Once Lost (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 10)
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Introduction
“A masterpiece of thriller and mystery! The author did a magnificent job developing characters with a psychological side that is so well described that we feel inside their minds, follow their fears and cheer for their success. The plot is very intelligent and will keep you entertained throughout the book. Full of twists, this book will keep you awake until the turn of the last page.” --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone) ONCE LOST is book #10 in the bestselling Riley Paige mystery series, which begins with the #1 bestseller ONCE GONE (Book #1)—a free download with over 900 five star reviews! Still reeling from her former partner Lucy’s death and from her partner Bill’s PTSD, FBI Special Agent Riley Paige does her best to try to keep herself stable and to patch together her family life. She has to decide what to about April’s boyfriend, recovering from his abusive father, and about Blaine, who is ready for their relationship to move ahead.But before she can work it out, Riley is summoned for a new case. In an idyllic suburban town in the Midwest, teenage girls are going missing—and a body has already turned up. The police are stumped, and Riley is called in to catch the killer before another girl goes missing.Making things worse is that Riley is assigned a partner she does not want—her nemesis, Special agent Roston—who had been interrogating her in Shane’s case.Even worse: Shane is on the loose, he wants revenge—and he has Riley’s family in his sights.A dark psychological thriller with heart-pounding suspense, ONCE LOST is book #10 in a riveting new series—with a beloved new character—that will leave you turning pages late into the night. Book #11 in the Riley Paige series will be available soon.
Chapter 1
PROLOGUE
Katy Philbin was giggling as she stepped carefully down the stairs,
Stop it!
she told herself.
What was so funny, anyway?
What was she doing, giggling like a little girl—not like the seventeen-year-old she actually was?
She wanted more than anything in the world to act like a serious adult.
After all,
he
was treating her like an adult. He’d been talking to her like an adult all evening long, making her feel special and respected.
He’d even been calling her Katherine instead of Katy.
She really liked it when he called her Katherine.
She also liked the adult drinks he’d been making for her all evening—“Mai Tais,” he called them, and they were so sweet that she could barely taste the alcohol.
And now she couldn’t even remember how many she’d had.
Was she drunk?
Oh, that would be awful!
she thought.
What would he think of her if she couldn’t even handle a few icy, sweet-tasting drinks?
And now she was feeling extremely light-headed.
What if she fell down these stairs?
She looked down at her feet, wondering why they weren’t moving as they should be. And why was the light so dim here?
To her embarrassment, she couldn’t even remember exactly why she was here on this flight of wooden steps that seemed to get longer by the moment.
“Where’re we going?” she asked.
Her words came out all fuzzy and sloppy but at least she’d managed to stop giggling.
“I told you,” he said in reply. “I want to show you something.”
She looked around for him. He was somewhere at the bottom of the stairs, but she couldn’t see him. Just one lamp spilled a small pool of light in a corner far away.
But that light was enough to remind her where she was.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured. “Down’n your basement.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to convince herself that it was true. “I’ll be right down.”
She forced one foot to reach for the next step.
She heard him say, “C’mon, Katy. The thing I promised to show you is over here.”
Dimly she realized …
He called me Katy.
She felt oddly disappointed, after a whole evening of being called Katherine.
“Be there in jus’ a minnit,” she said.
The slur in her words was getting worse.
And for some reason, she found that extremely funny.
She heard him chuckle.
“Are you having a good time, Katy?” he asked in a pleasant voice—a voice that she’d liked and trusted for many years.
“The besht,” she said, giggling again.
“I’m glad.”
But now the world seemed to be swimming around her. Hanging onto the railing, she sat down on the stairs.
He spoke again in a less patient voice.
“Hurry up, girl. I’m not going to stand here all day.”
Katy pulled herself back to her feet, struggling to clear her head. She didn’t like the tone of his voice now. But could she blame him for getting impatient? What was the matter with her, anyway? Why couldn’t she get down these stupid stairs?
She was finding it harder and harder to focus on where she was and what she was doing.
She lost her grip on the railing and dropped down to sit on the step.
She wondered again—how many drinks had she had, anyway?
Then she remembered.
Two.
Only two!
Of course, she hadn’t been drinking at all since that horrible night …
Not until now. But just two drinks.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe.
Is it happening again?
She told herself sternly that she was being silly.
