Hour of Need (Scarlet Falls #1)(13)

He dropped onto the sofa in the adjoining small family room. Picking up the remote, he turned on the TV. He flipped through channels until he came to a hockey game but barely saw the screen. Lee and Kate’s deaths seemed so senseless and surreal. Tomorrow the kids would be home. How was he going to manage a baby he’d never met and a grieving six-year-old he hadn’t seen in ten months?





Chapter Five


Donnie crouched behind the driver’s seat of his van and watched the big man and dog go into the Barrett house down the street. He lowered his binoculars. Who was that?

Fuck.

He did not need this shit. Yanking off his knit cap, he rubbed the stubble on his scalp with a brisk scrubbing motion. He couldn’t get lucky with this job. Three nights he’d attempted to get into the house, and all three times he’d been spotted. That bitch next door kept calling the cops. She seriously needed to be taught a lesson. With some hard-core punishment, he could teach her how to be submissive. There were so many different ways he could violate her body.

A memory intruded in his fantasy as he remembered his own lessons. He could still feel the concrete under his palms and knees and the blows to his face and body as he was beaten until he’d begged for it to be over. The humiliation of not only being forced to submit to the ultimate physical violation, but to have pleaded for it just to end the torture, had crushed his soul. Blood had dripped into his eyes and mouth. He was so f*cked up now that the metallic taste or smell of it still gave him an instant hard-on.

When this job was over, he’d release his frustrations. He turned his attention back to the house he was watching. This whole job was backward. The killing was supposed to be the hard part, and the recovery easy. Instead, the murder had been almost effortless—beyond effortless—euphoric.

There had been so much blood spreading out across the icy street he’d needed to exorcise a few demons with his new girlfriend. Good thing she dug pain as much as he enjoyed inflicting it.

He chewed on a ragged cuticle that tasted like hamburger grease. The longer he sat here, the greater his chances of getting caught. Although, according to the news, the cops had nothing. Sure, they pretended they were embroiled in an “ongoing investigation,” but he knew that meant they didn’t have squat. His fingerprints and DNA were in the system. If he’d left any personal trace evidence at the crime scene, his mug shot would have been on the news. He didn’t shave from head to foot as a fashion statement.

He was clean on the murders, but his client was holding back the balance of payment until the whole job was complete. He couldn’t sit out here forever. The neighbor was bound to notice him. He copied the license plate number of the sedan in the driveway. Probably a rental, but he’d check. Then he could try to hack into the rental company’s website and get a name on the big bastard that was holding up his job.

He should have stuck with cyber crime. It didn’t require him sitting out in a cold van, freezing his nuts off. But after eighteen months in prison, violence called to him. Rage built up inside him, the internal pressure growing until his very skin grew itchy and tight. Killing the Barretts had released the tension. Hurting people was a need. He might as well get paid to do it.

Tugging the hat back on his head, he blew into his cupped fists. His breath fogged in front of him. Fucking March was still ball-shrinking cold. But running the van’s engine wasn’t an option. Nothing sucked worse than surveillance in the winter. But he didn’t have many options. He had to get into that house. And soon. He’d already blown through his retainer, and the client was freaking out.

At some point the Barrett place had to be empty.

If not, he was going to have to come up with another way to get what he needed. His gaze drifted to the bitch’s house next door, and he wondered how much she knew.

What would it take to make her tell him everything?





Chapter Six


Ellie’s second cup of coffee cooled on her desk as Detective McNamara exited her boss’s office. The detective had been at Lee and Kate’s house on Friday night. After the children had left, he’d asked her questions about Lee and Kate. The cop gave her a polite nod as he went out the frosted glass front door. Ellie swallowed the grief rising in her throat. On her lunch hour, she’d call Nan to find out if the children were home. She wondered how Grant was holding up. Even grief-stricken, the major seemed . . . solid, and she wasn’t referring to his impressive physique.

The cop hadn’t been out the door for more than two minutes when shouts blasted through her boss’s closed door.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re running my firm into the ground,” Roger Peyton Sr. yelled. “None of this ever happened when I sat at that desk. Do I need to take over?”

Murmurs followed as Roger Peyton Jr. tried to placate his father, who held on to the bulk of the partnership equity with greedy, Scrooge-like fists. Five more minutes of alternating yelling and mumbling followed before the door opened again and a remarkably spry eighty-year-old bustled out. The cane in his grip looked more like a potential weapon than a necessity. Ellie fixed her gaze firmly on her computer screen. Peyton associated her with his son. When he was angry at Roger, his irritation bubbled over to include her.

He turned a bony, hawkish face toward Ellie. “Good morning, Miss Ross.”

The deep gray of his eyes always surprised her. She half expected them to glow red.