Broken Toy [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Read Online Free Page B

Carlton.
    The dive shop looked relatively unchanged since the last time he’d seen it the previous summer. He’d bumped into her county EMS paramedic husband, Rob Carlton, a couple of times in the course of his duties since Laura’s attack, but hadn’t had the time to check in on her.
    When he walked in, he found her standing behind the counter, a sleeping baby cradled in her arms as she talked with a customer. Laura’s beaming smile lit the room when she spotted him. She waved him over while handing the customer off to one of her employees.
    She hustled him into the shop’s office behind the counter and threw a one-armed hug around his neck, being careful not to jostle the infant. “It’s so good to see you!”
    He looked down at the baby in her arms. “I’m glad to see everything turned out well. How old is she now?”
    She laughed. “Four and a half months. Yeah, she’s healthy and happy and running us ragged, which everyone assures us is totally normal.” She gently settled the baby into a portable crib taking up a corner of the office before turning to give him a better hug. “So how are you doing?” She indicated for him to take a seat.
    “I had to be in the area and wanted to stop by for a visit. When I last saw Rob a few weeks ago, he was flashing everyone baby pics on his phone.”
    “He’s a proud dad.” She reached up and fingered her necklace, the heart-shaped locket there. It was a replacement for the one her attacker had taken from her, the same one they’d recovered from Don Kern’s home after his death. That, and quite a few other mementos from his other victims, some as of yet not matched up to cold cases. It likely meant the victims might go unnamed, possibly forever.
    The best investigators could figure, Don Kern had raped and murdered over forty women. Laura had been the first to escape him, and the reason they’d been able to break the case and piece together his cross-country trail of death.
    “So. How are you doing?” he gently asked.
    Her expression faltered a little, but she nodded. “I’m doing okay. Getting my memories back really helped.” She shrugged. “I didn’t start having nightmares until after Molly was born.” She let out a snort. “They’re better now, though. My psychiatrist said that was normal because of everything I went through.”
    “I’m glad everything’s going so well.”
    “You know how it is. I have all I need. A healthy daughter, a good husband, and good friends…” Her voice faltered. “I’m sorry. Rob told me about your wife. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.”
    He shrugged. “You weren’t, and it’s fine. She’s been gone nine years now. I’ve adjusted.”
    “Look, stay for dinner tonight. Please? We were going to grill burgers at home. Rob should be here any minute to get us. It’d be so nice to catch up with you.”
    “You mean to spend some unofficial time with me?”
    “Yeah. Please?”
    “Okay. Sure. I’d like that, thank you.”
    Actually, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Something that had rolled through his mind many times since the case was the relationship dynamic between Rob and Laura. He knew from text message records he’d had pulled from their cell phones during the investigation that they had a Master and slave dynamic. It turned out to be irrelevant to the case. He’d managed to successfully keep that evidence out of the official case file, saving the couple and their friends in the lifestyle potential embarrassment, as well as possibly preserving Rob’s job as a paramedic with the county’s fire department.
    Maybe my problem is that I need to fish in the right pond. Bill knew he wasn’t sadistic by any stretch of the imagination, but one of the most precious things about his relationship with Ella, what he couldn’t talk about with most people, and one of the things he missed the most, had been their non-vanilla relationship in bed, and sometimes out of it when the mood struck them. He never would