Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

And that was a first.

“I’ve never felt so fucking out of control. Is this what being in love is like?”

“Hate to break it to you, but if it is love, you’re going to need to get used to not being in control.”

“Get used to this? Ha!” Nik would rather be stuck in a Panama jungle with swamp rot and those giant .50 cal-sized ants gnawing on his balls. “Why am I even asking you? You’ve never had a serious relationship, either.”

“I haven’t?”

“You’ve been in love?”

“Yes.”

Nik’s brows jumped. In all the years he’d known Leo, he’d never had a girlfriend. Girls, yes. Models and actresses were always hanging off him. But now that Nik thought about it, Leo usually pushed them his or Coop’s way. Was it because there’d been someone else?

“How did I not know this?”

Leo grinned. “I don’t tell you guys everything.”

“Well, tell me now. Maybe it’ll help me keep my mind off this.”

“Another time.” Leo glanced down at his phone. “They’re almost at the gas station. Time to head to the park.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Coop reached over, yanked out some pages from the middle of the file and dropped them on top. I stared down at my lap and the photograph of an attractive man with pale blue eyes. The stranger Coop would be handing me over to. My fiancé.

My heart plummeted into my gut. I swallowed, in a futile effort to ease the gripping tightness in my throat. My fingers trembled so hard on the file, I could barely read the information. The only thing standing out for me was I was engaged to someone I didn’t know. Someone who I not only didn’t love, but wasn’t the man who I did.

My mouth went dry and my heart twisted at the thought. The implication. I fished through the papers in my lap again, my stomach knotting and cramping. My mind whirling too fast to even comprehend the information. “Does Nik know about all of this?”

“Not everything in the file, but he’s the one who told me you were engaged. He’s known for a while.”

I closed my eyes tight. The replay of Nik rebuffing my kiss spun through my mind like the twister, shredding my heart. What if knowing I was engaged meant he’d indeed intended for this to be goodbye? What if he and Coop had cooked up this entire plan to get rid of me? No. It couldn’t possibly be true. I refused to believe it. Just like I refused to believe I’d ever loved anyone the way I did Nik.

“I’m not engaged.” I thrust the words out, not knowing exactly where they were coming from. “I wasn’t wearing a ring. So if I was ever engaged to this person, I wasn’t when Nik found me.”

“I believe you, Thea. This isn’t about your current relationship status or any past one. It isn’t even about Nik or you. Look back at the autopsy report. Who identified the body?”

“Clay Kenyon. He’s an FBI agent?”

“As are you, but we’ll get to that later. As your fiancé, sorry, ex-fiancé, shouldn’t he be able to identify your body? There are vague similarities between you and this woman—age, height, weight—but it’s doubtful he could’ve mistaken her for you.”

I studied the autopsy photos again. The red hair was the wrong color and length. He could claim I’d dyed and cut it. The overall bone structure of her face was too narrow and short, her features more delicate and pinched. The woman had sustained brutal injuries possibly distorting her facial structure, though. Most telling were the phoenix tattoo on her forearm and a distinctive scar on the side of her breast to the left of her sternum. From the photograph, I couldn’t quite make the marking out, the blackened skin looked harsh and puckered, unlike the smooth lines on the Phoenix. “On her chest? What is this? Another tattoo?”

“It’s a brand. The angles represent six wings forming a circle. It symbolizes a seraph—the burning one. In Medieval Christian theology they are the caretakers of God’s throne. It’s also the symbol you drew on the red door at Animal Control when you busted Titan out.”

“What does it have to do with all of this?”

“It ties a few things together. It is a symbol used in the branding of Ardent Oils. The essential oils are part of a legitimate multilevel marketing venture which is under the same umbrella as the leadership series Aimee pitched you on. But the branding on this woman is very reminiscent of a cult.”

“Aimee gave me some of the oils to try.” I fished the bottle out of my purse. “It doesn’t have a seraph on it, see?”

“Did you use them?”

“I don’t know. I opened the bottle and remember smelling them, but then I must’ve fell asleep. I’ve been falling asleep a lot though.”

Coop reached back into his backpack again and fished out a plastic bag. “Drop it in here.”

“Why?”

“It’s evidence now.”

I did as he asked then turned to look out of the window. I didn’t want to believe Aimee would hurt me. I didn’t understand why any of this was happening to me. I just knew I had to find a way out.

“This deceased woman has fingerprints, right? Can we find out who she is and clear me that way?”

“Kenyon probably swapped them in the database. I’m sure if we ran yours, we’d learn who the Jane Doe really was.”

“DNA?”

“If he had access to swap the fingerprints in the Fed’s database, he could do blood type, dental records, whatever he needed to. Plus, he authorized a quick cremation of Jane Doe without a full autopsy. A little suspicious, but he could’ve explained it away because the tornado was most likely the cause of death and it’s not like you had family to consider regarding burial preferences.”

“So he’ll get away with it?”

“There’s more. Surveillance camera footage at Animal Control in Wichita shows a man with Clay’s description dropping a German shepherd off the afternoon of the tornado. The signature isn’t legible