What else would a female undertaker wear?

  Billy waved to the kids as they hurried off to their next stop. He strode back to where Rowan sat, and her breath caught. She looked away. She had to get this new fierce, needy streak under control.

  He sat next to her for a moment without saying anything, but she understood that he had something on his mind. He’d been avoiding saying whatever it was for a couple of hours now.

  “It was a long day,” she said, as much to herself as to him.

  “Sure was.” He leaned back, propped his arm across the back of the bench.

  In the darkness outside that shack where she was supposed to have died, Rowan had stopped in the middle of that dirt road and waited for Billy and the others to reach her. He’d parked, his headlights pinning her in place. He jumped out of his truck and rushed to her. The fear on his face and the worry in his voice as he’d asked her a dozen questions had ripped at her heart.

  Evidence techs had come. Burt and his assistant had arrived. Dressler had appeared in the middle of her recounting of events. He’d added his questions. She’d thought for sure he and Billy were going to tear into each other. She’d watched Wanda’s and Sue Ellen’s bodies being bagged and taken away.

  Rowan couldn’t hope to analyze the two, on what little she knew. What she understood with complete certainty was that they had been desperate to be free. Free of the men who controlled their lives. Free and away from here.

  “I thought I lost you.”

  Billy’s voice pulled her back to the here and now. She closed her eyes and searched for the strength to meet his gaze. When she did, she could hardly bear the hurt she saw there.

  “But you didn’t. You found me.”

  He stared into his mug for a second or two. “I think I told you this already but having Sue Ellen call Addington was ingenious. Dressler was able to track your location and get us there way faster than we could have on our own.”

  “Nothing ingenious about it. Having her make that call was the only strategy available to me,” Rowan admitted. “It was an act of desperation.”

  “Even Dressler was impressed.”

  The memory of how Billy had checked every place where he saw blood on her squeezed her heart all over again. “I’m sorry about your friend Culver.”

  “You believe the guy on the motorcycle killed him?”

  Rowan wished she knew. “He was certainly carrying the right knife for the job. A big hunting knife.”

  “Did you say he had a hunting knife?”

  Rowan nodded. “Yes. Didn’t I say that when I gave my statement?” She’d told them everything back at that shack. Hadn’t she?

  “Yeah, yeah, you did. But I didn’t think to ask whether or not the knife had a serrated edge. Did you see it? I’m sure it happened so fast you might not have noticed.”

  Rowan thought back to the moment when he drew the knife. She closed her eyes and replayed his hand wrapping around the handle, the knife slipping from its sheath. The glint of the lantern light on the blade. The rough, uneven edge...

  “Yes. It was definitely serrated.”

  “Hang on.” Billy pulled out his cell and made a call. “Hey, Burt, I know it’s Halloween and all, but can you check something for me?”

  As the two men talked, Rowan thought back to the victims whose throats had been slashed by Julian. None had been done with a serrated blade. Of course, if the bearded bald man was the one who had killed Culver, Burt should be able to determine that a serrated blade was used.

  Clearing up one more homicide would be useful, though it still wouldn’t tell them who had sent the bearded bald man. It certainly wasn’t her mother.

  The idea was ludicrous.

  “Thanks, Burt.”

  Billy ended the call, tucked his phone back into the pocket of his duster. “The blade used to cut Culver’s throat was not serrated.”

  Rowan rubbed her forehead. “So the man who cut me loose didn’t kill him.”

  “Guess not. It’s possible his knife had both a serrated and a smooth side.”

  “He cut me loose. Let me go. Why would he have killed Culver, anyway?” The scenario wasn’t logical, but killers were often irrational.

  “Dressler and I had the same discussion. If he came to save you—which would beg the question, how did he know where you were unless he followed you from the funeral home?”

  “And if he did,” Rowan added, “what took him so long to act?”

  “If he didn’t follow you, how did he get his information before I did?”

  His eyes said the same thing she was thinking. A leak in the FBI.

  “Damn.”

  Rowan agreed wholeheartedly with that summation.

  “I guess we should talk to Dressler about this.”

  “We should,” she confirmed.

  Another minute of quiet passed between them. The distant laughter and squeals of children whispered in the darkness. Freud cocked his head in first one direction and then the other, trying to determine the source of the sounds. Rowan rubbed his head to reassure him.

  “I can’t lose you, Ro.” Billy turned to her. “We can’t avoid having this conversation forever. We have to talk about us soon.”

  She set her mug on the ground and turned to him, her knees pressing into his. “Billy, you are an amazing man. You are incredible at your work, a great son and everyone loves you.” She dared to reach up and touch his jaw, allowing her hand to linger there. “I cannot imagine my life without you.”

  “But...” he prompted.

  She dropped her hand away. Clasped it in her other one. “You deserve so much better than I can hope to be.”

