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CHAPTER THIRTY

BLAKE

R oman scowls at me, but I don’t give a fuck. He was already pissed at me for earlier this morning, so a little more isn’t going to make a difference. Besides, we can’t keep what we do from her indefinitely. Not if we are planning to make her ours, well, officially. I know how I feel about her, and I’m certain Ro feels the same, though he won’t admit it so freely.

I can’t wait to see Kincaid’s reaction when he realises that we’ve defiled his precious daughter—the one he’s so sure he was protecting all these years, and who is currently pacing the kitchen.

“We have to stop him. How can we stop him?” she says, spinning to face us expectantly like we have all the answers.

We did when we thought Kincaid was our man, but now everything is fucked up.

“You have a plan, right?” she presses, her gaze flicking between the two of us like a game of table tennis.

“We did,” I say.

“Shut the fuck up, Blake,” Ro snaps.

“Oh, really. Okay, then I’m going fuck off. You should stay, and perhaps Syd will let you fuck all your frustration out on her.” I leave the pair of them wide eyed and yelling after me.

I take the other car and decide to go see Oz. Maybe he’s got some news on this prick JC’s whereabouts, or at the least a place to start looking.

I ignore my phone as it rings on and off several times on the way to Oz’s house. By the time I arrive, Ro’s got the message and stopped calling. I feel a little bit bad leaving Syd to deal with his shitty mood, but maybe she’ll be able to get him to chill the fuck out. I know and understand why he’s pissed off. All our plans have gone out the window, Syd is more than either of us expected and now she’s in danger, something neither of us wanted once we discovered she was clueless about who her father really was. And I know he’s gutted that Annabel’s life was snuffed out for simply being nice to some old guy, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not the usual case for someone like JC. Serial killers and rapist are meticulous in picking their victims; the right eye and hair colour, or a particular career, and they stalk them, learning their routines.

JC’s random selection process is more than unusual. It somehow makes him more dangerous, more unpredictable and a whole lot crazier and cold blooded.

I park next to Oz’s car and knock on the door before walking straight in.

“Oz, you here?” I call out as I stroll through the large open space. God, I hope he hasn’t got a woman here like the last time I turned up uninvited. At least I know to steer clear of the room with the black door now. What goes on in that room is too much even for me. All of it consensual, of course, but Oz has some twisted sexual preferences.

I call out to him again, and this time he answers, “Down here, Blake.” I make my way down the stairs leading to the lower level and find him sat at his desk, four computer screens in front of him.

“Glad to see you wearing some clothes this time,” I joke as I drag a chair over and join him at the desk.

“Fuck you,” he retorts. “Not my fault if you went poking your nose around my gaff.” His words are light-hearted. “So, what can I do you for?”

“Needed to escape a pissed off Ro. I left Syd to deal with him.”

He side eyes me. “That a good idea?”

“Guess I’ll find out when I get back. What’s this?” I ask as my attention is captured by one of the screens.

“Ah, well, this you’re going to love. Seeing as the cops are shit at linking all of JC’s victims, I’ve built my own database. And with the info Roxy sent over yesterday, we have ourselves something close to a pattern.”

I watch as Oz takes me through the map on the screen. Zooming out to show a map of the whole of the UK, different coloured pins litter it. Some areas appear to be one big pin due to the high number there.

“So, as you can see, this full map shows you locations with rape and-slash-or murders that we believe are JC. The green pins represent cases we know for certain are JC, the yellow pins are the cases Roxy sent, and the red pins are ones we don’t know much about but were still flagged as a possible link. You with me so far?”

I nod, then he zooms in a little. “The main bulk of cases is down south, no surprise, but this is where it gets really interesting.” He moves to an area in the Midlands where there are only four pins, two green and two yellow. He switches to another screen and taps away for a second until a spreadsheet appears, then he clicks a few more buttons and four lines are highlighted. “This”—He points to the screen—“is these four here,” he says and points to the pins on the map.

“Okay…” I say, waiting for the punchline.

“Kincaid and Sydney lived in this area between 2020-2022.” He sits back in his chair, proud as punch.

“Is that the same for all the areas with a bigger number of cases?” I ask, realising what this means.

“Yep! They moved around a lot, and every place they’ve lived for the last twenty years, has at least one pin in it.”

“Well fuck me!” I’m gobsmacked at the sheer number of pins on the screen. It’s more than we thought. “How come there are so many?”

“I might have figured out a way to hack into the police forensics database. Those are the red ones.”

“Show me London and the surrounding areas,” I ask.

Oz does and when the data loads on the spreadsheet, Annabel’s name is there. But that’s not what catches my eye. No, it’s the strange pattern surrounding London.

“He lives in London. Right?”

“I reckon so, yes. According to this, he’s been jumping in and out of London and the surrounding counties since Kincaid moved here two years ago.” Oz taps a couple of buttons, and the pins change colour to orange, purple and blue. “Each pin colour represents a different year. Blue is 2022, as Kincaid moved here late 2022, then orange is 2023, purple 2024.”

“You’re a fucking genius, Oz. The force were fools letting you go,” I praise him, slapping him on the shoulder as I get to my feet. “I need to show this to Ro, then we need to pay Kincaid another visit.”

“No problem. I’ll send you the link and add any more cases I find.”

“Perfect. I take it you didn’t have any luck with actually locating him?”

“Nah, but if we had a photo of him, I could try an image search.”

I tell him I’ll see if Kincaid has one, then thank him again before leaving.