Page 17 of The Survivor (Silhoutte Romantic Suspense)

“What is it?”

“Someone paid a visit to your house this morning.”

Her heart stopped. “The farmhouse in Wellstock? I thought that location was supposed to be secure!”

“Not the farmhouse, Sam. I’m talking about the house you lived in before your, uh, death.”

“But it was sold two months ago. Someone broke in?” Her anxiety escalated faster than a fighter jet in takeoff. “Were the new owners hurt?”

He shook his head slowly.

The alarm in her chest deepened to full-blown panic, constricting her airways. “Tell me what happened, Blake,” she squeaked out.

He spoke in a flat tone. “The new owners are vacationing in the Caribbean and aren’t due back for a couple more weeks. The neighbor who’d been collecting their mail called the police reporting that the front yard is covered with roses. Hundreds of them.”

Her body shook so hard it was almost impossible to get out the next words. “He was there…at my old house?”

A grim look darkened Blake’s eyes. “It seems the Rose Killer has decided to deliver a message.”

* * *

Blake’s gaze swept over the endless carpet of roses. The lush red petals covered the snowy lawn like an enormous pool of blood, the crimson display contrasting sharply with the clean white snow gracing the neighboring yards.

The bastard had been here. He’d approached Samantha’s old home—the one he’d once broken into, the one where he’d attacked her—and sprinkled these flowers on the lawn in broad daylight.

The sheer nerve of the madman slammed into Blake like a sledgehammer to the chest. And yet the reason for this sick demonstration hadn’t become clear yet.

Was the son of a bitch taunting them? Did he think Sam still owned the house?

Or perhaps this wasn’t the handiwork of the Rose Killer at all.

Perhaps someone familiar with the case had decided to indulge in a twisted prank.

Although the latter would be a hell of a lot less terrifying, Blake’s gut was screaming that this wasn’t the work of a prankster.

Rick came up beside him. “You should’ve stayed with Sam.”

“Melanie is with her.” He exhaled slowly. “I had to see this for myself.”

“You think it’s him?”

“Don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s him,” Rick said grimly. “My instincts are telling me he was here.”

“Mine, too.”

“The uniforms just finished questioning every resident on the street,” Rick added. “Nobody saw a goddamn thing.”

Blake wasn’t surprised. Most of the people he’d spoken to in the past hour had admitted to being indoors all morning.

A few ten-year-olds had been tossing snowballs at each other near the house earlier, but they insisted the roses hadn’t been in the yard when they were out there.

The boys had headed indoors around eleven.

And just past noon, the elderly neighbor across the street had phoned the police, which meant the Rose Killer had been in the vicinity between eleven and twelve.

One hour. That’s all it had taken for him to dump several hundred roses on his former victim’s lawn.

Unfortunately, the snowplows had come through the neighborhood sometime within that same hour, eliminating the hope of finding any usable tire tracks.

And the front path leading to the house was devoid of footprints; from the shapeless streaks, they’d deduced that the Rose Killer had kicked the snow as he’d walked to avoid leaving a distinctive mark.

“He knows she’s alive,” Blake muttered. “He wants us to know that he knows it.”

“I think there’s more to it than that…”

He saw the wheels turning in his partner’s head and waited for Rick to continue.

“I think he was hoping to draw her out into the open. Maybe he doesn’t know the house was sold, or maybe he was stupid enough to think we’d bring her along to check out the scene.

” Rick rubbed his forehead. “I’m just getting a feeling this is more than sending us a message. I think he hoped to achieve something.”

“God, I hope not.” He paused. “Just in case, we should tell the officers to canvas the neighborhood and check for any suspicious persons loitering around.”

“And look out for a tail when you’re driving home,” Rick added. “He knows our faces. Maybe he’s hoping one of us will lead him to Sam.”

The idea that the Rose Killer had done this in the hopes of learning Sam’s whereabouts was more frightening than the time Blake had gotten lost in the woods during a family vacation when he was seven years old.

He’d felt helpless then, powerless, unable to protect himself from the strange noises and forbidding shadows surrounding him in that forest. Fortunately, his father had found him before night had settled in, and over the years Blake had learned to protect himself from the dangerous killers he hunted for a living.

And now he had to protect Sam from another one of those dangerous killers.

His entire body tensed, his jaw so tight his teeth started to hurt. Anger filled his veins at the sight of the red petals strewn across the snow. If that bastard planned on getting his sadistic hands on Sam again, he had another thing coming.

* * *

“Blake looked angry,” Sam said, her gaze straying to the doorway for the hundredth time that hour.

She kept expecting Blake to walk through the front door, stroll into the living room and tell her it was a false alarm. Nope, the Rose Killer hadn’t tossed roses all over her old yard, just the local gardener hoping to bring some color to the neighborhood.

You are definitely losing it.

She tried not to sigh. God, maybe she was losing it. Of course the roses had been delivered by the madman who’d attacked her. Who else would be that sick and twisted?

Next to her, Special Agent Melanie Barnes, a tiny waif of a woman with a blond pixie cut, offered a reassuring smile.

She wrapped her fingers around the cup of coffee sitting on the kitchen table in front of her.

“I’m sure he’s fine. He’s not always this intense, you know.

