After The Dark. Cynthia Eden

summers in Martha’s Vineyards.

      It had been easy to set the bombs—two of them. One on the motorboat. One just beneath the pier. Almost anyone could make bombs these days, with just a handy internet search, but he’d actually spent time researching bomb-making for quite a while.

      One of his “phases” as his father called them. When he liked to explore destruction and death.

      Bombs had interested him, once upon a time, but he’d decided they weren’t intimate enough. Sure, they could do a lot of damage, very fast, but...

      As Dr. Latham had told him, the knife was an intimate weapon.

      I only used the bomb because I didn’t want to get too close to Samantha. He’d actually seen a story on the news months ago about Samantha Dark and a bomb. She’d barely escaped another case where someone tried to use a bomb to take her out. It had seemed fitting, using a bomb again.

      It was dangerous to get close to her. Dr. Latham had gotten close to her...

      And now he’s gone. She took him away.

      He watched the flames crackle. A lot of the fire had already gone out, thanks to that black water. He didn’t see Agent Gamble. The man was probably still in the water, still searching for Samantha.

      Would she be burned when he found her? Disfigured? The classic beauty Latham had once spoken of gone forever? Oh, he hoped so.

      It would be a treat to see Agent Gamble carry her broken body from the bay. To watch as the agent stood there, so lost without her.

      But he could hear the scream of sirens, coming in the distance. If he lingered too long, cops would be there, not that the local cops scared him.

      He’d completed his mission. Finished what Dr. Latham had started. Now he could evolve. He could go to the next step, he could—

      It was the faintest movement that caught his eye.

      The fog wasn’t as thick near the shoreline, and the moonlight shone down just right...just enough for him to see a man swimming. Strong, hard, a good distance away, not near the burning pier at all.

      He could see the man’s dark head. He approached the shore, splashing out of the water, and he knew it was Agent Gamble. Agent Gamble turned, stretched out his hand behind him—

      No, fucking no.

      And his fingers curled around her hand. Samantha splashed after him. They ran onto the little beach and hurried toward the cover of the trees.

      She hadn’t died. She hadn’t paid for her crimes. She’d escaped, like a damn cat with nine lives.

      Rage twisted in his gut, and he took a lurching step toward them.

      But the cry of the sirens came again, louder this time, closer, and he knew that he couldn’t finish Samantha right then.

      But he’d have his chance with her soon enough. After all, he still had the one thing she wanted. The victim.

      * * *

      “WE CAN’T LET him get away,” Samantha said. The wind whipped against her, and she shivered as her teeth began to chatter. When the explosion had first hit, she’d stayed under the water until she thought her lungs would burst. She’d tried hard to swim away from the pier even as the flames lit the sky. “Get the...cops... Search the area. He has Tammy close—”

      Blake pulled her against him. She could hear the shriek of sirens. Captain Lewis and his team were rushing to the scene.

      “You’re freezing.” Worry filled Blake’s voice.

      She was freezing, no doubt, but she was alive, so she’d just suck it up and deal with the cold. “I think he has Tammy in...in one of the abandoned houses on the bluff... W-we have to search for—”

      He wrapped his arms around her, held her tight. She could feel the heat of his body, and she wanted to press herself against him. He was warm and strong and she felt safe with him.

      “Thought I’d lost you...” His words were so low and...there was something about his tone. Something dark. Dangerous.

      Samantha glanced up at him.

      “I can’t lose you.”

      The sirens were louder. “We have to go,” she said, “we have to help find the perp. We need to get Tammy.”

      He eased back. “We will get her. And that SOB.”

      In the next instant, his hand had locked tightly around hers. They were running through the trees—twisting pines and old oaks that had limbs heavy with moss—as she and Blake circled back toward his rented SUV. He rushed to the vehicle, and she was right with him. He opened his door and—

      Patrol cars screeched to a stop, the sound of their squealing tires and lurching brakes hurting her ears. Bright headlights illuminated the scene, and she heard a rough voice call out, “Freeze! Put your hands up!”

      Blake turned in the light, putting his body in front of hers. “FBI,” he shouted. “Agent Blake Gamble. The perp is still here. We need to start searching the scene now.”

      Yes, they did...before the guy vanished into the shadows once again.

      * * *

      THE PERP WAS GOOD, Blake would give him the fuck that. The local cops and FBI agents had fanned out fast, and they’d made short work of searching the abandoned houses on the bluff. One house had shown signs of a squatter, a place littered with old food and debris, but whoever had been there—he was long gone.

      They’d found blood in a second house. One with boards on its busted windows and a front door that had been sagging open. Captain Lewis had ordered a crime scene team to the house so they could take care of collecting that bit of evidence.

      The problem was...it had been a whole lot of blood. Too much.

      If Tammy White is alive, I’m not sure how long she has left.

      But the perp—he’d gotten away. Probably just driven away when the cop cars had been screeching up to the scene.

      “You didn’t get a look at the guy?” Captain Lewis asked him now. He was pacing near Blake’s SUV. Samantha stood to the side, a borrowed Fairhope PD jacket wrapped around her shoulders. Lewis had given her that jacket—a jacket that dwarfed her fragile frame.

      “Didn’t see him,” Blake said. “Just the explosion.”

      Lewis swore. “Hate this shit is happening in my town. It’s not supposed to happen here. Sammie...” He pointed at Samantha. “You know this is a good town, a quiet place. A safe place.”

      “It’s always been my safe place,” Samantha said, her words low, just carrying to their little group. “That’s why I came back.”

      Lewis shifted closer to her—and the guy even gave her an awkward pat on the back. “You needed to come home.”

      Blake’s eyes narrowed. The police captain was built like a former linebacker, and energy seemed to crackle in the air around him. He was over thirty years Samantha’s senior, but there was a definite sharpness about him. This guy was no small-town hick. And this man knows Samantha, very well. Well enough that concern thickened his voice when he spoke to her. Samantha had said Lewis was the only father she’d had since she was thirteen, and right then, there was no missing the concern in Lewis’s eyes. The captain cared for her, deeply.

      “We’re catching him,” Lewis vowed now. “This punk isn’t coming here to terrorize my people. He’s not going to try to hurt you, not on my watch. If your dad knew what was happening...”

      Samantha’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of her father. Blake wanted to know a whole lot more about Samantha’s dad.

      “This man is highly intelligent.” She spoke without any emotion. “He’s a determined killer. Methodical. He’s planning out his attacks in careful detail.”