Overkill

PRAISE FOR A WHISPER IN THE DARK

“An exciting, fast, page-turning read that promises . . . and delivers.”—
Fresh Fiction

 
“A fine thriller . . .”—
The Best Reviews

 
DEPTH PERCEPTION

 
“A tightly written novel of romantic suspense by an author at the top of her game.”—
All About Romance

 
“An exciting page-turner,
Depth Perception
will appeal to the fans of Beverly Barton and Iris Johansen. This tense thriller will keep you up way past midnight.”

—
The Best Reviews

 
“A fabulous, taut paranormal thriller that grips readers . . . The story line is action-packed and filled with atmosphere that has the audience gasping as the tension mounts . . . exciting . . . a terrific read.”—
Midwest Book Review

 
“Explosive . . . deep [and] emotional . . . a riveting adventure.” —
The Romance Reader’s Connection

 
FADE TO RED

 
“Castillo is pushing the envelope. And she is doing a very convincing and, yes, disturbingly good job . . . This is not a book for the faint-hearted . . . If you like nothing better than an adrenaline rush and a hero and heroine possessing multiple character layers, then be assured that
Fade to Red
will be exactly what you are looking for and so much more.”—
A Romance Review

 
“Enlightening and original.”—
The Romance Reader

“A throwback to the old days of romantic suspense . . . chilling . . . Great character development [and] an ability to totally immerse the reader into the sleazy underbelly of porn and cause a shiver or two.”—
Romance Reviews Today

“Chillingly graphic—romantic suspense at its best.”

—
The Best Reviews

 
THE SHADOW SIDE

 
“An electrifying chiller rife with action and passion . . . splendid.”—
The Dallas Morning News

“
The Shadow Side
is exhilarating romantic suspense . . . never slows down until the final moment. Read this thriller.”—
Midwest Book Review

“Stunning. A masterpiece of suspense polished off with a raw romance. This book, the best romantic suspense I’ve ever read, knocked me out. The characters were hot, the story was downright chilling . . . but so compelling. The pace constantly keeps you on the edge . . . giving you twists and turns and never giving you any clues as to what’s going to happen next . . . until the very last minute! Don’t miss this thriller; you’ll be sorry if you do. They don’t come any better than this.”—
Romance and Friends

 
THE PERFECT VICTIM

 
“Castillo has a winner! I couldn’t stop turning the pages!”

—Kat Martin,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Fire Inside

 
“
The Perfect Victim
is a gripping page-turner. Peopled with fascinating characters and intricately plotted . . . compelling suspense that never lets up. A first class reading experience!”—Katherine Sutcliffe, bestselling author of
Darkling I Listen
and
Obsession

“An exciting thriller . . . action-packed [and] powerful . . . a strong tale that fans of suspense will love.”

—
Midwest Book Review

 
“Intense action . . . sizzling sex . . . a thrilling climax . . . the reader is carried along on the ride.”—Lynn Erickson, author of
After Hours

 
“Linda Castillo delivers a powerhouse punch.”

—Merline Lovelace, author of
After Midnight

 
“Realistic dialogue, beautifully vivid descriptions and an intricate plot add up to a chilling, fast-paced, riveting read.”—
Library Journal

 
“Both romantic and suspenseful—and in nearly equal measures. If you’re looking for a real page-turner with a strong and determined heroine and an even stronger, even more determined hero, you’ve found it.”

—
All About Romance

 
“I couldn’t put this book down . . . The escalating suspense and sexual tension pushes the story forward and keeps you hooked. Not many authors keep me up all night but Linda has succeeded with this riveting read.”—
The Best Reviews

THE PERFECT VICTIM
THE SHADOW SIDE
FADE TO RED
DEPTH PERCEPTION
DEAD RECKONING
A WHISPER IN THE DARK
OVERKILL

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book is an undertaking of monumental proportions that hijacks a writer’s life for months on end. It is an endeavor that entails hundreds of solitary and sometimes frustrating hours of work, countless sleepless nights, and the whole heart of anyone crazy enough to call himself or herself an author.

