Exposed Read online

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  Author's Note

  Other Suzanne Ferrell Books...

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Suzanne Ferrell

  Cover Art by Lyndsey Lewellen

  Formatting by Libris in CAPS

  Release date: June 2016

  Ferrell, Suzanne (2016), Exposed,

  A Romantic Suspense Novel.

  Suzanne Ferrell.

  All rights reserved to the Author

  This book and parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise - without prior written permission of the author and publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law. The only execption is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Exposed

  A Romantic Suspense Novel

  By

  Suzanne Ferrell

  DEDICATION

  For my sister Sami.

  You are the best sister in the entire world.

  You’ve had a ton of responsibilities on your shoulders for years

  and yet you still find things that make you laugh.

  Your strength, loyalty, love and wit amaze me.

  Love you, sis!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Ferrell team always deserves a big thank you!

  To my indispensable critique partner and wonderful friend, Sandy Blair, Thank you for everything you do to help me turn out the best book.

  I’d like to thank my cover artist, Lyndsey Lewellen of LLewellen Designs. I love how you take my vague descriptions and turn out such eye-catching, dynamic covers. I literally wrote EXPOSED to fit your design.

  My formatter at Libris in CAPS, Mitchell Rhodes. You’ve done such a great job.

  And my editor, Tanya Saari. Thanks for helping make my stories the best they can be.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Damn, he hated being cold and damp.

  Hunkered down in the half-built building across the street for hours in the rain, he’d been waiting for her to come home. Finally, the light came on in the apartment. He picked up his camera.

  Using the long-distance lens, he zoomed in as the young woman entered the living area. She threw her bag on the sofa and crossed out of sight into what he assumed was her bedroom. Two nights ago, she’d approached him about information that implicated her employer in a kick-back scheme. She’d wanted to know how much money she could get for the story, and wanted to remain anonymous.

  Silly girl, playing a dangerous game.

  He’d photographed her before approaching the table at the pizza joint where she’d set up their meeting. Two clicks of his internet app and he had her name and that of her employer. Washington was a city with secrets, most of which weren’t as hidden as people wished. Especially political identities.

  The brunette told him a story about being forced to have an affair with her employer or face unemployment and possible repercussions stretching back to her home state. A sex scandal. Not too unusual in this city.

  He’d followed her after the meet. Having worked in hot spots all over the world, where hiding from danger was a minute-by-minute fact of life, following one barely-out-of-law-school girl in the nation’s capital was a piece of cake.

  Sardonic laughter bubbled up inside him.

  Hell, she hadn’t checked once to see if she had a tail. Talk about naïveté.

  That night, she’d met her employer at this apartment. Typical cliché for Washington. Older man, young, nubile girl. At the time, all he’d had with him was his camera phone. Fine for taking selfies, but crap for getting the gritty photos he knew he’d need.

  Tonight, he’d come prepared.

  The woman crossed past the window towards the door. Dressed in a robe, probably hiding some sexy lingerie beneath. Yep, cliché.

  A black SUV had pulled up outside the building. Ah, her sugar daddy had probably arrived.

  Adjusting the lens, he pressed the shutter release to capture her welcoming him with open arms.

  Suddenly, she flew through the air and landed against the wall. She crumpled in a heap on the hardwood floors.

  Shit!

  He kept the camera clicking.

  Two men stalked through her apartment, one turning over furniture, the other grasping the dazed woman by her dark hair and hauling her to her feet, just to slam a fist into her face and send her crashing into the wall again, knocking a painting to the floor beside her.

  A third man walked into the room. Cool. Collected. In control. He held up a hand as the first thug lifted the woman to her feet again. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth.

  The leader said something to her.

  Damn, he wished he had some sort of long-distance listening device to hear what the man was saying. He kept taking pictures.

  The woman shook her head.

  Thug number one slapped her.

  Controlled said something else.

  He zoomed in on her face.

  Tears mixed with the blood. Again she shook her head.

  Controlled pointed a gun at her. It had a silencer on the end.

  Her body jumped in thug one’s hands.

  Fuck! They killed her!

  He scrambled back behind a cement column, afraid they’d somehow be able to see him through the dark, even nearly half a football field away. Once his heartrate returned to normal, he focused through the camera lens again, zooming out to keep the whole room in the frame.

  The picture was back in its former spot. Controlled held the woman’s laptop case in his hand while thug one and thug two were bent over, rolling up her carpet. After a few minutes, they hefted it onto their shoulders.

  Crap. She had to be inside it. They were getting rid of her body.

  What if she wasn’t dead?

