“Wait!” Dr. Martin appeared in front of him, eyeing Mia with a sneer. “Not yet.” Nausea rippled through her with the reveal of his chiseled features in the harsh light spilling from a single bulb over their heads. Beads of perspiration lined his forehead and upper lip. His thick dark hair stuck up around his head. Dirt covered his light colored shorts and white polo shirt. He panted heavily, as if he’d just completed a marathon.

  “She’s made us both, you moron!” Sheriff Perkins yelled. “You need to end this once and for all!”

  “It’s not like she’s going anywhere! Besides, I’m not finished with her!”

  “Sick bastard. You must really enjoy claiming your son’s sloppy seconds—just like with that Zens girl.”

  Mia shook her head from side to side, wishing she hadn’t taken her medications that day so her mind could slip into a blissfully unaware state. Where she didn’t have to listen to the brutal truth of what Richard had done to his own son, or that Matt had in fact slept with Nicole at one point. But her thoughts remained crystal clear. Sharp.

  With a deep scowl, the sheriff returned his pistol to its holster. “Do what you need to, and be quick about it. I’ll be outside, makin’ sure that suave prick doesn’t somehow find us.”

  “You’ll get your turn when I’m done,” Dr. Martin promised.

  Vomit ripped up Mia’s throat. She tried to convince herself to stay calm as Sheriff Perkins left the scope of the lightbulb’s reach. The sound of heavy footsteps ascending on wooden stairs came from somewhere in the dark. She had a plan, and wouldn’t let anyone hurt her without putting up a fight. Although she hadn’t been as loyal to the gym as of late, she’d trained for the situation once upon a time. She owed it to Bella and all the women that followed to stop him. Who knew how many other victims he’d claimed?

  Her former father-in-law pulled a length of rope from his pocket, twisting it in his fists as he neared her. She tried to focus on the harsh breaths falling from her nose, telling herself to inhale and exhale with slow and steady ease. She’d never break out of there if she had a panic attack. “You’re a slippery little bitch. You’ve managed to evade my plans for your demise not once but twice now.”

  She frowned and began to briskly shake her head, letting him know she didn’t understand, but then she was struck with a string of paralyzing recollections.

  After her accident, the investigator reported her back tires had possibly been punctured.

  The only time Dr. Martin had ever hugged her was at Gavin’s funeral. He’d told her he was "truly sorry her son had to die.”

  She remembered thinking it was an odd way to express his feelings about his grandson’s death.

  As the pieces all came together, white-hot rage gripped her spine. The deplorable son-of-a-bitch had murdered her boy. She wriggled and screamed like a wild animal, yanking at her restraints with the strength of a dozen men. She’d kill him with her bare hands.

  Chuckling, he rested a hand on top of her head. “Easy now, Mia. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  Thrashing her head, she knocked his hand off of her.

  He backed away, resuming his grip on the rope with a vacant expression. “Yes, I suppose you have a right to be angry. It was rather unfortunate my only grandson became one of my victims. You were supposed to die that night so you couldn’t steal the resort away from my son. I’d vowed never to claim another young woman after Terri Roberts, so I got a little creative in planning your death. You can imagine how dismayed I was when you walked away.” A sick smile twisted his lips. “Now killing your sister…that was an entirely different story. She’d started coming to me as a patient when she was sixteen. She was so young, so beautiful. Innocent. I had to steal her essence.”

  She’d always suspected Bella was dead, but to hear the truth aloud fractured her soul. Angry tears burned down her cheeks as she mourned both the loss of her sister, and her son’s senseless demise. They had died by the hands of the same monster. A man they’d both trusted. Mia had unknowingly chosen to bring the monster into her life, bear his kin.