 
I have people to thank for helping me complete this book in record time. First and foremost, I’d like to thank my husband, Ernest, for all of those evenings when you came home to find the house dark except for my office and didn’t try to coax me out. For my critique group—Jennifer Archer, Marcy McKay and April Redmon—whose unflagging enthusiasm, humor and support kept me going when the going was tough. Thanks for the Wednesday night Marty marathons, guys. To Ronda Thompson and the rest of the Amarillo writing community for welcoming me to the Texas Panhandle with smiles and open arms. And to all of the wonderful ladies at the barrel races. You gals are awesome!!!

PROLOGUE

The sign quivered in a brisk southwesterly wind, wel
coming weary travelers to Caprock Canyon, Texas, population 3500, where, evidently, one could find the best vistas in the state. The cheery signpost looked out of place among the scrub and prickly pear that dotted the bleak landscape of the high plains.

Despite the sign’s message, Marty Hogan didn’t feel very welcome. The truth of the matter was she didn’t want to be here. She didn’t have any interest in the town, its citizenry or her new job. She sure as hell didn’t have any inclination to take in the goddamn views. But then that fickle bitch Fate was funny in the way she doled out wisdom. In the last six months, Marty had had enough wisdom shoved down her throat to last a lifetime.

Sighing, she put the Mustang in gear and started toward the main drag. Downtown Caprock Canyon was the length of a football field and just as uninteresting. The redbrick storefronts included Jeb’s General Store, Hawkin’s Hardware, a Western outlet advertising Wrangler jeans, and the Wagon Wheel Diner, where you could get a biscuits-and-gravy breakfast for $1.99. Outside the barbershop, two grizzled old men sat in matching metal chairs, smoking cigarettes. On the street in front of the diner, three men in cowboy hats climbed into a big Ford pickup where a fat border collie waited in the bed.

Born and raised in Chicago, Marty might as well have landed on foreign soil. Or maybe Mars. But after thirty-five resumes and thirty-four thanks-but-no-thanks responses, she figured she was lucky to have a job at all. After a single desultory phone interview, the Caprock Canyon PD was the only department willing to hire a has-been, renegade cop with a bad reputation and a semitruck full of emotional baggage.

Just Marty’s luck she would end up in Bumfuck, U.S.A.

Six months had passed since the incident that thrust her into the national spotlight—and to the very top of the media’s hit list. A hostile media that took what should have been an obscure story and ran it into the ground. Marty Hogan became an overnight sensation, going from street cop to the most hated police officer in America.

Depending on your point of view, of course.

Her indiscretion put the phrase
police trauma syndrome
—an axiom coined by psychiatrists after the Rodney King debacle in LA—back in the limelight. But Marty had heard the other not-so-clinical names, too. Rogue cop. Fascist bitch. Nutcase. The labels shamed her with a passion she could not express. She wished fervently she could dispute them. But like her former partner, Rosetti, always said . . . if the straitjacket fits . . . In this case, she thought, the fit was perfect. Just ask the amateur videographer who’d caught the whole mess on tape and sold it to the highest bidder. The son of a bitch was probably sipping mojitos and soaking up the sun in Cancun.

In less than twenty-four hours, patrol officer Marty Hogan became Chicago’s new obsession. For weeks, those awful clips filled the airwaves from Bangor to San Diego and every podunk town in between. Love her or hate her, everyone had an opinion about the female cop who’d gone off the deep end and beat a male suspect to near unconsciousness.

It didn’t matter that the bastard had shot and killed a little girl. A nine-year-old hostage guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How horribly ironic that a kid’s murder didn’t garner even half the coverage.

Goddamn vultures.

Even now, Marty still received letters—and threats. She got so much mail, in fact, that she’d changed her address to a post office box, mostly for personal safety reasons. She’d changed her phone number, too. Three times, to be exact. But the diehards still found her. In a bizarre twist, about half of the people who took the time to contact her praised her actions on that fateful day. People were tired of crime. Tired of criminals getting away with murder. Now was their chance to chalk one up for the good guys. Give the girl a promotion. Pin a medal on her jacket.

Reality hadn’t been so kind.

Six days after
The Incident
, Marty was fired from a career she’d spent eight years building. She’d been charged with felony assault. A serious offense that could have garnered hard time and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. But after an expeditious trial, the jury had taken into consideration the extenuating circumstances and the charges were ultimately dropped. Of course, that didn’t help when the threat of a civil suit still hovered over her head like a pall.

