He had already called him once this week. If Sam was asleep, he needed the rest, and Jason resisted the longing to hear his voice for a few minutes. They had come painfully close to the alternative too many times to take it lightly. Still, it was better than the alternative. Long-distance relationships were never easy, and this one had more challenges than most. Before that it had been eight weeks since they’d been in the same room together. They’d met for a spontaneous (on Jason’s part) and very brief Memorial Day get-together. Tomorrow they’d be together for the first time in three weeks. He’d be wearing the gold-wire glasses Jason found peculiarly sexy and that distant, meditative look as he read over the day’s bad news.

At this time of night it would be unbuttoned, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Broad shoulders and hard, taut muscles beneath one of those severely tailored white shirts. He could picture Sam, the glow from his computer monitor highlighting his craggy, not-quite-handsome face. Though Sam was halfway across the country, the thought of him comforted Jason. Even if by some chance Behavior Analysis Unit Chief Sam Kennedy was asleep, he’d take Jason’s call. Less so when he was away from home sweet home, which was ironic.įor a minute or two Special Agent Jason West of the FBI’s Art Crime Team lay motionless, eyes probing the gloom of his Bozwin Montana hotel room, absently listening to-classifying-the nearby ice machine dumping its load, the gunning of a flooded engine in the parking lot, the clicking over of one luminous number in the clock on the nightstand. Not that he was afraid all the time-most days he was too busy to really think about whether he was in danger, but sometimes at night, yes. Meanwhile, someone in the shadows is biding his time… Jason is determined to clear his gr andfather’s name, even if that means breaking a few rules and regulations himself-putting him on a collision course with romantic partner BAU Chief Sam Kennedy. Learning that his legendary grandfather might have turned a blind eye to American GIs “liberating” priceless art treasures at the end of the war is more than disturbing. In fact, Grandpa Harley was a large part of what inspired Jason to join the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander Emerson Harley wasn’t just a World War II hero, he was the grandfather Jason grew up idolizing. But his latest case implicates one of the original Monuments Men in the theft and perhaps destruction of part of the world’s cultural heritage-a lost painting by Vermeer.

Despite having attracted the attention of a dangerous stalker, Special Agent Jason West is doing his best to keep his mind on his job and off his own troubles.

The Magician Murders by Josh Lanyon