Dead By Midnight by Beverly Barton Read Free Book Online Page A

to want to see him dead.
    Then Saturday, the third letter had arrived, another word-for-word replica of letter number two. He knew the message by heart.
    Midnight is coming. Say your prayers. Ask for forgiveness. Get your affairs in order. You’re on the list. Be prepared. You don’t know when it will be your turn. Will you be the next to die?
    For the past couple of days, he’d been thinking about what he should do. Lily had enough on her mind with her job as a waitress, the two girls, and their barely having enough money to make ends meet. The last thing she needed was to find out that someone was sending her husband death threats. If he went to the police, what could they do? Not a damn thing. And what could he do? He had no idea who had sent the letters. Even when he had ended up in the gutter—literally—a few years back, he hadn’t encountered anyone who’d want to kill him. All he could do was watch his back, be careful, and not take any chances. And as far as he knew, Lily and the girls were safe. The letters had not mentioned his wife and kids, so he hoped that meant that only he was in danger. But from whom? And why?
     
    Maleah would have preferred dealing directly with Nic, but that wasn’t an option right now and she needed permission to take Lorie Hammonds’s case and use the Powell Agency’s resources to investigate. That meant contacting Sanders in order to get his approval. When she had called Griffin’s Rest earlier today, she had spoken to Barbara Jean.
    “He’s in a meeting with a potential client. I’ll have him call you as soon as possible.”
    That had been two and a half hours ago. If Nic had been there, she wouldn’t have kept Maleah waiting. But she and Sanders were not close friends, simply coworkers at the agency. It wasn’t that she disliked Sanders. Quite the contrary was true. She liked and respected Griff’s right-hand man, but she found his formal manners and his military bearing if not exactly intimidating then at the very least forbidding. From the first time she had taken her turn as head of security at Griffin’s Rest, a position that routinely rotated among agents, she had thought it odd and at the same time rather endearing that the solemn, austere Sanders and the sweet, gregarious Barbara Jean were a couple. It was obvious to everyone that she adored him and that he, in his own way, cared deeply for her.
    It wasn’t until she and Nic had become close friends that Nic told her Sanders had, years ago, lost his wife and child. If Nic had known the particulars of the tragedy, she had not seen fit to share the information with Maleah. Sanders himself was as secretive about his past, if not more so, than Griff was; but Barbara Jean was an open book. Everyone who knew her knew she had been paralyzed in a devastating car accident and after many surgeries and years of physical therapy, she had been left a paraplegic. She considered herself lucky to have survived and found joy in her life every day. The topic she chose not to discuss, but that everyone at Powell’s was aware of, was the fact that her younger sister had been one of the many victims of the Beauty Queen Killer, who had also murdered the first wife of one of Griff’s best friends, Judd Walker.
    Maleah was deep in thought—remembering the last time she had seen the Walkers, Judd and his new wife and their two young daughters—when the phone rang. She recognized the number immediately. Griffin’s Rest.
    “Hello.”
    “I received your message,” Sanders said.
    “Then you know that I called to get your okay to take on a new client.”
    “Lorie Hammonds is a friend of your brother’s wife. Is that correct?”
    “Yes, Lorie and Cathy are best friends.”
    “And Ms. Hammonds has received two letters threatening her life?”
    “Yes.”
    “Have you notified the local authorities?”
    “I have. I personally spoke to Sheriff Mike Birkett last night.”
    “And you believe that the situation warrants the Powell