The fire in his body burned hotter and hotter, his breath came faster, the blade in his hand penetrating in forceful thrusts, again and again and again-
He barely heard his own hoarse cry of release above the wordless, keening sounds she made dying.
Soft skin.
Wet.
Slick.
Red.
Chapter Three
Wednesday, October 8
COMING BACK TO Venture, Georgia, a relatively small town not far outside Atlanta, was not something Dani had wanted to do, so she hadn't exactly planned for it. Her apartment was still in Atlanta, along with most of her clothes and other belongings; she had packed as if for a weeklong vacation somewhere. That had been nearly a month ago. Not that clothing was a problem, given that she was living with her twin sister. But she and Paris had both worked very hard to have separate lives as adults, and living in the same house again wasn't really helping sustain that determination.
In fact, it made it all too easy to slip back into girlhood habits and routines. Like this weekly trip to Smith's Pharmacy downtown, because it was the only place in Venture that sold honest-to-God homemade ice cream from the lunch counter, which still did brisk business, and the twins had a lifetime habit of ice cream before bed every night.
Dani had missed this in Atlanta. Not that she hadn't continued the habit; she literally couldn't sleep without at least a small bowl of ice cream at night. But she'd had to substitute brand names for the homemade stuff, and there was simply no comparison in her mind.
Jeez.
Ice cream.
Thirty-one years old, and the treat she looked forward to all day long was ice cream shared with her twin sister before bedtime.
Bedtime at eleven o'clock most nights.
'I'm pathetic,' she muttered, and dropped two of the bags she was juggling while trying to dig her car keys from the bottom of her purse.
'Let me.'
Dani froze, watching a pair of very male hands pick up the dropped bags. Her gaze tracked upward slowly, following as he straightened to note that he was still whipcord-lean, that his shoulders were still wide and powerful, that he was still the sort of good-looking they wrote about in romance novels.
His dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples, and there might have been a few more laugh lines at the corners of his steady blue eyes, but he still had the face of a heartbreaker.
Marcus Purcell.
Venture was a small-enough town that she had expected to run into him sooner or later. She had hoped for later.
Much later.
'Hey, Dani. How's tricks?'
The old childhood greeting brought an unexpected lump to her throat, but she thought her voice was calm enough to hide that when she replied as she always had.
'The rabbit ran away, but I still have the top hat. How're things in your magic show?'
'Not much of an act these days, I'm afraid. The beautiful assistant got a better offer, and after that there didn't seem to be much point.'
And there it was.
Trust Marc not to pussyfoot around a subject she would have avoided as long as necessary.
Avoidance was her defense mechanism, but hardly his.
'It wasn't a better offer,' she heard herself say. 'It was just… a change I needed. We both needed. You wanted to stay here, and I didn't.'
'You never asked, Dani.'
That shook her, but only for a moment. 'Your roots were always here. I didn't have to ask. And you knew once Paris decided to stay here, I-'
'Wouldn't.' He shrugged. 'And yet here you are.'
'Visiting. Because Paris needs me.'
'Yeah, who's getting divorced is always a hot topic around here, so I heard. Tough on her. But she's better off without him.'
'Oh? And why is that?' She was willing to talk about anything else, even her sister's painful divorce. Which told her something unsettling about her own feelings.
'Because there are just some things a man shouldn't say about his wife. Not even when he's drunk. Maybe especially not when he's drunk. And never to another man.'
Dani couldn't bring herself to ask out loud but knew the question showed.
'Not much I'm willing to repeat, Dani. But he talked a lot, and probably in bars up and down the East Coast since he traveled so much. He said she was a literal ball and chain. Holding him down. Said he couldn't have anything to himself. Not his thoughts, not even his dreams. No private space she couldn't get into. He said she made his skin crawl sometimes.'
'I knew he had trouble handling it, but…'
'There was no handling, believe me. Not for Dan. It was something he never accepted, never even got used to. Something he hated. Which is bad enough, considering he married Paris anyway. Telling strangers in bars that your wife really does know what you're thinking and dreaming and it makes you sick to your stomach is stepping way over the line.' Marc shrugged. 'Whether anybody ever listened to him or just chalked it up to drunken ramblings doesn't mitigate the fact that he acted like a jerk. He was drunk a lot toward the end. Spent more than one night in my jail, sobering up.'
Paris had told her that Marc was sheriff now, but Dani felt the need to comment. And to change the subject. 'I never thought you'd end up in law enforcement.'
'Yeah, well, things change.'
Not everything changed, Dani thought, but she felt unnerved and uncertain and was very aware that they were standing on the sidewalk in front of the pharmacy in downtown Venture, in full view of God and half the town's citizens, and that everybody south of God was taking it all in with interest.
'I should be going,' she said abruptly. 'My ice cream is melting.'
To her utter relief, he didn't respond to that lame comment as it probably deserved, but merely said, 'You were digging for your keys, I think. Find them?'
Dani produced the keys, used the remote to unlock the Jeep parked only a few yards away, and, as its headlights flashed in acknowledgment, accepted the bags he held out to her.
'Take care, Dani.'
It held the sound of finality, something she should have accepted gratefully, but he hadn't moved more than a few steps away from her when she heard herself speak. And even as she did, she was aware of a fatalistic certainty that she was turning a critical corner in her life.
And had no idea what lay ahead.
'Marc?'
He paused and looked back at her, eyebrows lifting but otherwise expressionless.
'Has anything… bad happened in Venture lately? In the county? I mean, anything really bad? I read the paper,
