Chicago, Illinois

Astoria Hotel

“Jessica, Michelle, Lesley, Brian, Gunner, Josh, and Kirk,” Zola said for the fifth time, trying to memorize the names of the contestants who remained in the house. “Jessica, Michelle, Lesley . . .”

Durango stepped out onto the balcony of the suite Mastiff had rented for them, his head aching from hours of prepping for this case. He was due on the set in less than three hours, so he didn’t see the point in trying to get any sleep. He worked better on no sleep than just a little sleep.

He leaned against the railing, dangling his water bottle over the edge as he tried to clear his head. He hadn’t prepared for a case in a long time, and the frantic pace of this preparation had taken its toll. They’d spent most of the flight and the first few hours here in Chicago going over the background information on everyone involved: the contestants, the support staff, the camera men, and the production people. Zola focused mostly on the contestants and camera people whom she’d come in contact with most often while Durango tried to pay attention to it all. And then they watched the majority of the fifteen episodes that had already aired and watched a little of the current live feeds that were streaming live over the internet.

It was a lot of information and a whole world that was so alien from what Durango knew that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull off the bit of acting he’d have to do. But, again, he grew up in this world. He hated it, but he grew up in it.

“You okay?”

Durango glanced over his shoulder toward the French doors that opened into the living room. He could see Zola still sitting straight as an arrow on the couch, going over the information she needed to remember most with Felicity and Cillian. But closer, blocking part of the sight, was Gracie, the constant set of files still pressed against her chest like they were in the office instead of two hundred miles away.

He’d been surprised to find her on the plane but realized he probably shouldn’t be. Axel would want someone to keep an eye on him and who better than Gracie? She was the backbone of Mastiff and the only thing that was keeping Durango from losing his mind, though he wasn’t sure Axel was aware of that. He wasn’t even sure Gracie herself knew it.

“Would it change anything if I said I wasn’t okay?” he asked, turning his attention back to the cityscape spread out in front of him.

“It would change everything.”

He bit his lip, warning his heart not to take her words too seriously. This was the same woman who’d stood with Axel and Calder just the night before when they confronted him with the evidence against him in these strangler murders.

“Why did you want to take this case, Durango?”

He shrugged. “I needed to get out of the office, and I couldn’t just sit around my condo, waiting for that knock.”

“You didn’t need to get out of the office.”

He looked over at her. She’d moved up beside him by the railing, resting her stack of files on the top rail, her thin fingers ringless and delicate despite her nails being cut quite bluntly, almost like regulations required for female law enforcement officers.

“You think I’m guilty.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.” He turned, watching her face, which was illuminated by starlight. “Can I ask you one thing, though?”

“What?”

“What would my motive be in killing those women? Why would I target women who were so close to me?”

She shook her head. “Calder’s theory is that it was some sort of sexual perversion. The description of what you did to Detective Hyde . . .” She shuddered a little. “Even you admitted that you were rough with her.”

“I was. And I regret the hell out of it.”

“Why would you do that?”

The memory of it rushed through Durango’s head:

He kissed her again, tasting the day on her, the slight copper taste of blood. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and twisted her head around, making her grunt again. He scraped his hand over her breasts, squeezing one in his hand, her hard nipple taut against his palm. She was breathing hard against him, the moans coming more and more. When he pressed a hand between her legs, he could feel the moisture there, could feel the excitement vibrating through her body. She wanted this more than he did.

And he wanted it desperately.

She reached for the zipper on his slacks, but he pulled her hands away and trapped them behind her back. He deepened the kiss, forcing himself inside of her. She sucked breath when he pulled back, her hands fighting against him as she tried to reach for him. He held her tighter, forcing her body back with the weight of his own. He moved his mouth from hers despite her moves to attempt to keep him close, nibbling hard at her throat, her bared breasts. She cried out when he bit one nipple, but she arched her back, pushing her body closer to his, not pulling away. She was loving every bit of this.

So was he.

He bit her inner thigh when he dropped to his knees to taste her. There was a mark that he was pretty sure would bruise, but she only hissed. She didn’t pull away. In fact, her hands were wrapped around his head, pulling him in deeper.

Durango took his cues from her, enjoying himself, but wanting to feel her need, to feel the pleasure that was rushing through her body, too. She wasn’t shy about letting him know what she wanted. She was more vocal than any lover he’d had in recent memory.

When he stood again, she was tugging at the front of his slacks before he could even attempt to do it himself. He stood still, his hands at his side, and let her pull his cock from his pants, stood still while she stroked him with soft, but firm hands. But he could only stand it for a moment, having worked himself up almost to the same heights he could feel her teetering on.

He shoved her thighs wide apart and moved up, impaling her with one hard thrust. She threw her head back, crying out like a woman who’d gone far too long without the pleasures of the flesh.

He was pissed, and she was in need; it got out of control. There was no other excuse for it.

They weren’t even true lovers. Not really. It was the second time they’d been together, but each time was just circumstance and nothing more. He liked her well enough and might have found her companionable under different circumstances. But Detective Donna Hyde was investigating him as a suspect in his partner’s death. And then she died that night, strangled the same way his fiancée, Sarah, had been, the same way his partner, Kyle, had been.

Someone was setting him up. And they were doing a damn good job of it!

Gracie’s eyes had been on the stack of files she held, but she slowly looked up at him as she waited for an answer. Durango wanted to touch her, but he knew it would be a mistake. It’d been five years since Sarah died. Five years since he’d felt the way he did when he looked at his beloved. He felt that now whenever he looked at Gracie. He knew he could easily fall in love with her if he allowed himself the freedom to do so. But he couldn’t. Not now, maybe not ever.

