Sweet Spot. Susan Mallery

      “She always has to be right, always has to be better than me…Miss Ph.D. thinks she’s so smart, but she has no idea…”

      Trent almost flinched at the hurtful words in the letters. Dixie was envious of Rees, that much was clear. Envy was probably normal for a troubled younger sister like Dixie. But he knew Rees wouldn’t write these cruel words off as mere sibling jealousy. Not Rees. She would accept them like tender flesh accepts a sharp blade. She would internalize them. She would bleed over them.

      Gritting his teeth, he kept handing her the pages.

      She bit the inside of her bottom lip as she read, her expression carefully neutral, her breathing carefully even, but her eyes shone overbright.

      Trent dragged his attention to the next pile of letters. To his relief, this stack wasn’t from Dixie, but from a woman named Farrentina Hamilton. Where Dixie’s handwriting was loopy and childish, the hand that composed these letters was pointed and bold. But save the jabs at Rees, the content of the letters was similar. Declarations of love. Promises of care packages. Plans for Kane’s future outside prison—a future his multiple life sentences were supposed to prevent.

      Trent held up the letter he was reading and focused on Wiley. “What do you know about a woman named Farrentina Hamilton?”

      “Widowed. Inherited a pile of dough from hubby. Visited Kane regularly. Several detectives are on the way to her house now.”

      Trent nodded. Handing the last pile to Rees, he homed in on the trinkets still left in the storage unit. He fingered a lock of platinum hair, Dixie’s probably, and a small pile of cigarettes. Then his hand moved to a stack of photographs lying facedown in one of the cubbies. He picked up the pile by the edges and turned the photos into the light. The first photo was a wedding shot of Kane and Dixie. The bride was dressed head-to-toe in frothy white, the groom in his prison jumpsuit.

      Rees leaned in close to see the pictures. Close enough for him to catch a wisp of her gentle lavender scent over the sharp stench of disinfectant. Close enough to feel the warmth of her skin.

      Her body tensed when she saw the reminder of her sister’s union with Kane. A reminder she surely didn’t need.

      Trent hurriedly moved on to the next photo. The next three were snapshots of a brunette posing seductively in red lace lingerie, complete with garter belt and stockings. Uneasy tension descended over his neck and shoulders. Something was not right about the pictures. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

      Flipping the photograph over, he read the inscription on the back. Enjoy! Love, Farrentina. No surprise. The seductive photos and red lace went with the bold script and contents of her letters, all right. But there was still something that bothered him.

      He shuffled past head shots of several blondes, women obviously attracted to the danger and notoriety of Kane. Women he would never understand. Finally his fingers grasped the last photo.

      It was a snapshot of Dixie and Rees in the foyer of Rees’s home. The two of them were posed on the antique bench, surrounded with teddy bears, silly smiles on their faces.

      But the photo was marred. A precise slit was cut from the locket around Dixie’s neck to her thighs. Drops of something thick and dried and brown obscured her sweet smile.

      Drops of blood.

      Rees gasped for air and swayed into him.

      Trent dropped the stack of photos on the storage unit and grasped her upper arms. Damn. Damn. Damn. This was just what he’d feared would happen. Kane would never pass up the chance to leave a blatant threat for whoever searched his cell.

      And Trent had allowed that person to be Rees.

      She trembled violently under his hands and drew in breath after breath as if she was in danger of drowning.

      He grasped her tighter, pulling her close, talking into her ear. “Rees. Remember, this is Kane’s game. Manipulate, control, dominate. He guessed you’d come to the prison with me. That you’d search through his things. He put that photo there for you to find. To hurt you. To scare you. Don’t let him win. Hold on to me. Breathe.” He drew in deep breaths and slowly exhaled.

      She followed his lead, her gasps becoming slower, more controlled until she was breathing almost normally.

      He pulled back to look at her, to make sure she was all right.

      Her heart-shaped face was pale as death, her dark eyes wide and glistening, but at least she wasn’t going to pass out on the floor of the cell.

      No thanks to him.

      Anger rumbled through him. Anger with Kane. Anger with Dixie. And, most of all, anger with himself.

      Rees was strong, but she wasn’t strong enough to stand up to Kane’s twisted manipulations. How could she be? How could any normal person face such an overt threat to the life of someone she loved? How could a normal person face such evil? “I’m getting you out of here.”

      She shook her head emphatically, her long dark hair lashing her cheeks. “No. I’ll be all right. I—”

      “Like hell you will. I shouldn’t have let you come. I’m taking you back to the entrance. Now.”

      Ushering Rees out to the walkway, he cursed himself again for good measure. They had been through nearly everything in the cell, and she hadn’t remembered one thing that would lead to Kane’s whereabouts. She hadn’t magically come up with the answers he was looking for. He’d risked her peace of mind for nothing.

      Chapter Three

      Risa leaned against one of the government-beige walls in the entrance of the prison—walls that closed in around her, crowding her, smothering her. Like all the other times she’d ventured inside the razor wire, the lack of light and air and freedom made her lungs constrict and her heart pound. But it was what she’d seen in Kane’s cell that made her head throb with fear.

      The sight of that photo of Dixie cut and bloody had left her shaking. She’d known Kane intended to kill Dixie since the day of their wedding, but seeing such a graphic reenactment of his earlier crimes with Dixie as his subject was almost more than she could take.

      And the worst part was that he’d gotten to her. His booby trap had worked. She’d blown it. She’d insisted she didn’t need protection, that she could handle whatever Kane had planned, and the truth was, she couldn’t.

      Trent was right. All the research she’d done into the criminal mind, all the horror stories she’d heard while compiling that research, none of it had prepared her to face the blood on that photograph. The slit down the middle of Dixie’s body. The clear threat to her sister’s life.

      Trent hadn’t thrown her over his shoulder, thankfully. But he had whisked her out of the cell block, deposited her here and instructed Duane to baby-sit until he and Wiley could gather up Kane’s belongings and make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

      She gritted her teeth and cursed her own weakness. Thank God, she hadn’t fainted. If she had, Trent probably would have shipped her off in an ambulance and ordered the doctors to sequester her in the hospital until Dixie was rescued. Or until it was too late. At least here, she could talk to the guards and do some general fact gathering on her own. She might still be able to help in some way.

      She sighed and looked up at Duane. Even before he’d phoned to inform her of Dixie’s secret wedding, the guard had taken her under his wing. And judging by the way he hovered over her, he was nearly as protective as Trent.

      Noticing her gaze on him, Duane laid his hand on her arm, his big mitt making it look as fragile as a toothpick. “I’m real sorry about what happened, Professor.”

      She looked into his weary eyes. “Thanks, Duane. That means a lot to me.”

      The guard’s coarse features clouded with obvious anger. “Damn Kane. Why did he have to drag your sister into