Crossroads 4: Shot Through the Heart (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Crossroads 4: Shot Through the Heart

  Mia is a forensics photographer. She joined the profession after her best friend, and only family, was murdered and she was the one to find the body during a search in the woods. It all stuck with her.

  Her issues with abandonment and trust are difficult to ignore, even when she meets three men who are perfect for her and begin to break down the walls around Mia’s heart.

  As she sets out to do her job, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with a Marine and two detectives. So when they meet on a case and she helps solve it, sparks fly and her ability to keep things professional doesn’t last long.

  When an old flame and a renewed investigation into her friend’s murder hits close to home, Mia has to deal with a lot of mixed emotions, and pushing away the men is not an option especially as she becomes the hunted.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Romantic Suspense

  Length: 40,673 words

  CROSSROADS 4: SHOT

  THROUGH THE HEART

  Dixie Lynn Dwyer

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to only ONE LEGAL copy for your own personal reading on your own personal computer or device. You do not have resell or distribution rights without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer.

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  CROSSROADS 4: SHOT THROUGH THE HEART

  Copyright © 2015 by Dixie Lynn Dwyer

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-982-7

  First E-book Publication: December 2015

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Crossroads 4: Shot Through the Heart by Dixie Lynn Dwyer from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Dixie Lynn Dwyer’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Dixie Lynn Dwyer’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  Dear readers, Thank you for purchasing this legal copy of Crossroads 4: Shot Through The Heart.

  Everyone has a gift, a talent, and ability that sets them apart from other people in the world. Discovering that gift, nurturing it, and feeding it so that you can excel and accomplish your life goals is a very tricky and difficult path sometimes.

  Mia Mallory has such a gift—an ability to dissect a crime scene, view victims’ bodies and evidence around that crime scene through the lens of her camera. But do not be fooled. Behind that strong, capable composure, is a woman suffering from loss, from heartache, and an experience that has hardened her heart and possibly even desensitized her to the evil, heinous crimes of truly violent perpetrators.

  Yet somehow, in the midst of hunting a serial killer, paths cross, and love ignites so strong, so pure that not even the evil of one twisted mind can seem to destroy that love. Or can it?

  May you enjoy the story.

  Happy reading.

  Hugs!

  ~Dixie~

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  CROSSROADS 4: SHOT

  THROUGH THE HEART

  DIXIE LYNN DWYER

  Copyright © 2015

  Prologue

  Her laughter was addicting. Her smile, her long brown hair, and her voluptuous figure were that of a goddess, not of some college co-ed. She didn’t belong around those boys trying to act like men. They would hurt her, take from her innocence, and that couldn’t happen.

  He sipped his beer and watched her and her friends. It was almost time. Weekend after weekend he’d traveled into the city just to see her. To catch a glimpse and prepare himself to fulfill his fantasies with her. She would belong to him in every way. There were no others. No substitutes for her. He’d tried. He’d failed. He’d almost gone too far. He couldn’t bring that kind of attention to himself. He had to maintain control of the emotions and desires.

  He had tried unsuccessfully to get her off his mind. But the more he learned about her, saw her strength, her independence, and spirit, the more she appealed to him. She wasn’t weak but, instead, strong and capable. He knew her parents. He’d seen them struggle with illness and also give her nothing but grief and pain. They were old. They weren’t even her biological parents. She was adopted, like him. She was too old to be cared for and placed in another home but too sensual of a young woman to be left unguarded. That night he’d stopped that dirty social services guy from trying to manipulate her, trick her into getting into his car, was special. It had been the moment her gorgeous dark-blue eyes locked onto his and he saw everything he was searching for. Then she’d disappeared. Until now.

  He guzzled down his beer and saw her look at her watch. She was a good girl, not a slut. She worked hard, studied hard, and barely went out, but next week, finals were over. When she came home, he would be there waiting. He would take her then. He had his plan. He had his house set up and everything ready, including the drugs to manipulate her mind and ease her ability to resist his charms and his games of pleasure because he knew she was innocent. She didn’t trust easily. She hid from being the focus of attention. She would be
his focus of attention, every day for the rest of their lives. His cock hardened, and his heart began to pound against his chest. He needed her so badly it hurt.

