Beverly Barton 3 Book Bundle

by Beverly Barton

  Inside a well.

  “I know where she is!” Griff shouted.

  Luke and Josh came running toward Griff.

  “She’s in a well. Look for a well,” Griff said. “It should be fairly close to the house, if this is the original house.”

  “What makes you think she’s in a well?” Josh asked.

  “No time for explanations,” Griff told him. “Call Trotter. Tell him to bring his men in and start looking near the house for a well.”

  “There’s no need to do that,” Josh said. “While we were searching for Nic, I saw what I think is an old well about a hundred yards behind the house.”

  “Show me,” Griff said. “Now!”

  Two minutes. She wouldn’t look at her watch again.

  She didn’t want to die.

  She wanted to live.

  She wanted to make love with Griff again.

  She wanted to have babies, wanted to grow old and become a grandmother, wanted to …

  Was there really life after death? Was there a heaven and hell?

  She wanted to believe that this one brief life wasn’t all there was.

  Maybe there really was a heaven.

  Or maybe reincarnation wasn’t just a pipe dream.

  If she could come back again and have another life, would she?

  What if she and Griff came back in a future life, one where they could spend a hundred years together?

  Don’t fight it. Just accept it. Death is simply the next stage of life.

  Nic felt herself floating slowly away, drifting into unconsciousness.

  Oh, Griff, there you are. I knew you’d come for me. Hold me close. Don’t let me go. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. I love you so very much.

  It felt so good to be safe in Griff’s arms.

  Griff held on to Nic tightly as he tugged on the lines leading to the top of the well, indicating to the others that he was ready for the agents to bring them topside. If the well had been any smaller, neither he nor any of the other men there would have been able to go down inside and bring Nic up. Luckily, the well gradually widened from the top to the bottom. When they reached the narrower area near the top, Griff lifted Nic up and over his head. Eager rescue hands reached down and pulled her out, then brought him up and out of the well.

  When he stood on firm ground again, he saw Nic lying on her side, her naked body draped with someone’s jacket. The scuba gear had been removed and lay on the ground beside her. A circle of bureau agents stood watching while Luke gave Nic mouth-to-mouth. She gasped for air, then coughed.

  Luke looked up at Griff and smiled.

  Griff dropped to his knees and pulled Nic into his arms.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked groggily.

  “No, you’re not dreaming, honey.”

  “Did I die and go to heaven?”

  “No, you’re alive. Heaven’s going to have to wait another fifty or sixty years.”

  Epilogue

  Nic sat between Griff’s spread legs in the middle of his huge king size bed, the back of her head resting on his naked chest. His big, strong arms circled her body, just below her breasts.

  She had come to Griffin’s Rest for a long weekend. Griff had sent the Powell jet to D.C. last night to bring her home to him.

  “I want us to spend Valentine’s Day together,” he’d told her.

  “That means I’ll have to miss work Thursday and Friday.”

  “I’ve already cleared your time off with Doug,” Griff had said.

  She had fussed at him for going over her head to her boss, for making decisions for her, for trying to run her life. But in the end, she had forgiven him, as she knew she always would. After all, she loved Griff just as he was. She wouldn’t change anything about him.

  She was so happy right now that she could hardly believe that it had been barely five weeks since she’d come within sixty seconds of dying.

  During his nine-month murder game, the Hunter had abducted ten women. He had killed seven. Only three had escaped with their lives. Nicole felt a strong bond with LaTasha Davies, who had come out of her coma and was recovering at home with her family. And with Mia O’Dell, who had the support of a loving family, and a boyfriend who was going with her to her counseling sessions.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Griff said as he nuzzled her neck.

  “What kind of proposition?”

  “I’d like for you to come and work with me at Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency.”

  She laughed. “You’re kidding. Why would I give up my job at the bureau, where I’m now in line for a promotion, to come work for you as a Powell agent?”

  “Your working for me is not quite what I had in mind. I believe I said I’d like for you to work with me.”

  She tilted her head, looked up at him, and eyed him questioningly. “Isn’t that just a matter of semantics?”

  “No, not really.” He cupped her breasts in his hands.

  “Then you’re going to have to explain your offer in more detail.” She grasped his hands and moved them back to her waist.

  “What I had in mind was a partnership. A full partnership. And, if you insist, I might even consider changing the name of the agency to Powell and Baxter Private Security and Investigation.”

  “I’m totally confused, Mr. Powell. Why would you make me a partner and hand over half the agency to me?”

  “Well,” Griff said, “let’s call it a wedding present.”

  “Wedding present?” She turned halfway around and stared at him. “Unless I’m mistaken, a wedding implies marriage, right?”

  “Right.”

  She crawled out from the warm cocoon between his legs and sat beside him. “A marriage is usually preceded by an engagement.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And before there can be an engagement, someone has to ask someone else to marry them.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well?”

  “I had planned to wait and do this tonight,” Griff told her.

  “Then you sort of jumped the gun, didn’t you?”

  “Your ring is in my safe downstairs.”

  She leaned over, got right up in his face, and said, “You must be pretty sure of yourself if you bought me a ring.”

  “Just hopeful.”

  She smiled. “I might marry you. That is, when you ask me.”

  “That’s good to know.” He pulled her over and onto his lap. “What about the other proposal? Any possibility you might accept that one, too?”

  “Hmm … I’m not sure. But if I do, there won’t be any need to change the name of our agency.”

  “Our agency?”

  “Yes, our agency. After all, once we’re married, I’ll be Nicole Powell, won’t I?”

  “You want to take my name?”

