Free Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) by Alexandra Sokoloff Page A

that she might not feel friendly toward the agent who was directly responsible for her cousin’s arrest. He hadn’t spent much time with Erin, but his impression had been that she was quite attached to Cara. As people who spent any significant time with her seemed to become. If they didn’t end up dead.
    In fact Erin’s last words to him had been a request: “If you find her, tell her I’d really like to see her.”
    Apparently she was there to do just that.
    Erin’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she was too pale for Roarke’s liking.
    “Here.” He took her arm and gently steered her toward one of the wood benches lining the wall. She collapsed onto it, pressing her hands against her temples as if she were trying to squeeze her brain out of her skull. He crouched in front of her. “I’m going to get you a Coke.” She took a deep, shaky breath and nodded.
    “Stay here,” he ordered, and as she didn’t seem in any hurry to move, he stood and strode toward an inner hall where he knew there were vending machines.
    He found the soft drink machine and fidgeted beside the wall while a young mother bought drinks for her brood of five unruly youngsters.
    His thoughts were racing. Erin was several years younger than Cara. Her mother, Cara’s aunt Joan, had taken Cara in for a few short months after Cara’s family was slaughtered by the Reaper. Erin had been only an infant then, and still just a baby when her mother gave Cara up to foster care, citing overwhelming behavioral problems. From their interview Roarke knew Erin had seen Cara sporadically throughout their childhoods, but not recently, not for years. The fact that she had come up to San Francisco from San Diego told him the news coverage of Cara’s arrest was spreading; it also hinted at how deep the blood tie ran between the two young women.
    Other than that, Roarke had no idea what Erin could be thinking. To find out that a relative was a killer was enough of a shock. Add to that the circumstances . . . Unique didn’t begin to cover them.
    The harried mother finally turned away from the drink machine and herded her soda-laden children out of the snack room, leaving Roarke to make his purchase.
    But when he came back out into the lobby with the Coke, Erin was gone.
    “Damn,” he said softly.
    The guard who brought Cara to the visiting booth was not Driscoll. But as she seated herself on the low stool, Roarke could see Cara was even edgier than Erin had been. She was so tense that he could almost feel her vibrate.
    His heart was pounding. He wanted to put his hands through the glass, to shatter it, to pull her against him. Instead he picked up the phone on his side of the wall, waited for her to reach for hers, then spoke into the mouthpiece.
    “I saw Erin. She was just in to see you?”
    Cara didn’t look at him.
    “She doesn’t look good,” he said softly, and waited.
    She shuddered, from pain or anger, maybe both.
    “What is it? Tell me.”
    She rocked on the stool, twisting her hands in the manacles. Suddenly she pounded her clenched hands on the table. Then she was up on her feet, thrashing like a wild, trapped animal, slamming her arms against the glass. Red drops burst out on her skin, blood welling at her wrists from the chafing of the cuffs.
    Roarke was on his feet, alarmed. “Cara. Cara . Don’t—” She had dropped the phone. It swung uselessly on its metal cord. He dropped his own receiver and hammered his hands flat against the glass. “Look at me. Look at me.”
    Somehow his words got through. She stopped still, looked through the Plexiglas at him. He could see the pulse pounding at her neck as she panted, gasping breaths.
    He pressed his hands into the glass. Cara sagged forward. She put her forearms, then her head, on the clear wall. He leaned in, too, touching his forehead to the cold surface. They stood pressed against the wall, arms to arms, brow to brow, and he thought he could feel her racing heart through the