  Mia, I’m coming for you. I’ve waited long enough.

  Chapter 1

  Mia Mallory rubbed her eyes, feeling the exhaustion of being at the computer for so long. But she couldn’t sleep. Not with all that racket going on next door. She hated living here and really wanted to find a new apartment but just couldn’t find the time to search. Plus, between Wellington and Portland Place, there were less apartments and more houses and cottages for sale. She wouldn’t be comfortable living in a house or even a cottage alone, never mind in a heavily wooded area. Too many bad memories there.

  She swallowed hard. Life had thrown her nothing but one curve ball after the next. She looked away from the computer and glanced up at the pictures on her desk. She didn’t know why she even bothered to keep them. Nor the photo album filled with what seemed like a past life, a time and a place that existed when she was innocent, unknowing, untouched by the evil of society. The tears filled her eyes, but not like they had years ago. So instant, so full, she couldn’t hide the tears that streaked down her cheeks. Her profession, her determination to live and move on, had desensitized her to things most people couldn’t even imagine, never mind experience and see. Not everyone had the emotional and physical fortitude, much less the strength, to view dead bodies and photograph them at their crime scenes.

  She stretched her muscles and saw the definition in them and the lightly raised veins against her wrist and forearms. She was in great physical condition, a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and expert in weapons, thanks not only to the police academy but to R.J.

  She felt her chest tighten. She missed him. Despite them both knowing that being lovers wasn’t ever going to work out, she still missed him. Those several months together after Wynona had been murdered had helped her get through losing her roommate and also compounded the desire to achieve her degree and help to capture individuals who took innocent people’s lives.

  She ran her finger along the small porcelain box, the one that held the locket he had given her that she no longer wore. She thought about the nights they’d spent going out to dinner and training on the mats at Sparrow’s dojo in the city. It felt like a lifetime ago. Just like everything else in her life, no one stuck around. No one committed to her fully, only temporarily. It was because she had a hardened heart. She’d created a kind of barrier over it that ensured she showed little emotion or let anyone get close to her. It was lonely, but she was used to it. It hurt less than the pain of losing someone you’d given your heart to or even loved.

  She felt guilty for feeling relieved that she was still alive when the police and the detectives like R.J. had told her she should be dead. Had that killer, the one who’d taken Wynona, been after her, too? She would never know. Just like she would never know why her biological parents had given her up for adoption and why her adoptive parents had to be so old they couldn’t even live long enough to see her go to college.

  She no longer felt sadness when she thought such things or feelings like worthlessness or being unneeded in this world, as though she was taking up space and would never be an asset to society, to anyone. Instead, she felt numb, as if she had gotten used to being truly alone and unconnected. Wasn’t it easier than feeling?

  Her only feelings of being connected or of fulfillment and making a difference came when she worked. Her ability to not only take the right pictures and document the evidence, but also assist in profiling the killers, was a gift, an innate ability, and also a curse. Too bad that gift hadn’t been present when Wynona had been found murdered. That had been a few years back before she completed her training and after she was forced into counseling by the department.

  She shifted in her chair and stood up. She looked at the computer. Wynona’s killer was still out there. She tightened her grip and thought about the search. She thought about the different avenues the detectives had focused on. They were all dead ends, even the fact that Wynona had been so drunk when she got back to the apartment that she’d slept in Mia’s bed. Mia could have been killed, too, if she hadn’t got caught up in a project at the academy. But to learn her own apartment had been turned into a crime scene, and men and women she knew, who had helped train her, had to photograph her apartment, look for fingerprints and evidence to find out who’d taken Wynona made her feel so violated and unsafe.

  It had been all over the media and had sent the local colleges in the city into a panic. Extra security was added to campuses, and police patrols throughout the city late at night kept watch on the co-eds that drank at bars until early morning hours. It was insane, and then came the news of evidence. Some thirty minutes away in the woods a shoe was found. The search parties consisted of everyone from law enforcement to volunteers from the colleges and communities.

