Colby Roundup

He liked watching her like this, all soft and vulnerable.

That she trusted him enough to sleep under his watch shifted something in his chest. He’d never met a woman like Olivia. Whatever he was feeling toward her, he wanted it to last.

The urge to climb into that bed with her and make love was powerful. No sooner than he settled in next to her did she start to flail and cry out. She was having another nightmare.

“Olivia.” He shook her gently, but she fought him off. “Olivia, wake up.”

Her eyes flew open and she screamed.

“Olivia, it’s me. It’s okay. You were dreaming.”

She blinked, inhaled a ragged breath and scrambled away from him. Her eyes looked crazed when she looked at him. “Bad things happened there, Russ. Things we don’t even know yet.”

Dear Reader,

The first COLBY AGENCY book, Safe by His Side, was released by Mills & Boon^>® Intrigue. Time has flown and the stories featuring Victoria Colby and her esteemed team of private investigators have stolen my heart.

You journeyed with Victoria through the painful memories of having lost her first husband and her son. You held your breath as her son returned a broken man determined to take his life back. You cheered for Victoria when she allowed herself to put the past behind her and love Lucas Camp, the man who had been there for her through it all. You have shared the danger as evil has tried repeatedly to destroy the Colbys and the triumphs of new love and the birth of children and grandchildren.

Most important, you have taken this journey with me every step of the way. I cannot thank you enough for helping me to make the Colby family a great success. As I faced my own personal challenges, your outpouring of support and concern has helped me rise above the pain and defeat it to write that next story and to keep believing in myself and the work. Please know that I read every letter and e-mail that you sent. I look forward to many, many more years of writing the stories I love and sharing those journeys with you. I hope you enjoy this fiftieth COLBY AGENCY story. Never fear, more Colbys are on the way!

Very best!

Debra Webb

DEBRA WEBB wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn’t until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain and within the confining political walls of Berlin, Germany, that she realized her true calling. A five-year stint with NASA on the space shuttle program reinforced her love of the endless possibilities within her grasp as a storyteller. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Debra has been writing romance, suspense and action-packed romance thrillers since. Visit her at www.debrawebb.com or write to her at PO Box 4889, Huntsville, AL 35815, USA.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Polunsky Prison, Polk County Texas, Monday, June 3, 3:00 p.m.

Olivia Westfield paced the stark interview room to which she had been sequestered. She paused long enough to take a breath and reminded herself that she needed to remain calm. Any visible sign of anticipation or anxiety would be a mistake. Though she was not an attorney, she had sat in enough courtrooms with her boss, who was the best criminal attorney in San Antonio, to know how to lead a witness, especially a potential hostile witness. During the next few minutes, it was immensely important that she lead.

It had taken her a week to get this interview, and then the warden had only been persuaded by her boss’s connection to an esteemed Texas senator with the right amount of clout. The prisoner Olivia was here to see was the most infamous death row inmate in Texas’s history. Since she was not his attorney, the interview had been extremely difficult to secure. The opportunity both terrified and exhilarated her.

Raymond Rafe Barker had spent twenty-two years in prison, seventeen on death row. In all those years he had not provided the locations of all the missing bodies of his many alleged victims, including those of his three young daughters. In a mere seventeen days he would be executed by lethal injection for his alleged heinous crimes. Olivia wanted his story—the whole story.

But what if he was innocent?

The tangle of nerves that had been twisting inside her for days tightened to a hard knot. Was she making a mistake doing this? Revealing herself to the man who could very well change the course of the rest of her life? Only her boss knew the reason for her need to meet the convicted murderer and learn the real story of what happened all those years ago in a small Texas community. Eventually the world would know; it was inevitable. The ramifications were immense, the impact potentially widespread.

Mistake or not, ultimately she had to do this. Whatever the consequences, living the rest of her life without knowing the truth was something she simply could not do. The past twenty-plus years of her life had been built on too many deceptions. From this moment forward she wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Want didn’t begin to describe what Olivia felt. She