Lethal Lies

Trusting the man she loves could cost her her life

Putting her faith in someone who lies for a living isn’t the safest thing Dr. Jillian Mahoney has ever done. But to stay alive, she has to believe the undercover agent—who’s kidnapped her to prove his innocence—isn’t a traitor to the FBI. And to help him, she must deny their intense attraction as they run from two vengeful killers.

Her captor, Alex Malcom, has lived a life of lies—some worse than others. Still, there’s one truth he’s reluctant to disclose to Jillian, the woman of his dreams. One that could stop their relationship cold.

Her fingers were gentle when she pressed around his stitches. Then she placed her other hand flush against the center of his chest, and he stopped worrying about his shoulder.

He closed his eyes, enjoying the comforting weight of her palm above his heart. Could she feel it beating, the way it sped up when she was near? Did hers do the same?

Her hand slipped away as she leaned back. Alex opened his eyes to find her watching him, and the naked yearning on her face nearly stole his breath.

“Well?” he croaked.

“I do believe you’ll live to fight another day,” she said, her own voice deep and sensuous.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Me, too,” she whispered.

“You know, Doc, I just noticed something.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re a bit overdressed for this party.”

She cocked her head, considering him for a long moment. “You know what? I do believe you’re right.” She stood and peeled off her shirt, dropping it to the floor to join his own.

Dear Reader,

As a native Texan, I have an ingrained fear of snow. Growing up, it was never a part of our regular winter weather, so when I moved to the DC area for graduate school, I packed a ridiculous number of coats and jackets in preparation for the coming cold.

My first real winter was an eye-opener. True to my roots, I abandoned the lab as soon as I saw flakes falling from the sky. There were many days I walked into work (yes, in the snow, uphill both ways!) because I was too scared to drive. And let’s not forget my lack of a windshield ice scraper, which meant I had to use a credit card (something I do not recommend). Nevertheless, I survived, mainly because of the kindness of my friends. They had all grown up in states that celebrated winter, so they taught me a lot of the tricks of the trade. I’ve since made my peace with snow, although we’ll never really be friends.

When I started this book, I knew Alex and Jillian were going to face a lot of difficulties. His cover has been blown, she’s been kidnapped, and a murderous gang is after them both. How could things get any worse? You guessed it—snow.

So grab a warm beverage and make yourself comfortable. I hope you enjoy reading their adventures as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Lara

Lethal Lies

Lara Lacombe

Lara Lacombe

I earned my PhD in microbiology and immunology and worked in several labs across the country before moving into the classroom. My day job as a college science professor gives me time to pursue my other love—writing fast-paced romantic suspense, with smart, nerdy heroines and dangerously attractive heroes. I love to hear from readers! Find me on the web, or contact me at laralacombewriter@gmail.com.

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This one is for Adam, with love.

Thanks as always to Jessica Alvarez

and Rachel Burkot.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

“The National Weather Service has issued a severe winter storm warning for the DC metro and surrounding areas...”

“You should get going.”

Dr. Jillian Mahoney glanced up from the computer screen and blinked. Her friend Carla stood in front of her, wearing neon-green scrubs that were bright enough to land planes at Dulles airport. It was a color Jillian could never wear, thanks to her Casper-the-Ghost-like coloring, but it looked good against Carla’s café-au-lait complexion.

“You’re very green today,” she observed, turning back to the computer screen.

“I was feeling festive this morning,” Carla replied dryly.

“Christmas is still over a week away. Besides, I’m pretty sure neon is not a holiday color.”

“It is in my book.” Carla leaned across the desk, casting a shadow over the keyboard. “I’m serious, Jilly. You need to get out of here before the storm hits. We’re supposed to get twelve inches of snow. That’s a foot.” She held her hands out in an exaggerated approximation of distance, her expression earnest.

“I know,” Jillian said, typing faster. “I just need to finish up these charts.”

“Got enough food to last you a couple of days?”

Jillian huffed out a breath. “For God’s sake, Carla, it’s just a bit of snow. It’s not the end of the world or anything.”

Her friend cocked an eyebrow and narrowed her eyes in a gimlet stare. It was an expression Jillian had seen before, one used to great effect with uncooperative patients or egotistical doctors. She’d never had it directed at her, though, and she ducked her head, feeling chastened.

“Sorry,” she muttered, clicking through to the next page of the chart.

“I’ll let it go, because I know you’re tired,” Carla said. “But I worry about you. I know you’ve been too busy to go to the grocery store, but with this storm coming, you don’t want to have to get out in the next couple of days. You need to take the time to relax and recharge, maybe get some sleep.”

