by Diane Kelly
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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To Jana Upton, who wrote as Trinity Blake. Your life story ended much too soon, with chapters left unwritten. But it featured a strong, beautiful, smart, and creative heroine I am glad to have had the chance to know. See you at The End.
Acknowledgments
As always, lots of people played a role in getting this book out into the world, and I’m grateful for all of their help and support.
Thanks to the IRS special agents who graciously granted me an interview all those years ago. You shared some invaluable information about your intriguing work and impressed me so much with your knowledge, skills, and drive. It’s good to know the American coffers are in such capable hands, and that you are fighting on behalf of us all to ensure fair and honest tax administration. Though I’ve stretched reality in these books for the sake of humor or efficiency and Tara is hardly a model agent, I hope that my books reflect the respect I have for the agency and your profession. Thanks for all you do, and keep up the good fight.
Thanks to my wonderful daughter Lindsay—a talented writer, dancer, actress, playwright, screenwriter, and all-around person. Thanks for not only giving me the idea of the rental scam while you were apartment hunting months ago, but for also schooling me on the ins and outs of Lyft and Uber.
Thanks to my editor, Holly Ingraham, for taking a chance on an aspiring writer seven years ago and helping me hone my skills since. I couldn’t ask for a better editor.
Thanks to Sarah Melnyck, Paul Hochman, Allison Ziegler, Jennie Conway, and the others at St. Martin’s who worked to get this book to readers. Y’all make a great team.
Thanks to Danielle Christopher and Monika Roe for creating such fun book covers for this series.
Thanks to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for all you do in furthering my career.
Thanks to Liz Bemis and the staff of Bemis Promotions for my great Web site and newsletters.
Many other writers helped me develop this series or gave me encouragement along the way. Thanks to the members of the Kick-Ass Writers Group—Urania Fung, Simon Rex-Lear, Gay Downs, Vannetta Chapman, Charles McMillen, Celya Bowers, and Kennedy Shaw. Wow, we were just kids when we met, huh? Big thanks to the Killer Fiction Writers—Christie Craig, Jana DeLeon, Leslie Langtry, Gemma Halliday, Kyra Davis, Angie Fox, Amanda Brice, Kathleen Bacus, and Robin Kaye. You invited me to join your blog even though I was still unpublished at the time. Your belief in me meant more than I could ever say. Thanks to Angela Cavener, Angela Hicks, Jana Upton, Michella Chappell, DD Ayres, Candace Havens, Kristan Higgins, Tina Ferraro, Cindy Kirk, Lorraine Heath, Molly Cannon, Andi King, and the other untold members of the Dallas Area Romance Authors, Romance Writers of America, and Mystery Writers of America who have served as my support system all these years and whose critique, suggestions, and/or volunteer efforts have furthered my career and made our industry what it is today.
A debt of gratitude is also owed to Allison Kelley, Executive Director of Romance Writers of America, as well as the entire RWA staff. They work hard to protect the interests of authors, to facilitate the relationships between authors and publishers, and to make sure readers get quality books from well-educated writers.
Thanks to my friends who have cheered me on along the way and shared my books with their friends and book clubs. I’m so lucky to have a great group of friends like you in my life.
Thanks to my husband, kids, and extended family, who have been supportive and encouraging, and at times even unwittingly lent their names to my characters. You are my rocks.
Now for some especially sappy stuff …
Though IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway and the other characters in this series are fictional, they have become like friends and family to me. This is the final book in the series, and it’s hard to say goodbye to them even though I know it’s time and I’m sending them off to live long and happy lives off the page. These characters would not have enjoyed all of these fun adventures if it weren’t for you wonderful readers who have bought my books and made my writing career possible. Thank you, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for giving me my dream job! There’s nothing as wonderful as connecting with readers through my stories. I’m happy knowing the books in this series have made you feel, think, and laugh. I hope you’ll venture into the worlds of the other fictional friends I’ll create for you in the future.
I wish all of you big tax refunds, freedom from audits, and many happy returns.
chapter one
Bride to Be … Killed?
Early on a Sunday morning in mid-August, I sat at my fiancé’s kitchen table and placed a stamp on the last of our one hundred and thirty-eight wedding invitations. Done! Yay!
In a few short weeks, Nick and I would be tying the knot. Woot-woot! But until then, we’d be busy with our jobs as special agents for the Internal Revenue Service, fighting tax evasion and white-collar crime. Criminals don’t take a day off, and neither would we—at least not until after the wedding when we planned to spend a romantic week in Cancún, Mexico. Margaritas. Cabana boys with sexy Spanish accents. Beautiful Mexican beaches. Life doesn’t get any better than that.
Even though the invitations wouldn’t be picked up until tomorrow, I figured I might as well get them in the mail. There was a blue collection box only a quarter mile away, at the entrance to the neighborhood. Besides, Nick’s Australian shepherd mix, Daffodil, had been dropping not-so-subtle hints that she wanted to go for a walk. She’d pawed the inside of his front door, nudged my leg, and when that failed, she’d retrieved her leash and brought it to me in her mouth, dropping it at my feet as if to say Hey, dummy. Am I making myself clear now?
