My protection, my ass. He tensed his fingers, readying himself to break her fucking neck. “Please, enlighten me,” Ephraim said, hoping he sounded bored. And not rattled. Because he was rattled. And he suspected he knew exactly where this was going.

“Oh, I will. I think you saw the telecast, saw Mercy and Eileen. Saw that Eileen was dead. She was tied to you somehow. I don’t know how yet. Hell, maybe she was your wife, after Mercy left you. But they said that Mercy had returned to New Orleans after her rescue from the killer, so that’s where you went.”

“You should be a writer. Such intriguing fiction.” Except she’d figured it out. Every fucking detail.

She simply smiled. “And I checked your laptop. You purchased a one-way ticket to New Orleans in the name of Eustace Carmelo—less than five minutes after the news report ended.”

He stared at her. “You checked my laptop?” How? How had she gotten past his password? “What the actual fuck? This is my property.”

“My house, my rules.”

“My locker. My fucking property.”

She shrugged. “You’re missing the point here, Ephraim.”

He was seething. So damn furious. “What is your fucking point, Regina?”

“That you booked a flight to New Orleans with a fake ID as soon as that CNN special was over. But something must have gone wrong there, because you followed her back here.”

Something had gone wrong. He’d followed Mercy for days, trying to figure out when he could safely grab her. Determining her schedule had been easy enough—she went to work, her apartment, and her half brother’s house—but the woman always had too many people around her, leaving Ephraim frustrated. She worked at the New Orleans police department, so grabbing her outside work was not going to happen. Each time she’d returned home for the evening she’d pulled into her parking place and was immediately met by one of the other residents of the apartment house, usually gathered on the stoop. She was a popular person, his Mercy, clearly liked by her neighbors.

The discovery of the half brother had been lucky, actually. That information had come from the man’s daughter, a chatty little thing, about nine years old. A little too young, unfortunately. Give the girl another few years and she’d have been perfect. Ephraim had followed Mercy from her office to the man’s home Thursday night and had almost had her in his hands when she’d left after dinner, but her brother had accompanied her home, walking her to her door then driving away with her car. Ephraim had wondered why her brother had taken her car as he’d ventured into the apartment building, but she hadn’t answered her door, and he’d been unable to break in.

So Ephraim returned to the half brother’s house yesterday, learning all about Mercy’s reunion with her half brother’s family from the little girl. She’d shared that her mother had borrowed Mercy’s car because the family car was in the shop, which explained why the brother had taken her car the night before.