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  Who could sell her out, knowing it would result in her death.

  “I don’t know whom I hate more right now,” Krista said. “You for what you did, or me for actually believing in you all those years.”

  His skin paled to gray and his hands fisted on the table. “I never meant for any of it to go so far. I—” He shook his head. “I’m not going to offer explanations or try to excuse what happened. But you should know I’ve always cared about you, Krista. From the day you started working with me, I wanted my daughters to grow up to be just like you. God knows I’ve failed them.”

  Krista squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears and kept her voice steady. “You can redeem yourself by doing whatever you can to help clean up the mess Maxwell left behind.”

  His voice, when he spoke, was the calm, authoritative tone she was used to hearing in the courtroom. “I’ve kept detailed notes on the cases where Maxwell required my assistance. They’ll be useful.”

  “Thanks,” Krista said after he told her where to find them. “The fact that you’re cooperating will help.”

  Mark let out a mirthless laugh. “Not enough.”

  Krista stood from her chair. “Good-bye, Mark.” It felt like a death, letting go of him and everything he’d been to her over the years. Accepting that the man she knew didn’t exist anymore, maybe never had.

  She left the interrogation room, her eyes blurry with tears as she closed the door behind her.

  “Hey, now, I’ve got you,” said a familiar, deep voice. She turned blindly into his chest, gripping him around the waist as she sobbed. Sean didn’t say anything, just stroked her back and held her up.

  Finally she calmed down enough to look up and notice her father hovering behind Sean, looking uncomfortable at the sight of his no-nonsense daughter falling apart. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, Krista,” he said, leaning over to give her a kiss on the cheek and an awkward pat on the back. “We can do this later if you’re not feeling up to it now.”

  The night Sean had rescued her, Krista had woken up in the hospital to find her father at her bedside, and since then he’d checked in on her at least twice a day and had become Sean and Krista’s most vocal advocate in the media and to anyone else who would listen.

  Though his representation of both Maxwell and Karev was widely known, John Slater claimed he had no idea the kinds of atrocities his clients were covering up. Odd as it seemed, Krista’s gut told her that he was telling the truth. In a complete one-eighty from his past behavior he’d publicly fired himself as Margaret Grayson-Maxwell’s attorney and announced he would be representing Krista and Sean in any lingering legal issues they might face in the fallout of Maxwell’s death.

  Today, he was supposed to take them to lunch to go through the details of getting Sean’s arrest warrant for allegedly shooting the sheriff’s deputy dismissed.

  Krista looked to Sean. His face was lined with concern, and he looked so good, so strong, so beautiful standing there, it gave her the strength to push through anything, even the loss of someone she’d so dearly loved. She blew her nose and straightened up and slipped her hand into Sean’s. “No, I’m fine. Let’s do this. The sooner we clear all this up, the sooner I can get on with my life.”

  Sean cocked a dark eyebrow at her. “Our life,” she quickly amended.

  * * *

  One Month Later

  Thunk. Crack. Thunk. Crack. Sean lost himself in the steady rhythm of the falling ax. He breathed steadily, in and out, savoring the clean mountain air as the early-summer sun warmed the bare skin of his chest and back.

  He heard the crunch of feet on gravel before a voice called, “Mail call.”

  Krista Goddamn Slater.

  Sean couldn’t have kept the goofy grin off his face if his life depended on it. He turned, propping the ax carefully against the splitting stump as he did. He reached for her with one hand and for his shirt with the other. “You’re early.”

  “I was going to work a full day, but it was so insane I had to get out of there.” Since the fallout, Krista had been working nonstop, the stress compounded by all the media attention the Maxwell case—not to mention Sean and Krista’s unexpected romance—was receiving.

  Sean hated all of it, the feeling of being cooped up in the house with nowhere to go, the feeling of being watched every time he did go out. The only thing that made it worth it was the time he spent with Krista, but it was taking its toll on both of them.

  Luckily, she could already read him like a book and knew he was about to hit the wall without him saying anything.

  They’d planned to come up to the cabin together for the weekend, their first trip up here together since everything had happened.

  But a few days before, when Krista had come home from the office, she’d taken one look at Sean and said, “You need to just go now. I’ll drive up Friday after work.” He’d left her with a kiss half an hour later, grateful for her understanding.

  It had been a relief to get up here, to be out in the open and not worry about reporters hounding him, but goddamn he missed her.

  He’d always thought the idea was corny, but he was pretty sure his heart actually did skip a beat every time he saw her, especially when it had been more than a few hours.

  With her dark hair dyed back to its natural color, she looked once again like the icy blonde, remote, unattainable. Until he looked a little closer and saw the hot glow in her gray-green eyes as she eyed him hungrily, the heat of her gaze like a physical touch running up and down his torso. His own blood stirred, thick and heavy in his groin.

  “No need to put that back on,” she said, indicating the shirt in his hand.

  He dropped the shirt, grinning even harder as he closed the distance between them. He pulled her close and vaguely heard the whisper of paper hitting the ground as his mail slipped through her fingers. But it didn’t matter because she was in his arms, lifting her mouth to his, as hungry for him as he was for her.

