Page 40 of Temptation
“Your biological father was the killer. The infamous Last Breath Killer.” She was far too conscious of the breath that she exhaled. “He kidnapped you. He buried you. He wanted to kill the person you were becoming so that you’d be reborn. He made you face the darkness. He wanted it to swallow you up, just the way that darkness had consumed him. He wanted you to become just like him.”
“No.” Adamant. Then, harder, “No.”
Yes. She hated telling him the truth this way. In the too bright conference room. While she was cuffed. While he glared at her and his hands tightened into fists. “I am currently researching the adult children of serial killers.”
“I am not?—”
“The idea is to see why certain individuals might take up the darker traits of their parents. Why some don’t.” Don’t think about Cody. Or the way it felt when his hands closed around you as you stood next to your mother’s dead body and you screamed and screamed and?—
“Don’t be scared, Sloane. We’re going to be together forever.” Cody’s voice. Would he ever stop haunting her?
Her heart raced.
“Why some don’t become fucking serial killers?” Preston snarled. “Is that what you’re saying? You think I’m going to lose my mind and start killing people?”
She stared straight at him. “Actually, I don’t. I don’t think that at all.”
“What?”
“He tried to make you like him. He put you through hell. But I’ve researched you.”
His jaw tightened.
“You didn’t cross the line. You aren’t taking innocent people and hurting them.”
His breath heaved out. “He wasn’t my father. You can’t know?—”
Her five minutes had to be nearly up, so Sloane spoke quickly. “Your biological mother was Mary Jean Addams. She ran away from home when she was seventeen years old because she’d fallen in love with a boy named Mitchell Donahue. Mitchell was three years older than her. A college student. From a rich family. Well educated. And Mary Jean, oh, but she was sure it was love.”
He seemed to have turned to stone.
“You’ve looked for your birth parents. I know you did. You submitted your DNA to online resources, and that’s where I found you. I have connections that others don’t.” She would not admit to her friendship with a certain hacker. Not while she was already in the custody of the sheriff’s department. Not like she wanted things to go from bad to worse.
Oh, wait, could they get worse? Probably. Better not tempt fate. “You linked to the DNA that was left at one of the Last Breath Killer’s crime scenes.”
He shook his head. Then dipped his head low.
“You did,” she insisted. “And I…talked to Mary Jean.”
His head whipped up. “She’s alive?”
OhGodOhGod. “She was sick.”
“Was.” He swallowed. “You said…was.” A nod. “She’s gone.”
His pain had flashed on his face, then vanished almost instantly. If Sloane hadn’t been watching him so closely, she might have missed it. “Mary Jean confirmed that she gave birth to you. That she gave you up.”
“Why?”
She tried to get out of the chair and reach him. The urge to comfort Preston was overwhelming. But the cuff bit into her skin. It jerked her back.
He frowned. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Her free hand stretched toward him. Her fingertips just skimmed the side of his crisp, white dress shirt. Because, sure, he looked fabulous. Expensive, black pants, gleaming shoes, dress shirt.
Meanwhile, she had to look like death itself.
But…still alive. Still kicking. Not dead. Not today.
