.”
“It already is,” she said. Smiling again, Laurel pulled him to her for a long, slow kiss.
* * * * *
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Intrigue story.
You crave excitement!
Harlequin Intrigue
stories deal in serious romantic suspense, keeping you on the edge of your seat as resourceful, true-to-life women and strong, fearless men fight for survival.
Enjoy six new stories from Harlequin Intrigue every month!
Connect with us on
Harlequin.com
for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com
ISBN-13: 9781460388334
Taking Aim at the Sheriff
Copyright © 2015 by Delores Fossen
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ⢠are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
He was looking for a missing person. What he was found was a beautiful stranger.
Looking for a fresh start, detective Jake Young headed south on a case that could help launch his PI business. He knew no amount of work would make him forget his tortured past, but maybe Faye Star could help. Caught up in Jake's missing persons case, the distracting Faye was hiding a secret he was begging to find out. Expertly guiding him through the swamps, Jake's job grew more complicated when someone started taking shots at the free-spirited beauty. As much as she protested she could take care of herself, Jake stepped in, refusing to admit how desperately he needed someone to save. Especially since he'd never be able to save himself...
Some kind of emotion flickered across her face so quickly he couldn't identify it. Anger? Fear? Or something else?
“Did you see the man who drove that car?” he asked again.
A low rumble sounded from the direction of the bushes where Faye had emerged a few moments earlier.
Jake yanked out his gun and shoved Faye behind his back as he whirled around. Was the panther still out here, stalking them? Or was that more of a curse than a growl?
A full minute passed in silence. No more growls or curses. No rustling of leaves to indicate anything, or anyone, was there. He cautiously straightened and turned back to Faye.
She was gone.
So were her knife and her rifle.
MISSING IN
THE GLADES
Lena Diaz
Lena Diaz
was born in Kentucky and has also lived in California, Louisiana and Florida, where she now resides with her husband and two children. Before becoming a romantic suspense author, she was a computer programmer. A former Romance Writers of America Golden Heart award finalist, she has won a prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery and suspense. To get the latest news about Lena, please visit her website,
lenadiaz.com
.
Books by Lena Diaz
Marshland Justice
Missing in the Glades
Harlequin Intrigue
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jake Youngâ
A police detective trying out his first case as a private investigator on the side, looking for a fresh start in Naples, Florida. But when his first major case takes him through Alligator Alley to the quirky town of Mystic Glades, he discovers a whole new world of danger.
Faye Starâ
This mysterious young woman sells her healing potions and mood stones by day and haunts the swamplands surrounding Mystic Glades by night. But when her secret past catches up to her, she may have to trust her life to the one man who could utterly destroy her.
Calvin Gilletteâ
When this Naples man goes missing, he sets off a chain of events that threatens the lives of everyone who knows him.
Dex Lassiterâ
Founder and partner of Lassiter and Young Private Investigations. Is he trying to help, or does he want to keep Jake from digging up something Dex would rather stayed buried?
Quinn Fugateâ
This FBI special agent will do anything to close the murder case that mars his otherwise perfect record.
Scott Holderâ
Deputy with Collier County Sheriff's Office in Naples, Florida. Is his lack of interest in assisting Jake really a ploy to make him stop the investigation?
Freddie Callahanâ
Whiskey-loving owner and bartender of Callahan's Watering Hole, her drunken confessions provide Jake with a fountain of information. But is the information reliable, or a clever ruse?
Thank you, Allison Lyons and Nalini Akolekar.
Thank you to my mom, Letha McAlister, who got such
a kick out of this story. This book is dedicated to my friend
and fellow suspense author Sarah Andre. Thank you for
selflessly giving me your time, ideas and encouragement.
This book would not have been written without you.
CHAPTER ONE
Jake aimed his pistol and flashlight through the chain-link wildlife fencing that marked where civilization ended and the Florida Everglades began. Behind him, his black Dodge Charger sat on the shoulder of a remote section of Interstate 75 that Floridians affectionately called Alligator Alley. With good reason. Alligators infested the swampy areas along this east-west corridor connecting Naples to Hialeah.
He swept his flashlight up and down the ditch behind him. Did alligator eyes reflect in the light? He sure hoped so. That might be the only way he'd see the hungry reptiles creeping up on him, looking for a late-night Jake-snack.
Not for the first time, he questioned his sanity in searching this dangerous area at night. But when a rare black panther had darted across the road in front of him and he'd skidded sideways to avoid it, he'd noticed a reflection in the beam of his headlights through the wildlife fenceâa reflection that just might be the car Calvin Gillette was driving when he went missing three days ago.
In theory, if Gillette had crashed, the cable barrier system should have kept his car from sliding under the fence into the woods. And hitting one of the cables would have triggered strobe lights and an automatic notification to the Department of Transportation. But the system wasn't foolproof. A few months earlier a minivan hit a pole and went airborne, flipping over the cable without touching it and sliding under the fence into a canal. Jake figured if it happened once, it could happen again. And the few clues he had about Gillette's disappearance all led him to this same area.
