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  To Gajus, sexier, funnier, and smarter than any hero I could imagine, and thankfully minus the emotional baggage

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, I owe a huge thanks to my writing buddies who have helped me through every single book since I started this crazy writing adventure. First to Monica McCarty, for the daily sanity checks and accompanying ego boosts or ass kicks, depending on what I need that day. I love our shared brain. And to Bella Andre/Bella Riley/Lucy Kevin, without whom this book would not exist! If you enjoy Hide from Evil, thank Bella, because if I’d had my way Sean would have never had his own happily ever after. And most especially thank you to my readers, for reading my books, enjoying them, and letting me know it! Nothing gets me through the tough spots and plot snags like knowing you are out there eagerly awaiting my next offering.

  Chapter 1

  You ready to go?”

  Krista Slater looked up and nodded at King County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Benson, who stood in the doorway of her office, briefcase in hand and an overstuffed accordion folder under his arm. She gathered the notes she’d made on the witness statements she’d taken in the past month, trying to summon up that hungry feeling that used to overtake her every time she prepared for court.

  Come on, Slater, eye of the tiger, she told herself as she shoved her files into her briefcase. She needed to be on her A-game today. No room for self-doubt or mistakes, not when they were facing off against a slick fish like Roman Karev and his team of five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorneys. Karev, a restaurant owner with known ties to the Russian mob, was accused of murdering a local businessman and his wife.

  Today was the pretrial hearing, and while she was damn sure their case was rock solid, she knew any mistake, any slipup could and would be used to get crucial pieces of evidence thrown out. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything, especially not—

  The phone on Krista’s desk buzzed, and she pushed the button on the intercom. “What is it, Lisa?”

  Her paralegal’s voice sounded on the speakerphone. “Ms. Slater, I have a phone call for you. He won’t say who he is, only that he was told to call you—”

  As casually as she could, Krista punched Lisa off speakerphone and picked up the handset. She shot Mark an apologetic look, praying her elevated pulse rate and the twist of anticipation in her belly didn’t show on her face. “I have to take this.”

  Benson looked pointedly at his watch. “We need to be there in ten minutes, and I need to go over some last-minute details.”

  “Two minutes, I promise.” Krista ignored Benson’s impatient sigh. “Put him through.” She glanced up, stifling a grimace when it became clear Benson had no intention of leaving.

  Krista swiveled her chair, turning her back to Benson, a thousand questions racing through her mind in the seconds it took for Lisa to put the call through.

  “Is this Krista Slater?” asked a hoarse male voice.

  “That’s me,” she said. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Jimmy, Jimmy Caparulo.”

  “I’m so glad to hear from you. I’ve been waiting for you to call.”

  “Uh, yeah,” the man replied, his confusion at Krista’s borderline flirtatious tone evident.

  Her heart thudded against her ribs. Jimmy Caparulo, the man Nate Brewster had tried to frame as the Slasher before Nate had been caught and killed. “I’m really glad you called,” Krista said. “My friend mentioned you might be in touch.”

  The “friend” was private investigator Stew Kowalski, whom Krista knew through his work on several cases with the prosecuting attorney’s office. But this time Stew wasn’t working in any official capacity, so she was careful not to mention him by name in front of Benson.

  Krista had hired Stew a couple of months ago to look deeper into the Nate Brewster case. Even though there was no doubt Brewster was guilty of killing seven women, including Evangeline Gordon, some things about him just weren’t adding up. Too many gaps of information, too many things screaming at her that what happened to those women didn’t begin and end with Nate Brewster.

  But everyone from the FBI agent in charge of Brewster’s case to Krista’s own boss seemed content to let it go. The Slasher had been caught. They had incontrovertible proof in the form of video that he’d killed all seven victims—eight in total if you included Evangeline Gordon, the victim whose murder Sean Flynn had been sent to death row for. Flynn had been exonerated, freed, and generously compensated, and now everyone seemed content to put the entire embarrassing episode behind them.

  Except for Krista, who couldn’t let it go. When it became clear there was no way to keep the investigation active, she hired Stew on her own dime to find out the real story behind Brewster and the prostitution ring he’d run out of one of Seattle’s most exclusive nightclubs. Up until now, he hadn’t been able to find anything. The trail was cold, and Krista realized she needed to resign herself to the fact that sometimes the bad guys got away.

  Flynn was free. She should be happy about that.

  Then, a few days ago, Stew had made contact with Jimmy Caparulo. Krista told herself not to get her hopes up. Even so, this call from Jimmy sent her back on high alert. “I told Stew I would only talk to you. I knew the way you helped Sean. You’re the only one I can trust with this,” Jimmy said, his words coming out in a rush.

  “I wish you’d called sooner.” Krista injected a pouty note into her voice and snuck a glance at Benson. His expression was one of disbelief.

  “I knew they would hurt my aunt if I ever said anything,” Jimmy continued, unable to stop himself now that the words had started. “But now Nate’s dead and she’s gone too. I can’t keep it in anymore. I should have said something sooner. I should have helped Sean—”

  Krista cut him off before he got rolling. She couldn’t completely focus with Benson tapping his foot and giving her the wrap it up sign, and she didn’t want to miss a word. “I really want to talk to you more, but this isn’t the best time. Can I call you later, or better yet, why don’t we go out?”