“I’ll order in,” Jillian said, entering the final notes with a flourish.

“There’s no delivery when the city has shut down,” Carla said, her tone reproving.

Jillian pushed back from the desk and stood, reaching for her coffee. “I’ll be all right,” she said with a smile, knowing her friend was only trying to help. “I’ll stop at the store on my way home, pick up the essentials. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Carla nodded, apparently satisfied with this plan. “Be careful getting home,” she said. “And try to enjoy the next few days off.”

“Thanks,” she said, rounding the desk and setting off down the hall. “And good luck,” she called back, remembering that tomorrow was a full moon. Carla gave her a mock glare and Jillian chuckled. She shook her head, thanking her lucky stars that she was off for the next seventy-two hours. A full moon and a winter storm? The ER would be crazy, and she’d had enough crazy this week to last a lifetime.

She retrieved her coat from her locker in the doctors’ lounge, not bothering to take off her white coat before shrugging into the outer layer. The puffed black jacket came down to her knees, long enough to cover the telltale fabric. Normally she didn’t like to wear the white coat when out in public because it attracted too much attention, but today, she was too tired to care if anyone saw the hem of her coat.

Keeping her head down, she walked quickly through the hall, wanting to make it out of the hospital before anyone stopped her. She’d been on for the past three days straight, and though by all rights she should have left an hour ago, it was all too easy to get caught up in the eternal rhythm of the emergency room. All it would take was one question from a medical student or an interesting case from an intern, and she’d be sucked back into the vortex. Given the coming storm, she had no desire to be waylaid, as it would likely result in her being stuck until the weather passed. As much as she loved her job, she did not relish the thought of sleeping on the stained, lumpy couch in the doctors’ lounge, subsisting on cafeteria food and bad coffee for the next three days.

She made it to the entrance without incident and she breathed a sigh of relief as she walked out into a blast of arctic air. Huddling into her coat, she pulled it closer to her body while she made her way to the parking lot. She didn’t have a car, but the employee lot was much closer to the Metro station, so she frequently cut through it on her way to and from work.

It had already begun to snow. Small flakes drifted down, landing on the exposed skin of her face and melting into her hair. She was damp within a few paces of the entrance, her nose and ears already going numb as the wind picked up. Great. The grocery store would likely be packed, if the shelves weren’t already bare. She’d probably have to be content with frozen dinners, and she could forget about fresh milk and vegetables. In the face of any winter weather, city inhabitants descended like a plague of locusts on the grocery stores, stripping the shelves of supplies and leaving dented cans and ripped packages in their wake. Given the dire predictions of snow, Jillian would be lucky to find any type of food. It was almost enough to send her back into the hospital to scrounge up some pudding cups from the cafeteria.

Almost.

The streetlamps cast an eerie yellow glow over the parking lot and she picked up her pace, her mind already focused on the comparative warmth the Metro station would provide. With her head down, she didn’t see the man step out from between parked cars, would have never known he was there had he not spoken.

“Doctor?”

She turned reflexively, stopping out of habit. Encouraged, the man stepped closer, emerging into the light. She wished he hadn’t. He was big, tall and broad through the chest and shoulders. Scruffy, too, with several days’ worth of beard on his face and dark hair that was a bit on the longish side, curling over his ears and at the nape of his neck. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, but she felt the intensity of his gaze like a brand.

Jillian took a small step back, alarm bells jangling in her mind. He didn’t seem overtly threatening, but he wore only a hooded cotton jacket against the chill. Hunched though he was, she could see his muscles were drawn tight, tense with cold or withdrawal, she couldn’t tell which. It wasn’t unusual for junkies to patrol the neighborhood surrounding the hospital, although she wasn’t sure what they thought they would find. Occasionally violence would erupt when one desperate soul tried to rob another in a bid to get the next fix.

The man standing in front of her didn’t appear to be an addict, even though the burned-plastic smell of meth smoke clung to his clothes. He was too big, too healthy-looking, for one thing. He lacked the gaunt, haunted look that was so common among users, although he did have the same fierceness to his gaze. He reminded her of a coiled snake, ready to strike, and she had no desire to be in the vicinity when he did.

“If you’re injured, the emergency room is right there.” She withdrew her hand from her coat pocket to point. He didn’t seem hurt, but it was hard to tell in the shadowy light of the parking lot.

“It’s not me, it’s my friend. Can you please help me?”

Jillian bit her lip, feeling torn. As a doctor, it was her duty to help people, even if they gave her the willies. She glanced around, searching for his companion. There was no one else in the lot, and she took another step back, suddenly feeling very alone.

“Let’s find an orderly. Then we can get your friend inside.” And you away from me.