A few minutes later, his search paid off. He found deep tire tracks in the wet grass. He hopped the ditch and pressed against the chain linksâloose and floppy as they'd be if a car had hit the fence. Excitement sizzled through him. He stepped over the cable and slid through to the other side.
Grateful he'd worn boots for this search, he trudged across the damp ground to a thick stand of pine trees and palmetto bushes. Not anxious to go much farther in the dark, he braced his shoulder on one of the trees and used his flashlight to search for that elusive reflection of metal he thought he'd seen from the road. And suddenly, there it was, behind some bushes, too big and shiny to not be man-made. But without knowing for sure that it was a car, he didn't want to raise an alarm. Which meant he would have to go into the swamp.
It was times like this when he seriously wondered if he should move forward with his planned career change from police officer to private investigator. He was on leave from his police job to give the private sector a try, which was why he'd recently moved south to this unpredictable, dangerous, land-that-time-forgot section of his home state.
Tightening his hold on his pistol, he stepped past the line of pine and oak trees andâfor the first time in his lifeâofficially entered the Everglades. The difference in temperature struck him first. It was much cooler here, the musty, woodsy scent a welcome change from the thick humid air by the road. He'd expected the ground to be wet, slippery like the ditch by the fence. Instead, it was dry and springy beneath his boots, not all that different from the woods behind the house in Saint Augustine where he'd grown up, just a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. But where he'd come from he'd hear waves breaking against the sand, seagulls crying overhead. Here, the night was filled with the deep-throated bass of frogs, and a hissing noise that could have been either insects or cranky reptiles warning him to get out of their territory.
Keeping an eye out for panthers and gators and whatever else thrived in this foreign but starkly beautiful section of Collier County, he continued forward. When he rounded the clump of bushes where he'd seen the reflection, he discovered what he'd both expected and dreaded to findâa car, its dented roof, crumpled hood and crushed front bumper broadcasting the wild ride its driver had endured before the car slammed against an unforgiving tree.
The paint was scratched all to hell, but there was no mistaking the color or the make and modelâa maroon Ford Taurus. A glance at the license plate confirmed it was Gillette's. The day he'd gone missing, it had been raining off and on for hours, which explained the dried mud caked on the half-buried tires. The ground must have been like wet cement when he'd crashed his car in here.
Fully expecting to see a body slumped over the wheel, Jake moved to the driver's door. But when he shined his light inside, he didn't see Calvin Gillette or anyone else. The car was empty. The now-deflated air bags must have saved the driver's life. If there'd been any footprints on the ground beside the car, they'd been scrubbed away by the rain and encroaching swamp before the heat of the past few days had wrestled the water back to its normal boundaries. So where was the driver? Had he gone looking for help and got lost?
He shoved his pistol into the holster on his belt to free his hands. In lieu of the gloves he'd have had if he were on active duty as a police officer, he yanked his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans. Keeping the cloth over his fingers, he opened the driver's door and grabbed the keys from the ignition. A moment later he popped the trunk. Except for a useless flat tire and some crumpled beer cans, it was empty.
Time to get the local police out here. He pulled out his cell phone as he peered through the driver's-side window, hoping to see some receipts or a map, anything to indicate where Gillette was headed before the crash.
Bam!
The window exploded in a tinkling rain of glass. Jake dropped to the ground. A second bullet slammed into the door.
He cursed and scrambled around the front of the car, taking cover behind the wheel. He drew his gun again, aiming at the dark scrub brush and live oak trees where he'd seen the muzzle flash from the second shot. The moonlight cast deep shadows across the clearing, but he didn't try to grab his flashlight that had fallen on the ground. He wanted to draw the shooter out, but not by giving him a well-lit target.
“Police!” he yelled. “I can see you hiding behind that bush. Come out, hands up, or I'll shoot.” He waited, crouched down, both hands gripping the gun. No sound. No movement. Half a minute went by.
Time to give his prey some incentive.
He aimed his pistol well above where the gunman had to be hiding and squeezed off a shot. It boomed through the clearing, hitting a small tree branch, sending a shower of leaves down to the forest floor.
“The next shot will be lower. And there are sixteen more rounds where that one came from.”
Silence. Even the croaking frogs and hissing insects had gone quiet.
“Threatening to shoot me is a lousy way of thanking me,” a voice called out, a distinctly
feminine
voice with a velvety Southern accent that had Jake raising his brows in surprise.
Had he stumbled across a beauty pageant queen in these woods? Or a debutante? He could easily picture the owner of that silky voice wearing a floor-length gown, sitting on a wraparound porch in the Carolinas, sipping a mint julep.
When the woman stepped out from behind the bushes, reality sucked the air from Jake's lungs. If there was such a thing as an
anti
-Southern belle, this astonishing creature was the physical embodiment of it.
Her curve-hugging blouse was Pepto-Bismol pink and was tucked into an equally pink collection of veils, or scarves, forming a semblance of a skirt that hung past her knees. Below the skirt was the only part of her outfit that wasn't pinkâa pair of green camouflage combat boots. She was probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, and at least a foot shorter than Jake. Her waterfall of blond curls hung to her hips, sparkling like burnished gold in the moonlight filtering through the trees. A stray warm breeze lifted one of the gold locks and fluttered it against the muzzle of her rifle, which was pointed up at the dark sky overhead.