  She wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed him. “Just call me an old-fashioned girlie-girl, but I can’t wait to become Mrs. Griffin Powell.”

  Griff chuckled. “Whew, that’s a big load off my mind. I was afraid you might expect me to become Mr. Nicole Baxter.”

  They both burst into laughter.

  Then Griff rolled her over onto the bed and took her breath away with a kiss that sealed their bargains.

  Please read on for an exciting sneak peek of

  Beverly Barton’s

  next thriller,

  COLD HEARTED,

  coming soon.

  Prologue

  Perhaps the best thing he could do for himself and everyone he loved was to commit suicide.

  Dan Price stared at the Glock pistol lying atop his desk. He had bought the 9mm automatic for his wife, but she had refused the gift, politely reminding him of her aversion to guns. But at his insistence, she had gone with him to the practice range and learned to use the weapon, only to please him. But to his knowledge, she had never carried the pistol, never kept it in her room or in her car.

  If his sweet Jordan had any idea that he was con
templating taking his own life, she would do her best to convince him that no matter what the future held, she would stand by him. It was her basic integrity and loyalty that had first attracted him to the woman who had become his greatest political asset.

  Dan lifted the half-full glass of Kentucky bourbon to his lips and finished off the remainder. The liquor burned a path down his esophagus and hit his belly like fire. He coughed a couple of times, then wiped his mouth, picked up the bottle and poured himself another drink.

  If he was going to do this—and he fully intended to end his life tonight—he knew he couldn’t do it stone cold sober. He wasn’t that courageous. Before he could put the hammer-forged barrel into his mouth and pull the trigger, he needed to be more than a little drunk.

  He sipped on the bourbon as he leaned back in the swivel desk chair and let his gaze travel over the room. His private study, as it has been his father’s and grandfather’s before him. An impressive room inside a two-hundred-year-old antebellum mansion, part of an estate that had been in his family since before the War Between the States. Generations of Price men had severed their country, first in wartime and then in local, state, and national politics. In Georgia, the name Price was synonymous with public service.

  If he killed himself, how would that affect his family’s good name? No Price man had ever taken the easy way out of a bad situation.

  But could he continue, knowing what the future held for him? Could he condemn Jordan to such a life? And what about Devon? And his brother, Ryan? They would never desert him, and that would mean great sacrifices for each of them.

  You don’t have to do this tonight. You have time.

  But how much time? Six months? A year?

  Dan finished off his second drink and poured himself a third.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway struck twice. Two in the morning.

  He unlocked the file cabinet in the bottom drawer of the desk, rummaged through the folders until he found the file he wanted. A copy of his will. His lawyer kept another copy and a third was inside his safe at the house in Alexandria. The contents of his will were not secret to anyone. Everything he possessed would be equally divided among Jordan, Devon and Ryan. Jordan had protested, telling him that she didn’t expect such an enormous legacy, but he had quieted her protests with a tender caress.

  “I owe you more than I will ever be able to repay,” he’d told her.

  Dan finished off his third drink.

  Minutes ticked by as he contemplated the Glock on his desk. Grandfather Price’s antique desk. Family lore claimed the desk had belonged to Jefferson Davis, a contemporary of his ancestor, General John Ryan Price.

  Dan poured another glass of bourbon, picked up the bottle and the glass and walked over to the leather Chesterfield sofa. He sat down, placed the bottle on the floor, and considered his options. Death was preferable to the fate that awaited him.

  Dan’s eyelids flickered open and shut. In the twilight zone of being half-awake/half-asleep, he didn’t immediately realize where he was or what had awakened him so abruptly. Woozy from sleep and overdosing on bourbon, Dan recalled that he had contemplated suicide to solve his problems, but in the end, drunk and oddly enough thinking more clearly than he had when he’d been sober, he had realized killing himself would have been the coward’s way out.

  Dan swatted at something cold against his cheek. His fingertips raked across the metal object. He opened his eyes fully, stared up at the woman leaning over him, and smiled. She did not return his smile. His gaze zipped from her familiar face to his own hand holding the 9mm, its barrel pressed firmly against his head. And it was only when he tried to ease the gun away from his head that he realized her hand covered his, her index finger squeezed tightly over his against the trigger.

  “What the—!”

  Before he could react, she forced his finger down against the trigger, firing the gut at point-blank range directly into his brain.

  Dan’s last thought was that someone he’d trusted completely had just killed him.

  BEVERLY BARTON · DON’T CRY

  The crime scenes are horrifying: the victims arranged with deliberate care, posed to appear alive despite their agonized last moments and the shocking nature of their deaths.

  For grief counsellor Audrey Sherrod it’s clear the murders are the work of a deranged serial killer. At first, the only link is the victims’ physical appearance. But then another connection emerges, tying them to a past series of horrifying crimes – crimes that hit all too close to home.

  As the truth is unravelled, its more twisted and terrifying than anyone could ever imagine. Prepare to lose sleep with this shocking and utterly engrossing thriller, for fans of Karen Rose and Karin Slaughter.

  ISBN: 978-0-00-745246-0

  About the Author

  An avid reader since childhood, Beverly Barton wrote her first book at the age of nine. Since then, she has gone on to write well over sixty novels and is a New York Times bestselling author.

  By the same author:

  Don’t Cry

  Amnesia

  Copyright

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First Published in Great Britain by

  HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

  Copyright © Beverly Barton 2013

  Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Ebook Bundle Edition (Containing The Dying Game, The Murder Game, Close Enough to Kill) © 2013 ISBN: 9780007527076

  Version 1

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