The Reunited Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE DEPARTED

  “[Walker] delivers 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

  “Walker fans will be captivated by this fast-paced story with passionate characters and a suspenseful plot that will leave their emotions bare. A well-crafted combination of paranormal, romance, and suspense, this book has everything.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An entertaining romantic urban fantasy police procedural.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “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

  THE MISSING

  “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

  “Walker pulls it off brilliantly . . . [She] certainly has a future in paranormal and/or romantic suspense.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Great romantic suspense that grips the audience.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  CHAINS

  “This book is a double page-turner. The story is thrilling, and the sex just makes it better—two great reasons not to put it down until the end!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Breathtakingly wonderful . . . Smoothly erotic . . . Utterly amazing . . .Will definitely keep your pulse racing!”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Exciting erotic romantic suspense.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  FRAGILE

  “[A] flawlessly sexy suspense novel . . . Exhilarating.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An excellently crafted mystery and romance!”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Suspense, romance, and an ending that I can’t say anything about—because that would be a spoiler . . . I recommend reading this one.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Intense, sexy . . . Ms. Walker has created another unforgettable . . . fast-paced, edgy tale.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  HUNTER’S FALL

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

  —Larissa Ione, New York Times bestselling author

  HUNTER’S NEED

  “A perfect ten! . . . [A] riveting tale that I couldn’t put down and wanted to read again as soon as I finished.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  HUNTER’S SALVATION

  “One of the best tales in a series that always achieves high marks . . . An excellent thriller.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL

  “Some of the best erotic romantic fantasies on the market. Walker’s world is vibrantly alive with this pair.”

  —The Best Reviews

  HUNTING THE HUNTER

  “Action, sex, savvy writing, and characters with larger-than-life personalities that you will not soon forget are where Ms. Walker’s talents lie, and she delivered all that and more.”

  —A Romance Review

  “An exhilarating romantic fantasy filled with suspense and . . . star-crossed love . . . Action packed.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Fast paced and very readable . . . Titillating.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Action packed, with intriguing characters and a very erotic punch, Hunting the Hunter had me from page one. Thoroughly enjoyable with a great hero and a story line you can sink your teeth into, this book is a winner.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Another promising voice is joining the paranormal genre by bringing her own take on the ever-evolving vampire myth. Walker has set up the bones of an interesting world and populated it with some intriguing characters.”

  —RT Book 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

  FRAGILE

  BROKEN

  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)

  SHILOH WALKER

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE REUNITED

  Copyright © 2013 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / February 2013

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition ISBN: 978-0-425-24697-9

  An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

  Thanks to all the readers who kept asking for more of these books . . .

  Ilona, thanks for letting me use your cat.

  And a special thanks to Carrie Ann Ryan . . . I needed the physics help.

  Thank God, always, for my family. I love you guys!

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  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

  ONE

  HE knew her face.

  Joss Crawford wasn’t prone to melodrama, he wasn’t prone to wishful thinking, and he didn’t much believe in fairy tales. He didn’t buy into those crazy stories of love at first sight.

  But he knew there was a woman for him—he’d been searching for her his entire life, had dreamed about her always. He looked for her in every face he saw, waited for the moment he’d find her again.

  And here she was, striding down the pavement, her face grim, her eyes dark . . . the sight of her was a punch, straight to his heart. She didn’t look like she should, part of his brain insisted. The rest of him didn’t care. He knew her, in his gut, in his heart, in his soul.

  Standing rigid, barely able to breathe, much less move, he waited for her to look at him, to see him . . . to know him. But it didn’t happen.

  In fact, she was so busy staring at the pavement and making a concentrated effort to ignore everything around her, she didn’t even seem to notice him. She went to go around him and he just couldn’t stop himself—he stepped right into her path so that she crashed straight into his chest, all lean limbs and long muscles and golden, sun-kissed skin, a nice, solid weight that he figured would fit his body just about perfectly. She stumbled and he reached up, closed his hands around her upper arms, where the cotton of her shirt kept him from touching bare flesh.

  He wanted to touch bare flesh . . . after all this time, he figured he just about needed to. But not now.

  Right now, she was watching him with dazed, distrustful eyes—wariness flashed through her gaze and he felt her tense.

  “You . . .” He didn’t even know what to say. A total stranger, and that’s what he’d seem like to her, he knew. How could he tell her he’d been dreaming of her for always? Waiting. Searching. Absently, without realizing it, he stroked his thumb across her arm, and it rubbed across the bare skin just below the sleeve of her shirt.

  As bare skin touched bare skin, he felt something . . . a buzz in his brain.

  And more . . . he felt the echo of it in her brain. Followed by a blinding rush of knowledge.

  Her pupils flared. She sucked in a breath. “You . . .”

  “. . . three . . . !”

  * * *

  I am too late, she thought, running even as she heard the gunshots echo. She ran. She ran so hard. So fast. This could not be happening.

  She burst through the cover of the trees just in time to see him stagger. See him fall.

  “No!” She lunged for him.

  But hard, cruel hands caught her arms.

  Whirling around, she swung out, her hand striking that perfect, chiseled face.

  She was on the ground a moment later, her eyes tearing from the blow. Her cheek didn’t hurt, not yet. It was numb, but already the numbness was starting to fade.

  “You would dare strike me?”

  Blinking the tears away, she stared up at the man she had once thought she could love. Such a mistake . . . such a horrid, awful mistake. “I know what you did.” She tasted blood now, and realized she’d cut the inside of her mouth when he’d struck her.

