Double Take

“What kind of ‘protection’ did you really provide?

“We lived in fear for my father‘s life every day, of his being found and killed. And for what? Because he testified in a federal trial to get you a conviction.”

“Not my conviction,” he said. “The government’s. Look,” he said. “I could have sent another agent here. Instead, I came to see you because I thought familiarity—”

“Breeds contempt?” Cameron walked toward the door. “Thank you for coming, Deputy Marshal Ransom. If there’s nothing else—”

“I’m not finished. Sit down,” he said.

Cameron knew she was close to losing the last of her control. She didn’t want Ransom to know how shaken she’d felt tonight. Didn’t want to hear what else he’d come to say…

“I think you’re in danger,” Ransom said, holding her gaze. “I think you’re next.”

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

We have another month of spine-tingling romantic thrillers lined up for you—starting with the much anticipated second book in Joanna Wayne’s tantalizing miniseries duo, HIDDEN PASSIONS: FULL MOON MADNESS. In Just Before Dawn, a reclusive mountain man vows to get to the bottom of a single mother’s terrifying nightmares before darkness closes in.

Award-winning author Leigh Riker makes an exciting debut in the Harlequin Intrigue line this May with Double Take. Next, pulses race out of control in Mask of a Hunter by Sylvie Kurtz—the second installment in THE SEEKERS—when a tough operative’s cover story as doting lover to a pretty librarian threatens to blow up.

Be there from the beginning of our brand-new in-line continuity, SHOTGUN SALLYS! In this exciting trilogy, three young women friends uncover a scandal in the town of Mustang Valley, Texas, that puts their lives—and the lives of the men they love—on the line. Don’t miss Out for Justice by Susan Kearney.

To wrap up a month of can’t-miss romantic suspense, Doreen Roberts debuts in the Harlequin Intrigue line with Official Duty, the next title in our COWBOY COPS thematic promotion. It’s a double-murder investigation that forces a woman out of hiding to face her perilous past…and her pent-up feelings for the sexy sheriff who still has her heart in custody. Last but certainly not least, Emergency Contact by Susan Peterson—part of our DEAD BOLT promotion—is an edgy psychological thriller about a traumatized amnesiac who may have been brainwashed to do the unthinkable….

Enjoy all our selections this month!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor,

Harlequin Intrigue

Double Take

Leigh Riker

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Like many readers and writers, Leigh Riker grew up with her nose in a book—still the best activity, in her opinion, on a hot summer afternoon or a cold winter night. To this day, she can’t imagine a better combination than suspense and romance.

The award-winning author of ten previous novels, she confesses she doesn’t like the sight of blood yet is a real fan of TV’s many forensics shows—a vicarious “walk on the wild side,” not to mention great research for her own novels. And when romance heats up the mix? It doesn’t get any better than that.

Born in Ohio, this former creative-writing instructor has lived in various parts of the U.S. She is now, with her husband, at home on a mountain in Tennessee with an inspiring view from her office of three states. She loves to hear from readers! Write to Leigh at P.O. Box 250, Soddy Daisy, TN 37384, or visit her Web site www.eclectics.com/authorsgalore/leighriker.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Cameron McKenzie—After growing up in Witness Protection, this celebrity chef craves a normal life. When her reluctant protector, J. C. Ransom, shows up, Cameron doesn’t want to believe she holds the key to her father’s unsolved case—or that she is now the target of a killer.

J. C. Ransom—The U.S. Marshal responsible for a federal witness—Cameron’s father—thinks he failed to do his job. Now James McKenzie is dead and his killer is on the loose. Cameron may be next…

James McKenzie—His testimony sent a vicious crime boss to jail. Was Cameron’s beloved father the victim of revenge?

Kyle McKenzie—Estranged from Cameron for many years, he wants to reconcile with his sister. Could he be harboring a deadly secret?

Venuto Destina—His stint in federal prison—and now-failing health—have weakened but not vanquished the deadly crime kingpin.

Emerald Greer—About to make her comeback on the courts, the temperamental tennis star has what seems to be a perfect life—until she disappears.

