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  We’ve missed you.

  His friends were all here, waiting for him in the only world he wanted to inhabit. Here he was somebody. Here he was never called useless or ugly. Here they respected him, were in awe of him. Feared him.

  Because here, everyone knew who he really was. And what he was capable of.

  When? someone asked. More took up the cry. When will you show us more?

  He checked the date—nearly five weeks since his last premiere. And then he considered his finances—very low. How he’d managed only one auction every couple of months at the start was beyond him.

  It was time. He had things he wanted to buy, places he wanted to visit, and he didn’t have the means to do it.

  Besides, his palms were beginning to itch. Right hand meant money coming in, left meant money going out, according to the old saying. But to the Reaper, both meant only one thing.

  Time to kill someone.

  Dean wanted to get right to work on the search for the murder site. Though they suspected it had been a long time since Lisa had died, and the odds of their finding anything were minimal, this was the first real break they’d had in the case. All the other bodies had been found in dump sites, the original location of the killings unknown.

  That the lead came courtesy of the sharp eyes of a small-town sheriff with a great ass did not escape him.

  “Enough of that,” he muttered, not even wanting to go there in his head when it came to Stacey Rhodes. No matter how attractive she was—physically and mentally.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he told Wyatt. “Just wishing we could get right on the search.”

  But they couldn’t.They’d spent the past two hours with the sheriff, laying out a search grid and making plans to start first thing tomorrow. Not only because it was late in the day, but also because they lacked the manpower. Even with the help of the sheriff and her deputies, there weren’t enough of them to search hundreds of acres of woods.

  Besides, neither he nor Wyatt knew a thing about the deputies on her staff. For all they knew, the guys who worked for her could be small-town old-timers who’d been in their jobs for decades. Given the emptiness of the sheriff’s office, and the casual, laid-back atmosphere inside, they weren’t expecting a top-notch crew.

  Stacey Rhodes was top-notch enough all on her own.

  “Rather a remarkable woman, Sheriff Rhodes, wouldn’t you say?” Wyatt asked as he drove them down the main street, in search of the town’s only hotel.

  Dean flinched, wondering if he’d been wearing an I’m-thinking-of-a-hot-female expression. Then again, any man with an ounce of blood below the waist and a brain cell in his head would be thinking about the woman whose office they’d just left. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Good of her to arrange for us to get a block of rooms on such short notice.”

  The sheriff had called the owner of the inn, getting him to offer government rates on their rooms. Dean and Wyatt were alone now, but Mulrooney and Stokes would show up tonight, Fletcher and Cole in the morning. With all of them, as well as Stacey and the deputies she vouched for, they could begin the search for the scene of the crime tomorrow. Jackie Stokes was bringing all her forensics gear, and they’d have the state police on standby with a cadaver-sniffing dog, just in case they got lucky.

  Dean doubted they’d get that lucky. Finding the site would be enough of a stretch. They knew the Reaper dumped his bodies far from his kill zones, so they almost certainly wouldn’t find remains. If they could find where he’d killed her, though, there might be some surviving evidence. Doubtful after more than a year’s worth of weather and animals and natural decay, but it was more than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.

  “If we find the crime took place on federal land, it’ll make things easier. But even barring that, I get the feeling the sheriff will be highly cooperative,” Wyatt said.

  Dean was about to respond when he saw Wyatt flip on the blinker and turn into a small, gravel parking lot. “God, I didn’t even see the place,” he said, gawking out the window at the rambling, single-story building before them.

  It was an inn only by the loosest definition of the word. A long, low strip of rooms with a sagging roof and paint-stripped doors that ended an inch above the jamb, the Hope Inn was in serious need of renovation, or a few gallons of gasoline and a match. “Think this is really the only option? What about Front Royal?”

  “Too far away.” Wyatt shrugged. “When in Rome . . .”

  “But you’re not the one who’s probably going to be stuck here for days.” His boss was heading back to D.C. tomorrow, once the rest of the team was in place.

