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Familiar Threat, Signed

Familiar Threat, Signed

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Synopsis

Cane and Charlie find romance on the run amidst a cult uprising, a diabolical killer who won’t stay dead, and a trail of bodies from Vegas to Portland...

Victim turned witness, Charlie finds herself the center of a blood bath, back in protective custody and safe in the arms of bodyguard Cane O’Reilly.

When the lights go out in Portland, it’s Vegas all over again, as the diabolical killers take to the streets and try to shake Charlie out of hiding.

From copycats to cold-blooded, there is no rest for the wicked, but if Anson is dead who’s calling the shots?

SERIES: The Keepers Series, Book 2

TROPES: Protector/Bodyguard, Friends to Lovers, Secret/Hidden Identity, Serial Killer, Forbidden Love, Kidnapped, On the Run, Scars of the Past, Mysterious Past, Band of Brothers, In Love with the Client/Target, Rescued from Danger

  

RETURN POLICY: NO RETURNS/REFUNDS. Not responsible for packages damaged in shipping or lost/missing packages.

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What Readers Are Saying...

"I love Stephanie St. Klaire's devious mind. It's a good thing she's an author and uses her thoughts for good!"

"Another OMG book!"

"What a ending, triple OMG, for sure!"

"Oh man does all craziness breakout. I loved it! Stephanie St Klaire has a way of making you feel like you are right there in the book!"

"Wow! This book sucked me in from the start. Had me guessing and wondering where this story was going. So many twists and turns, that had my head in a total spin. This book takes you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, switching from the soft tone of a love story to the adrenaline rush of a thriller. Full of thrilling suspense, this is another MUST read!"

"If you love romance and thriller you will love this book."

"The characters are dynamic. The plot twist I never saw coming. Normally I can figure it out. This one threw me off. If you like a well written suspense book this is for you."

"This is a great story. It keeps you guessing until the last chapter!"

"Wow! What a conclusion! Full of suspense, intrigue, twists and turns. Keeps you on the edge of your seat!"

"Awesome Ending!"

"Holy Plot Twist!"

"Once again, Stephanie St Klaire has me sitting on the edge of my seat with the twists & turns of this one! Must read!"

"I absolutely loved this story and can’t wait to read more from this series!!"

"The intense storyline had me on the edge of my seat reading nonstop and with every suspenseful, page turning twist and turn I could not put this book down until the last page!"

"Oh My Word!!!!!"

"This is as gripping and enthralling as it gets!"

"St. Klaire is as diabolical as some of her twisted characters. If I was her husband I would not sleep at night for fear of what was running through her mind."

"I give it a rousing 5 Stars!"

"SSK will once again have you on edge until the very last paragraph!!!"

"Fast paced and kept me on the edge of my seat from page one!"

"SSK keeps us guessing at every turn as to what will happen next. I would love to live inside her brain for a day just to see firsthand where she comes up with all the greatness that is her words. She continues to remind me with every story she writes why she is one of my favorites."

"Stephanie St Klaire has an ability to pull me in to a world where up is down and right is left. There are so many twists and turns that I couldn’t find my way back if I tried. I know that sounds bad but it’s oh so good."

"Swoon-city!!"

"Stephanie St. Klaire's brain is a scary place. I love her books. They keep you on the edge of your chair and by the time you're finished, you'll have no fingernails left."

"This book is so good. I love Stephanie St Klaire even with her scary brain, her books are always well researched, has believable characters, really smart writing and great stories. I highly recommend this story."

"As always, Stephanie St. Klaire knows how to keep you right at the edge of your seat!"

"Once again Stephanie has delivered a masterful read for all of us to enjoy in suspense and edge of our seats twist and turns."

"Amazing 5 star read! Stephanie never disappoints!"

"Ms. St. Klaire has become a master at terrifying suspense stories!"

"Stephanie St. Klaire has a sick and twisted mind, and I absolutely love it!"

"Stephanie takes her stories to wild places and I love it!"

"This book has lots of twists and turns- I could not put it down until I had all the answers. WOW!!"

"When St. Klaire invites you into her world, you don't hesitate, you don't waiver, you don't ask questions, you simply stop everything you're doing & you run toward her with arms, & eyes, wide open, because you will need her to catch you & you will want to be aware of your surroundings at all times!"

"OMG!! What a ride!"

"Stephanie always writes with suspense and lots of romance into her books, the plots always good and she gives us twists and surprises throughout the book."

