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  The shadowy figure had a gun. He drew it...

  She forced herself to wake up.

  Stacey remembered Adam Harrison had left her with his card. That had been years before, but maybe, just maybe she still had it somewhere.

  She searched through her drawers, her little jewelry boxes, every nook and cranny of her room. Finally, she found the card slipped into pages of a diary she’d kept when she was ten.

  She dialed the number before she could think too hard about it; he answered. Since she’d seen him last, it seemed he’d upped his game. He was now an assistant director, working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Adam came out with two agents: one named Jackson, and the other was a very tall young man with sandy hair and striking dark eyes; Special Agent someone or another. She didn’t really talk to him. He had to be new because of his age, and because of the way he deferred to the other men. She figured he’d be a really cool agent one day, because he sure as hell looked the part.

  They listened to her.

  The agents went to check out Miller Cemetery.

  Adam stayed with Stacey. She asked him why it was he believed her so easily. And he smiled and said, “My son. He was very much like you.”

  “And he’s...gone?”

  Adam Harrison’s smile grew broader. “Oh, sometimes, I believe, he’s very much still with me.”

  It took three nights. Then it happened. Kevin and Elaine slipped into the cemetery. The drug dealer was there. He listened to Kevin; he drew his gun to kill him. Kevin screamed and begged for his life and a shot went off...

  But Kevin hadn’t been shot.

  One of the agents had fired first, with amazing aim. He shot the gun right out of the drug dealer’s hand.

  It turned out to be the first domino to fall in a major chain of busts. The dealer had been selling across several states and in D.C. He had many connections, and eventually a whole network was brought down.

  Because many deaths could be linked to him, the dealer had gone for a plea deal to avert the federal death penalty. He had, as she had heard said, “Sung like a canary!”

  Adam Harrison was careful to keep any mention of Stacey from the news. According to all sources, the FBI had received an anonymous tip.

  Stacey had to go to the Miller Cemetery, not in a dream, but in person. She went the next day when it wasn’t spooky, just derelict and sad. Crime scene tape remained in the one section, drooping with the night’s rain and as sad as the rest of the cemetery. But the crime scene investigators were gone.

  As she walked, she felt a touch on her shoulder. She turned, and Chastity Miller was standing there. It wasn’t a dream.

  Stacey would have been terrified, except she felt a strange sense that was both chilling and warming as the young woman hugged her.

  “I knew you could do it.” the ghost said.

  “I—I was so afraid! I don’t know, I can’t—”

  “You could and you did. Fear is something important; you need to know fear. It will help you behave intelligently, keep you from being rash. We have all known fear. The thing of it, learning how to deal with that fear and meet it so you are stronger than fear, and stronger than those who would create it in others.”

  “But you...”

  “I made mistakes. I know. But I wouldn’t have changed what I could do for my country. And I will do my best, always, to see the dream of our country remains strong.” She smiled. “Whatever the challenge, we fight. We fight for what is right, whenever there is a right that must be upheld. You can do it!”

  Her last words were spoken softly. She smiled and dissolved into the sunlit air.

  Adam Harrison was still in Harpers Ferry, but he was leaving shortly.

  This time when they said goodbye, Stacey told him she’d see him soon. “I’ll be working for you next,” she assured him.

  “I don’t doubt it. Just be sure it’s what you want,” he told her.

  She passionately assured him, “I owe you—for believing in me!”

  “College,” he told her.

  “Oh, you bet. The University of Maryland—they offer great courses. I’ll do it all right, Adam. But there’s nothing else I want to do. Please...I won’t be able to stand my life without...without coming to work for you.”

  “You’ll need to apply to the FBI Academy.”

  “Oh, I will,” she promised. Her smile deepened. “And I will kick-ass! I promise you.”

  Her parents weren’t happy with her choice. “We’ve spent out lives trying to shield you from danger!” her mother told her.

  She adored her parents. But she knew what she was doing.

  “I need to learn how to use what I have,” she told them.

  They let her choose her way.

  Soon after her twenty-fourth birthday, she graduated from the FBI Academy at Quantico.

  And walked straight into the offices of Adam Harrison and his Krewe of Hunters.

  Dreaming Death

  by Heather Graham

  Available September 22, 2020, from MIRA

  Wherever books are sold

  Copyright © 2020 by Heather Graham Pozzessere

  ISBN-13: 9781488056154

  Deadly Touch

  Copyright © 2020 by Heather Graham Pozzessere

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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