Free Breath of Malice by Karen Fenech Page B

him to insinuate himself into the lives and private business of his agents. Or it hadn’t been, before Paige. Yesterday on his deck, when she’d mentioned her guardianship of Ivy, Sam had wanted to know more.
    The first day he’d met her, he’d thought she wasn’t what he’d been led to believe. Sam was coming to realize there was a lot more to Paige than a pretty face.
    There was something going on with her. He was back to that. Paige didn’t know him well. Didn’t know what she could trust him with or if she could trust him at all. It surprised him how much he wanted her to trust him.
    Which left him where? He should take a step back. Give her time to see that she could come to him. But he wasn’t going to do that. Even though he could tell she wanted to keep her emotions concealed, they were more open than she realized.
    She’d looked afraid, alone. Was that how she felt? Sam pressed his lips together at the grim thought. It bothered him that she felt that way.
    He rubbed the back of his neck at the tension that had knotted there thinking of Paige working through whatever it was that had put that look in her eyes on her own. The urge to go to her and find out what was going on pulled at him.
    “Sam, you out here?”
    Sam recognized the voice of Agent Carl Dodd from the central office. He could see Carl at the back of the drug house, in the glow of the lights rimming the crime scene perimeter. It was Sam himself who was in relative darkness behind one of the railway cars. “In the railway yard,” Sam called back.
    He knew Carl and others were waiting to meet with him. Sam pushed his thoughts of Paige aside and left the yard.

CHAPTER NINE
    Paige jerked awake gasping for breath, bathed in perspiration. Her heart was beating way too fast. A nightmare. Just a nightmare. She was fine. She was all right. She was in Kirk County. She hadn’t been seen by the media. Thames hadn’t found her.
    When she arrived home after the raid, she’d turned on her laptop and logged onto the Bureau’s database, conducting her usual search for female murder victims. She found nothing that matched Thames’s MO, but the images of his three known victims played over and over in an endless loop in her mind, following her into sleep.
    Gulping air now, Paige focused on regulating her breathing. But deep breathing wasn’t going to cut it. She was restless, edgy. It was early, but she wouldn’t attempt to go back to sleep. Sleep held only horror for her.
    She left the bed and switched off the TV that was now showing only a blue screen. Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt that concealed the weapon clipped to her waistband, she checked on her sister. Ivy was sprawled on her stomach, one arm flung across the deep-purple sheets, making her usual soft snuffling sounds that, in better times, Paige used to be able to tease her about. Paige wasn’t up to thinking about all that was wrong between her and Ivy now. It was all Paige could do to handle her thoughts of Thames.
    In case Ivy woke, Paige left a quick note letting her sister know she was going for a run in Kirk County Park. Harry had told Paige there were jogging trails there. Paige grabbed a bottle of water, a sports drink, and a towel, then drove away from the apartment complex.
    The sun was just streaking through a break in the clouds, weak and thready with first light. For the most part, the sky was heavy with gray clouds that promised the rain the local weather station had predicted the night before. Paige knew it might start raining before she was finished with her run. If so, so be it.
    She was straining to get moving. Foregoing a warm up, she set off. A couple of other people were also on the trail. Paige narrowed her eyes, looking for any sign that they might be watching her. When she saw nothing alarming, she ran by a woman pumping her arms and humming whatever she was listening to through her earbuds. Paige envied the woman the