Page 58 of The Sinner's Touch

And immediately wished she hadn’t.

It was the girl, the one who looked like her.

She looked away, gagging. What he’d done to her…her mind shied away from it.

“Kade!”

The word was barely a whisper even though she thought she’d shouted at the top of her lungs. That poor girl. Was this what he planned for her? Was that why he sent her this email? Would she end up in this position? Burned, cut, and God only knew what else?

Her hand shook so badly the phone tumbled from her fingers and hit the floor. He sent her a blueprint for what was going to happen to her.

The shower stopped.

“Kade!”

Again, she barely managed more than a whisper, that poor girl’s mutilated body all she could see. The image of herselfcovered in burns, her flesh cut and bruised, played like a movie in her head. What kind of person could do something like this to another human being? Bile rose in her throat, and she gagged, running for the en suite bathroom. She barely made the toilet before it came spewing out. God, why had she opened that email?

“Angel?”

She saw Kade standing in the doorway in just a pair of jeans, his hair still wet.

“What’s wrong?” Concern filled his eyes as he wet a washcloth and bathed her face. “I heard you running for the bathroom. Did you eat something that upset your stomach?”

“No,” she whispered. “My phone.”

“Your phone?”

She pointed in the general direction of the bedroom as another wave of nausea struck. Kade frowned but went out and picked the phone up off the floor before returning to her. “What’s your password?”

“Zero four twenty-two.”

“Matthew’s birthday.”

He remembered the nugget’s birthday and the name she’d wanted to give him? She didn’t have time to respond to that tidbit of information before he started cussing. He’d seen the photos. Thankfully, she’d only looked at the first one. The rest were probably worse.

“Are you okay by yourself for a minute?” His face was hard, angry, but it wasn’t directed at her. She nodded, and he all but ran from the room.

Angel sat up and leaned against the cool surface of the bathtub. A headache started right behind her eyes. She sat there for what felt like forever, staring blindly at the white tile flooring, that poor girl’s bloody body playing like a broken record in hermind. The image wouldn’t go away. He took her because she looked like Angel. How was that even fair?

Something had to be done before this sick son of a bitch did this to another girl because he couldn’t get at her.

She blinked, and Kade was kneeling in front of her, all full of concern and sympathy. “Hey, baby. You okay?”

“No.” How could she be okay as long as the sicko was out there torturing women who looked like her?

“I have Jeremy working on it. He’s going to try to trace the email, figure out who sent it and from where. It’s going to be okay.”

“No, Kade, it’s not. That poor girl…all because she looked like me. We have to stop this.”

“We’re working on it.”

“No. That’s not good enough. He wants me, so put me out there, let him try to take me. Set up a sting at the bar, give him the chance to make his move in a controlled situation. Nobody else should have to suffer because of me.”

“Hell fucking no.” Concerned Kade morphed into mad as hell Kade. “You’re out of your damn mind if you think I’m letting you get anywhere near that sick bastard.”

“How would you feel if he was out there taking people who looked like you?” She stared in him straight in his eyes. “You’d go do something about it.”

“Because I’m trained to do something about it, first as a police officer, and then as an FBI agent. Catching these guys is what I do.”

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