ALWAYS A SUSPECT
Task Force Eagle - Protecting their country & the women they love
Prequel - Book 1
Although part of a series, this is a stand-alone with its own conclusion.
Prequel - Book 1
Although part of a series, this is a stand-alone with its own conclusion.
"...a marvelous blend of romance and intrigue, and author Susan Vaughan keeps the mystery hurtling along until the unmasking of a most unexpected villain!" --Tess Gerritsen, NYT bestselling author "An intriguing blend of suspense and sizzle-- this one's a winner!" --Jean Brashear, NYT bestselling author “This book had everything! Mystery, adventure, humour, heartbreak and a whole lot of love. I was hooked on this story from start to finish. Susan's writing style is unique and the words really flow off the page. Definitely one of my fave reads and an author to look out for.” 5 Stars “This is a good murder mystery and a wonderful tale of self realization.” 5 Stars |
Updated & revised.
First published as Dangerous Attraction
Winner Golden Leaf Award
Winner Lories Award
First published as Dangerous Attraction
Winner Golden Leaf Award
Winner Lories Award
Available from The Wild Rose Press
Also available here - Amazon Kindle - Amazon Print - Barnes & Noble Nook - BN Print - iTunes/Apple - Kobo
Also available here - Amazon Kindle - Amazon Print - Barnes & Noble Nook - BN Print - iTunes/Apple - Kobo
Is she a criminal or a victim? Or both?
After the deaths of two husbands and a fiance, Claire Saint-Ange is branded the Widow Spider in her coastal Maine town.
Tormented by threatening phone calls and desperate to prove her innocence, Claire hires a P.I.
But her attraction to the rugged investigator poses an even greater threat. She can't risk losing someone she cares about ... not again. Never again.
Two tragic losses cause federal agent Michael Quinn to submit his resignation, but he's forced into one last gig--
spend Christmas investigating the widow's connection to her last husband's drug smuggling.
Uncovering this lovely, mysterious woman's darkest secrets should be just an assignment,
but her gentle soul and passion break down his walls and make him long to believe in her innocence.
The frozen Maine landscape, deadly attacks, and shocking revelations test Claire and Michael at every turn--
but it's the blazing desire between them that threatens their very lives.
After the deaths of two husbands and a fiance, Claire Saint-Ange is branded the Widow Spider in her coastal Maine town.
Tormented by threatening phone calls and desperate to prove her innocence, Claire hires a P.I.
But her attraction to the rugged investigator poses an even greater threat. She can't risk losing someone she cares about ... not again. Never again.
Two tragic losses cause federal agent Michael Quinn to submit his resignation, but he's forced into one last gig--
spend Christmas investigating the widow's connection to her last husband's drug smuggling.
Uncovering this lovely, mysterious woman's darkest secrets should be just an assignment,
but her gentle soul and passion break down his walls and make him long to believe in her innocence.
The frozen Maine landscape, deadly attacks, and shocking revelations test Claire and Michael at every turn--
but it's the blazing desire between them that threatens their very lives.
Excerpt from Always a Suspect:
Marie Claire Saint-Ange didn’t look like a woman who could murder three men.
None of the articles Michael Quinn had read prepared him for his first glimpse of the woman the Weymouth, Maine, newspaper called the Widow Spider.
Although she had an oversize black cardigan wrapped around her tall, slender form, his gaze browsed sweetly rounded curves. Her black pants and turtleneck looked expensive and soft. Winglike waves of dark brown hair framed a sensuous face with big doe eyes and full lips.
His breath lodged somewhere south of his throat and his blood, south of his belt. Even on this winter day, his blood burned.
A man would have to be dead not to react to her sultry beauty. Was hers a face from heaven, as her name suggested? Or of a siren?
Of course neither Lizzie Borden nor Ted Bundy had looked like butchers. If facial features could label killers, who would need cops like him?
He mentally kicked himself in the butt. He would keep as distant from that female as possible. He’d come on business. Anything else could be a hell of a lot more dangerous. For him.
Talking to a bearded old man in a tattered parka, Saint-Ange stood in a cleared space on her snow-covered side porch. Michael closed the door of his Explorer, parked behind a new black BMW SUV. Sweet wheels. The widow was doing all right.
She sketched a wave of greeting. He gave a nod of acknowledgment, and she continued her conversation.
