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I nod, watching him as he leaves and heads back to his car. If his spies are suspicious they don’t let on. I wait until I can’t see my brother’s vehicle anymore before I lock the door and turn away.
The book sits like a weight in my hand as I stare at it. The cover is really quite simple, but in hindsight it’s obviously a Porscha calling card. Love in Lockup has a paintbrush on the cover, painting the silhouette of a man.
Is this supposed to be creative imagery?
Going back upstairs, I find Jo still asleep. She didn’t take any of her pills, so this is sheer exhaustion that finally dragged her under to sleep. I leave her be, half closing the door to go back downstairs.
I shouldn’t crack the book open, but I do. Grabbing my coffee along the way, I sit down near the window and flip to chapter one.
Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe someone, probably Porscha, will try and do a drive by again. I’d love a reason to shoot someone, and after I read this I might be in the mood to choose violence.
~~~
Sterling is late.
And not just by a few minutes; more like a few hours.
Jo ends up sleeping through most of it because I’m distracted by the book, and I’ve nearly finished it when there's a knock at the door.
I glance up from the book. Jo already came down once, saw it, and looked sick. She went back upstairs under the guise of finding something else to wear but I’m sure she wants to get away from her mother’s book.
Sterling’s eyes go immediately to the book when I open the door. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
“Xeno brought it so you don’t try and get a warrant to search for the damn thing,” I tell him, stepping aside so he can come in. “I have eight pages left if you’d kindly shut up while I finish.”
“Are you…” his voice trails off, and he pauses long enough to pinch the bridge of his nose and glare at me. “Are you reading a smut book written by your mother-in-law, about a guy you used to fuck?”
I chuckle, turning to go back to my seat in the living room. Sterling follows and sits across from me. “It’s not the first smut book I’ve read, Agent. The writing is subpar at best. I’m taking one for the team so Jo isn’t forced to read this shit. She has way better options on her shelves at home.”
“Uh… well then,” Sterling replies, and I can hear the mix of surprise and confusion in his voice. “There’s… that.”
“It’s a smut novel, Sterling,” I say, not lifting my gaze as I finish off the book. “A trashy, cliche one, but it’s smut all the same. I can’t really call it romance.”
“Sounds like you know a lot about smut books,” he says, still sounding confused.
I lift my gaze long enough to glare at him. “I run a sex club. All versions of erotica are worth consuming when you’re in the business, and there’s some amazing books out there. Lots of ideas. It draws a whole different audience, too. We talked about implementing it more, but then we had to come back to Florida. It’s a plan for when we return.”
“Uh-huh.”
His silence is welcome as I skim the last few pages. I’m not engrossed in the story, just the message that it tells. To an outsider it probably just reads as some forbidden love tale, but there are too many things that hint at Porscha’s real life for this to be anything but a dead-on copy of her experiences. Exaggerated or not, it’s weird.
I can see why people like the Slayers were obsessed with this. The male character is undoubtedly Alastair. Calling him Albert feels like a serious insult, and the fact that the lead female in here told him to call her Princess makes me want to gag. I actually came close a couple times reading this nonsense.
The hints are not subtle. No wonder Porscha tried to make it disappear.
“There’s now an eighth body,” Sterling tells me as I flip to the last page. I grunt in response, because, garbage or not, he could at least let me finish. “Her name was Kim.”
I shut the book with a groan. “And you think it’s our buddy Alastair or Porscha who killed this poor girl.”
His jaw tenses as he glares at me. “Undetermined. I’m guessing Porscha, based on the rage. Half the girl’s face is gone, stabbed so many times the skin is missing. One of her eyes was torn out.”
I wince. “Violent.”
“Increasingly.” He pauses again, dragging a hand down his face. “That’s why I’m late. I can’t talk about specifics-”
“Save it,” I say, tossing him the book. He catches it with ease, glaring down at the cover. “Read that garbage instead.”
“Did you find it insightful?” he asks dryly.