Assumed Identity

KANSAS CITY HERO

Scarred inside and out by a past he can’t remember, Jake Lonergan doesn’t know if he’s a heroic undercover DEA agent or the hit man who killed him and assumed his identity. While he is determined to remain in the shadows, it’s Robin Carter and her baby girl who force him back into the light. When the gorgeous single mom is attacked, Jake comes to her rescue…and finds it impossible to walk away from this fragile little family. Now, with a dangerous stalker determined to get his hands on the only woman who got away, protecting Robin and her daughter becomes Jake’s priority. But with his memories still in question, Jake fears what will happen when the bad guy comes calling. Can he prove he’s the good guy Robin is convinced he must be?

“Robin. You don’t really know me. You shouldn’t automatically trust me.”

“I trusted you because I had to. You haven’t disappointed me yet.”

Oh, hell. That sounded like some sort of relationship had been forged between them.

Jake was relieved as much as he was on edge when he heard the sirens in the distance outside. He nodded toward the back door where they’d come in. “You stay here with the kid. I’ll wait outside and show the police in.”

Jake surmised the distance and direction of the approaching flashing lights. He paused for one shameless moment to admire the apple-shaped curve of Robin Carter’s backside, emphasized by the clinging dampness of her wet jeans, as she bent over the bassinet, tending to her sleeping baby again.

The cops were close enough. She’d be safe.

“Thank you again, Mr. Lonergan. By the way, you never told me your first name…”

He never heard the end of her sentence. By the time she straightened from the bassinet, he was gone.

Assumed

Identity

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Julie Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Miller attributes her passion for writing romance to all those books she read growing up. When shyness and asthma kept her from becoming the action-adventure heroine she longed to be, Julie created stories in her head to keep herself entertained. Encouragement from her family to write down the feelings and ideas she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where this teacher serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Julie believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, this award-winning author now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and an assortment of spoiled pets. To contact Julie or to learn more about her books, write to P.O. Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162 or check out her website and monthly newsletter at www.juliemiller.org.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Jake Lonergan—Is he an undercover agent who barely survived his last assignment? Or the hit man who killed the agent and assumed his identity?

Robin Carter—A successful career woman who wants to be a mother more than anything. Does she dare trust her life and her daughter’s to Jake? If they survive, can she trust the mystery man with her heart?

Emma Carter—Robin’s adopted daughter. Is she the real target?

Mark Riggins—The assistant manager at the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop. He runs things his way when Robin’s not there.

Leon Hundley—Robin’s newest hire drives the delivery van…and doesn’t like answering questions.

Brian Elliott—Robin’s former beau is very protective.

Tania Houseman—Emma’s birth mother. She survived one suicide attempt. Will she try again?

William Houseman—Tania’s big brother has his sister’s best interests at heart.

Hope Lockhart—Owner of the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop and Robin’s friend.

The Rose Red Rapist—Is he getting careless? Or changing his M.O.?

For Maggie May McGonagall Miller,

my ace writing companion and champion PR pooch.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Extract

Prologue

Jake wouldn’t mind the nightmare so much if he only knew what it meant.

He thrashed in the bed, knowing he could wake himself in an instant. Instead of saving himself, however, he wrestled with the demons that had haunted his dreams on and off, from nowhere, Texas, to Kansas City, Missouri, for nearly two years now.

The violence and pain had him in their grips again, the sensations as vivid and terrifying as the images were vague and fractured—meaningless flashes of objects and people without a context. But the nightmare was the closest thing he had to a memory, the closest thing he had to understanding. So he let it steal into his bed and wash over him. He invited the torment to become a part of him.

He was hot. Sweat stung his eyes and rolled down his back. He was breathing hard, every inhale the jab of a knife in his side, every exhale a silent grunt of pain. He was hurting bad—the kind of hurt that sent men to hospitals...or the morgue.

