LITMIR.BIZ

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read what she’d typed. Nodded. Yes. There.

      She still had two hours left to fill.

      She read her words again. One sentence. Her fingers lifted to the keys. Began to move. And Bloom quit fighting them.

      * * *

      WTF.

      Detective Samuel Larson, thirty-seven-year-old semistar of the Santa Raquel Police Department, leaned back in the old squeaky desk chair he’d inherited, along with the scarred desk, when he’d been awarded his detective’s shield.

      He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the desk. Never had. He stared at the emailed report he’d just opened.

      Two years? The asshole was out in two years?

      How was he going to... “Damn.”

      “Something wrong?” Brand-new detective Chantel Harris, who’d recently transferred from a beat cop to internet crime investigation, happened to be walking by Sam’s desk as that last expletive slipped out.

      Sam knew Chantel. Not from any work they’d done together on the job, but because they were both members of the Santa Raquel High Risk Team—an organization of professionals in all fields who came into contact with victims of domestic violence. From nurses to school counselors, cops, doctors, lawyers, the team had formed an intricate communication system geared solely to prevent domestic violence deaths.

      “Yeah, something’s wrong,” he said, running a hand through blond hair that was too long by department standards. No one seemed to care. Least of all him. “One of our High Risk cases just threw up on us.”

      In silk pants and a jacket that looked like it had cost a year of his car payments, the no-nonsense, no makeup, blond-hair-tied-back cop sat down hard in the varnishless wooden chair beside his desk.

      “Which one?” Her lips were white with tension.

      “This one was before your time,” he quickly assured her.

      “But not before yours.”

      “Right.” He looked at his screen again, seething angry energy. Rocking back and forth in the swivel chair that had seen better days, leaning on one elbow as he chewed the side of his finger.

      Chantel glanced at the screen. “Arrested three years ago, sentenced to life in prison a year later and now released on a technicality,” she read the portion he’d scrolled to.

      “The lawyer who prosecuted him was Trevor Banyon.” He chewed harder.

      Chantel’s drawn out curse was only slightly less harsh than his mental one. “How many are they up to now? Twenty-four? I can’t believe that many cases have been overturned. A top prosecutor with an illegal gun trade on the side.” She shook her head. “The guy should be shot.”

      With one of his own weapons, Sam agreed silently.

      “I thought all of his cases were drug related.” Chantel leaned over and, taking charge of his mouse, scrolled some more. “What was he doing on one of our cases?”

      “The perp was a professor of psychology at U of C. The victim, his wife, was an associate professor he’d mentored.”

      “The authority figure.” Chantel’s tone dripped disrespect. He knew it because it was a sentiment he shared.

      Answering to a boss was one thing—having someone assume that they knew what was best for you better than you did, or thought that they had the right to force their will onto another—the idea pissed him off. Royally.

      “So why were we on it?” Chantel, apparently finding nothing pertinent in the brief report, sat back. “U of C is out of our jurisdiction.”

      “The couple owned a home here on the beach and commuted.” An hour and a half four days a week. He remembered the details. Every one of them.

      “Still, doesn’t explain Banyon’s involvement.”

      “The professor also had a private practice. He was a licensed psychiatrist. He’d been slowly drugging his wife.”

      “He was killing her?”

      “Nothing that kind.” Sam shook his head, feeling his lunch threaten to come back up on him. “He’d made up his own little cocktail. Just to dumb her down enough that she wouldn’t surpass him.”

      “He drugged her to keep her in his control?”

      “She’s genius-level intelligent,” Sam said, remembering the woman he’d spent two years trying to forget. Because forgetting was the right thing to do.

      She’d been so vulnerable when he’d known her. Nothing like the person she’d been born to be. The person he hoped she’d become after she’d gotten her life back. “He was afraid she was going to take his job.” Chantel cut right to the chase. “Or surpass him in his field.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Did he hit her, too?”

      “Hard enough to break her jaw.” And the crooked smile he’d left behind would be her constant reminder of what the man she’d adored, idolized and trusted had done to her.

      “He’s due out next Monday. That’s four days,” Chantel said, frowning.

      “I know.”

      “When are you going to tell her?”

      It was Thursday morning. He was thinking about...maybe...Sunday night. Give her as much peace of mind as he could.

      Give himself some way to figure out how to get the asshole back behind bars before he’d had a chance to take a step out.

      “With his conviction overturned there won’t even be a probation period.”

      He knew that.

      “What about a restraining order?” Chantel asked the question even as she shook her head.

      “Not until he approaches her again,” he said what they both already knew. When a case went away, so did all of the painfully collected evidence. At least in theory.

      “She needs time to make arrangements.”

      She had a point. Maybe Sunday night was leaving it a little late. Still, he needed time to make a plan.

      “Is she still local?”

      “Yeah. She’s in private practice now. Has an office in that professional plaza across the street from the hospital.” Still living in the beach house she’d bought with the bastard. That was one of the first things they were going to have to fix.

      They. As though she was going to want to have anything to do with him when she found out that he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to her that once she testified the man who’d hurt her so cruelly would spend the rest of his life behind bars. That if she testified he, Detective Sam Larson, would guarantee her safety.

      Not that Banyon’s sins were on him. But the fact that the asshole professor’s wife had testified against him when everything in her had told her not to do so—that was on Sam. He’d ridden her hard.

      He’d needed her testimony to make his case.

      To keep her safe.

      Well, he’d sure as hell screwed that one up.

       CHAPTER TWO

      “I HAD A degree in psychology from Stanford University when I was seventeen. My master’s by the time I was nineteen. And my doctorate at twenty-one.”

      Bloom spoke with authority. Because when it came to her own life, she was the expert. And that was okay.

      “I’m smart. Aware. And a talented right brain, as well.” She could talk about her paintings. The artwork on

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