Free The Perfect Stranger by Jenna Mills

was much too obvious—she retrieved the new Kahr 9mm she’d purchased after her night with D’Ambrosia. The newest innovation, the gun shop owner had told her. Lightweight and compact, easily concealed and highly accurate.
    From afternoons spent at the shooting range, she knew he’d spoken the truth.
    Slipping barefoot into the hallway, she told herself she was overreacting. It was probably just a neighbor. Or someone looking for a lost dog. At midnight.
    The urgent pounding killed both theories. Her late-night visitor was not here for a social call. And they weren’t going away. If she did not answer, they would come in anyway. That was the purpose of the pounding. A test, much like the phone calls and the flowers. To see if she would open the door willingly. Or—
    The memory slammed her from somewhere broken, and before she could even breathe Cain was there again, bruising his hand against the door of Adrian’s condo. In the middle of the night. She’d pulled herself from bed and staggered to the door, not stopping to realize that if her fiancé had locked himself out, he would not be banging against the door as if his life depended on it.
    She’d been three feet away when the door flew open, and Cain charged in. She’d never seen him like that, so pale and shaken. It was only later that she’d learned why, that he’d stormed the condo like a commando on a suicide mission because he thought someone had gotten to her, too.
    That someone had eliminated her just as they’d done Adrian. With a bullet through the heart.
    Shoving aside the images, she lifted the gun and curled her finger around the trigger.
    This time, she would not go down without a fight.

Chapter 6
    J ohn pulled his hand from the door and took two steps back, caught himself in the boiling moment before he kicked.
    He was a cop, damn it. He knew how to stay calm when the world exploded around him. He knew the unexpected beauty of patience. How to use it. Milk it. He’d learned the importance of staying in control. Of never letting emotion slip in. Never letting it bleed through.
    Never letting it so much as form.
    Standing in the shadow of the old porch, without even a sliver of moonlight to guide him, he reached for his Glock and released the lock, but did not slide his finger around the trigger. Protocol guided his actions—or at least it was supposed to. Sometimes it was instinct that drove him. Instinct that kept him alive while others died.
    Instinct that kept him on the porch, when common sense told him to walk away—and something even more dangerous told him to gain access by whatever means necessary.
    The memory slashed, another day. Another closed door. Alec walking toward it. John running, shouting for his friend to stop. Alec reaching for the handle. Alec pulling.
    The world exploding.
    Narrowing his eyes against the horrific aftermath, John ripped his gaze from the door and stepped toward the glow from the small window. She was in there. In bed, he told himself. Exhausted. Cain had been with her until a short time before. John had been watching ever since. No one had come to her door. She was safe. Lambert had not come to finish what he’d started.
    Unless he’d come through the rear.
    On a violent rush, John pressed his back to the siding and eased next to the window, moved his finger to the trigger and looked inside. And saw her.
    She stood beyond the living room, in a narrow hallway with her back to the wall, much as his was. Dark hair fell against her face. Oversize pajamas hung from her shoulders. And in her hand, she held what looked like a 9mm.
    The sight of her, of the horrible tangle of uncertainty and courage in her gaze, punched through John like a fist to the gut.
    He’d done this to her. He’d meant to protect, but by banging on her door in the middle of the night, he’d sent her into a nightmare he’d never intended.
    “Saura.” His voice. She needed his voice, no matter how smoke-roughened it was. To know that