He scanned the two-story white Victorian. Simple green wreaths with crimson bows on the door. Classy but not ostentatious. Not unlike the decorations on all the other large frame houses on the quiet street.
How did they feel at the Weymouth town office about their sleepy little Portland suburb harboring a sexy serial killer?
Hoping to eavesdrop, he sauntered up the curving sidewalk to the porch. A gust of wind brushed the last clumps of new-fallen snow from tree branches and shrubs. The cold didn’t bother him, but how could the woman stand it out here in just a sweater?
“Don’t you fret none, Miz Claire,” the old man said in his Down-East Maine accent. “Elisha Fogg’s not too old for a few more years’ shovelin’.”
Unsmiling, she stared at him a long moment. Then she tilted her head in a uniquely French posture. “Certainly. But I won’t pay you to shovel the porch. The wind will clear it soon enough. Go home, Elisha.”
In contrast with her cold manner, her voice was throaty, with the musical lilt and pronunciation of her northern Maine Acadian background.
Old Elisha muttered what might have been “Yes, ma’am,” then shuffled past Michael toward a decrepit old truck parked at the curb.
Odd that she’d cut corners on the snow shoveling when she’d spent big money on a new ride.
After watching the old truck chug away, Michael frowned and turned, only to be struck dumb by eyes the color of the dark chocolate. The intensity of her stare unnerved yet aroused him. Did she have any idea of the impact of that liquid gaze? Sure as hell, a woman like that was born knowing her power over men.
In the set of her shoulders he saw self-assurance and determination, and in her eyes intelligence and… vulnerability that woke the protective instinct he damn well thought he’d buried. The Widow Spider’s confidence hung by a single strand.
“I assume you’re the private investigator?”
He shook off his unwanted thoughts. “Yeah. Michael Quinn. Mr. Fitzhugh said you were expecting me.”
“Come in, then. It’s too cold to stand out here any longer.” She opened the carved oak door. “Unless you’re afraid. Did Fitz tell you about me?”
Thinking of how she’d kept the old man out in the cold arguing and then stinting him on his pay, Michael scowled. “I know who you are. Fitzhugh gave me the newspaper clippings. After you.”
Spine rigid as an icicle, she preceded him into the wide foyer. After setting two locks on the heavy door, she hung his coat and her sweater on a brass tree. To his left spread a gracious parlor bigger than his entire apartment, but she led him to a smaller living room on the right.
Close behind her, Michael inhaled a light herbal scent. Shampoo or lotion, not perfume, but just as arousing. He noted that her haughty rigidity didn’t extend to her hips, which swayed with each step. Probably couldn’t help it.
“Sit down, Mr. Quinn. This room will warm up in a bit.” She lifted a log from the wood box beside the hearth and fed it into the small, high-tech wood stove set in the fireplace.
“Big house to heat that way.” He regarded the camel-backed couch. Antique or a very expensive reproduction? An assessing glance at the other aspects of the room—gleaming dark wood, hand-carved paneling, marble-topped tables, Oriental rugs—convinced his inexpert eye the couch was an original.
The house wasn’t merely renovated, as his sketchy file said; it ranked as a damn showplace ready for a magazine spread.
A partially decorated balsam fir that brushed the ceiling and neatly stacked boxes of ornaments filled the large front window. Unusual that a rich widow like her didn’t have the Christmas decorations done professionally.
He eased into a green wing chair near the hearth.
“The furnace does its job, but I prefer the ambience of wood heat.” She sat opposite him in a twin of his chair.
She wore little or no makeup, no adornments of any kind. He wouldn’t mind tasting the natural red of her lips. In the warmth of the lamplight, her dewy skin, like that of a young girl, belied the thirty odd years he knew to be her age. Hands itching to touch her, he clasped his fingers on his knees.
He didn’t want to be here, didn’t like the feel of this case, didn’t like coming into it less prepared than usual. From the onset, something about it had sent cold tingles to the base of his skull. He sure as hell didn’t want a case about a woman whose mere presence stirred everything male in him. But he had no choice.
Saint-Ange consulted a manila folder she slid from an adjacent small table. Her direct gaze heated his blood as if she’d stoked a fire in him instead of in the wood stove.
“Fitz tells me that until eight months ago, you were an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, based in Boston. One of their best investigators. Why did you quit?”
