PROLOGUE

MaKayla Sinatra, the District Attorney for Jericho County, stopped her Maserati Quattroporte at the sudden red light and quickly grabbed her iPad to check her notes. Her office had so many informants on so many different cases that she often had to remind herself which was which. She swiped through until she found the right one: The Ellison case. Jake Dalenti was the informant. Relatively new on their rolls, he had been giving them great intel. Jake was the man she was going to see.

She dropped her iPad on the passenger seat when the light turned green again and drove on through. Glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror, she saw dark circles forming under her eyes. She was working too hard again. Not getting enough sleep again.

Like now. It was ten-forty at night. It was way too late to still be on the clock, but when she got the call she knew she had to go. Darren McGuire, her lead prosecutor assigned to the Ellison case, was laid up in the hospital with an appendicitis eruption. He and she were the only ones who were allowed to know about the DA’s informants. When Jake called Darren with intel, and Darren called her, she knew she had no choice but to go and find out everything Jake knew.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

Something was wrong.

Then her phone rang.

When she looked at the name on her car screen, she gave out an exacerbated sigh and then answered. She was at dinner with Brent and his family when Darren phoned her, and she told the family she had to leave. She knew he was going to be bitching about why this time of night.

“Hey.”

“Where are you?”

“I told you I have a meeting I need to attend.”

“A meeting, Kayla?”’

“Brent, don’t start. I told you it can’t be helped. That new factory hit town with its eighteen thousand brand new employees from wherever they came from, mostly earning just above minimum wage in this high-dollar town, and now Jericho’s growing by leaps and bounds and the crime wave is too. And everybody’s feeling it. Including your office!” Brent Sinatra was the chief of the Jericho, Maine police department. After the new people arrived, swelling the city ranks by nearly a fifth, crime skyrocketed. “My office is prosecuting more cases than we ever have,” she added.

“I know it’s straining all of us. Did I say it wasn’t?” Brent’s voice was always tortured to Makayla. Too stern. Like his father’s. “All I’m questioning is another meeting this late at night. A meeting ? Are you kidding me?”

Makayla couldn’t believe he said that. “What’s that supposed to mean? Hun? What the hell is that supposed to mean, Brent? You think I’m lying ?”

“All of these late-night meetings are getting old, Kayla. That’s all I’m saying. Every other day you’ve got some late-night meeting.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true. It is true!” Then he exhaled. “Who is this judge anyway?”

Makayla frowned. “What judge ?”

“That Alvin Clayton they hired a few months back to help with the court’s backlog. Pop says you and he have been chummy .” Brent saw their chumminess with his own two eyes, too, but because he knew MaKayla so well he wasn’t ready to take it as far as the rumor mill was trying to take it.

Makayla had heard the ridiculous rumors too. And although she loved her father-in-law to death, she also felt that Big Daddy knew way too much about her business than she would ever be comfortable with. He kept tabs on her just like he kept tabs on his own children, all of whom were grown too. He was an involved father, she’d give him that. Before he married Jenay, he had been a single parent who raised his boys right. But damn . “We aren’t chummy . We work together. Just like you and all those females at JPD. Do you ever hear me complaining about them?”

“Yes.Hell yes!”

Makayla had to smile at his response as she pulled into the parking lot of the Hayton Hotel that was located on the outer edges of Jericho. She did feel some kind of way about all those beautiful females always up in Brent’s face, but her situation was vastly different. Men would give her assessing looks all the time, and some of them would try to be bold about it, but once they knew who she belonged to they always backed off. The Sinatra name carried serious weight in Jericho. Criminal weight if you rubbed them wrong. More weight than nearly any other name in the entire state of Maine. And Brent had a hardnosed reputation, almost as ruthless and unyielding as his father’s. No sane man wanted to ruffle his feathers.

But going in circles with Brent wasn’t getting them anywhere either. After parking her car, she told him she had to go. She waited to see if he would say that he loved her, something that had become nearly nonexistent on his lips of late. When he said nothing, she shook her head. Why did she keep expecting something different to come out of that man’s mouth? Then she said out loud, “I’ll talk to you later,” and ended the call before he could say another word.

