Page 15 of Craving Sin (Touch of Evil 13)

While Beth focused on Theo, Sylvie had accessed her phone. With Jacob’s picture on the screen, she turned the device so Beth could get a better look.

“Have you ever seen this man?”

“On television,” Beth replied bluntly as she tucked her order pad into the pocket of her black apron. “We don’t get a lot of strangers in these parts. They usually drive straight through from the pier to Blackpeak. I’ll be back with your breakfasts.”

The older gentleman from the counter met Beth’s gaze as they passed one another. He muttered something about seeing her tomorrow before walking out the door, activating the bell overhead.

“Looks like we stirred the hornet’s nest.”

“I have a feeling Mekhi Hale will walk into this diner before we finish our breakfasts,” Theo said with a satisfied smile as he monitored the older gentleman retrieve a flip phone from his pocket. It didn’t take long for him to press a number onto the keypad and hold the phone to his ear as he walked to his truck. “Everyone in here knows Mekhi used to hire a crew for his fishing charters. He won’t want to be the topic of conversation among the townsfolk.”

Sylvie stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her tea until she detected vibrations from Theo’s phone, which was currently face down on the table next to his silverware. She observed him closely as he read the text and braced herself for another round of bad news. She wasn’t so sure the team could take much more.

“Bit figured out why Kate was in Alaska.” Theo grimaced as he pushed his coffee away. “A message was discovered in her private email account requesting that she take a couple of personal days from work to meet us here. The sender’s email address was off by one letter, but she must not have noticed the subtle difference.”

“Who did she think the email was from, Theo?”

“Brook.” Theo set his phone back down on the table with a grimace. “Kate believed the email came from Brook.”

8

Brooklyn Sloane

June 2025

Wednesday — 7:58 am

“Ican get a large portable monitor delivered here by this evening.”

Brook shook her head in response to Bit’s offer, having just taken a drink of her coffee. She should have waited for the contents to cool off a bit. Instead, she had practically inhaled a quarter of the amount.

Sleep had been relatively elusive.

The fact that four hours wasn’t enough sleep was evidence of how far she had come in dealing with the emotional trauma of having a brother who just so happened to be a serial killer. There was a time when all she needed was two hours of sleep.

“I’m hoping we won’t need to do that after my conversation with Nathaniel,” Brook replied as she set her coffee back down on the room service tray. She grimaced at the bagels and fruit bowl next to the black carafe. Unfortunately, she was going to need to eat something before hiking up a mountainside. “While having access to our murder board on a larger screen would be beneficial, it would be a pointless expense if our theory pans out.”

Brook really needed their theory to be on point.

Mitch Norona had something to do with Lusa Kalluk’s disappearance, and Jacob was somehow using that knowledge to his advantage. It was the only theory that made sense.

Why, then, had Kate been brutally murdered in Jacob’s signature style?

“Are you okay, Boss?”

Brook hadn’t realized she was rubbing her chest while staring at the cinnamon raisin bagel. Her heartburn had reared its ugly head. She would forgo eating breakfast. A protein bar later would suffice.

“Yes.” Brook turned away from the room service cart and made her way over to the table. She stood behind Bit while observing Jacob’s room. While there was a free breakfast to be had downstairs, it went unspoken that Jacob wouldn’t be leaving his room for anything other than leading the federal authorities to Lusa Kalluk’s remains. “Did you alert Theo and Sylvie about Kate’s rental car being discovered on the side of the road?”

Brook hated to think of Kate flying to Alaska, driven by her belief that she was joining the investigation. Bit discovered that Kate had responded to the email, to which someone had then replied, instructing her not to reveal any details to her supervisory agent. She hadn’t reached out to Brook to confirm any of the details by phone, either.

One simple phone call could have saved her life.

“I did,” Bit replied before pointing toward his laptop, ignoring the monitor that displayed Nathaniel strolling down the hallway toward their room. “Unfortunately, if you look here, you’ll see that whoever sent the email bounced the signal through at least six different relays—Tor nodes, VPN tunnels, and even what looks like a compromised loT device in Singapore.”

Brook barely glanced at Bit’s laptop off to the side, which had numerous lines of code she couldn’t understand. Some appeared to be IP addresses, and others looked like proxy chains. That was about all she could recognize on the screen. She would leave the technological aspect of the investigation to the pro.

“See?” Bit directed, missing the fact that his previous explanation had gone over her head. “The exit node that I just hit is in Iceland, but that will probably change in the next few minutes. I’ll keep trying, but unless the guy screwed up somewhere along the way, there is a chance we might never figure out where the email originated from, Boss.”

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