LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Jasmine heard the phone ringing as she undertook the complex process of disabling her condo’s security system. Always the way, she thought, and considered letting the call go to voice mail. But the door opened, her shoes slipped off easily and the violence of the thunder that had been circling Salem, Massachusetts, for the past hour had her longing to hear a friendly voice rather than the insidious whispers currently echoing in her head.

       Those whispers wanted to draw her back to another place and time, just far enough away that she managed not to think of it every minute of the day. Only in darker minutes and thunderstorms.

       She ran the last few steps to grab the handset. The spectacular bolt of lightning that corresponded with her breathless “Jasmine Ellis” flickered on through the “Ouch” that followed when her bare foot came down on a leather dog toy. A moment later, two large paws planted themselves on her chest and shoved her onto the sofa.

       Laughing, she shoved back. “Hello to you, too, Boris.” She caught the dog’s chin. “If it took you this long to get here, you must have been sleeping on the bed again.”

       Her three-year-old German shepherd barked twice. Meant yes, or in this case, guilty.

       Still laughing, Jasmine dislodged his paws and returned her attention to the neglected caller. “Sorry—hello.” A prolonged crackle made her sigh. “Melvin, is that you?”

       To his delight, her assistant’s seven-year-old son had recently discovered the snicker value in playing practical jokes. He’d called her twice last night to crinkle tissue paper in front of the mouthpiece.

       “I can hear you breathing, kiddo.” Giving Boris’s ears a quick scratch, she shrugged off her black trench. “First rule of practical jokes, the same old, same old doesn’t work more than twice. …”

       The crackle came again, so sharp she drew the phone from her ear.

       “Jas, it’s me,” a man on the other end shouted. “Are you there?”

       A chill danced across Jasmine’s skin. She stood slowly, her eyes locking on the polished floorboards. “Daniel?” Then suspicion swept in, and she spun to scan the darkness beyond the living room window. “Who is this?”

       “It’s me, Daniel, swear. The rain in Spain made our honeymoon a pain.”

       Jasmine’s mind scrambled to decode his words even as she endeavored to block the horror-filled months that preceded his removal from her life.

       Didn’t work, of course. The memories were simply too strong.

       Daniel Corey was her ex-husband, emphasis on the ex. He’d been an investigative reporter who’d gone where he shouldn’t have, learned things he’d had no business knowing, escaped—barely—and dragged himself home. That’s when all hell had broken loose.

       Life for both of them had become a carousel of safe houses, stringent security measures, pending trial dates, testimony and, in the end, for Daniel at least, the witness protection program.

       Her role in the fallout hadn’t been as prominent, but that hadn’t made it any less terrifying. Because he had no other family, the people Daniel had crossed had seen her as his Achilles heel.

       With several very real threats hanging over her, Jasmine had been followed day and night by undercover police officers for four long months. When that had been deemed insufficient, she’d been placed in a safe house for three more. Altogether, she’d forfeited over half a year of her life to Daniel’s dog-with-a-bone attitude. She didn’t intend to lose another day.

       The rain-Spain-honeymoon thing was a password of sorts. Daniel had invented it should the need to contact her—which he was never supposed to do—arise.

       Thunder sounded directly overhead, a perfect backdrop to Jasmine’s plunging mood. “Where are you?” she demanded, then slashed a hand through the air. “Scratch that. Why are you calling?”

       “Something bad’s going on. I’ve got two feathers and, oh…um, speaking of death, I’m really sorry I missed Captain Ballard’s funeral.”

       Captain Gus Ballard of the San Diego Police Department had been at the heart of the case that Daniel’s unsanctioned investigating had brought to a highly explosive head. In short, and put very, very simply, one corrupt San Diego business magnate named Malcolm Wainwright, with ties to an equally corrupt South American magnate, both of whom possessed a network of people, weapons and criminal savvy, had been, if not destroyed, seriously damaged by Daniel’s findings.

       Ballard had spearheaded the case from start to finish. He’d arranged the safe houses, seen to her protection and kept Daniel alive through the trial and beyond. Sadly, eighteen months after the nightmare had more or less played out, he’d died of a pulmonary embolism.

       “I know you were at the service.” Her ex-husband’s regret penetrated the phone line’s static. “Ballard was a good man.”

       “Yes, he was.” She struggled for patience. “Daniel, what do you want?”

       “I told you, something’s happening. Here and in other places.”

       Thunder rumbled again. Though he made no sound, Boris’s ears flattened. She gave his side a reassuring rub. “Well, nothing’s happened here. I’d know if it had.” Wouldn’t she? “In any case, you must have seen the headlines. The escape Wainwright and two other inmates engineered three months ago resulted in a smashed helicopter and the remains of three dead bodies. And don’t tell me Wainwright couldn’t be positively identified, because both the police and the FBI were satisfied he was among the fatalities. Story’s dead, and so is he.”

       “Dentures aren’t proof positive in my opinion, and no Wainwright-related story is ever dead. If it were, would I still be living in exile under a new name?”

       Swallowing a snarl, Jasmine started for the kitchen. “Daniel, if you called to give me heebie-jeebies because you’re bored with your new life, I’m hanging up. I watched people die protecting me from the hornet’s nest you agitated just as the cops were about to close in.”

       “Hey, all I did was nudge the investigation along.”

       “Hanging up,” she warned.

       “No, don’t. Listen, Jas, I do know that a handful of people who should be alive today have died during the six weeks since Ballard’s funeral. Wainwright’s chopper went down three months ago, right?”

       Pausing, she rested her back on the kitchen door frame as another bolt of lightning shot through the sky. Wisdom told her she should disconnect. But Daniel had never been an alarmist. He wouldn’t have contacted her without a very good reason.

       “Okay, I give up,” she relented. “Who besides the captain—and his death was absolutely of natural causes—has died?” Her eyes went up as thunder rolled like a slow-motion wave from ceiling to floor. “Better make it fast. The storm here’s getting worse.”

       “Here, too,” he returned above the static. “The answer is two of Wainwright’s top executives, as well as the assistant D.A. of San Diego.”

       Boris wandered through the kitchen, sniffed the air. Watching him,

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