Outlaw Derek
Authors: Kay Hooper
OF KAY HOOPER
BLOOD TIES
“Hooper’s darkly riveting Blood trilogy comes to a terrifying climax.… The chilling intensity of this novel is sure to haunt your dreams!”
—
RT Book Reviews
“Series fans and newcomers alike will appreciate the appendixes, which include bios of Special Crimes Unit agents and definitions of their various paranormal abilities.”
—
Publishers Weekly
BLOOD SINS
“Disturbing … Hooper pulls out all the stops.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Fans of Kay Hooper won’t be disappointed.”
—The Romance Reader
“Another solid entry.”
—
Booklist
BLOOD DREAMS
“You won’t want to turn the lights out after reading this book!”
—
Romantic Times
“A good read for fans of other serial-killer books and the TV show
Criminal Minds
.”
—
Booklist
“Spectacular … With its fast pace, high-adrenaline plot, cast of well-developed characters, and fluid dialogue,
Blood Dreams
fills every expectation a reader could have.… I highly recommend.”
—Romance Reviews Today
SLEEPING WITH FEAR
“An entertaining book for any reader.”
—
Winston-Salem Journal
“Hooper keeps the suspense dialed up.… Readers will be mesmerized by a plot that moves quickly to a chilling conclusion.”
—
Publishers Weekly
CHILL OF FEAR
“Hooper’s latest may offer her fans a few shivers on a hot beach.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has conjured a fine thriller with appealing young ghosts and a suitably evil presence to provide a welcome chill on a hot summer’s day.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“The author draws the reader into the story line and, once there, they can’t leave because they want to see what happens next in this thrill-a-minute, chilling, fantastic reading experience.”
—
Midwest Book Review
HUNTING FEAR
“A well-told scary story.”
—
Toronto Sun
“Hooper’s unerring story sense and ability to keep the pages flying can’t be denied.”
—
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“Hooper has created another original—
Hunting Fear
sets an intense pace.… Work your way through the terror to the triumph … and you’ll be looking for more Hooper tales to add to your bookshelf.”
—Wichita Falls
Times Record News
“It’s vintage Hooper—a suspenseful page-turner.”
—Brazosport
Facts
“Expect plenty of twists and surprises as Kay Hooper gets her series off to a crackerjack start!”
—
Aptos Times
SENSE OF EVIL
“A well-written, entertaining police procedural … loaded with suspense.”
—
Midwest Book Review
“Filled with page-turning suspense.”
—
The Sunday Oklahoman
“Sense of Evil
will knock your socks off.”
—
Rendezvous
“A master storyteller.”
—T
AMI
H
OAG
STEALING SHADOWS
“A fast-paced, suspenseful plot … The story’s complicated and intriguing twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the chilling end.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“This definitely puts Ms. Hooper in a league with Tami Hoag and Iris Johansen and Sandra Brown. Gold 5-star rating.”
—
Heartland Critiques
HAUNTING RACHEL
“A stirring and evocative thriller.”
—
Palo Alto Daily News
“The pace flies, the suspense never lets up. It’s great reading.”
—Baton Rouge
Advocate
“An intriguing book with plenty of strange twists that will please the reader.”
—
Rocky Mountain News
“It passed the ‘stay up late to finish it in one night’ test.”
—
The Denver Post
FINDING LAURA
“You always know you are in for an outstanding read when you pick up a Kay Hooper novel, but in
Finding Laura
, she has created something really special! Simply superb!”
—
Romantic Times
“Hooper keeps the intrigue pleasurably complicated, with gothic touches of suspense and satisfying resolution.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A first-class reading experience.”
—
Affaire de Coeur
AFTER CAROLINE
“Harrowing good fun. Readers will shiver and shudder.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has crafted another solid story to keep readers enthralled until the last page is turned.”
—
Booklist
“Kay Hooper comes through with thrills, chills, and plenty of romance, this time with an energetic murder mystery with a clever twist. The suspense is sustained admirably right up to the very end.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
Outlaw Derek
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2012 Bantam Books eBook Edition
Copyright © 1988 by Kay Hooper
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in paperback in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1988.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53573-3
Cover design: Carl Galian
Cover images: © Josh Rinehults/istockphoto (cityscape); © Jacob Wackerhausen/istockphoto (man)
v3.1
O
NE
D
EREK
R
OSS STRUGGLED
up through the heavy layers of jet-lag exhaustion with an awful buzzing in his ears. Rolling over in a tangle of bedclothes, he started to reach for the phone on the nightstand, but then recognized the sound he heard. Sitting up instead, he raked his fingers through his hair.
