Dying Breath. Heather Graham

was a knock at the door. A heavy knock, pounding and insistent.

      “FBI! Folks, please open up!” came a voice.

      “What in the world?”

      Philip Preston rose and strode to the door; he looked through the peephole before frowning and opening it.

      Two men stepped in.

      The first was tall and dark and had the high cheekbones and golden skin tone of a Native American, along with striking blue eyes.

      The second man...

      Vickie had started to rise. She froze by the table.

      She knew him.

      He had aged nine years, of course. His features were still striking, but they seemed cleaner cut, leaner, more rugged. His shoulders were broader. He’d been wearing the blue uniform of the Boston Police Department that day; now he was in a blue suit he wore with casual ease.

      Yet she remembered him so clearly. He’d seen her...and he’d warned her to get down. He’d taken a shot, and he’d disarmed the man who had been after her and little Noah on that fateful day. He’d been tall and strong and ridiculously macho and beautiful to her. Detectives had interviewed her, but he’d been there with coffee and a blanket, and he’d held her when she started to shake and had nearly fallen because she was so nervous. He’d been called to be there when she brokenly described everything that had happened that day.

      She had thanked him for saving her.

      “But it wasn’t really me, was it?” he’d asked her.

      She hadn’t answered; she’d never known what to say, how much he knew, how much he had seen...if maybe he actually spoke to the dead himself.

      She’d watched him interviewed on the news. He’d stopped a stone-cold killer. He had done nothing any man on the beat wouldn’t have done, he had told reporters. He’d just been there when escaped convict Bertram Aldridge had burst out of the Ballantine house.

      She could have been brutally murdered that day. Bertram Aldridge had come after her with a gun. That wasn’t his customary means of murder. He liked to slice up his victims and write messages in their blood. He liked to write notes to the police and smear them with blood.

      She had been lucky; so damned lucky. Time had allowed her to walk and talk normally again. To head down to NYC for college, to take work there as a researcher, but now...

      She’d come home. And there he was. Griffin Pryce. He was standing next to the tall dark-haired man who was explaining that Chrissy Ballantine had been taken and they’d like to speak with Victoria for just a few minutes.

      As Vickie continued to stare while her father explained that she hadn’t worked for the Ballantine family since she’d been in college, she saw that Dylan had gone to the men, that he was speaking a blue streak at the same time.

      “You have to find my mother. This isn’t fair. My family has lost too much. Whatever the hell it takes, you have to find my mother.”

      It was almost as if Griffin Pryce had heard him. Because he spoke next, almost interrupting Philip Preston.

      “We will find Chrissy Ballantine. We will,” he said with conviction.

      “But what makes you think that Vickie could help?” her father asked, frustrated.

      And then Griffin Pryce looked at her. His eyes were older, harder than she remembered, though still determined and macho and beautiful and...

      “Because her name is part of the clue that was sent to the media,” he said softly.

       2

      Taker—as he had determined his code name to be—stood watching the commotion. Cops, reporters, medics—you name it.

      It was good. So good. The woman, it seemed, was alive. People everywhere were talking. A tall blonde next to him smiled at him radiantly. “Can you believe it? They saved her! Dug her right out of the ground—and saved her!”

      “Hallelujah,” he said, nodding seriously. “Thank God!”

      The blonde moved on.

      He became aware that Under was coming to stand next to him. Under thought that being Under meant being the leader—and that Taker had agreed with that, since, in the name the press had given them—Undertaker—Under came first. Taker knew that Under was a lackey; he was the smart one. He was the one with the plan. And—though he refrained from saying it—being a Taker was far better than being Under.

      No matter. His accomplice was good—and loyal. Loyal, he knew, mattered most.

      “So, they saved her ass!” Under said.

      “Doesn’t matter, does it?” Taker asked.

      “Not when we’ve got a big one all boxed up!” Under said, and laughed.

      Taker started moving down the street. Under followed in his footsteps.

      “Think we’ll get to see what happens with that one? I got to admit, I’m hoping your clue doesn’t work. That’s one I’d love to see go bad.”

      “Yeah,” Taker agreed. “But hey, not the prize we’re really looking for, right?”

      “But a thread to the prize,” Under said, and paused in the street, smiling as they watched the growing throng of reporters in the area. “Love this, love it, love it...and best of all...”

      “Best of all, what?” Taker asked.

      Under grinned. “We’ve got the dough to keeping going and going.” Under paused, frowning. “Hey, what happens when we’ve taken down the prize, huh? I mean, this is cool, really cool. But I mean, you have an objective. And that’s okay. But...”

      “You change. You change your direction. Your style, your signature. And start all over again. You become someone else.”

      “So, this never has to end?”

      “No, it never has to end,” Taker said.

      It would end, of course. He did have an objective. And as to his good friend Under...

      Well, friendships often—and tragically—came to an end.

      But for now...

      His eye was on the prize. And as for Under...at the moment, Under was loyal, like a lapdog, and had assets and abilities Taker did not. Under could, upon occasion, behave in a superior manner, but...

      Really. It was all just a matter of time.

      * * *

      “Where Preston ran and good old Paul rode.”

      Vickie sat frozen in her chair as Griffin Pryce read the words.

      The two men had declined to take seats; therefore, her parents had refused to sit again. They were like a pair of puppies, blindsided by a couple of whacks to the head.

      Not that Vickie felt any different. Or, perhaps, she did. She felt frozen.

      “This is wrong, just wrong,” Philip Preston said. “I mean, Preston is not an uncommon name. This clue may not refer to Vickie in any way. You’re asking my daughter to become involved with a killer. A killer who might target her. You can’t mean—”

      “Yes, Mr. Preston,” Jackson Crow said.

      Vickie’s father was not ready to give in. “Victoria was almost killed once. That man, that awful man—it’s him? Aldridge! Bertram Aldridge. She won’t be involved. I’ll get her out of the country, I’ll—”

      “Bertram Aldridge is sitting in prison,” Griffin said. “He will be there for life.”

      “This is someone who likes to taunt the police with notes,” Jackson