Danger and Desire
Kimberly Kincaid
Rachel Grant
Cat Johnson
Maryann Jordan
Cristin Harber
Janie Crouch
Caitlyn O’Leary
Elle James
Copyright
THE ROOKIE © 2020 Kimberly Kincaid
NIGHT OWL © 2020 Rachel Grant
DESIRE IN D.C. © 2020 Cat Johnson
LEVI: A LIGHTHOUSE SECURITY
INVESTIGATIONS NOVELLA © 2020 Maryann Jordan
THE GUARDIAN © 2020 Cristin Harber
SCOUT © 2020 Janie Crouch
LAWSON AND JILL: A NIGHT STORM LEGACY NOVEL © 2020 Caitlyn O’Leary
BREAKING AWAY © 2020 Elle James
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Formatted by Erica Alexander @ Serendipity Formatting
Contents
The Rookie by Kimberly Kincaid
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Night Owl by Rachel Grant
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Desire in D.C. by Cat Johnson
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Levi by Maryann Jordan
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Guardian by Cristin Harber
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Scout by Janie Crouch
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Lawson and Jill by Caitlyn O’Leary
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Breaking Away by Elle James
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
The Rookie by Kimberly Kincaid
The Intelligence Unit
THE ROOKIE, by Kimberly Kincaid
Police recruit Xander Matthews wants two things:
to help peopleand to keep his dark and dangerous pastin his rearview, where it belongs.
He never thought he’d see brash, beautiful A.D.A. Tara Kingstonafter she tried to prosecute him two years ago.
Yet here she is, smack in the middle of a crime sceneand now they have to work together
to catch a killer.
Tara prides herself on being tough—after all, she learned the hard way how fleeting life can be.
But the closer she gets to Xander
the more she wants to open up and let him in.
The more she wants everything.
The stakes are highand the passion is hot.
But Xander’s secrets run deepand now, their hearts and their livesare on the line…
Chapter 1
As far as Tara Kingston was concerned, not all murderers were created equal. Some killed people out of hate, some out of anger or revenge. Some were twisted enough to do it for chuckles. Some—and this category had always had the ability to chill Tara’s skin and send her stomach toward her Manolos—were frightening enough to do it for no reason at all. The murders Tara had helped to prosecute in her three years working in the Remington District Attorney’s office had ranged from emotion-fueled snap decisions to calculation and ice-cold blood. There was only one thing that every single one of them had in common.
The people who’d committed them all deserved to pay for their crimes. And even though it wouldn’t reverse the one senseless murder that mattered to her most, Tara could make sure that when wrong was done, justice was served.
Because she was going to miss her best friend for the rest of her life.
“Stop,” she said, her voice echoing through her office. The rest of the staff, including her workaholic boss, Bennett Alvarez, were long gone. If she’d clocked enough hours to have even a hint of a weak moment, it was time to toss in the towel for the night. No one wanted a soft, sentimental lawyer—especially not the families of the victims of the case she was working on right now. Ricky Sansone had committed three murders, maybe more, while he was selling illegal guns and God only knew what else to criminals with rap sheets as long as Tara’s leg. She’d busted her ass to work the case with Remington’s Intelligence Unit, carefully cultivating an agreement with a young woman who worked in Sansone’s nightclub to get her to work as an informant and testify against him. Between the intel they got from Amour—whose real name was Aimee and who wasn’t even old enough to drink, let alone work in a seedy-ass nightclub that was really a front for Sansone’s shifty extra-curriculars—and the evidence collected by the detectives at the Thirty-Third, Tara had been able to build a case and get an arrest warrant. Bail had been set at a staggering one million dollars, which Tara had thought was a victory…right up until Sansone had posted it.
But his days breathing free air were numbered. He was dangerous. Deadly. She was going to need all the fortitude she could work up in order to prepare for the trial, but she would put him away forever.
Tomorrow, her weary brain told her, and her burning eyes ganged up in agreement. Thanks to the precautionary measures she’d insisted upon as
a condition of his bail, Sansone was being carefully monitored by the RPD. Tara had six weeks until the trial started, and it was—shit—nine thirty on a Friday night. Her yoga pants and the leftover Pad Thai in her fridge were calling her name. She’d start fresh in the morning.
Turning in her desk chair, she powered down her laptop and slid it into her bag. A few files went on top, along with the legal pad she’d jotted a few notes on throughout the day. Remembering the self-defense class she’d taken last year, Tara pulled out her keys so she wouldn’t have to hunt for them in the dark and made her way out of her office, the sound of her heels clicking on the polished floor seeming overly loud with everyone gone. Exhaustion set in, turning her shoulders heavy as she stepped into the elevator, and she allowed herself the luxury of a too-long blink as the car descended to the ground level. The quick refresher gave her enough energy to steel her spine once the doors trundled open, and her legs took the autopilot route out of the building.
The night air was still residually warm from the brutal late-June heat wave that had put a chokehold on most of North Carolina over the last few days. Tara savored her inhale despite its muggy state, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped from the twist at her nape. She needed to schedule a yoga class—she’d already missed two this week because of all this trial prep—and make sure she hit the dry cleaners tomorrow to pick up her lucky suit to wear in court on Tuesday. And, oh, she had to order flowers for her mom’s birthday next—
The chime of her cell phone interrupted both her thoughts and the quiet, making her jump, then making her laugh at herself for doing so. Slipping her hand into the side pocket of her messenger bag, she palmed her phone and smiled at the name on the caller ID.
“Hi, Amour.” Tara hit the button on the key fob in her other hand, shifting the phone between her shoulder and her ear as the locks on her BMW disengaged with a beep-click. “How’s it—”
The pain-laced moan filtering over the line cut Tara’s question off at the knees.
