The Perfect Murder by Kat Martin
New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin is back with her most thrilling novel yet in the Maximum Security series—The Perfect Murder. Fans of Sandra Brown, Linda Howard and Julie Garwood will fall in love with The Max.
The eldest of the three wealthy Garrett brothers, Reese Garrett is in the middle of a major purchase for his multimillion-dollar oil and gas company, Garrett Resources. The Poseidon offshore drilling platform venture will greatly enhance the company’s value.
But when Reese is on a trip out to see the rig, his helicopter crashes, leaving him hospitalized and two men dead. It’s discovered the chopper was sabotaged, and Reese is determined to find out who’s behind the crash—and whether he was the intended target. Then, when his lover, Kenzie, is accused of her ex-husband’s murder—a man with a vested interest in the Poseidon deal—clues start pointing to a connection that puts Reese, Kenzie and her young son in the sights of a killer.
From the Texas heat to the Louisiana bayous, Reese and his brothers must track down the truth before the body count gets any higher.
“I’ve got a few things I need to add to my schedule,” he said. “Derek Stiles called yesterday. Looks like we’re having more problems with the rig.”
“You’ll get them sorted.” She flashed him a smile. “You always do.”
But there was one thing he was having more and more trouble handling and it was standing right in front of him.
Reese clenched his jaw and went to work.
He was sitting at his desk two hours later when his intercom buzzed.
“It’s Frank Milburn,” Kenzie said. “He has news about the crash.”
Milburn was in charge of the NTSB investigation. “Put him through.” Reese pressed the speaker button and settled back in his chair.
“I know you’ve been anxious to hear from us,” Frank said, a small man with close-cropped brown hair. “I wish we could have completed the investigation sooner, but these things take time.”
“I’m aware. So what have you found out?”
“The last of the reports came in. We’d been waiting for some metal structural tests. Combined with the rest of the information we’ve assembled, the reports revealed what we had recently begun to suspect but until today weren’t able to confirm.”
“Go on.”
“Sometime before the flight took off the morning of the crash, someone tampered with the engine. A piece of metal in one of the gears was filed just enough to cause it to grind itself to pieces. The flight control mechanism disconnected, rendering the helo uncontrollable. To put it in layman’s terms, the helicopter was sabotaged.”
Tension tightened Reese’s shoulders. He didn’t ask Milburn if he was sure. The NTSB team had been investigating the crash for weeks. Two men were dead. The authorities had to be extremely thorough. The question now was who had done it? And why?
“Have you found out who’s responsible?” Reese asked.
“Unfortunately, not yet. As we’ve known from the start and you were informed, pilot error contributed heavily to the event. There should have been room for the chopper to safely auto-rotate down, but the pilot misjudged his position. He came in too close to the building, one of blades clipped the corner, and the helicopter was torn apart.”
“So what, exactly, do you know?”
“As of today, we know a criminal act was committed that ended up causing the deaths of two men. As of this morning, the FBI will be taking over the investigation. They’ll be actively pursuing whoever is responsible for the crime, now a double murder.”
Murder. The news sent a chill down Reese’s spine. He leaned over his desk, shut off the speaker, and picked up the phone. “Whatever you find out, I’ll expect you to keep me in the loop.”
“I’ll do my best,” Milburn said. “It’ll be more difficult once the gears of the FBI begin to turn.”
He understood how a federal agency worked. Lots of interlocking pieces and parts that inevitably slowed things down. The call ended, but Reese had no intention of leaving the matter in the hands of some governmental bureaucracy, not even the FBI. The feds would have to start over, look at the crash from an entirely different angle. It could take weeks, even months.
Two men were dead and he could have been the third. He thought of the accidents that had been plaguing the Poseidon. The helo crash hadn’t been accidental. The chopper was meant to go down.
Was it possible he had been the target?
Currently living outside Missoula, Montana, Kat Martin is the New York Times bestselling author of over seventy-five Historical and Contemporary Romantic Suspense novels. Before she started writing, Kat was a real estate broker. During that time, she met her husband, L. J. Martin, an author of Westerns and high-action Thrillers. Kat is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara where she majored in Anthropology and also studied History. She spends her winters in Arizona.
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