She turned to head back to the hospital, but the man moved quickly to stand in front of her, blocking her path. She stepped back, a strangled yelp dying in her throat.

“There’s no time for that. He needs help now.”

Jillian stared up at him, her mind racing. She could try to scream an alarm, but the hospital entrance was at least a hundred feet away and, with the doors closed, it was unlikely anyone would hear her. She glanced around, hoping against hope that someone was just arriving, late for their shift, but the parking lot was still and silent. There was no one around, no one to help her.

“Please, you’re a doctor, right? Can’t you please help him?”

She halted her slow retreat, the need to help warring with her desire to get away. Don’t be an idiot, she chided herself, knowing the right thing to do was to return to the hospital. There was no telling what kind of injuries his friend had sustained, and she couldn’t exactly treat him in a dimly lit parking lot. No, better to retrieve a wheelchair and bring it back to collect the injured man.

But she couldn’t exactly do that with this man standing in front of her, blocking her path to the emergency room entrance.

“I’m just going to get a wheelchair,” she said, speaking calmly as if trying to soothe an angry dog. “It’ll be easier to move your friend into the ER if we can put him in the chair, and I’ll be able to examine him better once we get him inside.”

The man let out a huge sigh, his shoulders slumping further when he dropped his head. Jillian stepped to the side, intending to skirt around him. He muttered something that sounded strangely like, “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” but before she could process his words, he moved, his hand shooting out of the darkness to grip her arm with painful strength.

This time she did yelp, but he hauled her up against his broad chest so quickly the breath whooshed out of her before she could gear up to scream. She kicked and clawed at him, but he grabbed her other hand and tugged both arms behind her back, braceleting her wrists with one hand and effectively restraining her. Desperate, frantic, she jerked her knee up, hoping to land a crippling blow between his legs. He swerved to the side, easily deflecting it, so she brought her foot down hard, aiming for his instep. Another miss.

Just as she sucked in the air to scream, he flipped her around and clamped a hand over her mouth. He released her wrists to band his arm around her torso, locking her own arms by her hips and effectively rendering her helpless.

He picked her up and hauled her between the rows of parked cars, pulling her into a dark corner of the lot. Part of her brain screamed at her to resist, to make noise, to do something! She kicked furiously, her legs windmilling in the cold air but missing him completely. Her foot made contact with a car and a sudden numbing pain shot up her leg. She blinked back tears and bit down on the hand clamped over her mouth. She was rewarded with a mouthful of leather, the taste so foul it made her gag.

The man ignored her attempts to escape, maneuvering her easily through the lot, as though he did this kind of thing all the time. Maybe he did. He stopped next to a dark, four-door sedan and removed his hand from her mouth so he could open the back door. He quickly pushed her inside before she had a chance to scream, but took care to keep her from bumping her head against the frame.

A considerate kidnapper.

The burned-plastic smell that clung to his clothes was even stronger in the car. Habitual drug use had saturated the upholstery, and she dimly wondered if she would get high just from sitting on the fabric. He released her wrists and shut the door. She waited until he rounded the hood to scrabble at the handle—if she could get the door open, she could run. She had a head start; she could make it back to the ER.

But the door wouldn’t open. She threw herself against it, hoping it was just stuck, but it remained stubbornly closed.

She heard the driver’s door open and the man slid inside. “Gotta love child locks,” he said, eyeing her in the rearview mirror. She glared back, defiance and anger quickly replacing the numbness in her limbs as she began to thaw out.

A soft moan next to her made her jump. She shrank against the door in a bid to get away. What she had thought was a shapeless pile of clothes was in fact a person. One who was in bad shape, if the pitiful sounds coming from the opposite side of the back seat were any indication.

“That’s Tony,” the man said softly. “He’s been shot.”

So the friend really did exist.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” she snapped. “If you really wanted to help him, you’d let me take him inside instead of kidnapping me like this.”

The man shook his head as he started the car. “That’s not an option.”

“How do you expect me to treat him when I don’t have any medical supplies?”

He reached across the front passenger seat and lifted a paper bag, which he handed back to her. It was rather heavy, in a bulky, awkward way. Jillian glanced inside, surprised to find a large collection of vials, syringes and bandages. She lifted one out, straining to read the label as they drove. Ketamine.

“Where did you get this?” She picked up another vial. Acepromazine. Controlled substances, both of them, and neither of them routinely used in human medicine. Veterinary medicine, on the other hand...

“Does it matter?”

She shrugged. “Not really, but I typically don’t work with these drugs.”

“Keep digging.”

