Page 52 of Salacious Devotion

“Okay, baby. I believe you. We will get him. If not this time, the next time. Eventually, he will make a mistake.”

“Have you looked at the armed robbery patterns all over the country for the last ten years?” she asks.

“Yep.” And I’m not surprised she has, either.

“I feel like it would take me about eight hours to track down every robbery he committed. Why hasn’t anyone done this simple research? Based on the robberies committed in Kansas and Colorado this week, he has an obvious MO.”

She’s right. And part of the reason I want to be split up from JT and Brant is because there’s a solid chance Tombeck will hit another place sometime tomorrow. It would be his third in a week, and I don’t want him to get away with it because then he’ll be in the wind until he pops up in another state in about a month.

There is no rhyme nor reason to where he might strike next, so if we miss him on this rampage, we’ll be back to square one, hunting for a needle in a haystack until he chooses his next string of hits.

“I know, Paige.”

“Then you can understand why I’m not going to sleep tonight.”

I smile to myself again. “Permission granted.” I can’t argue with her logic. I’ll force myself to sleep for about four hours so I’m sharp in the morning, but the rest of the night I’ll be digging just like her.

“You can still spank me when you get back, though.”

I chuckle. “Oh, baby, I’m totally going to spank your ass when I return. It’s been a week since my palm last made contact with your perfect ass. That’s far too long.”

I just pray that the next time I take my woman into the safe room and bend her over my spanking bench, it will be with all this stress behind us.

Chapter 19

Paige

* * *

My hand shakes as I lift my third cup of coffee to my lips. I’m probably trembling more from the sugar and creamer than the caffeine. I never drink this much coffee.

When my eyes grew bleary in the early hours, I slept for about two hours. I’ve been back at my desk for several hours. I’m frustrated. I want to find that fucker so badly. I’ve tried every damn camera within hours in every direction of his suspected location.

I have a police radio scanner picking up information from several townships, too. At this point, the best thing that could happen would be for Tombeck to rob another location. At least then, I’ll know where the fuck he is.

The man takes his time. I’m betting he stops at tourist destinations along the way. That would explain the fact that it takes him eight hours to cover about four hours of ground.

I’ve pulled up three other strings of robberies from the past year. Always three in a week. Always four or five hours from the previous one. Usually, he strikes mid-afternoon. Sometimes, mid-morning.

Listening to the scanner is as tedious as locating surveillance cameras. So many calls come in to every station. It’s like static in the background. Hard to focus on.

Suddenly, I hear the code I’ve been waiting for—two, one, one. I nearly jump out of my seat as I scoot closer to the scanner to find out where the robbery is in progress.

My phone rings. It’s Dane. I pick it up. “One step ahead of you, big guy,” I say without a greeting.

“Good. See if you can get footage anywhere in the area. JT is working on it, too. Brant and I are headed in that direction. I’m about fifteen minutes out.”

I jot down the location as soon as I hear it and swivel back to my computer to start hacking into the location’s cameras. “Be careful. I’ll call when I get a hit.” I hang up so I can focus, and it takes me a moment to realize I was rather abrupt. I didn’t even tell him how much I love him. He better fucking be alive for me to tell him after all this is over.

The robbery is taking place at a pawn shop, and there are plenty of cameras, but Tombeck is too smart to let himself end up on any of the footage.

My knee bounces up and down as I watch the police arrive, but it’s too late. Tombeck is gone. He’s always gone. He’s good. When things get messy, he kills everyone inside, but he always gets away.

When I think about all the lives that have been lost since the day I did not die in that bank, I want to vomit.

Still shaking my knee, I open the map wider. “Which direction are you going, you asshole?” I mutter to myself. I look around. He’s not likely to go backward toward his previous crimes, nor is he likely to go to a rural area.

“Come on. Come on. Think, Paige.” I pull up the previous flurry of robberies he undoubtedly committed two months ago and look at the pattern. When I develop a suspicion, I open the string before that and then the one before that.

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