  Grabbing his equipment and the wrappers from the burgers he’d eaten earlier, he scrambled out of the construction site to his rental car parked in the lot next door. He wasn’t leaving any evidence that a witness to a murder had been here. If anyone even suspected someone had been here, they’d somehow figure out it was him. Nope. Not happening.

  Inside the car, he started the engine, then scrunched down in the driver’s seat to watch the exit of the apartment building, keeping the lights off. It took a few minutes—probably because they were carrying a dead body in a rug—but finally, the trio exited. Controlled went to the rear of the SUV parked on the street and opened the rear door for the thugs to deposit the girl and rug inside.

  After they closed the door and climbed into the vehicle, he snapped a picture of the license plate, then put his car in gear. He gave them half a block head start, pu
lled out, and slowly started to tail them. At first he stayed close by, trying not to lose them in the rain and the traffic. Once they turned off the Whitehurst Freeway onto Canal Road, heading northwest out of the city, the traffic thinned out and he backed off a little. He had a sinking feeling he knew where they were headed. All he needed was to keep close enough to keep an eye on them to see where they pulled over. There wouldn’t be many options. He’d drive past, park and double back on foot.

  If he was really smart, he’d turn around and head straight for the airport.

  The investigator in him couldn’t let it go.

  What if she were alive still? What would he do? She was probably dead. Had to be.

  Several car lengths in front of him, the SUV passed Georgetown University and continued up the Canal Road. Once they approached Chain Bridge Road, he backed off more. Here they had a choice. There was a parking spot on the left side, where joggers and hikers could park. Kind of out in the open, but on a rainy night, not too many witnesses.

  The SUV drove past in the right lane.

  He eased up even more on the gas.

  Up ahead, they pulled off to the right without a signal.

  He glanced to his right as he drove past. They’d pulled around behind a brick building. The black, metal-framed windows were frosted, and it had a weathered metal roof.

  Crap. He needed a place to pull over.

  Suddenly, to his right, a few feet ahead, there was a second turn-off. He pulled in. The thick growth of trees would hide his car. Pulling in farther, he carefully moved his car into the underbrush then cut the engine. He reached over his head and turned the overhead light to off. He switched cameras, preferring his digital one for taking pictures in the dark. As quietly as he could, he climbed out of his car and closed the door.

  Had they taken her into the building? Or down into the woods?

  Standing perfectly still, he listened.

  Loud crunching of brush and heavy breathing carried through the night. They were dumping the girl in the woods. Enough scavenger animals from Rock Creek Park and the Canal parklands would help the body disappear before the big hiking season started up in summer.

  Did he try to follow them? They were definitely to his right, probably about fifty feet in front of him.

  What if they ran into him? He had no excuse for being out in these woods in the rain, at this hour. Controlled had a gun in the apartment, so he had to assume the man was still armed.

  But if he didn’t try to follow them, he wouldn’t know where they’d dumped the girl.

  Deep breath.

  He eased his way into the brush, trying to parallel the path they’d probably taken. Going slow, he picked his way through the underbrush and bushes, trying not to make much noise. It would be great to turn on the flashlight app on his phone, but that would be like asking them to shoot him.

  God, he prayed no snakes were around this time of night. Probably too cold. Hopefully too cold.

  Up ahead to his right, he could see lights, moving back from the woods.

  They hadn’t taken her far.

  As the lights got closer, he hunkered low near the trunk of a thick tree. Please don’t let it be poison sumac. He’d love to get pictures of the three of them this close, but didn’t dare. He’d have to hope the ones from the apartment would give him good images of their faces.

  They passed less than ten feet from him.

  He held his breath and remained still. Finally, he heard three car doors close, and the engine of the SUV start up. He exhaled, but remained still until he heard it drive away.

  Slowly, he moved the ten feet to the right, to be on the same path the men had taken, working his way into the woods. Now he had his flashlight app on, slowly scanning side to side, trying to guess just how far they’d gone before Thug One and Thug Two gave up hauling the heavy bundle. Suddenly, to his right, he saw what at first looked like a log.

  His heart felt like it would pop out of his chest.

  Calm. Stay calm. You’ve seen dead bodies before. Focus.

  He lifted his camera, flipping on the flash, and snapped a picture of exactly where they’d dumped her. Then he wiped his sweaty palms, one at a time on his jeans, before moving closer. They’d also wrapped the body and rug in a huge garbage-bag-type plastic tarp.

  Kneeling down next to her, he peeled back the plastic to find an expensive Oriental rug. He pulled back one corner, then tugged until it unraveled enough to reveal her dark hair over her face. Again he took a picture. Then he smoothed the hair away from her face. It was very pale, but her eyes were closed. He snapped again.

  Deep breath.

  He had to know if she was alive or not.

  Slowly, he reached a hand towards her neck.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I need a favor.”