Grace Miller—As an assistant to the ill-tempered Emerald, this plain Jane’s coveted job is no picnic. Could a resentful Grace have orchestrated a kidnapping—and murder—to snuff out her famous employer?

Ron Davis—Emerald’s hunky personal trainer would restore her to full glory on the tennis courts. That’s his job. But Ron’s interest in Emerald may be far more personal and sinister, even deadly….

For Dianne Kruetzkamp, for friendship, support and all

those mutual brainstorming sessions. Thanks so much.

And for Jasmine, the best little kitty on earth.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Denver, Colorado

The man was almost dead.

J.C. watched the life slip out of him, but no matter how he tried, J.C. couldn’t stop the slow, inexorable march of death.

My fault.

Jordan Christopher Ransom, Deputy U.S. Marshal. It was his mission, for God’s sake, to protect…to safeguard his charge.

J.C.’s mouth twisted at the thought. Sitting on the cold ground in January with James McKenzie in his arms, he cursed himself for not figuring things out in time, not getting here faster, not being able to prevent what had finally come down in this grim, dark alley. And instead of hearing the whistle of the wind all around, he heard the utter silence that follows violence. After the gunshots, the running feet. The shouts.

Some of them had been his own.

No matter.

James was still lying here, his eyes on J.C., pleading as he slowly bled to death. His stomach knotting, J.C. worked his fingers deeper into the hole in McKenzie’s neck, but he knew his efforts to stanch the blood flow from a major vessel, no matter how hard he pressed, would do no good.

It was a killer wound.

From the cold-blooded bastard who had vowed revenge.

And achieved his goal after all.

Or so it seemed.

J.C.’s jaw tightened. In the darkness he heard the wailing of sirens coming closer. He’d called for help on his cell phone moments before.

“They’re on the way,” he told McKenzie, sounding desperate with relief, but the other man’s eyes didn’t change. “We’ll get you somewhere safe.”

His job. But he had failed.

McKenzie’s mouth opened then closed, as if the attempt to speak was simply too much. And of course it would be.

“Hang in there,” J.C. muttered.

The advice proved futile. His own heart thumped against the inside of his coat, against the blue steel semiautomatic in his shoulder holster. No reason to have it out now. They were alone. The coward had gone. He tightened his grip around McKenzie in cold comfort. It was the last the man would feel in this lifetime, and whether or not J.C. had ever believed McKenzie was innocent, he tried to provide solace.

It was the least he could do.

Because of me you’re lying here in a pool of your own blood.

McKenzie clutched at his coat sleeve, his voice weaker now.

“Cameron…” Then in a final gasp, another name. “Ven.”

Her name went through J.C. not like a sweet reprieve but like the bullets James had taken for J.C.’s brutal error, and he wondered for a moment if his own blood had spilled on the ground. The place smelled of rotting garbage, but of stale whiskey, too, and now of death.

He didn’t trust McKenzie, not one bit more than he’d trusted his own father. Even McKenzie’s name, his real name before the many aliases he’d used, was only a point of reference now for J.C.

But that didn’t mean he wanted him dead either.

A chill raced along J.C.’s veins, like guilt. His fingers clenched around McKenzie’s shoulders, then moved up to his throat.

And he realized he felt nothing. Nothing.

That last faint beat of blood was gone, like the assassin who had struck Cameron’s father. All that remained was the ever-closer scream of the sirens that shattered silence. The sirens, and now his own fear.

The body slumped against him. J.C. looked down into blank, staring eyes. James McKenzie was dead. All he’d left behind was a daughter and those last few words.

The cops and the ambulance shrieked to a halt at the entrance to the alley. But J.C. didn’t move.

This isn’t over yet, he kept thinking, and the words kept echoing inside.

Chapter One

New York City

Her father had been dead for nearly a year. Venuto Destina had been out of prison for a week. And Cameron McKenzie was still looking over her shoulder.