  He continued to speak in a conversational tone, as if telling a fishing story to a buddy. “I was securing the boathouse door when she came stumbling into view. It was like a gift from God. But it happened all too quickly. It was hasty…messy. I ended it too soon. Then you appeared, and I knew more of your friends would be coming. There wasn’t time to take care of you both without getting caught. I was confident you weren’t in the right state of mind to know what you’d witnessed anyway. But I paid you a visit the next morning to be certain.” Mia glanced up to see his smile had transformed into a grimace. “The mistakes I’d made with your sister haunted me for years. I’d considered taking you for a time, but you weren’t anything like your sister back then. Then the urges grew with time, became hard to deny. When Patricia Foster came to me as a patient several years later, I realized I had another chance to get it right. She looked so much like your sister. Terri Roberts too. All so young, so beautiful.

  “I'd stopped when Nicole came back into my life. She was having problems with Tom, said she was going to leave him. We’d started an affair long before I killed Bella, when they were still in high school. Then Nicole left for college, said we were finished. She was cheap and easy, unlike your sister and the others. They were untouchable.” With a wistful look, he stroked his fingers over the rope. “I suppose I took my misplaced anger for Nicole out on them. If I couldn’t have them, no one could.”

  Through her endless tears, Mia was certain she’d vomit into the gag and choke on her anger. She realized he was becoming excited by the confession, knowing she’d be dead before she could tell another living soul.

  “Nicole returned to me, time and again. I believed we were happy for a while, even though she remained married to Tom. She let me believe I was the father of her children for many years. I began to suspect something was off once the oldest started to resemble Tom, so I ordered copies of their birth records from Mankato. Not a damn one of them were mine! I was so angry! She’d lied—betrayed me for decades!” He released one hand from the rope and raked it through his hair while pacing the cement floor. “When Alyssa Scriber came into the clinic, I knew she’d pay for Nicole’s sins. A couple weeks later, while Tom was out of town on business, Nicole came to get me one night, said we should go for a drive. I thought she wanted me back, but she’d found Alyssa’s underwear in my home office, and accused me of having an affair. I made her pull over, said I’d rather walk back than listen to her ridiculous theories. We fought, and I lost control. I was done dealing with her insipidness.

  “I thought I was in the clear until the night Matt summoned me to the resort. Nicole had disclosed our twenty-year affair to him in a reckless email. She’d sent it to an old account that he hardly ever used, and he’d come across it by accident. He said he’d never loved her, but they’d been intimate enough times that he was concerned for her safety. He accused me of killing her—threatened to tell Tom and the police. I was envious of their affair, even though she was rotting at the bottom of the lake. Then I realized I’d be better off without him around as a reminder of her, and all she’d done to our family. It didn’t hurt that he’d changed his Will, made me executor of Shady Oaks.”

  Mia’s heart squeezed inside her chest with sickening speed until she was sure it would give up the fight. It would’ve been better than whatever her former father-in-law had planned once his conscience had been cleared.

  She’d heard more than her spirit could withstand for a lifetime.

  And she’d finally freed her hands behind her.

  She curled her fingers around the trigger of the pepper spray tucked into the bungee cord used to secure Ben’s sweatpants. She’d snatched it from her purse before Dr. Martin had given her a shot of something that made her sleep. She was relieved when she’d come to and felt it digging into her backbone.

  Pushing her tongue against the gag, she muttered as clearly as she could muster, “Please. I have something to say.”

  With a mournful sigh, the doctor let the rope fall at his feet and grinned. “I suppose it’s only fair to give you a last word after my disclosure.”

  He bent to remove the gag. She sprayed a ‘Z’ across his face before punching his groin with all the energy she could muster. He howled and fell to his knees, face clenched in his hands. She saw the gleam of metal in his back pocket and leaped forward to grab the scalpel. Heart hammering a frantic beat, she went to quick work in removing the gag and the rope around her calves. She pitched the scalpel into the darkest corner of the little room. Panic set in when she realized she had no idea where she was, or how to get away.

  “You bitch!” he roared, swatting a hand in her direction. She hopped away to avoid the strike, and hit her shin on a narrow stairway in the process. She began to climb. Two steps in, his hand clamped over her ankle. With a startled cry, she blindly kicked with her other foot, feeling a satisfying relief when it was met with what felt like his skull and his hand released her. She continued to climb the rest of the stairway until the dark shadow of a trap door overhead came into view. It was closed, and the lever to open it wouldn’t budge inside her grip.

