Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards

Stone.” Pugh sounded unhappy. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist. I—”
    “Charlie?”
    The interruption was welcome. The voice was even more so. Head whipping around so fast that she nearly gave herself whiplash, she beheld Tony Bartoli looming in the doorway behind the warden. Johnson and the Hazmat team were visible behind them—drawn, she guessed, by the commotion, which she could only hope they would assume had resulted from her dropped purse—and even as she glanced in their direction more guards came running up
    “Warden!” one of them cried, drawing Pugh’s attention. Pugh turned away to speak to the guards, although he remained in full view, framed by the doorway.
    “Tony!” Her surprised greeting blended genuine enthusiasm with relief. Here was an ally just when she needed one most.
    He stepped past the warden, stopping just inside her office, which placed him only a few feet away.
    “Are you kidding me?” Michael groaned, closing his eyes after taking one look at the newcomer. “Him again? This day just keeps getting better and better.”
    Special Agent Tony Bartoli was six-one, lean, tanned, not quite as gorgeous as Michael (honestly, who was?) but handsome enough to make most any woman sit up and take notice. Thirty-five years old, with short, well-groomed black hair and coffee brown eyes, he was as impeccably dressed as usual, in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and red power tie. Quite apart from being the guy with whom she hadbeen kinda/sorta trying to form a real, lasting human (as opposed to an impossible, insane, ghostly) relationship, she liked him. A lot. More to the point, he was from the Special Circumstances Division out of Quantico. The division that investigated serial killers. In other words, he was a highly competent,
armed
federal agent, just the kind of man she wanted in her corner when things started going south (like now). Having him here made her feel instantly safer. She’d assisted him and his team with their last two investigations and, in fact, had turned down repeated offers of a permanent job with them to return to her research project here at Wallens Ridge. She’d told Tony no largely, she saw now, because all she had wanted after dealing with the horrors of an active serial killer investigation was to go crawling back into the shelter of her safe research cocoon.
    Despite her ability to see the newly, violently created among them, ghosts had been absent from her life for more than a year before she had encountered Michael, and that was because she had deliberately arranged things that way. She still had been using her expertise on serial killers for the greater good, but the serial killers she had dealt with on a regular basis were caged, chained, and closely guarded prisoners.
    After years of screwing it up, she’d finally gotten her life just the way she wanted it: under control.
    She had her home in Big Stone Gap; she had her job at Wallens Ridge. In the carefully constructed environment she had created for herself, she’d felt secure.
    Then Michael had died despite her attempt to save him, and Tony had showed up asking for her help in catching the Boardwalk Killer, and between the two of them all her painstaking efforts to build a peaceful life for herself had gone straight to hell.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked, and ignored Michael’s muttered, “I’ll give you three guesses.”
    “Would you believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood?” Tony replied with a glimmer of humor.
    “No,” she answered, giving Tony a level look as she got to her feet. Her chest was tight with anxiety and her heart still beat uncomfortably fast, but with the salt down and the horseshoe tucked into her waistband she had done everything she could.
    So breathe
.
    At her less-than-encouraging response, Tony gave her a rueful smile. He had such a nice smile, she reflected. Sweet and charming and masculine, all at the same time. The kind of smile