Page 23 of Wicked Sin

We geton the last flight out that night. Taylor sleeps the whole way.

I mainline coffee and settle in for some serious reading. Apparently, I don’t know enough about the Dashford Reid family.

By the time we land in Washington, dawn has broken, and I have more questions than answers—but the answers I do have disturb me.

Taylor’s father is a long-time friend of Gerome Lively, a disgraced billionaire charged a few years ago with multiple sex trafficking charges by the FBI in Florida. After her sister Hailey was kidnapped by some of his associates, his other crimes came to light.

But the guy got off with a slap on the wrist, thanks to a federal prosecutor who now has a high-ranking position in the administration of President Victor Best—another life-long friend of the family’s.

President Best and Amelia Dashford Reid, Taylor’s mother, were once close.

Who the fuck knows, maybe they still are.

And I got all of that from a combination of police reports and Google searches.

What the fuck does Taylor know?

This is way beyond your pay grade.

And I thought she was just being a rich bitch.

When we land, I pick up a rental car and head to a discount hotel that doesn’t blink when I ask to rent a room for the day and pay cash.

“What are we doing?” Taylor asks once we’re alone.

“I need to check in with my team back in L.A., and it’s three in the morning there. I’m going to sleep for a couple of hours, and I suggest you do the same. This might be the last rest either of us gets for the next twenty-four hours.” I grab a pillow and blanket from the closet. “You can have the bed.”

“Where are you—” Her mouth drops open when I shove the pillow against the door and wedge myself into place against it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Tell me you aren’t a flight risk.”

“I’m not,” she protests hotly.

Too hotly.

I shrug. “Then I’m just being paranoid, and you’ll have to deal. Night, Princess. Get some rest.”

She’s watchingCNN when I wake up. Her father is on the screen, and her expression doesn’t change at all as the newscaster drones on and on about the list of charges, the speculation that more will be coming, and perhaps some may even be leveled at her mother.

When the next story comes on, her only reaction is to sigh and toss the controller aside—at which point she realizes I’m awake and watching her.

“Feel better, Detective?”

She sounds bitter.

So not completely unaffected by the criminal disintegration of her family’s financial security, then.

“Yeah. And you can call me Luke while we’re here. Keep the whole cop thing on the quiet.” I stand up and roll my shoulders, working out the kinks from sleeping on the floor. A quick glance at my watch tells me I got three hours of sleep. It’s almost time to wake up McBride and Singh—if they got any sleep at all. “Are you hungry?”

“No.” She grabs her bag and disappears without another word into the bathroom.

I send a text to McBride, who calls me instead of texting back. “What’s up, you maverick?”

“I’m holed up in a shitty motel room with someone who has never seen this much polyester in her life. How do you think it’s going? What do you have for me?”

“We pulled the surveillance cameras at her office building, and in the general vicinity. Put a couple of young guys on scrolling through that detail, but so far, nothing. Not sure if the guy got lucky or if he knew where the cameras were pointed—and where they weren’t. Either way, no visual on anyone planting the bomb.”

I frown. It would have been a lucky break if we’d found something that way, but a shame that we didn’t. “Okay.”

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