She was safe and sound here with a man she’d trusted all her life.
And she was making a fool of herself, and the last thing she wanted to do was make a fool of herself, especially around him, when he’d treated her so nicely and served her all those drinks and …
And now everything was foggy, blurred, and dark.
And she felt a strange nausea churning inside her.
“I’m not feeling sho good,” she said.
He didn’t reply, and she couldn’t see him.
She couldn’t see anything.
“I think I’d besht—better go home now,” she said.
He still didn’t say anything.
She reached out blindly, groping around in the air.
“Help me—me get up—off the shtairs. Help me go up the shtairs.”
She heard his footsteps coming toward her.
He’s going to help me,
she thought.
So why was that churning, sick feeling getting worse by the second?
“D-d-rive me home,” she said. “Could shyoo do that for me? Please?”
His footsteps stopped.
She could feel his presence right in front of her, even if she couldn’t see him.
But why wasn’t he saying anything?
Why wasn’t he doing anything to help her?
Then she realized what that nauseous feeling actually was.
Fear.
She summoned up her last ounce of will, reached up and took hold of the railing, and pulled herself to her feet.
I have to leave,
she thought. But she was unable to say the words aloud.
Then Katy felt a heavy blow to her head.
And then she didn’t feel anything at all.
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But Tyler keeps showing up. At the hospital. At her school. In the quiet spaces, she thought were hers alone. And for the first time in years, Sofia's threat assessment comes back wrong because the most dangerous thing about Tyler Rodriguez isn't his fists. It's that he listens.
As their forbidden connection deepens, Sofia's ex-husband, Marcus, is watching, and when he files for custody of their daughter, naming Tyler as evidence of Sofia's poor judgment, everything they've carefully built begins to crack.
Tyler must choose between the only language he's ever known and the man he's desperately trying to become. Sofia must decide whether protecting her daughter means keeping her walls up or finally letting the right person through them.
The Enforcer's Redemption is a sizzling, emotionally raw forbidden romance featuring a brooding hockey enforcer haunted by grief, a fiercely independent single mother rebuilding from trauma, and a slow-burn love story set against the backdrop of professional sports, custody battles, and the hardest question of all: can broken people protect each other without breaking again?
Perfect for fans of Elle Kennedy, Devney Perry, and Elsie Silver.
Tyler Rodriguez is the most feared enforcer in professional hockey, six-foot-three of controlled aggression, paid to hurt people and too hollowed by guilt to care about the cost. When a brutal hit sends rival player Danny Martinez to the hospital, Tyler expects hate. What he doesn't expect is Danny's sister.
Sofia Martinez has spent two years rebuilding her life after escaping an abusive marriage, raising her daughter Emma alone, watching every exit, trusting no one who looks like violence. Tyler Rodriguez looks exactly like violence. She knows better than to let him in.
But Tyler keeps showing up. At the hospital. At her school. In the quiet spaces, she thought were hers alone. And for the first time in years, Sofia's threat assessment comes back wrong because the most dangerous thing about Tyler Rodriguez isn't his fists. It's that he listens.
As their forbidden connection deepens, Sofia's ex-husband, Marcus, is watching, and when he files for custody of their daughter, naming Tyler as evidence of Sofia's poor judgment, everything they've carefully built begins to crack.
Tyler must choose between the only language he's ever known and the man he's desperately trying to become. Sofia must decide whether protecting her daughter means keeping her walls up or finally letting the right person through them.
The Enforcer's Redemption is a sizzling, emotionally raw forbidden romance featuring a brooding hockey enforcer haunted by grief, a fiercely independent single mother rebuilding from trauma, and a slow-burn love story set against the backdrop of professional sports, custody battles, and the hardest question of all: can broken people protect each other without breaking again?
Perfect for fans of Elle Kennedy, Devney Perry, and Elsie Silver.
Love's Deadly Equation
1.6k Views · Ongoing · Genevieve Hale
⬥ Keegan ⬥
I was sent to her.
To watch her. To protect her. And, when the order comes… to kill her.
My name is Keegan Caffery. I’m the Carter Mafia’s best hitman. I don’t miss. I don’t fail.
At least, I didn’t use to.
I don’t know what it is about her that got to me first—her mouth, her mind, or the way she looks at me like I’m not what she should fear.
I’ve had a gun to her head since I walked into her life.
