Notorious Read online

  Dedication

  For Sarah and Chloe

  Best friends who met by bobby pins

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Fallen

  About the Author

  Also by Carey Baldwin

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Sunday, October 13

  10:00 P.M.

  Dallas, Texas

  WHEN HEADING FOR a secret rendezvous with her lover, it simply wouldn’t do to appear to be sneaking off. So it was with a proud, unflinching spine, that Cynthia Beasley Langhorne ascended the grand staircase at the Worthington Mansion—­one of Dallas’s most celebrated historic landmarks.

  Golden light from opulent chandeliers flooded the plush, red carpet runner on the steps, giving her the eerie feeling she was wading into a river of blood. To keep from tripping, she lifted her Stella McCartney gown above her ankles. Its blue silk-­chiffon swooshed, whispering secrets against her skin and tickling her bare legs. The mingled scents of money, power, and perfume floated up from the ballroom, along with the strains of Mozart and crashing cymbals. To those looking on with interest, and there were plenty of gawking eyes fixed on her, she supposed she appeared to be gliding with ease. But in truth, the crushing weight of her charmed life made each demure step as tortuous as a death march.

  Bracing herself with a deep breath, she cast a glance over her shoulder at her handsome, unreachable husband, who was posted in the middle of the marble foyer below. She kept her head turned long enough to catch Dutch’s eye, allowing a few paparazzi to capture her impenetrable smile. Mona Lisa had nothing on her. No one would ever guess her thoughts or her true purpose—­at least so far, no one ever had. And that was her curse in life. Blessed with wealth and notoriety, her heart would remain forever unseen, her diary her only confidante.

  In spite of her determination, her steps slowed involuntarily, giving Dutch every chance to stop her. If he had so much as raised an eyebrow at her, she might’ve turned back and run straight for his arms. But, of course, he didn’t, and his indifference bolstered her faltering courage. She tossed her head, knowing the effect of her silky, auburn hair swinging across her bare shoulders would be dazzling. The music lulled, as if paying its respects like a gentleman rising to his feet when a lady exits the room. A flurry of flashing lights was accompanied by the electric sound of cameras clicking.

  When her husband had asked her where she was going, she’d answered truthfully, “I’m meeting Matthew Cambridge, darling. I promise I won’t be long.”

  Dutch’s eyes had glinted dangerously—­but only for a moment. Then he sent her an insouciant smile. “Tell Matt that I’m the one who brought you to this god-­awful-­boring fund-­raiser, and I’d like to dance with my wife at some point, let’s say before midnight.”

  “Before midnight it is,” she’d promised.

  Then he’d taken her hand, and she’d willed him not to let it go—­not to let her go. But let her go he did.

  Now a resigned sigh escaped her lips because it was too late for regrets. Her husband was married to his work. His passion was reserved for the FBI, and there was nothing to be done about that. Though she would give her own life to protect the damnable fool, the separate paths she and Dutch had chosen were paved with the cold stone of one irrefutable truth.

  He doesn’t love me.

  As her brown eyes locked with his frosty blue ones, she raised her chin and blinked away the moisture that blurred her vision. When her chest tightened, she commanded her body to relax, then raised her hand to her lips and blew him a kiss. She turned her back fully, then continued her march—­not because she didn’t love her husband but because she did.

  And because if she didn’t go through with this, the only thing that mattered would be destroyed.

  Up the stairs, down the hall, and behind a closed bedroom door, she shed her clothing. She folded her silks, laying them neatly on a side chair, then hung her delicate gown in the closet. A chill seeped down to her bones, and a shiver swept over her. Without her garments, she felt as vulnerable as a soldier going into battle without armor.

  But she had no choice.

  The cost of defeat would be unbearably high.

  Naked now, she arranged herself seductively on the bed, pressing her hand on her stomach to suppress the wave of anticipatory nausea. Pretending she was somewhere else, she closed her eyes. A creak of floorboards signaled her paramour’s approach. The door whooshed open. She steeled her resolve and forced her eyelids up.

  But what she saw, there, in the doorway, turned her blood to ice and froze a scream, forever, in her throat.

  Chapter Two

  Wednesday, October 16

  4:00 P.M.

  Dallas, Texas

  MOST DAYS SPECIAL AGENT Atticus Spenser loved his job—­but today sure as hell wasn’t one of them. At the moment, he and his partner, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Caity Cassidy, were “off the books,” working a special assignment: protect the interests of the tall, red-­haired, pain in the ass striding beside them.

  Fellow agent Alex “Dutch” Langhorne had always seemed more like a cactus needle swimming beneath Spense’s skin than a colleague, and as far as he could tell, the feeling was mutual. But during a recent fund-­raiser for Texas governor and presidential hopeful, Matthew Cambridge, Agent Langhorne had found his wife, Cindy, brutally murdered; her nude body posed in an upstairs bedroom of the Worthington Mansion. And like any family, dysfunctional or no, when one of their own was in trouble, the FBI rallied.

