Haven of Nightmares (Littlemoon Investigations Book 5) (32 page)

As Mattie came, rupturing apart while riding his dick, he needed so much more.

“God! That was amazing,” she muttered.

Only, he was far from done.

“It’s about to get better.”

Roman rolled, placing her beneath him. As he pushed his jeans and boxers down, Mattie pulled off his shirt.

What started as her giving head was now full-blown sex, and he was damn glad.

“So sexy,” he muttered, running his mouth across her chest to her erect nipples. He couldn’t help himself.

He needed a taste.

Licking, rolling, and nipping, he made her moan and beg for more. It looked like her being shy was going out the window, and he was glad.

By the end of the week, he wanted to know her body inside and out.

“I really need you in me, Roman. That’s when I feel the best.”

Well, ask and she shall receive.

Reaching down, he ripped her panties from her body, causing her to gasp.

He loved it.

It made him harder, even though that seemed nearly impossible.

He drove his erection right into her, burying himself deeply within her. His sexy little librarian was holding back. She had a wicked mouth and an even wickeder streak that he was curious about. Maybe it was the reporter in him, but he wanted to plumb the depths of this woman until he knew everything.

Mattie shattered apart as he slammed into her body. It was the hottest thing she’d ever experienced. As she came, he began moving, giving her no chance to regain her focus. He was pounding himself into her body, she was begging him for more, and they were both buried in the ecstasy.

“Roman,” she moaned, her nails digging into his shoulders. “God! Don’t stop!”

He couldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

She was his.

Surrounded by all of this hell, she was the one thing that would always remain a constant.

Matilda Boyd was his girl.

The idea of her never leaving him pushed Roman closer to the edge. As his lower body tightened, he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer.

Mattie was hot.

Wet.

Tight.

It was the trifecta of male happiness.

As he drove in, she shattered apart again, pulling him with her for the ride.

The colors swirled.

The happiness filled him.

As they drifted, him buried in her body, Roman knew this was the pinnacle in his life.

Reaching down, he pulled the spare blanket off the floor that had been displaced when he began his quest to jump her. As he pulled it over them, Mattie stirred against him.

Roman could smell the sexy scent of her hair, and he never wanted to go a day without it. She smelled like coconut and some tropical island.

It was calming.

Almost like being at the beach and on vacation.

“Promise me that we’ll never be apart, Mattie. Promise me that from this day on, you’ll love me enough to stay even when the times get tough.”

She turned her head to stare into his eyes. “Roman, I promise to die loving you. I’m yours.”

Her words reverberated through him.

Instead of peace, they scared him.

Her death was exactly what he feared, and he couldn’t help but believe that it was coming.

Despite what everyone promised.

Chapter Eighteen

They searched the office for anything that would help them with this case. There were a few rules of investigation, and they were the same for cops, Feds, and PI’s.

It was leave no stone unturned.

Since most of this seemed to center on the family, and the things going on in their life, Julian suspected that heading to the office would be an excellent place to start.

He was glad Roman wanted to take his sister’s room. In all likelihood, chances were that there wouldn’t be anything there that would turn into a good, solid lead. This office seemed to be the center and the most painful for the man.

They didn’t want to cause their employee any suffering.

The office was where Clifford Remington broke the law, created a mess, and pretended to care about his school. If he really did, he wouldn’t have been molesting underage kids.

Truly
.

It was just that damn simple.

As they dug through the room, Tori was quiet. Immediately, that put Julian on alert. Something wasn’t right.

“You’re not saying anything. What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I was eavesdropping on Trey and Bethany.”

He stared at her. “You know that freaks me out, right? Just the mere idea that you’re walking around like a spirit lightening rod is weird.”

Tori gave him a quick kiss. “Yeah, I know, but think of this as payback. She watches us do it all the time, and I’m sure Trey sneaks a peek too.”

Now he looked horrified.

“Tori! If you ever want me to get it up again, we’ll stop this conversation right now!”

She stared at him, checking out her husband. His hair was getting a little longer, and as it hung past his shoulders. Tori knew he’d be getting it cut again.

She wished he wouldn’t.

Tori thought it was as sexy as sin.

