Page 102 of Temptation
Did he think that big reveal was going to crack Sloane? Preston almost laughed at him. He would have laughed, if they hadn’t been talking about his biological father.
His father’s murder.
Gage cocked his head to the right as he assessed Preston. “Did she tell you about Mitchell Donahue?”
Oh, right. Now he understood. This FBI agent thought that the news about the body would make Sloane and Preston break apart. Preston quirked a brow. “She did. Sloane believes that he was the Last Breath Killer. She found his body and gave me closure.” A shrug. “What else is there to know?”
“Sloane and Lily research the offspring of serial killers.” Again, Gage delivered that line as if he’d just dropped a bombshell. Boom.
Preston shrugged. “Good for them.”
Gage lurched toward him. “Are you understanding what I am saying? Mitchell Donahue was the Last Breath Killer. You were put up for adoption. You were?—”
Preston sighed. His stare shifted to Dominic. The guy should follow Sloane’s advice and lead the Q and A so they could all stop wasting time. “Are there any leads at all on this case? Does the FBI have anything to offer?”
Dominic quirked a brow. “I’m currently searching through missing persons in the area. Like Sloane, I don’t believe our perp just decided to randomly grab you one day after leading a completely law-abiding life. That’s not how it works. People don’t wake up, kiss their partners in the morning, and think, Hey, I’ll bury someone alive today. Just not how shit is done.”
“Dominic has…” Sloane sighed. “A bit of a twisted sense of humor.”
“It’s my coping mechanism. You see torture and death and murder day in and day out, and you’ll need something to help you cope, too.” Dominic rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I could cope by being a total dick to everyone I meet, putting up a shield and not letting anyone get close, but my new partner already has a lock on that situation so, yeah, I’ll stick with the dark humor, thanks.”
Gage glared at him. “I am not a total dick.”
Debatable.
Dominic thrust back his shoulders. “I’ll just keep embracing my dark side.” His stare sharpened on Preston. “I suspect you can understand that. If you don’t take control of the darkness, it will take control of you.”
Of the two agents, Preston realized that Dominic was by far the more dangerous one.
“Anyway, back to the missing persons.” Dominic stopped rubbing his clean-shaven jaw. “Unfortunately, we are looking at an area that is an exceedingly popular hiking destination. When you have miles and miles and miles of wilderness and you have plenty of people who like exploring that wilderness, it’s hard to say exactly who is missing. Who might be dead. Some people head out and hike alone, preferring solitude. Some of those people are never seen again. The bitter truth is that people disappear all the time in the wilderness. They get lost. They run out of supplies. They die. If you happen to have a predator also hunting in the wilderness, it would be too easy for him to help one of those hikers vanish. Our perp could have practiced his trade on several victims, and we would not have known. They could have just gone down as missing hikers. End of story.”
Preston could feel tension through him. “Debra would know about all the missing hikers.”
“Yes, Sheriff Tooni and her deputies should know about them. They should have helped concerned friends and family members fill out reports on missing individuals.” Dominic nodded. “I suppose Sheriff Tooni could have even been targeted by the killer for that very reason. Because she might know something she should not. Perhaps he wanted to stop her from making a connection that could come back and bite him in the ass. Ass bites are the worst, don’t you agree?”
“He didn’t bury her.” Sloane began to pace. “If he wanted the sheriff eliminated, he would have buried her. Putting her in a body storage drawer is not the way to get rid of her.”
“It is,” Dominic chimed in to say, “if you just need a temporary spot to hide her. Maybe our perp was planning to come back and retrieve her, but the deputy found her first. Murder interrupted, if you will.”
I need to check on Debra. Preston had told Sloane that Debra always watched out for him. She had. She’d been at his side when he buried both of his parents. She’d been there, waiting, every single time that he came back to town over the years. She baked him cookies on Christmas. He always spent Christmas in this town, and she always came to see him on Christmas morning. Brought her truly horrible cookies—not that he’d ever told her they were horrible—but, still…
She tried to do something nice for him.
And…
She’d been there when he and Noble got into a big slug fest years ago. They’d both been bloody and beaten, and, instead of tossing both their asses into jail, she’d erased the entire incident from the record books at the station.
Because she’d been paid to watch out for him, as he’d told Sloane?
Or because…maybe because Debra Tooni had the misfortune of actually caring about him?
“Debra Tooni is important to you.” Gage drew his attention once more. “One of the few close friends that you have in this world.”
Ah, so someone else has been researching me, too. That had been clear as soon as Gage said Mitchell Donahue and he waited for Preston to crumble.
As if that shit would ever happen.
“Tell me…” Gage folded his arms over his chest. “Did Bridget Russell happen to be important to you, too?”