  Hours upon hours they looked through the deep wooded area in Upstate New York. There were clues and evidence left behind. Pieces of clothing, a high-heel shoe, and even blood.

  She was the one who’d discovered Wynona’s body in the search through the woods. Mia would never forget that day. Only a state away in Pennsylvania, a place filled with deep woods and gorgeous works of art created by Mother Nature, and on a good day captured by the lens on her digital camera. Those woods also contained danger, isolation from society, and no one for miles. When she thought of the woods, she thought of Wynona’s screams for help. The only witnesses to her last dying breaths had been the trees and wildlife within.

  Mia shivered from the thoughts and walked away from her desk.

  There was nothing she could do about it now, no way to ease the spirit of her friend or those who had passed before her, murdered, victims of violent, brutal crimes and heinous acts by monsters. Except for one way—capture them by catching their mistakes.

  She looked at her camera bags that sat by the front door, ready to leave with her now. Nothing she could ever want for herself mattered. Nothing. She lived and breathed for that buzz on her phone in the morning or at any given hour when she got a call for work. This was her life. She hunted killers, and one day she would find Wynona’s.

  * * * *

  Tiegen McKay stood near the security guards by the entrance of the terminal. He ground his teeth and tapped his foot, just staring down the hallway and waiting to see his brother appear or at least some people from the plane that had landed. The terminal was small. The whole airport was, which made it ideal for business travel and, of course, more common flights like from the military base in South Carolina. He couldn’t wait to see his brother Murdock, especially knowing that he had a close call while on some damn mission for the government. Tiegen wished Murdock was a cop like him and Mitch, but then again, wearing blue was becoming almost as dangerous as wearing fatigues.

  He took an uneasy breath as he glanced around him. He was always in cop mode, a state police investigator, a man that had seen some bad shit and the evil allowed to roam free on this earth. It all gave him nightmares and made him wonder if he could ever give it up. Ever stop hunting killers and bringing justice to people’s families. Especially after the last week he had.

  His eyes landed on his brother as he slowly walked up the small incline, limping and wearing dark sunglasses and fatigues, and carrying a duffel bag. He always traveled light. The closer Murdock got, the more Tiegen took in of his six-feet-four height, conditioned body, and trim waist. He was a walking killing machine.

  “Murdock.” He reached for him. His brother dropped his bag and held him close, slapping his hand against his back in a bear hug.

  Tiegen chuckled and pulled back. The relief must have been apparent on his face because Murdock picked his bag back up, grunted, and looked at him. At least he thought he did, but the dark sunglasses covered his eyes. Tiegen could see the scrapes and bruises on his cheeks leading behind the glasses.

  “What the hell happened? Are you okay?” he asked him as they started to walk.r />
  “I’m alive, Tiegen,” he said very flatly, and Tiegen swallowed hard.

  They didn’t say another word to one another until they got into the parking lot and to the truck. They were big men, tough men who didn’t show emotion in public but who were closer than normal brothers by far. He would wait to see when Murdock was ready to talk. Once they were inside, Murdock leaned his head back and exhaled.

  “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “No problem, it was easy for me to head out of the city today early. It worked out just fine.”

  The silence continued, and so badly Tiegen wanted to ask Murdock what had gone down, but he knew he couldn’t. His missions were always so secretive.

  “How is Mitch?” he asked.

  “He’s busy with some case in Wellington. Some break-ins have been happening, and they started a few months ago. The perpetrators started expanding their territory from Wellington to Portland Place now. But he says he’s getting close. I think he brought in Toro Vancouver to help.”

  Murdock turned to look at him and then chuckled. “Damn, he needs a tracker to find these punks.”

  “They committed a couple of home invasions. Put some residents in the hospital and nearly killed an older couple when they both sustained heart attacks. It’s getting worse each time. Mitch thinks that they have a connection in both towns, a person who identifies the right people and homes to break into.”

  “Well, Mitch is like a pit bull. He never gives up until he gets what he’s after.”