  “Go out? Yeah, this will be better in person. Where do you live?”

  “Wow, you don’t waste any time!” she said with a little laugh. “How about we at least meet for a drink before you invite yourself over?”

  “What on earth are you doing?” Benson whispered incredulously. “We have to leave, now!”

  Krista held up a finger and mouthed Sorry, as she grabbed a pen to write down the name of a coffee place near Jimmy’s aunt’s house. “Tonight at eight. It’s a date,” she said before she hung up.

  She gathered her things, avoiding Benson’s eyes as she braced herself for the scolding that would begin in five, four, three, two…

  “What was that all about?” Benson said, exasperated, his footsteps echoing off the hard floors of the corridor that connected their office wing to the courthouse. “Ten minutes before we face off against Karev is not the time for a personal call.”

  Krista bit back a smart-ass response. Relieved as she was that Benson had bought her performance, it galled her that he really thought, after working with her for over seven years, she would be that frivolous. Still, he’d be furious if he knew she was investigating Brewster after he’d told her to drop it. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I made a commitment to myself to give a little more balance to my personal life, and my friend has been trying to connect me with this guy for months now, and I’ve been really excited to meet with him.”

  At least that part was true. Ever since the truth about Sean’s innocence had come out, Krista had wondered if Jimmy had known all along that Nate was guilty. When Jimmy had testified against his friend Sean, had he known he was covering for
Nate Brewster?

  To date, Jimmy hadn’t given any indication that he knew more about Brewster and his activities than he’d let on. Even when Brewster had tried to set Jimmy up as the Slasher, Jimmy wouldn’t say a word other than that they’d become close friends in the army but had lost touch over the years. Nothing new, nothing Jimmy’s aunt, who Jimmy had cared for during the last years of her life, couldn’t tell them.

  But now…I knew they would kill my aunt if I ever said anything.

  Her heart skipped a beat. They. So she was right. Nate Brewster hadn’t been working alone.

  It looked like Jimmy had something to say after all. It took all of her restraint not to share the news with Benson, but she needed to play her cards close to the vest until she had something concrete to go on.

  Then all bets were off.

  Benson paused and stayed Krista with a hand on her arm. “You know Rae and I would love nothing more than to see you settled down and happy. But really, Krista, couldn’t you have had Lisa take a message and called him back?”

  Krista forced a smile. “Aren’t you the one who always told me to seize an opportunity as soon as it presented itself? I’m not getting any younger, and Lord knows I’ve given enough of my life to the job these past few years. I need to find some kind of a balance, especially after…” She let her voice trail off.

  Mark frowned down at her, his face creased with paternal concern. “I know the last few months have been hard on you, and I know it’s hard to drive forward after a mistake like that.”

  She couldn’t suppress her indignant squawk. “A mistake? Mark, what happened to Sean Flynn was a catastrophe. And we were the engineers.”

  Mark gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “We did the best we could with the evidence we were given. No prosecutor would have acted any differently.”

  Nothing but cold comfort, Krista thought. She couldn’t just shrug off her guilt.

  Mark rubbed his thumb over the crease between his brows. “Mistakes were made. It happens in this job. But you learn from those mistakes, move on, and do a better job the next time.”

  Krista swallowed hard. She knew he was right, that the cases they prosecuted were rarely black and white, cut and dried. She did the best she could with every case, but she couldn’t afford to agonize over every case that didn’t go exactly the way she wanted it to.

  Even though months had passed since Flynn’s release, she still couldn’t put it behind her. It was starting to take its toll, and it showed.

  As though reading her thoughts, Benson said, “You’ve lost that fire, that passion that got you to where you are, and where I know you want to go.”

  Oh, Jimmy’s call had lit a fire all right, but it had nothing to do with advancing her career with the prosecuting attorney’s office.

  “This is a big deal,” Benson continued, “being part of the Karev case, and I put you on it because I know you’re the best. This is your chance—our chance, to put the whole Sean Flynn disaster behind us.”

  “And I appreciate that,” Krista said. She truly did. She knew Mark, her mentor who had hired her straight out of law school, was handing her a great opportunity to get her career back on track. But she wished he wasn’t quite so eager to nail the lid shut on the Brewster/Flynn case. Was he becoming so embroiled in the politics that surrounded his position that he no longer cared about seeing justice done?

  No, she knew Mark better than that, Krista thought as she shook off her cynicism. Mark was a good man, and he had also been shaken to the core after the events of the past few months. He had every reason to be cautious when it came to dealing with such a high-profile case.

  Exactly why she needed to keep her little side investigation to herself until she came up with something concrete.

  And just because they’d messed up royally with Sean Flynn, that didn’t mean the whole system was broken. There was still good to be done, criminals to get off the street. Especially those who might have been working with Nate Brewster behind the scenes.

  The mere thought of it was enough to make her blood simmer.

