Reading Online Novel

Undercover Hunter(102)



                He tried to keep one step ahead of the worst, by acting before the hammering in his head began, and usually he managed. He was proud of his self-control, and while he’d acted more frequently when he left here, it remained that even through the pounding need he recognized the danger in moving too swiftly. He’d heighten the search, and worse he might slip somehow and give himself away.

                He still had too much to do to allow that. So many kids had to be cleaned before it was too late for them. But he also wanted that woman.

                She walked through his mind almost constantly now, limned in a bright aura of color that indicated she was chosen. Most people just looked dull to him, but his chosen ones always gleamed with the beauty of what they would become through him. Perfect angels.

                He looked down at his hands and saw they were shaking. The pile driver in his head narrowed his vision. Sitting with his boys wasn’t going to help, and he’d better get down from this loft and back to the house before he couldn’t see at all.

                Once his vision left him, all he’d be able to do was think about his next move. Who was already a settled question. How was the one he needed to answer.

                He climbed down the ladder carefully, reminding himself to pause to lock the barn. When he got back to the house, he had tunnel vision, a narrow area that he could see. Just enough to get to the medicine chest and take something for his headache. Some of those strong pills he’d found here when he came to bury his mother two years ago. Putting her in the ground had been one of the most satisfying yet saddest events of his life.

                He was past trying to sort through those mixed feelings. He had more important matters to worry about.

                Like DeeJay. He could already envision her wrapped up and hanging among his boys, like a mother. Yes, she would be a mother to them, unlike the other women he’d taken.

                A mother. How fitting. Boys needed a mother to control them, even his purified ones.

                As for her husband...he needed to plan that out, too. If both of them disappeared, not a soul would look for them. Everyone would just assume they’d finished their job.

                But he must not make a mistake. His mother had taught him that and the lesson had served him well.

                He closed his eyes as the last of his vision faded, and then, as the medicine began to make him drowsy, he forgot about everything.

                * * *

                Elsewhere and much later, Cade and DeeJay felt drowsy, too. Having parsed all their too-slender evidence yet again, until they felt brain-fried, they had tumbled into bed together for some glorious lovemaking.

                Now they lay side by side, holding hands beneath the covers, replete and trying not to think about the looming threat.

                Cade stirred. “You think about the future much?”

                DeeJay rolled onto her side, still holding his hand. “How so?”

                “Well, we’re a pair of workaholics, that’s obvious. I wondered if you had any long-term goals besides becoming the director of the FBI.”

                That surprised a tired laugh out of her. “Really?”

                “Really.” He paused, and when she didn’t say anything, he volunteered an answer. “I told you about my hobbies. I like camping, hiking, skiing. You?”

                The sad thing was she’d never looked beyond surviving the next day, solving the next case. “I read.” That much was at least true. “And work out.”