Jake pocketed his cell phone that had fallen by the tire before grabbing his flashlight and shining it on her. If she hadn't just tried to shoot him, he'd have been hard-pressed not to smile at the utterly adorable picture she presented.
He forced himself to focus on the fact that she'd just shot at him. Twice. She was dangerous, at least while she was holding that rifle.
“Toss the weapon,” he ordered.
“That's not a good idea. There are all kinds of dangers in these woods, especially at night.”
“Now.”
She let out a dramatic sigh and pitched the rifle onto the ground.
“Kick it away from you.”
“Seriously? Do you know how expensive that gun is?”
He didn't bother to respond to that ridiculous statement.
She pursed her lips, not at all happy about his dictate. But she must have realized she didn't have a choice because she gave the gun a healthy kick. It slid across the pine needle-strewn forest floor and slammed against the car's rear tire.
Jake hopped to his feet and quickly closed the distance between them. “Who are you? Why did you shoot at me?”
She squinted and waved toward his flashlight. “Mind pointing that thing somewhere else?”
He relented and turned it just enough so it wasn't directly on her face.
She cocked her head, studying him. Her emerald green eyes were startlingly similar to the panther's eyes he'd seen reflected in his car's headlights earlier. Her outfit reminded him of the carnival gypsies he'd seen at local fairs, except for all the pink. Anyone else might have looked ridiculous in the flamboyant clothes. But, somehow, on her they looked...enchanting. If he'd seen her in a bar he'd be begging for her number and hoping to wind up sharing breakfast with her the next morning.
“Who
are
you?” he repeated, lowering his weapon. The little sprite certainly wasn't a threat to a man his size.
She braced her hands on her hips and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “A local, which you obviously are not.”
“That syrupy accent of yours doesn't make you sound like a local, either.” He cocked his head, mirroring the same look she'd just given him. “But what makes you think
I'm
not a local?”
She snorted in a completely unladylike manner. It was hard for Jake not to grin and to maintain his serious look.
“Oh, please,” she said. “You're oblivious to the dangers around here. You might as well wear a neon sign that says âcity slicker.'”
Her delightful accent was as intoxicating as her curvy figure. His fingers itched to slide around her tiny waist and pull her against him just to see how the two of them would fit. He gave himself a mental shake. Now was not the time to let his attention wander. He needed to focus. Finding this woman near Gillette's car couldn't be a coincidence. She must know something about what had happened. Maybe she'd even been a passenger in his car. That thought had Jake glancing around the clearing, his shoulders tensing. Was Gillette hiding in the trees, watching?
“Were you in that car when it crashed?” he asked. “Do you know the driver?”
She smiled as if she had a secret. “You said you were a cop. Show me your badge.”
“My name is Jake Young. I don't have a badge because I'm notâ”
She whirled around, kicking his feet out from under him so fast that he didn't have time to react. He landed on his backside, blinking up at the dark sky in shock. His flashlight rolled a few feet away, shining its light in a crazy arc. Before he could move, the little firebrand was on top of him holding the tip of a very large knife to his throat.
The last time anyone had gotten the drop on him had been...well,
never
. When the knife pricked his skin, his earlier amusement and distraction vanished in a flood of adrenaline and anger.
The hell with this.
He knocked the knife to the ground and rolled over in one swift movement, trapping her beneath him. Shackling both her wrists in one of his hands, he forced her arms above her head, using his body to pin her to the ground. But as soon as he felt her soft curves pressed to his and breathed in the flowery, feminine scent of her, he knew he'd made a tactical mistake. Especially when the breeze blew one of her silky curls against his face.
She
wasn't the one who was trapped.
He
was, trapped in a sensual hell of his own making. He silently cursed himself a dozen ways to Sunday.
She just tried to shoot you. She's not your potential next girlfriend. Get a grip.
“Let's start the introductions over,” he growled, more angry with himself than her. “I'm Jake Young, from Lassiter and Young Private Investigations. And what I was trying to say earlier is that I don't have a badge with me because I'm on leave from my police detective job in Saint Augustine. I don't have jurisdiction around here. But that doesn't change who
you
areâthe woman who's about to be arrested for attempted murder when I call the Collier County Sheriff's Office.”
Her soft pink lips curved in an amused smile. “Oh, you think so, huh?”
“I know so.”
In answer, she wiggled beneath him and tugged her arms, trying to free them.
A cold sweat broke out on his brow at his body's instant, unwelcome response to her sensual movements. He swore and shifted his weight, hoping she wouldn't notice her effect on him.
“Who are you?” he repeated between clenched teeth.
“Let me go and I'll tell you.”
“So you can shoot at me again, or kick my feet out from under me, or stab me? I don't think so.”
She huffed out a breath. “You're looking at this all wrong. I didn't shoot at
you
. And the only reason I knocked you down and pulled my knife was because I thought that you'd tricked me when you yelled âpolice' and then said you didn't have a badge. What's a girl to think? I'm vulnerable, in a secluded area, with a stranger I believed was pretending to be a police officer. I have a right, a duty, to do whatever I can to protect myself.”