  She made herself focus that fire, channeled it into the here-and-now as she walked into the courtroom. Roman Karev’s mud-green stare raked her from head to toe, his greasy smile making her yearn for a shower.

  I’m going to nail you, asshole, she thought, picturing the bodies of Aurelia and Nico Salvatore clinging together after Karev and his thugs had beaten them to death for reasons that changed depending on whom you talked to.

  Some said it was because Nico had failed to pay back a loan he’d taken out to keep his trattoria running when business slowed to a crawl. Others said it was because Nico refused to let Karev’s men use the apartment of the restaurant as a holding area for stolen goods after Nico had already taken payment.

  Either way, Nico made a fatal mistake when he decided to do business with Karev, and now it was up to Krista to prove it.

  As hard as it was to follow Benson’s lead and let go of Flynn’s case for the time being, right now she had to focus on the big picture. For her, this job was all about doing right, making sure sleazebags like Karev got their due, and on the rare occasion that she fucked up, doing everything she could to make sure the truth came out.

  Forty-five minutes later, Krista gathered up her files, her gut churning at the debacle that had just occurred. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured again. “Without Baker’s eyewitness account, we’re screwed.” In a move that had blindsided them, the judge had granted the defense’s motion to make their key witness’s testimony inadmissible in the trial.

  “It’s a blow,” Benson replied.

  “It’s more than a blow,” Krista hissed low so the other side wouldn’t hear. “All we’re left with is circumstantial.” The chances of getting a jury to convict were now hovering somewhere around zero, and Karev and his sharks knew it.

  “Keep your head,” Benson warned. “We’ll regroup back at the office.”

  Krista nodded, gathering her composure around her like a protective force field. Never let the defense see your cracks. It was one of the first lessons Benson ever taught her. No matter what, never show anything but supreme confidence to the enemy.

  She slung her briefcase over her shoulder and stormed out of the courtroom. Mark followed a few steps behind. Karev and his team were standing outside, shaking hands and patting backs. Karev’s lead counsel, Matt Swanson, shot her a sympathetic look and shrugged as if to say, Better luck next time.

  Krista ignored the friendly gesture from the man she’d known nearly half her life, wanting nothing more than to get away from them before she completely lost her cool.

  “Roman, congratulations,” a masculine voice boomed. A wave of dread paralyzed her. As if this morning could get any worse. “Matt, I heard you did a great job. Sorry I couldn’t be there myself, but, well, there are certain conflicts.”

  Krista looked up to see a pair of familiar grayish-green eyes on her. “So why are you here, Dad?”

  “I came down to observe. I wanted to see how everything went.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, and Krista forced herself not to wipe it off.

  She didn’t even need to ask how he felt about the outcome. They may have shared the same eye color and light-blond hair, but that was where the similarities between Krista and her father, John Slater, ended. While Krista had focused her career on using the system to make sure criminals got what they deserved, John Slater cared about one thing: winning.

  And today his partner at the highly regarded law firm of Slater, Swanson, and Miller had scored a major victory against his own daughter.

  Decades of disappointment and disdain roiled in her stomach, and underneath that the sharp ache that never failed to assault her whenever she saw her father. Mark, who knew her history with her father, gave her a sympathetic look and she did her best to keep her turmoil from showing.

  “Mark, good to see you,” her father said, reaching past Krista to shake Mark’s hand. The two exchanged p
leasantries and Krista felt like her head was going to explode. She started to move past them.

  Her father caught her by the arm. “Will I see you at the Maxwell luncheon on Friday?”

  Krista gave her head a curt shake. “Political fund-raisers aren’t exactly my thing.”

  “David has been a friend for years.” Her father’s scolding tone made her feel about five years old.

  Krista refrained from reminding him that just because someone paid your firm hundreds of thousands in legal fees didn’t make them your friend. “I have to work.” Then, because she couldn’t resist: “Not everyone can take off in the middle of the day to spend a thousand dollars for a plate of rubbery chicken.”

  “You could if you wanted to,” her father said quietly. “You know I always have a place for you.”

  He still didn’t get it. After everything that had happened, he couldn’t accept that she would never be like him.

  Mark shifted uncomfortably beside her and murmured something about getting back to the office.

  Before they could go, Karev spoke, his English thickly accented and dripping with arrogance. “I would hire you. You come work for me, you never have to worry again.” The smug grin he exchanged with her father made her jaw lock.

  “Don’t think this is over,” she said, hitting him with an icy glare that had felled better men than him. “You may have slithered your way out today, but I’m going to nail you for what you did to the Salvatores.”

  Karev’s smile pulled into a sneer and he stepped close enough for her to pick up the cloying scent of hair gel. “You can try. But I will give you some advice. Think of today as a bullet you dodged and quit while you’re ahead.”

  * * *

  Six hours later, Krista’s gut was still churning as she entered the coffee shop where she was supposed to meet Jimmy Caparulo.

  Though she’d dismissed Karev’s threat for the macho posturing that it was, what had happened today had left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She’d faced down hundreds of lowlifes in the courtroom, but it wasn’t often that she left the room feeling so contaminated by the people she came in contact with.