Love you to Death

  “A new star in the romantic suspense galaxy.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  PRAISE FOR SHANNON K. BUTCHER’S THRILLERS

  NO ESCAPE

  “4½ Stars! Top pick! A clever premise… High-octane thrills with top-notch drama.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine

  “Edgy and intense… A sizzling romance… Make yourself comfortable and turn on the light—once you start reading No Escape, you’ll not want to put it down until the very last page.”

  — RomRevToday.com

  “A tautly written romantic thriller, chilling in premise with a thrilling secondary plot and sensual romance to entice readers from page one.”

  — FreshFiction.com

  “Outstanding… intriguing… Steamy and romantic love scenes… Fast-paced, suspenseful, and sensual.”

  — RomanceJunkies.com

  “An exciting, suspenseful ride that goes from zero to sixty on the first page… A first-class romantic suspense that satisfies from beginning to end and one that shouldn’t be missed.”

  — FallenAngelReviews.com

  “Suspenseful… palatable danger and plenty of sexual tension… Stunning.”

  — SingleTitles.com

  “A nicely paced and involving romantic suspense that will keep readers flipping the pages well into the wee hours.”

  — BookLoons.com

  “Solid, quality romantic suspense that’s well worth reading.”

  — LikesBooks.com

  NO CONTROL

  “Tense, fast-paced… Believable and gut-wrenching… Butcher is in control.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Butcher is one to watch! Characters that tug on your heartstrings and a well-formed plot make this romantic suspense a must-read!”

  — ArmchairInterviews.com

  “Top pick! 4½ Stars! Provides ample evidence that Butcher is on the fast track to becoming a major presence in the romantic suspense genre. Chilling plotlines and layered characters add serious punch to this thriller!”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine

  NO REGRETS

  “4½ Stars! Top pick!… A promising new talent who wastes no time getting gritty has just joined the romantic suspense world. Powerful emotions permeate this intense story.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine

  “An absolute must-read… Romantic suspense at its very best!”

  —MARIAH STEWART, New York Times best-selling author

  “Action, adventure, and romance with as many twists and turns as a roller-coaster ride.”

  —CINDY GERARD, USA Today best-selling author

  “Four stars! A fast-paced, character-driven story.”

  — HuntressReviews.com

  “A romantic suspense that simply burns up the pages… Readers will swoon to the hero and identify with the delicate heroine. No Regrets will leave readers breathless.”

  — SuspenseRomanceWriters.com

  “She has a unique voice with an uncanny ability to create characters that are interesting and refreshingly different. Readers will look forward to reading Ms. Butcher’s next novel.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A good, fast thriller… I could not stop reading it.”

  — GumshoeReview.com

  “Excitement, adventure, and steamy scenes keep you turning pages to keep up with the many twists in the story… No Regrets is a delightful read.”

  — BookLoons.com

  “Shannon K. Butcher has hit this one out of the park. The suspense will keep you on the edge of your seat… The tension is so thick you will jump with the creaks in your own house. And not only is the suspense tension readily apparent, so is the sexual tension.”

  — OnceUponARomance.com

  “5 Cups! Takes the reader by storm. This is one intense, driven read that should not be missed.”

  — CoffeeTimeRomance.com

  “Fast-paced, pulling the reader along… I thoroughly enjoyed watching David and Noelle as they work through an exceptional situation and come together.”

  — JandysBooks.com

  ALSO BY SHANNON K. BUTCHER

  No Escape

  No Control

  No Regrets

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Shannon K. Butcher

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/foreverromance

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55878-5

  Contents

  PRAISE FOR SHANNON K. BUTCHER’S THRILLERS

  ALSO BY SHANNON K. BUTCHER

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  THE DISH

  This book is dedicated to all the loving sisters out there, but most especially to mine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Robert Schneider for his invaluable insight into the mind of a serial killer. You saved me hours of difficult and creepy research, and I’m sorry if I messed anything up in the process of breathing life into the profile.

  My thanks also go out to my faithful critique group: Sara Attebury, Dyann Barr, Julie Fedynich, Sherry Foley, Liz Lafferty, and Claire Ashgrove. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your putting up with my never-ending requests for feedback.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Breaking into a house was a lot harder than it looked on TV.

  Elise McBride held the small flashlight in her mouth, smoothed the warped edge of her credit card with her fingers, and tried to shove it between the door and the jamb again, with no luck. All she managed to do was take off another layer of plastic and shred the magnetic strip.