  So now, accompanied by Dallas police detective, Monroe Sheridan, they approached the newly cleared crime scene on foot in order to get the lay of the land. To Spense’s trained eye, the expansive grounds revealed no obvious escape routes or hiding places or even a decent place for a kid to build a fort—­only yards of manicured green lawn, redbrick paving stones, and widely spaced trees. Spense’s family had lived a short stint here in Dallas, and the pungent scent of honeysuckle reminded him of that time.

  “What are those?” he asked, spying some climbing bushes covered with familiar-­looking orange berries.

  “Pyracantha.” Caity’s knowledge of all things botanical sometimes got him wondering if her doctorate were really in horticulture. The smile she sent him made him glad he’d expressed an interest in the local flora.

  If he were being honest, he’d have to admit his current foul mood was as much due to the fact his vacation had been canceled, yet again, as it was to his contentious relationship with Dutch. Spense had hoped to get Caity alone on a nice secluded beach somewhere far away from murder and mayhem. She needed to learn how to unwind, and he’d prepared the perfect tension-­release plan: sand, sangria, and a who
le lot of Spense.

  Instead, here they were, sweating it out in the damn Dallas heat. He’d almost forgotten the way the humidity could turn a polyester shirt into a wet suit. Pressing a handkerchief to his forehead, he glanced over at his fellow agent, who didn’t appear inclined to break a sweat. Was it ice in Dutch’s veins keeping him cool or simply his European heritage? If anything ever happened to Caity, Spense knew he’d never be able to hide his distress. He applied the handkerchief to the back of his neck. He and Langhorne were cut from very different cloth.

  “Dammit to hell.” Detective Monroe Sheridan’s expletive broke into Spense’s thoughts, and he looked up to find the source of the man’s consternation: A few yards ahead, in the mansion’s drive, a kid circled on a beat-­up yellow bike. Steering with one hand, the boy appeared to be snapping pics on his phone with the other.

  “Stop! Police!” Hand on a holstered Taser, Detective Sheridan charged straight at him.

  Jackass. Spense’s temperature rose several points above Sheridan’s IQ—­or at least above the man’s commonsense quotient. “Take it easy,” he called out to Sheridan.

  Too late. The kid raised his hands, shouting, “Don’t shoot!” His front wheel lifted in the air, then the bike tilted, first dumping the boy on the ground and finally clattering on top of him.

  Caity sped after Sheridan. It took Spense and Dutch only a few long strides to catch up to where she now knelt beside the fallen boy.

  “What’s your name?” she asked softly as she began checking out his cuts and scrapes and examining his twisted limbs.

  “My friends call me Artard, but my name is Aaron.” The kid’s voice came out high and shaky. Not surprising, considering he probably thought Sheridan had been ready to shoot him. Even if he knew the difference between a Taser and a pistol, from a distance, he couldn’t have told them apart.

  “Well, which do you prefer?” Caity asked matter-­of-­factly, not hinting at the offensiveness of the nickname. Spense’s chest expanded. Caity was like that. She knew feeling sorry for the kid would cause him even more embarrassment. She understood a lot of things most ­people didn’t.

  “Aaron.”

  “All right, Aaron. I think you’ll live. You feel okay? Like you can stand up?”

  Aaron’s gaze darted to Sheridan, and his eyes widened.

  Caity threw an arm around him.

  “Nothing to be scared of,” Dutch said. “You’re not in trouble or anything.”

  “Oh hell yes, he’s in trouble. He’s interfering with my crime scene.” Sheridan folded his arms, glaring down at the boy.

  “Not your crime scene anymore. It’s been cleared,” Spense reminded the detective.

  “It’s still private property. I ought to arrest his little Artard ass for trespassing.” Sheridan bent and scooped a cell phone off the ground.

  “Hey, you can’t take my phone!”

  The kid was right. The detective needed a search warrant to look at the contents of the phone.

  A mean glint came into Sheridan’s eyes. “I might still drag you down to the station. Haven’t made up my mind yet.” He made a show of scrolling through the pics. “Delete. Delete. Delete,” he said, tapping the phone. Then Sheridan grabbed the kid’s collar, as if to yank him to his feet.

  Spense inserted himself between Sheridan and Aaron and knocked the detective’s hand away.

  “Watch yourself, Agent Spenser, or else . . .”

  “Or else what?” Spense spun around. He was a good half foot taller and had at least fifty pounds of muscle on the detective.

  “Just watch yourself, that’s all.”

  Spense took the boy by one arm, and Caity took him by the other, then they gently helped him to a stand. Blood oozed down from a scraped knee, and his shorts were dirty and torn, but other than that, he seemed to be none the worse for the tumble.

