Page 125 of Sweet Temptation

All day, I’d become increasingly agitated when there was no news. He hadn’t reappeared, and we’d been unable to pick up his trail.

I’d told Naveen, Keep looking.

But I was losing faith, with every passing hour, that we were gonna find him at all.

I went through the motions of getting ready for bed, running a hot shower and getting in, even though I doubted I was gonna be able to sleep tonight.

Where the fuck was this guy?

Did he figure out he was being watched? Did he slip the tail on purpose? Did he go underground?

Or did he simply take off, leave the city? The province?

Did the Sinners help him disappear?

Or did the Kings get to him?

I was too fucking consumed by all of it to bother with getting myself off in the shower. I was already out and toweling off, and falling into bed, before I realized it.

I lay there, just replaying tonight’s fuck-ups in my head.

Walking away from Summer at the club. Leaving her with Yancy, with Andre. Leaving her without me.

Touching her.

Why the fuck did I have to go touching her?

I tried to relax, at least get some rest so I could be sharp tomorrow, and do my fucking job. But I kept thinking about her. I wondered how she was doing, alone in her hotel room, right now.

She’d told me she didn’t like being alone.

Was she sleeping?

I thought about Naveen’s call, the one that told me what I did not want to hear. That my team had failed. That we’d lost our eyes on Blair Sanchuk, the man who’d fucked with Summer’s peace of mind.

I kept checking my phone for an update from my guys.

Nothing.

Eventually, I realized I wouldn’t be able to let this go tonight until I called Jude. I didn’t have much of a choice but to tell him what happened. I’d been putting it off, hoping we’d find Sanchuk before I ever had to tell him or Brody that we’d lost him.

But it was now approaching midnight in Vancouver, and he hadn’t come home for the second night in a row.

Things were not looking good.

“Sanchuk’s in the wind,” I told Jude when he picked up. “Our tail lost him in a crowd outside a concert letting out in downtown Vancouver, around ten-thirty last night. He was on foot. He hasn’t been home since.”

I let that hang, in case he wanted to speak up and tell me the Kings had anything to do with this.

“And you’re just telling me this now?”

“We’ve been trying to pick up the trail. But I’m wondering if he might’ve taken a runner.”

“I’ll talk to Piper,” Jude said. “The Kings will find him.”

They’d fucking better.

I got off that call even more pissed off. Definitely wanted to blame the Kings for fucking with this, sending Sanchuk into hiding, if that’s what they’d done.

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