Page 65 of Seven Deadly Sins

Neither. The thought of roaming the large empty place full of rats chilled her blood. “Down.”

She turned left into a dining room with a table large enough to seat twenty. Why hadn’t Thompson sold the place? The furnishings alone would bring him a good amount of money. Did he have plans on returning here once he completed his quest?

Her gaze rose to the twenty-foot ceiling. Despite the dirt and evidence that four-legged things lived there, the place was in amazingly good condition for having been vacant for so many years.

Continuing, she entered a kitchen any chef would dream of owning. Commercial grade everything. Who needed a place this big?

Muffled footsteps sounded overhead, then stopped. Wood floor to carpet? She shrugged and opened the back door of the kitchen. An expansive lawn full of more untrimmed bushes stretched to a thick grove of trees. The place was definitely private. She turned and headed across the foyer into a living room.

One photo adorned the mantel. She peered through the gloom at the face of a ten-year-old boy. No smile, only a sad look in his eyes. One blue, and one green. Striking and definitely not something anyone would forget. This had not been a happy home, she guessed. No other photos. Not one of a wife and mother. Very few knickknacks and decorations. Very clinical with its sheet-covered furniture.

Dusty books lined a bookshelf. She reached for a thick volume titled The Seven Deadly Sins. As she went to remove it from the shelf, something clicked. She stepped back as the bookcase swung open.

“Liam!” She unhooked a small flashlight from her belt and shined it into a dark room. Not wanting the case to shut on her, leaving her trapped in darkness, she shoved a chair between the case and the opening. This way, Liam could easily find her if something happened.

She gasped as her light shined on the very things Robert Thompson tried to stop. A stack of porn magazines, shelves full of Cuban cigars, expensive clothes tossed in a corner as if they meant nothing. The room had been turned into a shrine of everything the son hated.

Were these his father’s things? Had he locked them away as part of his quest.

She swung the light toward a desk. No computer sat on the desk blotter. She moved closer. The blotter was actually a calendar from ten years ago. The last recorded date had been for a cancer treatment. The father’s office then.

She flipped through the pages, noting the notations on the dates. The last thing not related to the man’s cancer, had been a charity ball in Little Rock for a children’s hospital. She stepped back and shined the light on the opposite wall.

A stack of newspapers sat on a side table. On the first page of the top paper was an article about philanthropist Richard Thompson’s sad announcement of his disease.

“Whoa.” Liam stepped into the room, his light joining Harper’s. “The rest of the house is so sparse compared to this.”

“I think Robert brought all his father’s things here. Look.” She picked up a framed photo from next to the papers. “The wife.” A pretty brunette with her hair swept up out of her face with a barrette. “She had the same two different colored eyes as her son.”

“Let’s step back outside. I didn’t find anything upstairs. Anything personal is in this room. We need to get a crime scene in here to bag this stuff up. There’s bound to be a clue.”

With one final sweep of her flashlight, she followed him onto the porch. “Robert is a very troubled man. His mother left him, his father, despite the things he was into, did try to change the world, but in a far different way than his son is.”

Liam put his hands on her shoulders, his gaze boring into hers. “Don’t let your empathy cloud the fact that Robert Thompson is a very evil man.”

“I won’t.” Her phone buzzed, and she read,I don’t believe in love at first sight. You fall in lust with what your eyes see, and in love with what your heart sees.

What did he mean?

~

Look at them. Robert glared through the binoculars. When Lucy had given him the heads up that they were headed to his family home. Ah. Family home was definitely not what he could call the place. Home meant happy, and he had not been a happy child.

When she had alerted him as to where the detective and agent were headed, he took the back roads and arrived shortly after they did. His blood boiled to see that the den of iniquity that contained all the sordid parts of his father, had been discovered.

As he had gone through the house as an adult and seen the things he hadn’t noticed as a child, he’d realized how misguided his father’s quest had been and designed his own. Robert’s would truly rid the world of all depravity.

Now, the two people he toyed with until the time came, looked at each other with lust. Everything in him wanted to order Lucy to get rid of them, but the time wasn’t right. He needed them to be the final sin. The one to erase the sin of anger he felt. The only way to do that was to end their lives.

After glancing at the phone in the detective’s hand, the agent whirled and scanned the tree line.

~

“He’s watching us.” Liam strained his eyes to see movement in the trees.

“How could he know where we are?” She glanced at her phone. “Is it possible to get phones that can’t be traced?”

“I think so. We also need to have the jeep swept.” He pulled her to where the bushes hid them from anyone’s view. His main consolation was that Thompson wouldn’t strike until the seventh sin. They had to find him before then. “He won’t be happy that we discovered that room.”