Page 125 of Please Hate Me

“And that’s a bad thing? He is literally hotter than the surface of the sun— Oops! Don’t tell Lucian I said that.”

A smirk formed on my lips. She was right. If being a detective didn’t work for Sebastian, he probably could have had a very successful career in nude modeling.

“If you think that, why haven’t you slept with him?” That was more of a rhetorical question.

Lucian had probably forbidden her from sleeping with his brother. But he was fine with Cameron and me messing around with Sebastian. Why should Sophia be any different?

Sophia’s cheeks flushed to match her lips.

“Honestly? I don’t know how to start a conversation with him.” A laugh stole the end of her sentence. “He’s cute, but he’s so awkward that I’m worried I’d scare him off.”

It was my turn to laugh. She was probably right; Sophia was intense. Sex with her would probably be overwhelming to someone with very little experience.

“Would you want to go see himwithoutthe sex?” Sophia asked.

My lips pressed into a thin line as I considered it. If I was completely honest with myself, the answer would still beno. That’s when I realized the sex wasn’t the problem at all.

I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Sophia yet.

Chapter 34

Sebastian

I sat at my desk in the bedroom, a cup of coffee precariously perched in the one empty space near the edge. The rest of the surface was completely covered in papers from theSons of Christcase file.

Mason was taking too long to come home, and I needed to distract myself from whatever mind games Cameron was playing. The only surefire way to do that was to compile enough evidence to incriminate Cameron and submit it to my superior. As soon as I could do that, they would permit me to eliminate him.

I was going to make it look like a suicide, just like I had with Mason’s mom years earlier. Cameron fit the description of their false prophet; the biggest church in town remained closed for six months during his absence, and he was lying to either Sophia or me about his father. But why?

I looked up from the papers to stare at a stray nail protruding from the wall.

He didn’t seem to gain anything from lying about his father being dead… unless Cameron didn’t want me to look for him. I pressed my lips together and tilted my head before digging through the files again, looking for anything with the last name Cole. I was fairly certain Cameron was using a fake name, but it was worth a shot.

Unsurprisingly, that yielded no results. But, as I examined documents from the date of the initial crimes, the seed of an idea began to take root in my head.

The Sons of Christ killings may have been the most interesting crimes in rural Quebec, but they were far from the only ones. Plenty of my subordinates had worked cases dealing with one-off murderers from the area. I didn’t have the physical case files at my disposal, but Ididhave a database I could tap into.

I slid my documents back into the manila envelope and unlocked the desk drawer, pulling out my laptop and putting the case file in its place. The soft whirring of the machine filled the air as I waited for the computer to load. I took a sip of my now-cold coffee, wincing at the bitter aftertaste as I double-clicked the desktop shortcut to my company’s database. After entering my credentials, I was presented with a search screen.

I had no idea what I was looking for, so I just typedQuebecinto the location filter and set the time frame for up to five years prior to the first killing. At first, I found nothing of interest. There were a few petty crimes and one or two murders, but mostly just pages and pages of garbage.

Finally, after several minutes of searching, something caught my attention.

Though most written French eluded me, I knew thatfuemeant fire, andmaisonwas house. Both of these words appeared in the title of an article written roughly four years before the first appearance of theSons of Christ. My pulse quickened as I clicked the link, hoping for a web page that could be auto-translated by my browser. Instead, I was greeted by a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. Normally, I didn’t bother with evidence I couldn’t read, but a family photo drew me in.

As my heartbeat thundered in my ears, I zoomed in on the face of a teen boy, presumably the oldest son. The black-and-white photo obscured his hair color, but the eyes and nose matched the now-familiar shape of Cameron’s. My eyes flicked to the article, landing on the one piece of text I could actually read: a list of names, each followed by a number in parentheses—their ages, I assumed.

One of the names in particular caught my attention:

Calvin Waters (16).

Puzzle pieces were beginning to appear before me, but for the life of me I could not fit them together. If I could just read the rest of the damn article...

I swallowed hard as I realized I was intimately familiar with a native French speaker. Surely, she’d be happy to translate a few short paragraphs for me. But was it really worth the stress of involving her in the case?

I studied Calvin’s face, tracing his features through the screen. My original goal had been to find some solid evidence proving Cameron was a cold-blooded homicidal maniac. But, unless these people were the founding members of the cult or Calvin had lit the house on fire, I wouldn’t be getting that at all. No, it seemed much more likely that I had found some early victims of the true father of theSons of Christ. If that were the case, it would turn the entire narrative I had constructed on its head, setting me back to square one with this case.

And, even more infuriatingly, it would mean I wouldn’t be allowed to kill Cameron.

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