With Her Last Breath Read Online Free Page B

of water, and get the home that she desperately needed.
     
    In San Francisco, Brent Templeton watched the prostitute walk toward him, her generous hips swaying, that knowing, hard look on her face. In his pocket were the ropes with which he would tie her. She would serve his purposes tonight, because no one would believe a prostitute, just as no one had believed Glenda that she had once been righteous.
    Except Maggie Chantel, fighting for her sister, fighting to avenge the pitiful excuse for a woman. Maggie had raised enough doubt with her constant harassment to make his heiress wife listen and eventually leave him.
    Evelyn took her time arranging their divorce, her strategy perfect as she lined up the reasons for a quiet breakup, carefully extracting his name from her accounts. His ex-wife deleted his name from her insurance and made him wear the limp—the reminder that he’d failed to rape Maggie and that she’d badly injured his knee.
    Oh, Maggie had described his attack perfectly to Evelyn, and his ex-wife had made him pay every day by her coldness.
    Two weeks after his dog was stolen, Evelyn had delivered her final coup—papers for a quick, quiet settlement.
    He’d had quite the scramble at first, trying to maintain lifestyle appearances, trying to get his old friends’ support while searching for Maggie. But without Evelyn, the doors were closed to him. Then he’d started his search in earnest for the woman who destroyed his life. Evelyn’s get-lost money didn’t last long, and when he couldn’t pay the bills for his lifestyle, he’d borrowed, and the collectors hadn’t been sweet.
    He’d furnished drugs and prostitutes for his powerful friends, including attorneys and a judge, Sam Jones. Brent was an expert at moving in to use the soft underbelly of private vices and sins. He’d gotten information for blackmail, enough to push through big-money deals that weren’t supposed to happen. Once, he’d been a member of an elite club for hunters, a tightly woven group of powerful men with enough dark secrets to keep a blackmailer happy. They shied from him now, fearing for their reputations even though once he’d helped them. Blackmailing them had worked only a few times, and then they’d sent experienced muscle men after him.
    Surgery could correct his broken nose, the long scar down his cheek, if only he had money. The slight paunch on his thin frame would take hours in the gym, which he could no longer afford. Gone was his Jamaican tan, replaced by a sallow, mottled complexion.
    He’d wanted Maggie from the first moment he saw her five years ago. When she’d rebuffed his advances, he’d taken her sister instead, using her to prod Maggie. But the she-devil fought him and everyone else and had taken everything from him.
    He would find her, and when he did, Maggie Chantel’s death would be very, very slow and painful. He’d have her first, of course, in many painful ways. She’d ruined his life, taken his pride, his home and prestige, and now the country club set laughed at him, avoided him.
    All because of Maggie Chantel.
    Now he had nothing left but the hatred that drove him, the need to find Maggie and see the fear in her hazel eyes, making her pay, feeling the pain. Whatever hole she’d found to hide in, he’d find her.
    The hunted had become the hunter…
    Later, when the woman tied to the bed cried out in pain, he was powerful again and in command. He viciously ordered her to tell him that she loved him.
    Just as Glenda had.
    Just as Maggie would.

TWO
    D own on the street, a car honked and Maggie snapped back to the present. With a steadying breath and shaking hands, she began unpacking.
    With more to retrieve from her pickup, Maggie opened the upstairs apartment door and stepped out onto the landing.
    The stairway was narrow, the varnished wooden steps firm, but worn with use. The man standing on the bottom of the stairs startled her. It was the same man—the jogger beside the road, the man