LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Cooper Marshall burst into the apartment, gun ready as his gaze swept the dim interior of the room that waited for him. “Lockwood!”

      There was no response to his call, but the stench in the air—that unmistakable odor of death and blood—told Cooper that he’d arrived too late.

      Again.

      Damn it.

      Cooper rushed deeper into that darkened apartment. He’d gotten his orders from the top. He’d been assigned to track down Keith Lockwood, an ex–Elite Operations Division agent. Cooper was supposed to confirm that the other man was alive and well. He’d fallen off the EOD’s radar, and that had sure raised a red flag in the mind of Cooper’s boss.

      Especially since other EOD agents had recently turned up dead.

      Cooper rounded a corner in the narrow hallway. The scent of blood was stronger. He headed toward what he suspected was the bedroom. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, so it was easy for him to see the body slumped on the floor just a few feet from him.

      He knelt, and his gloved fingers turned the body just slightly. Cooper pulled out his penlight and shone it on the dead man’s face.

      Keith Lockwood. Cooper had never worked with the man on a mission, but he’d seen Lockwood’s photos.

      Lockwood’s throat had been slit. An up-close kill.

      Considering that Lockwood was a former navy SEAL, the man shouldn’t have been caught off guard.

      But he had been.

      Because the killer isn’t your average thug off the streets.

      The killer was also an agent with the EOD, and the killer was trained just as well as Lockwood had been.

      No, trained better.

      Because the killer had been able to get the drop on the SEAL.

      Cooper’s breath eased out in a rough sigh just as a knock sounded on the front door.

      The front door that Cooper had just smashed open moments before.

      He leapt to his feet.

      “Mr. Lockwood?” A feminine voice called out. “Mr. Lockwood...i-is everything all right?”

      No, things were far from all right. The broken door should have been a dead giveaway on that point.

      “It’s Gabrielle Harper!” The voice called out. “We were supposed to meet...”

      His back teeth clenched. Talk about extremely bad timing. He knew Gabrielle Harper, and the trouble that the woman was about to bring his way was just going to make the situation even more of a tangled mess.

      Cooper holstered his weapon. He had to get out of that apartment. Before Gabrielle saw him and asked questions that he couldn’t answer for her.

      He rose and stalked toward the bedroom window. His footsteps were silent. After all of his training, they should have been.

      Gabrielle’s steps—and her high heels—tapped across the hardwood floor as she came inside the apartment.

      Of course, Gabrielle wasn’t just going to wait outside. She was a reporter, no doubt on the scent of a story.

      And she must have scented the blood.

      She was following that scent, and if he didn’t

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