title: Don't Go
author: Bateman, Beverley
description: Washoe County Sheriff’s Office Detective, and a member of Crimes Against Children, Samantha Brennan is a dedicated to finding pedophiles who stalk their victims online.
  Raped as a child Sam has always blamed her parents for not protecting her. Even with counseling, she’s been unable to move past her experience. The emotional scars left her hating to be physically touched. It's also prevented her from forming any relationships with men, until now. She’s a strong, dedicated detective whose specialty is the internet chatrooms, preventing young girls from becoming potential rape victims. She works to prevent them from going through the same trauma she’s still working her way through.
  Reno Police Department Lieutenant Devlin O’Reilly is a loose canon who works alone.
  Devlin is a renegade cop who prefers to work undercover and catch bad guys. A gun in the perp’s mouth gives him a real rush. For several years he worked in the missing children division but his attitude irritated parents, because of his honesty. He also burned out because they seldom found the children alive. Off duty he likes to drink and pick up surgically enhanced, brainless bimbos, so he’s always in control. A relationship to him is a long weekend. This cavalier attitude toward women results from a bad marriage when he first became a cop. The woman lied and said she was pregnant. After the marriage, she said she lost the baby. When she realized that a cop didn’t make that much money, she cheated on Devlin, sometimes with other cops in his division. This humiliated him in front of his peers. When she found a sugar daddy she walked out on him. Devlin blamed himself for his marriage failure. Humiliated and angry, he vowed never to let any woman do that to him again. He wants respect from his buddies and recognition for the work he does and the perps he takes off the street. What he doesn’t realize is his cavalier, work alone, attitude works against this. It prevents him from advancing his career.
  Forced to work together when a fourteen year old girl leaves home to meet a ‘boy’ from a chatroom, Sam and Devlin have to overcome many of their personal challenges. They both know that the girl is not going to find a peer who understands her, but a man who will terrorize and rape her.
  As Sam and Devlin gather information, sift and sort through it, they come to the realization that this is not the first time this pedophile has lured a young girl to meet him. Devlin pulls statistics from five years back. They find a pattern that shows this internet predator has been doing this for many years and in different locations. He finds his victims online, meets them and probably kills them. Their bodies are never found. He’s not just a pedophile but a serial killer.
  Sam and Devlin work to figure out how to outsmart this pedophile and serial killer, but he’s always one step ahead of them as they work his profile, trying to find him before he finds, rapes and possibly kills his next victim. Devlin hasn’t had time to take a drink since the case started and his skills are becoming sharper; and so is his interest in Sam. He finds he is working well with her. She works hard and shares information easily.
  Sam is learning to trust Devlin. She’s becoming more comfortable with being touched, thank to him. She’s also more open to other people and physical contact. Sam wonders if the professional relationship with Devlin might become something more.
  They follow the killers trail to Sacramento and work with the local police. Just when they think they have the pedophile--it turns out the killer has set up another man to take the fall. He’s still one step ahead of them and there’s another girl in danger.