LITMIR.BIZ

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not just plant it now?”

      Again his authority was being challenged and again he felt a sudden and intense rush of rage. Pain, sharp and intense stabbed behind his eyes, and blood rushed to his skin like fiery sheet lightning. He grabbed his questioner, balled up his fist and punched him. The other man staggered backward from the blow, crashing into a table and scattering components onto the floor.

      “Don’t.” He got a grip on the fallen man’s shirt and hauled him to his feet.

      “Ever.” He punched him again, this time blood spurted from his friend’s nose.

      “Question.” He pulled back and gut punched him. His pal doubled over.

      “Me.” He jerked up his knee and made contact with the other man’s chin.

      Bleeding and unconscious, the guy crumpled to the floor, then lay motionless.

      Power. He had it. He was invincible now. He gave the other man a hard look. “Any more questions?”

      “Not me, dude.”

      As it should be. “Good.” Though his knuckles hurt from the contact with the man’s jaw, that little bit of physical exertion had allowed him to release some of the fury surging through his system. Not as much as killing him would’ve done, but killing the weasel dog wasn’t in the cards. He smiled inwardly. At least not today. He still had a use for his good old buddy.

      His heartbeat resumed its normal cadence as his blood pressure went down. “There’s still some covert work to be done.” He wiped the spatter of his victim’s blood from his hand to his jeans and stepped over the man’s extended legs. “I’ll be giving each of you a specific assignment. Are you ready for your instructions?”

      MOLLY ARRIVED BACK at her modest apartment feeling utterly exhausted. On the plus side, her stomach had quieted. On the minus side, she was struggling to push the horrific image of the mutilated torso from her mind.

      She parked and walked the short distance to her front door, inserted her key and breathed in the calming scent of familiarity. Since she lived alone, the scents from her abundance of potpourri and candles were the closest substitute she had to hearing “Welcome home, honey, how was your day?”

      As was her habit, she dropped her purse and keys on the foyer table and automatically pressed the button on her telephone’s answering machine. The first four messages were to her home number. Three hang-ups and one from her mentor Gavin Templesman.

      “Molly, honey, I heard about the show and I’m just calling to see how you’re dealing with it. Call me when you get in.”

      She’d call Gavin back later. When she no longer had a burning desire to damn him to hell for having her fill in on the show. Intellectually she knew that Gavin wasn’t responsible for getting her dragged into the murder of that poor woman, emotionally she felt like sharing some of the bad karma.

      Two beeps sounded, followed by a mechanical voice announcing, “Switching to remote message retrieval. Inbox for Dr. Jameson accessed.”

      She stripped off her jacket as she listened to the lone message. Her ten-o’clock appointment for the next morning was canceling. Again.

      “Lester,” she said as the message ended, “that’s three appointments in a row, pal. I’m sensing you’re not serious about working on your issues.”

      She jotted a note to remind herself to send Lester Boyle a letter explaining that his therapy was court ordered, and she was going to have to inform the court of his violation of that order.

      “Nothing like telling a guy with a serious anger-management problem that you’re ratting him out,” she mumbled as she walked back through her bedroom to her bath and turned on the faucet. Could this day suck any more? she wondered as she prepared for her favorite indulgence.

      As the Roman tub filled with hot, steamy water, she added a handful of lavender salts to the bath. Next, she lit the lavender-scented candles around the back ledge and went into her bedroom to retrieve the latest L. S. Connor novel, Hide and Seek. She placed the book on the tiled first step up to the tub. Next, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine, returned to the bath to place it next to the book and then stripped off the rest of her clothes.

      In no time she left her world behind, engrossed in the latest adventures of Connor’s fictional hero, Caleb “Lucky” Wyatt. Wyatt was equal parts James Bond and Indiana Jones and Molly’s personal guilty pleasure. The author’s style was wonderful and the larger-than-life tales of Wyatt—head of ACE, the Anti-Crime Enforcement Agency—were both entertaining and romantic.

      Yes, she was fully aware of the fact that she was living vicariously through a fictional hero—the kind that didn’t exist in the real world. Yes, she knew that when Wyatt seduced a woman in the book it wasn’t her. And that was a shame, because Wyatt was her ultimate fantasy man. He was intelligent, sexy, handsome, resourceful, cool under pressure, quick on his feet. He was—

      A lot like Chandler Landry.

      Molly almost dropped her coveted novel into the tub when that disturbing and unwelcomed parallel popped into her head.

      Thinking carnal thoughts about a fake guy in a book was okay. It was safe. Equating Chandler to Wyatt was just wrong. Actually, merely thinking about Chandler in those terms was the total opposite of safe.

      Aside from being a virtual stranger, he was everything she avoided in a man. There was the whole thing about his looks. It had been her experience that if the Good Lord gave a man physical perfection, he countered the generosity by subtracting important elements from other areas. Gorgeous men were usually arrogant. Usually self-possessed. Usually as shallow as a mud puddle after a long drought.

      Then there was the money thing. Chandler—all the Landrys—were loaded. Old-family-money rich. The town of Jasper was founded by and named for Jasper Landry, Chandler’s however-many-greats grandfather. Rich guys were different. Different rules, different standards. Not that she was impoverished, but Molly knew he was way out of her league.

      Then there was the celebrity thing. Chandler was a version of local royalty. His life was public and Molly—perhaps above all else—valued her privacy. It was safer to guard her past than to have to answer painful and intrusive questions.

      She read the papers. She knew that any woman associated with Chandler normally got a mention of some sort. “Not mention,” she muttered as she put her book down and took a sip of wine. “A label,” she continued, sarcastically recalling what she’d read. “Former model blah-blah, or disgraced debutante blah-blah. Pass, thanks.”

      She heard the phone ring in the bedroom but opted to let the machine pick up. She returned to her book and hated the fact that as she read her mind’s eye pictured Chandler in the role of her beloved Wyatt.

      IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT when Chandler arrived at his family’s ranch house. While he would always consider the place home, the huge clapboard house was currently occupied by his brothers Shane and Sam. But that was about to change. Sam and Callie were in the process of building their own place on the east edge of the property. Chandler guessed the decision to move out was two-fold. First and foremost, Sam and Callie had two kids and smart money said more would follow. Second, sharing living space with Shane probably cut into their private time. Assuming married people with two kids actually had private time.

      Shane greeted him by opening the door wearing a deep scowl.

      “Good evening,” Chandler commented, unable to keep the brotherly taunt out of his tone.

      “Not when you’re stuck with the Housekeeper from Hell under your roof.”

      “I heard that!” came a familiar voice from just inside.

      Soon Taylor Reese was just behind Shane, her small frame barely visible behind Shane’s huge bulk.

      “You drank the last of the milk, so you should be the one making the middle-of-the-night run to the store.”

      It

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