Valley in the form of a blizzard. But the return of winter wasn’t what chilled her blood even with the snow blowing outside, nearly obscuring the street below the third-floor apartment. Nearly.
Erica still caught a glimpse of someone standing on the sidewalk across the street. He was just a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. But she could feel his gaze as he stared up at her window. And it chilled her far more than the cold air.
“There is no way that he found you,” she whispered, reassuring herself again, like she had been doing since that special report three nights ago. Nothing was in her name. Not the business. Not the building. Not even the car she drove. “It’s safe here.”
But despite all of her assurances, those doubts niggled at her, jangling her already frazzled nerves. That was why she was up so late, because every creak and clunk of the old building had her pulse jumping and heart racing.
Even though her eyes were gritty and lids heavy, sleep eluded her. So she paced and kept watch, making sure those creaks and clunks were nothing but weather testing the structure of the old building.
But what about the shadow watching her window? She stepped closer but caught no glimpse of him now. Had there really been someone there, or had her overwrought nerves conjured up the image? She studied the street for several more moments, but the wind picked up, swirling the snow around and obliterating whatever footprints might have been on the street or sidewalk.
The snowstorm was late in the spring even for Michigan’s unpredictable April weather. The temperatures had dropped, and rain had turned to sleet and then snow. No one would be out walking in such a storm.
She must have just imagined someone watching her. She exhaled a shaky breath of relief. As her nerves settled, exhaustion overwhelmed her. Maybe she could finally sleep. She stepped back from the window and crossed the living room to shut off the light switch by the door before heading down the hall.
Bam!
Her heart slammed into her ribs. This was no creak or clunk.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Midstep, she stopped in the hall and whirled back toward the door that rattled under a pounding fist. Her hand trembling, she reached out and flipped on the lights as if the light alone would banish the monsters that had crept out of the shadows.
“Who’s there?” she called out, her voice quavering as her nerves rushed back and overwhelmed her. She couldn’t move—couldn’t even step close enough to the dead-bolted door to peer through the peephole—as if he might be able to grab her through the tiny window.
“Ms. Towsley,” a gruff voice murmured through the door, “I’m an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
How the hell did he know who she was? And what could he possibly want with her? She knew nothing about narcotics; she rarely even remembered to take her vitamins.
“Prove it,” she challenged him.
She shook off the nerves, so that she had the courage to press her eye to the peephole. But the man was so tall that he blocked most of the light in the hall. And he stood so close to the door that Erica couldn’t see his face, only his wide chest.
“What?” he asked with an impatient grunt.
“Prove that you are who you say you are.” Because she had been fooled before; she had thought a man was something he wasn’t, and the mistake could have cost her everything.
Now she had even more to lose …
“Open the door,” he replied, “and I’ll show you my credentials.”
“Just hold your ID up to the peephole,” she directed him.
She had once chuckled over Aunt Eleanor installing the tiny security window in the door—given that no one had ever committed a crime in Miller’s Valley. But now she was grateful for her great aunt’s paranoia; too bad it had actually been the first symptom of the Alzheimer’s that had eventually taken the elderly woman’s life.
The shadows shifted as he stepped back and finally she was able to see—but just the identification the man held up: Rowe Cusack, Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was the lawman the news hadn’t stopped talking about since the prison break. He was the DEA agent who had gone undercover to expose the corruption at Blackwoods Penitentiary and had nearly lost his life.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
What possible business could a DEA agent have in Miller’s Valley? Fear clutched her stomach, tying it into knots. Perhaps this wasn’t about drugs at all but about whom he’d met on that last assignment of his at Blackwoods.
“I need to talk to you about Jedidiah Kleyn,” he said. His voice was raspy and gruff—just as it had been when he’d made his brief replies to the reporters’ incessant questions.
She fumbled with the dead-bolt lock and opened the door. “Do you think he’s looking for me?”
The man stepped inside and shoved the door closed behind himself. “He’s not looking for you.”
His dark eyes narrowed, he stared down at her—his gaze as cold as the snow melting on his mammothly wide shoulders. Dark stubble clung to his square jaw. “Not anymore.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs as she realized her mistake. Once again she had fallen for this man’s lies.
“He’s found you,” Jedidiah Kleyn said.
Erica had let a killer into her home. And now she was probably going to become his next victim …
Chapter Two
Despite having sworn that she wouldn’t watch the news anymore, Macy Kleyn couldn’t look away from the television screen. But the reporters or, worse yet, the mug shot from when Jed had been arrested weren’t on the TV. The man whose face filled the screen was devastatingly handsome with a strong jaw, icy blue eyes and golden-blond hair.
But she didn’t have to watch the news to see him. All she had to do was glance over to where he sat at a desk in a corner of his open apartment. It was what he was saying to the reporters gathered for that prerecorded press conference that held her attention.
“Jedidiah Kleyn is not the dangerous convict that earlier reports are claiming,” he said, his deep voice vibrating in the TV speakers. “If not for Mr. Kleyn, I would not have made it out of Blackwoods Penitentiary alive. He saved my life, not once, but twice.”
Macy’s breath caught, but she released it in a shuddery sigh of relief. She would never be able to thank her big brother enough for saving the man she loved. But proving Jed’s innocence would be a great place to start. If she had ever been able to figure out where to start …
“Are you suggesting that three years in prison reformed him?” a disembodied voice asked from behind the camera.
Rowe snorted. “Blackwoods reforms no one. Three years incarcerated there would have broken a lesser man than Jedidiah Kleyn.”
“You seem to have an awful lot of respect for a cop killer,” another disembodied voice, this one full of derision,