She tossed her iPad in her briefcase as she grabbed the briefcase, got out, and headed for the entrance.

She entered the hotel’s lobby and made her way to the elevators. When The Hayton first hit the scene, everybody assumed it would be a natural rival to her in-laws’ hotel. But it never rose anywhere near to that level. It was nice enough. The lobby was decent enough. But there was always that undercurrent of raunchiness to it too. As if it was ghetto-fabulous more than luxurious. And it reeked. It always had a pesky, hard-to-place odor that was as uninviting as the stains on the elevator carpet she now stood upon.

Three men got onto the elevator with her and when one got off on the second floor and the other two stayed on, she knew the bullshit was coming.

And it came.

“Hey there pretty lady,” said the shorter one, a white guy. “I heard big girls like you know how to get down.” He was grinning. “I ain’t never been with no big girls, just skinny ones. But that’s what I heard. That the truth?”

MaKayla ignored him.

But that didn’t stop him. “Anybody ever tell you that you have the most beautiful of skin? And your high cheekbones and that gorgeous face is nice to look at,” he added, causing the taller one, an African American like MaKayla, to laugh. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” the short guy asked. “You got a name?”

MaKayla didn’t dignify his question with a response. But then the black guy got on the bandwagon too. “I don’t need to know your name. You know why? Cause you fine as wine, baby girl. Got some serious curves going on right there, yes ma’am you do. A real brother can do a lot with that right there. But only if he’s a real brother,” he added, looking at his friend and laughing as both men continued to look down the length of her body.

Makayla used to be self-conscious about her full figure even though guys were always going on about it. She always chalked up that sexy talk to guys just trying to get some and any willing woman would do. But when Brent came along helping her rather than trying to use her, and when he reminded her how her curves fell into perfect place in a magical way, elevating her body to a voluptuousness women envied and men actually did want, she got over herself and embraced her curves. But what she didn’t do was flirt around with guys. She had too many cases of guys stalking ladies, raining down pure hell on those ladies’ lives, just because they were nice to them.

She stepped off the elevator onto the fourteenth floor, with the guys still going on about her body until the elevator door closed them in, and she made her way around corridors until she was standing at room number 1498. It was a suite Darren had set up for them to meet privately with their various informants and she pulled out her keycard, swiped it, and entered the room.

Expecting to find Jake seated on the sofa ready to talk, but finding no one there, she yelled out. “Jake? Where are you?”

“Jake?”

“I’m back here!”

She couldn’t say if it was Jake Dalenti’s voice or not because her contact with him had been minimal, but something stopped her in her tracks. Her hackles went up and she sensed again within herself that something was off. Something was wrong. And instead of going to the back where he had no business being, everything within her screamed for her to turn tail and get out of there.

She got out of there.

At least she tried to.

Because as soon as she turned to leave, a wall of a body, a huge man, stood in front of her and tried to force a wet rag into her face. Certain it was chloroform that would knock her out, she fought with all she had, snatching that rag away from her nose before it could take any effect. She scratched and clawed her attacker and kicked him in his groin and tried to scream but the rag was still covering her mouth and muffling the sound.

They fell to the floor wrestling, but she kept fighting. She was scratching him. She tried to poke his eyes out. She knew she had to fight for her life.

And within seconds she was beginning to pull away from him. He was big but he wasn’t strong. He was big but he wasn’t agile. Her body was on that floor circling around in her Prada dress and heels, wiggling away from him as if he was a vortex trying to suck the life out of her and she wasn’t having it. She was winning the fight.

Until the man from the back room, who had yelled out when she called Jake’s name, hurried over and grabbed her uncooperative arms and legs just enough for his partner to press that wet cloth up to her nose until she was woozy. Until she no longer had any control of her body whatsoever.

“ Brent .” She thought she was crying out at the top of her lungs. “ Brent !” But her voice was barely a whisper.

She cried out Brent’s name once again, this time with even more feeling and with all she had, but it wasn’t even a whisper anymore. But she kept crying out for him. She kept crying out. Until she was unable to do even that.