I reached out and ruffled her head. “Okay, girl. I give in. We’ll go for a walk.”
After clipping the leash to her collar, I stashed the invitations in my tote bag and slung the straps over my shoulder. Nick was still asleep in his bed upstairs. He’d had a tough week, learning the ropes as he prepared to move up the ladder at the IRS, taking on his new position as codirector of the IRS Criminal Investigations Division in Dallas. I let him continue snoozing. He’d earned it. Besides, he’d need to be well rested for later. We planned to spend the day packing for our upcoming move, and he’d be the one doing the heavy lifting.
Daffodil dragged me to the door, prancing happily on the floor, her nails clicking on the tile and her fluffy tail whipping back and forth. We eased past the stack of empty boxes in the foyer, headed out onto the porch, and made our way down to the sidewalk. When she stopped to sniff the tree out front, she took advantage of the opportunity to multitask and simultaneously crouched to relieve herself.
We continued down the sidewalk, pausing on occasion so she could smell a bush here, a curb there. It wasn’t unusual for cars to be parked on the street in our neighborhood of town houses, so I paid little attention to the white pickup sitting halfway between Nick’s town house and mine down the block. It l
ooked just the same as thousands of other trucks in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.
We continued on, passing my place across the street. In the yard was a recently erected FOR SALE sign with the phone number of my Realtor, whose tax returns I’d prepared while working my former job at the CPA firm of Martin & McGee. Nick and I were in the process of buying the house next door to his mother in another part of town, so I hoped my place would sell quickly. Couldn’t hurt to get my equity out of my current home and put more down on the new place, lower our monthly payments.
We also planned to hold a garage sale at my place next Saturday to get rid of the things we’d no longer need once we were married. Given that we’d both lived on our own for several years, we had duplicates of some items. Two living room sets. Two sets of pots and pans. Two gun cabinets. We’d begun sorting through our things and separating them into piles of stuff to keep and stuff to put out at the garage sale.
While we hadn’t yet agreed whose living room furniture or pans we’d be selling off, there was no doubt we’d be keeping my gun cabinet. Nick had bought mine for me for Valentine’s Day. It was painted a glossy red and held my extensive collection of handguns and rifles, even a sawed-off shotgun. But there would be room for Nick’s guns in it, too. He had fewer than I did. He’d grown up in the country where he might need a rifle to shoot into the air to scare off a wandering coyote before it went for the chicken coop. I, on the other hand, grew up in a family of gun nuts who liked to hunt. While I’d inherited their affinity for the sport of shooting, I had no killer instinct and couldn’t imagine taking aim at an innocent deer or bird. I preferred target practice only, putting a bullet through a paper target or a root beer can. That’s not to say I’d never shot anyone. I’d put bullets in the legs of suspects after they’d first shot at me, and I’d even put a bullet through the brain of a member of a dangerous drug cartel. My one and only kill. I hoped it would stay that way. I derived no pleasure from having to use my weapon against people. I hoped I would never have to do it again.
“This way, girl,” I told the dog as I rounded the corner. Daffodil turned up the street too, trotting a few feet ahead of me as we made our way onto the main road.
We reached the mailbox and I circled around to the front of it, grabbing stacks of invitations out of my bag and slipping them through the slot, where they plunked to the metal floor inside. Finished, we began to head back down the sidewalk.
We’d taken only a few steps when my ears picked up the sound of a big automobile engine coming up the street in front of us. Daffodil heard it, too. I looked up to see the white truck heading our way. Still, I would have paid it no mind had the dog not pricked up her ears and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at it, as if she sensed something was amiss.
“Everything okay, Daffy?”
VROOOOOM! The driver floored the engine and swerved right at us.
What the—?!?
Luckily for us both, Daffodil’s canine instincts were quicker than my inferior human ones, and she darted behind a mature oak tree, yanking me after her. Not a second too soon, either. As I fell to the grass behind the tree, the truck came up the curb, ran over the sidewalk where we’d just been standing, and hit the mailbox with a resounding BAM!
The four legs of the box had been bolted to the concrete. But not anymore. The force of the impact ripped them from their moorings. The box flew up in the air and performed a back flip, its door opening and showering out wedding invitations in every direction before the box came down in the center of the main road. CLANG! The white pickup never even braked, careening back onto the street and roaring off before I could catch its license-plate number.
SCREEEEEEECH! An oncoming red Ford Fiesta braked hard but couldn’t stop before crashing into the mailbox. CRASH! An instant later there was a poom as the airbags inflated, followed by tinkle-tinkle-tinkle as the Fiesta became a metal piñata, raining parts onto the asphalt. Meanwhile, the mailbox spun like a top down the street, finally coming to rest against the curb.
As I levered myself up from the ground, the airbag deflated to reveal a teenaged girl at the wheel. Heck, the ink was probably still wet on her license. Her eyes bugged wide and her mouth hung open in shock.