He shrugged. “I’d had enough.” Enough damned drug dealers, enough wallowing in greed and slime, enough misplaced emotional involvement. Enough failure.
his time he didn’t have to care or feel responsible or protective. Didn’t have to feel, didn’t want to feel, period. His only stake in this case would be completing it and moving on.
She probably expected him to say more. Tough. “Why did you hire me?”
She clapped shut the folder. “I want you to clear me.”
“Clear you.” The tingling again. He rubbed his nape. He hoped to God she didn’t need protection. Given his track record, no one should trust him to protect a snow cone. “But I understood you’ve never been charged with anything.”
In a feminine gesture, she tossed her hair back.
Damn, but she was beautiful. If she ever let herself smile, if she ever smiled at him, he’d erupt into a fireball. He was already having a hell of a time keeping cool.
“Officially, no. But by every other means—in the press and in everyone’s eyes— I’ve been charged, convicted and sentenced.”
“You’re innocent, of course.” He couldn’t prevent an accusatory tone.
Shoulders straight, she glared at him. “You can think whatever you want, Mr. Quinn. Few believe in my innocence. Though Fitz has been my financial adviser for years, sometimes I think even he doubts me. The police are chasing a cat with five paws trying to prove I killed those men. I’ve hired you to find the truth of how each died, so I can live in peace.”
Her gaze held pride and strength, but underneath he detected a sadness that didn’t jibe with what little he’d read about her. Innocent? Or acting?
The last death had occurred eleven months ago. A long time to wait before seeking help. Did she aim to make herself look good by hiring a P.I.?
He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Seems to me you’ve held up okay under media and police pressure. What makes now any different?”
Marie Claire Saint-Ange didn’t look like a woman who could murder three men.
None of the articles Michael Quinn had read prepared him for his first glimpse of the woman the Weymouth, Maine, newspaper called the Widow Spider.
Although she had an oversize black cardigan wrapped around her tall, slender form, his gaze browsed sweetly rounded curves. Her black pants and turtleneck looked expensive and soft. Winglike waves of dark brown hair framed a sensuous face with big doe eyes and full lips.
His breath lodged somewhere south of his throat and his blood, south of his belt. Even on this winter day, his blood burned.
A man would have to be dead not to react to her sultry beauty. Was hers a face from heaven, as her name suggested? Or of a siren?
Of course neither Lizzie Borden nor Ted Bundy had looked like butchers. If facial features could label killers, who would need cops like him?
He mentally kicked himself in the butt. He would keep as distant from that female as possible. He’d come on business. Anything else could be a hell of a lot more dangerous. For him.
Talking to a bearded old man in a tattered parka, Saint-Ange stood in a cleared space on her snow-covered side porch. Michael closed the door of his Explorer, parked behind a new black BMW SUV. Sweet wheels. The widow was doing all right.
She sketched a wave of greeting. He gave a nod of acknowledgment, and she continued her conversation.
He scanned the two-story white Victorian. Simple green wreaths with crimson bows on the door. Classy but not ostentatious. Not unlike the decorations on all the other large frame houses on the quiet street.
How did they feel at the Weymouth town office about their sleepy little Portland suburb harboring a sexy serial killer?
Hoping to eavesdrop, he sauntered up the curving sidewalk to the porch. A gust of wind brushed the last clumps of new-fallen snow from tree branches and shrubs. The cold didn’t bother him, but how could the woman stand it out here in just a sweater?
“Don’t you fret none, Miz Claire,” the old man said in his Down-East Maine accent. “Elisha Fogg’s not too old for a few more years’ shovelin’.”
Unsmiling, she stared at him a long moment. Then she tilted her head in a uniquely French posture. “Certainly. But I won’t pay you to shovel the porch. The wind will clear it soon enough. Go home, Elisha.”
In contrast with her cold manner, her voice was throaty, with the musical lilt and pronunciation of her northern Maine Acadian background.
Old Elisha muttered what might have been “Yes, ma’am,” then shuffled past Michael toward a decrepit old truck parked at the curb.
Odd that she’d cut corners on the snow shoveling when she’d spent big money on a new ride.
After watching the old truck chug away, Michael frowned and turned, only to be struck dumb by eyes the color of the dark chocolate. The intensity of her stare unnerved yet aroused him. Did she have any idea of the impact of that liquid gaze? Sure as hell, a woman like that was born knowing her power over men.
In the set of her shoulders he saw self-assurance and determination, and in her eyes intelligence and… vulnerability that woke the protective instinct he damn well thought he’d buried. The Widow Spider’s confidence hung by a single strand.
