LITMIR.BIZ

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she looked as if she was on the verge of agreeing with him. Then her rational side took over and her resolve hardened. “There’s no reason to suspect foul play. Forensic evidence at every one of the scenes—”

      “Is consistent with suicide. Yes, I know. I’m not suggesting these people didn’t die by their own hand. I have no doubt that Gracie Abbott drove her car into her garage, rolled up all the windows and let the carbon monoxide do its job. I’m certain those two kids purposely took overdoses and Ricky Morales pulled that trigger. What I am suggesting is that they were somehow compelled to do it.”

      Marly gave him an incredulous look. “Compelled? How on earth do you compel someone to commit suicide?”

      “It’s been done before,” Deacon said. “A man named Jim Jones led more than nine hundred of his followers to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking a cyanide-laced punch. Thirty-nine Heaven’s Gate devotees were found dead in a mansion near San Diego, California. I could go on, but I think you get my point.”

      A myriad of emotions flashed across Marly’s features. Revulsion. Horror. Disbelief. But she didn’t turn away. She didn’t send him packing. She was listening whether she wanted to or not. “You’re not suggesting something like that is going on here, are you?”

      “I’m suggesting you need to keep an open mind if you want to stop this.”

      She tore her gaze from his and stared across the yard where a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. A breeze whispered through the orange trees in the front yard, and overhead, the rain beat a steady staccato on the porch roof.

      It was a long time before she spoke. And even then, she avoided his gaze, as if sensing eye contact with him could be a dangerous thing. She watched the rain with a brooding frown. “In those cases you cited, the bodies were all found together. It’s happening one at a time here. And the incidents appear unrelated. An elderly woman. Two teenagers. A construction worker. Where’s the connection?”

      “That’s what we have to find out,” Deacon said.

      “We?”

      “Like I said, I can help you.”

      He saw her shiver at the prospect. “If you have information regarding any of these deaths, you should take it to Chief Navarro. He’s heading up the investigations.”

      “I’m telling you, Marly. Because you know something bad is happening is this town. You know something’s not right about these deaths. I can see it in your eyes.” His gaze challenged hers. “And whether you want to admit it or not, you may be the only one who can stop it.”

      DEACON FIDDLED WITH THE RADIO dial in his truck as he kept an eye on the front porch of Ricky Morales’s house. After his conversation with Marly, he’d left the scene at her rather adamant insistence, circled the block a couple of times, then pulled his truck to the curb a few houses down where he could unobtrusively observe the comings and goings of the authorities.

      A hearse from a local funeral home had arrived on the scene just after Deacon had left which meant they would soon bring out the body. Onlookers mingled on the sidewalk, and Deacon knew that word would soon be all over town about Morales’s death. In a day or two, the autopsy would confirm suicide, and the case would be closed. There would be lingering speculation, of course, but no one in Mission Creek would seriously suspect homicide. No one except Deacon…and now Marly Jessop.

      She was still standing on the front porch, speaking to another deputy. Deacon couldn’t see her features through the rain, but he remembered all too vividly the nuances of her face—those golden eyes, those lips that were neither thin nor full but lush, nonetheless, and pliant, he somehow knew. He imagined running his thumb along that mouth, then tasting her with his tongue, teasing and coaxing until she opened like a flower beneath him.

      Did she have any idea how attractive she was? How sensual? Deacon knew instinctively that she was a complicated woman, and he wondered if any man had ever taken the time to really know her. If any man had taken the time to nurture her latent passion into full bloom.

      Because she was a passionate woman, he thought. Beneath her cool, almost nondescript façade he’d glimpsed an ember, a tiny, ardent flame just waiting to be stoked, by a patient hand, into a raging inferno of needs and desires.

      He rubbed a hand across his eyes, trying to erase the vision of an aroused Marly Jessop. That kind of thinking was dangerous because it could make him lose sight of the mission. He was here for one reason only. To stop a killer, and to do so, he needed Marly’s help. Beyond that, his feelings for her couldn’t be allowed to matter.

      But what if she refused to help him? What if he couldn’t make her accept the truth?

      He had ways of gaining her cooperation, of course. Ways of convincing her. But afterward, she would never trust him again.

      Well, so be it, he decided grimly.

      The cell phone on the truck seat rang and he lifted it to his ear. “Cage.”

      “Deacon, it’s Camille.”

      At the sound of his colleague’s voice, Deacon tensed. “What’s wrong?”

      “Grandfather—”

      “He’s worse?” Deacon’s hand tightened on the phone.

      “No, no, it’s not that,” Camille rushed to assure him. “He just wanted to make sure you’re okay. He has a bad feeling about this job, Deacon.”

      Deacon let out a breath of relief. “He has a bad feeling about every job.”

      “I know. It’s because…he feels we’re running out of time.”

      Deacon sometimes felt that way, too. There were so many of them out there. A secret army of soldiers who had been trained and programmed to kill…and couldn’t stop.

      And Deacon had once been one of them.

      He didn’t like to contemplate what his life might have been like if Dr. Nicholas Kessler, a renowned quantum physicist, and his granddaughter hadn’t found him when they had. Hadn’t recruited him to the good side as Camille liked to tease him.

      “As much as it pains me to admit it, Grandfather isn’t going to be around forever,” she said. “He’ll be eighty-nine his next birthday.”

      “And still as sharp as ever,” Deacon reminded her.

      “His mind, yes, but his body is failing him, Deacon. You know how frail he is. I can’t help worrying what will happen to our work when he’s gone.”

      Deacon shrugged. “We’ll carry on as we have been.”

      “You’ll take over the organization when the time comes?” she asked anxiously.

      “You’re more qualified to run it than I am,” he said with a frown. “Besides, I like being in the field.”

      “I know you do. And that’s what worries me because one of these days…”

      “One of these days, what?”

      She hesitated. “One of these days you may meet your match out there.”

      “That’s not going to happen.” But Deacon knew it could easily happen because on every mission the killer always had the advantage. He was on his home turf, and the only way for Deacon to even the odds was to recruit someone locally to help him. Someone like Marly Jessop.

      He said none of that to Camille, however, because she tended to be a worrier and she had too much on her plate as it was. She was right. Her grandfather might not last much longer, and when the time came, Nicholas’s death would hit her hard. She’d lost her only child not so long ago, and though she put up a brave front, Deacon knew she hadn’t recovered from the blow. Her grandfather and her work were all she had left.

      And at that, she had a damn sight more than Deacon.

      “So how are things going down there?” she

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