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  CRITICS PRAISE JUDITH E. FRENCH!

  THE BARBARIAN

  “Combining strong, fully developed characters, colorful descriptive locales, and a beautifully haunting romance, The Barbarian is a must-read.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “The Barbarian is an exhilarating ride through the deserts of Egypt as a woman and a man fight for all they believe in against the might of a king.”

  —A Romance Review

  “This sequel to The Conqueror is packed full of vivid historical details that will transport the reader back to mystical Egypt. A great read!”

  —The Best Reviews

  THE CONQUEROR

  “Historical fiction fans will have a feast!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Judith French has skillfully crafted not only a top-notch romance but an excellent work of historical fiction.”

  —A Romance Review

  “Don’t miss The Conqueror.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Extremely compelling . . . [this book is] a difficult one to put down.”

  —LikesBooks.com

  “The Conqueror is a strong historical tale . . . action packed.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  A DEADLY GAME

  The Game Master regretted that it had been impossible to remove Tracy’s body from the scene. A single finger hardly qualified as a trophy of . . . of . . . He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. Ah, yes, a trophy of the sophomore.

  Poor little sophomore, a mere pawn sacrificed in a larger game, that of his next quarry, the professor. He had great hopes for her. “Yes.” The Game Master smiled. “With a little assistance, the professor might prove my finest and most satisfying adversary.”

  The third crab pot lay some distance away. He’d saved the best for last, and anticipation made his hands tremble as he pulled up the wire cage containing Number Thirty-six’s skull.

  “Ah,” he crooned as the water drained away, leaving his prize gleaming ivory in the mist. “So many of you waiting for me . . . So many women, and all I have to do is collect them.”

  Other Leisure books by Judith E. French:

  THE BARBARIAN

  THE CONQUEROR

  AT RISK

  JUDITH E. FRENCH

  For my brother, Paul F. Donahue, Lt., Delaware State Police, retired, with love and thanks for answering my endless questions and for your unfailing support through the years.

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2005 by Judith E. French

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  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, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1734-9

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-1726-4

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: June 2005

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  Contents

  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

  AT RISK

  Prologue

  Somerville College, Dover, Delaware

  Tracy Fleming stopped outside of her history professor’s office and glanced at her watch. She was a few minutes early for her seven-o’clock appointment, but the door was open several inches. Hesitantly, she knocked.

  “Good morning,” called a muffled voice. “Come in.”

  Tracy pushed open the door and blinked. No lights were on, and the blinds were closed, making the room dim after the brightly lit hallway. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” She stepped inside and shifted her load of library books to one hip. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t bother you.”

  “Back here.”

  Thinking the professor must be using the copy machine in an alcove in the far corner of the office, Tracy moved past the desk. “It’s about my research paper,” she said. “I know it’s due on Friday, but I’ve got this jerk ex-boyfriend, and—”

  The tall figure rose out of the shadows like a malevolent ghost.

  Tracy opened her mouth to scream, but a fist slammed into her midsection, knocking the air out of her, making it impossible to utter more than a strangled whimper. She would have fallen from the force of the blow, but her attacker lunged past and seized her from behind.

  One hard hand clamped over her mouth, and he leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Game’s over, Sophomore. You lose.”

  Terror lent her strength. She drove an elbow into his ribs and tried to wrench free, but he arched her neck back and slashed once across her throat. Tracy felt an odd sensation of cold against her bared flesh as pinwheels of light exploded in her brain. A tide of blackness flooded her head, and then the wave receded, leaving nothing at all.

  He released her, thrusting the body away so that it tumbled forward onto the carpet. Thin ribbons of light seeping between the blinds revealed a splash of liquid on his glove. For an instant, he regarded the crimson color like another man might a rare jewel. Then he smiled, lowered his head, and licked the drops from the back of his hand.

  The blood was warm and slightly salty.

  He liked the taste.

  Chapter One

  Somerville College, Dover, Delaware

  Liz Clarke glanced at her watch as she hurried down the hall toward her office in Jacobs Hall. Her early class began at eight on Mondays, but she was already forty minutes late for her seven-o’clock appointment with a student in her popular Heroines of the American Revolution course.

  Liz hated being late for anything. She’d deliberately set her alarm an hour early so she’d be on time for Tracy’s appointment. Why had her car picked this morning to refuse to start?

  Shifting her briefcase and purse to her left hand, Liz stopped to find her office key before realizing that her door was slightly ajar. Puzzled, she stepped inside and flicked the switch. The room remained dark. The only light came filtered through the closed blinds.

  “Tracy?” A faint sense of unease made Liz cautious. “Is anyone here?” The room had an unpleasant, almost sweet odor. She hesitated, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom before she dropped her briefcase on the nearest chair and walked to the desk.

