Special Agent's Perfect Cover

Hawk’s emotions were still all in a jumble and he was at a loss how to sort everything all out.

“I thought that Grayson … I was afraid that you—”

None of this was coming out right.

“Damn it, Carly,” he all but exploded, thinking of what might have happened to her. “I don’t like you taking these kinds of chances.”

“You don’t have the right to tell me not to do this, you know,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he answered “but just thinking that something could have happened to you—”

Hawk couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence. Instead, he abruptly pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Kissed her hard, as if there was no tomorrow because, for all he knew, there wasn’t one.

Dear Reader,

Come with me to a little town called Cold Plains, Wyoming, where everything is perfect … or is it? Beneath this gleaming exterior are dark secrets and an even darker heart at work to turn this one-time rough-and-tumble town into a gleaming metropolis. But to what end?

This question is what brings FBI special agent Hawk Bledsoe reluctantly back to the town he’d left behind ten years ago. Left behind because Carly Finn, the girl he’d loved, suddenly told him she didn’t love him. Through a strange twist of fate, they have to join forces to unlock the secrets holding this town prisoner and save her younger sister. All this while trying not to fall in love again.

I hope you enjoy this first installment of PERFECT, WYOMING. As ever, I thank you for reading, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Marie Ferrarella

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Special Agent’s Perfect Cover

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To

all the wonderful readers,

who give me

such a great audience

to write for.

You make it fun.

Prologue

Micah Grayson wasn’t sure what had possessed him to turn on the TV in the pristine, upscale hotel room that he was occupying for the day. He wasn’t exactly the kind of man who craved company or needed to fill the silence.

Hell, in his particular chosen “line of work,” silence and stealth were two of his best tools. He had no desire to listen to music or watch anything that might be on the big screen TV that came with the price of the first-class room. For that matter, he only kept up on world affairs insofar as to learn about what region of the world he’d most likely be going to next.

But after methodically going through his own mental checklist and making sure that the room was clear of bugs—not the kind with legs but the kind that could get a man killed—he’d absently switched on the set and sank down on the bed, thinking about his next move.

The grim voice of the newscaster didn’t even penetrate his consciousness.

Not until her picture was flashed on the screen.

Very little caught Micah off guard these days. His life was literally riding on this fact, that he was always prepared for any and all contingencies and could act accordingly.

But seeing her face knocked the wind out of him. More than that, it was as if he’d just been on the receiving end of an iron fist aimed straight for his gut.

Because according to the newscaster, the woman in the photograph was dead. And when he had last seen her, a million years ago, before life had gotten so immensely complicated and they had gone their separate ways, Johanna had been very much alive.

Alive, but no longer his.

“In keeping with what seems to have become a bizarre ritual, the body of Johanna Tate was found yesterday outside of Eden, Wyoming. The victim suffered a single gunshot wound. The coroner has concluded that that was the cause of death. This is the fifth such female body found in as many years. Police are asking anyone with any information about this latest murder victim to please step forward. Any informant’s identity will be kept strictly confidential. Rumor has it that this young woman was a resident of Cold Plains, a town located some eighty miles away, but this has not been confirmed yet.”

A resident of Cold Plains.

Yes, she was from there, Micah thought, bitterness filling his mouth like bile.

As had he once been.

Johanna had been the reason he’d remained in that godforsaken blot on the map for as long as he had. And ultimately, she’d been the reason why he had abruptly left without so much as a backward glance. Because after being his, after planning to share all her tomorrows with him, she’d allowed herself to be charmed away from his side by the very devil himself.

Charmed away by Samuel Grayson.

Never mind that Samuel was his twin brother. He and that underhanded, despicable excuse for a human being were as different as night and day. He had never pretended to be anything but what he was, never made any excuses for himself. While Samuel wove elaborate tapestries made of intricate lies to ensnare those he wanted to own, to control for his own unstated purposes.

Crossing to the TV monitor, Micah Grayson turned up the volume.

But the story was over. The dark-haired newscaster had gone on to talk about the unseasonably warm April weather, exchanging inane banter with an overly ripe, barely legal-looking weather girl sporting a torrent of blond hair that appeared to be almost longer than her dress.

Johanna had been allocated less than a sound bite.

Micah hit the off button. The screen on the wall went instantly dark as it fell into silence.