Someone was killing every woman he loved, and he couldn’t put Gracie in his sights. So, he kept his hands to himself and turned back to look over the city.

“I’m not the man you think I am, Gracie,” he said softly. “I’m not a nice guy, and I’ve never pretended to be.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“But you believe I’m capable of murder. Multiple murders.”

“No. I think someone close to you is, someone who wants to make you hurt. I just don’t understand why you give that person easy material to work with, you know?”

“Like Hyde?”

“Like your reputation with your assistants? Do you really think that helped when the cops found your last assistant murdered? Or the fact that you go around to bars and pick up pretty women who fit the killer’s type perfectly?”

He glanced at her. “Why do you think I do that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I understood you, but when I saw the evidence Detective Fedor had in his house—”

“What other evidence did you find?”

“Pictures of you from security cameras. The night Kyle died, you were out in an alley with a blond, getting hot and heavy, and he had pictures of it all over the cork board at his house!”

“I’m sorry you saw that.”

“You’re not an ass, Durango, but you sure go out of your way to make people think you are.”

“Do you know how I got my name?” he asked, changing the subject so abruptly that she stuttered a little before she answered.

“I don’t, actually.”

He stared off over the city, but he was really seeing a bright home in the Hollywood hills and a dark-haired woman who laughed easily and never ran out of hugs for her small son.

“My mother was born in Mexico, in the state of Durango, but she hid that fact when she went to Hollywood to become an actress. She didn’t want to be typecast, didn’t want people to make assumptions about her just because she was born to poor peasant people who gave up everything to bring her to the United States. By the time I came along, she hadn’t seen her parents in more than fifteen years. They sent her to an aunt she had in Texas. She got lucky, found a good lawyer who helped her with her papers, and she got her citizenship pretty quick. I don’t think she even told my dad about her origins until their wedding night.”

He opened his water bottle, but he didn’t drink from it. He just fidgeted with the top as the water leaked out over his fingers. “Casting directors thought she was Italian or Puerto Rican. A few assumed she was from the Middle East somewhere. Not that it mattered what her exact origins were. She was exotic, and they liked that. She was cast as an ingenue more often than not, the female character who innocently caused trouble for the hero. And she liked that.”

Durango glanced at Gracie. “But then she began to feel guilty about denying her past because she felt like she was denying her parents and her ancestors. To her, that was a terrible sin. When I came along, she named me after her home state and told me every night what the city where she grew up was like, told me all about her parents and her grandparents, about all the people she’d left behind. She even promised to take me there someday.”

He grew quiet for a moment, thinking of some of the things his mother had told him. There was so much, but his memories of those stories had faded. He was only five when she died, and a five-year old’s memories aren’t always concrete. But he remembered enough.

“My mother took an overdose of pills after my father told her she wasn’t strong enough to do such a thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Gracie said softly, reaching over to touch his arm. He stared at her fingers against his skin for a moment, then moved away, desperate not to touch her in any manner.

“For most of my life, I believed it was my father’s fault, and that he should be punished for what he’d done. It drove a wedge between us. I can still remember every word of the fight they’d had that night, can still remember the tears running down her face. That night is the reason I left home the moment I could legally do so; it’s that night that pushed me into a law enforcement career. And it’s that night that still haunts me whenever I set eyes on my father, or anytime I think about my mother. It sullies my thoughts of her.” He brushed a hand over his head, his back to Gracie. “And it’s the same with Sarah. We had years of happiness together, but it’s that final day that I remember the most clearly. It’s the night we spent together and the few moments we had the next morning before I left her before her killer arrived and took her away from me.”

“Durango . . .”

“It’s seeing the evidence that the strangler had been in our apartment. And then Kyle, seeing those same things there . . .” He took a deep, stuttering breath. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, forgotten things that I should have clung to.” He turned to her then, his eyes moving slowly over her face. “I’m like my mother in the fact that I carry around a lot of guilt for the choices I’ve made. I took solace from anonymous sources because it was easier. I can’t . . .”

He couldn’t finish his point, couldn’t find a way to express to her what it was he’d wanted so desperately to say. He wanted her to know why he’d done the things he had, but when he tried to put it into words, he couldn’t find the right ones.

She came toward him, dropping those ever-present files on a low table set on the balcony for late night cocktails, and slipped her hands over his face, holding his jaw to force him to look at her.

“You’ve been through hell, and it’s not fair. I wish there was a way to make this right for you.”

He shook his head, gripping her wrists. “I didn’t say all that to make you feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.” Her eyes were snapping with anger as she looked up at him. “I’m sorry for the strangler when we finally find him.”

He shook his head. “We’re not going to.”

“We are. Calder already has a couple of leads he’s checking out right now.”

“I’ve been working this case for more than seven years, Gracie. If this guy were going to be found, it would have been five years ago when I arrested the wrong guy.”

“You don’t know that. You can never know what the future holds, Durango. No one can.”

“I know that if we don’t figure this out within the next twenty-eight days, I’ll be arrested for Hyde. And I know that more women will die. And I know that this has to stop.”

He pushed her back, letting go of her wrists after a moment’s hesitation, after squeezing them for a second between his fingers. Then he turned to go, the sound of Zola’s repetitions reminding him of where they were and why.

“What are you going to do, Durango?”

He didn’t answer her. If he told her, he knew she’d try to stop him. And he knew it wouldn’t take much for her to do it. He wanted to cling to her, wanted to cling to the hope she could give him for the future. But clinging to her would just lead to more of this nightmare he was living, and he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t watch anyone else he cared about die. And he couldn’t go to prison.

There was only one way out of this. The strangler wanted to hurt him, wanted to make this personal? Then he would. He’d take himself out of the equation.

Twenty-eight days.