  Glancing at the floor, Liz stopped short as she saw the dark, wet pool on the carpet. Water . . . No, not water, something thicker and darker. A chill washed over her as she took one more step and saw a slender hand
. Blood? Liz rushed forward, took in the sprawled body of Tracy Fleming, throat slashed from ear to ear, and screamed.

  Trembling, Liz dropped to her knees beside the young woman. She seized the girl’s limp wrist, desperately seeking a pulse.

  A man burst into the room. “Liz? What’s wrong? I heard you—holy shit!”

  Normally, Cameron would have been the last person she’d have wanted in her office. Now, even the grad student’s face was a relief.

  He froze, his handsome features nearly as bloodless as Tracy’s. “Oh, God,” he babbled. “Who? God, there’s blood everywhere! Her throat . . . Holy shit! Is that Fleming?”

  “I can’t find a pulse.” Liz gripped the girl’s hand. “Call 911. Get security.” Her voice came out in a rasp. Liz felt the wet carpet through her linen slacks and realized that she was kneeling in blood. She supposed the thought should have sickened her, but she was too numb to care.

  “What are you doing? Don’t touch her!” Cameron admonished with macabre fascination as he dialed from her desk phone. “You’re contaminating a crime scene. The authorities—hello, yes. I’d like to report a murder. You heard me correctly. A murder.”

  Dazed, Liz sat on the floor beside Tracy’s lifeless body as Cameron calmly spoke with the 911 operator and then dialed campus security. Liz hadn’t known that a body so delicate could contain so much blood. Or that Tracy could be such an unnatural shade of white and yet still warm to the touch.

  She lifted the girl’s head to her lap and felt again for a pulse, this time in the hollow below her ear, just above her bloody throat. Nothing. Liz had taken advanced CPR classes, but this was beyond her ability. She could do nothing but hold Tracy and wait.

  She had no conception of time passing.

  “Elizabeth?”

  Michael’s voice cut through Liz’s stupor. She glanced at the open doorway and sighed in relief.

  “Elizabeth? Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Liz smoothed a clump of Tracy’s stained and matted hair. “But I think she’s dead.”

  “I told Liz she wasn’t supposed to touch the evidence.” Cameron raised both palms and backed away from the desk, as if distancing himself from her ignorant blunder.

  Michael didn’t break eye contact with her as he rolled his wheelchair into the dim room. “Did you find her just like this?”

  The knot in Liz’s throat made it hard to speak. She nodded, gently lowering the girl’s head to the sticky, wet carpet, turning Tracy’s face so that her blond hair hid the gaping slash across her throat.

  “And you’re all right?” Michael asked.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Liz stood up and swayed, suddenly feeling as though she’d had too much to drink.

  “Of course she’s dead.” Cameron’s voice was scathing as he ventured out of the corner. “Any fool can see the girl’s dead. Her throat’s been cut. Oh, shit. Her left hand. Where’s her finger?”

  Liz couldn’t stop herself from looking. Someone had hacked off the ring finger of Tracy’s left hand.

  “I should have been here.” Her words tumbled out . . . only half coherent as she stumbled to Michael’s chair. “I was late. My car wouldn’t start. Amelia had to drive me . . .” She heard a high-pitched buzzing as the room began to spin. “If I’d been here on time . . .”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Michael insisted firmly, his tone calming.

  “She had no business touching the body. I told her—”

  “Whitaker,” Michael cut Cameron off. “We don’t need you here. Go out into the hall and keep everyone away until the police arrive.”

  “Security’s doing that. What do you think, Captain? Attempted rape?”

  Michael’s gaze hardened. “Go to the front entrance and direct the responding officers to this wing. And stay close. They may want to question you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Now, Whitaker.”

  Cameron vanished.

  “She’s beyond your help.” Michael clasped Liz’s blood-smeared hand. “You look faint. Maybe you should sit down.”

  She swallowed, trying to dissolve the constriction in her throat, hoping the floor would stop swaying under her feet. “I’m okay,” she murmured, more to convince herself than him. “I’m all right.”

  “Nobody ever gets used to seeing this sort of thing.” Michael’s grip was reassuring. Despite his handicap, his commanding presence made her feel better.

  “Tracy and I . . . we had an appointment,” she explained, needing to talk. “I was late. My car wouldn’t start. Amelia had to give me a ride.” She knew she was rambling, repeating herself, but she couldn’t help it. “When I got here . . .”

