Dead by Morning Read Online Free PDF

saw everything in life as a competition. But during their working partnership on the Midnight Killer case, he had come to realize several things about Maleah. She hated to come in second to anyone, but especially to any man. The fact he had reached the gates outside the Powells’ Douglas Lake retreat moments before she had seemed completely insignificant to him, but probably not to Maleah. Sometimes her competitive spirit drove him nuts.
    “You’ve never had to struggle for anything in your entire spoiled rotten rich life,” she had once accused him. “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch because you have an inflated ego. You overestimate your self-worth.”
    “And I believe you underestimate yours,” he’d told her.
    His comment had ended that conversation once and for all. Didn’t she realize that he could see past all the pseudo-confidence she tried so hard to project? He suspected that deep inside Maleah Perdue a small, helpless, vulnerable child warned her not to give up a single ounce of the hard-won control she had over her life.
    Derek stopped his silver Corvette at the enormous iron gates flanked by two massive stone arches decorated with large bronze griffins. After he used the voiceactivated entry code, the gates opened and he drove onto the long, tree-lined lane leading to the house overlooking the lake. Maleah followed at least twenty feet behind him. He parked in front of the house, got out, and waited for her as she pulled in behind him.
    The Powell home was large, approximately ten thousand square feet, but actually rather modest for a man worth billions. Despite the mansion’s size, there was nothing ostentatious about either the house itself or the décor. It had been built and decorated to accommodate the man who owned the property. Since his marriage to Nicole Baxter a few years ago, Griff had allowed his wife to make any changes she wanted. But almost as if she didn’t quite think of Griffin’s Rest as her home, Nic had made few alterations.
    Derek snorted. Good God, why did he always do that? Why did his brain instantly delve into other people’s psyche and try to figure out what made them tick? Instinct, pure and simple. His instinct dictated that he profile everyone.
    Maleah emerged from her white SUV, slung the straps of her small leather bag over her shoulder and approached him. If she took more time with her appearance, she could be strikingly beautiful. She had all the ingredients, from pretty face to shapely body. Shapely? Get real, Lawrence. The woman is built like a brick shithouse and you know it.
    “Waiting on me?” she asked.
    “Yeah. What took you so long?”
    She glared at him, giving him an eat-dirt-and-die look. “I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’m totally pissed at you.”
    “What did I do now?”
    “You drove like a bat out of hell, that’s what you did.”
    He stared at her, totally puzzled by her comment. “You lost me somewhere there, Blondie. I have no idea—”
    “I got a speeding ticket, thanks to you.”
    He grinned. “How is it my fault that you got a ticket?”
    Glowering angrily at him, she clenched her jaw and huffed. “Never mind. Forget I mentioned it. Let’s go inside and—”
    Before she could finish her sentence, the front door opened. Sanders glanced from Maleah to Derek. “Please, come in. Griffin and Nicole are waiting for you.”
    Sanders had been Griffin Powell’s right-hand man for as long as Derek had known either of them. Griff and Sanders’s association went back a good twenty years. Rumor had it that they had met during the ten missing years of Griff’s life, when he had disappeared off the face of the earth shortly after graduating from the University of Tennessee nearly two decades ago.
    A couple of inches short of six feet, the bald, dark-eyed, brown-skinned Sanders possessed the bearing of a much larger man. His stance, his attitude, and his appearance practically screamed military background. His slightly accented English