  “I missed you,” she said, her voice going all breathy the way he loved as she sucked his tongue into her mouth and ran her hands up the sweat-slicked skin of his back.

  “I missed you too,” he groaned. His body roared to life at the first brush of her hands, desperate to touch her, taste her, get as deep inside of her as he could get. It felt like it had been weeks, not just days, since he’d been with her.

  He lifted her off the ground, cradling her butt as she wrapped those long, lean legs around him. His mouth never left hers as he carried her into the cabin, through the front room, and back to the bedroom. Within seconds, they were naked and he laid her out on the bed, groaning at the first contact of skin on skin.

  Jesus, she was gorgeous, so much better than the heated memories that kept him up at night. Creamy skin, hard nipples pointing to the sky, begging to be touched. He sucked her into his mouth and slipped a hand between her pale thighs. She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to hers as his fingers thrust deep inside, stroking and teasing until she was rocking against him, every nerve pulled tight as she got closer to the edge.

  He wanted to feel her come around him the first time, needed to feel the tight pull of her muscles, rippling and clenching around him like she was trying to pull him deeper inside. He let out a frustrated breath as he fumbled in the bedside drawer for one of the dozens of condoms he’d stashed there.

  And then, Jesus, he was inside her, buried all the way in one slick thrust. It felt so good, the pleasure radiating out from his cock, coursing out to every nerve ending. Krista arched against him with a harsh cry and wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer, urging him deeper, harder, as she sucked at his lips and tongue.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and struggled not to come, but it felt too good, Krista’s wet heat squeezing him with every stroke, the sting of her nails as they dug into the flexing muscles of his ass. And the way she was chanting his name in that high, breathless voice that never failed to send him soaring.

  One
last thrust and he couldn’t hold back, but it didn’t matter because Krista was right there with him, grinding her hips against his as she pulsed and shuddered, her muscles squeezing around him, wringing him dry as he came so hard stars floated in front of his vision.

  He held himself there, deep inside her as he propped himself up on his elbows and just stared at her. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks rosy pink, her lips swollen and parted in a soft smile of pure satisfaction. “I love you,” she murmured.

  Three words that never failed to hit him like a kick to the chest. “I love you too,” he said, his voice suspiciously thick as he stared down at her.

  They’d gone through hell to get here, been through shit two people could never expect to get past to be together. But here they were. To Sean, who’d once given up all hope on any kind of life, it felt like he’d been granted a miracle. Krista in his bed, loving him, needing him, her skin against his, a smile on her face that he’d put there. Completely his, body and soul.

  All Talia Vega wants is

  a quiet, normal life.

  But a brutal killer from her past has come back to haunt her—and Jack Brooks, the man she swore she’d never let herself depend on again, is the only man she can trust…

  Run from Fear

  Available in March 2012

  Please turn this page for a preview.

  Someone was watching her. Talia could feel it. The tingling her in shoulders, her scalp, the way the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She pasted a smile on her face and kept her hand from shaking as she handed a friendly blonde in her forties another glass of chardonnay across the bar.

  The blonde sidled aside and the feeling grew stronger. Her gaze scanned the bar of Suzette’s. It was Sunday evening, never the busiest night of the week, especially not when March Madness drove a lot of the happy-hour crowd to the sports bar around the corner. But the bar was about two-thirds full, girlfriends catching a quick drink as they braced for a busy week ahead, couples having drinks and a light dinner, a few older students from the nearby university who craved something a little more sophisticated than the college bars.

  No one stuck out as someone who should give her this feeling again. That feeling that had faded steadily over the past two years, to the point where she could imagine the day it would disappear entirely. But now it was back, that eerie sensation that had dogged her every day she’d been under David Maxwell’s thumb, long years of always having eyes on her, knowing that nothing she did went unwatched, unnoticed.

  Then she saw him.

  And almost laughed out loud at her foolishness. Of course she was being looked at. As the only bartender working tonight in the decently crowded restaurant, people would be looking at her all evening, straining to make eye contact and get her attention.

  The muscles in her face relaxed into a friendly smile as she greeted a man in his early fifties, salt-and-pepper hair swept back from his lined forehead. He was a regular enough customer for Talia to remember the face if not the name.

  She poured him a vodka martini and made small talk, mentally reminding herself that just because there had been a fresh surge in the last couple weeks of news stories mentioning her name, that didn’t mean she needed to let fear and paranoia once again rule her existence.

  She had a new life now. She wasn’t that scared victim anymore, living underground in a series of safe houses in northern California, always looking over her shoulder as she frantically tried to keep herself and her teenage sister safe from people who wanted nothing more than to see them suffer.

  She was free, had been for two years, and she’d done pretty well for herself and Rosie if she did say so herself. All they’d needed was a fresh start.

  Even after they’d been able to come out of hiding, Talia had no desire to return to the life they’d fled in Seattle, so she’d convinced Rosario to get her GED a year early so they could spend some time traveling. Six months ago, Talia and Rosario had moved back to Palo Alto, so Rosario could begin her freshman year at nearby Stanford.