  “No!” she screamed, pounding on the fragile panel of wood with both fists. She didn’t know where she was, or if anyone other than the crooked sheriff was within earshot, but she refused to give up, refused to become the evil doctor’s next victim. “Please! Someone help me!”

  Footsteps pounded on the steps behind her. She was trapped. Her heart throbbed. She found her center and tightened her fists, ready to turn and fight.

  Then the door swung open above her head, and her breath caught with a sharp inhale.

  Ben stood over her, face hard with immeasurable rage.

  He raised his gun.

  “Duck,” Ben commanded.

  Mia’s eyes widened a second before she bent, providing him with a clear shot of the demented doctor. He fired two shots into Richard Martin. He’d been the top marksman in his class at Quantico. If he was still any good, he would’ve missed Richard’s vital organs, and kept him alive long enough to face prosecution and a lifetime behind bars. Satisfaction roared through his veins as the bastard jerked backwards and tumbled down the crude stairway.

  With his finger still on the trigger and muzzle aimed at the unmoving suspect, he took a step down the hidden stairs and used his other hand to hook beneath Mia’s armpit. His eyes flickered to her tear-streaked face before scanning her body. If the son-of-a-bitch hurt her, he’d go down the stairs and put a third bullet directly into his skull. “Are you alright?” he demanded. “Did he hurt you?”

  When she flung her arms around his neck, sobbing, he winced in pain. “He did it, Ben! He killed them all! Bella, Matt, Nicole…all those poor girls! Gavin, too! He took my entire family!”

  Tears thickened inside his throat as he stroked her head and kissed her temple. He didn’t know how he’d ever sleep again, knowing Dr. Martin could’ve claimed her as his last victim. “I’m so sorry, Mia. I wish I’d known it was him sooner. I wish I could’ve saved her…saved them all.”

  She leaned back with a slight frown. “How’d you know where to find me?”

  “The email he sent pretending to be you mentioned the old boathouse. I suspected a bit of truth was woven in among all the bullshit. When I couldn’t find you, I thought of it, remembered it was on the far east end of the property. I figured my intuition had been off until Sheriff Perkins tried to stop me.” He released her, glancing down at the blood on his shoulder. “Luckily he’s both slow and a shitty aim.”

  “He shot you?” she cried, hands fluttering above the gunshot wound. “That son-of-a-bitch! We need to get you to the hospital!”

  Bending, he brushed his lips over hers. “It’s okay, Mia. It’s just a flesh wound. I’ll live. The sheriff, however, will not.” The second he’d gleaned the sheriff’s intent to kill him, Ben had shot him point-blank between his eyes. He wasn’t going to waste time fighting the lazy bastard when it was imperative to find Mia.

  With the shrill wail of multiple sirens filling the air, he puffed a breath of relief. When Eva had called for backup that time, someone must’ve actually answered. Lowering the gun, he gripped the back of Mia’s neck with his wounded arm. Looking into her wild eyes, he feared the doctor had told her more than she’d needed to hear. “It’s over, Mia. You’re safe.” He closed his eyes and held her tighter than he’d ever held anyone in his life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  With a grand view of the frozen lake framed by a sophisticated blend of black window frames and soft white curtains, Ben embraced his sleeping wife, dropping occasional kisses into her thick hair. In the sixteen months since Richard Martin’s arrest, the discovery of the bodies of Patricia Foster and Terri Roberts both buried on his property, and the month-long trial, there were times Ben had become overwhelmed by blinding fear, and wouldn’t let Mia out of his sight. He knew the bastard who’d murdered Matt and the women of Lake Shetek was held in a secure prison two hundred miles away, and could no longer hurt her. It was something else that often kept him awake at night.

  A curt knock fell against their bedroom door. “Anyone in there alive?” Gwen called out. “Better cover up. I don’t want to witness any naked bits.”

  Chuckling, Ben tugged the comforter over Mia’s bare breasts and tucked it beneath her armpits. He’d appreciated the kid’s acceptance of the situation from the first day Mia had asked him to leave D.C. and he’d taken an extended leave of absence to move into their family’s newly renovated home with them. He was handling cold cases from home until he was scheduled to report to his new position in four months with the bureau in Minneapolis. Until then, he planned to enjoy every minute with his new family.

