"The Deception was an intriguing, suspenseful, exciting story line that was also very intense throughout. [...]
Once again, Kat Martin gives us another exciting thriller. If you enjoy action, suspense, romance and intense crime thrillers, you should read anything by Kat Martin." - Barb Lie, Goodreads
“Fans of romantic suspense won’t be able to put this book down until the final page is turned.”―Publishers Weekly on The Deception
When missing turns to murdered, one woman's search for answers will take her to a place she never wanted to go…
After searching for her sister for two long years, Kate Gallagher is devastated when she’s called to the morgue to identify Chrissy’s body, the runaway teen the victim of a brutal attack. Guilt and grief send Kate into a tailspin. She failed Chrissy once…she won’t do it again. Even if finding her sister’s killer means following a lethal bounty hunter into the heart of darkness, placing both their lives in danger.
Working at Maximum Security has taken Jason Maddox down some dangerous paths, but never for a client he’s so drawn to, or for a case so monstrous. As clues lead them deeper into the city’s underbelly, connections to human trafficking draw them closer and closer to peril, but even Jase’s warnings can’t convince Kate to walk away. As the deadly operation puts a target on their backs, they’ll have to decide what matters most: the truth…or their lives.
EXCERPT
Jason Hawkins Maddox sat at the old-fashioned long bar in the
Sagebrush Saloon, a country-western hangout with a live band for dancing on the
weekends and a jukebox that served the same purpose the rest of the week. The
place, out I-30 on Bruckner Boulevard, was a spot Jase had been to before but
not for a couple of years.
He was there tonight on business, meeting an informant he hoped
would give him a lead on the fugitive he was hunting.
Randall Darren Harding, a cement contractor, had been arrested
for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend. He’d been out on bail when he’d
decided to flee instead of standing trial, where most likely he would have been
convicted.
On the outskirts of Dallas, he’d had a firefight with police,
shot two sheriff’s deputies and escaped. The guy was tough. He wouldn’t go down
easy.
From what Jase could find out, Harding was a rotten,
self-centered, mean-tempered bastard, the kind who could wind up killing again.
He’d strangled his girlfriend in a fit of rage, but a fancy lawyer had gotten
him out on bail.
Jase had a warrant for Harding’s arrest—rearrest, technically,
since the guy had already been charged with murder-one, the premeditated kind
that could earn you the death penalty in Texas.
The reward for catching him was a fat 15 percent of his
million-and-a-half-dollar bond. Jase planned to collect.
Thus his meeting with Tommy Dieter at the Sagebrush Saloon.
It was relatively early, a little after 9:00 p.m., but the place
was already more than half full. A big dance floor dominated the interior,
surrounded by a sea of wooden tables. Being Wednesday, there was no band, but
the juke was belting Willie Nelson so a few couples two-stepped out on the
floor.
It was a decent place, not one of the rat holes he occasionally
frequented for information, the crowd a mix of cowboys and bikers, couples of
various ages, and a smattering of tourists, there to try some real Texas line
dancing.
From the mirror in the carved oak back bar across from him, Jase
could keep an eye on the front door and watch for Tommy’s arrival. Between a
row of liquor bottles, he could see himself on a bar stool next to a little guy
in a blue Texas Rangers baseball cap. The little guy made Jase look even bigger
than his six-foot-four-inch, 210-pound frame, a size that in his job often came
in handy.
So far Tommy hadn’t shown, but he wasn’t due for another few
minutes. In the meantime, Jase was enjoying the local scenery, his attention
fixed on the tall blonde with the pretty face, sexy curves and amazing
cleavage, but then half the guys in the bar were watching her.
In a short denim skirt, a pair of cowboy boots and a bright pink
tank top, she had danced to five songs in a row. Jase figured as long as her
stamina held out, she wouldn’t lack for partners. If he weren’t there on
business, he might have asked her for a turn around the floor himself.
The blonde finished the dance and sat back down on a bar stool a
ways down from him. He noticed she was drinking tequila shooters. Looked like
someone was going to get lucky tonight. Hearing the throaty purr of her
laughter, he felt a tug in his groin and couldn’t help wishing it was him.
The front door swung open and Tommy Dieter walked in. Jase
tossed money for the Lone Star he’d been drinking on top the bar. Time to go to
work.
Tommy spotted him and walked over to the bar. “Hey, Hawk.” It
was a nickname Jase had picked up thanks to his middle name. They called him
the Hawk because he swooped down on his prey and always got his man. Or so the
story went.
“Tommy.” He was a slender guy in his early twenties with
carrot-red hair, not a bad sort, but he hung with a bad crowd, which gave him
access to a lot of dirt, and he was hungry enough to deal the info for money.
Jase nodded toward an empty table at the back of the bar, and
the two of them made their way past a pool table where a couple of cowboys
clacked balls across a sea of green.
Tommy and Jase both pulled out chairs and sat down at the
battered wooden table. Jase didn’t ask Tommy if he wanted a beer. It wasn’t
healthy for an informant to spend too much time with a guy who hunted people
for a living.
“You got something on Harding for me?” Jase asked.
“Yeah. Randy has a girlfriend in Houston,” Tommy said. “Mexican
girl. No papers. She keeps him happy. He pays her rent.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rosa Diaz. She’s got a brother in town. A mechanic named
Paulo.”
“You think Randy’s still in Houston? I figured he’d leave the
state, head for Arizona, maybe, or New Mexico.”
“Word is he’s got the serious hots for Rosa. According to Randy,
she’s a great piece of ass.”
The words sent Jase’s gaze back to the blonde who had returned
to the dance floor with a lanky biker too short for her, too skinny and a few
years too young.
She wasn’t meant for the boy biker, but she was just Jase’s
type, luscious, with legs that went on forever. And, as she slid her arms
around the boy biker’s neck and he pulled her close, clearly uninhibited. It
didn’t take much to imagine the way she’d feel moving beneath him.
Jase ignored a surge of heat and forced his mind back to
business. “If Randy’s that close, you’d think the cops would already have him
in custody.”
“I don’t think the cops know anything about the girl.”
Probably not. They had their hands full without having to arrest
the same guy twice.
Jase reached into the pocket of his black T-shirt, plucked out a
folded-up hundred-dollar bill and slid it across the table to Dieter. “Let me
know if you come up with anything else.”
Tommy snagged the hundred. “Good luck,” he said. “I hope you
nail this prick. What he did to that girl…fucker deserves to fry.”
Jase made no comment since he completely agreed. One of the
perks of the job was bringing dicks like Harding to justice.
As Tommy walked away, Jase noticed his seat at the bar was still
empty. Since he wasn’t ready to leave, he picked up his beer and headed back
the way he’d come.
He watched the blonde as he passed the dance floor. He’d been
watching her all evening. The good news was, she’d been watching him, too.
When the song came to an end, she left the boy biker and walked
toward him, stopped right in front of his bar stool, the heels on her boots
pushing her closer to his height.
She smiled. “You like to dance, cowboy?”
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About the author:
Top ten New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin is a graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara. Residing with her Western-author husband, L.J. Martin, in Missoula, Montana, Kat has written 70 Historical and Contemporary Romantic Suspense novels. More than 17 million of her books are in print and she has been published in twenty foreign countries. Kat is currently hard at work on her next novel.
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