Gail Barrett - Fatal Exposure

SILENCE IS HER ONLY PROTECTION

Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist B. K. (“Brynn”) Elliot chronicles Baltimore’s grittier side with her lens—a talent cultivated from her years as a teenage runaway. A reclusive figure, Brynn lives under everyone’s radar...until a photo from her past plunges her into the crosshairs of powerful enemies.

Detective Parker McCall has devoted fifteen years to trying to solve his brother’s murder, and with the release of a photo implicating Brynn as a potential suspect, he feels close to finding justice. Determined to get answers, Parker must ignore the inexplicable attraction he feels for the haunted beauty in the photo. And Brynn must decide if Parker will protect her or betray her in his hunt for a killer.

Sweat glistened on her waxy face.

Then her expression changed, her eyes filling with acceptance—the same resignation Parker had seen on his father’s face before he’d committed suicide.

Denial rose inside him. Desperation screamed through his skull. He had to do something. He had to stop her somehow. But the slightest move, and Brynn would die.

Her trigger finger moved. Knowing it was hopeless, Parker dived off the bed toward Brynn, flinging himself toward her with all his strength. But she was too far away.

The gun went off, the suppressor silencing all but a quiet pop.

Buried Secrets: Three murder witnesses, one deadly conspiracy

Dear Reader,

Desperate people do desperate things. Sadly, for millions of troubled teenagers, this often means running away from home. But life on the streets can be brutal, exposing these vulnerable children to dangers they never expected, making it difficult to stay alive.

That’s the premise for my Buried Secrets trilogy. Fifteen years ago three desperate girls left their homes for different reasons, then banded together for protection on Baltimore’s treacherous streets. But their lives grew even more precarious when they witnessed a murder committed by a powerful man—who saw them watching. Terrified, they hid the evidence, changed their identities and went on the run to survive.

Now fifteen years later, a chance photograph in the newspaper exposes their identities, blowing the lid off their secret past—and sending each on a journey more dangerous than they’d ever dreamed.

I hope you enjoy their stories as they face down their pasts, confront enemies determined to silence them permanently and finally find the love they deserve.

Happy reading!

Gail Barrett

Fatal Exposure

Gail Barrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

GAIL BARRETT

always knew she’d be a writer. Who else would spend her childhood grinding sparkling rocks into fairy dust and convincing her friends it was real? Or daydream her way through elementary school, spend high school reading philosophy and playing the bagpipes, then head off to Spain during college to live the writer’s life? After four years she straggled back home—broke, but fluent in Spanish. She became a teacher, earned a master’s degree in linguistics, married a Coast Guard officer and had two sons.

But she never lost the desire to write. Then one day she discovered a Silhouette Intimate Moments novel in a bookstore—and knew she was destined to write romance. Her books have won numerous awards, including a National Readers’ Choice Award and Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart.

Gail currently lives in western Maryland. Readers can contact her through her website, www.gailbarrett.com.

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To Binnie Syril Braunstein,

a woman with a generous heart.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank the following people for making this story possible: Tom Beck, Chief Curator and Head of Special Collections at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, for answering my questions about photography; Lesley Gourley of Photohunter, whose phenomenal talent is matched only by her kindness; Wesley Wilson, Chief of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, for taking time out of his busy schedule to give me a personal tour of the library and helping me find a place to hide the film; Loni Glover, Karen Alerie and Mary Jo Archer for their invaluable input and support; and last—but definitely not least—an enormous and heartfelt thanks to Officer Robert Carusone of the Baltimore Police Department for not only answering my endless questions, but letting me tag along with him on patrol. Rob, you’re the best! Any mistakes are definitely my own!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Cold case detective Parker McCall tightened his grip on the newspaper, his gaze riveted on the photo of the woman splashed across the Baltimore Sun’s front page. She could have been any affluent shopper strolling out of the pricey art gallery—her long, glossy hair tumbling over her shoulders, the collar of her woolen coat turned up against the brisk November wind.

Except for her wary eyes.

The eyes of his brother’s murderer.

The eyes that had eluded him for fifteen years.

He lowered the newspaper to his cluttered desk, the laughter and banter of the detectives beyond his cubicle receding to a distant buzz. Then, hardly breathing, he tugged his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. Working as carefully as a scientist handling nuclear material, he extracted a worn, faded photo and placed it alongside the page.

For several excruciating seconds his gaze lingered on the image of his younger brother, his heart making its usual lurch of guilt and remorse. Sixteen years old, his cheeks badly hollowed, his body wasted by his addictions, Tommy leaned against a graffiti-sprayed wall near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, one emaciated arm slung over the waiflike girl at his side.

The girl Parker had failed to find.

Until now.

He shifted his scrutiny to the girl, taking in her sparrow-thin legs, the baggy sweatshirt dwarfing her scrawny frame, her unruly mop of auburn curls. Then he homed in on her eyes—bleak, world-weary eyes aged far beyond her years.

He sliced his gaze back to the woman in the newspaper. She was still petite, still thin and older than the adolescent slouching against the wall beside his brother, but he’d stake his life they were the same.

A punch of adrenaline making his heart sprint, he skimmed the article accompanying the front-page spread. Amazingly, the woman appeared to be B. K. Elliot, the world-renowned photojournalist whose exhibit had opened in the gallery that week—a photographer so reclusive that no one had known what she looked like until now. But rumors about her abounded, claiming she was everything from a traumatized war vet to a homeless woman disfigured in a fire.

Regardless of her identity, B. K. Elliot’s photos had caused a worldwide furor in recent years, winning both the Pulitzer for Feature Photography and the prestigious Hasselblad Award. Even Parker, who didn’t know squat about photography, could recognize the power in her unsettling work. Her photos chronicled the poverty and violence of street life with brutal, disturbing honesty.