Lust and Homicide: The Death Betrayal and Love Series, #3

By Paula-Michelle Trotter

This book has everything you'll want in a Rom-Com Mystery with a little bit of your friendly neighborhood hacker. 
He's trying to solve a murder. She's trying to be a hero. 
Seven dead, two gun shots, and one house fire. 
When these two hackers go head-to-head online and in bed, things get messy.
Can he save her from her destructive behavior that puts her life on the line? 
*** A portion of the proceeds from each book purchase go to a domestic violence and sexual assault charity group. ***
This is book #3 Of the Death Betrayal and Love Series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paula-Michelle Trotter
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781985545199

Book preview

Prologue

~Present Day~

She's dead. Her green as grass eyes are dead. Will I be blamed?

The definition of homicide is the act of one human killing another. A homicide requires only a volitional act by another person that results in death. A homicide may result from an accidental, reckless or negligent act even if there is no intent to cause harm.

Lust. Lust is a strong emotion, feeling, or an uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite which leads to pleasure, delight. Lust is often confused with love. Lust is a physical attraction with no lasting effects. Don't get it confused with love. That could prove to be fatal.

Can good people do bad things for a good reason?

Chapter 1- Drew

~Six Months Ago~

Hi there.

My name is Drew Roberts.

Nice to meet you. Hopefully, you will never actually meet me because I am a computer hacker. More precisely, I am what people call a Gray Hat. That means I use the darkest deepest ugliest parts of the underbelly of the dark web, to help people. I do things a little different than most hackers. I get information for the police department to help them solve crimes, mostly murders, thefts, and occasionally fraud cases. I do my best to bring the hidden details to light in the name of justice. I try not to focus on vengeance too much. I’m not what is known as a Blue Hat.

Let me explain this real quick. In my line of work, we all have titles, names, as a color. Your color explains your purpose online. White Hats are the good guys, clean above the boards. Black Hats are bad guys. They will steal from you and kill you. They play in the dark web. Gray Hats, like me, we use the dark web to do good things, mostly. Then you have Green Hats, they are newbies. The Red Hats are the police, not really law enforcement. They are hackers who shut down the work of another hacker if they simply don’t like their work. It’s the Blue Hats that are dangerous. They are all about vengeance. It’s always good to keep one of those guys in your pocket. It’s helpful when you need a favor done. I may have a couple Blue Hats I keep as close friends. You really don’t want to piss them off. You know how they say ambition is always the first step towards success and knowledge is the next step. Where you get that knowledge, well, no one really needs to know that.

There have been the few occasions I’ve used my skills to exact revenge. I am only human after all. I’m pretty sure if you had my skills you would too. Come on, wouldn’t you increase your credit score or maybe read an email addressed to someone else if you could? I think you would.

The hardest part of my job is feeding the information I get to the right people. It’s even trickier to make it come to light in a way that makes other people think they found it on their own. Let me explain, my best friend and brother in law are homicide investigators. They work for one of California’s busiest homicide divisions in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are good with the above ground internet, but they have somewhat nine to five jobs. They aren’t allowed to get their hands dirty. They do, however, carry guns and badges. That allows them to finish the justice aspect of our system.

Currently, I am doing a side job that has turned out to be more than I ever expected. I’m also working on a very personal case as well. These two cases keep me busier than I ever thought they would.

Let’s talk about revenge for a quick moment. In my world revenge is a ball of snow. Once you gather that little ball together, you tend to get the desire to pack a little more and a little more. You want to make it perfectly round. Then the ball is too big to hold, so you put it on the ground. It starts to become something more. Now, you have a snowman, or maybe your snowball rolls down a hill. It’s always going to end with the same result. A big puddle of nasty muddy wetness. That’s revenge. When you’ve achieved my skill level of navigating through the dark web, you’ve learned to steer clear of that mud. But, sometimes some people need a little mud mask on their face to clean off the ugliness that has built up. That’s why I like to think of it as helping the queen of all bitches, Miss Karma, do her job.

