“Stop. Come on, Cam. You know we need to talk. Just let me explain, and then if you don’t want to talk to me, we can be done. I just need five minutes, but I have to finish that briefing. I can meet you at McKay’s at four, okay?” Rafe was already backing up, his five hundred dollar shoes squeaking against the marbled floor.

McKay’s Pub. They had spent a lot of nights unwinding at McKay’s. For a while it had been their favorite hangout. Cam had spent every night there after work. They had joked that there was a booth with their names on it. He and Rafe had taken turns sitting beside Laura while they discussed the work day. “Sure. Four o’clock.”

Rafe smiled. “Four o’clock. I’ll be there.”

But Cam wouldn’t. He waved at Rafe and then walked out the door, hopped on his bike, and motored right past the bar where he was supposed to give his ex-partner five minutes of his time. He wouldn’t waste another second.

When he pulled into his rathole of an apartment complex, he carefully unfolded the newspaper clipping he’d printed from the Internet . Billionaire Artist’s Bride-to-Be . It was an article featuring someone named Jennifer Waters and her spectacular wedding plans.

The picture was of the bride-to-be and her bridesmaids. There were five other women in the picture, but Cam’s eyes focused on one. She stood toward the back as though she didn’t really want to be in the photo, but a smiling red-haired woman held her hand, dragging her in.

Her lips quirked up in a secretive smile. She looked so different with her hair down and very little makeup on her face. She looked vibrant and happy and so sweet he could eat her alive.

Laura Rosen.

The only woman he ever loved.

“I’m coming for you, baby.” He hopped off his bike and jogged to his apartment, eager to get the hell out of Dodge.

* * *

Rafael Kincaid pulled his Benz into the small parking lot of the Hampton Manor Homes and felt a bit of his rage morph into guilt.

He’d been furious when he realized Cam had stood him up. Rafe had rushed through the meeting, anxious to talk to Cam, to clear the air between them, and that asshole had just gone home. He’d gone home to a dilapidated fourplex that Rafe wouldn’t have let a dog live in.

Cam lived here?

Damn it, he should have known. Cam had sent him an e-mail with his new address, but Rafe had been far too busy to do what he should have done. He should have helped him move. He should have checked this place out. He slid out of his car, which might be worth more than the entire small building. There were four units, and at least three of them had to be housing meth labs. What the hell was Cam doing here?

Spending every dime he has looking for your woman.

It was obvious to Rafe that Cam had spent all of his money on the computer equipment he needed to perfect his facial recognition software. Cam had given up comfort and safety.


Rafe scrubbed a hand across his face and felt years older than thirty-four. He could swear he’d aged twenty years since the night Laura Rosen had been captured by the Marquis de Sade. The minute he’d realized she was gone, his soul had become something older, heavier, than it had been before. Guilt weighed on him. Now he felt its press as he walked up the steps that led to Cam’s “home.” Damn it. Why hadn’t Cam told him he needed money? Rafe would have happily written him a check.

He rapped his knuckles across the peeling paint on the door.

“Cam? Cam, let me in. I’m not going away, and I can see that your bike is parked outside. I know you’re in there.”

“And I should care about that, why?” Cam shouted it through the door.

“Because I’ll tell you what you want to know. I brought the files and everything.” Rafe felt infinitely weary. He’d wanted to avoid talking to Cam about this because he didn’t need anything else tugging at his conscience.

“I don’t want to know anything. I’m good. You could get in some serious trouble for sharing that file with me. I hope you catch the bastard.”

Rafe was about to protest, to start to coax Cam out of his shell.

He’d known Cam for years. When Cam felt slighted, he could hold on to it like a baby clutching a prized toy. But he was also tenacious as a pit bull. Cam should be drooling over new information about the man they had been hunting for years.

Four years before, they had made a deal. It had been almost a year after Laura had walked out of her hospital room leaving behind nothing but a note that told them a simple goodbye. They had killed themselves, splitting their time between trying to catch the Marquis de Sade and trying to track their wayward lover. Neither one of them had had a decent night’s sleep. It had been time to make a deal. Rafe stayed on at the FBI to keep on top of the case, and Cam had devoted himself to finding Laura. Cam had started a private investigations business, but it was almost entirely funded by Rafe. Cam had also started writing a software program that scanned the Internet not only searching for any mention of her name, but more importantly, looking for her face.

Cameron Briggs was not a man who gave up. Unless he’d found a much bigger prize.

“You motherfucker, you found her.” Rafe pounded on the door.

Just like that, his guilt raged into red-hot jealousy. Rafe was not about to let Cam waltz away with information on Laura. Laura was his, damn it. His.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rafe heard the unspoken “sucker” in Cam’s shouted words. He lifted his leg and gave the piece-of-shit door separating him from his ex-partner a well-placed kick. The door itself held, but it cracked up the middle. Cam stared at him through his now ruined door.

“You’re an asshole, and you’re replacing that door.” Cam reached out, and after two loud clicks, the door swung open.

Rafe wasn’t about to feel bad about the door. “Where is she?” Cam’s mouth became a flat, stubborn line. A long huff of breath came out of his chest, and he pointed to a table in the tiny kitchen.

“Colorado.”

There was a printout of a newspaper article on the table. It was a copy of an article from the Lifestyle section of a Denver newspaper.

He couldn’t miss her even though she was surrounded by other women. Laura Rosen. He could still remember the day she’d walked into the Bureau. He’d known the moment he’d laid eyes on her that she was the one.

