Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious Read Free Page A

have slipped and Trish LaBelle over at WNAB is picking up your market share…not good, Sammie, definitely not good. Your listeners want you, girl, and they aren’t in the mood to accept any substitutes, no matter how good they might be. So don’t you go bringin’ me some note from a hunk of a doctor, y’hear? Uh-uh. You all haul your ass down to the station. Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now. But call me. A-S-A-P.”
    “Hear that, Charon? I am loved after all,” she said absently to the cat, then felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Some noise, some shift in the atmosphere, some intangible thing caught her attention.
    The cat sat on the sill, his body frozen except for the barely perceptible twitching of his tail. “You see something?” she asked, trying to shake off the feeling. She dropped the rest of the mail and moved to the window, searching the darkness through the steamy drizzle on the windowpanes.
    The live oaks stood like bearded sentinels, unmoving dark shapes guarding her two-hundred-year-old house.
    Creeaaak.
    Sam’s heart nearly stopped.
    Was that the wind in the branches, the house settling, or someone shifting their weight on the porch? Her throat went dry.
    Stop it, Sam, you’re jumping at shadows. There’s nothing sinister here. This is your home. But she’d only lived here three months, and after she’d moved in, she’d learned the history of the house from a gossipy old neighbor across the street. According to Mrs. Killingsworth, the reason the old home had been on the market so long and Sam had gotten it far under its market value was that the woman who had previously owned the place had been murdered here—the object of an enraged boyfriend’s vengeance.
    “So what’s that got to do with you?” she said now, rubbing her arms as if she were chilled. She didn’t believe in ghosts, curses or the supernatural.
    The recorder spun. “Hi, Sam.” Melanie’s voice. Samantha relaxed a bit. “Hope you had a good trip. I called the credit-card companies, as you asked, and left the mail on the desk, but you’ve probably found it by now. Charon was a pill while you were gone. Really out of sorts. Even sprayed on the piano, but I cleaned it up. And the hair balls. Gross. Anyway, I bought you a quart of milk and some of those fancy French vanilla coffee beans you like. They’re both in the fridge. Sorry to hear about your leg. What a bummer. Some romantic getaway, huh? See you at the station, or you can call if you need anything.”
    Sam hobbled back to her chair. She was imagining things. Nothing had changed. She glanced at the picture of David on her desk. Tall and athletic, with gray eyes and a square jaw. Good-looking. Executive vice president and director of sales for Regal Hotels, she’d been reminded more often than not. A man with a future and a quick, if cutting, sense of humor. A catch, as her mother would have said had Beth Matheson still been alive.
    Oh, Mom, I still miss you. Sam’s gaze moved from the five-by-seven of David to a faded color portrait of her own family, both smiling parents flanking her in her cap and gown at graduation from UCLA. Her older brother, Peter, stood just behind her father’s shoulder, frowning, looking away from the camera, not even bothering to remove his sunglasses, as if making a statement that he didn’t want to be there, wasn’t interested in sharing any of Sam’s glory as her parents beamed beside her. Beth had believed in marriage and would want to see her daughter with an ambitious man; successful David Ross would have been just such a man.
    And a man with a dark side.
    Too much like Jeremy Leeds. Her ex.
    She sliced open another piece of junk mail and wondered why she was always drawn to control freaks?
    “Hey, Sam. Dad again,” her father’s voice said. “I’m worried about you. Haven’t heard anything since you called from Mexico trying to get out of the country. I assume you made it…hope so. So, how’re you getting