Read Online A Killing Cupid (Sensory Ops) by Nikki Duncan - Free Book Online

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Of all the Valentine's Days I've spent single, this one... What in Hell was I thinking?
    Lana Quinn stopped three steps from her front door and stared. Stared at the romance red envelope propped against her door beside a single red rose. It was a greeting she'd sought out. One she'd told herself she wanted, and could handle.
    Closing her eyes for the briefest and shallowest of breaths, she told herself again that she could handle what came next. The strength to finish what she started had been drummed into her from childhood, and she wouldn't have uncovered the stories she had if she'd released the lesson as an adult.
    Logic lifted her feet and carried her to her door . She picked up and sliced open the waiting message. She knew what was coming. She had planned for this moment. Fought for this opportunity. An opportunity she’d had no guarantee would work out.
    Lana pulled the coordinating slip of heavy paper from the envelope. Her lungs seized.
     
    Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.
    Through the awakening of touch, y our death will be an awfully big adventure.
    Your Cupid
     
    A chill skittered along her spine. The hairs on her arms hummed like rhythmically rubbed rings of crystal champagne flutes.
    " Lovely. A Shakespeare and Peter Pan quoting Cupid. What more could a single girl need on a lonely Valentine’s Day?"
    " Ye’r not alone, Quinn." Aidan Burgess, second in command of the FBI Specialized Crimes Unit, had a sexy Scottish brogue that enhanced rather than diminished his arrogance.
    She wanted to ignore his voice piping through the earpiece the team had given her, as well as the knowledge that he and most of his team waited in the town house next door. That he was the agent taking point on this case, and that she’d promised to play by his rules, kept her from following up on the desire.
    She wanted this story .
    " Are you referring to you, or someone else?"
    " Both." His voice hardened. "Don’t do anything stupid."
    It was too late for that, but she couldn’t dwell on unrequited longings. Shaking off the destructively distracting thoughts, she unlocked her front door.
    Fragrant petals littered the floor of her small, softly lit foyer —a foyer that should be dark. A crystal vase, holding eleven blood-red roses, sat on the heavy iron table behind her sofa. Her heart thrummed. She didn’t have to count the roses to know she held the twelfth.
    The Killing Cupid. A serial who had begun killing three years earlier. Each year he killed one woman a day for seven days. His seventh kill was always on Valentine's Day.
    Certain he would begin again this year, Lana had set herself up as a target even before he'd started killing. She'd spent the year tracking down every cash transaction in every flower shop in Miami. Then, the Sunday before his first kill was expected, she'd written an article reminding single women of the importance of hyper vigilance when it came to their safety.
    She hadn't named The Killing Cupid in the article, or even mentioned the kills from the previous years. She had instead kept the article factual and angled it toward the rise in rape victims around Valentine's Day.
    The Killing Cupid had let her know almost immediately that she'd gotten his attention. After each of his kills, he'd called her work line and asked if she would be his Valentine.
    A shiver traipsed down her spine. She could go the rest of her life without celebrating Valentine's Day.
    "Keep your cool, Lana. We need concrete evidence."
    As long as it's not my corpse. She wanted to respond, to engage in the verbal sparring they settled into naturally. She had to satisfy herself with his unrebutted disdain.
    Cupid was in her home and the feds waited next door for her cue.
    Lana swallowed and forced her wobbly legs to carry her to the table. She’d faced danger before and survived. Tonight would be no different. Except for the trained feds monitoring her.
    Lana sat her things