Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
“What about you? You’re exposing yourself to this thing.” Leo walks through the room, gathering her hair ties, earbuds, coat, and purse.
“Risks of the job. But we wear PPE to minimize exposure.” She takes his face in her hands, halting his movements. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
“Holding you to that, love.” He helps her get ready in silent concentration, handling her gently as if she’s flammable.
He’s the one who’s close to combustion. His tenderness disguises the Molotov cocktail blazing beneath his skin.
“You’re not going alone.” Monty snags a pair of sweatpants from the floor and hauls them on. “You’ll take a security team.”
She nods, knowing it’s the only way we’ll let her leave.
“This isn’t going to wrap up in a day. I’ll be there for a while, working long shifts and taking naps when I can. Promise me you’ll all stay here.” She looks each of us in the eye. “Don’t go into town and risk getting sick.”
Monty stares at her, silent for a moment before nodding stiffly. “We’ll stay. But you need to promise to stay safe, too.”
“I promise.” She kisses him then Leo. Then turns to me.
“I’ll walk you out.” I shove my feet into Monty’s sliders.
With a small smile, she heads to the door.
“Frankie.” Monty grabs her phone where she left it on the bed. “Forgetting something?”
“Shit.” She spins back and takes it from him.
“This is a new phone,” he says.
“It is?” She stares at it, eyebrows pinched. “Looks the same.”
“Same model. After you left, I spent a lot of time thinking. How does the stalker know so much about you? It’s like they can hear your conversations and see where you are.”
Her eyes widen.
“I’ve been monitoring your phone for five months.” He rests his hands on his hips. “I scan it for bugs and dig for hidden software constantly. But I’m not a forensics analyst. So while you were gone, I bought a new phone.” He nods at the one in her hand.
“And you sent my other one to your forensics team?”
He nods.
“When?” she asks.
“The day after you returned. I swapped them out and shipped off the old one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was waiting until the analysis came back. Didn’t want to worry you. But you’re leaving with it and need to know. I manually installed everything on that one and might’ve missed something. I didn’t want you to freak out if I didn’t set it up correctly.”
“This one has the GPS tracker, too?”
“Of course.” He strokes his thumb across her cheekbone. “Come back to us, darling.”
“I will.”
I follow her out.
A perpetual drizzle mists our rainforest island in a fine sheen, clinging to my skin.
Our island.
Monty has spent the past three days pounding the concept of all in into our heads. Everything that belonged to him is now ours.
Frankie is ours.
I walk her to her cruiser, my heart heavy. She’s going back into danger, and I fucking hate it.
Up ahead, the guards are already assembled on the dock.
“Your shoe is untied.” I stop her with a hand on her back.
As she bends at the waist to lace the strings, I can’t help it. I crouch behind her and shove my nose between her legs.
“Kody.” She whisper-scolds through a laugh, only encouraging me to linger longer.
Inhaling deeply, I scent her through the fabric. It’s not enough to hold me over, but my time is up. As she starts to stand, I sink my teeth into her muscled backside, biting hard enough to bruise.
She yelps, spinning toward me.
I rise to my full height and pull her close. The cherry aroma of her hair, the warmth of her body, everything about her is my oxygen, my nutrients, my lifeblood. “Come back to us.”
“I will.” She kisses me, a lingering, tender kiss that ends too soon.
She boards her boat with her bodyguards and blows me a kiss before steering it away and fading into the gloom.
I ache with loss. It feels wrong to let her go, but I have to trust her, trust she’ll return to us.
An hour later, I sit with my brothers in the den, surrounded by maps, sticky notes, and diagrams. After Frankie’s last session with Doyle, Monty turned this space into a war room. Clues, evidence, suspects, timelines—all the information we have is displayed on the wall in a complex diagram to help us focus and problem-solve.
“We don’t have enough clues.” Monty scans the wall of sticky notes. “The stalker has been too quiet.”
I lower onto the couch beside him. “Every message and morbid gift to Frankie puts this nutjob at risk of getting caught.”
“Why send anything at all?” Leo rubs his head.
“Desire for control and power,” Monty says. “By making us afraid of him, he can savor the perceived power he holds over us.”
“He?” I raise my brows.
“Most serial killers are male,” Monty argues.
“Okay, well, maybe these gifts are also a need for recognition.” My throat works around painful memories. “Denver craved acknowledgment for all the good work he did. He believed he committed all those crimes for us and wanted recognition for it.”