“I love you, Jules. It’s hard to ignore them. It’s going on in my head, or in some parallel dimension. I don’t know where, but I’m tuned in. I haven’t figured out the learning curve on this one yet. Once I do, I’ll block it.”

“Are they really doing it?” he asked, the curiosity finally getting to him. What would it hurt to ask?

She laughed. “No, he’s trying to get in her pants, and she’s playing hard to get. There’s a lot of
‘baby’
and giggling going on. It’s like foreplay for dummies.”

He laughed. “This whole thing is bizarre, and yet I can’t look away. It’s like a car accident on the side of the highway.”

She was well aware.

Tori crouched in front of a cabinet. “Look, Jules. This lock is busted.”

“Someone’s been here,” he stated.

Tori pulled the cabinet open, and inside were some empty VHS cases.

“It looks like this might be where Betty Remington found that tape.”

Julian thought about it.

“I doubt he was recording more than one woman.”

“Why?”

“She would have kept them. Why did she only keep one girl in particular? She likely destroyed all of them and kept that one as a sick, angry memento.”

He was probably right.

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

“I’m about to dig through the desk. I’m hoping there will be something. This office looks like it has been picked through.”

Tori was pretty sure they knew who did it too.

“Betty has been here. I know I would go through your office if you died. I’d want to find something that I could hold onto for the rest of my life.”

“Would you get remarried?”

She glanced over from a file cabinet. “No. I don’t think I could. My heart would be too broken.”

“Yeah, mine too, so don’t die.”

Tori laughed. “It’s right at the top of my list of things not to do until I’m about one hundred, and even then, I want us to go in bed having sex.”

He was glad. “There’s a picture.”

She was well aware.

Julian went back to searching.

“I think I found something, but I’m not sure what it is.”

“What?”

“It looks like there were some students on a disciplinary list. This is some old journal. There are not many names in it, but still…if he wrote them down, they had to be pretty bad.”

She moved closer and stared over his shoulder. “We should ask Roman if he remembers any of them.”

Tori scribbled the names down in a notebook.

                     Chase Weber

That one name sounded familiar. “Where did we hear that before?” she asked.

Julian knew she had to be getting tired. Tori was excellent with details, and if she was forgetting, that was his sign that she needed some down time.

“We met the brother at the gym when we were doing the interview. Remember Harrison Weber? He mentioned his brother. This is probably him.”

“Right. Sorry. I’m a little distracted,” she admitted, tapping her head.

“Is Trey yelling?”

“Oh, he’s shouting all right, and it’s Bethany’s name.”

“Jesus. Really, Victoria? I don’t need to know.”

She laughed. “You asked, and why the hell should I be having all the fun?”

His wife had a point.

Tori wrote down the second name. It popped up a few times. After the first set of killings, it stopped.

That was suspicious.

“Who is Blake Lyons?” she asked.

He pointed toward a file cabinet. “That’s marked student records. Maybe he’s in there?”

It was locked.

“We can break it open or ask Roman for a key. We’ve already wrecked this place. The resale value is going down as we speak.”

Julian was well aware.

It was a damn good thing that the man worked for them, or this might be a disaster. Granted, the chandelier wasn’t their fault, or the ghost explosion, but those things were damn hard to explain to prospective buyers.

Tori began rifling through the open cabinet. There were letters, papers, and a couple ledgers with lots of figures in them.

“Different handwriting,” stated Tori. “You can tell it’s a man’s. Look at how to the point and direct it is. This one is Mrs. Remington’s. You can see the curves and pretty arches in her letters. It’s typical woman writing.”

Julian checked it out, and it appeared that Tori was right. Her name was signed at the bottom of a few of them.

“Think back to the letter Clifford left for his wife. It was the same as this sample,” she stated, pointing at the one letter that he’d signed.

“The signatures match,” Julian admitted.

“Then look at this one. It’s block lettering, it’s strict, controlled, and very different than both of them. Let’s see if we can find one with a signature.”

They began digging.

Finally, Julian found one. “I got it. Who the hell is Gene Gentry?”

“No clue. We’ll ask Roman when we see him. He’s probably finishing up with his sister’s room by now. Let’s go ask him. I think we’re done in here.”