  He took her hand in his. “What the hell does that mean, Ro?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know how to be in that kind of relationship. It’s never worked for me and I don’t want anything to ruin what we have.” She took a breath and said the rest, “And I can’t risk Julian trying to use you to get to me. If he hurt you—”

  “Addington doesn’t worry me.” His long fingers curled around hers. “I’m willing to take my chances on both counts.”

  Rowan was well aware of how he felt and it scared her to death. “Let’s agree to take this slow and see what happens.”

  He nodded. “I can live with that.”

  He frowned, then reached into his jacket pocket and snagged his phone. He checked the screen and his frown deepened. “Dressler. It’s kind of creepy that he would call when we were just talking about him.”

  Rowan made a face. “Definitely creepy.”

  He shrugged then answered.

  Another huddle of kids skipped across the lot toward them. Rowan took the bucket and met them a few feet away. The children ranged in age from toddlers to preteens. The mothers held toddlers’ hands and urged them to recite the expected greeting of “trick or treat.” The older kids shouted the words, then giggled and whispered among themselves.

  “You’re so cute,” Rowan said as she dropped candy into a little pumpkin’s treat bag.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if she would ever have children of her own. Her biological clock was quickly winding down. She glanced back at Billy and her heart squeezed. He would be a good father. He should have kids. She wasn’t so sure if she was mother material. She’d had no role model growing up.

  Thank-yous and squeals twittered through the kids as she finished dropping goodies into the treat bags. She watched them hurry away before turning back to Billy.

  He was right behind her. She jumped. “I didn’t hear you walk up.”

  The worry on his face told her the news from Dressler was not good. “What did he say?”

  “The forensic lab that’s working on all those bones and the faces inside the skin binders sent him a preliminary report.”

  Which meant they had discovered some matches to victims in their databases. “That’s good news, right?”

  Billy’s troubled expression and tone didn’t correspond with the concept of good news.

  “They’ve found some matches in databases but so far none are people who’ve been listed as missing.”

  “How is that possible? That would mean the matches aren’t to victims. Why would they be in a database if they’re not victims?”

  “So far the bones and skin masks appear to belong to inactive serial killers.”

  Rowan absorbed the ramifications of the words. They shook her to the very core of her being, but disbelief refused to allow the meaning to fully penetrate. “You’re saying that the victims of Sanchez—or Santos, whatever his real name is—are documented serial killers?”

  Billy nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  This news changed everything. Rowan just wasn’t certain if the change was for the good or what it meant about her mother...or her father.

  How would she ever sort through all this and find some semblance of the truth? Each step forward was immediately followed by two steps back. Every new answer was twisted into one or more new questions. No sooner had she solved the puzzle of who one character in this bizarre story was than another one, or three, appeared.

  All of it, every single twisted move, led back to Julian.

  Rowan pushed away the disturbing realizations and questions. What she did know was that she couldn’t keep pretending her own life didn’t matter just because she couldn’t figure out the past.

  She refused to allow Julian Addington to control her any longer.

  This was her life and she intended to live it from this moment forward.

  She reached out, took Billy’s hand in hers. She searched his eyes, saw the promise and the reassurance there. She trusted him. She needed him. She wanted him.

  “Stay with me tonight.”

  He reached up, cupped her cheek in his hand. “You sure about that?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

  And she was. She was absolutely certain for the first time in her life.

  * * *

  When Allison James got married, she didn’t know the charismatic man was the son of an illegal drug and weapons kingpin. After her husband’s murder, she escapes and is placed in witness protection. Now US Marshal Jaxson Stevens, a man from her past, is the only person standing between her and certain death...

  Read on for a sneak preview of Witness Protection Widow by USA TODAY bestselling author Debra Webb.

  Witness Protection Widow

  by Debra Webb

  One

  Four Days until Trial

  Sunday, February 2

  Winchester, Tennessee

  It was colder now.

  The meteorologist had warned that it might snow tomorrow. The temperature was already dropping. She didn’t mind. She had no appointments, no deadlines and no place to be—except here.

  Four days.

  Four more days until the day.

  If she lived that long.

  She stopped and surveyed the thick woods around her, making a full three-sixty turn. Nothing but trees and this one trail for as far as the eye could see. The fading sun trickled through the bare limbs. This place had taken her through the last of summer and then fall, and now winter was nearing an end. In all that time she had seen only one other living human. It was best, they said. For her protection, they insisted.

  It was true. But she had never felt more alone in her life.

  Bob nudged her. She pushed aside the troubling thoughts and looked down at her black Labrador. “I know, boy. I should get moving. It’s cold out here.”

