Déjà Vu. Lisa Childs

was pissed, not just about the deadline but because Trent had told him this book would be the last in the lucrative Thief of Hearts series. It was time to end it. But he’d been struggling before Alaina Paulsen had shattered his peace and quiet and confirmed that his fiction was actually fact.

      Fact that Trent didn’t know if he was strong enough yet to face….

      “I’ll get the book done,” he promised Dietrich and himself.

      “But it’s easier for you to write back at the estate,” his assistant insisted. “You have fewer distractions.”

      It wasn’t just his empathy that distracted him now; it was her. And Dietrich must have noticed.

      Hell, Trent had left shortly after she had that morning. But it hadn’t been just that he was drawn to her, connected in some way he couldn’t explain. It had been because of the murder. He’d called the Bureau to find out why she’d been called away so abruptly and he’d learned of it. The ritualistic killing that so closely matched the M.O. of the protagonist of his Thief of Hearts novels. He’d had to see for himself if the nightmares he’d hoped were only products of his imagination matched the horrifying reality.

      “I was there,” he murmured, the dead woman’s terror gripping him again. “It was just like.” The violent images once again took center stage in his mind.

      “It’s not your fault,” Dietrich said, “if someone copied your book. You can’t be held responsible for someone else’s actions.”

      But what if they’d once been his?

      He closed his eyes, and passionate images replaced the violent ones. A woman’s nails raking his back, clutching at his butt as he thrust inside her again and again. Alaina Paulsen was more than just an agent investigating murders; she was part of it, too.

      She had once been his … and he couldn’t leave until she was again.

      Excitement coursed through him, but he fought it down, fought to control his emotions.

      But it was all so perfect.

      He wanted to scream, wanted to thump his fist in the air in celebration. But he had rejoiced another way, a far more satisfying way….

      He lifted the cover from the box. He’d found it, like he had so many other things, when he’d opened that door and allowed the past to come rushing back into his mind.

      A chuckle rumbled in his chest. Trent Baines had unlocked that door with his books. And until today the man had had no idea that he’d let the monster loose.

      He gazed inside that box at the heart he’d stolen. In his mind, it beat yet. For him.

      But it wasn’t the heart he really wanted. That heart beat now inside Alaina Paulsen’s chest. But he knew to whom it had once belonged. The woman she had once been and the man she had once loved.

      Now he knew who they all were and who they all had once been … before he’d killed them.

      He closed the lid on the box, which would soon fill with more hearts. Because now he knew what he had to do, who he had to kill. Again.