After The Dark. Cynthia Eden

was never part of Cameron’s MO. He didn’t make any recordings. He just—He took pictures.”

      Because she’d found his pictures on his computer.

      “Maybe his MO has changed.”

      She stared at him, and he could see the pain in her eyes. He hated that. He never wanted to bring Samantha pain. “I have a copy of the video in my bag. I brought my laptop because I wanted you to see that clip.” He’d thought it would be the one thing that would convince Samantha to help him. She’d never been able to turn away from victims. Her heart was too soft. Tough exterior, gentle soul. That was his Sam. “Do you want to see it?”

      She shook her head... No.

      Hell, he’d been sure...

      “Yes,” Samantha said quietly even as she was still shaking her head. “I want to see it.”

      He reached for his bag, which he’d placed on the ground. He opened it up and pulled out his laptop. It took just a moment to boot.

      Samantha slid closer to him. He made sure to keep his breathing deep and easy. He knew the tightrope that he and Samantha had always walked. If she was coming back to him, coming back to work with him, he had to be careful to keep his control around her. Samantha pulled at his emotions, a dangerous thing when he was working a case. He needed his focus to be on the killer.

      Not on Samantha and the need he felt for her.

      “The video doesn’t end well,” he warned her. His finger was poised over the keyboard. One click, and he’d have the video playing.

      “Just get the hell on with it,” Samantha muttered. For just an instant, he heard the whisper of the South in her voice. Normally, Samantha had no accent. But when she was angry or really stressed, that Southern drawl would reveal itself.

      His finger tapped against the keyboard.

      The video began to play.

      “I’m Kristy Wales,” the blonde woman in the video said. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. Long streaks of black mascara coated her face. “And I’m going to d-die.”

      Kristy sat in a chair, her hands bound behind her. There was nothing in the background of the video, just a white wall. No sound on the video, just her voice. Shallow cuts covered her arms and her legs. He’d tortured her.

      “It’s...it’s because of Agent Dark. She...she didn’t finish the ex-experiment.” Her gaze cut from the camera to some spot just to the right. There was silence a moment. Then Kristy gave a jerky nod and said, “Dark should have f-finished.” Her eyelids fluttered, and then she was looking back at the camera. “She doesn’t get to run. It won’t stop. He won’t stop.” Her lips were trembling. “Make him stop.”

      The camera kept going.

      But then...Kristy started screaming. “I did it! I did it! Now let me go, please, please, please—”

      A man walked into the frame. Tall, with wide shoulders, dressed in black from the top of his head down to his feet. A ski mask completely shielded his face and head.

      But nothing covered the knife in his hand.

      Kristy jerked in the chair. “I’ll do anything! I said what you wanted—I’ll do anything! I’ll—”

      The man had walked behind Kristy. His hand lifted. He put the knife to her throat.

      “I’m sorry! Whatever I did, I’m sorry!” Kristy yelled. “Please don’t—”

      The knife sliced across her throat, moving from the left side in a sweeping slash to the right, ending just beneath her right earlobe. Blood flew out, and Kristy gasped. Her body shuddered and...

      She didn’t die instantly.

      She jerked and twitched a few more moments while the man stood behind her.

      Then the video ended.

      Beside Blake, Samantha was dead silent. He closed the lid on his laptop. Blake put the computer back in his bag, then he raised his gaze to look at her face.

      She’d paled. The faint spray of freckles on her nose stood out—a stark contrast to her too-pale skin. Her eyes were wide.

      “We found Kristy in a lake. The video was sent to the FBI. We saw her die before we ever found her body.”

      She exhaled on a ragged breath.

      “Samantha—”

      “That wasn’t Cameron.” She stood up. “You’re too good of an FBI agent to think that it was.” She turned on her heel and hurried into the cottage.

      For an instant, Blake didn’t move. But Samantha hadn’t slammed the front door shut behind her, she hadn’t locked him out, so he took that as a sign that he could follow her. Hopefully. He grabbed his bag and hurried inside.

      The place was bright, with plenty of light coming through the big picture window that looked out over the bay. The walls were white. And the furniture—what little of it there was—appeared comfortable, casual. An overstuffed couch, a white chair with a blue blanket thrown over its back.

      Samantha stood in front of the window, staring out at the bay below. Through the picture window, he could see the wooden stairs that led down to the small beach that waited at the bottom of the bluff. A moment passed in silence. She remained there, her arms wrapped around her stomach. He was just about to speak when she said, “Why are you really here, Blake?”

      Because I want you back. She’d been the best partner he ever had, and his life was pretty much shit without her. But they’d get to that, later. Because right then, hell, yes, they did have business to discuss. “Tell me why it’s not him.”

      Her shoulders stiffened. “Is this some kind of test? You want to see if I’ve lost my edge over the last few months?”

      Actually, he just wanted to see what was going on inside of her head.

      “Cameron is left-handed, and that killer in the video was right-handed. Obvious, of course, because when he went behind her, he sliced from the left side across to the right, the typical strike pattern of a right-hander.”

      “Cameron Latham is a fucking genius.” Certified. He’d seen the test scores in the guy’s file. “You think he couldn’t attack with a different hand if he wanted? I don’t buy that. I think he could. I think—”

      She looked back at him. “He never called me Agent Dark. We’d known each other too long. Been too...intimate for that.”

      Blake’s hands clenched into fists.

      “I was Sam to him. Samantha when he was annoyed. I was never Agent Dark. This guy...the one on that video? It’s not him. Sure, he had Cameron’s build. He had his height. But I mean, if it really were Cameron, why hide the face? Why bother with a mask in that video?” She gave a grim shake of her head. “This isn’t him, and I think you know that.”

      “I know that Cameron Latham disappeared completely four months ago. Just seemed to vanish from the face of the earth.”

      Her expression didn’t change.

      “You said he was alive the last time you saw him.” That had been her story.

      “He was.” Samantha’s voice was flat.

      What is she hiding from me? Because he’d known—from the moment he saw her blood-soaked form in Cameron’s house—that she was hiding something. He tried pushing her. “So all this time, Cameron has been alive out there.”

      “Yes.”

      “Only, the guy is a killer—he was taking victims like freaking clockwork before he vanished. Am I really supposed to believe that he just stopped killing? That he gave that up cold turkey?” It was Blake’s turn to grimly shake his head. “Bullshit. Guys like him don’t stop. They can’t stop, not until they’re behind bars