Wheezing through the pain that seared him inside and out, he crouched behind a formless shadow in a world filled with ghosts and darkness. A voiceless command echoed in his head, forcing him to press on, demanding that he live. “You let him get away? He’ll destroy everything we’ve worked for if he escapes. You have to stop him. It’s up to you. You’re the only one who can.”

What did the words mean? Who said them? Why did he hurt like this? Where was he? When was he?

What was he?

One of the hazy apparitions moved, darting quickly from night to night. He pulled a hunting knife from a bag at his feet, flipped the blade into his hand as if he’d done the dangerous maneuver a hundred times before. He hurled the knife and the apparition sank into the darkness.

Another shadow rose from the swirling black mist. It took the shape of a man, faceless and unnamed.

He was digging through the bag again. He didn’t know where it had come from, why he had it. It was a heavy black satchel filled with things he couldn’t see, couldn’t identify, couldn’t remember. That’s when he saw the gun in his hand. It was a wicked, streamlined thing of black steel that felt comfortable there, like it was a part of him. Its shiny surface gleamed in the shadows. He knew that gun better than he knew his own name.

He squeezed the trigger and the shadow jerked. But it didn’t fall. He couldn’t see a face, but he could see the gun, pointed at him, and he dove for the ground at the flashes of gunshots exploding in the night.

All Jake knew was the driving need to hunt down prey that was getting away. The instinct to run cramped his sore, weary muscles. But somehow he knew he belonged to the darkness. He had to hide. And wait. And kill.

The barrage of deafening noise came next. Explosions. Thunder. The sounds pierced the darkness, filled it up. Guns and bombs and pain and death. He was stuck in the middle of it. Or maybe he was the cause of it.

“You have to stop him.”

He was stalking the faceless shadow. He was the bringer of death.

The nightmare took a surreal turn as snow began to fall in the darkness. He was hotter than he’d ever been, and it was snowing—but not light, airy flakes. White, acrid pellets stung his nose, melted against his skin, branded him.

The walls were collapsing around him. He needed to get out of there. Now.

But he needed to get the job done even more.

He slung the bag over his burning shoulder and pushed to his feet. Crouching low, he hurried through the darkness, snatching his knife from the dead man’s chest and tucking it into his belt before he flattened his back against a crumpling wall and peered around its black edge into the fire-studded darkness.

He blinked away the snow and sweat and pain, and stilled his breath. There. He spotted the limping shadow and moved from his hiding place. Victory was his. He lined up his prey in the crosshairs of his gun. Jake squeezed the trigger.

A searing pain exploded in his shoulder and he staggered back. A crimson stain added color to the nightmare. The bag dropped to his feet. He clutched his arm to his side and cursed the numbness creeping down to his fingertips.

“You have to stop him.”

He raised his gun again.

There was blood in his eyes now. Red was everywhere he could see. The noise was so loud he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. The very air tasted of sulfur.

He was running out of time. Kill or die.

He squeezed the trigger.

Fire ripped through his skull. Pain consumed him. He was falling, plummeting toward death.

For one blink, there was clarity, understanding.

But the blackness rushed up from Jake’s feet and swallowed him whole, taking a clear image of the man’s face, of his surroundings—of freedom from this nightmare—with it.

Jake came awake on a groan and jackknifed upright in the bed. The sheet and blanket were twisted around his legs. His naked skin glistened with cold beads of sweat in the dampish night air. His chest heaved in and out on deep, ragged breaths as he oriented himself to his surroundings.

He eased open his fists, releasing the pillow he’d crushed, flexing his long fingers against the gray light that filtered into the studio apartment from the street lamp outside his window, verifying that he held neither gun nor knife. The deafening fusillade that had filled his ears a moment earlier faded into the lazy drumbeat of thunder and the soft patter of raindrops on the sidewalk and street below.

Jake turned his face to the screen at the half-open window and breathed in slowly, deeply—noting each fresh, tangible detail of the world around him. His waking world was still dark, but the rain brought a calming sound and the scent of ozone into his room. The springtime temperature cooled his heated skin.