  Allowing herself to get caught out in the woods in the dark—no matter that she knew the way back to the cabin by heart—was a bad idea. She started forward once more. Her hiking boots crunched the rocks and the few frozen leaves scattered across the trail. Bob trotted beside her, his tail wagging happily. She’d never had a dog before coming to this place. Her mother’s allergies had never allowed for pets. Later, when she was out on her own, the apartment building hadn’t permitted pets.

  Even after she married and moved into one of Atlanta’s megamansions, she couldn’t have a dog. Her husband had hated dogs, cats, any sort of pet. How had she not recognized the evil in him then? Anyone who hated animals so much couldn’t be good.

  She hugged herself, rubbed her arms. Thinking of him, even in such simple terms, unsettled her. Soon she hoped she would be able to put that part of her life behind her and never look back again.

  Never, ever.

  “Not soon enough,” she muttered.

  Most widows grieved the loss of their spouses. She did not. No matter the circumstances, she had never wished him dead, though she had wished many, many times that she had never met him.

  But she had met him, and there was no taking back the past five years. At first, she had believed the illusion he presented to her. Harrison had been older, very handsome and extremely charming. She had been born in small-town Georgia on a farm to parents who taught her that fairy tales and dreams weren’t real. There was only reality and the painful lessons that came from hard work and bad luck. Suddenly, at nearly twenty-six, she was convinced her parents had been wrong. Harrison swooped into her life like Prince Charming poised to rescue a damsel in distress.

  Except she hadn’t been in distress really. But she had been hopeful. Desperately hopeful that good things would one day come. Perhaps that was why she didn’t see through him for so long. He’d filled her life with trips to places she’d only dreamed of visiting, like Paris and London. He’d lavished her with gifts. Exquisite clothing, endless jewels. Even when she tried to tell him it was too much, more came.

  He gave her anything she wanted...except children. He had been married once before and had two college-aged children. He had no desire to go down that path again. She had been devastated at first. But she had been in love, so she learned to live within those disappointing parameters. Soon after this revelation she discovered a way to satisfy her mothering needs. She volunteered at Atlanta’s rescue mission for at-risk kids. Several months after she began helping out part-time, she was faced with her first unpleasant truth about her husband. To her dismay, there were those who believed he and his family were very bad people.

  The shock and horror on the other woman’s face when she’d asked, “You’re married to Harrison Armone?”

  Alice—of course, that wasn’t her name then—had smiled, a bit confused, and said, “I am.”

  The woman had never spoken to her again. In fact, she had done all within her power to avoid her. At least twice she had seen her whisper something to another volunteer, who subsequently avoided her, as well. Arriving at the center on her scheduled volunteer days soon became something she dreaded rather than to which she looked forward. From that moment she understood there was something wrong with who she was—the wife of Harrison Armone.

  If only she had realized then the level of evil the Armone family represented. Perhaps she would have escaped before the real nightmare that came later. Too bad she hadn’t been smart enough to escape before it was too late.

  She stared up at the sky, visible only by virtue of the fact that the trees remained bare for the winter. She closed her eyes and tried to force away the images that always followed on the heels of memories even remotely related to him. That first year and a half had been so blissful. So perfect. For the most part she had been kept away from the rest of the family. Their estate had been well away from his father’s. Her husband went to work each day at a beautiful, upscale building on the most distinguished street in the city. Her life was protected from all things bad and painful.

  Until her co-volunteer had asked her that question.

  The worry had grown and swelled inside her like a tidal wave rushing to shore to destroy all in its path. But the trouble didn’t begin until a few weeks later. Until she could no longer bear the building pressure inside her.

  Her first true mistake was when she had asked him—point-blank—if there was anything he had failed to disclose before they married.

  The question had obviously startled him. He wanted to know where she had gotten such a ridiculous idea. His voice had been calm and kind, as always, tinged with only the tiniest bit of concern. But something about the look in his eyes when he asked the question terrified her. She hadn’t wanted to tell him. He had been far too strangely calm and yet wild-eyed. Fear that he would track down her fellow volunteers and give them a hard time had horrified her. After much prodding and far too much pretending how devastated he was, he had let it go. But she had known that deep down something had changed.

  Whether it was the idea that the bond of trust had been broken, or that she had finally just woken up, she could not look at him the same way again.

  The worst part was that he noticed immediately. He realized that thin veil of make-believe had been torn. Every word she uttered, every move she made was suddenly under intense scrutiny. He became suspicious to the point of paranoia. Every day was another in-depth examination of what she had done that day, to whom she had spoken. Then he allowed his true character to show. One by one those ugly family secrets were revealed by his actions. Late-night business meetings that were once handled at his father’s house were suddenly held in their home.

  One night after a particularly long meeting with lots of drinking involved, he confessed that he had wanted to keep the fantasy of their “normal” life and she had taken it from him.

  From that moment forward, she became his prisoner. He punished her in unspeakable ways for taking away his fairy tale.