Now she felt the back of her neck prickle, and the too-familiar thought shot through her brain. I’m being followed. Unable to fight the lifelong urge, she glanced behind her again along the dark Manhattan street but the footsteps she imagined hearing had died.

She saw no one.

Relief swept through her, canceling the swift rush of adrenaline, and for a moment she felt her heartbeat begin to slow. She often worked late—how else could The Unlimited Chef, Cameron’s cooking business for celebrities, show more than a small profit?—but she never liked walking home by herself.

It was necessary, of course, for her own peace of mind. Yet on this cold December night—the week after Thanks-giving—with light snow falling, she liked it even less. As if to acknowledge a threat, fewer people seemed to be out. Only a handful dotted the normally crowded sidewalks and several restaurants had closed early tonight. On this side street in the Seventies off Third Avenue, where Christmas lights already twinkled in almost every window, she felt utterly alone.

She strode briskly toward her apartment, arms wrapped around her too-thin coat trying to keep warm, but the chill seemed to penetrate her very bones. Just a few more blocks, she told herself. Then she’d feel safe.

Suddenly, her pulse hitched again. Her heart took up a noisy pounding.

Was that another footstep behind her? The sound of a man’s shoes muffled by the lightly falling snow? She would not look.

Then the blare of a passing taxi’s horn sent a shock blast through her body, and she struggled against panic. Now she heard nothing. The danger she had lived with for most of her life was gone, like those imagined footsteps. Safe, she tried to think.

Only the past lurked behind her now, not some assailant or unseen threat that seemed to hover in the cold air like a hand about to snuff out her breath.

Cameron silently scolded herself. This unfounded paranoia was why she forced herself to walk home each night rather than hail a cab or hop a city bus and bathe herself in its harsh interior light. She wouldn’t take the easy way out.

“I am going to lead a normal life,” she said aloud.

Even without Dad.

At the thought of James McKenzie, she pressed her lips tight.

She missed him. Oh God, how she missed him.

But he, of all people, wouldn’t want her cowering behind closed doors. Wouldn’t want her shivering in terror because Destina was free.

With one ear still tuned to any sound behind her, she picked up her pace.

She would go home, fix a cup of hot chocolate, open her mail…

Normal things. Everyday things.

She had yearned for them too long. Now, most of the time, she had them.

Yet the vague feeling of impending doom stalked her every step and Cameron finally surrendered again to the heart-thumping need to look over her shoulder. One more time. Just to be sure…

Seeing nothing, she felt in a pocket for her key then clutched it tight, ready to strike out at some attacker’s eyes. Frowning, she swept into the lighted lobby of her high-rise apartment building. There, too, the lobby was already decked out with wreaths and a huge tree. Normally, the sight would cheer her.

“’Evening, Fred,” she greeted the elderly doorman. And checked the sidewalk outside, reflected in the mirrored glass of the elevator bank, while she waited for the car.

“A cold one,” he said, clearly relishing the overheated lobby.

She shivered. “I’m glad to be home.”

“This is New York, not Arizona. You need a warmer coat.”

“Or thicker blood.” Leaving his laugh behind, she stepped into the elevator.

Blood. There must have been so much blood when her father…

Cameron blinked and stared up at the floor indicator. Two, three, four…at number eight the doors glided open. Cameron knew she was being silly, but she held them back anyway—and peered out into the long hall. Looking left then right, she confirmed that it, like the street downstairs, remained empty.

With her key gripped tight in a fist, she hurried to her own door. Her sensible shoes sank into the dense plush of the hallway carpet. She couldn’t afford this address, but she needed it. Image was everything.

After all, she had been forced to reinvent herself. More than once.

Turning her back on the hall, she slipped the key into her lock.

Startled by a slight sound from behind, she froze. Alarm flashed through her body like a scream. Dread pooled in her veins and her pulse beat thundered again. I was right, I was right, dammit. Before she could spin around, she felt someone at her back. She sensed the hard male body inches from her spine, watched the large, callused hand cover hers on the key. Her nose picked up his scent, but the lone word didn’t calm her.

“Relax.”

