Beautiful Beast

Uneasy, he stepped from his car trying to determine why his senses were crying an alert for no good reason. He felt oddly exposed. His hand itched for the comfort of his holstered service revolver.

He hesitated as headlights swept up the street. The garage door began to open. The approaching vehicle slowed to make the turn, giving Gabe a clear view of the driver. Dr. Richards appeared even more stressed and distracted than before. He didn’t so much as glance at Gabe standing there. Something was definitely wrong.

Gabe’s hand still hovered near his revolver as he followed the car toward the house. He moved more quickly when it pulled all the way into the garage.

Without warning, a giant fireball rocked the neighborhood. Gabe reeled back. Something sliced his face as the garage exploded.

He ignored the warmth running down his cheek and sprinted for the car. A figure struggled to climb out as flames engulfed everything. A billowing wave of heat brought Gabe’s hands up to cover his face.

The second, larger explosion sent Gabe sailing through the air. He landed with incredible force amid a hail of raining debris. His last coherent thought was that he should have listened to his instincts.

Chapter One

Frederick, Maryland

Present Day

A slender figure came around the far side of his house and sprinted across the front lawn to disappear in the hedge on the other side. Gabriel Lowe stopped walking. Not CID, FBI, Homeland Security or any of the other official types who watched his house from time to time. Their people would have approached his home in a much different fashion.

Female, based on the swing of nicely rounded hips in figure-hugging jeans. A long ponytail swished against a slender back covered by a fitted jacket. His intruder was obviously looking for a way inside. And in that instant, he knew who it had to be.

His fingers flexed and balled into fists. Jaw clenched, Gabe stepped off the sidewalk and slipped into the nearest shadow. He followed her silently, letting his anger build.

With a low-voiced, muttered imprecation, she battled her way behind the prickly juniper that squatted beneath his dining room window. Identity confirmed, Gabe faded back against the bole of the spreading oak tree a short distance from her.

Cassiopia Richards—the woman who had named him a murderer—gazed up at the window and sighed. She withdrew a ridiculously tiny pocketknife from her hip pocket and hesitated. The small blade was hard to see in the bit of moonlight that filtered between the high clouds, but her intention was clear.

Gabe was reluctant to accost her too soon. Would she actually go through with a criminal act?

She slit the screen and started to reach for the window itself. Abruptly, she stopped.

“Blast.”

The utterance was a wisp of discord in the chilly night air. She struggled with the juniper branch that had clamped onto the back of her coat. Apparently, she didn’t understand that an illegal activity like breaking and entering required silence and speed.

Not once did she bother to scan her surroundings. She wouldn’t have seen him if she had, but she was either extremely sure of herself or totally inept. Watching her struggle with the bush, he was betting on the latter.

FRAZZLED, CASSY JERKED her coat free, half hoping this window would be locked like the others she had already tried. Then she could go home and come up with a new plan. This one was stupid. If she were caught…

She would not think about that. She couldn’t afford to turn around and go home. If there was the slimmest chance Gabriel’s friend Beacher Coyle had actually succeeded where everyone else had failed, she needed to do something.

She’d been a fool to listen to him in the first place. He’d almost convinced her that they were victims, like her father. He’d persuaded her to listen and now the golden-tongued son of a serpent wasn’t answering his telephone. Gabriel had blown her off when she’d contacted him, and now Beacher was avoiding her calls. And if her suspicions were correct, Beacher had brought the results of his search to Gabriel.

They’d found the missing toxin and were going to sell it unless she stopped them. By the time she convinced someone in authority, it would be too late and she was not going to let them get away with it.

Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the night. Cassy had little fear of being observed, given the distance between the houses. The blasted neighborhood was dark enough to give her the creeps. Once more she adjusted the thin bits of plastic over her hands and reached up.

With a scraping, groaning racket all out of proportion to what she’d expected, the window yielded and slid to one side. Startled, she froze. Her heart thundered wildly in her chest. Her ponytail swung as she took a quick look around the yard and at the house next door.

