LITMIR.BIZ

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prove he had actually completed the job. That Amber Talsma was really dead.

      He slowed as he turned onto the street behind her. With one hand on the steering wheel, he leaned across the passenger’s seat and popped open the glove compartment with his other hand.

      Then he reached inside and pulled out the gun he kept there. The Glock had a silencer on the barrel, just like the one he’d fired at Amber Talsma’s house a year ago. That was why no one had reported hearing gunfire. Despite the suburban neighborhood and all the little houses sitting closely on small lots, nobody would hear anything this time, either.

      The only thing that would be different this time was that he would not miss. He would make sure every bullet fired struck its target: Amber Talsma.

Chapter 3

      “Where the hell is he?” Garek Kozminski asked as he pushed open the door to FBI Special Agent Nicholas Rus’s office at the River City Police Department. His hands were already curled into fists—ready to swing. He was angry. Not as angry as he’d been when someone had been trying to kill the woman who was now his wife, but he was beyond irritated. And the damn agent wasn’t even in his office...

      A hand touched his arm, long fingers wrapping around it. Even through his coat and sweater, his skin tingled at her touch. He turned back toward her, and as always, his breath caught at her beauty. With her black hair, silky skin and thickly lashed blue eyes, she was stunning.

      She looked at him with concern and love. “You don’t know for sure Milek is working for him.”

      He knew. “Milek has been refusing to take any bodyguard assignments,” he said. “He’s preoccupied. Rus roped him into something.”

      “Are you sure that’s a bad thing?” Candace asked.

      Garek lost his breath again—for another reason than his wife’s beauty. “What?”

      “He seems to be doing better than he’s been since...”

      Since he’d lost the woman he loved and his child. Garek didn’t know how Milek had survived the loss—the grief. If Garek ever lost Candace...

      He shuddered at the horrific thought.

      Candace continued, “He’s less despondent.”

      That was a good thing. For the past year Garek had lost his brother to his grief—to the point that Milek had had him move out of the condo they’d shared. But working for Rus was not a good thing. Garek worried he might lose his brother to more than grief—to death.

      “I’ve done a special assignment for Rus,” Garek said, although he didn’t need to remind her. “And all of us—you and I and Milek—nearly got killed.”

      She squeezed his arm in reassurance. “Nearly,” she said. “We all survived.”

      Maybe Milek wasn’t happy he had. Maybe working for Rus again was some kind of death wish for him—a wish to join the woman and the child he’d lost.

      “Hey, Candace!” A man stopped in the doorway to Rus’s office. He was a big, barrel-chested man with a scruffy beard and long, stringy hair.

      Although his wife needed no protection, Garek pulled her against his side and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

      “Bruce,” Candace greeted the guy with a smile. So Garek doubted the man was a criminal. She hadn’t always had the most affection for them—until she’d fallen for him.

      “You’re looking great,” Bruce said with an appreciative grin as he checked out her lean, sexy body. “We could really use you back in Vice.”

      She laughed, but not with her usual self-deprecating humor. She wasn’t refusing the man’s compliment—the way she used to Garek’s. Now she saw herself as he saw her—as the true beauty she was.

      Garek glared at the interloper, but the guy paid him no attention.

      “Is that why you’re here?” Bruce asked. “Giving up the bodyguard business?”

      She laughed again. “Not at all. My husband and I are looking for Agent Rus.”

      Bruce glanced at him then. “You look like the guy who was with him right before they tore out of here.”

      “Why’d they tear out of here?” Garek asked.

      “Did something come through Dispatch?” Candace asked.

      “Something always comes through Dispatch,” Bruce said. “But Rus usually doesn’t go out on calls.”

      Unless it involved something he was already working on—like when he’d been trying to take down Chekov with Garek’s help.

      “Was anything patched through to him?” Candace clarified her question.

      Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know. If he was called out because of some kind of incident, he didn’t ask for backup. It was just the two of them. Before they ran out of here, they were at Rus’s computer.”

      “Thanks,” Candace told the man. And he must have picked up from her tone that she was dismissing him. The moment he turned away, she closed the office door. Then she slipped from Garek’s grasp and moved around Rus’s desk. She tapped on his keyboard.

      “Isn’t it password protected?” he asked. He could break into any building or safe, but computers were beyond his area of expertise.

      “It was,” she said as she continued tapping on the keys.

      “You broke in?” he asked and whistled in appreciation and pride.

      She nodded. “Nikki’s been teaching me about computers,” she said. “And I’ve been teaching her about self-defense and weapons.”

      Candace was a good teacher. Logan Payne would soon have no more excuses to keep denying his sister fieldwork.

      A soft gasp slipped through Candace’s red lips.

      “What is it?”

      “I don’t know...” she murmured. But her blue eyes were wide as she stared at the monitor.

      Garek moved around the desk to lean over his wife’s shoulder. “What the hell...”

      “Why would someone have dug up Amber’s and Michael’s graves?” Candace asked.

      Garek could think of a reason, but it was too far-fetched to contemplate. Or was it?

      He grasped his wife’s hand and tugged her toward the door. “Let’s find out.”

      Maybe that was where Rus and Milek had raced off to, but he suspected they’d gone someplace else entirely. Amber and Michael were already dead, so desecrating their graves wouldn’t have harmed them.

      Unless...

      * * *

      This is a mistake.

      Amber knew it the moment she turned onto the street. She shouldn’t have come back here. “Sweetheart,” she murmured. “Maybe we’ll have to get Jewel another time.” Like never. Maybe it was good to have no reminders of the life they’d had to give up, because she had a feeling they would never be safe to return to it.

      “No, Mommy!” Michael burst out. “I want Jewel!” Then sobs broke up his little voice.

      And broke her heart.

      He was too young to understand. And she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t tell a child that someone wanted them dead. It was too much for him to handle.

      It was too much for her to handle alone. But she had no choice now. She could trust no one. Apparently she shouldn’t have trusted Agent Rus.

      “Okay, okay, we’ll get Jewel,” she assured him. It was broad daylight. Surely no one would try to kill her now—with

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