“You’re right, there is a lot you don’t know. I explained that I’m not at liberty to give you all the details at this time. I have my—”
“I don’t care about your orders.” She grabbed him by the shirtfront and tried shaking him, maybe to make him see she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
All she succeeded in doing was sending him teetering closer to the edge. “Tell me the truth, Lyle.”
There was no time to develop an intelligent strategy to outmaneuver this precarious situation. No evasive explanation that would satisfy her. His only alternative was distraction.
His fingers dove into her hair. He pulled her mouth up to his and kissed her, hard at first out of sheer desperation, and then softer … because the taste of her melted him from the inside out. To his surprise, she didn’t resist.
About the Author
DEBRA WEBB wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn’t until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain and within the confining political walls of Berlin, Germany, that she realized her true calling. A five-year stint with NASA on the space shuttle program reinforced her love of the endless possibilities within her grasp as a storyteller. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Debra has been writing romance suspense and action-packed romance thrillers since. Visit her at www.debrawebb.com or write to her at PO Box 4889, Huntsville, AL 35815, USA.
I want to thank the readers for their love and support of the Colby Agency through all these years!
It’s hard to believe that the third book in this trilogy heralds the 50th installment of the Colby Agency!
Enjoy!
Colby Law
Debra Webb
Chapter One
May 20, 9:30 a.m., Polunsky Prison,
Polk County, Texas
Victoria Colby-Camp waited in the cold, sterile room for the man who had requested her presence. Considerable persuasion from the right source had been required to sway the warden of Polunsky Prison to allow this meeting. Lucas, Victoria’s husband, though fully retired from his lifelong career with the CIA, still wielded a great deal of influence. One call to the esteemed governor of Texas and Victoria had almost immediate approval to meet with the prison’s most infamous death-row inmate.
Raymond Rafe Barker had spent twenty-two years in prison, seventeen on death row, quite an extended period for Texas, where the punishment of heinous criminals was generally carried out in a swift and efficient manner. Many had hoped that the delays would provide the necessary time for him to grow a conscience and give up the locations of the bodies of his victims that were never recovered. But that hadn’t happened, and now his time on this earth was coming to a close. In thirty days he would be executed by lethal injection.
Victoria was torn by what she had read in the file provided by the warden and what she might be about to learn. No one wanted to be used as a conduit for an evil man’s purposes. Yet, after due consideration of the letter Barker had written, she could not refuse the request.
The door of the interview room opened. Victoria jerked from her troubling thoughts and mentally fortified for the impact of meeting the man whose stunning invitation had brought her here. Two prison guards escorted Barker into the room. The leg irons around his ankles and belly chain coiled about his waist rattled as he was ushered to the chair directly across the table from her. The nylon glides whispered across the tile floor as the chair was drawn back.
“Sit,” one of the guards ordered.
Barker glanced at the man on his left, then followed the instruction given. He settled into the molded plastic chair and faced Victoria. His gaze, however, remained lowered, as if his reflection in the steel tabletop had garnered his undivided attention. The second guard secured the leg irons to a hook on the floor and the ones binding Barker’s hands to his waist to the underside of the sturdy table that spanned some three feet between the prisoner and his visitor.
“We’ll be right outside, ma’am,” the first guard said to Victoria, “if you need anything.”
“Thank you. We’ll be fine.”
When the door had closed behind the guards, Barker finally looked up. The move was slow, cautious, as if he too were braced on some level for what was to come. The twenty-three hours per day confined to his cell showed in the pale skin stretched across his gaunt face; a face that narrowed down to slumped shoulders and rail-thin arms covered by colorless prison garb. But the most glaring aspect of his appearance was the faded brown eyes, dull and listless. There was nothing about this man’s presence that exhibited the compassion and desperation of the letter he had written to Victoria. Had she made a mistake in coming?
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
The rustiness of his voice had her resisting the urge to flinch. His voice croaked with disuse and age far beyond his true years. According to the warden, this was the first time he had broken his silence in more than two decades. Reporters, men of God, bestselling authors, all had urged him to tell his story. He had refused. The measure of restraint required to maintain that vigil in spite of so very many reasons not to was nothing short of astonishing.
“Guess you’re wishing you hadn’t,” he offered before Victoria completed her visual inventory of the man labeled as a heinous monster.
“Your letter was quite compelling.” Only two pages, but every word had been carefully chosen to convey the worry and outright fear he professed haunted him. Victoria had no choice but to look into the matter. His assertions, though somewhat vague, carried far too much potential for even greater devastation for all concerned in the Princess Killer case. The idea that the man watching her so intently had been arrested and charged with the murders of more than a dozen young girls held her breath hostage as she waited for his next move.
His throat worked as if the words he intended to utter were difficult to summon. “It’s true. All of it.”
Victoria kept her hands folded in her lap to ensure there was no perception of superiority. She wanted Barker relaxed and open. Even more, she wanted his full attention on her face, not on her unshackled hands. The eyes were the windows to the soul. If she left this room with nothing else gained, she needed to gauge if there was any possibility whatsoever that he was telling the truth about those horrific murders.
The prospect carried monumental ramifications even beyond the added pain to the families of the victims. Her chest tightened at the conceivability of what his long-awaited words might mean. “Why haven’t you come forward with this before now?” Having told the truth at or before trial, for instance. Instead, he had refused to talk from the moment he and his wife were arrested.
Clare Barker, on the other hand, had steadfastly stood by her story that she was innocent. As the investigation of the case had progressed, the bodies of eight young girls, ranging in age from twelve to seventeen, had been recovered, but several others remained missing. Clare insisted that she knew nothing about any of the murders. Her husband, a pillar of the small Texas community rocked by the news, had executed all the heinous murders, at least twelve, without her knowledge, and that gruesome number didn’t include those of their three young daughters the morning of the arrest. This would not be the first time a community and even a spouse were totally blindsided. Since the evidence had incriminated both Clare and Rafe, there was the remote chance his sudden claims were, in part, the truth.
But