  “Getting stuck here for several days would be a good thing,” Wyatt reminded him, his voice quiet, getting his point across immediately. Because having to stick around would mean there was something to stick around for. Like evidence, or definite leads.

  “I know. I just wish I’d packed a few more things. A tent and a sleeping bag, for starters.” Dean had brought an overnight bag, just in case, but he wasn’t used to sleeping in anything but his skin. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to want that skin coming into contact with anything in one of those rooms: bed, sheets, shower, nothing.

  “I have some calls to make.” Wyatt parked outside the small, dingy office. “Why don’t I check us both in, take care of my calls, and you can go scout around, see if there’s anyplace decent to grab a bite for dinner.”

  Sensing that Wyatt generally ate four-star, he didn’t even want to imagine the man sitting in the local diner ordering the meat loaf special. But he didn’t argue. Obviously Wyatt wanted privacy for his calls. “Not a problem.”

  Knowing his boss wasn’t just calling back to the office to update the team, he took no offense. Wyatt had other fires to control. The powers that be had him on a tight leash and a choker collar. He was always second-guessed, having to explain himself the way no other supervisory special agent in his position ever had to. Superiors continually asked questions, many of them because they wanted the wrong answers. Any excuse, any chance to mess with Wyatt, who’d brought down one of their own, and they’d use it.

  It had taken balls of steel for Blackstone to expose the man who’d been the deputy director’s right-hand man for the lying, crooked scumbag he really was. Especially since the lying, crooked scumbag had once been Wyatt’s mentor.

  And, man, had Wyatt paid for it. Officially, they’d given him a commendation. Unofficially . . . a lot of people would like to give the whistle-blower his ass on a plate.

  “You can take the car if you need it,” Wyatt said, “then come back for me. Though I don’t imagine driving is going to improve the selection.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed as they exited the car. No need to drive in a town no bigger than his fist. “I’ll walk. If I’m not back by the time you’re done, give me a call.”

  Before he left, Dean glanced at his watch. Five thirty. Screw it. He loosened his tie, tugged it free, and tossed it into the car, then unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. He’d lose the jacket, too, if he didn’t have his sidearm strapped to his hip.

  Wyatt did not follow suit, which didn’t surprise Dean. Wyatt would wear the whole damn FBI ensemble, head to toe, until he closed the door of his hotel room for the night.

  Not Dean. Despite the hour, the heat remained monstrous, and he was ready for relief. He even found himself wondering if the no-tell motel had a pool. And if there was any chance in hell that pool didn’t contain rare, disease-causing bacteria.

  Heading across the street toward the center of town, he noted the quickest way into and out of the parking lot, the access to it from the woods beyond. He estimated the distance to the sheriff’s office, and the number of intersections along the way. He might have been half joking with that serial-killer-in-a-small-town crack, but the thought had been in the back of his mind from the moment the sheriff had ID’d the victim.

  The two-inch-wide strip of creamy, soft skin around the sheriff�
��s middle had been on his mind, too.

  Ever since she’d stood and stretched her arms above her head back in her office, he’d been unable to shake Stacey Rhodes’s image from his brain. God knew the scenario had been all wrong to think about how attractive she was. Yet even the reason for his presence here hadn’t been enough to stop him from appreciating that combination of strength and softness evident in every move she made. He found the stubborn jut of her jaw as attractive as the femininity of that loose strand of hair. He’d wanted to see her handle the Glock she wore so comfortably on her hip as much as he’d wanted to taste the slight sheen of sweat shining on her throat in her hot office.

  “Man, you need to get laid,” he muttered as he turned a corner and headed down the block. Going without sex since his divorce had been a bad idea. Celibacy was making women he had no business thinking about look way too good to him.

  He needed the kind of woman who wouldn’t care about his last name the next morning, nor he about hers. A bar hookup was the required response for any recently divorced guy whose wife had remarried. At least, so his twice-divorced brother said.