  Through a friend of a friend—though to be fair, to call Jack Brooks a friend was both too strong and too weak a word to describe what he was to her—she’d secured a job as the beverage manager and bartender at Suzette’s. It didn’t exactly open the floodgates on her cash flow, but combined with the proceeds of the sale of her house in Seattle it provided a decent enough living while she paid for Rosario to go to school and saved what she could for her own education somewhere down the road.

  All in all, it was a perfectly nice life, much nicer than she could have imagined or asked for two short years ago. Much too nice a life for her to let it be affected by a few news stories that dredged up a sordid past Talia wanted nothing more than to leave behind.

  Still, it was hard to entirely shake off the prickles, and against her will, her eyes did another quick scan of the bar area. They snagged on a shadowy figure in the corner and for a split second the scars crisscrossing her back tingled as though electrified.

  She shook it off. It was nothing. It was no one, just a lone male whose features she couldn’t quite make out in the shadows, but whom she imagined to be young, in his early to mid-twenties. She could see the outline of a wool knit cap and guessed he was a grad student.

  There was nothing about him to cause the spike in adrenaline that accompanied the paranoia that had snaked its dark tendrils around her in the past month. Ever since Margaret Grayson-Maxwell had been released from prison in a wave of press that rehashed all of the sordid details of Margaret’s involvement in her late husband David Maxwell’s less than legitimate businesses of trafficking in people, drugs, weapons—whatever earned him the biggest profits, along with Talia’s own role as the disgruntled mistress who helped to take him and his empire down.

  Talia could have all the fresh starts she wanted, but she couldn’t prevent her picture from appearing front and center on every newspaper in Seattle, as she was alternately portrayed as both the mercenary gold digger who looked the other way while her wealthy keeper used his monster of a nephew to carry out the murders of high-class prostitutes, and as the victim who had barely escaped with her life when that same nephew, Nate Brewster, known better under his infamous moniker the Seattle Slasher, had set his sights on Talia.

  But what was big news in Seattle was nothing in a bustling Palo Alto, she reminded herself. Sure, the revelation of Nate as the Seattle Slasher had been a national story two years ago when it resulted in the release of Sean Flynn from death row. A few months later, it was revealed that David Maxwell, one of Seattle’s most prominent citizens, a man who had married into a family often referred to as Washington state’s version of the Kennedys, had not only been the shadowy force behind the Seattle Slasher but had also run a criminal organization that netted millions of dollars and was linked to the Russian Mafia.

  At that point, there had been magazine articles, front-page stories, even features on news programs like 48 Hours and Dateline. Though Talia had refused to be interviewed, her involvement with David Maxwell meant her name was dragged through the mud with his, and for about a week or so there, she was definitely on the country’s radar.

  But news moved fast, especially in the Internet age. Though Seattle-ites had clearly reveled in the opportunity to rehash one of the few lurid scandals to hit their comparatively white-washed city, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Margaret Grayson-Maxwell’s arrest and the nefarious activities of her dead husband were lost in the ether.

  No reason for anyone to associate Talia’s name with the ugly events of her past. Not unless someone was deliberately seeking, in which case nearly every lurid detail was on the Internet for anyone to find.

  But so far no one seemed inclined to go digging, or to bring it up if they had. She shook off her unease. No matter what was going on in Seattle with Margaret Grayson-Maxwell or anyone else involved in the scandal, Talia had moved on. She was safe now.

  She moved to the other end of the bar to clear away two wine g
lasses and a picked-over plate of calamari.

  “Talia!”

  A smile stretched over her face at the sound of the familiar voice. “Rosie, you’re early,” she said, turning at the sound of her younger sister’s voice. She wasn’t hard to spot in a crowd. At five-foot-nine, Rosario Vega was a good four inches taller than Talia, easy to spot in the mostly seated crowd.

  But even without the height, Rosie would have stood out. At eighteen, she was finally growing into the huge brown eyes, long nose, and full mouth that had given her a mismatched look throughout her childhood. Now the bold features gave her a beauty that was as arresting as it was unique.

  Something that didn’t go unnoticed by a single straight man in the bar.

  Except, Talia noted as she felt her smile fade, by maybe the boy-man to Talia’s left, looking bored as he stood next to Rosario, hands stuffed in the pockets of his scruffy black hoodie. “Oh, and I see you brought Kevin,” Talia said, trying to keep the acid from her tone, but failing if Rosario’s warning look was anything to go by.

  “Still cool if we have dinner here?” Rosario said as she plopped onto a bar stool. She motioned for Kevin to follow, who joined her with an eye roll.

  It was on the tip of Talia’s tongue to remind Rosie that the invitation to dinner on Talia’s tab did not include shiftless twenty-three-year-old sixth-year seniors who should be out working for a living instead of sucking off their parents’ seemingly limitless college fund while preying on hapless, wide-eyed freshmen.

  Instead, she bit out a sharp “Sure.” Sure, she’d forgo her share of tips tonight to pay for the extra forty or so dollars of food and drink Kevin would undoubtedly suck up. Sure, she’d do her best to ignore the way Rosario would tune out everyone, focus all of her attention on Kevin, bouncing around him like a puppy, while he mumbled monosyllabic replies through a mouth stuffed with food.