(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(60)

He turns his face toward the camera, and it glitches as he makes eye contact—well, as his sunglasses do. There’s a halo for half a second, and then the whole picture goes black. If it were in color I suspect it might be red.

The coffee finishes brewing as I rewind it again.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Angie lifts her face, sputtering and moaning. “I wasn’t asleep. I was resting my eyes.” She rubs her eyes and lays her face back down on Rory’s desk.

I grab the coffee and hurry back to the picture. I rewind and watch three more times, but there’s nothing. He’s wearing a generic pair of pants and a hoodie. He looks like a criminal if you ask me, but I know that’s the first choice cops go for when they disguise themselves.

I sit back and watch him walk. Of course he’s familiar to me, I’ve spent months in my head with him. I watch it over and over, knowing it’s him. He knows about the cameras; he knows about using a laser pointer against a camera.

He doesn’t go anywhere else in the store, and he pays with cash. I scan his order of the bed and mattress, raising my eyebrows when I see the purchase was shipped to the fucking townhouse in downtown Seattle. The one the old man owned—the dead old man, who also owned the cabin where the girls were tortured.

Damn!

Someone is using that house still. I close up the computer, remove the thumb drives, and put the papers in my bag, before waking Angie with a nudge. She gets up from Rory’s desk and stumbles out of the office and down the corridor with me guiding her. I will have to go back to Seattle in the morning. And I’m making Angie come along.

I nod at the guards as we leave and head for the car parked out front. She falls asleep in the car, while I plot.





18. Surprise




I chew my licorice, watching the house. My cell phone rings again, another angry call from Dash. How do I explain I know what’s going on, that even though I’m not supposed to be doing the job, I can’t let it go? All it does is confirm his hatred for my work. It proves he’s right and that I can’t separate from a file.

I text Angie: Cover for me if Dash calls, huh?

Her response is immediate.

I would if a huge and spicy doctor wasn’t sitting here eyeballing my every move from our little apartment here in Seattle . . .

I wince. “I’ll tell him where I am, don’t bother,” I type. But that isn’t as easy as texting Angie. I watch the house, a brownstone townhouse in an older but wealthy downtown area in Seattle. I can’t believe he flew here. It’s my eighth flight to Seattle in three weeks. Thank God for our plane. Everything is easy and at my disposal, so stalking this house from my rental car is simple. Far simpler than explaining to my fiancé why I can’t let go.

I text the address I am at and the color of my rental car.

We need to talk!

His message makes my insides clench but not enough to stop me from texting: Be astute, please!

I scowl at the word astute, not confident I am correct in what it means. I had meant to write cautious but my crappy spelling got it autocorrected to astute. I send one more message: And by that I mean careful to not be seen!

Thank you, Jane, I am completely aware of what ASTUTE means!

I slump, dropping the phone on the console, and sit back to watch the house again.

The passenger door opens far faster than it should, but he has hate driving him on when he sits in the seat next to me. I can tell by the way he’s breathing. “Hello, love!”

I jump when Rory gets in. “You scared the piss out of me! Why are you here too? Did they fly you down? Did we find something?”

“Too?” He grins widely. “I think the question is what in the bloody hell are you doing here? The cops over there watching the house phoned you in. I was already here, never made it back to DC yet. I was meant to go home a couple of days ago, but the boss man wanted me to ensure everyone is being wrangled and none of the uniforms or Feds are going to leak any information.” He chuckles and sits back. “So what has made you and Angie circle back here? Angie never told me she was coming back.”

“Nothing. Women’s intuition is all. We decided to take a quick trip and see if a couple of stupid leads turned out to be anything.” I scowl at him, not sure he hasn’t blabbed to the police. He always gets chatty with them, whereas I stay behind. He does seem to learn more from them, but I feel like the relationship is reciprocated. Someone leaked that the girl was found; someone let him kill all those other girls. And I can’t rule out Rory. He might have let it slip by accident.

“Women’s intuition?” He wrinkles his nose. “I think it’s something more. I think you found something and you aren’t sharing it.” His eyes flash a little hurt. “Ya know Angie doesn’t keep secrets from me.”