She agreed with him there.

After they locked up, they headed upstairs to the family quarters. As they approached Rylee’s room, they noticed the light was on, but there was no sound coming from the slightly cracked door.

Tori gently pushed the door open to peek inside the room. She wasn’t surprised at what she saw. Roman and Mattie were naked, barely covered with a blanket, and sound asleep.

It looked like someone had to burn off some of that energy. She closed the door and started grinning.

“What?”

“They’re asleep. It looks like they took a sex sedative to chase the demons away.”

He shook his head. “It’s not fair.”

“What?” she asked, as they headed toward the guest room.

“Everyone’s having sex but me, and I’m the one with the paper that gives me access to my wife.”

“You mean our marriage license?”

“Yep.”

Tori laughed as they closed the bedroom door. “Your life sucks, Julian. You have a pregnant wife and no one to have sex with—how horrible!”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Maybe my wife can get in the mood and cuddle with me?”

Tori headed for the bathroom. “I want a hot shower, and then bed.”

He looked disappointed.

“Want to wash my back?”

That had his attention.

“What about your front? You’re dirty.”

“Oh, Mr. Littlemoon, you have no idea how true of a statement that is.”

“Then show me.”

Oh, she could do that.

       
         
* * *
  L   i   t   t   l  e  m  o  o  n  * * *

Thursday Morning

Three A.M

When Tori’s phone rang, she wanted to throw it against the wall. One of the things she didn’t miss from her FBI days was this. No one liked getting calls in the middle of the night.

At first, she thought it might be Beau, checking in with Nyx’s status, or someone from home, but it wasn’t. It was Detective Rose, and that meant one of two things.

Someone was dead, or he’d found the bodies.

Either way, they were now on duty. Someone had to handle it, and they’d taken on this mess.

It was time to own it.

“Detective?” Tori said, answering the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“Off the record, I got a call from dispatch about ten minutes ago. It seems that Elbert Barber’s wife called in a missing person. Dispatch called me, since she told them he might be hurt or at work.”

“You need to get here to search?” Tori asked, sliding out of bed to get some clothes on. Julian was watching from the bed, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I hate bothering you guys because I’m sure you’ve been up working, but can we do a walkthrough of the place? I find it odd that one of your suspects is missing. Could he be guilty and made a break for it?”

That was a distinct possibility.

Since that was the case, they had to do it. This couldn’t wait for morning.

“We’ll meet you in front of the main building.”

“Thank you, Tori. We’ll be fast, and then you can get back to sleep.”

She knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Now her mind was going, and she was curious as to what the hell was going on. As soon as she hung up, Tori filled her husband in on the situation.

“That’s suspicious.”

She was aware.

“We better wake Roman up. I don’t like that a man who has the keys to this place is now MIA and the possible killer. They’re passed out. He could sneak in there and hurt them.”

Julian agreed.

Tori pulled out her phone and dialed Roman’s. When he answered, he sounded half-asleep.

“Tori?”

“We have a situation.”

She told him.

“Jesus! I’ll help you search. If he’s not here, I’m going to manually change the codes on the gates and doors. Luckily, I remember how to do it.”

“That’s a good idea. Detective Rose is coming. We’ll meet you downstairs.”

He hung up.

Julian was already dressed and ready to go.

As they headed down, they could hear creaks and motion in the building around them. No one believed that it was the settling of the building.

“Something is stirred up,” Julian stated.

Oh, she could see the flutter of spirits whipping around. It was more than stirred up.

It was in a frenzy.

“Tori?”

“Huh?”

“What? You don’t have a comment?”

Oh, she had plenty to say. Only, she didn’t think that Julian would want to hear it.

Frankly, she had that feeling, and she knew it was going to be bad. As of late, her hunches were more than guesses. They were pretty accurate.

“He’s dead, Jules.”

He stared at her. “How do you know?”

She lifted a brow.

“Ohhhh, it’s a dead thing, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

Honestly, he was glad.

Outside, Julian and Tori waited for their team and the Detective. As they did, she sent a text to her brother, hoping to get some good news.

When she got his reply, it was anything but.