Stephanie’s chin had come up at her father’s declaration. ‘He’d been fucking her for a while. She was his toy.’

Chip’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. ‘You ungrateful, spiteful little bitch.’

Ken cocked a brow. Interesting. ‘Didn’t it bother you that he was fucking the servant? He was your boyfriend.’

Eyes narrowing, Stephanie gave her father a satisfied sneer. ‘I was fucking her too. We did her together.’

‘I see,’ Ken murmured. And he really was starting to. Chip was breathing hard, fury evident in every charged line of his body. That Stephanie and Drake had fucked his servant was not welcome news. No, not at all. ‘Why did you look at your father like that?’

‘Like what?’ Stephanie asked harshly.

‘Like you’re thumbing it in his face.’

‘Because he wanted to keep her for himself,’ Stephanie spat. ‘He loved her.’

This was getting more interesting by the moment. ‘By loved, you mean exactly what?’

‘He had a baby with her,’ Stephanie said bitterly. ‘My daughter this and my daughter that. You’d think it was some kind of rocket scientist instead of a half-breed. Little brat cried all the damn time. I think Tala pinched it to make it cry, just so Mama would hear it.’ She kept her chin high, her gaze resolutely away from her mother’s body. ‘Flaunting the little bastard in Mama’s face.’

Ken rose, his heart grown grimly cold. ‘We didn’t find a baby.’

‘Because she took it,’ Stephanie said.

‘You mean Tala?’ Ken asked, and Stephanie shook her head with a cold smile. ‘The other two escaped women?’ he pressed.

Stephanie’s smile curled at the edges of her mouth, becoming predatory. ‘You wish.’

Cincinnati, Ohio

Tuesday 4 August, 12.45 P.M.

When they were out of sight of the house, both Marcus and Scarlett took their cell phones from their pockets. She placed hers on the dash of her car, put an earbud in her left ear, then used her hands-free to call Deacon Novak.

Marcus logged into the website he used for background searches and inputted Marlene Anders. Just in case Scarlett decided not to share everything she learned.

‘Hey, Deacon, it’s me. Did you get my text?’ She listened for a moment, then nodded. ‘Got it. Don’t wait for me, but don’t go in without backup.’ She made an impatient sound. ‘I know we don’t have a warrant. I thought you’d do your thing with the judge. You know, give ’em the eye . . . She is? Good. Lynda can push harder for a warrant than we can. She has more markers to call in, too. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.’ She glanced at Marcus. ‘Go ahead and send it, but I have Marcus with me. I’m sure he’s already run a background on Anders in the time it’s taken us to get to the end of Delores’s driveway. I’ll get the info from him. Suit up, Novak. They’ve already shot two people today.’ She stopped at the end of Delores’s long driveway and pulled the earbud out. ‘Deacon’s sitting out front of the Anderses’ house. Can you hand me the flasher? It’s in the glove box.’

Marcus put the blue flashing light in her outstretched hand and watched as she fixed it to the roof of the car. ‘Hold on tight,’ she said as she floored the accelerator.

‘You all need to have turbo engines,’ Marcus said, although he was more than a little surprised that the department vehicle had as much pickup as it did.

‘We need a lot of things,’ she said glumly. ‘Like a warrant, for starters.’

‘That’s what you wanted Deacon to get by giving someone the eye?’

She shot him a quick glare. ‘Hey, jack, don’t knock it. It’s worked before.’

‘Really? That’s quite a secret weapon.’

‘You have no idea.’

‘Will he go in without a warrant?’

‘Deacon?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Probably not. He’s a straight shooter.’

Marcus settled into his seat. She was driving faster than he’d anticipated even with the flashing light, but she was in control of the vehicle so he could relax a little. ‘Would you?’

‘Enter without a warrant?’ She made a facial shrug. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. I’ve been known to bend the rules from time to time.’

‘Like trespassing on private property and listening at closed doors to private conversations?’ he asked, only half teasing.

She didn’t break a smile. ‘I don’t know who would do anything that boorish.’

His lips twitched. He didn’t care if she wasn’t as much fun as her friends. He liked her sarcastic sense of humor. ‘So terribly rude.’

One side of her mouth quirked up, then fell again. ‘Part of me wishes that Deacon could wait for me,’ she confessed, ‘but that’s not the best thing for the victims.’

Her use of ‘for me’ was like nails on a chalkboard, but he didn’t fight it because he wanted what was best for the victims too. ‘Especially the baby. She’s gotta be hungry by now.’

‘Since her mama’s dead in the morgue,’ Scarlett said grimly, then cast him a cautious sideways glance. ‘You know I can’t let you go in with me.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll get the story one way or the other.’

She was quiet for a long moment, the only sound that of her tires as they ate up the interstate. ‘You’re not what I expected, Marcus.’

He turned in his seat to study her profile. ‘How so?’

She kept her eyes on the road. ‘You say you make your living digging up news. This is a big story. I thought you’d be on your phone to your office, having them send a reporter with a camera to the address that I know you’ve already looked up.’

‘How do you know I didn’t contact my office? I could have texted them.’

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘No,’ he said, and watched her shoulders relax a fraction. She’d been bluffing him, he thought, admiring the effort. But she’d really been hoping that he’d say no.

‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Some other reporter with a police radio could follow Deacon and his backup to the Anders house and scoop your story.’

‘They wouldn’t have all the background,’ he said, ‘so I still have the exclusive. But sometimes it’s not about the story. Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing.’

A single nod. ‘I expected you to say that this morning when I asked you why you came back to the alley, but you didn’t. You said that you couldn’t leave her alone in the dark. Why?’

He’d known she was perceptive. He should have expected that she’d pick up on that nuance. ‘Scarlett,’ he drawled, ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’

‘Okay,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Don’t tell me. I understand the need to keep some things to yourself. Tell me about Marlene Anders instead.’

Fifteen

Cincinnati, Ohio

Tuesday 4 August, 1.05 P.M.

Scarlett cleared all thoughts of cigars being cigars from her mind, focusing on the information Marcus was reading to her from the background check he’d run while she’d been coordinating the search of the Anders home with Deacon.

‘Marlene Anders is a fifty-two-year-old Caucasian,’ Marcus said. ‘Married Charles “Chip” Anders when she was twenty-one. She worked as a dental hygienist for ten years, quitting the same year that she gave birth. Her daughter is Stephanie Anders. Marlene has no work history in the years that followed. I see links to about thirty articles, all in the Style section of various newspapers.’

‘What about Chip?’

From the corner of her eye she could see him typing on his phone with his finger. ‘Chip Anders got an engineering degree from Xavier and went to work in the family-owned snack-food business.’ He was quiet for a few minutes. ‘The state business database says that the company declared bankruptcy ten years ago. The same year Chip is listed as incorporating a contract manufacturing company. It’s privately owned, so we can’t see the earnings report, but two years later his and Marlene’s address changed from Bridgetown Road to a three-million-dollar place in Hyde Park, less than a quarter-mile from the park where Tala walked their dog.’