“Who is Raphael Sokolov?” Regina asked, looking over his shoulder as she resumed massaging his shoulders. Damn, the woman had good hands.

“A cop. He’s the one who hit me tonight.”

“Then he’s a bastard,” Regina said soothingly.

“That’s for sure.” Ephraim dropped his head, stretching his stiff neck.

“Why did he hit you?”

“I really don’t know,” Ephraim lied smoothly.

She chuckled. “He didn’t hit you that hard, E. Not enough to scramble your brains. But it’s okay. I heard the news reports. I know there are BOLOs out on you all over the state. The reporters say that you tried to abduct a woman from the airport. I saw her photo. She’s a little old for your tastes, isn’t she?”

“She wasn’t when I married her,” he muttered.

Regina stopped the massage. “You’re married?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Because all of his wives were too old now. He wished he could just get rid of them like he did his very first ball and chain, but Pastor frowned on open murder. He’d been able to pass off the first wife’s early demise as an accident to the Eden community, but Pastor knew the truth. Ephraim had been officially punished, which for him required taking on another wife who was also too old for his liking. At least most of his wives behaved themselves.

Unlike Mercy, Rhoda, and then Miriam, who’d all run away.

“That’s all you’re going to tell me? ‘Unfortunately, yes’?”

“Yes.” Because Regina didn’t know about Eden, and he never intended for her to. It was enough that she knew about his predilection for young girls, but at least there they each had equally damaging information on the other. Yes, Ephraim liked to fuck fourteen-year-olds, but Regina sold them, so they were at a stalemate.

“So you married Mercy Callahan?” Regina prodded. “Did she leave you?”

“Something like that.”

“Huh. And this Raphael Sokolov. Is he her new man?”

“I don’t know.” And that pissed him off. He’d been digging into Sokolov for nearly an hour and all he knew was that the man was a homicide detective on leave because he’d been injured saving Mercy Callahan from a deranged killer.

The same deranged killer who’d murdered another of his wives. It was a CNN report about Miriam’s murder that had alerted him to the fact that Mercy was still alive.

“I see. What do you know, Ephraim?”

“That I’m tired of answering your questions.”

With a thin smile, she pulled up a chair. “Too bad, because I have quite a few more. I’d heard Mercy Callahan’s name before tonight, but I couldn’t remember where, so I looked her up. She was one of the three women who escaped that serial killer who was taken down back in February.”

Ephraim tamped his temper down. It wasn’t a good idea to make Regina annoyed. “Yes, she was.”

“And before then, she was living a private life all the way in New Orleans. Where she just happened to be coming from today, according to the news reports. She’d just flown into Sacramento when you tried to grab her.”