  He smiled down at her. “Do you?”

  “Yes.” She turned her head, staring at the fallen man. She lifted her hand. “Please . . .”

  TWO

  Three weeks earlier

  "NOW . . . if you’ll just put your hand . . . right about there . . .”

  Special Agent Joss Crawford stood to the back of the group, his craggy face stoic, mouth unsmiling, eyes unblinking. It took all of his willpower not to laugh. Keeping a straight face through this joke was a rough gig, but he did it.

  He wasn’t sure why he kept coming back here. He could get where he needed to go without this moron’s help.

  There was a reason he kept doing the tour, though. He’d figure it out sooner or later. For the sake of his sanity and his patience, he kind of hoped it would be sooner. The idiot irritated the hell out of him.

  “Do you feel it . . .”

  Bored, he stared at the area the tour guide had indicated. Nope. He didn’t feel a damn thing.

  “Yes, you feel it, don’t you? Most of you can just sense it . . .” the guide murmured, his skinny, ratlike face animated, dark eyes glinting in the lights of the flashlights. “That burst of cold, feel how it radiates. All around. Almost like a cold wind.”

  It was a cold wind, Joss thought, bored. A cold front was projected to move through, and he had a feeling that had something to do with the sudden cool wind.

  But he couldn’t blame everything on the weather.

  Plenty of weird, though, could be laid at the feet of the guide. If anybody with eyes had bothered to look, they would have seen the clues all over the place. At least, he had.

  He’d seen where the dry ice had been used.

  He’d caught it when the guide had signaled one of his coworkers, too, and not a second later, there had been mysterious banging sounds when they’d stopped in the middle of an open field where supposedly hundreds of Seminoles had been slaughtered four hundred years earlier.

  You can almost hear their cries, can’t you . . .

  If the guide hadn’t had the timing wrong, Joss might not have been so skeptical.

  All in all, he’d definitely gotten his money’s worth, he supposed. Joss took his amusements where he could, and they weren’t even at the highlight of the tour.

  The Oglesby Cemetery.

  Every step pulled him closer. Closer. Closer. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he heard the echo of her laugh. But then it was followed by the harsh, broken sound of her screaming. Pain. Darkness . . . torn away from her . . .

  You’re going crazy, he thought wearily.

  And if anybody knew why he was here, they just might try to get him committed. He certainly sounded crazy, he knew. Here to keep watch over the grave of a woman who’d died more than a century earlier.

  Keep watch—just as he’d done dozens of times over the years.

  * * *

  “YOU, sir, have the aura of a man in need.”

  Joss looked down to see the psychic-wanna-be standing in front of him, an anxious look on that skinny face, his hands clasped in front of his chest, his eyes hopeful, shining.

  Aw, shit. He wasn’t the target for the night, was he?

  Then the man lifted a hand . . .

  Yes. He was the target.

  Each time he’d done this tour, the guy had picked somebody out of his group to focus on. He seemed to think it added something to the show, Joss figured. Hell, Joss could really add something to the show. But he wasn’t in the mood to have some fake playing tricks on him, and he damn sure wasn’t going to go along with the gag, either.

  Instead of responding, he just stared at him.

  “And you’re so closed off,” Larry “Cap” Rawlings said, his voice heavy and mournful as he peered up at Joss.

  Joss stood six-feet-five. Most people had to peer up at him. Normally, people kept some distance, but this guy was practically standing on his toes, so close that Joss could smell the garlic he’d eaten. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Cap had his head tipped so far back, one push
against his chest and he’d be off balance enough to end up on his ass.

  Joss amused himself with that image but didn’t let it show on his face as he continued to stare at the con artist. “What is it?” Cap asked again. “Why are you here? What draws you here? What do you seek?”

  Oh, that’s a good guess . . . not. Most of these people here were seeking something. Either they wanted some sort of proof of life after death, or they wanted a thrill, or they just wanted something to do. A million other excuses, and a person didn’t have to be psychic to figure out the people here were seeking anything.

  If this guy was a psychic, Joss was a prima ballerina.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joss said, keeping his voice flat, his face blank, and his eyes shuttered. He also deliberately crossed his arms over his chest and looked away—keep out, keep out, keep out—the body movements said it all. Assuming the guy knew how to read body language and had half a brain, maybe he’d just walk away and call it quits.

  The guy didn’t have half a brain. Joss was guessing he was running on about a third.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, you do. You seek answers, but you don’t even know if you believe in what you see before you. You don’t believe in the . . .” He paused dramatically and looked all around. “Gift.”

  Joss had to bite back a laugh.

  The . . . Gift? The moron probably didn’t even believe in psychic talent. It was real. Very real. He had a bona fide psychic standing before him, and Joss came with the freak gift of all freak gifts.

  He was a mirror—he mirrored the gift of whoever he’d last connected with—partnered with.

  And the last person he’d partnered with had been one of the telepaths on the special task force. Eyes slitted, Joss stared hard at Cap and caught a rush of thought. Current thoughts, recent thoughts, all of them coming together—organized chaos settling inside his mind, like they were just as much a part of Joss’s brain as Cap’s.

  “Motherfuck. I should have picked the old broad. She just wants to hear the same garbage old bitches always want to hear, but I get so tired of that tripe. This guy looked like he’d be more fun, but he’s not going to do a damn thing . . .