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Informationen zum Autor Jennifer Ashley, USA Today bestselling author and winner of RWA’s RITA award, writes as Allyson James and Jennifer Ashley. She lives in the Southwest with her husband and cats and spends most of her time in the wonderful world of her stories. Klappentext Heartbroken from the death of her mate three years ago, Shifter Cassidy Warden is tracking down his mysterious killer-one who could bring danger to all Shifters. But Detective Diego Escobar rekindles the flames of her mating desire. And once the fires begin, nothing and no one can put them out... Heights. Damn it, why does it have to be heights? Diego Escobar scanned the steel beams of the unfinished skyscraper against a gray morning sky, and acid seared his stomach. Heights had never bothered him until two years ago, when five meth-heads had hung him over the penthouse balcony of a thirty-story hotel and threatened to drop him. His partner, Jobe, a damn good cop, had put his weapon on the balcony floor and raised his hands to save Diego’s life. The men had pulled Diego to safety and then casually shot them both. Diego had survived; Jobe hadn’t. Diego’s rage and grief had manifested into an obsessive fear of heights. Now, going up even three floors in a glass elevator could give him cold sweats. “Way the hell up there?” he asked Rogers, the uniform cop. “Yes, sir.” Shit. “Hooper’s pretty sure it’s not human,” Rogers said. “He says it moves too fast, jumps too far. But he hasn’t got a visual yet.” Not human meant Shifter. This was getting better and better. “Hooper’s up there alone?” “Jemez is with him. They think they have the Shifter cornered on the fifty-first level.” The fifty-first level? “Tell me you’re fucking kidding me.” “No, sir. There’s an elevator. We got the electric company to turn on the power.” Diego looked at the rusty doors Rogers indicated, then up, up, and up through the grid of beams into empty space. He could see nothing but the gray dawn sky between the crisscross of girders. His mouth went dry. This cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere—which was to have been an apartment complex, hotel, office tower, and shopping center—had been under construction for years. The project had started to great fanfare, designed to draw tourists and locals away from the heavily trafficked Strip. But construction slowed, and so many investors pulled out that building had ground to a halt. Now the unfinished skyscraper sat like a rusting blot on the empty desert. Tracking Shifters wasn’t Diego’s department. Diego was a detective in vice. He’d responded to the call for help with a trespasser because he’d been heading to work and his route took him right by the construction site. Diego figured he’d help Rogers chase down the miscreant and drive on in. Now Rogers wanted Diego to jaunt to the fifty-first level, where there weren’t any floors, for crying out loud, and chase a suspect who might be a Shifter. Shifters were dangerous—people who could become animals. Or, maybe animals who became people. The jury was still out. In any case, they’d been classified as too dangerous to live with humans, rounded up into Shiftertowns, and made to wear Collars that regulated their violent tendencies. Diego had heard that regular guns didn’t always bring them down, Shifters having amazing metabolisms. Shifter Division used tranquilizers when they needed to shoot a Shifter, but Diego was fresh out of those. Rogers, rotund and near retirement, watched Diego with a bland expression, making it clear he had no intention of going up after the Shifter himself. A high-pitched scream rang down from on high. It was a woman’s scream—Maria Jemez—followed by a man’s bellow of surprise and pain. Then, silence. “Damn it.” Diego ran for the elevator. “Stay down here, call Shifter Division, and get more backup...