"This book is one heart stopping twist after another!"

"This is a masterpiece!"

"Stephanie St. Klaire is not only a gifted romance writer, but she can work intrigue, suspense and action like the best of the thriller writers out there."

"Heart pounding, edge of your seat suspense is what Ms. St. Klaire delivers in this amazing story."

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"Chills, I got Chills…"

"Stephanie St. Klaire has a way of pulling you into the moment with her you feel it’s actually you living the nightmare."

Look Inside: Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1:
“There was another murder,” Cane said, his words laced in dread.
“He’s here, you know…” Charlie replied. With her back to him and arms crossed, she stood on the balcony and looked over the city of Portland.
Cane moved in behind her and snaked his arms around Charlie’s waist, causing her to jump. He didn’t mean to startle her—he never did—but it was their normal. She lived on edge, and he lived to neutralize the fear that left her there.
Cane kissed the back of her neck. “We don’t know he’s here. We don’t even know he’s alive…”
“We don’t know he’s dead, either,” Charlie said, turning in Cane’s arms to face him. “We know there was an explosion, and his DNA was left behind, but no positive ID has been made on any of the…remains because most of the bodies disintegrated in the extreme heat.”
“Exactly. Nobody survived it.” He went on, trying to give her some sort of assurance. “It was tragic to lose some of our best people, but it was also the end of your nightmare. He was lost too.”
Charlie slid under his arm and moved to his side, their proximity too close and too intimate for her, acting as a trigger that reminded her too often of her past. Intimacy of any kind was hard for her. It was nearly impossible, despite how badly she craved it. Especially with Cane.
She faced the city once again, arms resting on the balcony railing as she leaned against it. “Was the body…?” She cleared her throat. “Was it…brutalized? Like the others? Did he leave his mark?”
Cane dropped his head. The answer to her question pained him because he knew the significance of Charlie’s question since she, too, wore the mark. “Yes. But there was something else. An E was carved in the forehead.”
She quickly turned to Cane, brows furrowed. “An E?”
“So it likely isn’t him. Maybe a sick copycat. Like I’ve been saying…Anson Deveraux is dead.”
Charlie nodded, then shrugged. “Or it’s him, and he’s sending a message.”
“And what message would that be?” Cane moved closer, weaving his fingers with hers.
“My name. My real name, the name Deveraux knows me as is Emily.” She was looking in Cane’s direction, but really she was looking through him as she remembered everything Anson Deveraux did to her.
It was impossible to forget she was branded with his signature—a large X covering her entire abdomen. Anson Deveraux was an international serial killer wanted in more countries than anyone knew existed. He was a modern-day Jack the Ripper with a twist. He had money, lots of it, and it afforded him a lifetime of bloodlust murders and elusiveness.
Deveraux had victimized some of the world’s elite families, royalty, celebrities, and even the daughter of the president of the United States and members of her protection detail. The man was some sort of illusionist or super genius and always a step ahead. Until Charlie. She’s the only one who got away…alive. He’d been hunting her ever since, and though he’d found her several times while in protective custody, it wasn’t until the Brother’s Keeper Security firm took her case that she finally seemed just out of reach. Until he found her again.
“Coincidence.” Cane interrupted Charlie from her thoughts. “That E can stand for anything. The mark of a new killer paying homage to a trade hero by using his method to…kill.”
“His method to kill.” Charlie shook her head. “Pfft. It’s torture, slow and painful. Marking someone’s entire abdomen with a large X, tracing it daily, etching deeper until the body tissue can no longer hold…that’s worth hero worship?”
“What a psychopath deems heroic versus what the average person deems heroic is vastly different, Charlie. We may not understand it, but I’d say that’s a good thing.”
“I understand it, though.” With her focus elsewhere in the distance once more, she went on to share the highlight reel on constant replay in her mind. “It’s control. It’s intimate for him. Sexual even. He thrives on the screams and cries, sucks them in like the air he needs to breathe. It’s foreplay. It feeds him. Then…the victims beg. They need him. They plead and beg. They almost want him or so he thinks. That’s his arousal and what drives him to the big finish. What he patiently waits for and takes as soon as he’s at the edge and wants that wave of ecstasy to course through him, leaving him with a high that lasts until the next victim.” She looked in Cane’s direction. “Was she raped? Because there’s that part too.”
Cane paused, hesitant to answer and feed the ache he knew she had to be feeling, but he’d also promised to never lie to her. It was how he gained her trust and maintained it. “She was, unfortunately.”
