Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            Because he’d hurt her.

            You didn’t feel the same way.

            No. I didn’t.

            I know.

            He hadn’t been able to stop the words at that moment. Because he hadn’t felt that way, and letting her believe otherwise was cruel.

            Except . . . that wasn’t entirely true. He had felt that way once. He’d almost told her on her eighteenth birthday, but she’d shocked him with the news that she was joining the army. He’d stopped himself that night, too stunned, too hurt to bare his soul.

            Tom stared at his screen, at the photo of the man who’d been there when she’d needed someone. “I’m sorry you died,” he whispered to Fritz. “But I’m not sorry you saved her life. Thank you for that.”

            Then he closed both the browser tab and the compartment in his heart. He had work to do.

            He’d gotten into Sunnyside Oaks’s network and it was so easy, it was scary. He bet their system administrator believed he’d constructed a hackproof network. That admin would be wrong. A nurse working the night shift had clicked on a link he’d embedded in an e-mail to the staff in general with a bogus offer of free samples from a nonexistent pharmaceutical company.

            He’d sent his message to two dozen different accounts, all with names he’d simply guessed at based on work he’d done with other medical facilities. One had worked.

            Tom was violating the most basic of privacy laws at the moment, sifting through the facility’s patient database, looking for anyone who might be tied to Eden. So far, he’d found evidence of medical procedures done on movie stars and mob bosses, but nothing that resembled any of the Eden bigwigs. The facility hadn’t had a new arrival in more than five days.

            Tom put an alert on the database so that he’d know when they added any new patients and closed that tab as well. He needed to get a few hours’ sleep or he’d be of no use to Croft in the morning. He stood, starting to call for Pebbles, but remembered he’d left her next door.

            She’d be fine with Liza for a few more hours. He wasn’t going to bother Liza again tonight.

            Because you are the biggest coward ever.

            It was true. He didn’t want to face her again. His emotions were too raw and too unclear.

            What was clear, though, was his need to see her safe. He’d go over in the morning before he went to work. He’d make her promise to stay home. To stay safe.




SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

            THURSDAY, MAY 25, 7:00 A.M.

            “He’s awake. DJ, he’s awake. Come—”

            DJ jolted to consciousness, his hands halfway to Coleen’s throat before he realized where he was. “God.” He shook himself, trying to dispel the sudden surge of adrenaline that was too much to handle on so little sleep. He felt like he had nodded off just minutes ago.

            Fuck. He searched frantically for his phone, finding it on the chair beside him. It must have slipped from his hand. The screen was dark, so no one had seen what he’d been looking at.

            After Kowalski’s revelation that Ephraim had murdered his old doctor, DJ had spent most of the hours of Pastor’s surgery reading articles about Ephraim Burton’s recent tangle with the law. He’d learned that Ephraim had killed a buttload of people, dropping clues along with every corpse. He’d also noticed that Eden hadn’t been mentioned once in any of the articles.

            That was good. But also bad. It was good that Eden wasn’t on anyone’s radar, so if Pastor muttered it in his sleep, the rehab staff wouldn’t know what it meant. However, the Feds knew about Eden. Gideon, Mercy, and Amos had to have told them. That they were holding the knowledge from the press didn’t bode well at all. The only reference to Eden that he’d seen had been a picture of one of the lockets. The locket had come up in another case, having belonged to a victim of a serial killer who’d killed one of Ephraim’s former wives.

            The wife that Ephraim had claimed died while trying to escape. The wife whose “body” he’d brought back, too decomposed to identify. In other words, he’d lied. Like they all did.

            DJ would have loved for Pastor to hear about Ephraim’s lies, to keep him angry about Ephraim and not angry at DJ, but that same news story had featured photos of Mercy Callahan. It would be like shooting himself in the face.