Night Shift
Carey Decevito
(Nightshade, #2)
Publication date: January 9th 2018
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
A serial killer…
A past that haunts no matter how much the distance…
Which one will strike first?
Eighteen deaths over eight years has left Shane Peters itching to find his mark. The death that started it all ensured his obsession with the murderer who had turned his life into a living hell, leaving him to raise a newborn daughter on his own.
Starting over wasn’t the easiest thing, but Emberlyn Roth had managed by shear grit and the skin of her teeth. It’s too bad one can’t outrun their past.
A protector of the wronged, Shane is torn between his duty as a detective for the Jacksonville PD and a quest to find himself some peace. Red tape binds his capabilities and moonlighting as an investigator for Nightshade Securities has him feeling stretched thin. Late nights on the streets and his sense of duty keeps him from being the father he wants to be. Throw onto his already rickety house of cards, an attraction to the mysterious Emberlyn, the lead he’s got on the murderer he’s been hunting for nearly a decade, and threats his woman is receiving by an unsavory character from her past, and he’s seriously tempted to take Dalton Kipper’s offer to join his team in a permanent basis.
Rules have a place, but when you’re faced with losing the one that means most to you, lines can become blurred. With the fate of his family’s future hanging in the balance, he’s ready to risk it all.
PROLOGUE
“What are you doing here?” The tension around me palpable, she hurried aside to let me enter before closing the door behind us.
My blood boiled.
My skin crawled that she’d let him do that to her.
I had to get rid of it.
The taint.
Purify her.
“What have you done? You’re mine, Evie. I told you, when I came back, you’d be mine and now look at yourself.” Disgust was as clear in my voice as it was in my expression.
“Wh-whatever it is…we can talk this out,” she stuttered, her feet inching her backward as I followed her movements.
Reaching to the small of my back, my fingers wrapped around the grip as I pulled it from its sheath. The eight-inch blade caught the glint of the afternoon sun, mesmerizing me, causing me to admire the play of light against it before I focused on the woman before me.
Her eyes shone with terror. “You don’t…” She shook her head left to right, swallowing hard, stumbling against the side table next to the sofa. “You don’t have to do this.” She righted herself. “We can still be together. Now that…now that you’re back–”
I shot her an incredulous look. Did she think me a fool? “You’ve gone and done the unthinkable. You had his child!” I hollered, my knuckles gripping the knife tightly. “This is the only way…the only way to get rid of the stain.”
Her steps froze momentarily. “Stain?”
“It’s what I should have done a while ago,” I spat, cornering her as her steps were halted by the wall at her back. “What you took from me…what should have been mine,” I raged, “is what I’ll take from you.”
One moment my eyes darted toward the hallway where I knew the devil lay in slumber, and the next, Eva Peters was making a mad rush toward the door that separated me from saving us all.
“No!” she panted. “You’re crazy!”
If she only knew. “Move, Evie,” I growled, “it’s the only way.”
“She’s not here. Please!” Tears streamed down her face, her body shaking with fear.
Using the tip of the blade, I ran it over her soaked cheek, the metal sharp enough to catch on her ivory skin, causing a streak of blood to suddenly materialize.
I felt lighter instantly.
Powerful.
In control. A feeling I hadn’t had in quite some time.
Manning my knife, I proceeded to run the tip of it down to her bottom lip, nicking it just enough for another bubble of her essence to form.
“Mmm…” I groaned, leaning forward to press my front against hers, taking the time to lick her damaged lip, then whispered my new realization while rubbing my impossibly hard cock against her stomach. “I was wrong. This…” I ran my finger through the blood on her cheek, watching its movement, “is what I need, Evie.”
The sadness was overwhelming as I stared at the beauty laying limp and lifeless beneath me.
The rage I’d felt had all but dissipated with each slice of my blade through her flesh. Like a hot knife through butter, each time blood began to pour out, a weight lifted within me.
What once held pleading in her eyes, was now long gone.
She was nothing but a piece of art, trussed up by her silk scarves, a vessel conveying my message.
I’d be back…
More than a decade later, with weeks of sleepless nights, where exhaustion settled into her everyday existence, she finally gave in and put pen to paper (more like fingers to keyboard!) She submitted to the dreams that plagued her. And the rest, as they say, is history!
A member of the RWA, Carey Decevito enjoys spending time with family and friends, the outdoors, travelling, and playing tourist in Canada’s National Capital region. When life gets crazy, she seeks respite through her writing and reading. If all else fails, she knows there’s never a dull moment with her two daughters, her goofy husband, and cat who she swears is out to get her.