Kicking his covers to the foot of the fold-out bed, he swung his legs over the side and planted his feet on the solid familiarity of worn wood and a discount store throw rug.

Wearing nothing but the boxer shorts he slept in, Jake rose and crossed to the apartment’s lone closet and opened the door. He pushed aside the hangers that held a handful of jeans and shirts and reached behind them to pull out a worn, black leather bag. Its heavy weight was the lone anchor to a past he couldn’t remember, the one tangible reality from the nightmare he couldn’t forget.

With an easy clench of muscle he lifted the bag and dropped it onto the bed. Pulling apart the singed handles, he dug into an inside pocket and pulled out a badge. The nickel and brass were shiny beneath his touch as he rubbed his thumb over the letters and numbers he’d traced so many nights before.

Drug Enforcement Agency. J. Lonergan.

But it meant nothing to him. Not the badge, not the name.

He reached into the same pocket and pulled out three different sets of passports and ID cards. Three different identities, three different home addresses, three different versions of the same grim face staring back at him. None of them stirred a glimmer of recognition, either. What kind of man needed three aliases? Why would he have taken so many trips to Central and South America? He felt no ties to the DEA—no ties to Houston, St. Louis or Chicago, either. He felt nothing but confusion. The badge might be his. But it could just as easily have been taken off one of the faceless shadows he killed every night in his dreams.

Which one of these names was real? Were any of them?

He scraped his palm over the craggy ridges and hollows of his battered nose and grizzled jaw and cursed. Why couldn’t he remember? Why the hell couldn’t he remember anything before that morning he’d woken up in a tiny Texas border-town hospital?

Was he a cop who’d nearly died in the line of duty? Or the man who’d killed a cop and assumed his identity?

After two years, with no one coming to the hospital to check on him, and no image that matched his face on any television screen in any of the towns he’d lived in between then and now that even felt familiar, he was beginning to believe it had to be the latter. He was a cold-blooded killer without any memory of the monster he’d once been.

He tossed the badge and passports back into the bag. The nightmare wouldn’t come back tonight. But neither would sleep. The blank holes and black walls in Jake’s memory—Jake, because he had no idea what the J on that badge stood for—disturbed him more than the violent images in between.

Some nights he took a cold shower. Other nights he bench-pressed the weights in the corner of the room until his strength was spent. On the worst nights he poured shots of tequila to erase the sweat from his skin and numb the emptiness in his head. Tonight, the rain and a long walk would do.

Without turning on the light, Jake quickly dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and work boots. Before putting away the bag, he pulled out a gun and ankle holster and strapped it to his leg. He slipped a hunting knife from beneath his pillow, flipped it with practiced ease in his hand and tucked it into the leather sheath inside his boot.

He couldn’t remember his own name, but he knew how to wake himself from a nightmare without crying out and alerting his enemies—not that he knew who those enemies might be. He knew how to arm himself before walking out into the shabby side of downtown Kansas City after the sun had set and every reputable business had closed for the night. He knew how to survive in the shadows of society without calling unwanted attention to himself.

But he didn’t know how to remember.

Needing something physical, something familiar, something as rooted in the present moment as he could make it to silence the demons from his forgotten past, Jake set the satchel back into the closet, locked his door and disappeared into the stormy night.

Chapter One

“I know it’s late, Emma. But try to help Mommy just a little bit longer. Just one little belch. Please?” Of all the evenings to outgrow her night-owl schedule, Robin Carter’s infant daughter had decided that the one night her mother wanted to stay up late she would be a fussy pants.

Hiding her frown of frustration, Robin shifted the precious weight in her arms to gaze down into drowsy eyes that were fighting hard not to sleep, despite a full tummy and the midnight hour. From the moment she’d first met her infant daughter, barely two months ago, those blue eyes had been irresistible. Robin glanced over at the clock on her office desk, then back to the baby’s agitated plea. They were still impossible to resist.

