Page 41 of Lust

“He told me to protect you. He knows what kind of men we are, yet he begged me to keep you safe. Can you believe that?”

She shakes her head, and a tear rolls down her cheek. “Why? Who do you need to keep me safe from?”

Roman closes the distance between them, his mouth ghosting across her lips, and my cock inappropriately jerks behind my boxers.

“Your father. The man who raped and murdered my sister, Sydney, that’s who. But”—he chuckles—“apparently, I got it wrong.” Then he licks the tear from her face, drops her hair and walks away.

Sydney sags against the wall, drawing deep breath after deep breath, her whole body vibrating.

“Syd,” I say, reaching for her, but she holds up a hand, stopping me.

“No, don’t touch me.” She sucks in another fortifying breath, then swoops round me and into the guest room, slamming the door closed. A second later, I hear something being pushed up against the door, and I know she’s barricaded herself inside.

Fuck!

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ROMAN

Fuck Amos Kincaid for screwing up my perfect revenge. Not only has he a daughter that is like nectar to a bee, but he’s now got me doubting everything Blake and I worked on. I can still taste her salty tear despite the bottle of beer I drank when I came to hide out in the office. And I can still smell her on my skin even though I showered. It’s a quiet kind of torture.

I flick the papers on the desk in front of me away, pissed that I can’t find anything on this so-called John Clark slash John Smith. It was obvious when Kincaid told me the name, it would be impossible to locate a single John Smith in a world where that surname is as common as a cold.

I don’t care if Kincaid isn’t the killer, the man still as to answer for the things he’s done, and I intend to start with how a man like Kincaid has a child while no one around him or in his past as Warren Burns knows of any woman he was close to.

I go back to the file in front of me, but all I can see is Sydney’s face as I pinned her to the wall. Devastation. I know what that feels like—it’s been the only real emotion I’ve felt since Annabel died. My phone pings, even though it’s almost 1 a.m. Picking it up, it’s a message from Oz.

OZ: I got a hit on a vehicle reg outside the church.

I hit call, and he answers immediately. “What have you got?” I ask.

“Yeah, hello to you too. What are you doing up at this time?”

I sigh. “Figuring out how we fucked up so bad. But give me the details.”

“We didn’t fuck up, Roman. We worked with what info we had.” When I don’t bother replying, he gives me the details of the car make and reg and the owner.

“And this car was parked outside the church at the time Kincaid was attacked?”

“Yeah, man. I went back a few days too, and it’s been there almost every day.”

“Almost every day?” I question.

“Accept when Kincaid was out of town. Which is suspicious as fuck. Unless the guy?—”

“Followed Kincaid back here,” I say, finishing his sentence for him. “Okay, go back and see where else this car has been in the last month or so. And, Oz?”

“Yes, boss,” he says expectantly.

“Find me a John Smith linked to Kincaid or Burns.”

“I’ll try.”

I slide my phone onto the desk and pick up my drink. I needed something a little stronger than beer and opened a bottle of bourbon.

I go over the victims’ names, the ones we know about, again. Something Kincaid said in the hospital comes back to me and I call the only person who can give me access to what I need.

Finding a serial rapist and killer with no clear type or identical MO every time is making our job impossibly hard. It’swhat has kept him from having the old bill on his arse and connecting the victims all this time. But with Kincaid revealing he knows the guy, I’m beginning to think this started as something personal.

---