Evidence of Passion (Shadow Agents #7)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Prologue

“You should’ve walked away and dropped the charges. Hell, you should’ve just given the case to someone else to prosecute. To anyone else.” Sadness coated his words.

So did fury.

Rachel Mancini jerked against the ropes that held her. Terror clawed through her body. He’d tied her to the chair, secured her so completely.

After he’d drugged her.

The drugs were still in her system. They made her limbs feel sluggish, but the drugs did nothing to numb the terror coursing through her body.

“You should have listened!”

She blinked and found him right in front of her. Adam Wright. The man she’d been dating for the past three months. The man she’d fallen for so easily. He was charming. He was handsome.

He was also a killer.

His hand lifted and she tensed, expecting him to hit her. Instead, his fingers skimmed lightly over her cheek. It was a familiar caress. He’d touched her that way dozens of times. This time his touch seemed to burn her.

“I didn’t count on you, Rachel,” Adam said, his voice dropping to a low growl. “The kills are always so easy. I do the work. I get the cash.”

This couldn’t be happening to her. She and Adam were supposed to go away this weekend. Their first vacation as a couple.

She’d just finished prosecuting her latest case earlier that day. Rachel was a Marine Corps Judge Advocate, and she’d been working on the biggest case of her career. Private First Class Quincy Langam had been accused of murdering two senior officers. Rachel was sure the man was guilty, and she’d done everything possible to give justice to Langam’s victims.

Adam’s hand dropped away from her face. He pulled out the gun that had been holstered at his hip. “I was paid to kill you.”

Her hands twisted against the ropes. Her wrists were bleeding. The flesh had cut quickly against the thick, hemp rope. Rachel ignored the pain. Maybe the blood would help her to slip free of the binds. “I thought you cared about me.” All of those months. The flowers. The dates. The laughter and the talking that had gone late into the night. Everything had been a lie?

“I don’t care about anything.” His words were cold now, hollow. The emotion that had blazed in his voice and eyes just moments before was gone.

Adam lifted the gun and aimed it at her.

“Please!” The cry broke from Rachel. This was the man who’d kissed her? Who’d talked to her about a future, a new life? They were supposed to build a life together. “Don’t do this, Adam!”

“It’s your fault.” His jaw hardened. “You should’ve let someone else handle the case. I could’ve killed that prosecutor, and you’d be free.”

She latched on to what he’d said as she realized just who had sent Adam after her. “Quincy? Quincy Langam hired you?” Keep him talking. If Adam was talking, then he wasn’t shooting her.

He nodded and didn’t lower the gun. He also didn’t shoot her. “Quincy’s family has a lot of money. Money can hide so much.”

“Like the fact that Quincy is a cold-blooded killer?”

Adam smiled at her. “No, he’s not cold-blooded. He attacked in the heat of the moment. One of those passion kills. He found his girlfriend with another man, and he erupted. He killed them both. The fact that they were senior officers never mattered to him—it was all personal.” Adam gave a little shrug. “All passion, like I said.”

Was the rope starting to give around her left wrist? It was! And with another yank, Rachel thought she might be able to slip out of the rope that twisted around her right wrist, too.

“I’m the cold-blooded one,” he told her, “and I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you’re dead.”

No. No! Her wrists slipped free of the binds, and Rachel didn’t waste any more time begging for her life. She leaped out of that chair, attacking him with all her might.

They collided. Hit the floor. The gun slid from his fingers. She tried to lift her elbow and ram it into him—

But the drugs still had her muscles trembling and weak.

Adam caught her hand easily and he yanked her arm back down. He rolled them on the floor, locking her body beneath his. His green eyes gleamed down at her. “Such a fighter.” He yanked her hands above her head and pinned them to the floor. “Some don’t fight. They just sit there, crying, as they wait for me to kill them.” He flashed the wide smile that used to make her heart skip a beat. “That’s just one of the things I love about you.”

He dared to speak about love even as he prepared to kill her? Rachel slammed her forehead into his nose. She heard the crunch and knew she’d broken cartilage. The sound gave her a savage satisfaction. “You know nothing about love.”

He swore at the pain, and his hold weakened. Rachel was a marine, first and foremost, and she was not about to be easy prey. She twisted beneath him, struggling desperately, and she escaped from him as she heaved across the floor.

The gun. She had to get the gun that he’d dropped.

“Yes, I do know about love….”

His voice was so soft she barely heard it.

Rachel grabbed the gun. Her bloody fingers made holding the weapon hard.

Before she could spin toward him with her weapon, Rachel felt the tip of a knife press into her back.

“Do you think…” Adam asked her, seemingly curious “…that you could really do it? Do you think you could kill me?”

Her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

He leaned closer to her. That knife pressed a little deeper into her back. “Because I don’t think you can, Rachel. I think that I got to you. The controlled, all-business prosecutor. The brave soldier. I got beneath your skin, and I don’t think you’ve got it in you to actually kill me.”

She spun, ignoring the burn of the knife as it sliced over her skin. Rachel brought the gun up and aimed it right at him. “Get away from me,” Rachel ordered. Because she would pull that trigger. She would.

He dropped the knife, eased back. “I marked you.”

Her back throbbed, and she could feel the wetness of her blood soaking her shirt. “And if you come at me again,” Rachel told him, “I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. Adam didn’t seem to care that blood was coming from his nose or that she had a gun aimed dead-center at his heart.

“Get your hands up!” Rachel shouted.

He slowly lifted his hands. “A fighter,” he whispered again, and he sounded pleased. “But I guess you had to be, right, Rachel? Once a marine, always a marine…. A core of steel hidden beneath the silk.”