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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

SYDNEY

I wake early the next morning and find Blake in the kitchen when I come downstairs.

“Hey, how did you sleep?” he asks, grabbing another cup from the cupboard.

“Okay.” I take a seat at the table. “Where’s Roman?”

“Taking a shower,” he says as he places a cup of tea down in front of me. “You want some breakfast?”

I shake my head. “No, I’m good. Thanks for this,” I say, nodding to my tea. I stare out the sliding doors into the garden, which is covered in a light early morning mist, and try to work out what’s bothering me—well, aside from Pa being missing and being on JC’s hit list.

“Where are those photos I gave you last night, the ones of the guy we think is JC?”

“I’ll grab them.” He disappears for a moment, then comes back carrying the photos and the box. He hands me the pictures and places the box on the table. “What do you want them for? Did you remember something?”

Grabbing his tea, he comes and joins me as I look over the photos again.

“I don’t know… There’s something about this guy, like I’ve seen him before.” I bring one particular photo closer. It’s of Pa and just JC, but it’s cleaner than the others. I scan it carefully, looking for anything I might recognise. “I don’t know,” I mutter, throwing them back to the table as Roman enters the room.

I watch as a half-naked Roman picks up his coffee, walks towards Blake, tilts his chin up and kisses him. I squirm on my chair at the sight and squeeze my thighs together as Roman’s tongue tangles with Blake’s. I look away because now isn’t the time to be thinking about sex. Seconds later, a hand in my hair startles me as my head is forcibly turned and Roman’s lips land on mine.

I can taste toothpaste as his tongue slips inside my mouth along with the scent of two very different aftershaves. When he breaks the kiss a second later, I’m left in a daze.

Blake laughs, and before I can gather myself, he leans over and kisses me too. My head spins, and I’m not sure I’m even on this planet anymore. This whole experience is surreal.

“What are you doing with those?” Roman asks, pointing at the photos I discarded.

“Oh, I was sure this guy is familiar, but I don’t know.” I look at the haphazard photos splayed out before me, but I still can’t grasp what is bothering me.

Roman and Blake chat around me as I drink my tea, lost in my thoughts. But when I hear Roman talking about a guy who came to the church to see Pa, a light bulb goes off in my head.

“That’s it!” I exclaim. They both look at me. “I was at Pa’s, and after I left, I watched a guy knock on Pa’s door. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he was wearing a baseball cap just like this one,” I say, stabbing a finger at the photo of Pa, the guy we think is JC and another guy.

“And you’ve never seen this guy before?” Roman asks, picking up the photo.

“No. Pa doesn’t have a lot of friends, and certainly none that visit the house.”

And as if his timing couldn’t be more appropriate, Oz walks into the room. He’s carrying a laptop and a bag, which looks heavy.

“Morning.” He pauses. “Why do I get the feeling you guys were talking about me?” he asks, stepping slowly towards us and placing his bag on the floor and the laptop on the table.

“We weren’t, but your timing couldn’t have been better. I’ll make you a coffee while you get set up. In here or the office?”

“The office is probably better suited.” Oz picks up the laptop, and Roman grabs the bag.

“Sydney, bring the box and photos. Blake, you grab the phone on your way through,” he orders.

Doing as he says, I collect the box, photos and my tea and follow them to the office. Oz begins setting up his equipment with Roman’s help. When Blake joins us, carrying a coffee for Oz, Roman hands the photo of the man I saw at Pa’s house.

“Run this through the facial recognition software first, then while we wait for that, you can get started on tracking JC’s burner.”

I watch completely stunned and feeling like I stepped into some crime movie as Oz begins running the image through facial recognition. Faces flash across the screen at a rapid pace, and the longer I watch, I begin to catch the markers the software uses to determine a likeness.

Before running a trace on the phone, Oz hands out several sheets to us all. “The top page lists every place, that we know about, where Sydney and Kincaid have lived the last eighteen years. The second page is the same list and beside each place are the names of known and possible murders of women during the time they lived there. The last page is a scaled down map, showing Sydney and Kincaid’s location along with a pin for each murder.”

I scan over the two first pages, but when I reach the third, the true scale is visible.

“Oh my god, are you sure about all these deaths?” I ask the room.

My question is met with a resounding and sullen yes. Oz proceeds to explain his pin colour code; green for known cases, yellow are unconfirmed but highly probable and the red pins represent possible matches.

Some of these names I recognise from news reports, but there was never any suggestion they were connected. With the different MO and locations, plus the large gap between deaths, the police were never going to connect the dots.

There’s a ping from the screen with the facial recognition, and we all stop, then move to look at the screen. There’s an image of a guy wearing a baseball cap, the logo matches that of the one on the cap in the older photo.

Robert Richards, a year younger than Pa, and he lives fifteen minutes from here.

“And it seems our guy works for the passport office. Explains how Kincaid got his hands on good quality counterfeit passports,” Oz says, clicking through details on the screen.

Blake and Roman share a look, and I know what they’re going to say, so I make a pre-emptive strike.

“I’m coming with you,” I state, looking at each of them and waiting for one of them, or both, to refuse. “What, no arguments?”

“Short of tying you up, we can’t stop you,” Roman says, which is a surprise as I thought he’d be the most likely to contest me coming. With two fingers, in a come-hither motion, Roman gestures for me to follow him.

I’m ashamed to admit the hand gesture reminded me of his finger in my…and my cheeks redden. I pass him, and he steps in alongside me, our shoulders rubbing together.

“You look a little red there, Sydney. You okay?” he asks.

I look at him from the corner of my eye to see him smirking. “You’re not funny, and this isn’t the time.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “It’s not me with the filthy mind.” He strides past me, quickly glancing back at me over his shoulder with a wink.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we enter a side of the gigantic manor house I’ve not been to yet.

“You’ll see. But keep an open mind, Sydney,” he says, his tone serious.

We stop at a door with a biometric keypad, and Roman places his hand on the scanner. A couple of seconds pass before it flashes green, and an automated voice confirms his name. The door whooshes open, revealing a staircase.

Lights switch on as we enter, and I nervously follow Roman down. There’s a momentary worry that I am in fact being taken to a room to be tied up and left here while they go and see Robert, but it vanishes the second we reach the bottom.

Guns, knives and weapons I have no clue what they are line the walls. There are shelves housing ammo and cabinets with vests and belts. This place is like an armoury

No, not like. It is.