"Stop. I only called you this early because if you didn't say yes, then I would need to make other calls."
"Like you thought you would have to call someone else. When have I ever said no to you? See you at three," he said before hanging up the phone and rolling over.
He pulled the covers over his head and closed his eyes. There was no fucking way she was going to rob him of his precious Sunday morning in bed.
Sloane really had a problem with letting work consume her entire life. It was a holiday weekend, and she was at the office, obsessing over some video feed or fucked-up photos. She truly got attached to the work in a way no one else did.
He'd spent the last few years tempting her away from the computer screen, away from her dark thoughts, just long enough to enjoy something, anything. But she couldn't see all the light in the world because she chose to submerge herself in darkness.
Marc couldn't completely ignore the things that came through his lab, and some days he did come home and drink a couple fingers of whiskey and go right to bed. But those days were few and far between. That was Sloane's everyday. If anyone in the entire world deserved a break from the violence and hatred of the human race, it was Sloane.
She would do anything for a friend—hell, she would do anything for someone she didn't know. She spent every single one of her waking hours in the service of others because she wanted to. It was a damned shame he couldn't make her see that.
He tossed and turned, unable to fall back asleep. "Fuck it," he said to the empty room as he climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
He slipped on his glasses as he shuffled to the bathroom and examined himself as he brushed his teeth. Did he really need to shave? No. He ran some water, spitting the toothpaste into the sink before dipping his hands under the brisk stream and running them through his hair. Good enough. It didn't make a difference to Sloane what he looked like, anyway.
Half an hour later, he pulled into the empty parking garage and made his way toward the elevators. Of course, no one else was crazy enough to come into work today. They were all out on boats soaking up the last few warm days of summer before the fall hit and kids went back to school.
He navigated through the maze of hallways in the county building to the end that held the forensics and computer labs. See? It was fate that brought them together.
"Hey, Sloane! It's just Marc," he called out as he approached her door, knowing she was jumpy as fuck on a normal day, let alone in an empty office building. Some people in their line of work thought they were invincible because they'd seen it all—Sloane had just grown more vulnerable.
When she didn't respond, he called out again. "Sugar, I'm coming for you!" He turned the last corner and saw her sitting in a darkened office, her face partially illuminated by the glow of her computer monitor. She was hunched over a cup of coffee, and the white cord of her earbuds hung down along her cheek.
He swung wide in front of her desk, talking the whole time, hoping not to startle her. "I hope you have a whole pot of that sludge brewing because you robbed me of my last precious hours of beauty sleep, and the least you could do is provide the caffeine." He approached her desk from behind her monitor, and she still hadn't acknowledged him. "I might even demand some sugar with my coffee too." He lowered his hand over her screen. "Any chance you might…"
“Fuck!” She jumped and tore her headphones from her ears. Splashes of deep brown coffee covered her hands and desk.
"Damn, Marc. What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me?"
She was shaking and running her hands through her hair repeatedly, twisting it into a rope and pulling it over her shoulder then shaking it loose and performing the whole ritual all over again.
"I tried my hardest not to. I've been calling to you since I got off the elevator. I was talking to you the whole time, trying not to sneak up on you."
"Fuck, my music must have been really loud." She shook her hands. "Damn it, I can't stop shaking, and my heart is racing. I need to get back to work," she said, shooting him a threatening glare.
He reached out and grabbed one of her hands. "I know of a few things that could calm you down. Take your mind off of the scare and your work," he said, stepping closer and lowering his voice. "Though I don't think it will stop your heart from racing, sugar."
She didn't pull away. She placed a palm on his chest. Her eyes met his, dark and unreadable. A solid one, two, three, four seconds passed.
Is this the time she says yes? She took a deep breath and licked her lips. His cock jumped, and he tightened his grip on her hand. He’d throw her against any of these glass walls and fuck her until she was screaming his name, cursing for waiting this long to let him take her. The building may appear empty now, but with her cries echoing down the hallway, every spare personnel would come to watch him fuck Sloane until she was his.
Sloane’s hand patted lightly on his chest, pushing him away. "Hard pass. And that line will never work for you unless you're trying to seduce someone with a Fabio fantasy."
She started to turn away, but he refused to let her go that easily and pulled her back to him. "What's your fantasy, Sloane?"
"I don't have time for make-believe. There's too much shit in the real world."
"That's exactly why you need to escape, sugar."
She scoffed. "Please, you have nowhere to start. Everything you want to do to me, I've seen done time and time again to sobbing women. Where's the fun in that?"
"Shit, Sloane, the fun comes from you saying yes."
CHAPTER THREE
______________
SLOANE
She glared into Marc's eyes. Her cheeks burned, and she felt an overwhelming desire to slap him like some overdramatic southern belle. His playful banter had suddenly left the realm of fantasy, and she'd let their conversation get too real, way too quickly. And now here they were, in what felt like an actual argument over why Sloane wouldn't sleep with him, their faces just inches from each other, his hand still gripping her wrist, and she was fighting every urge to tell him to fuck off. But somehow it was that iron grip on her skin that slowed her down. The instant he'd snapped his arm and dragged her back to him, her breath had caught in her throat. She was just surprised, right? The tension that built in her body was anger. And the fire on her cheeks definitely wasn't in response to the heat in her core.