  An ambulance wailed in the distance, the jarring sound as grating as a dentist’s drill. “I locked my office yesterday,” Liz said. “I know I did. I always do. Maybe maintenance—”

  “No one’s blaming you, Elizabeth.” Michael pointed up at the darkened fluorescent fixture overhead. “That out when you arrived?”

  “Yes. I tried the switch, but the light wouldn’t come on.” She pulled away, grabbed a fast-food napkin from her desk, and wiped her hands.

  “What else did you touch in the room?”

  “Nothing. The door was open. I came in, laid my briefcase on the chair, and . . .” Her voice seemed to fail her.

  “There’s a bench in the hall. It’s better if we talk out there.”

  The antique church pew was only a few yards from her office. When they reached it, Michael motioned her to sit. Liz was vaguely aware of an assistant dean and other faculty members staring at her, but security had already begun to block off the area with yellow tape. Gooseflesh rose on her arms, and she began to shiver.

  Michael took her hand again. “Look at me, Elizabeth. Don’t pay any attention to them. Think. Did you see anything unusual on your way in? Hear anything?”

  “Nobody. The hall was empty.” She swallowed. Did he think she would have strolled calmly past a madman waving a bloody knife without alerting anyone?

  “Did you see anyone outside? Electricians? Delivery vans?”

  She shook her head.

  “You entered where?”

  “The double doors that open onto faculty parking. I told you,” she said. “My car wouldn’t start this morning. You’d already left, so I called Amelia to drive me to school.”

  “And you saw nothing out of the ordinary? No one you don’t see on a regular basis?”

  “No. Wait, yes,” Liz corrected. “As we were turning into the parking lot, there was a motorcycle. A Harley. The driver was leaving in a hurry, and Amelia had to stop to avoid flying gravel. She drives that red BMW, and she didn’t want dings in the paint. He was wearing a helmet, so I couldn’t see a face, but he was in a hurry.”

  “He? You know it was a man?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just assumed. He was wearing leather and looked too big for a woman.” The sirens grew louder. “You don’t think he—”

  “I don’t think anything.” Michael took the bloody napkin she was shredding, balled it up, and thrust it into his pocket. “At this point, we ask questions, we don’t conclude. Have you seen the Harley around campus before? Could it be a student?”

  “It’s possible. But that’s the faculty lot. Students don’t have the blue stickers. You know Ernie tows the kids’ cars on the slightest excuse.”

  “But you don’t remember seeing the bike here before?”

  She shook her head. “I’d remember it.”

  “Can you describe the motorcycle?”

  “Big. Black and silver.” She shrugged. “It was loud and . . .” She broke off as two tall and booted state troopers came around the corner.

  Michael squeezed her hand. “They’ll take over. Tell them what you told me.”

  “I’m terrified,” she whispered, watching the troopers approach.

  “You’ll be okay, Elizabeth. You’re tough.”

  “Stay with me?”

  His rugged features softened, and
his vivid blue eyes clouded with compassion. “Absolutely,” he promised. “All the way.”

  Hours later, after she’d finished the seemingly endless questioning and had a chance to shower and change into clean clothing at the school wellness center, Liz leaned back against the headrest of Michael’s van and closed her eyes.

  “Headache?” he asked.

  “Worse. I think my skull’s about to explode.” Gravel crunched under the wide tires as Michael slowed for the right turn off onto Clarke’s Purchase Road, the narrow blacktop that threaded around the edge of the marsh and cut through thick stands of oak and maple that had stood untouched for over a century. “I appreciate this,” she said.

  “Anything for a friend.”

  “This is what you did . . . when you were with the state police. Did you ever get used to it?”

  “Death?” He exhaled softly. “Never did. Never wanted to.”

  Liz opened her eyes, glad for the dark glasses that cut some of the afternoon glare, and stared out at the waves of reeds and grass that stretched toward the bay as far as the eye could see. To her right, a great blue heron rose gracefully above a glistening eddy of black water. Far overhead, a marsh hawk hovered almost motionless against a cloudless sky. “How could any human being do that to another?” She blinked back tears.

  “They can’t. Murderers aren’t human.”

  “But who would want to hurt Tracy Fleming? She was the sweetest girl. One of our full scholarship students. Shy. Everyone seemed to like her.”

  “Not everybody, apparently.”

  “Could it have been a random mugging? Something to do with drugs?”

  Liz avoided Michael’s eyes, looking instead at his broad hands on the steering wheel. Michael was over six foot two and muscular. He was tanned from the sun, and he worked out regularly. No one who passed them on the road would guess that Michael Hubbard’s legs were useless, courtesy of a drunk driver who’d skidded off the road one rainy night and hit the off-duty detective who’d stopped to help a stranded motorist.

  “I can’t believe someone murdered her in my office.”