Sometimes the irony of the whole thing was just too much.

Now, having faced professional ruin, incarceration, financial devastation and public ridicule, Marty almost wished Caprock Canyon
was
on another planet.

Shoving thoughts of the past aside, she idled down the main thoroughfare, which was aptly named Cactus Street. The old pang sounded in her belly when she passed the police station. That same emotion twisted inside her every time she so much as looked at a cop or a black-and-white. She could only describe it as a longing for something that was lost. Dreams were so damn hard to let go of.

She watched as a young officer with the requisite crew cut and Arnold Schwarzenegger physique crossed the sidewalk to a white Explorer emblazoned with the Caprock Canyon PD insignia. He looked sure of himself. Cocky. Happy and secure in his job. A young person with his entire future before him.

Marty had been him a lifetime ago.

Don’t screw this up,
she thought, but cruised past the building, hating it that she didn’t have the guts to pull in. Berating herself for putting off the inevitable, she turned around in a Lutheran church parking lot and sped back through town. The young officer and his cruiser were gone when she reached the police station. Pulling into the empty space, she studied the redbrick facade. The structure was a neat, one-story building with double glass doors and five reserved parking places in front. She thought about the chief of police and wondered what kind of man would hire a cop with her reputation.

A schmuck, probably.

Gripping the steering wheel, Marty broke a sweat beneath her wrinkled khaki slacks and jacket and tried not to hear the little voice in her head telling her this was a bad idea. She needed to go inside; she was already ten minutes late. Not a great way to make a good first impression. But she was nervous, seriously depressed, and for the first time in a long time, she was scared. Really, really scared.

The irony of that burned. Up until that day six months ago, Marty had never been afraid of anything. She could walk into a dark warehouse with nothing but her Glock to back her up and barely raise her heart rate. She could approach a car full of suspected gang members in the dead of night and not feel the shaky stab of terror she felt at this moment.

Now fear seemed to be the overriding emotion that drove her every move. It was her best friend and her worst enemy. She second-guessed every thought, every decision, and every action. Not a good state of mind when you were a cop. Unless you had a death wish. If Marty wanted to be honest, she’d considered that, too.

Sick and tired of the incessant thoughts pummeling her beleaguered brain, she climbed out of the car and stepped into sunlight so bright it felt as if it might burn her eyeballs right out of their sockets. She fumbled for her shades, shoved them onto her nose. Around her, Caprock Canyon was as hushed as a ghost town out of some melodramatic Italian Western. She almost couldn’t believe it when a tumbleweed the size of a recliner rolled down the street. The only thing needed to make the scene complete was a gun-slinger with a poncho, a six-shooter and a flat-crowned hat.

The day wasn’t over.

Taking a deep breath, Marty smoothed wet palms over her slacks and started for the entrance. She could hear the zing of her pulse as she pulled open the glass door and stepped inside.

The smell of cigarette smoke hovered in the air. Seated at an ugly metal desk, a round-faced person of indistinguishable gender and frizzy brown hair eyed her over the top of a computer monitor. The little creature wore a turquoise jacket with silver conchos and thick-lensed bifocals that made watery blue eyes look huge, and had the most wrinkled skin Marty had ever seen on a living being. Relief skittered through her when she spotted the brass plate mounted on a chunk of walnut identifying the person as Jo Nell Mulligan.

“Hep ya?” the woman asked.

“I’m here to see Chief Settlemeyer.”

“You Hogan?”

“The one and only.”

“Thought you might be her.” The receptionist looked her up and down, a potential buyer eyeing a beef cow, trying to decide if it was fat enough to get her family through the winter.

Marty resisted the urge to squirm.

“Smaller than I thought, but I guess size ain’t no issue when you’re pissed. Heard you broke your hand.” A raspy sound that might have been a chuckle rattled from her throat. “Fed that sumbitch a sandwich he ain’t gonna soon forget.”

Marty glanced toward the door, wishing she could run, knowing once she started she might never stop. She didn’t want to talk to this rude little creep. She couldn’t give a shit about the job. The problem was she had no other prospects and absolutely nowhere else to go.

