Page 3 of Untamed Sinner

I wonder if he'd look at me the same way in bed. Cold. Detached. Methodical.

I wonder if I could make him lose that control.

"Fuck," I mutter, taking off my bloody gloves. I drop them in the garbage bag I brought with me, pull out another pair, and start wiping down the kitchen.

3

HENDRICKS

Some people leave footprints. Mandy Reed leaves questions.

Unable to push her from my mind, I pull on a pair of loose sweats, pour myself a finger of whiskey, and walk through the dark house, heading to the basement.

The secure room sits behind eight inches of reinforced concrete and a vault door. It wasn't built to survive an apocalypse. It was built to keep information in.

The motion-censored lights and three monitors wake up as I let myself in.

I should open the file on the commission I wrapped up tonight and close it out. I should check my answering service for messages from clients. Instead, I sit down, set the glass on the table, and pull up the folder named AMANDA REED.

Information I've compiled since I met her approximately five weeks ago flashes onto the monitors. Birth certificate for Amanda Rose Jenkins. Transcripts from kindergarten all the way to her junior year in college. Medical records. Traffic citations and unpaid parking tickets. Banking and taxes.

All ending thirteen years ago.

There isn't a single piece of information about her since, not even under her assumed identity of Mandy Reed.

Everything else I know about her is cobbled from bits of information from other people and deductive reasoning. She's almost thirty-five, and thirteen years ago she was kidnapped and taken into a sex trafficking ring run by Cole Turner. She was captive for three years before getting out, ostensibly with the help of Gabriel Reyes, the enforcer for the Reyes family, currently headed by his brother.

I turn to the monitor on the left, where Mandy’s face fills the screen.

I stare at it longer than I should. She's attractive in that dangerous way that makes men stupid. Sharp cheekbones. Hazel eyes that miss nothing. The kind of beauty that comes from surviving things that should have broken her.

I’m far from stupid, and that's not why I stare at her.

She's an anomaly.

Most people become simpler the longer you study them. Their patterns emerge. Their tells become obvious. You learn what they want, what they fear, what they'll do when cornered. After enough observation, they're predictable. Solved.

Mandy Reed just becomes more complicated the more I delve in.

I've forgotten faces I've spent weeks tracking. I can't seem to forget Mandy Reed, and I've only spent a total of forty-three minutes with her.

This is a problem.

The bigger problem is that I have no idea how to resolve it.

4

MANDY

The smell of bleach clears my head. I continue until Pemberton's kitchen is clean—well, except for the area around his corpse.

I'm wiping down the sink's drain when my phone plays "Vigilante Shit" by Taylor Swift. I step over the body to pick up my phone. I wish Gabriel could hear it. Anything Taylor Swift drives him batshit. It's funny.

"It's like you have radar," I say the second I answer. "I was going to call you."

"Miss me?" he says in his molten chocolate voice.

Gabriel Reyes is renowned for his looks and charm. His mom was Irish and his dad was Colombian, so he has the Latin heat with killer blue eyes. One smile and women melt.