Never Die Alone

And Chloe was no help at all. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she chanted, her eyes wild and teary. “Oh, no . . . no, no!” She began to pant, gasping for breath.

“Shit.” Zoe winced, working one prong of the scissors into the coils of a fat knot.

The cord over Chloe’s wrists weakened and finally gave. “Come on, help me with your ankles,” Zoe ordered, but Chloe was shivering and wild-eyed, panting and damned useless.

“Chloe!” Zoe gave her twin a sharp shake, then worked at the ropes around her twin’s ankles. “Come on. We have to get out of here. Now!”

“No. Oh, God. He . . . he!” She was staring petrified over Zoe’s shoulder, and for a split second Zoe thought the freak had awakened and was dragging himself up to pounce again. A quick look confirmed he was still unmoving. Hopefully dead.

Still, her twin was frozen in place. “I . . . I can’t . . . he . . .”

“Stop it!” Zoe ordered.

“I . . . I . . . I can’t.” Chloe sobbed, staring at the naked man prone on the floor, blood still pumping in a dark pool blooming around his body. “I—”

Slap! Zoe swatted her twin on the cheek.

“Ow!”

“You can and you will,” Zoe insisted, finally untying the rope around Chloe’s ankles.

As Chloe started unwinding the cord from her neck and kicking her feet free, Zoe spied a ladder propped upward, extending through a hole in the ceiling.

Zoe pulled Chloe to her feet. “Come on, let’s go!” Even in the garish half-light she could see a red welt rising on her sister’s cheek. Zoe didn’t have time to care. Served the ni

“Geez, you didn’t have to hit me.” Chloe was rubbing the red spot above her jaw.

“Yeah, I did. Now! Up, damn it. Climb!” What was wrong with her twin?

With maddening slowness, Chloe began the climb up the teetering ladder. Come on, come on, come on! Zoe mentally urged, right on her sister’s heels. Impatient, she pushed her upward on the unsteady rungs. As Chloe reached the top, the great unknown, Zoe heard a pained groan come from behind them, an ugly noise rising from the shadows.

Her heart sank.

The freak wasn’t dead.

CHAPTER 3

“What’s wrong?” Olivia’s voice was a balm, always had been. Soft and sensual, with a bit of a Southern drawl. Sexy as hell.

Bentz sat on the edge of their bed, felt the mattress beneath the thin quilt sag. He’d tried to enter the bedroom quietly so as not to disturb her, but of course that had been impossible. “A case.”

“Father John.” Not a question.

“Yeah.”

Sighing, she rolled over and hit the bedside lamp. In the soft illumination he saw the concern in her large eyes, the dusting of freckles over her nose. “Want to talk about it?” Yawning, she swept a few blond curls from her face.

“Nah.”

“You never do.”

He chuckled, leaned over, and brushed a kiss across her cheek. God, she was beautiful.

“You’ve had a beer?” No judgment. Just a question asked as she pulled herself onto her elbows and cocked her head to one side.

“Or two.”

“So the case is really bad.”

“I hate that bastard.”

“I know. We all do.” She was wearing an oversized T-shirt but was still incredibly feminine.

He chuckled at her pout, unbuttoned his dress shirt, peeled it off, and became serious again. “This guy, a fake priest of all things. I thought he was dead. I mean . . .” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and yanked off his pants. “What the hell? Couldn’t he have had the decency to die in that damned swamp?” Angrily, he balled the dirty shirt. “I mean, all of my cases are bad. You know that. Hell, I work homicide. But some of them, some of the killers, like this one, make it personal.”

“You’ll get him,” she said, smiling up at him in the shadowed room with its gauzy curtains, huge bed, and coved ceilings. “You always do.”

“I thought I already had,” he muttered, tossing his shirt into a darkened corner where a hamper stood near the closet. He missed, of course, the tee catching on the side of the hamper. Not that he cared. He thought of all the cases that he hadn’t closed, the killers who’d gotten away. There were several where he’d known who the criminal was but hadn’t been able to gather enough evidence to put the bastard away. And there were a few where a criminal was convicted, the case against him sufficient, but still Bentz had wondered if the right man had ended up behind bars. Those, thankfully, were not even a handful.

“Hey, can’t you forget about it for a few hours?” Olivia said. She’d let one long leg slide from beneath the quilt, and reached up to touch his cheek. With a gleam in her eyes and a lift of one already arched brow, she added, “I’m awake, and the baby’s asleep.”

He couldn’t help the grin that grew from one side of his jaw to the other. “Why, Mrs. Bentz,” he asked, “are you trying to seduce me?”

“Never,” she said, but dropped the hand from his face, slowly tracing his neck and chest to fall into his crotch. “Uh-oh.” Feigned i

Jesus, he loved her.

She let a finger trail between his legs.

His erection, already at half-mast, stiffened.

“You’re wicked,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

“Only for you,” she said into his open mouth as he scraped back the blankets with one hand and stretched out beside her. Her arms surrounded his neck and she kissed him with a passion that had been with them since the first time they’d made love. Yes, they’d had their bumps in the road. Their relationship had been far from perfect. But the heat between them, that raw lust and deep yearning, had never faltered. And now, as her hands sculpted his muscles and his blood quickened in his veins, he closed his eyes, lost himself in her, and wished that the lovemaking would never end.

“Come on, hurry!” Zoe said, pushing her sister from that hellhole. The ladder had opened to the stone floor of a small one-room building that was more shed than living space, and she’d had to push her sister up and out. After they had made their way up the metal rungs, Zoe had taken the time to pull the ladder to the ground floor of the darkened shed. If the psycho in his rubber apron somehow had the grit and strength to wake up and try to follow them, he’d be trapped in his own lair.

Fitting, Zoe figured, as she knocked over a chair and tripped while ushering Chloe outside to the darkness of the night.

“What about him?” Chloe asked, her voice tremulous with fear.

“He’s dead.”

“You killed him?”

“Yes! Move it! ”

“Good. Twisted psycho-freak!”

The old door scraped as Zoe tugged it open. Then she led her sister into the dark night. The cabin was dilapidated, ready to topple onto the sparse, weedy clearing around it. A forest surrounding the small patch of ground seemed to block out any light. From here, there were no visible neighbors, no signs of civilization. If only she could hear the hum of traffic on a highway or the clack of a train on tracks or the deep moan of a foghorn on the river. But there was no sound beyond their tattered breathing, the steady patter of rain, and the sough of wind rushing through branches of nearby trees. Then a dog, as if disturbed from slumber, gave a sharp “woof.”

“Where are we?” Chloe whimpered, sounding as if she might start crying again.

“Don’t know. Come on!” Grabbing her sister’s hand, she started ru