“You’re right. We’ll figure out how to make the books balance in the morning. Right now we’d better get home to our comfy beds.” She put Emma back to her shoulder and patted her soft back until she heard the burp. Robin grinned, reassured and reenergized by the healthy sound. “Dainty and delicate and tough as a Marine, aren’t you?”

Despite the difficult circumstances surrounding Emma’s birth, and the adoption that had changed both their lives, Emma did everything in a healthy, robust way. Burping. Eating. Crying. Growing silky brown hair. Claiming her new mother’s heart. The four-month-old was all Robin had wanted but feared she would never have.

Relationships had failed.

In vitro had failed.

Robin was closer to forty than to thirty now. She’d put herself through college on scholarships and hard work, built her own floral design business, invested smartly, bought a house with an acreage just outside of Kansas City and landscaped and remodeled it to become her dream home. But her dream could never really be complete if she was all alone.

With her biological clock ticking like mad and no man she wanted in her life, Robin had listened to the advice of her attorney and gotten on a waiting list to obtain the one thing she hadn’t been able to achieve on her own—a beautiful, healthy baby. Adopting Emma was a miracle that had altered Robin’s lonely, workaholic life in wonderful ways she was discovering each and every day as the two of them became a family.

Normally, Emma adapted to wherever Robin took her—errands, shopping, visits with friends. She especially liked coming to work at the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop, napping in the bassinet in the corner of Robin’s quiet office or supervising customer satisfaction and employee workloads from the baby sling Robin often wore across her chest. Maybe Emma loved the shop because of the building’s cool, climate-controlled air, or the friendly employees who doted on her. Or maybe Emma simply loved being close to the reliable, down-to-earth practicality and unconditional love that Robin provided.

But tonight was not normal. And Emma was not a happy camper.

Neither was Robin.

The baby’s restlessness could be attributed to something concrete, like the changing barometric pressure as the spring storm gathered strength outside. But it was more likely that Emma had picked up on Robin’s frustration with the numbers on her computer. Perhaps Emma was being fussy because Robin had been fussing over the business’s books ever since the shop had closed three hours earlier. Her accountant had had some questions about discrepancies between receipts and job estimates and stock manifests. Robin had been away from work far too much since Emma’s arrival, and maybe her employees had gotten lazy about keeping track of everything. But spending the night in her office wasn’t going to make the books balance for her. And although Emma normally stayed up past eleven most nights, she didn’t want her daughter thinking the shop and office were her new home, either.

Robin lay Emma in the bassinet and leaned over to kiss her dimpled cheek, taking a moment to inhale the innocent fragrance that was all powder and baby wash and Emma herself. “Let Mommy make one more check around the place and then we’ll go home.”

She pulled the cotton blanket over her round little body, hoping that second bottle of formula, a clean diaper and the muffled rhythm of the rain and thunder would soothe her to sleep. But when Emma’s face squinched up, promising another bout of crying, Robin hardened her heart against the urge to take the baby into her arms again. “Give me five minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

Emma’s tiny fists batted the air. Robin touched one of the perfect little hands and guided the baby’s thumb into her mouth. Emma started sucking and quieted for a few moments, but Robin had pushed them both long enough for one day. The bookkeeping questions could wait for tomorrow. Her daughter came first.

Turning away before sympathetic tears stung her own eyes, Robin quickly shut down her computer and stuffed the shipping manifests and customer orders into their respective files. Since she’d started carrying the diaper bag, her brief case and purse spent most of their time locked up in her car. She carried the necessities in her pockets or, like these files, tucked them into the flowered backpack that was Emma’s diaper bag. Pulling her keys from the pocket of her jeans, she hurried out into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind her.

