Page 53 of Stealing Sloane

“Don’t even think about it. Lizzie will make sure there’s no evidence of you there, and one of my warlock relatives can whisk you away to Timbuktu if they have to. Besides, when they find him burned to a crisp, they’ll know it was me.”

She let out a frustrated cry. “Why would you do this? This doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” He closed the distance between them, his gaze never leaving hers. “Don’t you know why?” He reached out and cupped her cheek with his fingers. “Why I would doanythingfor you? Why I would burn the entire world for you?”

A maelstrom of emotions rushed through her, and all the air squeezed out of her lungs. His gaze was intense, with his jaw set in determination and those green eyes smoldering with an emotion that couldn’t be contained. It was so honest, yet, fear crept inside her and if it weren’t for the flames around them,her first instinct would have been to run away. Away from the emotions, away from him.

“Jacob, we can’t?—”

“Shh.” He gently placed a finger on her lips. “We don’t have to do this now. You don’t have to say anything, and I won’t rush you. Besides, we still have a few hours drive until Boston.”

Her anger returned. “I told you, I’m not going to let you kill Ronan.”

“And how are you going to stop me? I don’t even have to let you come with me. I could leave you trapped here and go to Boston myself. The only reason I’m bringing you is so you can see him burn to death yourself.”

“Goddammit!” She pushed him away with an indignant cry. “I don’t want you to kill him. You’re making this impossible.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “That’s the point. Unless you can think of an alternative.”

“I’m not going to sit in a safe house for the next few years, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Okay then. How about this: Lizzie said it’s almost impossible to find any electronic proof of his involvement with your parents’ murder, so that got me thinking. If Boston is as powerful as you said, then there was to be some kind of record somewhere. Not electronically, but on paper? Even the old school Mafia had ledgers to keep track of their activities. Do you think he’d write them down somewhere? A book or a diary or?—”

His words sparked something in her memory.

The black book.

The one he was always scribbling in. He was never without it, and she recalled that time she was hiding in his office and saw him place an old notebook into his safe and replace it with a new one.

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but there may be one place he kept records.” She told him about the black books. “Hemust have piles of them in that safe. But surely, he wouldn’t straight up write ‘I ordered the murder of this person’ in a diary?”

“No, but …” He thought for a moment. “It’s a starting point. See, whenever we begin an investigation, it’s sometimes almost harder when you have too much information because you don’t know how it can prove your case. But when you have a starting point, then you can follow the trail. We had this case where our suspect wrote down dates and times of his appointments. Seems innocuous right? But, we were able to track those dates and times to the crimes he committed, using his location, security cameras, even a stop at a nearby fast-food drive was able to tie him to a crime. But see, we wouldn’t have known where to begin without those written records.”

“I … I suppose it’s worth a try.” There was always the belladonna she still had in her backpack. If the black books turned out to be a dud, she could still go after Ronan.

“Can you get into the safe?”

She searched her memories, trying to recall the make and model of the safe. “I think so. It might take me a while, but with enough time, I can break it.”

“All right. But if we do this, you have to promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“That you won’t run from me again, not without talking to me first.”

“I—” That look on his face returned, one that made her heart soar and her feet itch to run at the same time.

“If you do, I’ll get to Ronan first.”

“That’s blackmail,” she accused.

He grinned at her. “Yep.”

“Arghh!” He was impossible. “All right, fine.”

“Good.” Before she could protest, he snaked an arm around her, and pulled her close, giving her another of his breath-stealing kisses. “Now”—he snapped his fingers and the flames around them disappeared—“we should get on the road so we can be in Boston by nightfall.”

Chapter 12

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