“Damn it, Johanna, I told you he was trouble. I told you you’d regret picking him over me,” Micah said in frustrated anger.

That had been the extent of his fight to keep her. Telling her that she’d regret her choice. He’d felt that if he had to convince Johanna to stay with him, then he’d already lost her, and it hadn’t been worth his breath to argue with her.

Taking out his worn, creased wallet, the one that carried his current ID stamped with his current name—one of many he’d assumed since he’d left Johanna and Cold Plains behind—he opened it. Beneath the handful of bills he always kept in it and the false ID was a tiny close-up of a sweet-faced girl with pale brown eyes and long, straight black hair.

Johanna’s high school picture.

The same picture that was embossed in his brain. He couldn’t say that it was embossed on his heart because he no longer had one. One of the hazards of his job. A heart only got in the way, slowed a man down, kept him from a laser-like focus on his assignment.

A wave of fury flared through his veins, and Micah crumpled the faded photo in his hand. He drew back his arm, about to pitch the tiny paper ball across the room, then changed his mind.

Exhaling a long, slow breath, he opened his hand, letting the small wad fall onto the bed. He carefully flattened it out again, then slipped the now-creased photograph back into his wallet.

Samuel couldn’t be allowed to get away with this, Micah swore vehemently. He didn’t know any of the particulars, but Samuel had to be behind Johanna’s death. His twin brother’s prints were all over this. He’d bet his soul on it.

The corners of Micah’s mouth curved in a humorless smile.

If he had a soul, he corrected silently.

Micah knew someone who could look into things. Someone who could take Samuel’s so-called paradise, strip it of all its gingerbread facade and expose it for what it was: hell on earth. Someone who he’d known all those years ago and had himself left for greener pastures, so to speak.

Someone, Micah thought as he tapped the numbers lodged in his memory out onto the cell phone’s key pad, who still had a soul. And who knew, maybe even a heart, too.

The cell phone on the other end rang a total of six times. Micah decided to give it to the count of ten and then try again later.

A man in his profession didn’t leave messages.

But then he heard someone picking up on the other end and a deep voice say, “Special Agent Bledsoe.”

A glimmer of a smile passed over Micah’s lips.

His brother was going down. It might take a while, but he was going down. And he would pay for what had happened to Johanna.

“Hawk, this is Micah. Grayson,” he added in case the agent was having trouble remembering him. It had been a while. “I need to see you.” He paused and then said cryptically, “I’ve got a not-so-anonymous tip for you about those murdered women on the news.”

Chapter 1

Okay, so where is he?

Special Agent Hawk Bledsoe paced about the hotel room, which grew progressively smaller by the moment. His frown deepened significantly as impatience drummed through him.

He had a really bad feeling about this.

About all of this.

To say that he had been surprised to hear from Micah Grayson out of the blue yesterday after so many years gave new meaning to the term “understatement.” Micah and he both had the very same connection between them that had just recently come to light about the five murder victims: they came from the same region in Wyoming. Micah was born in Horn’s Gulf, while he had the misfortune of actually growing up in Cold Plains.

A great place to be from, Hawk thought cynically, the heels of his boots sinking into the light gray carpet. He made yet another complete trip around the room. Nothing good had ever come from that town. Except for—

No! He wasn’t going to let himself go there. Those thoughts belonged in his past, buried deeper than the unearthed five victims apparently had been.

The victims, he’d already decided after reviewing the notes made by past agents, had all been buried as if the killer had expected them to be discovered. Eventually, if not immediately.

Why? What was the sense in that? What did these women have in common other than having the bad luck of being from Cold Plains? And of course, other than the fact that they had all been murdered, execution style, with a single bullet to the back of the head. Their sins—whatever they were—had obviously been unpardonable to someone.

But who?

And why?

And where the hell was Micah, anyway? He was supposed to be here. The urgency in Micah’s voice was the reason why he’d driven straight through the night to get here.

It wasn’t as if he’d called the man—a man who he knew through various sources made his living by hiring out to do things that others either could not or would not do—or were just unable to do. Be that as it may, it was Micah who had called him, not the other way around.

Called him and had said just enough to get him hooked. That he needed to talk to him about the five murdered women who had been found scattered through isolated areas in Wyoming.