“Right. Because it’s him. It’s a part of his MO. It’s a part of the control and breaking down his victims so he can do whatever he wants to do for as long as he wants to do it.” Charlie let out a deep sigh. “That poor girl. All of them. What he does—”
“Was barbaric. Inhumane. Disgusting. Deplorable,” Cane stated. “But we don’t know this is Anson. In fact, it’s more likely that it’s not him. He couldn’t have survived that explosion. This is some other sick twisted bastard, and it’s just a coincidence this one is in our backyard doing exactly what we are protecting you from.”
Cane was referring to the accident when they finally apprehended Anson Deveraux just months before in Las Vegas. He’d changed his appearance with plastic surgery, managed to find Cane and Charlie, and posed as a high roller in the hotel casino they both worked at, despite all the security measures in place. As soon as they had him on an armored truck headed to a super-max compound, where the Brother’s Keeper team was preparing to process him and hand him over to authorities, there was an explosion. The armored vehicle transporting Anson Deveraux blew up, and despite the endless resources afforded upon their investigation, nobody knew how or why.
There were no survivors. The citywide blackout had just ended, and the city’s CCTV cameras and private sector security cameras hadn’t fully gone back online at the location of the explosion, so they didn’t have any footage to study. It was big, though. Several of the homes in the area, only blocks from Cane’s house where Deveraux was apprehended, were severely damaged. Even the road needed extensive repair.
What was left at the scene was unrecognizable. Even though nothing more than scrap metal was left, they knew there had been a vehicle because some of the Keepers—Brother’s Keeper employees—had loaded Deveraux in the back to haul him away. Any human remains were identified by trace DNA, but nothing more than a couple of limbs were recovered. Everything else was gone, lost in the heat and combustion of the explosion. It was unlike anything any of them had experienced unless they’d been to war. Nobody survived something like that, much less walked away from it.
“There wasn’t a body, Cane. He was injured during his capture, which would have spilled DNA all over the place. That could explain why his DNA was amongst the remains…”
“Charlie, there were no bodies. Everyone was presumed dead.” He ran his hands through his hair, tired of revisiting this argument every time another local homicide was reported. “Look, you saw what was left, or rather, what wasn’t left. Deep down, you have to know he didn’t survive that.”
“We don’t know that at all, Cane. Look at all the odds he’s defied before. Look at how he’s beat us at every turn. I admit, it took him a long time to find me in Vegas, but he eventually did. And here we are, sitting in Portland, surrounded by dead bodies with his signature all over them. Bodies that started appearing after we arrived. We need more than DNA to prove he’s dead.” Charlie walked inside, shaking her head, wearing the exhaustion she carried in her tormented expression.
Cane followed her in, worried the fatigue he saw in her and the defeat she exuded, would lead her to do something drastic. “Charlie, we are safe here. Regardless of who is behind any of this and whether it’s linked or not, we are safe in Portland. It isn’t him. It’s been months without a trace of activity from Anson. He went down in that explosion.”
Turning on her heel, she quickly lifted a finger and met his chest with a sharp jab. “Then why am I still here? If you are so confident Anson is dead, why am I still locked up under Brother’s Keeper protection? Why can’t I leave the building? Why do I need an escort everywhere I go inside the building?”
Cane didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The words he wanted to share with her at that moment would confirm her fears and perpetuate the anguish. He couldn’t tell her that his mind said Deveraux was dead and no longer a threat, but his gut said what if? He couldn’t tell her he was afraid. Afraid for her because even if Anson was dead, someone out there was imitating him and likely hunting Charlie just as Deveraux did.
“I thought so,” Charlie said, making her way to the couch. “Same answer as last time. Silence. Cane, I’ve been with you long enough to know how to interpret your silence. I know how you function. I know how you think. I know when your guard is up or down, and right now, yours is up. The hairs on your arms and the back of your neck stood tall when you told me there was another murder, and it wasn’t because it was cold outside. You know there’s a chance he’s still—”
“No,” Cane interrupted. “I don’t think there’s a single chance in hell that he’s alive. But I’m keeping you here until we know it’s safe for you out in the real world, know why these murders are happening, and know who is behind them. If these are Anson copycats, you are potentially their target too, just like you were his.”
“Right. The one who got away. The one they all want dead in his honor. At this rate, Cane…I’ll never be free of him, dead or alive.”
