Dirty boy! The voice screamed up from his past. You’re a dirty, disgusting boy, and you must be punished for your sins!
No. Detective Moreno needed to be punished. She made him feel this way, with her whore smiles and her hidden agenda. She thought she could outsmart him, but she was wrong. He knew all about her past. The cousin who’d died after three long days of being locked in a basement and repeatedly raped. The ridiculous dedication she’d thrown into becoming a police detective, almost certainly to avenge the crime. The way she’d shamelessly thrown herself at that firefighter, rutting against him for the sole purpose of getting what she wanted. Of trying to get to him and shut him down.
Isabella Moreno was dirty and disgusting and the worst sort of whore. And he was going to break her.
Scrubbing his body until the pain made him numb, Julian finished his shower. He dressed quickly, rebuilding his composure with each movement. He couldn’t allow savage anger to lead him toward mistakes.
He would kill Isabella Moreno. But first, he would make her pay.
Julian made his way to the surveillance room, where Vaughn and Charles and Franco had gathered at his demand. “Gentlemen,” he said, though the address was far enough from the mark to leave a foul taste in his mouth. “An update, if you please.”
All three men exchanged uncomfortable glances from across the bank of computer monitors, and finally, Vaughn spoke. “The news isn’t great, boss. The fire department is ruling the, uh, incident on Oakmont as ‘undetermined’, which wouldn’t be so bad, except the RPD just reached out to their friendly neighborhood field office to request an official investigation into the deaths. All they need is one connection between you and Angel or Marcus, and they’ll be on us like a bad rash.”
Julian arched a brow at Vaughn. From the other two, he’d expect this lack of insight. Perhaps his hacker was slipping. “Fine,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “Then things are proceeding exactly as expected.”
“You want the Feds crawling up your ass?” Franco asked, shock covering his scarred face. Christ, the man was as big an idiot as he was a brute.
“Of course not,” Julian replied, speaking as he might to a child. “But their investigation will serve as a means to an end. The FBI, like the fire department, won’t find anything they can use to indict me, for the deaths or for my gatherings. While they struggle in vain to try, however, I’ll gain access to something I want very much.”
“I don’t get it,” Charles said, blinking his beady eyes. “What do the cops have that you want?”
Vaughn straightened, staring at Julian from beneath the hood of that infernal sweatshirt. “The woman. You want the woman.”
At last, a light among the dimwits. “Bravo, Mr. Vaughn. I want the lovely Detective Moreno to pay for her audacity, and what better way than to have her come to me.”
“You think she’ll come to you as part of the investigation?” Charles asked, and truly, Julian had to question how the man functioned with such slow uptake.
“I think she came to me when there was no investigation. She’s too impulsive for her own well-being. Certainly we can motivate her to act without too much effort. And when she does, I’ll be ready.” He turned toward Vaughn and lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “So tell me, do we have eyes on the detective’s apartment?”
Vaughn clacked a series of commands over the nearest keyboard, one-handed. “Yup, sure do. I tapped into the security feed for her building—piece of fucking cake, by the way—but she’s not there now. The camera in the lobby has her leaving at about oh-five-hundred this morning. Interestingly enough, she landed on the firefighter’s doorstep.” Another clack, and the grainy image on the computer monitor changed. “They got hot and heavy on their way into his place a couple hours ago, and haven’t come out since.”
Julian smiled. This was going to be even easier than he’d anticipated. “Excellent. Don’t take your eyes off that feed. If either one of them so much as sets a toe over the threshold, I want to be informed on my cell phone.”
“You’re headed out?” Vaughn’s fleece-covered head pulled back in surprise.
Julian’s heart beat faster, his blood beginning to rush at the dark pleasure of the task in front of him.
“Yes. Charles and Franco and I have some work to do. It’s time to bait the hook.”
21