The woman was still talking, but Marty had tuned out the brunt of it. “. . . you got that look about you. Cop look. Guys here all got it. You’d think each and every one of ’em was Dirty Harry hisself.” Phlegm rattled in her throat when she laughed. “Never seen it on a woman before, but it suits you just fine.”

“What suits whom just fine, Jo Nell?”

Marty turned at the sound of the deep male voice. Surprise rippled through her when she found herself looking at a tall man leaning against the doorjamb of the rear office, taking in the scene as if he were watching some amusing sitcom. His arms were crossed. A toothpick jutted from the corner of a mouth that curved up in a half smile. But what was most surprising about this man was the black Stetson perched on his head. A born-and-bred city girl, Marty wasn’t used to seeing men in cowboy hats. She sure as hell wasn’t used to cops wearing them. She knew it was silly to let that intimidate her. But it did.

He shifted and the nameplate affixed to the wall behind him came into view.
Chief Clay Settlemeyer.
Marty couldn’t believe he was the man she’d talked to. Over the phone, Clay Settlemeyer had seemed soft-spoken and . . . civilized. The man staring her down didn’t appear to be either of those things.

He stood well over six feet tall, but with the hat it could have been twenty. His skin was tanned and far from smooth, but every line only served to make his face more interesting than any male face had a right to be. A day’s growth of stubble gave him a rough-around-the edges look. His eyes were as dark as the West Texas sky at night, an unusual shade of gray with a hint of starlight. His mouth seemed to curve easily into a smile. But Marty got the impression he could snarl just as readily.

He wasn’t a handsome man; his mouth was too thin. His eyes were too intense. His brows too heavy. His face was as hard and angular as the foothills to the west. But the package as a whole stirred something inside her she couldn’t name. Something that made her pulse quicken, her heart flutter uneasily in her chest. Marty had experienced the sensation before, and recognized it as a reaction to danger. Of course, that didn’t make sense. She wasn’t in danger. Damn it, she wasn’t some fragile debutante who shrank away from a dangerous-looking man. She’d grown up with cops. Hung out with them most of her life. She could hold her own in any situation—just ask the poor bastard she’d put in the hospital six months ago.

But this man unnerved her in a way she’d never been before. His stare penetrated her cop suit of armor with the proficiency of a double-edged sword, tore away the facade she used to protect herself. He made her feel stripped bare, because he was looking at her as if she were a woman at the end of her rope and facing a very long fall.

“I was just about to buzz you, Chief.”

“My office is ten feet away and my hearing’s just fine, Jo Nell.”

“Guess I’ll yell next time.”

He sniffed. “You’ve been smoking again.”

“I have not,” she said, deadpan.

Marty couldn’t help it; she snickered, drawing a dark look from the chief—and a wink from the very busted Jo Nell.

He pointed at Marty. “You’re late.”

Six months ago, a smart-assed reply would have sailed off her tongue with the ease of a bird taking flight. Today, she had to work at it for a full two seconds. “Traffic,” she said.

Clay Settlemeyer stared at her for what felt like a full minute, his heavy, black brows riding low over those weird gray eyes. His mouth remained as flat as the Texas plain. Marty was usually adept at reading people, but this man’s expression revealed none of his thoughts. Fearing she’d ticked him off, she was considering another tactic when he shook his head and let out a chuckle.

“In that case, come on in.” He motioned to his office.

Squaring her shoulders, Marty gathered the jagged remains of her composure and entered, keenly aware that he was right behind her.

“Have a seat,” he said.

She lowered herself into the vinyl chair opposite his desk and tried to relax.

Closing the door, he rounded his desk. “How was the drive?”

The fifteen-hour drive had been long and boring, and Marty had had way too much time to think—something she tried not to do too much of these days. A recent insomniac, she’d left at midnight and driven straight through. “No problems.”

“When did you get in?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“You find a place to live?”

“Rented a house on the south side.”

“Nice area. Close to the canyon. You’ll get some wildlife out there.”

Since the extent of Marty’s experience with wildlife centered around the occasional bar fight or domestic dispute, she had to ask. “Wildlife?”

“Deer mostly. Coyotes occasionally. A few skunk.” He raised a brow. “If you own a cat or dog, you might want to keep them inside at night.”