Marc's eyes darted back and forth between her own like he was trying to see through her. She'd been standing there dumbfounded for too long, and she still didn't know what to do. Everything she'd said was true. Whenever she ended up rolling around with someone, images of jumpy video flashed through her mind of hundreds of women who'd been through the exact same action involuntarily. She couldn't get out of her damn head to enjoy a TV show, let alone detach enough to enjoy sex after watching sex crimes all day.
But Marc’s fingers dug into her skin, and her brain screamed. He can't touch you like this! Meanwhile, heat surged through her. She knew her cheeks were flushed, and her stomach fluttered. None of this should be happening—she should be telling him off. But his mouth was just inches from hers, and her body was begging her to lean forward. Say yes.
Her cell phone buzzed and jumped across the desk, breaking the spell that Marc had cast over her. He dropped her hand as she stepped away and picked up her phone.
"I'm making more coffee," Marc said to the floor as he walked out of the room. Her eyes followed his entire trek to the lounge through the glass walls of the computer lab, a glass fish tank in the center of this wing of the building.
He ran his hands through his hair, shoved them into his pockets, and stared at his shoes as he turned the corner. Just as he was going to disappear from sight, he looked up and met her eyes. Instantly, his demeanor changed; he straightened his shoulders, stuck out his broad chest—how did a lab tech get such a build anyway?—and stared back at her with an aggressive fire in his eyes. Gone was the playful Marc she'd known for years. Before her was the predator she'd just b
arely caught a glimpse of minutes before.
Her stomach dropped, and she couldn't seem to take in a full breath. She pressed her thighs together. A slow, subtle grin spread across his face as he strode into the break room, refusing to leave her gaze until the last possible moment, that sly smile glued to his lips.
Fuck. Did he somehow find out her fantasy? And did he know he'd unearthed this dark secret she didn't even know she had? If he did, it was definitely not one she wanted to explore. She faced predators every day. They were not fun; they were not sexy… They were also not Marc…
Her phone buzzed in her hand again, making her jump and almost fling it across the room. Shit. She'd completely forgotten that she was holding the damned thing, let alone that she'd picked it up for a reason.
Unlocking the screen, she read through text messages from Taylor. Taylor had completely lost her mind over that poem she'd found and was obsessing over the tiniest details "hidden" between the lines. Sloane rolled her eyes. Flipping out over severed fingers? Reasonable. Third-grade poetry from a murder mystery weekend? Completely irrational.
She set her phone down on the desk and focused her attention back to the feed on her computer monitor. After checking the time stamp, she opened up a second window, rewound the video about six minutes, and watched the time she'd missed while talking with Marc. Odds were absolutely nothing had happened, but one never knew when the perpetrator would make his fatal mistake.
Her eyes shifted between the two videos. They were basically identical; the camera was focused on a man huddled in the corner of the room—prison cell. She had seen him before. He'd been in this same position for days. At first, she’d scrutinized the grainy video obsessively, trying to see if he was even breathing, but eventually, she noticed slight shifts in his position—just a change in the angle of his head or his feet, but enough to know that he was alive. She just needed to know that the fucker hadn't left him alone in a room to die. Not that she saw any obvious reason that he would have died. No blood from an injury. No vomit from poisoning. Maybe hypothermia? That would be a no-mess, quiet way to die. Possibly infection? But there would have been a fever and physical signs of distress.
The live feed switched to another room. An elderly, white man sat in the corner, sipping a cup of water and talking to himself. What the hell tied all these people together? Probably nothing. It was hard enough to kidnap one person without getting caught, let alone eight.
If the perp knew what he was doing, he would have chosen victims of convenience. Randomizing his victims would mean one less thing that could lead the police back to a single perpetrator. Sloane had given rough descriptions to the surrounding areas' police departments to see if they could find matches to the missing persons. The only problem was that adults had the right to go missing if they wanted to. Lakeside County had a solid reputation for disregarding loved ones if there was no sign of struggle and no foul play. But absolutely nothing indicated that these victims were from her county or even her country.
CHAPTER FOUR
______________
MARC
Marc moved around the dim break room, filling the coffeepot with water and measuring out grounds. He'd noticed Sloane's reaction to his sudden break from decorum. He'd seen her shift uncomfortably when he'd let his desire show. All this time he'd been teasing and playful, keeping up a light banter with her. When really what she wanted—needed—was for him show her the heat that lay underneath all his sweet "sugars."
He could fucking do that for her. She just needed to say yes. That was going to be the hard part. Sloane protected herself with the Great Wall of China. He’d spent years trying to find a crack to gently slide in; what she wanted was someone to conquer her. He wanted to claim every inch of her. Break through every one of her walls.
He poured two cups of coffee—both black—and made his way back to the computer lab. He set them both down on her desk then dragged a chair away from another desk, turned it around, and straddled the seat, resting his forearms along the backrest.
