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Fury crosses his features, but I’d rather have him angry with me than lusting over me. This could go one of two ways. Either he thinks I’m used material and doesn’t want to touch me, or he decides that if everyone has fucked me already, then he might as well do the same.
I’m betting on it being the idea of me as some innocent little virgin, his wife’s young daughter, the forbidden fruit, that had gotten him all hot and bothered. If I’m right—for the moment, anyway—he might leave me alone. There’s a chance he’ll get over it soon enough, though, and take what he wants.
He also might decide that if I’m damaged goods now, he might as well kill me already.
I can only wait, terrified, to see how this will go down.
Chapter Four
Wilder
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THOUGH IT’S THE MIDDLEof the night, none of us even tries to sleep. How can we when Honor is still missing and potentially in the hands of her stepfather? I wish I’d paid more attention to her when she’d been here. I wish I’d asked her more questions about her life and her background and the person she was running from. I can’t help but be furious with myself, and with the others, too, that we didn’t care more. She’d tried to tell us, but we didn’t listen.
I cannot get the name of that boat out of my mind. There's no way it can be a coincidence. Pastor Wren used to say that specific phrase repeatedly during his sermons, and also during his private time with his special boys, as he called us.
It makes no sense, though. How can Honor’s stepfather be linked to Pastor Wren in any way?
Every now and then, my eyes grow heavy and I slip into an almost dreamlike state, only to startle awake again as more thoughts hit me. My mind is racing, trying to make connections and maps between a corrupt LA cop and a pastor who has spent most of his life on the move, a never-ending quest not to be caught for his crimes.
Something occurs to me and sends my heart racing.
There's one thing Pastor Wren does have a lot of...money.
If there's one thing corrupt cops like, it’s cold, hard cash. What if at some point Pastor Wren needed a California cop in his pocket? He could easily have looked into which police officers would possibly be amenable to bribes, and maybe through doing that he found Honor’s stepfather.
Maybe I'm putting too much weight into the name of the boat, but I can't seem to shake it. Besides, it makes sense, doesn't it? Men like them are drawn together like magnets.
We have a private investigator on the mainland who has been charged with tracking down Wren. Only recently did he report that Wren was using an alias and preaching at a church in Reno. The chances of Honor’s stepfather taking her there are slim but not none. But I'm wary of sending us all racing off on a wild goose chase only to miss clues about where her stepfather actually may have taken her.
I'd left the others for a short time, needing a break from the intensity in that room. Now, I need to get back to them.
We need Asher on this to do some digging. Pastor Wren hides his tracks far too well. We’ve been after the man for the longest time. Don, however, might not be quite so savvy.
I’ve met a lot of cops in my time, and the ones who tend to be corrupt also tend to be overconfident. They think having the weight of the law behind them gives them a power to do anything they want. It’s often that false belief in their own God-like ability to handle anything that comes their way that proves their ultimate downfall.
