Free Beautiful Maids All in a Row by Jennifer Harlow Page A

what had him spooked.
    A tall, blond woman stared at Luke and me with shock and disbelief, almost as if she’d just seen us making out on her desk. The pain in her eyes jarred me. She was crushed, and I had no idea why. She turned away before scurrying into the hallway. Lord, even FBI agents felt the need to flee from me.
    “Stay here,” Luke ordered. He hurried out of the room, presumably after the woman. The few agents around me smiled to themselves before looking over at me to gauge my reaction. Each one felt the full force of my glare. They quickly averted their eyes and went back to work. “Oh, fuck,” I muttered under my breath. There was only one explanation for their reactions.
    Everyone knew.
    I couldn’t say I was surprised. A hot piece of gossip like that must have made the rounds like wildfire. Two hotshot, high-profile agents hooking up, one married no less, was the stuff gossips dreamed of. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the whole of Washington knew.
    It happened once,
just once,
and I immediately regretted it. I was going through a rough patch in my marriage. A
real
rough patch. It was no excuse, but it was the truth. For years I’d barely seen my husband. Toward the end we spent three hours a week together, and then it was just being in the same room zoning out in front of the TV. When I wasn’t flying all over the country chasing the bad guys, I was in the bowels of Quantico or sleeping. Hayden worked a lot too, almost as much as I did. Our paths rarely crossed, and of course it put a strain on the marriage. I was just too damn busy to realize it. He reached the conclusion first. When his old family home in Grafton went up for sale, he put an offer on it. Without asking me. He gave me an ultimatum: transfer to the Charlotte field office and move with him or he’d file for divorce. I said no, he filed, and I received the papers right before I left on my last case.
    It was a bad one: little girls raped, chopped into little pieces, and left by the side of the interstate in Rosetta, Texas. It was the worst of my career, hands-down. I had to talk to the families, these moms and dads who’d just had their babies, girls of five and six, torn away from them in the most heinous way. I fell asleep haunted by those lifeless eyes begging me to get justice for their little girls.
    I was vulnerable. Luke was too. Even the strong have their breaking point. Ours was finding Arlene Percy’s mangled body after twenty-six hours of searching. It all came to a head: the futility of the job, failing my husband, the unfairness of life, everything. I broke down and Luke picked up the pieces. When I woke in his arms, I grew ill, physically ill. No matter our problems, Hayden didn’t deserve that. I gathered my clothes and slipped out without a word. We caught the psycho and I went home and put in for a transfer to Charlotte, North Carolina. A month later I was attacked, and my husband was dead. Because of me.
    “We don’t have time for this now,” I muttered to myself. I spun around and walked into the hallway, where I found them arguing near the elevators. I couldn’t hear what they said, but the woman was on the verge of tears. She must have been from White-Collar Crimes. Nobody who cried that easily could possibly have been from Violent Crimes.
    Luke threw his hands up in exasperation and turned from the blonde. A sense of déjà vu came over me. I’d witnessed a similar scene many times before, always starring Luke and a beautiful woman. The man left a swath of broken hearts all along the Beltway. Blondie was the newest recruit. He was angry, and his face had turned the color of red apples. That was out of the ordinary. Normally he maintained his calm in this pantomime, but not that day. He noticed me and squared his shoulders. The blonde looked at me in horror before fleeing down the crossing corridor out of sight. Luke watched her go but didn’t follow. Instead, he walked toward me. He opened his mouth to