  Stacey Rhodes was no bar tramp. The prickly yet soft small-town woman probably knew not only any potential lover’s last name, but the names of his parents and grandparents, too.

  Tugging his thoughts off the sheriff and back onto his job, where they belonged, he continued to scope out Hope Valley. It took ten minutes to traverse the ten or so square blocks of it. On foot. Meaning if someone were driving through and looked down to squirt ketchup on a carryout burger, they’d probably miss it.

  The town had a few small restaurants—bars serving burgers, and an Internet café. But he opted for the diner. He didn’t choose the place because of its proximity to the sheriff’s office, or his curiosity about whether she ever stopped in for a bite after her shift ended. At least, that was what he told himself.

  Once he stepped inside, however, his gaze shifted to the right, and his stare locked on the woman sitting at the first booth. The strawberry blond woman with the moist lips and the moist throat, and the look of almost guilty surprise on her face. And he knew that even if their hotel had been four-star, with room service, he would have come here, on the off chance that she would, too.

  “Sheriff Rhodes,” he said, his voice low, for his ears only.

  She heard anyway. “Special Agent Taggert.”

  She’d come here on purpose. He wasn’t a profiler, didn’t do any behavioral analysis stuff. But he knew that as surely as he knew the sound of his son’s voice.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up,” she said, admitting as much.

  Any other woman he knew would have danced around that admission all night. Or avoided making it altogether. Not this one. She was in-your-face truth and nothing but. He shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  Knowing the empty seat opposite her was for him, he took it without an invitation. “If we’re going to do this, you might as well call me Dean.”

  She nibbled her lip, that full lower lip that had trembled the tiniest bit earlier today when she’d first seen those pictures. “Going to do what?”

  Any number of possibilities flashed across his brain, but he settled for the most basic. “Have a drink together. Work together.” Do anything else two unattached adults who are attracted to each other do together.

  Suddenly realizing he’d made a huge assumption, he cast a quick glance toward her left hand. Because he had no idea whether Sheriff Rhodes was unattached or not. He’d just wanted her to be, so he hadn’t even considered the alternative.

  He saw no ring. And suddenly his heart started beating again. Dean might be a lot of things, but a home wrecker he wasn’t.

  “Okay. And I’m Stacey.” She glanced past him. “Where’s your boss?”

  “Making some calls back at the hotel.”

  “You get settled in okay?”

  He grunted. “I didn’t stop to introduce myself to the bedbugs.”

  Her lips might have twitched the tiniest bit. “Sorry. The closest chain hotel is several miles away. There is a very nice B and B a mile outside of town, but I know they have a wedding scheduled there for this weekend and every room is booked.”

  “Think I could pass for the best man?”

  “Unlike your boss, you don’t look like the tux type.” She actually smiled, visibly relaxing for the first time since they’d met. Her wide mouth seemed made for smiling, and her green eyes twinkled, negating the tiny lines of worry on her brow.

  She’d been incredibly attractive before. Now she was damn near beautiful.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “Wyatt’s the Dom Péri gnon of our team. I guess I’m the Mad Dog 20/20.”

  Laughter spilled across her lips, husky and soft all at once, so natural it could never have been forced. Hearing it gave Dean the first real flash of pleasure he’d had all day.

  “I know the inn looks bad from the outside, but I promise the place is very clean. The owners can’t afford to renovate, but they make sure the rooms are spick-and-span.”

  His hopes rose. But he still intended to reserve judgment until he actually had a chance to check out the inside of his room for himself.

  About to tell her that, he was startled by the sound of glass breaking nearby. He and Stacey both jerked their heads reflexively, though he imagined they’d see nothing more than a waitress standing in the middle of diner plate wreckage.

  Instead, he saw a man, pale and wiry, standing in the midst of the broken dishes on the floor. No waitress was in sight, and the glass and plate, complete with half-eaten sandwich, seemed to have slipped off his own table.

  “Oh, great,” Stacey muttered, her voice soaked in dislike.