He’s under a lot of pressure, that’s all. ”

“Rick said the same thing to me a few days ago,” Sam admitted. “But to be honest, I can’t see Blake not being this intense. I think intensity is part of his genetic makeup.”

A faint smile crossed Mel’s face. “You’re probably right. But trust me, I’ve seen Blake let loose a time or two. He was engaged to a profiler out in Quantico, who used to drag him out of the house whenever he got too moody.”

“She died, didn’t she—the woman he was involved with?”

Mel looked surprised. “He told you?”

“Not a lot. I only know she died.”

“Did he tell you how?”

Sam swallowed. “No.”

“Three shots to the back.” Mel’s voice was curt, but the pain in it was unmistakable. “By a serial killer Blake had been tracking.”

Sam wrinkled her forehead. “I thought you said she was a profiler. Do profilers usually go into the field?”

The blond agent shook her head.

“Then why did—”

She was interrupted by the sound of the front door creaking open.

Mel was on her feet just as Blake strode into the kitchen. “Rick’s waiting for you outside,” Blake told his colleague.

Mel shot him a questioning glance but he gave a slight shake of the head. “Rick will fill you in.”

With a nod of her own, Mel turned to Sam. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

She offered a genuine smile. She really had enjoyed spending the last couple of hours with Melanie. It had been so long since she’d had some female company. “Could you let Elaine know I’ll call her tonight?”

Mel returned the smile. “She’ll appreciate that, Samantha.”

After the blonde left, Blake headed for the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t say a word as he sipped the hot liquid. She noticed that his shoulders looked stiff under the black sweater stretching across them, his strong jaw taut with displeasure.

“Well?” she asked. “Do you think it was him?”

There was a moment of silence. Blake finally nodded. “Nobody saw a damn thing, but yes, I think it was him.”

A sigh slipped out of her chest before she could stop it. She couldn’t seem to stop her next words, either. “Don’t look so upset.”

“You expect me not to be upset?” he returned, his voice laced with steel. “The bastard was at your house, Sam.”

“If anything, that’s a good thing.”

He swiveled his head to shoot her a look swimming with disbelief. “Are you serious? Don’t you realize what this means? He knows you’re alive. He wants you to know he can come after you again.”

“And if he does, you’ll be waiting for him.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this, Sam. You should be worrying about your safety.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “I am worried about my safety. As long as this maniac is out on the streets I’ll always worry about my safety. I’m simply pointing out the positive.”

“I’m afraid I don’t agree. There’s nothing positive about this.”

“He must be furious that I’m alive, Blake. So furious that he made the mistake of showing up at my old house in broad daylight. Yes, nobody saw him, but the next time he makes the same mistake he might not be so lucky.”

“And what if next time he doesn’t make a mistake? What if next time he finishes what he started the night he attacked you?”

His voice, thick with worry, sent a wave of emotion surging through her. He cared about her. She’d never doubted it, but the urgency in his tone told her that Blake Corwin’s feelings for her ran much deeper than he’d ever admit.

She thought about the kiss they’d almost shared last night, the one they had shared the night before that, and something warm and tender rolled inside her like a balmy summer breeze.

“As long as I’m with you, I’ll be fine,” she said quietly.

He gave her a sideways glance. “You sound sure of that.”

“I am. I have faith that you’ll keep me safe, Blake.”

The silence that followed was broken by the whistling of wind against the kitchen window. She shifted her gaze and saw fat flakes in front of the glass, falling harder, thicker, as each second ticked by.

“Looks like the blizzard that never came last night decided to make an appearance,” she remarked, hoping the change of subject would ease the tension hanging over the room.

Blake gestured to the doorway. “Let’s sit in the living room. You’ll have a better view of the blizzard from there.” His mouth quirked. “I know how much you love watching the snow fall.”

Smiling, she followed him into the cozy living room, touched that he was trying to make her feel better about being cooped up indoors by offering to sit by the window and watch the storm with her.

He sank down on the leather couch and sipped his coffee again. His hair fell onto his forehead but he didn’t seem to notice or care enough to brush it away, and her fingers tingled with the urge to slide through all that thick dark hair.

She hesitated in the doorway. “I wanted to talk to you about last night,” she found herself blurting.

His shoulders instantly stiffened, his face became unreadable.

Dammit. Why was he fighting this? She knew he felt the same hum of awareness she did.

Sooner or later he’d have to deal with it, accept that there was…

something …between them. And since a blizzard was about to rage outside this house, she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to bring the attraction between them out in the open.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked in a soft voice.

“I’m not doing anything, Sam.”

“That’s exactly the point.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “You were going to kiss me last night.”

He fixed that familiar steady gaze on her. “It would have been a mistake.”

She sagged against the doorframe, fighting the urge to yell at him.

Though there was a good five feet between them, she could feel the heat emanating from his body.

The spicy, male scent of him teased her senses and made her want to close the distance.

But she knew he’d only shut down if she pushed him too far.

Taking a deep breath, she played with the hem of her sweater, gathered up bits and pieces of the courage she’d once possessed but lost after the attack. “Blake…I’m attracted to you.”

He blinked in surprise. Even from where she stood she could see his pulse thudding in his throat.

“You want me to take you to bed, is that it?” His voice was low with both challenge and hesitation.

She swallowed. “Yes.”