Although she’d always been cautious about her safety whenever she worked late at the shop, Robin had become doubly paranoid lately, and moved through the building to recheck the locks on the back loading bay doors, the windows in the stock and workrooms, the massive walk-in refrigerator where fresh flowers were stored, as well as the doors at the front of the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop. It wasn’t just that bone-deep need to make sure her child was safe, whether she brought Emma to work or stayed at home with her. A friend and employee of Robin’s had been abducted from this very neighborhood eight months earlier. Janie Harrison had been raped and murdered, and her abductor, believed to be the Rose Red Rapist, was still at large.

Robin hated the nickname the press had given to the serial rapist. They’d latched on to the colorful appellation because his first victim had been abducted outside the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop across the street. Rose Red, like the fairy tale, instead of simply naming him after the flower he left with his victims after each brutal attack. At one point, KCPD had even suspected the creep had gotten the roses at her shop.

So Robin didn’t stock red roses anymore. If a bride or some other client wanted the red flowers for a wedding or funeral, then she’d special order them. It made her sick to think she’d enabled the creep in even that small way.

Confident that every lock was secure, Robin peeked through the front windows into the wet night outside. Thick sheets of rain puddled on the pavement and created a translucent curtain that dimmed the street lamps and the occasional headlights from vehicles that drove past. Normally, she loved the rain. It made her lawn green up, and the irises she’d planted last fall around her house and in the window boxes in front of her shop were blooming like crazy. The world outside her business near downtown Kansas City seemed gray and quiet tonight—perfect for sleeping or curling up with a good book or rocking a tired infant to sleep.

But the women of Kansas City lived in fear on nights like this, wondering what danger might lurk in the shadows. Robin was no exception. The Rose Red Rapist reportedly came out of nowhere, striking his victim from behind and hauling the woman away in a white van to some unknown location where he assaulted her before bringing her back and dumping her body in this refurbished uptown neighborhood.

As if to emphasize the danger, a bolt of lightning zapped across the sky and a crack of thunder split the air, startling Robin and instantly pricking the hairs beneath the sleeves of the blue oxford blouse she wore. She crossed her arms and inhaled deeply, fighting off the chill that seemed to creep right through the glass to raise goose bumps on her skin.

As her eyes readjusted to the darkness, Robin detected a subtle movement in the shadows across the street. She braced one hand against the cool, damp glass and leaned closer, squinting to bring the lone figure, with shoulders hunched against the rain, into focus. Lightning flashed again and Robin caught a glimpse of the slender figure darting beneath the awning above the front entrance to the bridal shop. A coat or dress swung around the shadow’s knees.

A woman. Alone on a night like this. Robin’s heart knotted with concern. “Oh, sweetie. Be safe.”

The woman pulled a hand from her pocket and brushed her straight, wet hair off her pale face. Then she lifted her head and looked straight at Robin. Maybe. The shop was dark and the nearest streetlight was farther down near the parking lot entrance. Robin should be nothing more than a shadow herself.

But the young woman’s dark eyes never seemed to blink. She stared so hard that she must be seeing Robin watching her.

Robin breathed one moment of uncomfortable trepidation beneath the imagined scrutiny. In the next breath, she considered unlocking the front door and inviting the stranded woman inside the shop where she’d be warm and safe. Robin moved to the front door, pulled the keys from her pocket. Then the lightning flashed again.

But when Robin blinked her eyes back into focus in the darkness, the young woman was gone.

“Where...?” The woman must have found enough respite to gather her courage and run off in the rain and shadows to her destination again. “Be safe,” Robin whispered again.

She needed to do the same. Robin shook off her apprehension about her books, the stormy weather and those mysterious shadows outside and returned to her office. “I’m back, sweetie.”

She was greeted by a soft suckling sound that gave her hope that a ride in the car would coax Emma into a deep sleep that would last for five or six hours—long enough to get a decent rest herself so she could tackle the problems at work with a fresh eye in the morning. Smiling at her daughter’s resilience, Robin picked her up from the bassinet and strapped her into her carrier. She thanked Emma for her patience with a gentle kiss to her forehead and then slipped a yellow knit cap over her hair and covered her with the blanket. Certain her daughter was warm and secure, Robin pulled the cloth protector over the carrier and closed the round viewing vent over Emma’s face to shield her from the rain.

