Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I should’ve done something that night to stop the Bondage Killer.
It doesn’t make sense to feel this way, but I do.
You’re going to nail him. She sounds so certain. She’s always believed in me.
For some reason, that makes me want to cry even more.
I somehow make my way to my desk and sink into my chair. The room is busy with people, but only Burgess notices me. He frowns in my general direction but doesn’t say anything before going back to his work.
I bow my head like I’m thinking and try to get a hold of myself. My psychic senses are screaming, trying to tell me something, so I dampen them a moment. I feel like I’m moving through water.
Breathe. Just breathe. The small, encouraging voice in my head sounds like Rex. It helps.
I’m going to nail him. My mentor is right. This time, the thought doesn’t make me want to cry. It makes me want to work.
But then I look at my desk and realize what someone has left for me.
There’s a worn book in front of me with a familiar image on the cover—a pattern of birds in flight. I haven’t seen it in years and yet I recognize it right away. It’s my journal from years ago. I know without looking that it’s filled with my childish scrawl.
I remember my mother giving it to me, explaining the origins of my name.
Swallow. After she gave me the journal, I learned more about the birds. The knowledge stayed with me, lurking in my subconscious, so when it was time to choose a submissive moniker, I chose that word. Little bird.
My Swallow. This is why the Bondage Killer called me that in his letters to me. I can only hope he didn’t discover my visits to Empire. Just thinking of him obsessing over my sex life makes me feel like I’ve bathed in a cesspit.
Don’t spiral. Think. This is evidence. A clue. A sign the killer was able to infiltrate the department. His message is clear: nowhere is safe.
I have a sudden, wild thought: I want Rex. I imagine him here, standing with me, reminding me to breathe. He’d take over and eventually would go too far and annoy me, but he’d be a safe, solid presence. A powerful force on my side.
I look around, but there’s no sign of anyone who might have left this.
“Burgess?” I call.
He raises his head so quickly that I get the feeling he was paying too close attention to me even before I called his name.
I point to the journal. “Do you know who put this on my desk?”
“Yeah, some guy from the press. He wanted to hang around to speak to you, but the desk sergeant made him leave. He said his name was Ted.”
“When was this?”
He shrugs. “Half an hour ago.”
This is it—confirmation that the Bondage Killer is responsible for the recent killings. He picked up this journal the night he came into my room. And now he’s left it for me.
Slowly, gingerly, I pick up the journal, and a picture falls out.
It’s a picture of my family. I stare at the smiling faces, and chills run through me. Every face has an X over it except one.
Mine.
Rex
* * *
I’m beginning to think that giving Inara her own private situation room was a mistake. Ever since Hamish delivered Detective Lacy Collins’s notes, my beautiful wife has been holed up for days, staring at the walls of evidence for hours on end. She goes into the precinct for a few hours each day. Her team of bodyguards reports that she’s visited the most recent crime scenes a few times, although the detail makes it difficult to do the sort of boots-on-the-ground police work she prefers.
I’ve stopped sending Jaeger and Kaiser out with her. I didn’t tell her that St. James was the one who insisted on them being her main bodyguards rather than having a more traditional team. I think he was afraid I’d steal her away.
All that’s changed now. As a Roy, Inara has a security detail a mile deep. Everywhere she goes, she gets media attention, which effectively restricts her movements as much as a cage.
Despite the police’s best efforts, word got out about the connection between the recent murders and the ones in Elyria. The news has run constant stories about the Bondage Killer.
Nadia’s been able to keep Inara out of the news. She’s offered a bigger, better sacrifice: Me. There have been whole news spreads about “the last scion of the Roys.” She even let them cover my threats to the press.
“Rex Roy billionaire shouts threats at press conference,” read the headlines. One publication ran a long article on “the violent history of the Roy family” that included stories about my boot-legging great-grandfather and our warrior ancestors. Because Nadia gave them access to the Roy family records, it actually wasn’t bad. Mostly accurate. I figure I can give it to Inara as an overview if she’s ever curious about the family she married into.