Did that mean Micah knew who was responsible? Or that he at least had a viable theory? He wished he could have gotten Micah to say more, but the man had been deliberately closemouthed, saying he’d tell him “everything” when he got here.

So where was he?

Hawk knew that Micah Grayson had once dated Johanna Tate. Was that why the man had gone out of his way to call him? Had he called in reinforcements? As far as he knew, that wasn’t Micah’s style.

Either way, it looked as if he wasn’t about to find out now. He’d gotten no more out of his one-time friend than that: to come meet him in this off-the-beaten-path hotel. Room 705. Micah didn’t believe in saying much over the phone, even one that most likely was one of those disposable models, which could be discarded—and rendered untraceable—at a moment’s notice.

So rather than clear anything up, Micah’s call had merely added to the mystery that was already so tightly wound around the dead women it reminded Hawk of a skein of yarn whose beginning was so well hidden, it defied discovery—or unraveling.

Yarn.

Where the hell had that come from?

And then he remembered.

She had liked to knit. He’d teased her about it, saying things like it was an old-lady hobby. Carly, in turn, had sniffed dismissively and informed him that it suited her just fine, thank you very much. He recalled being fascinated, watching her fingers manage the needles like a master, creating articles of clothing out of straight lines of color.

As he recalled, she had professed to absolutely love creating things.

Again, he banished the thoughts—the all-too-vivid memories—out of his head. But not quite as forcefully this time as he had initially. Hawk supposed that it was inevitable. After all this time, he was about to be dragged back to the little pimple of a town he’d once left behind in his rearview mirror.

He recalled driving away as fast as he could all those years ago. At the time, he’d thought he was leaving permanently. Obviously not.

He was making too much out of this. The thoughts he was having about Carly just went to prove that he was human, just like everyone else. Nothing more.

The problem was, he didn’t want to be human. Especially not now of all times. If nothing else, being human, reacting emotionally, got in the way of efficiency. Being human was a distraction, and he had a case to unravel and a murderer—or murderers—to track down. That had to come first. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not even a little.

Memories and thoughts of what could have been—and hadn’t been—had no place here. Or anywhere in his life.

Though his expression gave no evidence of his emotional turmoil, Hawk was too tense to sit down. So he went on pacing about the small hotel room where Micah had said he would meet him.

He’d been waiting for over an hour.

To the best of his recollection, Micah was never late. It was one of the things they’d had in common. Because of the directions that life had taken them, they both believed that time was a tool to be used, not frivolously ignored or disregarded.

Micah wouldn’t be late. If the mercenary wasn’t here it was because he couldn’t be here.

Which meant that something was wrong.

Which in turn meant that he, as the special agent who had recently been put in charge of this case, couldn’t put off the inevitable for very much longer.

The only thing that Micah had confirmed over the phone was what he’d already just learned: that all the victims were women from Cold Plains. In order to conduct the investigation properly, he would have to go up to Cold Plains, Wyoming, himself.

Looks like the prodigal son is coming home, he thought wryly.

Except that, in this case, he hadn’t been prodigal so much as smart. Leaving Cold Plains had been the smartest thing he’d ever done. By the same token, returning might turn out to be the stupidest.

Hawk looked at his watch again. When he’d gotten here—and found the room empty—he’d mentally promised himself to give Micah approximately ninety minutes to show up. But right now, he was feeling way too antsy to wait for sixty more minutes to slip beyond his reach.

With a sigh, he crossed back to the hotel room door that had been deliberately left unlocked for him.

Damn it, Micah, I hope you haven’t gotten yourself killed, he thought irritably. Because he was fairly certain that nothing short of death would have kept Micah Grayson from keeping an appointment that he himself had set up.

He needed to see the county coroner before he made his way to Cold Plains, but a visit to Cold Plains was definitely in his immediate future.

Biting off a curse, Hawk let himself out of the room and closed the door behind him.

It seemed rather incredible to Carly Finn that the two times she made up her mind to finally, finally leave Cold Plains, something came up to stop her.

And not some mild, inconsequential “something” but a major, pull-out-all-the-stops “something.”

The first time she’d been ready to test her wings and fly, leaving this soul-draining speck of a town behind her and eagerly begin a fresh, new chapter of her life with the man she knew deep down in her soul she was meant to be with, her infinite sense of obligation as well as her never-ending sense of responsibility to her family had added lead to her wings and grounded her with a bone-jarring thud.