Before turning out the lights, Robin pulled on her yellow raincoat, slipped the diaper bag over her shoulders and picked up Emma’s carrier. Since she’d put away her pepper spray two months earlier, not wanting to risk any accidental contact with her baby’s delicate skin, Robin pulled a security whistle from the pocket of her slicker and looped the lanyard around her neck. Then they were moving through the familiar hallway and workrooms to the employee entrance from the parking lot beside the restored redbrick building.

With the steel door locked solidly behind her, Robin waited a moment beneath the green-and-white-striped awning above the entrance, assessing her surroundings. Pulses of lightning lit up the clouds in the skies overhead, giving her brief flashes of the rain and night around her.

Although the small lot was well lit, the emptiness between the brick walls of her building and the next one on the opposite side of the lot hitched up her apprehension a bit. Besides the shop’s delivery van, parked near the alley behind the building at the end of the loading dock, the only car left was hers, parked in a circle of light beneath the lamppost nearest the street. Lights were working; doors were locked. Street-level shops were closed and the storm seemed to have driven any tenants who lived on the upper floors of the neighborhood high-rises inside.

Still, the rain hitting the awning over her head and rhythmic rumbles of thunder drowned out any telltale sounds that would alert her to approaching footsteps on the sidewalk or to vehicles passing on the street. She knew that, despite all her precautions, there was an inherent danger to a woman walking to her vehicle alone at night in the city. It required a deep, fortifying breath and the knowledge that she had a child to protect from the elements for Robin to pull her hood up over her chin-length hair, stick the whistle in her mouth and step out into the rain.

With her head slightly bowed against the rain drumming on her slicker, Robin hurried across the lot. Hugging Emma’s carrier in the crook of her elbow, she made sure there was no one hiding beneath or around her car before tapping the remote and unlocking the doors.

As challenging as it had been at first to learn all the buckles and straps and tabs and slots of loading Emma into her car seat, Robin now made quick work of opening the back door and sliding the carrier into place. Once everything had locked and the car seat was secure, she spit the whistle from her mouth and leaned inside to open the vent on Emma’s pink carrier cover, hoping to find a sleeping baby inside.

Instead, blue eyes stared up at her. With her darling face crinkled up with displeasure and looking as if the tears were about to let loose again, Emma swung her tiny fists in the air. “Oh, sweetie. Just give up the fight and go to sleep.”

After wiping her wet fingers on the leg of her jeans, Robin reached beneath the damp material that had kept Emma dry and guided a thumb back to Emma’s mouth, earning what Robin interpreted as a resigned whimper that things were okay. For now. “You’ll be just fine in a minute, sweetie. I promise.” She straightened Emma’s cap, cupped her soft cheek and smiled. “Mommy loves you.”

A flicker of movement reflected off the back window. Startled by the darting shadow, Emma grabbed for her whistle.

Before she could blow it, something hard smacked her across the back, throwing her against the frame of the car with bruising force. She thought the wind had slammed the door against her. But just as it registered that the rain was falling in a straight curtain around her car, she was struck again. This time, lower down. Something hard, narrow and unforgiving cracked against the back of her knees, toppling her to the pavement.

Robin screamed as another blow slammed across her back. Her palms scraped over the wet asphalt as she spread-eagled on her stomach, the wind knocked from her chest. As the pain radiated through her legs, and she struggled to inhale through her bruised lungs, she realized the baby backpack she wore had probably saved her from a crippling or killing blow.

The same backpack also served as an easy handle for her attacker. He latched on to the straps and dragged her several feet away from the car. Terror poured into her veins, thrusting aside the shock that had addled her thoughts. This was it. She was about to become the Rose Red Rapist’s latest victim. She needed to shake off this oxygen-deprived stupor, ignore the pain and fight. She had a child to live for and protect.