Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  RAZED

  “Walker builds her story around a passionate, convincing romance, and fleshes it out with memorable characters and a healthy dose of steamy, sensual interaction that’s satisfying on an emotional and visceral level.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It was the perfect mix of angst and drama and sweet surrender . . . I think this is one of Walker’s best series. Her characters are memorable, the setting vivid, and their struggles real without being all-consuming.”

  —BookPushers

  “Razed is a passionate story about family, betrayal, heartbreak, and moving on . . . Shiloh’s characters will captivate youir imagination and pull you in along their journeys of romance and love.”

  —The Reading Cafe

  “If you like the rock-type, strong, and supportive heroes, then look no further than Zane Barnes.”

  —Under the Covers Book Blog

  WRECKED

  “The sexy surprises . . . send their comfortable relationship into uncharted (and utterly hot) territory . . . Walker ably demonstrates her skill with a contemporary scenario.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A touching romance about best friends finding out that love was right in front of them the whole time. It has plenty of sizzle . . . We get to see the interior feelings of both leads in this lovely little contained look at two people that any reader would love to call friends. A beautiful story!”

  —RT Book Reviews ()

  “A sweet and sexy story that . . . was charming and fun to read.”

  —Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

  “A successful romance and a good read . . . Sexy and poignant.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Made my heart beat out of my chest.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  “Full of love, humor, and a passion that burns brightly.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  PRAISE FOR THE PARANORMAL ROMANCES OF SHILOH WALKER

  “Shiloh’s books are sinfully good, wickedly sexy, and wildly imaginative!”

  —Larissa Ione, New York Times bestselling author

  “An action junkie’s thrill ride that hits all the right notes. I recommend this series as a must read for those who love their paranormal romances to be wrapped in dark emotional suspense and intrigue.”

  —Smexy Books

  “This story showcases Walker’s talent . . . Her characters are complex . . . Her plots twist in very interesting ways . . . The sex is sizzling . . . This is a taut, beautifully written thriller readers won’t want to miss.”

  —RT Book Reviews ()

  “An outstanding story fraught with sexual tension and a spine-tingling mystery. The Departed will keep readers turning pages faster than they think trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Chilling [and] heart-wrenching . . . A richly emotional and wildly imaginative story that grips the reader with genuine, vivacious characters and a sinuous, flowing plot.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  “Suspense that can rip your heart open and leave you raw . . . The characters are absolutely fantastic, from the leads to the side characters.”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  Titles by Shiloh Walker

  HUNTING THE HUNTER

  HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL

  HUNTER’S SALVATION

  HUNTER’S NEED

  HUNTER’S FALL

  HUNTER’S RISE

  THROUGH THE VEIL

  VEIL OF SHADOWS

  THE MISSING

  THE DEPARTED

  THE REUNITED

  THE PROTECTED

  FRAGILE

  BROKEN

  CHAINS

  WRECKED

  RAZED

  BUSTED

  Anthologies

  HOT SPELL

  (with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Meljean Brook)

  PRIVATE PLACES

  (with Robin Schone, Claudia Dain, and Allyson James)

  HOT IN HANDCUFFS

  (with Shayla Black and Sylvia Day)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  BUSTED

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  Copyright © 2015 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Random house LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-15413-1

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / May 2015

  Cover art: Young couple in embrace © Photodisc / Getty Images;

  Architectural background © Joshua Haviv / Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Thanks to all my readers.

  I appreciate you all so much!

  As always, to my family. I thank God for you.

  To Ann M.

  Thanks for the day in Norfolk . . . and library talk.

  To Robin T. It’s always good to have librarians on hand. For lots of reasons.

  Thanks to Cindy and Kristine and the team at Berkley.

  Contents

  Praise for Shiloh Walker

  Titles by Shiloh Walker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Prologue

  There was, at times, only one way to completely lose yourself.

  This was a fact that Trey Barnes knew all too well.

  He’d spent a great deal of time losing himsel
f to books, for instance—first as a reader, and then, as he’d gotten older, as a writer. He found other ways to lose himself, too. He liked to dabble in photography, although he was a bumbling amateur compared to his oldest brother, Zane. Still, it was a good way to while away an afternoon.

