Page 89 of Temptation
There had been too many grieving families. Families who’d stared at her with their desolate eyes and didn’t understand why she couldn’t do more. Why she couldn’t always bring their loved ones back alive.
She’d wanted to escape that world. To find a wide-open space where there were no murders. Where the worst crimes tended to be some teenager shoplifting.
But no place was completely safe. No town could shut out the monsters entirely.
As she stood in the county morgue, her gaze on the zipped up remains in front of her, Debra knew the truth. A monster hunted in her town. Her home. One of the very worst monsters out there. The kind of monster that hid behind a smile. Someone who seemed like a perfect neighbor. Someone who could hide the evil inside, just as that long-ago school teacher had hidden his true self with a kind grin.
Bridget Russell was dead. She’d been alive when she was put in the ground. The broken, bloody fingernails on Bridget’s hands told that story. Bridget had fought to live.
But she had not escaped.
Her death is on me. It happened on my watch. In my town. Debra was supposed to protect the people in her town. She was supposed to do whatever it took to keep them safe.
So that’s what she would do. Her hand reached out toward the black body bag. No, to the woman in that bag.
A faint scuff sounded behind her. Like a shoe, rubbing over the tiled floor. Had the coroner come back already? She began to turn.
Something hard slammed into the side of her head.
Chapter Twenty-One
Wrong time.
After he’d just had sex with Sloane—her first time to actually have sex—that was not the moment when he should confess to killing his father.
Technically, there was probably never a good time to do that.
But here the fuck they were.
Sloane didn’t leap from the bed. Didn’t jerk away from his touch. Didn’t call him a sick freak. All expected responses. All justified responses.
Nope.
She snuggled closer. “I would have done the same.”
What?
“He kidnapped you. He tortured you by trapping you in a coffin. He’d already killed all those other people…what were you supposed to do? Let him keep hunting? Let him keep attacking? He wanted you to be exactly like him, but that wasn’t going to happen.”
“It did happen, angel.” He should leave the bed. He shouldn’t have ever touched her in the first place.
But I have never wanted someone more than I want her.
“Do you want to tell me the story?” she asked. “Or do you want me to tell you what I know happened?”
She’d said…what I know. Not…what I believe. Or even what I suspect. “You can’t know what happened.” She hadn’t been there. No one had been there. Just him. Just him and the blood and the death and…
“You got out of the grave. The grave your biological father had buried you in. Even as you crawled out, the cops were searching for you. Combing those woods. He’d called your parents, just like he always did with his victims. He called and gave coordinates but…because it was you, because he wanted you to make it out of the ground, he called them sooner than he had the others. Didn’t wait twenty-four hours.”
No, he’d only waited a few hours after the abduction before contacting Preston’s family.
“He was still there when you dug yourself out. Still there as the cops closed in. He had to be there because he was watching you.”
Preston could feel the dirt beneath his fingers. Taste it on his lips. He hated that taste. He hated?—
She kissed him.
He tasted her. Not the dirt. Not the fear. Not the rage.