She did, pulling out a vial of Buprenex. The amber glass shone warmly in the glow of the streetlamps, the liquid inside turbulent as they hit a deep pothole.

“You can work with that.”

She glanced up to find him staring at her in the rearview mirror. “Oh?” He sounded so sure of himself; she couldn’t resist poking him just a little. Who was this man and why did he think he knew what she needed to treat his friend?

His eyes narrowed briefly before he returned his focus to the road. “You know that’s a morphine derivative. It’ll help calm him down so you can dig the bullet out.”

How the hell did he know that? Did he have some kind of medical background? But if that was the case, why did he need her? She glanced over at his friend, who was leaning against the door, his body limp. The sound of his labored breathing let her know he hadn’t died, but neither was he unconscious, as evidenced by the faint moans he released every time they hit a rough patch of road.

“Where were you shot?” She scanned his body, searching for blood, but it was too dark to see anything. No way was she going to touch him without gloves—she was a doctor, but she had her limits.

The man didn’t respond, but his eyes flickered open in response to her question. He stared at her for a beat, then leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes again.

“The chest,” the driver responded. “I think he punctured a lung.”

Jillian clenched her jaw, frustration mounting. “If that’s the case, then we really need to get to a hospital. He’ll need a chest tube, scans and quite possibly surgery to remove the bullet.”

“No.”

“He could die!”

The driver spared her a glance. “Make sure he doesn’t.”

Jillian leaned back against the seat, her heart kicking into high gear. Great. Not only had she been kidnapped, but she was expected to treat a man with serious injuries, without the benefit of a hospital. It belatedly dawned on her that if this man died, her kidnapper would have no further use for her, and he didn’t seem the type to drop her off on the corner with a wave goodbye.

Fear trailed a cold finger down her spine and she shivered, her stomach roiling. “Can we at least stop moving?” she asked, knowing she couldn’t do much for the injured man in a moving car. “And you can’t expect me to treat him in the dark. I’ll need light. Lots of it.”

“We’re almost there.” His voice was grim, determination underlying every word.

Jillian took another look at her patient. His condition hadn’t obviously changed, so she decided not to risk examining him until they had arrived at their destination, wherever it was. He seemed stable enough, and she didn’t want to make things worse. She returned her focus to the bag in her lap. There were several suture kits, additional vials of drugs and antibiotics, and at the bottom, a chest tube kit. Her kidnapper had come prepared.

But who was he, and why was he so insistent they stay out of a hospital?

Was it the nature of his friend’s injury? The law stated doctors had to report gunshot wounds to the police. Maybe he was on the run and didn’t want to reveal his whereabouts. Still, she knew there were back-alley clinics that would stitch up bullet holes for a price. He could have easily taken his friend there, gotten the job done without having to resort to kidnapping. Or theft, she thought, glancing down at the bag of medical supplies in her lap. It was clear the hospital hadn’t been their first stop tonight, and she was willing to bet all the toilet paper in the city that her kidnapper had broken into a vet clinic to steal supplies before grabbing her.

He took a corner hard, the car sliding a bit as the tires fought for purchase on the slick street. The snow was coming down in earnest now, a thin layer of flakes dusting the sidewalk white, as if someone had spilled a bag of powdered sugar over the city. She didn’t know where he was taking them, but if the weather continued in this fashion, it was likely they’d be stuck, at least for the foreseeable future. If his friend took a turn for the worse, or she was unable to treat him, that meant they’d be cut off from help. While the driver didn’t appear to be too concerned about her lack of resources, she shivered at the thought of his reaction if his friend didn’t make it.

They pulled into a small parking lot riddled with potholes and puddles. A squat, plain building that may have once been white sat at one end of the lot, looking like a deflated soufflé. She caught sight of a red-neon Vacancy sign as they circled to the back of the building, but she didn’t see a name for the place. She cursed herself for not paying attention to street signs and landmarks along the way—the kidnapper hadn’t bothered to conceal their route, so if she’d had half a brain, she could have easily called for help and led rescuers to them, or run away herself.

Jillian stared at the back of his head, considering. He didn’t seem to be a very good kidnapper. He’d let her see his face, which, according to all the movies she’d seen, was a big no-no. Either he didn’t care about being caught or...

She swallowed hard, her stomach cramping in warning. It was possible he wasn’t going to let her live long enough to be caught. Why else would he let her see his face or see the route they’d taken to his hideaway? Was he going to have her treat his friend, then kill her?

He parked next to a stained blue Dumpster and turned around to face her. “Are you going to give me any trouble?”

She shook her head, her mind desperately churning. She had to come up with something—she couldn’t just let him lead her like a lamb to slaughter.