  And he had loved to lose himself in the arms of his wife, Aliesha.

  Now, though, all he had of her were memories . . . and that small infant on the other side of the glass, struggling for every breath.

  “Mr. Barnes?”

  He didn’t look at the nurse.

  “Sir, why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

  It was creeping up on ten. He’d been here since . . . hell. He’d come straight here after the funeral. Yeah, it had been a while. He’d taken every precious moment he could to be as close to his baby as possible. Not that he could do much more than stroke one small, frail hand.

  Clayton Barnes, a mere three days old, was a tiny, little miracle from God. He’d been born more than two months early. Without the ventilator that was doing the breathing for him, he wouldn’t be alive.

  “Mr. Barnes.”

  Slowly, he looked away from the window and met the compassionate gaze of the nurse. She was older, her round face softened by time, and her eyes held his steadily.

  She reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “You need rest,” she said gently. “You have to take care of yourself now . . . for him, if nothing else. You’re all he has.”

  A knot settled in his throat, then he nodded. “Can I have another few minutes with him?”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  Once he left the neonatal intensive care unit and the hospital behind, he didn’t go home. Not yet.

  There was no way he could sleep in their bed.

  Their bed.

  Aliesha . . .

  Tears burned his eyes and he blinked them away as the road blurred in front of him.

  His phone buzzed—it was still on silent mode from the funeral. It had too many ignored phone calls, too many unanswered messages and he planned on letting them go ignored. Unanswered. The only people he’d care to talk to were his family, and all of them knew where to track him down. He’d be at the hospital sixteen to eighteen hours a day for the foreseeable future.

  For now, he didn’t want to be around anybody he knew. Anybody . . . or any place.

  Taking the interstate downtown, he found a hotel. Somebody came out from behind the valet parking stand but Trey already had the door open. “Will you be checking in, sir?”

  He gave a short nod and moved to the back, grabbing the bag his mother had packed so he could have clothes for after the funeral. He’d never changed. They’d come in handy now.

  “Do you have any other luggage?”

  “No.” He turned his keys over and went to head inside, but then looked back at the man. “Where’s the nearest bar?”

  “There’s the hotel lounge, although it closes at eleven.”

  “Aside from that?”

  The man cocked his head and gestured west. “Take a left at the next block. You’ll find quite a few. Plenty of places open til midnight, some even later.”

  Trey gave another nod and passed over a few of the bills he’d shoved inside his pocket earlier. He’d meant to get coffee, or something from the vending machines at the hospital. Meant to—forgot. Again.

  Check-in was a short, silent affair. One thing about some of the more upscale hotels—they seemed to realize when somebody wasn’t in a mood to chat.

  The lady at check-in apologetically told him the hotel was rather full due to an upcoming convention, although she did have a single open for only one night. The word convention had his gut turning—

  . . . an accident . . . hospital as soon as possible . . .

  Shoving the memories aside, he said hoarsely, “I just need it for the night.”

  He’d figure something else out tomorrow.

  Trey barely remembered the walk from the desk to the elevator to the room.

  He barely remembered throwing his bag on the bed and stumbling back out.

  It was all a blur, and then he was sitting down at the bar, his hand closed tightly around a glass.

  It was a dive. He’d asked for whiskey, a double, neat, and it had come in a smudged glass, the fumes of whatever horse-piss they’d brought so strong, it might have doubled for rocket fuel.

  He tossed it back and tapped his glass.

  The bartender slid him a look but served him up another before disappearing to tend to everybody else jammed in at the bar, elbow deep.

  “You look like you want to drink away your sorrows.”

  Sighing, Trey lifted the glass and pressed it to his head. He closed his eyes and said, “Go away.”

  “Aww . . .” A hand stroked down his arm. “Don’t go being like that.”

  Jerking his arm away, he tugged his wallet out and fished out some bills—how much did whiskey cost in a dive like this? He didn’t know. He caught the bartender’s eye and held up two twenties.

  “Get your change in a minute—”

  “Keep it,” Trey said sourly as the woman on his left leaned in closer. The feel of her breasts, the scent of her, had something inside him going cold.

