Dakota Heat (Book 3 - Dakota Hearts) by Lisa Mondello

warmth.
    Her warrior protector.
    “Tell me who’s coming after you?”
    “He’s going to find me,” Summer whispered against his cheek, as tears of fear spilled from her eyes again.
    “No one is going to find you, Summer. I’m here. I have you,” he said, his tone soothing, as he gently stroked her hair. “You’re safe here. I promise no one will hurt you.”
    A long moment passed as Summer stayed quiet. She was no longer crying. Slowly, with every passing second, her shivers subsided. She turned, laying her head against Sam’s chest as she took a deep breath.
    “I didn’t leave Providence because I wanted to be a fire dispatcher,” she finally said, her tone defeated. “I was forced to leave.”
    “What are you talking about? Who forced you?”
    “The chief of police in the precinct where I worked as a dispatcher. Matt Jorgensen.”
    She took a deep breath, wanting so much to release this burden that she’d carried for so long, wanting to share it with Sam.
    “About two months ago, the police found the body of a murdered woman. At that time, they treated it as a random act of violence and investigated it as an individual homicide. But then a second woman’s body was found. The MO matched the first murder.”
    Summer pulled back and raised her head to look at Sam. “I got involved when the third woman called into 911. She’d called and then hung up before I could get her information. I put through the information like any other call because the address comes up automatically when someone calls the 911 line. I tried to call back while the officers were on their way, hoping to get the woman on the phone so I could tell her that help was on the way.” She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “But he answered the phone. He threatened to come after me.”
    Sam muttered a curse under his breath and squeezed her tighter. Fresh tears fell down her cheek.
    “When the police broke through the door, the woman was dead. Same MO except the killer actually talked to me on the phone and threatened me,” she said, a silent shudder running through her at the thought of the madman who was now targeting her.
    “So the police chief sent you here?”
    “Not at first. We didn’t think there was any way for the killer to know which 911 operator he’d spoken to. Being a city, Providence has a lot of 911 dispatchers. But to be safe, I stayed with my friend Bobbi. I mentioned last week that she’d become a police officer.”
    Sam nodded, recalling the conversation at dinner.
    “But a week later, a fourth body was found on the same morning a newspaper was delivered to my apartment doorstep. Sam, he knew where I lived. He put a picture of me coming out of Bobbi’s apartment inside the newspaper and put a red bulseye on it. They’d had a car watching my apartment and he still managed to get inside. That’s when Matt told me to leave. Matt went to college with Adam White. They arranged the whole thing.”
    “Adam knew about this?”
    Summer could feel the rise of anger in Sam by the way his body stiffened.
    “I didn’t want anyone to know. Adam thought it would be easier if no one in the crew knew. You all have a job to do that is bigger and more dangerous than—”
    “Than a serial killer coming after you?”
    “They all thought I’d be safe here. I began to believe it to until…”
    She pulled herself from Sam’s arms and stood. Sam did the same.
    “Until what?”
    “A woman’s body was found along the same route I took coming to Rudolph, just a few hours away from here in Montgomery.”
    “Was it him?”
    “Ethan is checking it out. Matt told him the MO was very similar and there have been no other murders in Providence since I left. It could be him. It might just be a random killing that is unrelated. But…I’m scared Sam. He was at the front door of my apartment. He got a picture of me. He knows what I look like. What if he followed me here? For all I know he could be in Rudolph right