Average features.
Except blood oozed from his mouth. And his chest had turned crimson, a red stain spreading across his torso.
The stench of body odors assaulted her, and a scream bubbled in her throat. She scrambled backward off the bed, panic clawing at her. Her foot hit a gun and sent it skittering to the floor. She jerked it up, turning it over in horror as she realized the man had been shot with it.
Her heart pounded as she glanced back at him again. Whoever he was, maybe he was still alive.
But he wasn’t breathing. His eyes were wide open, glued to the ceiling in the cold shock of death.
Suddenly the door burst open, and a policeman raced in, his weapon drawn. Stella froze.
The officer took one look at the dead man, then her, and his ruddy face went white. “Don’t move, ma’am.”
Her hand shook violently, the gun bobbing up and down as she realized how the scenario appeared. “I—”
“Put the gun down,” he barked.
“But I…I don’t understand.”
His tone hardened. “Now. Slowly lower the weapon to the floor.”
Shock and fear washed over her as she did as he instructed.
“Raise your hands in the air.”
She swallowed hard, then lifted her hands in surrender as he trained his gun on her. It was obvious that he thought she’d killed the man in the bed.
Only she had no idea what had happened.
LUKE DEVLIN’S phone trilled, the sound cutting into the silence of the night as if announcing trouble. He reached for it, one foot already sliding off the side of the bed, his mind playing the guessing game as to the nature of the call. A new case. An old one. Somebody else found dead. Something mysterious happening at Nighthawk Island. More bioengineering related to terrorism and chemical warfare. Their newest undercover plot—or maybe the feds with information on who had killed his partner J.T. Osborne last year and made it look like a suicide.
Or something about his wife’s disappearance.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, wishing he’d had at least an hour or two’s worth of sleep. But sleep eluded him these days. So he welcomed work to relieve the pain and restlessness. “Special Agent Devlin.”
“Devlin, this is Lieutenant Rawlins of the Savannah Police Department.”
“Yes?”
“I just got a call from one of my officers, Detective Black. They found your wife.”
His heart thundered in his chest. Stella had been found. Alive?
Time vaulted to a standstill. For the past year, he’d searched endlessly. Even as a suspect himself, he’d pushed the cops and feds for the truth. They thought he’d crossed the line on this one.
But Luke Devlin never crossed the line. Not for anyone. Just as he didn’t believe that J.T. had been corrupt, either.
Eventually clues had turned up that made them believe Stella had left of her own accord. That she was alive and well, moving from one place to another. That she didn’t want to be reunited with him or to be found. But her disappearance had stamped a black mark on his career. Too many questions left unanswered. Too much doubt and suspicion for anyone to completely trust him.
Especially after all the trouble with J.T.
Although the police had officially deemed his partner’s death a suicide, and had called off the search for Stella, Luke hadn’t given up.
He had to solve the mystery around J.T.’s death. He’d been undercover at CIRP, getting close to finding out their latest experiments when he’d died. Luke needed to know what had happened to his wife on their honeymoon.
“Devlin?”
Luke cleared his throat, collecting himself. “Where is she?”
“Sunset Motel.”
“What?” His hand tightened around the phone. Was this some kind of joke? “What’s going on?”
“You can meet Detective Adam Black when you get there,” Lieutenant Rawlins said.
The officer started to hang up, but Luke needed more information. “Wait. Just tell me—is she … alive?”
A long hesitation stretched over the line, riddled with tension. Heat from the open window brushed his neck, and he broke out in a cold sweat.
“Yes, but, Devlin, there’s something else you need to know.” Rawlins paused, the scent of death and fear filled Luke again.
“What?”
“She’s going to be charged with murder.”
The breath whooshed from Luke’s chest. Moving on instincts so natural, he didn’t contemplate his actions, he closed the phone, yanked on his jeans, grabbed a shirt and jogged to his car. His mind raced while he cut through the streets of Savannah. Though it was midnight, tourists crowded the streets, Saturday night partiers in full swing. Booze and music floated through the humid summer air from River Street, a cruise ship had docked in town creating more chaos in the summer atmosphere. The roar of a siren in the distance reminded him that crimes had been at an all-time-high for the area, the closing of the bizarre suicide cases a while back having added more hype to the mysterious happenings at Nighthawk Island.
Questions rattled through his head, the same ones that had haunted him the past year. Where had Stella been all this time? Why had she left him on their wedding night? Had their marriage been some kind of scam? Had she been ill and decided not to burden him? Had she decided that she couldn’t stay married to him, that he was some kind of cold, FBI agent who didn’t know how to treat a wife? Or had she been in some kind of trouble, something she was afraid to confess to him?
But if she’d left of her own free will, why had there been blood on her wedding dress? That one element had bothered him, kept him searching for her, kept him awake each night with disturbing dreams and images.
And if she had been in trouble, why hadn’t she attempted to contact him sometime during the last year?
He maneuvered around traffic and a handful of pedestrians leaving a blues bar, then sped onto the road leading to the motel, leaving the historic side of Savannah with its town squares, haunted cemeteries and classy bed-and-breakfasts behind. He continued on, threading his way to the outskirts, to a rinky-dink motel that catered to low-rent patrons and truckers, ones who didn’t mind bug-infested rooms and two-bit hookers.
What was Stella doing at a place of this caliber? And why had Rawlins said they were going to arrest her for murder? Had she been held captive? Had she become involved with another man and gotten in over her head?
He approached the motel room with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Finally he’d glean some answers. Learn the truth. Get closure.
Look into her eyes and know why she’d put him through hell the last year. Why she hadn’t loved him