“I assume you’re the private investigator?”
He shook off his unwanted thoughts. “Yeah. Michael Quinn. Mr. Fitzhugh said you were expecting me.”
“Come in, then. It’s too cold to stand out here any longer.” She opened the carved oak door. “Unless you’re afraid. Did Fitz tell you about me?”
Thinking of how she’d kept the old man out in the cold arguing and then stinting him on his pay, Michael scowled. “I know who you are. Fitzhugh gave me the newspaper clippings. After you.”
Spine rigid as an icicle, she preceded him into the wide foyer. After setting two locks on the heavy door, she hung his coat and her sweater on a brass tree. To his left spread a gracious parlor bigger than his entire apartment, but she led him to a smaller living room on the right.
Close behind her, Michael inhaled a light herbal scent. Shampoo or lotion, not perfume, but just as arousing. He noted that her haughty rigidity didn’t extend to her hips, which swayed with each step. Probably couldn’t help it.
“Sit down, Mr. Quinn. This room will warm up in a bit.” She lifted a log from the wood box beside the hearth and fed it into the small, high-tech wood stove set in the fireplace.
“Big house to heat that way.” He regarded the camel-backed couch. Antique or a very expensive reproduction? An assessing glance at the other aspects of the room—gleaming dark wood, hand-carved paneling, marble-topped tables, Oriental rugs—convinced his inexpert eye the couch was an original.
The house wasn’t merely renovated, as his sketchy file said; it ranked as a damn showplace ready for a magazine spread.
A partially decorated balsam fir that brushed the ceiling and neatly stacked boxes of ornaments filled the large front window. Unusual that a rich widow like her didn’t have the Christmas decorations done professionally.
He eased into a green wing chair near the hearth.
“The furnace does its job, but I prefer the ambience of wood heat.” She sat opposite him in a twin of his chair.
She wore little or no makeup, no adornments of any kind. He wouldn’t mind tasting the natural red of her lips. In the warmth of the lamplight, her dewy skin, like that of a young girl, belied the thirty odd years he knew to be her age. Hands itching to touch her, he clasped his fingers on his knees.
He didn’t want to be here, didn’t like the feel of this case, didn’t like coming into it less prepared than usual. From the onset, something about it had sent cold tingles to the base of his skull. He sure as hell didn’t want a case about a woman whose mere presence stirred everything male in him. But he had no choice.
Saint-Ange consulted a manila folder she slid from an adjacent small table. Her direct gaze heated his blood as if she’d stoked a fire in him instead of in the wood stove.
“Fitz tells me that until eight months ago, you were an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, based in Boston. One of their best investigators. Why did you quit?”
He shrugged. “I’d had enough.” Enough damned drug dealers, enough wallowing in greed and slime, enough misplaced emotional involvement. Enough failure.
his time he didn’t have to care or feel responsible or protective. Didn’t have to feel, didn’t want to feel, period. His only stake in this case would be completing it and moving on.
She probably expected him to say more. Tough. “Why did you hire me?”
She clapped shut the folder. “I want you to clear me.”
“Clear you.” The tingling again. He rubbed his nape. He hoped to God she didn’t need protection. Given his track record, no one should trust him to protect a snow cone. “But I understood you’ve never been charged with anything.”
In a feminine gesture, she tossed her hair back.
Damn, but she was beautiful. If she ever let herself smile, if she ever smiled at him, he’d erupt into a fireball. He was already having a hell of a time keeping cool.
“Officially, no. But by every other means—in the press and in everyone’s eyes— I’ve been charged, convicted and sentenced.”
“You’re innocent, of course.” He couldn’t prevent an accusatory tone.
Shoulders straight, she glared at him. “You can think whatever you want, Mr. Quinn. Few believe in my innocence. Though Fitz has been my financial adviser for years, sometimes I think even he doubts me. The police are chasing a cat with five paws trying to prove I killed those men. I’ve hired you to find the truth of how each died, so I can live in peace.”
Her gaze held pride and strength, but underneath he detected a sadness that didn’t jibe with what little he’d read about her. Innocent? Or acting?
The last death had occurred eleven months ago. A long time to wait before seeking help. Did she aim to make herself look good by hiring a P.I.?
He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Seems to me you’ve held up okay under media and police pressure. What makes now any different?”