Torn - Cynthia Eden Page 0,16
at Worthington when she vanished. He wanted to talk with some of the professors she’d had, see if they remembered anything about her.
“Wade.” Victoria sounded annoyed. She reached out, locking her hand around his wrist. “Answer me. Why would he lie?”
He looked down at her hand. She’d touched him. That was a good step. Maybe. “He’s already keeping secrets from the woman he’s about to marry. Doesn’t that tell you anything about the guy?”
“He hired us!” They were just beneath the bell tower and no one else was around. “That tells me he wants to find Kennedy. He wants to get closure—just like he said.”
Closure was one thing. Lies were another. “He knows she was screwing around on him, Viki.”
“Because of a few marks?” She pulled away and motioned dismissively with her hand. “Maybe those were just from her workout, maybe—”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it.
She glared at him. Victoria pushed up her glasses. Did she know that the glasses made her eyes look even darker? Sexier? Probably not.
Her hair was up in a ponytail again today. He knew she meant the style to be no-nonsense, but it just accentuated her high cheekbones and the elegant curves of her face. She didn’t have to ditch the glasses and let her hair down to be hot to him.
She kind of . . . just was.
“Wade . . .”
She was also back to sounding annoyed with him.
His hand lifted. She tensed. Still not past that, are we? One day, she wouldn’t tense when he reached for her.
Keeping his eyes on hers, he slowly pushed back the collar of her shirt. His fingers brushed over her soft skin, right along the base of her neck. “There’s a big difference,” he told her softly, “between the mark that comes from clothes rubbing against you and the mark that a lover makes.”
Her lips parted.
His fingers stroked over the faint mark he’d left on her skin. “I can look at this and tell it was made from my mouth.”
She backed away from him.
“And I’m betting,” he said, as his hand dropped to his side, “that when Lucas Branson saw the marks on Kennedy’s body, he knew another man had left them.”
She touched her neck. “I didn’t even notice it!”
Now she looked horrified.
His lips twitched. “Don’t worry. Your shirt covers it. No one else will know.” Just me and you, baby. “But if you had another lover . . .” And that thought sure as hell pisses me off. “. . . he’d notice. He’d notice any marks left by my mouth or by my hands.”
“Her hips,” Victoria said. “He said there were marks on her hips.”
Wade nodded. “If she had bruising on her hips, it could have come from a lover holding tight during an, um, delicate moment.”
“And that’s why you believe he was lying. You think he had to know about the other man.”
“I believe he knew of him, but I don’t think Lucas knows who the guy was.” That was where they came in. “Another lover could be the key to finding her.”
She paced away from him, to stand in the shadow of the tower. “You’re good at reading people.”
“I’ve had to be, in my job.”
“But are you ever wrong? Do they ever fool you?” She turned back toward him. “Is there anyone that you just can’t figure out?”
“Yes.” He waited a beat. “You.”
Her gaze quickly cut away from him. She sure seemed to be paying a whole lot of attention to that bell tower.
But he wasn’t done. “You’ve got so many secrets surrounding you. Other people at LOST, they think that Sarah is the one with the dark past . . .”
“Her dad is a serial killer,” Victoria pointed out. “One who is still out there, and no one knows what he is doing or if he’ll strike again.”
That thought had kept him up plenty. He knew exactly how dangerous Murphy Jacobs was. The guy hadn’t earned the name of Murphy the Monster for nothing.
“And I think everyone at LOST has a dark past,” she continued quickly. “Isn’t that why we take the cases we do? Why we do the job?”
Maybe. Or maybe there was more to it.
Maybe some of them were trying to atone for the sins of the past.
I know I am.
“So you believe,” Victoria said, her gaze seemingly still on the tower, “that Lucas Branson is a liar, but not a killer?” She sighed and looked over her shoulder at him. “You don’t think he killed Kennedy, do you?”
Killed her,