In spite of the Latin name, the man had a Viking’s golden coloring and height. She’d had only a glimpse of his features before the second-year resident had inserted a breathing tube, but the rough-cut features had been overlaid with a rugged strength. Masculinity personified, she thought with a giddiness born of exhaustion. A beautiful tawny gold man with a heart that had faltered but fought on.
Did he have a mate? she wondered, thinking of her own adorably rumpled husband waiting for her at home. A woman with enough courage and strength to keep from being overpowered by his? A romantic at heart, she fervently hoped so.
“He’s tough,” she echoed, infusing her voice with a certainty she desperately wanted to feel. “He’ll make it.”
With a lot of luck, she thought as she turned away—and perhaps a little help from whatever benevolent deity looked after men like him.
Gut knotted even tighter now, Linc Slocum watched her until she disappeared behind the double doors to his left. Only then did he allow his stiff shoulders to relax.
He’d been at the White House, meeting with the President’s Chief of Staff, when he’d been notified that one of his men was down, shot while guarding a witness at a government safe house in Maryland.
No, not just one of his men, damn it. His best man, his go-to guy. In spite of the fourteen years difference in their ages, they had a bond, he and Rafe—an immigrant steelworker’s kid and the bastard son of a teenage runaway, brought up by a Mexican-American laborer and his wife after his birth mother had abandoned him in a horse barn.
“Any word, yet, sir?” Preoccupied with his own thoughts he hadn’t seen Rafe’s partner of three months approaching. Each year the new hires seemed to get younger, he thought with an inner sigh. Even Rafe, at a lean and muscular thirty-eight, had started complaining about feeling old. But then Linc doubted that Rafe had ever truly been young.
“He’s holding his own,” he said, smiling briefly to let the rookie know his concern had been noted and appreciated. “The doctor said it might take a while to patch things together.”
Seth Gresham’s lips tightened as he struggled to settle his emotions. “Twenty more minutes and I would have been there,” he grated in an emotion rough voice.
“Any idea how the shooter found her?”
“Damned if I know, sir.”
Rafe was too savvy to let himself be tailed. But this kid? It was possible, though unlikely. Among other things, Rafe had a way of getting the young ones up to speed fast.
Apparently Rafe had been in the kitchen making breakfast when the woman he’d been protecting had inexplicably—and against express orders—opened the front door to a man who’d claimed to be Rafe’s relief.
It had been damn clever, the way the shooter had worked it. Arriving not too early to alert Rafe, but late enough to minimize the chance of being spotted.
“You think the shooter was Folsom himself?” Gresham asked tersely.
“Could be. Or he could have hired a pro.”
“Damn frigging flu bug. Rafe never should have had to pull that kind of routine duty.” Stan Vincent was head of the investigative branch—and Rafe’s immediate superior—although both he and Stan knew that Rafe played by his own rules, which, given the unshakable integrity at the man’s core, were far stricter than the ones in the book.
“We both know there was no ‘should’ to it, Stan. The woman only agreed to testify because Rafe convinced her she’d be protected. Nothing but an act of God was going to keep him from looking out for her.”
Slocum bit down hard on the rage that threatened to break free.
Jacob Peter Folsom was a cold, calculating predator, a swindler and a cheat who raped with words instead of his body. The specifics varied, but his M.O. was always the same. Contrive to meet a lonely—and well-off—woman on vacation, romance her with flowers and dancing and a healthy dollop of charm, winning her trust during moonlit strolls and candlelight dinners.
Alice MacGregor had been the principal of a prestigious boarding school located in Virginia’s horse country. A dedicated scholar and empathetic teacher, she had entered her fortieth year a virgin with a spotless reputation and an empty womb.
While on a Mediterranean cruise she’d met a man who’d introduced himself as Jason Smythe-Jones. Cultured, sophisticated and well-read, he had claimed to be a history professor at Bennington in Vermont.
Still fit and athletic at forty-seven, he had beautiful silver hair and piercing blue eyes. In her statement Alice, as well as several of his other victims, had mentioned his remarkable resemblance to George Hamilton.
A highly intelligent, bluntly honest woman who knew all too well that her face would never be considered more than passably pleasant, she would have been immune to a traditional seduction. Instead, Smythe-Jones, aka Jacob Folsom, had praised her mind and her dedication to her students. To sweeten the pot, he’d asked her to be the mother of his children. For all her intelligence and sophistication Alice had been bedazzled.
They’d married in a flower-filled chapel in Venice before returning to Alice’s small home on the school grounds. Two months later Alice had been bankrupt, her reputation in tatters, her job in jeopardy. After cleaning her out, her new husband had simply vanished. This time, however, he’d been caught when, in a wholly improbable coincidence he’d attempted to sell her highly recognizable vintage Mercedes convertible to the mother of one of Alice’s former students.
Out on bail, he’d first tried to charm his bride into refusing to testify. When that hadn’t worked, he’d threatened to kill her. Something in his eyes had made her believe him. Rafe had been the one to calm her fears. Now brave, heartbroken Alice MacGregor was downstairs on a slab in the hospital morgue, and the man who had tried to protect her was fighting for his life a few doors away in the OR.
“I don’t get it, sir,” Gresham said in a low, frustrated tone. “Ms. MacGregor was too trusting, yeah, but she wasn’t a stupid woman. Just the opposite, in fact.” He took a fast breath, his expression earnest. “In fact, none of the victims seem like the type to be conned. Near as we’ve been able to piece together, almost all are college graduates with responsible jobs. The one in Miami was a neurosurgeon and the one before Alice is an associate dean of women at San Diego State. As far as I can see, there’s not a bimbo or airhead in the bunch.”
Slocum was astounded by the man’s naiveté. “Bimbos and airheads don’t usually have fat bank accounts and platinum charge cards,” he said tightly.
“He targets professionals in their thirties or forties because most of them have been too busy getting to the top to have time for romance,” Stan amplified when Gresham’s face reddened. “Most have biological clocks that are clicking down, which makes them especially susceptible to a man who professes to want children very badly.”
Slocum felt a certain sympathy for the rookie, who still expected evil to make sense. “Folsom’s smart and he’s charming. He knows exactly what a woman wants—and he gives it to her.” His jaw hardened. “If she’s lucky, he’ll only destroy her life before he walks away.”
There was no need to say more. Every man and woman there knew that unless Folsom was stopped, there was every possibility that Alice MacGregor would not be the last woman to end up dead, simply because she fell in love with a monster.
Chapter 1
Portland, Oregon—Six months later.
As soon as Dr. Daniela Fabrizio picked up her office phone and heard the tobacco-ruined voice of the repair shop mechanic on the other end, she’d expected bad news. In fact, it was worse than bad.
“Did you say eleven hundred dollars?” she forced out when breath returned to her body. “To fix that…that lemon?”
On