She knows it.
And she still doesn’t run.
She just watches me back like she’s studying a problem she refuses to call impossible.
She’s the one variable I can’t control.
And God help me… I don’t want to.
I have an order. I have loyalty. I have a trigger.
But every time I imagine it—
I can’t stand it.
Her or me. That’s the math.
It’s a deadly equation I don’t want to solve.
⬥ Maisie ⬥
I’m not ordinary. I stopped pretending long ago.
My name is Maisie Seo. IQ 145. Clinical genius.
Which sounds impressive until you realize what it actually means: I don’t fit anywhere people expect me to.
I see patterns everywhere. Outcomes before they happen. People like equations I’ve already solved.
It gets lonely in a world you’ve already figured out.
So I dull myself down. Smoke the edges off. Pretend, badly, to be the kind of normal that lets people stay.
Then he walked in.
I knew what he was immediately. Dangerous. Intentional. Wrong in all the right ways.
I should be afraid of him.
I keep waiting for that to kick in.
Instead, I’m fascinated.
Because for the first time in my life… I’ve found something I can’t solve.
He is my deadly equation.
I was sent to her.
To watch her. To protect her. And, when the order comes… to kill her.
My name is Keegan Caffery. I’m the Carter Mafia’s best hitman. I don’t miss. I don’t fail.
At least, I didn’t use to.
I don’t know what it is about her that got to me first—her mouth, her mind, or the way she looks at me like I’m not what she should fear.
I’ve had a gun to her head since I walked into her life.
She knows it.
And she still doesn’t run.
She just watches me back like she’s studying a problem she refuses to call impossible.
She’s the one variable I can’t control.
And God help me… I don’t want to.
I have an order. I have loyalty. I have a trigger.
But every time I imagine it—
I can’t stand it.
Her or me. That’s the math.
It’s a deadly equation I don’t want to solve.
⬥ Maisie ⬥
I’m not ordinary. I stopped pretending long ago.
My name is Maisie Seo. IQ 145. Clinical genius.
Which sounds impressive until you realize what it actually means: I don’t fit anywhere people expect me to.
I see patterns everywhere. Outcomes before they happen. People like equations I’ve already solved.
It gets lonely in a world you’ve already figured out.
So I dull myself down. Smoke the edges off. Pretend, badly, to be the kind of normal that lets people stay.
Then he walked in.
I knew what he was immediately. Dangerous. Intentional. Wrong in all the right ways.
I should be afraid of him.
I keep waiting for that to kick in.
Instead, I’m fascinated.
Because for the first time in my life… I’ve found something I can’t solve.
He is my deadly equation.
My Husband's Secretary Wore My Dress
3.9k Views · Ongoing · Rosalind Claire
"She saved me, Vivian. Not you."
Those words shattered Vivian's heart.
For three years, she endured her husband's coldness and his secretary's endless provocations.
She never knew that the woman he trusted most had stolen her identity.
Or that the man she loved had secretly loved her all along.
When the truth finally came out, it was already too late.
Vivian had divorced him.
She had disappeared with his unborn child.
And she had no intention of coming back.
Five years later, the former ballerina returned as the sole heiress of a powerful family.
Standing beside her was a little girl with eyes identical to Caden Lux's.
The billionaire who once ignored her had gone mad.
He blocked her in the dressing room, knelt before her, and even accepted the possibility that another man had taken his place.
Because losing his pride was nothing.
Losing Vivian had nearly killed him.
But after everything he had done…
Could she ever forgive the man who chose another woman over his own wife?
Those words shattered Vivian's heart.
For three years, she endured her husband's coldness and his secretary's endless provocations.
She never knew that the woman he trusted most had stolen her identity.
Or that the man she loved had secretly loved her all along.
When the truth finally came out, it was already too late.
Vivian had divorced him.
She had disappeared with his unborn child.
And she had no intention of coming back.
Five years later, the former ballerina returned as the sole heiress of a powerful family.
Standing beside her was a little girl with eyes identical to Caden Lux's.
The billionaire who once ignored her had gone mad.
He blocked her in the dressing room, knelt before her, and even accepted the possibility that another man had taken his place.
Because losing his pride was nothing.
Losing Vivian had nearly killed him.
But after everything he had done…
Could she ever forgive the man who chose another woman over his own wife?