That harsh male voice, deep and low, sent her crashing back into the nightmare. That scent he carried, so uniquely his…she’d hoped never to smell it again. A hint of outdoors, of musk, of heat. Even a frigid December in New York couldn’t protect her.

Maybe, Cameron thought, there was no escape.

HE SHOULD LET HER GO. Now.

Yet he couldn’t seem to move and J.C. silently cursed himself again.

He knew better than to come up behind a solitary woman in a dimly lit hall—especially an edgy woman like this—just as he’d known not to follow her home, or to accost her downstairs in the building lobby.

Frankly, there didn’t seem to be an optimum place to confront her.

Just as there would be no easy way to tell her what he’d come to say.

In the past week everything had changed.

J.C. kept his mouth shut. His professional training hadn’t covered these bases, no way, but he’d done enough damage, especially with James McKenzie. From the race of the pulse at Cameron’s slender wrist, he guessed she wouldn’t relax until next week. If then.

Fresh guilt swamped him. Nothing new, but for the past year he’d devoted his every waking moment to official routine, official protocol, to one careful bureaucratic step at a time. It hadn’t helped. He didn’t sleep much and when he did, he dreamed of death and destruction and his own deadly error in that Denver alley.

Cameron… Ven…

Then there were the shakes, the sweats.

No wonder he’d finally been relieved of his duties.

Unfortunately, a medical leave of absence wouldn’t close this case.

Now, not unlike J.C., he could see that Cameron McKenzie was no more than a breath away from hyperventilating—his fault all over again—and he couldn’t seem to let go of her hand, or to block out the feel of her so near, or even to remember who he was and how to do his job. Unofficially this time.

Never mind business. Cameron made his head swim. Her strong yet delicate-feeling bones beneath his harder grip sent a swift rush of desire through his own body, and he had to remind himself why he had tracked her down. When he inhaled the fresh smells of shampoo and clean female skin, mixed with the faintest hint of some tempting spice—perhaps from her dinner—he felt his heart beat faster. J.C. fought the urge to lean even closer, to touch her.

She always had that effect on him.

That, and more.

For an instant, J.C. felt grateful. He could almost stop obsessing about the night in the alley, about James. And his latest suspicion. He could almost believe panic wouldn’t overtake him again. He could almost hope that he affected her the same way she always got to him.

Talk about wishful thinking.

No wonder she hated him, J.C. thought. Certainly she wouldn’t have opened her door to him tonight. So here they were, standing in the hall of her expensive apartment building—which didn’t strike him right—and Cameron, all five feet four inches of her, with her medium-length flow of dark hair and stiffened shoulders and taut, willowy frame, appeared about to faint.

When he gave her the latest bad news, she probably would.

Because J.C. had been thinking. He’d gone over—obsessed over—every detail in the Destina files. And he’d altered his view. Destina hadn’t gotten his revenge—not all of it anyway—and maybe James hadn’t said his daughter’s name at the end of his life merely as a goodbye. In the past days since Destina’s release from prison, someone had been making inquiries, not about James but about the big chunk of money that remained missing twenty-five years after Destina’s trial.

J.C. was convinced Destina had a new target.

“Let’s go inside,” he muttered, his cheek a fraction of an inch away from the softness of her silky hair. Her skin would feel equally slick, he imagined. For an instant J.C. allowed himself to envision Cameron in his bed, her hair spread out across his pillow, his fingers tangled in its rich, warm depths. Her wide hazel eyes would look up into his and her smile would light his weary spirit just before his mouth covered hers. As the kiss deepened, his hand would drift between them to seek her perfect breast, then the nip of her narrow waist, the modest swell of her hips, and he would hear Cameron moan.

The imaginary sound made J.C. straighten. If he didn’t step back, in the next few seconds she would realize exactly what effect she had on him.

On the other hand, her obvious impression of him came as no surprise. She pushed back, dislodging his hand from hers on the key then whirling around. He gazed down into her hazel eyes and saw the dislike he expected. Her voice dripped with it, along with the remnants of stark fear.