The problem then was that her father had been a drunk, a dyed-in-the-wool, leave-no-drink-untouched, hopeless alcoholic, and while there were many men—and women—with that shortcoming who could be considered by the rest of the world to be functioning alcoholics, her father hadn’t fallen into that category. He hadn’t been even close to a functioning alcoholic, and she knew that if she left with Hawk, if she accompanied the man she loved so much that it hurt so he could follow his dreams, she would be abandoning not just her father but her baby sister to a very cruel, inevitable life of poverty and, eventually, to homelessness. The baby sister she had promised her dying mother to look after all those years ago.

So she knew that in all good conscience, she had to remain. And remain she did. She remained in order to run the family farm and somehow juggle a job as a waitress, as well, the latter she undertook in order to bring in some extra, much-needed money into the household.

She remained while sending Hawk Bledsoe on his way with a lie ringing in his ears.

There was no other choice. She knew that the only way she could get Hawk to leave Cold Plains—and her—so that he could follow his dreams was to tell him that she didn’t love him anymore. That she had actually never loved him and had decided that she just couldn’t go on pretending anymore.

Because she knew that if she didn’t, if she let him know how much she really loved him, Hawk would stay in Cold Plains with her. He would marry her, and eventually, he would become very bitter as he entertained thoughts of what “could have been but wasn’t.”

She couldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t allow him to do that to himself.

Loving someone meant making sacrifices. So she’d made the ultimate sacrifice: she’d lied to him and sent him on his way, while she had stayed behind to do what she had to do. And struggled not to die by inches with each passing day.

But the day finally came when she had had enough. When she had silently declared her independence, not just from the farm but from the town, which had become downright frightening in a short period. Cold Plains had gone from a dead-end town to a sleek, picture-perfect one that had sold its soul to the devil.

She’d reached the conclusion that she had a right to live her own life. That went for Mia, the baby sister she had always doted on, as well.

She didn’t even want to pack, content to leave everything behind just so that she and Mia could get a brand-new start. But she was in for a startling surprise. Somehow, while she was doing all that juggling to keep the farm—and them—afloat, Mia had grown up and formed opinions of her own—or rather, as it turned out, had them formed for her.

When she had told Mia that the day had finally come, that she’d had enough and that they were leaving Cold Plains for good, her beautiful, talented baby sister had knocked her for a loop by telling her flatly that she was staying.

It got worse.

Mia was not just staying, but she was “planning” on marrying Brice Carrington, a wealthy widower more than twice her age.

“But you don’t love him,” Carly had protested when she had finally recovered from the shock.

The expression on Mia’s face had turned nasty. “Yes, I do,” her sister had insisted. “Besides, how would you know if I did or didn’t? You’re always so busy working, you don’t have time to notice anything. You certainly don’t have any time for me. Not like Samuel does,” she’d added proudly, with the air of one who had been singled out and smiled down upon by some higher power.

The accusation had stung, especially since the only reason she had been working so hard was to provide for Mia in the first place. But the sudden realization that while she’d been busy trying to make a life for them, trying to save money so that they could finally get away from here, her sister had been brainwashed.

There was no other term for it. What Samuel Grayson did, with his silver tongue, his charm and his exceedingly handsome face was pull people into his growing circle of followers. Pull them in and mesmerize them with rhetoric. Make them believe that whatever he suggested they do was really their idea in the first place.

Why else would Mia believe that she was actually in love with a man who was old enough to be her father. Older. Brice Carrington was as bland as a bowl of unsalted, white rice. He was also, in the hierarchy of things, currently very high up in Samuel Grayson’s social structure.

Maybe Brice represented the father they’d never really had, Carly guessed. Or maybe, since their dad was dead, Mia was looking for someone to serve as a substitute?

In any case, if Mia was supposed to marry Brice Carrington, it was because the match suited Grayson’s grand plan.

The very thought of Grayson made her angry. But at the moment, it was an anger that had no suitable outlet. She couldn’t just go railing against the man as if she was some kind of a lunatic. For one thing, most of the people who still lived in town thought Samuel Grayson was nothing short of the Second Coming.

