At first, Grant was going to take him up on the offer, but there was still the unfinished Ferguson business. It had almost been a week since he’d seen the reporter at Hawley’s funeral, so Grant had dutifully trudged into the Yard the day before and kept making inquiries into the Daily Mail man’s disappearance.

He had all but discarded the theory that Ferguson was the actual Commandment Killer and had framed Prior Silver. But not completely. There was something about it that seemed so right, yet simultaneously so wrong.

Wherever the truth lay, Monte Ferguson had dropped off the face of the earth. Grant began to wonder if something had actually happened to the man.

Maybe he was lying dead in a ditch on some British backroad, having swerved off the road from too much drink celebrating his coup. If that was the case, Grant thought, good riddance; the bugger deserved it.

But now Grant was suddenly preoccupied with something else.

Rachel’s revelation of the secret she had promised Allison to keep from him had sent Grant into a total tailspin.

Sexual assault. For God’s sake. What kind of world were they living in?

Why couldn’t Allison just have told him?

That should never have been a burden for her and Rachel to carry alone.

If Grant had only known—he could have done something about it. He would have utilized every resource the Yard had to find the monster. He would have hunted the man down and made him pay for attacking a helpless, dying woman.

Austin Grant was certain he would have strangled the culprit on sight.

It was what Allison wanted to desperately avoid—Grant taking the matter into his own hands in a way that would ruin her family’s lives long after she was dead and gone.

And that was why Grant had returned to the Yard for his last couple of days—to try and find Allison’s attacker while he still had access to the massive database it had compiled over the years.

Massive might have been an understatement—overwhelming was more like it.

With no information except the date two years ago, the task was virtually impossible—especially with the little time he had left. He wasn’t going to ask Stebbins for more—not when he couldn’t give him the real reason. Grant knew it was pointless to lie and say he needed to keep working the Ferguson angles; that case was dead as far as Stebbins and the Yard were concerned.

When Rachel had called the day before, Grant had told her he was still hunting the missing reporter—though he suspected she knew that her father couldn’t resist looking into what happened in the Maida Vale living room that day.

Rachel made no mention of it. Neither did Grant.

More bloody secrets.