  “Be sure to wash those abrasions with soap and water when you get home. A little Neosporin wouldn’t hurt either. But you don’t need stitches.” Caity was still scrutinizing Aaron’s injuries.

  “He said agent? Are y’all with the CIA?” The kid had a Texas drawl, and again, Spense was reminded of his childhood. His family had moved out of Dallas, rather abruptly, when he was six. He didn’t recall much, but some distant part of him went nostalgic in a really weird way. Aaron’s nickname reminded him of what some had called him back in the day. Only then, nobody sugarcoated a thing. Retard, plain and simple was the name that had been hurled at him on the playground.

  Caity brushed debris from Aaron’s shorts. “Not CIA. I’m a psychiatrist.”

  Spense thumped the kid conspiratorially on the back. “I’m with the FBI. Special Agent Spenser.” He tilted his head at Caity. “Dr. Cassidy isn’t an agent, but she works along with us, helping to solve crimes. She’s what we call a civilian consultant.”

  “Is she your girlfriend?”

  The kid had a pair. Spense liked him even more than when he’d first spotted him playing junior detective, checking out a major crime scene on a decrepit old bike that had probably been handed down from an older sister—­most boys weren’t into yellow with flower decals. “I’m working on that, Aaron. Maybe you could put in a good word for me.”

  “I don’t think she cares what a kid like me thinks.”

  “Sure she does. See how her mouth is twitching over there? Every time she looks at you, she has to work real hard not to smile. That means she likes you. She likes you a lot.”

  Aaron’s muted brown eyes brightened. “She does that with you, too. I’d say you’ve got a good chance with her.”

  “You’re very observant, kid. I think you’d make a good profiler someday. In fact, you remind me of myself when I was younger.”

  “You’re a profiler? Like on Criminal Minds?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s a good one, too,” Dutch said, surprising Spense with a rare compliment and more conversation than they’d had during the entire forty-­five-­minute ride in traffic after Dutch had picked them up at the airport.

  “I bet he could profile you down to a T,” Caity added.

  “Would you profile me? Please?” Suddenly Aaron couldn’t take his eyes off Spense, and that made Spense feel an unexpected rush of responsibility toward him.

  Sheridan dragged a hand across his face. “Look, I get it. I might’ve been a little hard on Artard here. But do you two have to keep making it up to him up all day long? We came here for a reason.”

  “We have plenty of time,” Dutch said.

  Spense wondered if he had a human side after all. Then again, maybe his colleague just wanted to avoid the crime-­scene walk-­through and Sheridan’s questions as long as possible.

  Spense widened his stance, studying Aaron. “If I were to profile you, I’d start by noting that you’re a lover of Flaming Hot Cheetos.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Easy, there are red powder stains on the tips of your fingers,” Caity chimed in.

  Aaron stuck his hands behind his back, hiding the evidence.

  The kid’s giant grin alone was enough to keep Spense going, but the happy glow on Caity’s cheeks gave him an added incentive. Plus, he never minded showing off a little.

  “You’re extremely loyal to your friends, even though you hate it when they call you Artard.” He lowered his voice. “By the way, if you don’t like that nickname, I think you should say so.”

  “That’s horseshit. You got no way to know if he’s a loyal friend or not,” Sheridan protested.

  “Sure I do. After all, he didn’t try to save himself by ratting out his buddy—­the one who’s hiding just around the corner.” Spense jerked his head, and they all followed his gaze to a narrow trail of flattened grass in the yard—­it looked to have been made by a bicycle tire and led straight to the side of the mansion. “And what else, let’s see . . .
you hated girls until about six months ago, when you discovered that the most beautiful girl in the world goes to your school.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because you’re fourteen.”

  “But how—­”

  “Easy. You’re obviously older than thirteen.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And if you were fifteen, you’d have your learner’s permit already. If you had your learner’s permit, you wouldn’t be checking out a crime scene on your bike. You’d have cruised by in the car, with your older sister as your driving supervisor.” Spense whipped his Rubik’s cube out, scrambled and unscrambled it, then handed it to Aaron with a flourish. “This is for you—­I’ve got plenty more. Practice up, and you’ll find out what your brain can really do if only you’ll let it.”

  “You’re some kind of a genius or something, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be too impressed, kid. The older sister was a lucky guess . . . sort of—­that bike used to be hers, right?”

  Aaron nodded.

  “Want me to take a picture of you holding up my FBI creds?”

  Caity held out her hand to Sheridan, wiggling her fingers insistently. He let out a long sigh before handing over the illegally confiscated phone.

  “Say cheese,” Caity prompted.

  After posing for a ­couple of shots, Spense scrawled his personal number on the back of his card and gave it to Aaron. “Call me next week, and if I’m still around, I’ll take you and your buddy down to the FBI building. We can have lunch in the cafeteria.”

  At last, the buddy poked his head out from around the side of the mansion and began walking his bike toward them, slowly at first, then picking up speed. “Will you show us the X-­files?”