GABE REMAINED MOTIONLESS as her eyes swept by him without faltering and continued on to the house next door. He could have told her she had nothing to worry about from that direction. The family inside would be glued to their television sets at this hour. Nothing less than an explosion would bring them to a door or window.

But what was Cassiopia Richards doing here in the first place? Perhaps he should have heard her out when she called the other day, but her patronizing tone had annoyed him. He’d never forgotten her tirade when he’d been trapped in that hospital bed. Gabe didn’t owe her a thing.

She stared at the opening as if trying to screw up her courage to climb inside. Then she cast another nervous glance around. He waited.

THIS WAS NO TIME for paranoia, Cassy admonished herself. There was no one lurking nearby watching her every move, even if the back of her neck was crawling in warning. Gabriel Lowe was at his gym at this hour. While the sound of the window opening had been loud, it hadn’t been loud enough to carry inside the house across the yard, and no one moved on the silent street. Not a single car had driven past since she got here.

Well, it wasn’t every day she attempted to break into someone’s home. Her nerves had a right to be jumpy. She was usually such a practical person.

Cassy gripped the windowsill and levered herself up. The jagged screen snagged on the elbow of her jacket. She yanked her arm back. The screen ripped free of the window and fell, tangling with the bush below. She froze in dismay and swore softly.

So much for hoping he wouldn’t notice the torn screen.

ENTERTAINED DESPITE his annoyance, Gabe waited to see what she’d do next. What she did was seek a better grip, even though the weird, loose-fitting clear plastic covering her hands made the task harder than it should have been.

What were those things? They weren’t the latex gloves that hugged the skin. These bits of clear plastic fit so loosely she seemed to be having trouble keeping them in place.

Cassiopia Richards had to be the most inept burglar ever. Her thrusting hand tangled in the sheer drape that covered the window. She tried to shove the material aside as she swung her leg up and over but the drape wasn’t having any of it. In her attempt to avoid being wrapped in the filmy cloth, her leg apparently collided with the back of a chair.

Gabe nearly smiled. His dining room was small, the furniture too large for the space. He’d kept his parents’ old stuff after he bought this place because the pieces served to fill the empty rooms. Since he was pretty much the only one who ever saw them, their relative size had never mattered, but her unexpected contact with the chair nearly reversed Cassiopia’s direction. Even from where he stood he could hear the chair clatter against the table.

CASSY STOPPED MOVING half-in and half-out of the window. She stopped breathing as well. She waited for Gabriel Lowe to appear out of the darkness and condemn her. Even though she was almost positive he wasn’t home, it seemed an inevitable thing to happen.

She cast another frantic glance around. The yard was pitch-black. She couldn’t see a thing. There was no going back now. She expelled the breath of air and forced her other leg over the sill.

The drape swirled around her once more. She wriggled, colliding with the chair again. Cassy wrenched the gauzy fabric to one side in a frantic swipe. Off balance, she tumbled forward. Only pure dumb luck and the mahogany dining room table kept her from crashing to the floor.

Great. He’d never notice that. This was not an auspicious start to a life of crime. If she believed in omens, she’d turn around, climb back through that window and go home to bed. She could always get a decent lawyer in the morning.

She should have tried the authorities first. Maybe someone would have listened.

The prickly sensation that she was being watched would not go away. Her hand went to a side pocket and came out with the minuscule pocket flash. The attached key ring jingled as she moved.

If someone had been home, they’d have called the police by now. She’d made enough noise to wake the dead. Good thing she wasn’t planning on a life of crime. Her nerves couldn’t take much more of this.

Get it over with. Call out. See if someone was there.

GABE FLATTENED HIMSELF against the side of the house near the open window. He jumped when she spoke.

“Hello?”

Her scratchy voice was barely a whisper of sound.

“Is anybody home?”

And what would she do if he answered?

“Didn’t think so, but I wanted to be sure.”