“Fuck. I don’t know, Charlie.” Cane took the seat next to her, letting his head fall back on the couch and running his hands through his hair. “I hear you. You know I hear you. If I believed with every thread of my soul that he was dead and no longer a threat in any capacity and then something were to happen to you, I couldn’t live with myself.”
What Cane didn’t say, but very much wanted to, was that he had feelings for her. His deep, soul-crushing, heart-wrenching feelings kept him awake at night and kept him going during the day. He loved her, and Cane O’Reilly didn’t do love. He wasn’t supposed to fall for clients. It was unprofessional and a work hazard. She was a job, a case…but even in all her brokenness, he felt her to his core and would die for her. Charlie was an exception to every rule he had.
He suspected her feelings waded somewhere near his, but because of that brokenness—because of what Anson Deveraux did to her—Charlie wasn’t able to fully give herself to anyone. He’d scarred her more than just the physical marks left on her body, her daily reminder of what she’d been through and why Charlie was still going through it. She couldn’t even face him while they had sex. She’d panic, then react, the fear causing more than one black eye and bloody nose as she crawled out from beneath him, clenching her chest and gasping for air. But she tried, finding she could have all the sex she wanted as long as she was turned away from him and not pinned down. That was how he knew she had feelings for him. Charlie was working through her own demons while sharing her victories with Cane…against every surface they could find.
Their relationship was casual in the beginning. They were locked down together for a long period, and despite Charlie’s hang-ups, she had desires she couldn’t control any more than Cane could. Though it was a matter of convenience and primal need at first, it became more, even if neither would admit it.
Cane had read Charlie’s entire case file, front to back, more than once. He knew what Deveraux had done to her. For days, she watched Anson rape and torture another woman with the promise she was next. And she was. For just as many days, maybe more.
Charlie was a forensic scientist for the FBI and worked many of the Deveraux cases, which caught the man’s attention and made her a target. Deveraux’s obsession. So when the infamous serial killer finally had her, he took his time and treated her differently, though he didn’t spare her harm. Not by a long shot. And Cane was there to pick up the broken pieces and hold them until she was ready to let him put them back together.
“He’s relentless, Cane. I’m starting to believe that there is no escaping him. Even if he is dead, he’ll never let me go. Never.”
“Yes, he will. We’re so close, Charlie. He doesn’t get to do this to you or anyone else. Not anymore.”
Charlie crawled into Cane’s lap and held his face in her hands, eyes filled with pain and emotion threatening to spill over, “I wish you were right, but look what just being here in this city has caused. A record number of murders. A serial killer on the loose, they say. The entire city is frightened, and officials are threatening curfew and lockdowns until they figure it all out.”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s him or that it has anything to do with you, or you being here.”
“Then why does your entire family have additional security? Cane, they don’t leave the building without their own detail of armed guards. That’s no way to live, and it’s because of me.”
“We do a lot of high-profile work and have a lot of enemies. It’s just protocol,” he argued.
“Protocol? They didn’t have extreme measures like this the first time I was here, right before you took me to Vegas. What changed? Me being here is what changed. I brought this here.”
“They don’t see it that way. They all have come to love you. You’re a part of the family, and they love having you here,” Cane defended.
“That may be, but I’m sure they’d like to have their lives back. They’re trapped. Prisoners. Just like me. I know how that feels, and they’ve done nothing to deserve this.”
“Neither did you, Charlie.” Cane pulled her hands into his. “Being an O’Reilly comes with...inconveniences. This isn’t the first time we’ve had increased security, so they’re used to it. There is a serial killer on the loose, so the extra caution is for that. It has nothing to do with you.”
“So you’re saying when you all convene for your briefings, Anson Deveraux never comes up? I mean, if he’s dead and off the radar…you wouldn’t be talking about him, right?”
“My family would do anything if it meant keeping you safe—” he began.
“You aren’t answering the question,” Charlie interrupted. “Or maybe that’s your answer, Cane.”
“Of course he still comes up. There, I said it. We wouldn’t be good at our jobs if we ran off assumptions. Look, there’s no way he walked away from that armored rig explosion. But the murders…they raise red flags. Besides, Anson aside, the family likes having us here. They want us here.”
Charlie smiled with a hint of defeat. “Because they know as well as you do, it isn’t safe out there. Anson Deveraux…is alive.”

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