"What are you doing?" Sloane asked.
He shrugged. "Whatever you're doing. At least until Taylor gets here. What are you working on?"
She looked at him then back to her computer screen before exhaling loudly and rolling her chair to the side to make room for him at her desk. "Someone else’s CI contacted us with the case. Mentioned my name in the tip. And it's…"
"Why?"
"Why, what?" Sloane didn't take her eyes off the computer screen.
"Why would a random CI know your name?”
She shrugged. "We must have worked together in the past. I just so happened to not have an active case, so I took it. I think if I were working on something else, I would have worked with the informant until we got connected.” She gestured toward her screens. "Then passed it along to someone else. Some informants are just twitchy and weird. They're usually doing something illegal themselves. So I honestly don't put too much thought into their paranoia."
"Huh, okay." He just dealt with inanimate objects, so he'd never stopped to consider the idiosyncrasies of small-time criminals working with law enforcement. "So what's the case?"
"Some guy is saying he's going to broadcast killing a dozen people. There's no time line or countdown. I think he's seeing how much money he can make first, and when interest wanes, he'll deliver. While he gathers all of his victims, to keep people on the hook, he's got this twenty-four-hour video feed of the victims."
"Fuck, Sloane." He let out a low whistle.
The two of them were just sitting there, watching an elderly, white man, whose days were numbered, arguing with someone outside of the view of the camera—probably his sadistic kidnapper—and they were completely helpless. Yeah, that could kill one's libido.
"I got the case on Friday. I've been watching the video and running through every piece of code I can find for the last two and a half days. This guy is good—I can't find anything on him. No location. No signature. He hasn't shown his face. The building is nondescript. I don't even know what time of day it is. I don't even know what language they’re fucking speaking. So this might not even be in the U.S.
“I've seen eight people total, and I've put their info through NamUs, though I don't expect any hits so soon. Though who knows how long he's had these people. I've sent out the information to surrounding law enforcement agencies. But I don't even know if they are local. They could be anywhere."
Marc's mouth fell open. They went to so many seminars and saw department shrinks about how to separate yourself from the work and the victims. Clearly, Sloane didn't pay attention to any of those messages. "So you're just sitting here on a Sunday watching people suffer, hoping you'll see the one clue that cracks the case?"
"Pretty much."
"Can you move the camera and see who he's talking to?" Marc asked, pointing to the man on the screen.
She shook her head. "He's not talking to anyone. I've never seen anyone else in the rooms. I don't think the perp would be in there with the camera on."
"If he was talking to himself, I don't think that he'd be pausing for answers. Can you move the camera?"
"There’s no one else in the room, but I can try." Sloane opened up three more windows on her desktop, and her fingers flew across the keyboard, typing furiously.
"Shit, you don't have to beat the computer into submission. It’ll still obey you if you ask nicely."
"Shhh!" Sloane scolded without stopping her work.
The door to the lab opened, and Detective Craig came flying in holding two plastic baggies. "Hey, guys! I come with creepy presents. These are for you," she said, handing one to Marc. "And this one is for Sloane." She held the other bag out in front of Sloane's face.
"Desk," Sloane said. "Two minutes."
Taylor furrowed her brows and looked at Marc.
"She's in the zone," he said. "What’s the story behind this?" he asked, holding up his baggie.
"Long story short. Murder mystery game. Creepy poem. Bumps i
n the night. And those—she pointed to the contents of Marc's bag—"on our breakfast table."
"Severed thumbs, right?" Marc asked.
"I couldn't tell if they were right or left thumbs. But yes. Thumbs and a USB drive."
Marc paused and cocked his head. She was joking, right? He opened his mouth to clarify but was interrupted by Sloane pounding excitedly on her desk.
"I got you, motherfucker!" she yelled triumphantly.
"Seriously?" He leapt out of his chair.
"I'm in. That man is still talking to the hidden corner." She started beating the keys on her keyboard again. "Just have to move the camera now." The image on the screen started to pan painfully slowly to the left, exposing more of the decrepit room.
He held his breath, waiting to see if he was right, if there was actually another person in that room. Just as a set of feet came into the shot, the legs jumped and moved out of the frame. A dark blur obscured the whole view, the camera fell to the floor, and the feed went black.
"Oh no!" Sloane gasped, frozen in place. "What if I just ruined everything?"
"You just learned that he was there. In the same room with that man, just hanging out talking to him. That tells you something," he said, hoping to reassure her.
"Yes, I learned that someone who can abduct a forty-year-old man feels comfortable around a ninety-year-old. Big fucking surprise."
"I never thought I'd say this," he said, "but why don't you do some more work to get your mind off of work? I'm going to start processing the thumbprints. Why don't you check out the drive? We'll get Taylor some answers and call it a night."
Sloane opened her mouth, but he cut her off. "Don't argue; that's the plan."
She snapped her mouth shut and bit her bottom lip as if her teeth were the only things keeping her objections inside her mouth. Her teeth raked across her bottom lip as she exhaled loudly and snatched the plastic bag off her desk and got to work.
Hot Pursuit- the Complete Collection Page 6