  “You’re good,” he called out softly.

  The door swung open and Gwen breezed inside, animated green eyes widening on her mother. “She’s still asleep? Dude. It’s, like, almost noon.”

  “She’s exhausted these days,” Ben replied, shrugging. He eyed Gwen’s motorcycle jacket paired with ripped jeans, skater shoes, and a No Doubt t-shirt. “Hot date?”

  “Damn it,” Gwen huffed, rolling her eyes in mock annoyance. “Why did my mom have to marry a federal agent? Nothing gets past you.”

  A small bolt of fear struck his gut. She’d steered clear of Darrin Tribeau after Dr. Martin’s arrest, and as far as he knew, she hadn’t dated anyone else since. Their family therapist had been riding her hard about keeping an honest line of communication between both her mom and Ben since he’d become her stepdad. “Do I know this guy?”

  She drew her plush bottom lip between her teeth. “Umm…”

  “If you’re going somewhere with a guy, I need a name.”

  “So you can use your connections to dig up his deepest, darkest secrets?” She gave a firm shake of her head, making her short blonde curls dance around her face. “No. No way.”

  “Name, Gwen,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

  Twisting her hands together, she shifted her weight. “It’s…uh…Preston. Hassing.”

  He gaped back at her. “As in Liz and Shaun’s son, Preston?”

  “Yeah.” Her lips parted with a grimace. “Is that okay?”

  Liz and Shaun’s oldest son had recently graduated from Coast Guard boot camp, and was stationed in Duluth—the same city where Gwen was enrolled at the university for the upcoming fall semester. Preston was driven and noble. Loved his mother, and showed his elders respect. Plus he would have gone through Homeland Security clearance before entering boot camp, so there was nothing unsavory for him to hide. Ben couldn’t imagine anyone better suited for his stepdaughter. “Hell yeah, that’s okay. Where’re you two kids going?”

  “Skating in front of Key Largo. Their winter games start this weekend.”

  “How long is his leave?”

  “For a week, I guess.”

  “If he doesn’t want to drive all the way back to his folks’ house tonight, he can crash here.” Realizing Preston was probably as smitten with Gwen as Ben had been with Mia, he blurted, “On the Murphy bed. In my office.”

  “Really?” Her lips spread with a youthful, toothy smile. The kind she’d only started giving him after a major breakthrough with her therapist. The poor girl had struggled with the stark reality of her grandfather’s actions, and no one could blame her. “You don’t think mom would mind?”

  “Are you serious? She loves that kid.”

  She let out a breathy sigh. “Don’t make a big deal out of it if he comes by later, okay? We’re just trying it out…seeing how it feels. It might be weird since we’ve been friends forever.”

  “Or it might feel exactly right,” he told her among a cheesy wink and a grin.

  “God, you’re a disgusting romantic.” She rolled her eyes again. “You know, you two should actually get out of the house today. Go for a walk…drive into town…something. It wouldn’t hurt your wife to get a little exercise outside of this room.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  When she turned back for the door, he called her name.

  “What?” she snapped over her shoulder.

  “Love you, kid. Have fun.”

  Her lips spread with a beautiful, dazzling smile. “Love you too…weirdo.”

  Ben’s chest burned with heightened emotion. It’d taken him a lifetime to come home to a family he loved, and would die to protect. He only wished he’d returned earlier, so he could’ve both protected and known Gavin.

  When the door gently clicked shut behind Gwen, Mia hummed and stretched her limbs at his side. The sweet sound called to his darkest desires. “You handled that extremely well, Special Agent.”

  He cupped her breast beneath the blanket, teasing the nipple with his thumb. “I knew you were only pretending to sleep.”

  On a gasp, her eyelids opened, revealing chocolatey brown eyes swirling with humor. “You did not.”

  “Prove it.”

  She wound her delicate fingers around him, giggling when he hardened to attention. “See, that’s fresh. And you’re always hard when I’m awake.”