Somehow, in the past five years, while no one was paying attention, Samuel Grayson and a few of his handpicked associates had managed to buy up all the property in Cold Plains. At first, moving stealthily but always steadily, he’d wound up arranging everything up to and possibly including the rising and setting of the sun to suit his own specifications and purposes.

These days, it seemed as if nothing took place in Cold Plains without his say-so or close scrutiny. He had eyes and ears everywhere. Anyone who opposed him was either asked to leave or, and this seemed to be more and more the case, they just disappeared.

At first glance, it appeared as if the man had done a great deal for the town. Old buildings had been renovated, and new buildings had gone up, as well. There was now a new town hall, a brand-new school, which he oversaw and for which he only hired teachers who were devoted to his ideology. And most important of all, he’d built a bright, spanking, brand-new church, one he professed was concerned strictly with the well-being of its parishioners’ souls—and that, he had not been shy about saying, was the purview of the leader of the flock: Grayson himself.

To a stranger from the outside, it looked like a pretty little, idyllic town.

To her, Cold Plains had become a town filled with puppets—and Samuel Grayson was the smiling, grand puppeteer. A puppeteer whose every dictate was slavishly followed. His call for modesty had all the women who belonged to his sect wearing dresses that would have been more at home on the bodies of performers reenacting the late 1950s.

Maybe her skepticism was because she’d grown up listening to her late father’s promises, none of which he’d ever kept. Promises that, for the most part, he didn’t even recall making once a little time had gone by.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t trust Samuel Grayson any further than she could throw him. And he was a large, powerful-looking man.

Her sense of survival was urgently prompting her to leave before something went wrong—before she couldn’t leave.

But no matter what she felt about Cold Plains’s transformation and no matter what her sense of survival dictated, she was not about to leave town without her sister. And Mia had flatly refused to budge, declaring instead her intentions of staying.

She was, Carly caught herself thinking again, between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Common sense might prod her to make a run for it, but she had never put her own well-being above someone else’s, especially that of a loved one.

That was why she’d lied to Hawk to make him leave Cold Plains and why she was still here now, doing her best to pretend to be one of Samuel’s most recent converts even though the very thought made her sick to her stomach.

In her opinion, Samuel Grayson, once merely a very slick motivational speaker, was now orchestrating a utopian-like environment where allegiance to him was the prime directive and where, by instituting a society of blindly obedient, non-thinking robots, he was setting the cause of civilization back over fifty years.

Women in Samuel’s society were nothing more than subservient, second-class citizens whose main function, Carly strongly suspected, was to bear children and populate Grayson’s new world.

She’d heard, although hadn’t quite managed to confirm, that Samuel was even having these devoted women “branded.” Horrified, she’d looked into it and discovered that they were being tattooed with the small letter D, for devotee, on their right hips. That alone made the man a crazed megalomaniac.

Although it sickened her, Carly knew she had to play up to Samuel in order to get her sister to trust her enough so that she could eventually abduct her and get her away from this awful place. Nothing short of that was going to work—and even that might not—but she had no other options open to her.

Hoping that Samuel would eventually grow tired of his little game—or that someone would get sick of his playing the not-so-benevolent dictator—and send him on his way was akin to waiting for Godot. It just wasn’t going to happen.

So she’d gone to Samuel and insisted that she was qualified to fill the teaching position that had suddenly opened up at the Cold Plains Day Care Center. A smile that she could only describe as reptilian had spread over Samuel’s handsome, tanned face. Steepling his long, aristocratic fingers together, he fixed his gaze intently on her face.

He paused dramatically for effect as the moment sank in, then said, “Yes, my dear, I am sure that you are more than qualified to fill that position, and may I say how very happy I am that you have come around and decided to come join us.” He’d taken her hand between his and though his smile had never wavered, it had sent chills through her. Chills she wasn’t quite sure how to dodge. She’d never felt more of a sense of imprisonment than she had at that moment.

“You will be a most welcomed addition,” he had assured her.

She remembered thinking, Over my dead body, and she had meant it.

The problem was she was fairly certain that the coda, although silently said, would not be a deterrent to Grayson. He was a man who allowed nothing to stand in the way of his plans. To that end, he was perfectly capable of cutting out a person’s heart without missing a beat.

She had to get Mia away from here. And she would, even if it wound up being the last thing she ever did.