Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Carol Ericson (short books to read TXT) 📖

you’d recovered the victims or brought down the killer, no matter how many obstacles got in your way. So when I lost my job as sheriff, and I came to work for the marshals...you were my first thought. You’re always my first thought.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, what to think.

Her phone vibrated on the surface of the island, and she reached for it. Sliding her thumb across the screen, Remi let the softness leave her voice as she answered. “Tell me you have something good, Foster.”

Dylan turned back to the paperwork spread across the kitchen table. There had to be something there—anything—that would lead them to the man who’d killed twenty-six people over the past two years and abducted Remi straight from the Gresham PD station. Surveillance footage hadn’t done them a damn bit of good. The perp had been wearing a ski mask.

The men the New Castle Killer murdered weren’t professionals. Tony Rasmussen had worked for his father’s printing shop before his body had turned up in an alley behind his apartment building. He wasn’t their killer. Brett Smith had been studying programming to become a video game designer, and although his body hadn’t been recovered, there’d been too much blood left at the scene for the medical examiner to rule anything but murder.

As for Tad Marrow, the veterinarian’s assistant had been loved by everyone he’d come into contact with and even went as far as to volunteer at the local homeless shelter. Law enforcement had looked for his remains for two months before the ME had officially declared the victim dead, but once again, the amount of blood... Dylan recalled the crime scene photos. No one could’ve survived that attack, but neither of their remaining suspects had the skills or the psychological profile of a serial killer hiding the fact he was actually alive all this time. “Except he’d said the New Castle Killer had awakened something in him that day.”

Remi’s low voice tendrilled through the sudden haze of inspiration.

He leaned forward in his chair and tilted the laptop screen closer. None of the background information, profiles and character statements were doing them a damn bit of good because the men who’d been attacked didn’t exist anymore. Not psychologically. They’d been working off the assumption the victims would be the same men coming out the other side of a knife, but trauma had a way of changing people. Damn it. Dylan should’ve seen it before now.

A rush of adrenaline burned in his veins as he logged into the Warrant Information Network federal database. The information he needed didn’t fall under the normal purview of his job as a deputy US marshal. Law enforcement operations, fugitive investigations, warrant administration, threat management, witness security protocols, district investigations—none of that would help him right now but the network did give him access to the National Crime Information Center.

“That was Foster. He said Del Howe’s autopsy report was finalized an hour ago.” Remi closed the distance between her and where he sat at the kitchen table, her voice more tense than a few minutes ago.

Dylan pulled back from the laptop. He didn’t look at her, couldn’t. He knew it would’ve been only a matter of time before the truth came to light. He’d tried to warn her before they’d taken on the case, but now, everything he’d worked for these past three years would tell her exactly what kind of man she’d let into her office, into her bed.

Remi tossed her phone onto the table in front of him, the report on her screen. “You lied to me.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Falling in love was like handing someone a gun pointed at her heart and hoping they’d never pull the trigger.

Dylan had pulled the trigger.

Bits of conversation, whispered secrets and addictive kisses buzzed in her head from the past few days. Over and over, she’d ignored her instincts to keep her emotions locked behind the armor she’d spent most of her life constructing, and now she had to face the consequences. “You told me you’d only been to Del Howe’s cabin once, with permission from the owners and a key to get inside while he was off the premises. But this report details a sample of dried blood that matches your DNA embedded in a wound on the back of his left hand.”

She tried to keep herself from jumping to conclusions, but DNA didn’t lie. Curling her fingers into the centers of her palms, Remi battled to control the tremors fighting up her arms as every minute of the past three days came into question. She’d brought Dylan Cove into her office, depended on him with sensitive material for his investigations, let him into her bed and into her heart, and he’d lied to her.

Color drained from Dylan’s face, his body tensing as though considering his options, but there was no point in denying it. “You’re right. I lied.”

An invisible earthquake rocked through her, and she fought the urge to reach out for the chair. Pure, unadulterated anger exploded in her chest as the pieces of the puzzle she’d been more than willing to ignore from the beginning fit together. “You figured out who the New Castle Killer was, and you trailed his movements from Delaware to Oregon. You used your position as a US marshal to convince the owners of the cabin to let you search the place, but Howe must’ve come back to the property.”

He pushed away from the table, stood and faced her. Regret played across his handsome features, but it wouldn’t save him now. “Remi—”

“The DNA the ME recovered from the body was embedded in a wound across the bridge of Del Howe’s knuckles, Cove.” Emotional self-preservation arced through her, and she increased the space between them. Her weapon weighed heavy in her holster, but she hoped to hell he wouldn’t make her pull it. “You found the man responsible for killing three victims in New Castle, and you couldn’t let him get away with what he’d