The door. In the middle of the night. No. He looked blearily at the clock on his nightstand. At four
A.M.
A visitor? Even in exhaustion, his mind automatically considered and rejected
possibilities of felonious intent. It wasn’t likely. In general, the guys in the black hats didn’t lean on door buzzers to announce their arrival, especially at four in the morning, when stealth tended to be a prime consideration.
He kicked the blankets away and got up, finding his jeans in the darkness and struggling into them to the accompaniment of a few sleepy curses. He turned on lights as he made his way through the apartment to the front door, and, when he reached it, said in a voice little more than a growl, “Yeah, what?”
“Mr. Ross? I need to talk to you.”
Standing well to one side of the still-closed door, Derek frowned. A woman whose voice he didn’t recognize. In his business, that tended to be a bad sign. He realized that he had tensed. “It’s four o’clock in the morning,” he said shortly. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Mr. Ross, please, I—I have to see you. It’s very important.”
Derek hesitated, then leaned forward cautiously
so that he could look through the security peephole. He was taking a chance, because the door was composed of only a few flimsy layers of plywood, which wouldn’t stop a bullet or even withstand a well-placed kick. His view through the tiny hole was distorted, but he saw enough to make him relax—if only a bit. “Hold your hands where I can see them,” he said curtly.
Outside in the well-lit hallway, the woman held both hands up at shoulder height, palms out toward him. She didn’t seem surprised by his extreme caution, but then, she was obviously too distraught to be surprised by anything.
“Keep them up,” he said, and drew back away from the door as he unlocked and opened it. Instantly, the woman came into the apartment, her hands still held at shoulder height. Derek closed and relocked the door.
“I’m not armed,” she said softly.
He was reasonably sure of that; it was why he had relaxed. The silk dress she wore clung like a second skin and left little to the imagination. She
couldn’t have hidden a bullet under the garment, much less a gun. But he hadn’t lived to be thirty-five by being reckless or taking unnecessary chances, so he kept his distance while watching her intently. “All right. Into the den, straight ahead.”
Following her, Derek observed thoughtfully that her walk didn’t fit the dress. She had the carriage of an athlete or dancer, fluid and graceful in spite of an obvious limp. The dress, on the other hand, was designed to emphasize curves and wiggles, in fact to make it nearly impossible for a woman to walk in it
without
wiggling. She managed, however, despite the limp; the slight sway of her hips was utterly feminine, but in no way exaggerated.
Still seductive as hell, though.
She stopped by the couch, continuing to hold her hands as he’d instructed. “Can—can I sit down?”
Derek circled slowly until they faced each other. “I don’t know,” he said dryly. “Can you?”
She blinked, then glanced down at the bright-red skintight sheath. A flush lightly colored her pale face. “Oh. I haven’t sat down since—well.”
“Try,” he invited her.
She did, gingerly. And managed the feat, although the strapless bodice might have slipped downward half an inch or so. An unconscious relief filled her expression as the weight was removed from her legs. Slowly, she lowered her hands until they twined together in her lap.
For a long moment, they studied each other in silence. She saw a big man, barefooted and beard-stubbled, his wheat-gold hair tousled and a thick mat of golden hair covering his powerful chest. He had very dark and lazy eyes and a way of standing that was seemingly relaxed and negligent, but gave an impression of latent strength casually under control. And he had a face that would fascinate women and artists, because it was starkly male, diamond-hard, and utterly beautiful, even though he was obviously very tired.
He saw a young woman somewhere in her twenties, of medium height and slender in a way most women wanted to be and few were; she was full-breasted, her hips curved gently, and there wasn’t an ounce of excess flesh anywhere. Her hair was a rich dark brown with red highlights, falling past her shoulders in a thick mass of loose curls. Her face was heart-shaped and delicate, and she had large eyes so light brown they were almost amber, eyes with haunting shadows of pain. She looked lovely, fragile, gentle … and scared. Scared to death.
“Who are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Shannon.” Her gaze flickered. “Brown.”