  That tone, accompanied by the flash of anger that appeared in the stranger’s eyes when he met Dean’s, made him wonder if the dishes had slipped after all. When the man cast a glare of barely disguised anger at Stacey, he wondered even more. “Problem?”

  “Not on my part.”

  Dean sat up straighter, assessing the dish-killing stranger.With curly, dingy brown hair, and his tall, skinny, pale form, he most resembled a used Q-tip. The man, realizing Dean was staring, finally tugged his attention off Stacey. Grabbing some cash out of his pocket, he thrust it at the waitress, who’d come running to clean up. Then he stalked across the broken glass, beelining toward the door, not casting another look in their direction.

  “Please don’t tell me he’s your ex,” Dean murmured, knowing the unusual exchange had been a personal, not a professional, one.

  “He’d like to have been,” she acknowledged. “His name’s Rob Monroe. I had to let him down hard when he didn’t take the hint that I wasn’t interested.”

  “Gee, can’t imagine what’s not to like.”

  She snickered a little. A cute snicker. “Aside from the fact that I think his mommy still makes his bed and his daddy the mayor tells him what time to be home every night? I can’t imagine.”

  Dean groaned at the very thought, even while tempted to ask her what did interest her. He was so not the smooth type who played those kinds of games with women, however, and didn’t know the language. He had no clue how to find out if she was feeling the intrinsic pull that he had since the moment they’d met. He only knew that when she’d laughed a few moments ago and her eyes had twinkled with genuine good humor, his heart had skipped a beat. Or ten.

  “I saw you scoping out the town.”

  Back to business. She obviously didn’t want to talk about her unwanted admirer, ignoring him just as she’d ignored the altercation with her brother earlier.

  He wondered how a man might react to being so easily put out of this beautiful woman’s mind. And suddenly he felt the tiniest hint of sympathy for the angry Mr. Monroe.

  “Didn’t take long to explore all of Hope Valley, did it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Two-stoplight heaven—that’s us.” She lifted her glass and sipped what appeared to be strong
iced tea. Not exactly the beer he’d like to have at the end of a long, shitty day, but it looked refreshing.

  A polyester-uniformed waitress approached and mumbled, “Getcha somethin’?” After Dean pointed to Stacey’s glass and asked for the same, she stuck her pencil behind her ear and ambled away.

  Once they were again alone, Stacey continued. “I watched you from my office window. It’s dinnertime, and I figured if you were looking for a place to eat, you’d eventually end up here. There are a few restaurants on the outskirts—a pretty good steak place and a Waffle House. But they’re not walkable, and this is.” She shrugged and sipped again. “So I decided to come over here and wait for you to show up.”

  He glanced at his watch. Dinnertime at six o’clock? Only in small-town USA. Most nights, like every other worker in D.C., he didn’t get home before seven. “I was just taking stock, picking someplace to eat while Wyatt makes his calls.”

  “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you came.”

  Her tone told him she had more to say, and that it wasn’t personal. While Dean had seen the guarded looks she’d sent his way earlier, and knew his interest in her was returned, he also knew she wanted to talk business. She might have loosened her uniform jacket and taken her hair out of its bun to hang down her back in a long ponytail, but she was still on the job. He doubted there was ever a time somebody in her position wasn’t.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “I’m not surprised.” In the brief time since he and Wyatt had left her office, he imagined a whole slew of questions had entered her thoughts. Earlier, hit with such shocking news, she’d gone along with them, had let them take the lead. She hadn’t had a chance to think of the ramifications.

  Now she’d thought about them.

  He imagined the vivid pictures in her head would haunt her for a long time, each one raising a thousand questions. They certainly did for him.

  How such things could happen, how he could watch such things happening on the same day he could find himself warmed by the laughter of a near-stranger, was beyond him. But he thanked God for the laughter, for the simple pleasure of bidding his son good night, arguing baseball with his brother, or hearing the latest news about his sister’s kids. Simple pleasures were the only things that kept anyone in his line of work sane.