“Amour?” Dread shuddered down Tara’s spine, cold and clammy despite the humid night. Oh, God. “Amour, talk to me. Where are you?”
“Tara,” came the barely-there whisper.
“I’m here,” she promised. “Tell me what’s going on. Are you hurt?”
Amour’s whimper in reply was all the affirmative Tara needed, the sound claiming her gut in an instant. “Please. Help me.”
Tara’s brain kicked her thoughts into action. “Don’t hang up, do you hear me?” She flung her car door open, dumping her bag inside and yanking herself into the driver’s seat. She needed to get EMS on the line so they could access the GPS in Amour’s phone and send help. “I’m going to put you on hold and get nine-one-one on the line. Do not hang up, Amour.”
Willing her fingers not to shake so hard they couldn’t function, Tara pressed the mute button for three seconds that might as well have been a month, then dialed nine-one-one.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the operator asked, his voice smooth and sure.
Tara’s was neither. “My name is Tara Kingston, and I’m an ADA in Bennett Alvarez’s office. I’ve got an informant on the other line who’s in danger. I’m patching her through.”
Praying that Amour was still there—please, please, please—Tara punched the button that would—please—bring her back on the line. “Amour? Are you there? There’s an operator listening.”
“Tara,” she croaked. “It hurts.”
“Ma’am, can you tell me where you are so I can send help?” the operator asked.
Amour whimpered. “H-home.”
“Twelve Broadmoor Street, in North Point,” Tara supplied, switching the call over to her car’s Bluetooth and pulling out of her parking spot. She’d arranged for at least a dozen Ubers to take Amour home as they’d put together the case against Sansone. Of course, she was halfway across town, and damn it! Tara had to hurry.
“Ma’am, can you tell me if you’re in danger right now?” The operator was trained to keep his tone calm, Tara knew, but the concern in his voice was obvious.
“I don’t…know. There was a man,” Amour murmured. “He…I can’t…my…my head feels funny. Hurts.”
Tara bit her bottom lip hard enough to make it throb, letting the nine-one-one operator do his job even though she wanted nothing more than to loosen the scream in her throat.
“I’m dispatching police and EMS to your location, ma’am,” the operator said. “Do you know if the man is still there? Are you in danger?”
“I don’t…see him…he…said…not to…” Amour’s whisper faded into a white-noise whoosh of silence on the line.
Tara’s heart vaulted against her breastbone. “Amour? Are you there?”
“Ma’am?” The operator’s voice tightened. “Ma’am, if you can hear me, stay on the line. Don’t hang up, even if you can’t talk. Help is on the way.”
Please, God, Tara thought as she jammed her foot even harder over the BMW’s accelerator. Please don’t let me be too late again.
“You try and lay claim to that Cuban sandwich, and me and you are gonna have words, rookie.”
Xander Matthews looked up from the takeout bag in his lap and placed a hand over the Kevlar turning his patrol uniform into a sauna. This heat wave gave zero fucks about the fact that the sun had set, or that the air conditioning in the cruiser where he’d spent the last eleven hours was iffy, at best. Still, the smile he leveled at his partner was genuine.
“After all this quality time we’ve spent together, you think I’d do that to you? I’m wounded, Sergeant Dade. Truly.”
She snorted, just as Xander knew she would. Despite her petite stature and her sweet, Halle Berry looks, Lucinda Dade had a mile-wide reputation for being one of Remington’s toughest patrol cops. But after a year of working a beat under her supervision, Xander also knew that she was as fair as she was fierce.
Also, a sucker for a good Cuban sandwich.
“Your charm’s no good over here, Matthews,” Dade said, her mouth forming a scowl that the rest of her expression couldn’t make stick.
“If I’m charming, it’s only because I learned from the best,” Xander pointed out with a grin as he passed over her sandwich. While he might’ve been laying the rest on with a trowel just to mess with her—he was her partner, after all, which made him practically duty-bound to give her at least a little crap on occasion, rookie or not—the part about her being the best, he meant. Dade had served the Remington Police Department for fifteen years. She’d passed up numerous well-earned promotions to stay right where she was, preferring to “keep one eye on the street and the other one on rookies”—something she reminded him of at least daily.
Not that Xander minded. He was here to be a good cop, and that meant learning from the sharpest and most streetwise. If it also meant crazy hours (it did) and work hard enough to make most grown people weep (yep again), then so be it.
He was all too happy to keep his head down, his ears open, and his boots on the straight and narrow.
It was the least he could do to atone for the sins of his past.
“Mmm.” Dade slid some PhD-level side-eye across the front seat of their cruiser before softening into a smile. “I am pretty damn good. And you’re pretty damn lucky the guy running your sister’s kitchen makes the best Cuban sandwich in the city.”
“You’re not going to get any arguments out of me on that one,” Xander agreed. Kennedy managed one of Remington’s most popular bar and grills, and she never hesitated to have a grab-and-go meal ready for him and Dade when they were on patrol. She hadn’t been thrilled about his decision to become a cop—ever since they’d been reunited two years ago, she’d done some serious leveling up in the protective older sister department. Considering the dangerous circumstances that had brought them back together after five years of near radio silence, he couldn’t exactly blame her. But Xander had been adamant.
He’d been a party to that danger, and a lot of really good co
ps had helped him out of a shit situation. Becoming a really good cop in return so he could help people, too? Made sense, no matter how dangerous it might get.
Before Xander could unearth the Tex-Mex turkey sandwich Kennedy had put in the bag for him—that homemade Chipotle mayo was a work of freaking art—the radio on the cruiser’s dashboard crackled to life.
Danger and Desire: A Romantic Suspense Anthology Page 1