I ran to the curb, holding Daffodil’s leash tight. “Are you okay?” I hollered to the girl.
She looked at me through the window and burst into tears but nonetheless managed to nod, her dark curls bobbing about her face.
I whipped my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911.
“Dallas 911,” came a male voice. “What’s your emergency?”
“A driver in a white pickup nearly ran over me and my dog, and hit a mail collection box. The mailbox ended up in the road and a car crashed into it.” I gave him the names of the streets at the intersection. “Last I saw the truck it was heading east.”
“Did you get a license-plate number?”
“No. It all happened too fast. But there’s got to be front end damage to the truck.”
“Anyone injured?”
“No.” Thank goodness!
“I’ll get law enforcement en route.”
By this time, traffic had slowed to a crawl as cars backed up behind the stationary Ford and rubberneckers inched around it, gawking as they rolled over the invitations we’d paid a pretty penny for and spent untold hours addressing and stamping. But there was nothing I could do about that now. Holding Daffodil’s leash tight, I stepped up to the curb and motioned for the girl to unroll the passenger window. “The police are on their way.”
She held out her phone to me. “Can you call my parents?” she blubbered. “They’re going to be so mad!”
“Not at you,” I assured her. “I’ll let them know this wasn’t your fault.”
I took the phone, found “Mom” on her list of contacts, and dialed the number. “Hello,” I said. “My name is Tara Holloway. Your daughter is fine but she’s been in an accident.”
“WHAT?!?” shrieked her mother.
“She’s okay,” I repeated to calm the woman. “The accident wasn’t her fault. A truck hit a mailbox and it flew out into the street right in front of her car. She’s not hurt. She’s just scared.”
I gave the woman our location.
“I’ll be right there!” she cried.
I ended the call and handed the phone back to the girl. “Your mom’s on her way.”
Sobbing, she nodded and took her phone.
The girl taken care of, I phoned Nick. “Put on some pants,” I told him. “Daffy and I need you.” I gave him a quick rundown. Truck. Mailbox. Crash.
“Holy shit!” he hollered into the phone. “I’ll be right there!”
We ended the call and I slid the phone into my pocket. In mere seconds, Nick came running around the corner in sneakers, a rumpled pair of shorts and nothing else.
“Are you all right?” he shouted as he ran toward us.
“We’re fine.” Well, other than my shoulder having been pulled out of the socket. But I wasn’t about to complain.
Nick grabbed me in a bear hug and pulled me to him, holding me so tight I could barely breathe.
When he finally released me, I told him about his hero dog. “Daffodil yanked me to safety. No telling what would have happened if she hadn’t clued in and pulled me out of the way.” Actually, that was a lie. I knew exactly what would have happened. I would’ve been plowed down, that’s what. I owed her my life.
Nick crouched next to me and cradled Daffodil’s face in his hands, looking into her eyes. “You okay, baby girl?”
She trembled in fear, but nonetheless gave him a lick on the cheek. He returned the gesture by kissing her snout. “I can’t believe someone tried to run over an innocent dog.” He stood and turned to me. “Unfortunately, I have no trouble believing someone would want to run you over.”
I frowned and put my hands on my hips. “Thanks a lot!”
“You know what I mean.” Nick’s eyes darkened with concern. “You’ve made a lot of enemies.”
I certainly had. Trouble just seemed to find me. Since joining the IRS, I’d put dozens of people behind bars. Far as I knew, though, all of them were still behind those bars. “Maybe this was just a freak thing,” I said. “Maybe the driver wasn’t aiming for me. Maybe the driver just lost control of the truck.”
“I suppose that’s possible. But until we know for sure this was an accident we’d better keep our guard up.” Nick turned to the crumpled car and eyed the sobbing girl behind the wheel. “Let’s get her out of there.”
“Good idea.”
Putting up a hand to halt the traffic, he circled around the car and opened her door. “Why don’t you come wait with us?”
She swiped her tears away and nodded. She tried to climb out, realized her seat belt was still on, and reached down to release it. Nick held out a hand to help her out of the car.
After leading her over to the oak tree where I waited with Daffodil, Nick glanced back at the envelopes strewn all over the road. “Tell me those aren’t our wedding invitations all over the street.”
I sighed. “Wish I could.”
chapter two
Special Delivery
Sirens sounded in the distance, drawing closer. A minute later, a fortyish female police officer pulled up behind the Fiesta, the lights flashing on her cruiser. She climbed out and came over to speak with us. Her gaze went to Nick, and she eyed his biceps appreciatively. I used to get jealous when this type of thing happened, but by now I’d gotten used to it. Female attention was a given when you were dating a hottie. Fortunately, Nick didn’t let it go to his head.
After obtaining our names, she said, “All units are keeping an eye out for a damaged white pickup in the vicinity. Nothing so far.” She turned to the girl, angling her head to indicate the crumpled Fiesta. “That your car, hon?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “My mom and dad bought it for me for my birthday last week.”