  Aliesha—

  He half stumbled away as days of grief, of guilt, crashed into him. He found a bare space of wall near the back of the bar, a painted-over window tucked up over his head. He rested there, taking another drink of whiskey, slower this time, grimacing at the almost painful bite of the cheapest, shittiest whiskey he’d ever had the misery to experience. Appropriate, he decided. Today was the most miserable, shittiest day of his life.

  A tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye. He swiped at it with the heel of his hand, not giving a damn if anybody saw it. Then he tipped back the glass and had another sip.

  “Hey.”

  Cracking one eye open, he bit back a groan. It was the woman from the bar. At one time in the past, he would have given her a thorough look. Her hair was done in long, thick plaits that hung almost to her waist, while her hourglass curves were poured into a belly-baring shirt and a skirt that just barely skimmed the legal limit. A gold ring flashed from her navel and there was a piercing in her nose.

  She looked like a woman capable of wicked things.

  No doubt about it, she could make a man’s cock stand on end.

  Now, though, all she did was angle her head to the side. “Look, I’m sorry if I came on too strong. You . . . hell, you look like you’re having a rough day. You want to talk about it?”

  “No.” He closed his eyes again and had another long, hard pull of his drink, realized it was empty.

  His head was also starting to spin. Usually two drinks wouldn’t do it, but he hadn’t eaten since the toast his mother had forced on him that morning. Not exactly the ideal dietary intake.

  Didn’t matter. He could still think. If he could think, he wasn’t drunk enough.

  Shouldering up off the wall, he went to cut around her.

  She caught his arm and when he tried to pull away, she just gripped him tighter. “Come on,” she said, her voice firm. “If you’re going to get plastered, at least do it sitting down.”

  He might have argued, except he was damn tired.

  A few minutes later, he was in a booth.

  She sat across from him and he watched listlessly as she picked up his glass and sniffed at it. “What is that, Old Grand-Dad? You trying to kill your stomach or what?” She flagged down one of the servers and Trey snorted.

  She wasn’t ever going—

  Well, scratch that. Some sort of blurry amusement worked its way free in his mind as somebody sidetracked to their table, shooting the woman across from him a hard look. “Yeah?”

  That look was meant with an equally hard smile. “Get him something that isn’t going to kill his gut,” she said, her tone all sugar. Sugar, but the gaze was steel.

  Too many undertones there for him to p
rocess.

  Trying to juggle his way through all of that and deal with the noise in his head was making his brain hurt. He still wasn’t drunk enough. Maybe what he should do was hit that liquor store he’d passed . . . yeah.

  He liked that idea. He could grab himself a bottle of whatever was closest to the door, lock himself in his room, and get plastered. The headache he’d have in the morning would keep him focused on something other than what he’d done today—

  Something thunked down in front of him, hard.

  Blinking, he stared at it.

  He went to reach for it but before he could, a hand tugged it out of reach.

  “Give me that,” he demanded.

  She kept her hand over it as she slid into the booth next to him. He’d settled in the middle and he wasn’t exactly a small guy, so that didn’t leave her a lot of room. She didn’t seem to care.

  Alarms started to screech in his head.

  “You wanna talk now?” she said, managing to make that low purr of a voice audible over the din in the air. She stroked a finger down the glass.

  “No.” He took the glass and the scent of it hit his nose before he took the first swallow. He almost sighed in appreciation. That was more like it. He couldn’t quite recognize it—some sort of bourbon, he thought, but a damn sight better than whatever swill he’d been tossing back. Slumping in the seat, he rested his head on the back of the booth.

  The fog in his head crept in closer.

  “So what has you looking so miserable today, handsome?” Her hand settled on his thigh, dangerously close to his crotch.

  He picked it up and slowly, carefully, deliberately settled it on the table. That right there was enough to have the fog in his head clearing.

  Even when she started to lean in closer, Trey found the energy to get his leaden legs moving, forcing his too-fogged brain to function. Her eyes—he studied her eyes through a haze of alcohol and realized something was off.

  “I buried my wife,” he said. His gut went slippery cold as he said it, and then, he said it again. “I buried my wife. She went into early labor and died during the emergency C-section. My son almost died, too.”

  She went to open her mouth and he leaned in, ignoring the absolutely lovely breasts she displayed as she reached out to touch his arm. “I’m not interested. You’re better off looking elsewhere.”