I don’t look back.
I bolt for the front door and pray it’s not locked.
It’s not.
I burst into the frigid outside, ripping off the gas mask, sucking in lungfuls of icy clean air as I stumble through the snow.
So much fucking snow.
Behind me, Rooke’s house burns like a funeral pyre.
My cruiser is where I left it. I fumble for the keys—still in my pocket, thank fuck—and wrench open the door.
That’s when I notice the tires.
Slashed. All four of them.
Snow billows into the car from a broken passenger-side window.
“Motherfucker,” I growl as I slam the door closed behind me and take a long, slow breath. It’s freezing in here, but there’s no smoke or fire.
I turn the engine and crank up the heating, staring at Rooke’s house as it burns, my mind churning.
“Fuck!” I slam my hands into the steering wheel and grab my radio.
Rooke might have incapacitated my car, but all I need to do is put an APB out on his ass, and he’ll get scooped up at the next roadblock.
Just need that Land Rover’s plates and I’ll?—
I pop the glove box, groaning when I see my notebook’s gone.
So that’s why he broke the window. To get into my car.
Fuck it. They couldn’t have gotten far in this weather. I’ll give the station what I have. It’ll be enough to flag down every Land Rover within a twenty-mile radius.
I’m about to press down on the radio button when something catches my attention. Only my eyes move as I swivel them to look at the stack of papers on my passenger seat, partially buried under some snow.
Those weren’t there when I got out of the car earlier.
I pick them up with a growing sense of dread. They’re pages from a ledger, hastily torn out. Something tells me it wasn’t Rooke who’d been tasked with extracting them from the ledger.
Names. Chat room handles. Notes in some kind of cipher.
It could have been anything, but sudden knowledge fills me like a divine vision…because I’ve seen this kind of thing before.
Criminals like to keep in touch. They swap information with each other, keeping track like some kind of deranged neighborhood watch.
Is this why Rooke was so sure I’d change my mind?
…the only way to fight evil is tobeevil…
My hoarse laugh catches me off guard.
It’s a goldmine. A fucking goldmine of predators, laid out like a roadmap for anyone with the skill and the will to do something about it.
And it’s obvious this is just a sample. A teaser of what he has.
I laugh as I watch Bastian Rooke’s carefully constructed life burn to ash while snow drifts over the windshield. Somewhere out there, he and his murderous lovers are on their way to a safe house I’ll never find.