Let me introduce you to some of the key players in this game called my life.  My best friend is my brother in law. His name is Nick Caprisi. He’s a homicide investigator, and he is pretty damn good at his job. He’s great because of my other friend Garcia and I. We feed him information to help him solve these crimes. I do have to give Nick credit. He doesn’t need our help too often. I’m thankful he married my sister, Izzy. I love her dearly. I’d do anything in the world for her. This last year has been hell for her. She’s been put through the wringer. She recently changed her line of work, and I’m damn thankful for that. She is now a virtual assistant. She put in a lot of hard work to build an excellent reputation for herself as a personal assistant, but now she’s doing it all online. That makes me happy because I can keep an eye on her and keep her safe. In the last couple of months, she has taken over looking after our mother. Our mother fell ill when I was a young child. Our family friend, who everyone calls Grandma Betty, took over as the responsible adult for my sister and me. We’ll come back to Granny B in a moment.

Nick’s partner, the other homicide investigator who used to be his best friend, until I came along, is Jake. Jake married my sister’s best friend, Julia. Are you keeping track? Well, Julia is now like a sister to me. All the years we practically grew up together, nearly living at her grandmother’s house, I had the biggest crush on her. She was the first female I ever saw naked, besides my sister. In fact, she is the reason I decided I love tits. Hers are spectacular. I watched her develop them over time, and I’m pretty sure that’s the reason Granny B had a lock installed on the bathroom door. They quickly caught on to my accidentally walking into the bathroom while she was showering, just to see her chest. Yes, I am grinning right now, just thinking about my teenage antics. Those showers were why I learned to masturbate. Alright, enough about Julia’s fantastic tits. What was I talking about? Oh yes, Julia married Jake and Izzy married his work partner Nick.

My other friend is Garcia. He works with Nick and Jake. Garcia is a little different. The lady’s fall all over themselves for him. I don’t know why. He doesn’t even say two words, and he has women following his every move. Garcia does what I do for a living, only he does it for the police department, and the department ties his hands. He has to stay clean if you will. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t like to take credit for his achievements. He’s happy to let other people get all the accolades. Last year when we found that cumstain lawyer used phenol and chloroform, he was the one who knew to use antifreeze to counteract it. I couldn’t figure out where to find ethylene glycol. It was his quick thinking that actually saved my sister’s life. Everyone gave me credit for it, and he was happy to let them. Later he explained that he was trained by the Marine Corps for chemical warfare. We work well together in the sense that I don’t have his problem. I can go underground in the dark web and get as dirty as I need to. The hard part is cleaning it up enough so that he can use the information I gather.

Let’s keep going. Jake and spectacular tits, wait I mean Julia, sorry. They got married and had a baby, Senna. They copied Nick and Izzy by going to the drive-thru wedding chapel. Nick and Izzy don’t have kids. Izzy has a service dog named Summer. Summer is a badass pit-bull. She looks all sweet and innocent, but shit, let me tell you she will rip your throat out if you threaten to hurt Izzy physically. She keeps Nick on his toes. Oh yes, I almost forgot to tell you Nick’s mom, Jamie, runs a dog rescue on some property Jake loans her. Jamie is now my sister’s mother in law and is cool as hell. She’s not like most women. She’s sweet and kind, which is why I have no idea what her reason is for her dating Nick’s boss, the Captain of the Police Department. Everyone calls him Cap. Nobody likes him, not even enough to call him by his name. Garcia spends a lot of his off time there at the rescue training the dogs that have that natural ability to become a service dog. That’s where they found Summer when she was a puppy. We all think Garcia has a thing for Jamie, but he will never admit it. He works with Nick, so I don’t think he wants to cross that line. But, I have a funny feeling Jamie might not continue her relationship with Cap if she knew Garcia was an option. But that’s really none of my business, so I keep my nose out of it, for now.

Let’s see, who haven’t I told you about? So far you have Izzy, Nick, Jake, Julia, Garcia, Jamie, and Cap. Oh yes, there is Carla and Maya. They both were victims of horrible crimes and with spectacular tits, shit, I mean Julia. Damn, I have to stop calling her that. She would seriously beat my ass if she heard me say that, and she truly could. Julia and Carla worked together to start a really cool foundation for families and victims of violent crimes. The foundation started out for families who