“J. C. Ransom. What the hell are you doing here?”

EVERY TIME CAMERON saw a U.S. Marshal, it meant trouble.

Despite that, she couldn’t help noticing that J. C. Ransom was one intriguing hunk of obviously red-blooded male.

Her senses clanged like a five-alarm fire bell as she took him in.

Tall, lean, broad-shouldered and sleekly muscled, he sure fit the Marshals’ service profile. His sun-streaked hair, on the other hand, didn’t. He could never blend into the background. Thick and silky, his hair always drew her gaze first, gleaming like a California surfer boy’s. But the lethal-looking gun he carried under his jacket ruined the effect. As did the hard metal badge clipped to his belt that glinted in the hall light. Just when she thought she had control of the situation, she made the mistake of gazing into his eyes.

Oh, God.

She shouldn’t have looked. Dark, enigmatic, almost navy blue, they wore that intense look of purpose that Cameron identified with him. The look that had always meant he’d be whisking her off to another relocation, another move away from new friends and treasured new belongings. Another escape under darkness to somewhere else, to somewhere safe. Where did he get such eyes? Were they military—or no, U.S. Department of Justice—issue?

That blue gaze could burn a hole through titanium, but the most Ransom had ever gotten from her in return was a heartfelt glare of rebuke for destroying her security, her life, again. Carefully chosen from her repertoire of careful looks. Nobody saw anything in Cameron McKenzie that she didn’t want them to see.

She’d learned that when she was three years old.

Yet at twenty-eight, a woman not a child, she saw the world through newly changed lenses. Those blue eyes looked different now, not only his usual sexy as sin but…haunted. Yes, that was it. And that was new.

“What happened to you?” was the next thing she managed to say.

Ransom’s gaze had settled on her lips, watching her speak, watching her react to his stare with a quick dart of her tongue over her lower lip that turned his dark eyes to midnight blue.

She hadn’t seen that look before.

Not willing to explain her observation, or to ponder his, she busied herself opening the lock with shaking fingers, hoping to slip inside and shut the door in his face.

Ransom was everything she hated, everything that reminded her of being afraid.

Her ploy didn’t work. He straight-armed the steel door panel and followed her inside, so close behind her that she could feel his body heat. Had his footsteps been the ones on the street behind her?

In the foyer Cameron whirled to face him.

“I suppose you have some reason for scaring me half to death.”

“Maybe you’d better sit down.”

“I’m fine standing up.” She wasn’t on a level with him—Ransom stood just over six feet—but she managed to meet his gaze squarely, hoping he wouldn’t hear the pounding of her heart. “Make it quick. I’m tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

“So would I,” he murmured.

Cameron blinked under his steady regard. He couldn’t mean that the way it sounded in that husky tone, but his eyes held hers and it wasn’t his official, government-agent gaze she saw. Those blue eyes had warmed with what Cameron recognized as desire. Her pulse pounded harder. Now there was another twist.

A dozen images of him flashed through her memory.

Maybe, until her last years in the program, she had simply repressed that hot, dark look. And before that…

“I’ve known you since I was thirteen,” she said. “I never heard you crack a dirty joke, even with your buddies. So I assume…”

“This isn’t a joke. I need to tell you something.”

His gaze had cooled and he was back to business again. The way she knew him best. And liked him least. Cameron tossed her coat over a chair in the living room—her only real furniture. She wouldn’t invite him any farther into her sanctuary. Her first home of her own. This U.S. Marshal had no right to violate her privacy here. He had no right to stun her with his masculine good looks, either. But his statement had drawn her attention.

Straightening, she turned back to him. “Well?”

“It’s about your father.”

“God. I should have known.” Cameron cast a quick glance toward the fireplace mantel—and the copper urn that held her father’s ashes. Then she sank onto the arm of the chair, her legs suddenly weak. “You’ve never minced words before. Why start now?”

“Look, I’m sorry, Cameron. I don’t know how to tell you this except to just say it.” He stepped closer to her and she tilted her head to look up at him. “You know Destina was released from federal prison last week?”