Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious by Lisa Jackson

didn’t need a man, didn’t really want one right now. She shook herself out of her reverie and stared through the sweating windowpanes to the lake…where she’d imagined a mysterious man on the deck of his sailboat, binoculars trained on her house in the middle of the night, no less. She grinned at her folly. “You’re jumping at shadows,” she told herself, and with Charon trailing behind her, hitched her way to the bathroom, where she tied a plastic sack over her cast, sent up a prayer that the damned thing would be cut off soon, and climbed into the shower. She thought about David, about the man on the sailboat in the lake, about the seductive voice on the phone and about the mutilated picture of herself—the eyes gouged out.
    Shivering, she turned the spray to hot and closed her eyes, letting the warm jets wash over her.

Chapter Four
    “What the hell happened here last night?” Eleanor’s voice shook with rage, her face was set in a hard mask, and as she followed Sam down the aorta of WSLJ, she was hellbent for an explanation.
    “You heard about the caller?” Sam set her dripping umbrella in a corner of the compact room, then placed her crutch over it.
    “The whole damned town heard about the caller, for Christ’s sake. It was on the radio! Remember? Who was he, and how in the hell did he get past screening?”
    “He tricked Melanie—we were talking about vacations and he said something about Paradise—”
    “This much I know,” Eleanor said, her lips pursing, as Sam shrugged out of her raincoat. “I have it all on tape, and I’ve listened to it half a dozen times. What I’m asking you” “—she pointed a long, accusing finger at Sam as she tucked her coat into a closet—” “is do you know who this guy is and what he wants?”
    “No.”
    “But there’s something more.” Eleanor’s dark eyes trained on Sam’s face. “Something you’re not telling me. Does this have anything to do with your accident in Mexico?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What about your ex? I remember him from when we worked in Houston together.”
    “I don’t think Jeremy would bother with crank calls. It would be beneath him.”
    “But he still lives here, right? Got that professorship at Tulane.”
    “Give it up, Eleanor, okay? Jeremy’s remarried—what we had was over a long, long time ago,” Sam said.
    “Well, somebody around here made the calls, and I want to know who. Don’t I wish we could trace calls from here. I’ve suggested it, you know, but George is so damned tight he squeaks.”
    Sam smiled with more than a trace of cynicism. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe John will call back.”
    Eleanor chased her down a jagged hallway to the kitchen area, where coffee was brewing, and the lingering smell of chili from someone’s lunch permeated the air. The room was utilitarian, remodeled half a dozen times in its two-hundred-year history, with three round tables, a few scattered chairs, microwave and refrigerator. Whatever charm the area once embraced had long ago been covered with layers of Formica, vinyl, and glaring white paint. The only hint of the building’s original charm was in the French doors, surrounded by original, ornate grillwork that once opened to a small verandah seven stories above the street. Now the doors were locked and double bolted.
    Sam clomped her way to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup.
    “When do you get the cast off?” Eleanor asked, her temper seeming to be under control again as Sam poured coffee into Eleanor’s favorite cup, one that read, I hear what you’re saying, I just don’t believe it!
    Sam wasn’t lulled into thinking the subject of the crank caller had been dropped. It wasn’t her boss’s nature. Eleanor was like a pit bull with a bone when something bothered her. She never gave up.
    “I should get rid of this thing” “—she lifted her leg and cast—” “tomorrow morning, if I can convince the doctor that I’d be better off without