Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
And he didn’t take advantage of innocents.
He snorted and picked up his pace until he was jogging. The wet sand clung to his boots, but he relished the effort each step took. Anything to distract him from imagining what Sloan might taste like. She gave the impression of someone with little experience, and a primal part of him raged to the forefront at the thought of being the one to show her how much pleasure she’d been missing.
Hold on, asshole. You’re acting like it’s a sure thing. You’re the one who put on the brakes.
Yeah, he had.
But as far as he was concerned, she’d issued an open invitation when she’d touched herself while fantasizing about him. It didn’t matter if she didn’t realize what she’d done. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
He wouldn’t force her. He wouldn’t have to.
She just needed permission to take what she wanted…to allow him to take what he wanted.
He circled back to their houses, heading for his. As tempting as it was to appear at her bedside like some sort of incubus, he doubted she’d respond well to it. So he went back to the drawing board—his go-to time consumer.
Jude pulled out the gun he’d taped beneath the cupboard just inside the back door—one of many secreted throughout the house—and checked to make sure it was loaded and hadn’t been tampered with. Satisfied everything was as it should be, he cleared the house, one room after another. It was unlikely that anyone had broken in, but he couldn’t afford to be careless.
Not when he was so close to his goal.
Sorcha was the only Sheridan who’d left Boston, and it had made tracking her down a hellish job. But just because she was out of Boston didn’t mean she was completely out of the family business. Jude’s sources had come back with info that he couldn’t ignore—about Sorcha and her nephew, Ronan. It didn’t strain Jude’s skills too much to make it look like Ronan had an unfortunate accident. But finding Sorcha had proven much tougher.
He moved to the room at the back of the house. It had originally been a guest room, but he’d converted it into a place to lay out his research. He unlocked both the door and the deadbolt and let himself in. Just like in the rest of the house, nothing here was tampered with.
The map spread across most of one wall, little blue pegs marking the various homes Sorcha owned across the world, courtesy of her late second husband. She never stayed too long in one place, never moved about with any pattern that could be tracked.
If he was going to be perfectly honest with himself, he’d hesitated at first. After all, Sorcha and Ronan had almost done him a favor. Once he’d finished with Sorcha, he fully intended to send Colm the information he’d compiled—information confirming how the man’s beloved son and sister had fully intended a coup that would leave half the Sheridan force dead. That old saying about the apple not falling too far from the tree applied to Ronan Sheridan—with interest.
It took a sick son of a bitch to kill his own father in a quest for power.
And what better way to hurt Colm than to first take his scheming son away, and then to pour salt on the wound by using the truth as a weapon?
But first—Sorcha.
The only reason he had some assurance that she would come to Callaway Rock was that a contact of his had heard that Callista Sheridan had recently spoken with Sorcha for the first time in her adult life. No one knew why—though it sure as fuck wasn’t because Callie had found out that her aunt fully intended to murder her just one year before—but the contact had heard Callaway Rock mentioned.
That was it.
It wasn’t much as leads went, but it was more than he’d had.
And now Sloan was occupying the O’Connor house.
He’d have to be an idiot to ignore the possible connection. There were too many facts adding up to a mystery he had no answers to. Sloan, with her delicate personality, who flinched like she’d been someone’s punching bag. Callista, contacting her aunt for the first time in her life. Sorcha, coming to a predetermined location despite all evidence pointing to her never once doing that. It all boiled down to one fact.
Sloan was the reason Callista had called Sorcha.
While that might seem like something profound, it didn’t mean a damn thing when push came to shove. Sloan wasn’t a Sheridan. He knew every single one of them inside and out. And she wasn’t on the list.
A part of him was profoundly grateful for that fact.
He could seduce her, could pump her for information, but he wouldn’t have to put an end to her. She’d been in town a grand total of a week and he’d actually seen her finding her feet as day after day went by. He’d hate himself a little if he had to put an end to that—to her. He’d compromised damn near every line he’d ever had in the pursuit of vengeance. He refused to kill an innocent, no matter her apparent connection to his enemies.