  Fantastic. Getting a replacement card while she was traveling wasn’t going to be any fun.

  Defeated, Elise dropped her head against the cool wood of her sister’s front door and tried not to cry in frustration. After days with no contact from her gabby sister, Elise was sure Ashley was in trouble. The deep kind.

  Her gut churned with worry, warning her that something was wrong. Ashley had a tendency to disappear, wandering off on bizarre, artistic tangents with whatever hot g
uy was at hand, but never for this long, and never without returning a phone call.

  Elise had left dozens of messages on her sister’s phone over the past few days, and not one of them had been answered.

  The police had promised her they’d check Ashley’s home, but what if they’d forgotten, or lied to Elise just to get her to stop bugging them? What if she was inside, hurt or unconscious and unable to reach a phone? What if she was lying in a hospital somewhere with amnesia, unable to call for help because she couldn’t remember who she was? What if she’d driven her car into a ditch, gotten trapped, and no one had found her yet?

  Stop it. Get a grip. All that doom-and-gloom stuff sounded like Mom talking. If Elise had listened to her, she’d believe that everyone died in a ditch wearing dirty underwear after being attacked by boys who wanted only one thing.

  Ashley was fine. She had to be. Elise just needed to figure out where she’d gone this time, and the key to that mystery was likely inside her sister’s tiny house.

  Elise briefly thought about breaking a window, but it was around three in the morning. Haven, Illinois, was as still and quiet as the cool morning air, and she was afraid one of the nearby neighbors would call the police if they heard breaking glass. She wasn’t about to get hauled to jail for breaking and entering while her sister was in trouble.

  Maybe Ashley had stashed a key somewhere. Heaven knew she was always forgetting or losing things. Including keys. After years of being coddled by family, Ashley was on her own now, developing coping mechanisms to combat all her flighty, brainless habits—like misplacing keys. At least that’s what she said. She’d told Elise many times how she was fine living on her own and didn’t need a keeper, no matter how much Elise worried.

  And she did. Every day. She worried that Ashley would get lost in a particularly engrossing series of paintings and forget to eat. She worried that Ashley would be driving along, see a bird she wanted to paint, try to follow it, and crash her car into a tree. She worried that Ashley would go home with the wrong man one of these days, and rather than spending a fun weekend in bed, she’d become a victim.

  Ashley was way too trusting with men, way too easily swayed by a sweet smile and a confident wink. One of these days, it was going to get her in trouble.

  Maybe it already had.

  Elise had to get in her house and find out.

  The front porch was littered with springtime lawn ornaments and pots of flowers—both fake and dead. A dozen wind chimes hung in stillness, though Elise wished for a wind to kick them up and cover any noise she was making. A blown-glass globe sat in a wrought-iron stand right next to the door. The base of it was mosaic tile depicting a stylized peacock—Ashley’s design, no doubt.

  Elise tipped the stand, shined her flashlight under it and took a look, praying she’d find a key. No luck. She searched under all the flowerpots, sculpted frogs, lawn gnomes, and even the doormat with no success. Her flashlight beam bobbed over the porch, glinting off the wind chimes.

  Frustration and a growing sense of panic gripped Elise hard. A cold sweat formed along her spine, making her shiver in the cool May air.

  She was going to have to break a window. There was no help for it. She couldn’t stand around out here in the dark when the key to her sister’s disappearance might be right inside that door.

  Elise clamped the slim flashlight in her mouth to hold it while she took off her jacket. She could use the fabric to mute the sound of breaking glass and hope the neighbors were all heavy sleepers.

  She tipped her head back a bit when she slid the jacket off, and the silhouette of a key appeared on the porch ceiling. Elise followed the beam of light to the small wind chime dangling near the door. It was made from a variety of household bits, including a tarnished knife, a can opener, chunks of broken colored glass, and wire. Everything was painted in lazy swirls of color that Elise instantly recognized as Ashley’s work. Even the key was painted.

  Surely, Ashley wouldn’t be foolish enough to dangle the key to her front door in plain sight? It had to be an old key.

  Then again, this was Ashley. If the key was at hand when she went into that creative zone, she wouldn’t have thought twice about using it.

  Being careful not to make a racket, Elise gripped the wind chime in her hand to keep everything quiet and eased it from the suspended hook. She separated the key from the rest of the piece, then slid it into the lock. It went in easily and turned without effort.

