Read Touching Evil for Free Online

anyone hurt me again.  I believe you.  That’s what this around the clock protection detail has been all about, hasn’t it?  And it’s been successful.  You and the rest of the team are working yourselves into the ground toward that end.  The least I can do is make myself useful.”
    Useful.  The word was masterful understatement.  No one looking at the petite blonde in the filmy pink robe would ever imagine the mind housed behind those cultured looks.  Dr. Sophia Channing was a leading international expert in forensic psychology.  She trained under the legendary Louis Frein of FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.  In the course of her career she’d interviewed the most notorious serial killers in captivity and her services were highly sought after by law enforcement around the country.  It was in her professional capacity that she’d signed on to develop the criminal profile when they were hunting Vance.
    But it wasn’t Dr. Sophia Channing, the professional that concerned Cam now.  It was Sophie, the woman.  
    “I really am okay….” she began.  But the look he gave her then had her voice tapering off.
    “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.  You’re anything but fine.”  He bit the words out, incapable of finesse or diplomacy.  He’d have to find those traits again in an hour or so when he briefed the rest of the team, but they were beyond him now.  “You told me once that you could tell when I’m lying.  The same goes.  Last I noticed you weren’t wearing a cape and tights, so drop the superwoman act.  Vance beat the hell out of you.  The only reason you weren’t raped is because you convinced him to give you time to write a new profile on him.  But thoughts of what he did to his other victims were in your mind the entire time.  They had to be.  It isn’t your outward injuries that concern me, it’s what’s going on in here.”  He tapped her temple lightly and she flinched a little.  
    “As it happens, I do have a cape.”  He snorted, and looked away.  “It’s pink.  Studded with rhinestones along the edge, elegant but not too flashy.”
    Dammit, he wasn’t going to smile, although she was clearly trying to lighten the tension.  “As I recall, you have a purse to match.”
    “Well, it’s all about accessorizing.”
    Against his will, a corner of his mouth quirked.  She reached over then, laid her hand gently on his arm and Cam froze.  His gaze fell to where she was touching him.  Her flesh was pale.  Smooth.  The fingernails painted a pastel color he’d never be able to name.   A few short days ago, after they’d found her escaping with Vance’s other victim along a lonely gravel road in rural Polk county, her nails had been bloody and broken from the efforts of breaking out of the cell the man had kept her in.  Sometime since they’d been repaired, as if the damage had never occurred.  She’d have him believe that she was recovering from all her injuries that easily.  He wasn’t buying it.
    Rivers of heat traced on his skin beneath her fingers and he mentally damned his response.  Their affair had been short and spectacularly hot, but those twelve days had been just long enough for Sophie Channing to lodge herself under his skin, take up residence in the corners of his mind.  And he needed to distance himself from the personal to retain his objectivity.
    As if reading his mind, she said, “Since this case is on-going, I can be a valuable resource.”  When he raised his brows, she gave his arm a quick pinch.  “False modesty aside, you need another offender profile and then there’s Rhonda Klaussen to be interviewed.  She might be able to shed insight on Vance and the accomplice.”
    “She claims she doesn’t know anything about an accomplice.”
    When Sophie just looked at him, his jaw snapped shut.  That was what Klaussen had told him , but Sophie was adept at drawing out information from criminals and witnesses alike that law enforcement