  Deputy U.S. Marshal, Frank Castello, took a long draw off his beer then stretched his left leg out in front of the lawn chair he’d been relaxing in. He pointed to the brace that extended from his knee to his foot. “Last favor you asked of me.”

  Luke Edgars, a computer expert with the Treasury division of Homeland Security, let out a groan. “Man, you ever going to let me live that down? How was I to know a homegrown extremist cult would decide to mess up my undercover op by invading the ball, trying to kill the president and half the Joint Chiefs?”

  Frank cocked his head to one side and lifted a brow in a you’re-really-going-to-ask-that stare. “Intelligence officer?”

  “Walked right into that one,” Dave Edgars, Luke’s oldest brother and a member of the local SWAT team said, dropping down into another lawn chair and handing his brother a beer. “How much longer you going to be on medical leave, Castello?”

  “They tell professional athletes with torn ACLs six months,” Sami Carlisle, the only sister of the Edgars clan and an ER nurse said, walking past with a tray full of burgers and brats from the grill her husband Jake was manning. The smell of the food had Frank salivating. He had to admit the FBI special agent knew how to handle a barbecue. “Add on to that the fact you had two gunshot wounds to the same area,” she continued, setting the tray on the table. “I’d be surprised if you got clearance to return to duty before then.”

  “He’s in the Marshal’s office, sis. It’s not like he’s going to be running for hundred-yard touchdowns or anything,” Matt Edgars, a former Ohio Highway Patrolman added as he tossed the baseball with his nephew Nicky. He gave Frank a half smirk over his shoulder. “But then you are older than most athletes.”

  “He’s not that old. Besides, like you could catch a hundred-yard pass these days?” Dave leaned forward and caught his young son as he started to topple off the picnic table bench. He settled back in his chair with the tot on his lap. “Gotcha,” he said, and received a smile from both his son and wife, Judy.

  “Pretty sure I could catch one if you could still throw one,” Matt said, always pushing his older brother’s buttons.

  “Is that a challenge?” Dave asked with the confidence of a former star quarterback. “Because only one of us was all-State, and it sure wasn’t you.”

  “We could drive over to the high school and see if either of you’ve still got it,” Luke said with the grin of the youngest brother egging the older two into a fight. “Then we can watch Castello try to hobble a few yards.”

  “No thanks to you, kid.” Frank took another long swig of his beer. When he first got to know the Edgars family, it had taken him a while to get used to not only the good-natured ribbing they tended to inflict on each other, but the almost rapid-fire delivery of comments from all angles. That they considered him one of them filled a small part of that emptiness in his chest.

  Nearly two years ago he’d met the clan when one of his WitSec clients had not only her cover blown, but her Jeep, too—literally. He glanced up as that remarkable young woman, Katie, now an Edgars, set a bowl of potato salad on the table. The very obvious bulge in her middle spoke not only of the passion between her and Matt, but the healing th
at had taken place in her life. She’d been ecstatic when she’d called him to tell him her news.

  “I wanted to tell you before we tell the rest of the family,” she said, after a little bit of small talk. It always touched him that she considered him her part of the family. She’d been a teen when she walked into his office. He’d been the one to protect her while she testified against the monster that was her step-father. He’d helped her start her new life with a new name and identity, like he had so many before. But with Katie, there was something special about her inner strength and delicate vulnerability.

  “Matt and I are…we’re…I’m pregnant.”

  Tears stung his eyes, and he was glad he was at home alone. “Congratulations! That’s great news.”

  “I know,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s a little overwhelming. I never dreamed I’d find this kind of happiness with a man. Much less become a mother.”

  “You’ll make a great mom,” he’d said past the small knot in his throat. She was like a little sister to him, and he wanted only good things in her life. God knows, she deserved them after the hell she’d grown up in.

  “I don’t know. My mom was…a mess.” The slight hesitation cut his heart a little. Her mother had been a naïve, selfish woman who put her child’s life in danger to live with a man who was bent on destroying not just the country, but as many lives as he could in the process.

  “You’ll be great. You have Matt. And with him comes his mom, Sami, and Judy. They’re all great moms and will walk you through everything.”

  “I know and they’ll all be thrilled. I just wanted you to know first.”

  And knowing she cared that much for him had humbled the tears right down his cheek.

  Katie stepped sideways toward her husband, snagging the ball mid-flight before it could hit his glove. “Time to eat. Luke’s favor can wait until later.”

  “Your mom and dad are pulling up outside with dessert,” Luke’s fiancée, Abigail Whitson, announced to the group as she walked past carrying a hot pan of baked beans. Her announcement had the older grandkids flocking to the backdoor to greet Ben and Mary, the patriarch and matriarch of the clan.