“Maybe you should take a closer look at Frank’s daughter, Jasmine. She was right there, and we’ve only skimmedthe surface of her relationship with her father. The fact that she found the body doesn’t clear her of the crime.”
Nick’s chilling words rose in his memory. Much as he might want to ignore them, Sam knew he had to give them the weight they deserved. He’d dismissed Jasmine as a suspect because she’d insisted she loved her father—and he’d taken her at her word because she was sweet and sincere and passionate. Then, when he’d fallen in love with her, he’d stopped asking questions.
Now duty compelled him to raise those questions again, if only to himself. Meanwhile, if it became known, a romantic relationship between the investigating agent and one of the suspects could blow a court case wide open.
Still fighting the urge to get up and go to her, Sam picked up the remote, switched on the TV, and clicked through the channels. Settling on a mindless zombie-invasion movie, he forced himself to watch it to the end. Then, still battling temptation, he showered and went to bed.
Wide awake, he lay in the darkness, listening to the whir and bump of the elevator down the hall and the faint sound of voices passing his door. Jasmine’s image tortured his thoughts—her laughing face, with its petal-like, kissable lips, her small but perfect breasts, made to fit the hollows of his hands, her golden legs parting to draw him into her silken warmth.
Logic argued that there was no chance she’d murdered her father. She was too warm and loving, too tenderhearted to take a life. Yet he remembered the time she’d snatched his service pistol out of its holster and fired it to kill a fatally injured antelope from the game farm that had run in front of her jeep. After it was done, she’d shed tears. Jasmine was surprisingly strong, but she wasn’t a killer. Sam believed that with all his heart. But his work ethic demandedthat he treat her as a suspect until proven otherwise.
If he didn’t go to her now, they would be finished. After traveling so far to be with him, Jasmine would never forgive him for putting his job ahead of their love.
But she was right about one thing. Las Vegas was a city of strangers. He might be known here in the South Point complex. But no one on the street or in the Excalibur would recognize him or Jasmine. Surely, they’d be safe, especially if he only saw her in her hotel room.
But there was still the ethical question. If he saw her, he’d be breaking the rules, putting the case and his career in jeopardy. He could always claim that he was investigating her as a suspect, but that would be the height of hypocrisy.
Right now, the only sure thing was that he loved her. And if he didn’t go to her, he would lose her.
Torn, he swung out of bed and walked to the window. Somewhere out in that sea of lights Jasmine waited alone. Was he strong enough to honor his vow and break her heart? Or was he already too late?
Jasmine turned over in bed and checked the glowing numbers on the digital clock. Twelve twenty-seven. She should have known that Sam wouldn’t be coming.
Sitting up, she untangled the sheets that had twisted around her legs. She’d tossed and turned as she struggled with the terms of her new reality. Sam might love her in his way, but he valued his work more, and she couldn’t expect him to change.
She had come to a painful decision. Tomorrow morning she would reschedule her return flight, pack her suitcase, and leave Las Vegas. And she wouldn’t cry. A man whowould put his job ahead of his woman wasn’t worth a single tear.
With a muttered curse, she rose and made a short trek to the bathroom. Before climbing back into bed, she stripped off the sexy black nightgown she’d worn and pulled on an oversized gray cotton T-shirt. She was exhausted. Maybe now that she had a plan in place, she’d be able to get some sleep.
Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths and willed herself to think positive thoughts. She was going to be fine, she told herself. She already had a job offer from an animal-rescue group out of Lubbock. She’d worked with them to find homes for the poor creatures salvaged from Charlie Grishman’s game farm. The pay would be minimal, but she didn’t need the money. She needed the satisfaction of doing some good in the world. At least she would have that.
Sam could take his job and shove it!
As her body relaxed, she began to drift, then to dream. But this dream wasn’t about Sam, shaped by longing and frustrated love. It was the nightmare, etched so deeply into her brain that she would never be free of it.
She was back in her mother’s Lake Travis condo, staring into the anthracite eyes of her mother’s lover, Louis Divino. Her burner phone, which she’d used to communicate with Sam, lay crushed on the floor between them. Divino had just heard Sam’s warning message with instructions for calling his boss at the FBI. Now Divino was going to kill her.
The muzzle of Divino’s pistol was inches from her heart. Seconds from now, she would be dead. She willed her last thought to be of Sam, his sweet blue eyes gazing into hers, his strong arms holding her, easing her fall to the floor.
Divino’s swarthy face showed no emotion as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Without warning, the deafening blast of a gunshot shattered the silence. Shot from behind, Divino’s forehead disintegrated in a mass of blood and tissue.
Jasmine’s scream died in her throat as he toppled forward, revealing her mother in the doorway. Her filmy negligee was spattered with crimson. Her manicured hands gripped a Smith & Wesson .38 Special.
Jasmine woke with a convulsive jerk. She was shivering, her body damp with perspiration. What had awakened her? There must’ve been a sound—but was it the gunshot in her dream, or something real? Her mother had warned her to keep a low profile. A woman taking over the leadership of a powerful mob was bound to have enemies—enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to take revenge on her family members.
Jasmine’s loaded pistol lay on the nightstand next to the bed, where she’d placed it within easy reach. As she slipped out of bed, a rap on the door made her pulse jump. She’d been right. Someone was out there.
Even if she didn’t answer, a locked door might not be enough to keep out an intruder with tools or a master key. With frantic hands, she bunched the pillows in the bed and covered them with a blanket to mimic her sleeping form. Then she stood in the shadowed corner where the opened door would hide her, cocked the gun, and waited.
Seconds crawled past. The knock came again, more urgent this time—and a voice.
“Jasmine? Are you in there? Are you all right?”
Sam!
Her knees went limp. She sagged against the wall. Earlier tonight, she’d been furious with him. But that was behindher now. Sam, her love, had put his misgivings aside and come to her.