  Ashley’s front door swung open and Elise stood there, dreading that first step. If she failed to find her sister now, it was completely her fault. She couldn’t blame it on a locked door.

  Part of her was terrified she wouldn’t be able to find Ashley. The rest of her was terrified that she would, and that it would be too late.

  Pretend you’re not afraid. That’s what she always did whenever the story she was covering got dangerous. She’d straighten her spine, pretend she wasn’t queasy and shaking, and move on. As a freelance reporter, she had no choice but to move on or go hungry, so she moved. But the stakes were higher this time. Her sweet, too-trusting sister needed her, and she couldn’t fail.

  Elise stepped inside.

  Trent Brady’s flighty neighbor was out of town again, but someone was creeping around her house all the same. At three in the morning.

  Cop instincts he’d tried for two years to kill came roaring back to life, making him reach for his gun. Of course, there was no weapon strapped to his hip, nor would there ever be again, but it was a reflex he hadn’t been able to stifle.

  Trent set the sleeping pill he’d been about to swallow aside. It wouldn’t have worked anyway. They never did.

  Through his kitchen window, he watched the intruder’s flashlight beam dart around clumsily. Whoever he was, this guy was a novice. Judging from what Trent could see of his build, he was young, too—just the right age to learn a lesson.

  A slow smile pulled at Trent’s mouth. It had been a long time since he’d had the pleasure of educating a youngster. He’d almost forgotten how much he missed it. Almost.

  It took him only a few seconds to slide on a pair of jeans and shove his feet into grass-stained sneakers. He was out the door before he realized he hadn’t called the police. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten that it was no longer his duty to deal with this. No longer his right.

  Trent turned around, made a quick call to his buddy on the Haven police force, but refused to wait for him to show up. Little Ashley McBride was a sweet kid, even if she couldn’t remember what day of the week it was. He wasn’t going to let some punk trash her place when he was able to stop it.

  The fact that said punk might have a gun, when Trent didn’t, didn’t even slow him down. Maybe an action like that deserved some careful thought, but he’d do that later. Much, much later. His life was bad enough without adding a bunch of psychobabble crap on top of it.

  He hurried across the street and slipped silently onto the porch. The front door was closed again, but a slow turn of the knob told him it wasn’t locked.

  Amateur.

  Trent eased inside, listening for which way the intruder had gone. Ashley’s house was an artistic mess, with canvases stacked everywhere. Every horizontal surface was covered with clothes, paints, brushes, or papers. There was more furniture in her living room than there was in his entire house, leaving only a narrow walkway open for him to navigate.

  This whole neighborhood had been built in the housing boom after World War II, and Ashley’s house was an exact copy of his own, so he had the advantage of knowing the layout, even in the dark.

  A low scraping sound came from the back bedroom, like someone was rummaging around in there.

  Trent’s body flooded with adrenaline and he slid into that comfortable space where each heartbeat stretched out for an eternity. The rush of strength and clarity nearly made him giddy, and he realized it had been way too long since the adrenaline junkie in him had gotten his fix.

  The streetlights outside shone
through the front window, outlining the entrance to the hallway. His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that he could see vague shapes, but little else. He crept toward the bedroom where he’d heard the sound.

  A thud followed by a muffled hiss of pain came from the back room. Trent eased through the doorway just as the intruder stood up from a crouch.

  He was only three feet in front of Trent, and a sudden rush of instinct took over Trent’s body as he moved. He grabbed the kid and shoved him hard against the door. He used his body to pin the kid there while he took control of the intruder’s hands and any weapon he might hold.

  The kid let out a high shriek of fear that was cut off too soon, like he’d run out of air. He struggled, fighting Trent’s hold, but wasn’t strong enough for it to do any good. Those struggles did, however, press the intruder’s breasts against Trent’s bare ribs.

  Breasts? For a brief second, shock rolled through him, freezing him in place. The intruder was a woman, not a kid. Not that it mattered. She was still breaking the law.

  She used his moment of surprise to wrench one hand free of his grip and slammed her fist into the side of his head. The blow rattled his cage, but it didn’t slow him down. He recaptured her hand and leaned his weight into her harder, crushing her ribs.

  Her knee came up toward his groin, but they were too close for the blow to have any force behind it. She kind of grazed his thigh, but it was enough to make him want to prevent it from happening again, just in case she got a lucky shot.