Unfortunately, Cam had felt the same way.

Unfortunately? Was it really so bad? At the time, it had felt that way. At the time, all he could think about was how enjoying a three-way with his partner and his soul mate would affect his career. There wasn’t a single sitting Bureau chief openly involved in a polyamorous relationship. At the time, he’d been willing to fight his best friend over her. At the time, he’d been willing to throw her under a bus to get ahead. Oh, he’d told himself he was helping her, but he was really only thinking of himself.

Yep. The guilt was back.

“She’s calling herself Laura Niles. Why does Niles sound familiar?” Rafe asked, his finger tracing over the picture. He wanted to touch her, to assure himself that she was real and alive and whole.

“Her grandfather’s name was Niles. Niles Rosen. She loved that old man.” Cam stood at his side, his arms crossed over his chest.

Rafe looked at the man he’d once been closer to than his own brother. Cam looked tired. There was a set to his shoulders that Rafe recognized as defensiveness. Cam stood there in the tiny piece-of-crap kitchen, a big, unmoving block of wood.

Cam had come to the office to tell Rafe he’d found Laura. He’d run through the building with this printout in his hand, and when he’d found Rafe, he’d walked in on what Cam had to assume was a betrayal of the worst kind. No wonder Cam hadn’t met him at the pub.

He had to play this carefully if he didn’t want to get his ass kicked.

“Stefan Talbot.” Rafe whistled as he glanced over the article.

“Who the fuck is Stefan Talbot?”

Rafe felt a grin come and go. That was Cam. Despite the fact that he was built like a linebacker, Cam was a nerd. He was far more into his computers and watching bad sci-fi movies than art. And Cam couldn’t care less about society and powerful people. “He’s an artist.

My mother has one of his works. He’s very reclusive. Supposedly he lives in a weird little town in Colorado. And, according to this, Laura is in his wedding party.”

“What the hell is she doing in some backwater small town?” Cam asked. His shoulders had relaxed slightly as he stared at the photo.

“Hiding. From the Marquis de Sade. From the Bureau. From us.” Laura had a lot to run from. “But if he’s back, then he could have seen this, too.”

“Yeah, nice to fill me in on that.” Cam’s eyes had sunken back into his face as though retreating. “I must have missed the message you left. You know how it is when your social life is as active as mine is. Oh, wait. That’s you. So, you too busy kissing the brass’s ass to give an old friend a call?”

Cam was firmly pushing a whole bunch of Rafe’s buttons. “Cam, please hear me out.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you think you can say that would make me care.”

How did he put this? Rafe had been thinking about this every minute since last Tuesday when he’d gotten word of the new victim.

“I’m going to be flat honest with you. We found the body a couple of days ago. We’ve kept it very quiet. I was worried about you. I remember what happened the last time you were on this case. I remember the drinking and the fights. I remember you nearly died on that damn bike. When we found that girl, do you know what I saw when I looked down at her? I saw you. I saw you falling into bad habits and getting your ass killed.”

“And that would matter to you?”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? The asshole wouldn’t give him an inch. “I give a shit if you die, Cam. You couldn’t handle it the first time. I wasn’t about to send you down that path again.”

“I couldn’t handle it?” The words came out clipped, each bitten off through clenched teeth.

Rafe had tried to give him an easy way out. Cam was too damn stupid to take it. “You know you couldn’t. You punched another special agent in the middle of a briefing. You wrecked your bike twice. You got arrested for public intoxication. I’m not bailing your ass out again.”

“I wasn’t asking you to.”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” Rafe gestured around the room that seemed to serve as Cam’s kitchen, office, and bedroom. The whole place was covered in computer equipment. Wires and cords ran along the floor like thick vines. There was no rhyme or reason or organization to the place. Rafe wouldn’t be surprised if Cam just opened a window to pee. “You don’t want to have to ask me for money?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sick of living off you.” Cam’s booted feet widened to a predatory stance.

Rafe was so sick of Cam’s insecurities. He’d put up with them for years. Rafe had never been able to convince Cam that he didn’t give a shit that he’d grown up in a trailer park. It was Cam’s problem. Not Rafe’s. “You weren’t living off me, you stupid, overly proud prick. It wasn’t charity. You were working to find her. We agreed to this deal.”

Cam’s lips curled up in a smirking approximation of a smile.

“Yeah, we agreed that you would share information with me, but you don’t have to uphold your end of the bargain, do you? You don’t have to share with a guy you consider your goddamn employee. That’s why I didn’t want your money. I didn’t want to be your butt monkey anymore. Tell me something, Rafe, you been fucking any admins with Brad there? Brad working out as your wingman? I’ll be sure to tell Laura when I see her that you’re fine, because you finally found a partner you could truly love.”

Without another thought, Rafe pulled back his fist and plowed into Cam with everything he had. Cam’s head snapped back with a crack, but his body stayed in place. Too late, Rafe remembered why Cam had gotten into that fight with another agent.

Cam liked it.

A feral smile crossed Cam’s face just before he reared back and let his fist fly.

A lance of shock speared through Rafe’s gut. His breath shot out of his body, and Rafe staggered back, hitting the wall with a thud.

Cam pressed his advantage. He landed another blow, this one an uppercut to Rafe’s jaw. The pain exploded in Rafe’s skull, and he fought back.

He shoved against Cam’s bulk. Did the country boy expect the city boy to play fair? Rafe was done playing fair. It bought him nothing with Cam. He shoved out with both hands, and Cam fell back, stumbling over his sadly worn duffel bag.