by J. R. Ward
He and Adrian didn’t say a word as they took up res on either side of the truck bed by the back. The tarp they’d bought at Home Depot an hour ago was secured by a half dozen bungee cords, and one by one they freed the hooks and bands. Rolling up the thick, blue cover, they revealed the sheet-wrapped body they had been so careful with.
They had left the lobby of the bank not long after Jim’s fury had busted out all the windows, and they’d taken Eddie with them—which had been no struggle, as it had turned out; at least not physically. After the death, the body was light as a feather, as if all the critical mass had vacated the skin and bones, and what was left behind was nothing more than the outline drawing of what Eddie had once been.
Jim had had no clue where to go, but then Dog had appeared in their path . . . and led them to an abandoned three-story walk-up.
Leaving Adrian and the animal to guard their dead, Jim had returned to the hotel, packed up all their shit and loaded it into his truck. When he’d returned, he’d parked in an underground garage a couple blocks away, and flashed over with all sorts of plans to move to greater safety and collect the other vehicles and bikes that were still in the lot at the Marriott.
In the end, though, he’d just sat around, and given Adrian a break—because the guy had looked as if he were about to shatter.
Eventually, they’d had to relocate, however, and he’d decided that coming here was their best bet in the immediate short term. And Adrian had gone along without comment, except that was probably not a good sign—he was clearly still numbed out, but that wasn’t going to last, and what was on the other side? Biblical wasn’t going to cover the half of it, most likely.
Jim unlatched the back gate and let it fall. “Do you want to—”
Adrian sprang up and over the gunnels, landing deftly next to Eddie. Scooping up the shrouded remains, he stepped off the bed, and walked over to the side door. “Can you get this for us?”
“Yeah, sure.”
With Dog leading the way again, Jim went over and opened the exit and then all three of them went up the exterior stairs. At the top, he used a lock pick, worked the doorknob in a matter of seconds, and stood to the side as Adrian went in.
The single bed was just the way it had been when Jim had left, the sheets tangled from the last bad night’s sleep he’d had there. And yup, the money and the key were right where he’d put them on the counter of the galley kitchen. Sofa was still under the picture window, with the thin drapes pulled closed. Air smelled vaguely of hay, but that wasn’t going to last.
Not with Eddie around.
As Jim looked over at Adrian, he knew there was no reason not to use this place. Matthias was in Devina’s well of souls for eternity so it wasn’t like he was any threat, and the rest of XOps was going to be busy scrambling to fill the leadership void the guy had left behind. Besides, Jim’s only problem had been with his old boss.
Who he’d let down in the last round.
“There’s a crawl space back here,” Jim said, walking over to the kitchen.
Next to the refrigerator, there was a narrow half door that led into a shallow, Sheetrocked area under the eaves of the roof. Reaching in, he turned on the bald lightbulb and got out of the way.
As Adrian crouched down and went inside with his burden, Jim opened one of the drawers under the kitchen counter and took out a long knife.
He didn’t hesitate as he put the blade against his palm and streaked it through his skin.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
Adrian backed out of the crawl space. “What are you doing?”
Bright red, shimmering drops fell to the floor in a little trail as he walked over to where Eddie had been placed. The truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on here, but his instincts were guiding him, pulling him forward, and putting his bleeding palm against the inside of the half door . . . as well as on the body itself.
Before he retracted his dripping hand, he vowed, “I don’t leave fallen soldiers behind. You’re going to be with us—until you come back to us. Bet your ass on it.”
Shutting the door, he looked over at Adrian, who had backed up against the counter and braced himself. The angel was staring at the linoleum like it was tea leaves . . . or a map . . . or a mirror . . . or maybe nothing at all.
Who the fuck knew.
“I need to know where you’re at,” Jim said. “You want to stay here with him or do you want to keep fighting?”
Vacant eyes rose from the floor. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He would have handled this better.”
“Ain’t no good way of dealing with it. And I’m not going to twist your arm about anything. You want to do nothing but mourn, that’s perfectly fine with me. But I have to know what you’re up for.”
Shit, it was probably too early to ask the guy to think about what he wanted for lunch, much less whether he was tight to fight. But they didn’t have the luxury to go all therapisty, explore-your-feelings. This was war.
When Adrian just mumbled something about how “not right” it all was, Jim knew he had to get the guy’s attention.
“Listen to me,” he said slowly and clearly, “Devina did this on purpose. She took him from you because she’s depending on the loss incapacitating you. It’s Strategy One-oh-one—isolation. Me from the two of you . . . you from the world. It’s your choice whether it works or not.”
Adrian shifted his stare over to the door Jim had shut. “How can something so . . . huge happen so fast?”
Jim went back in his own past, to a kitchen he had known so well, to a bloody scene he had never forgotten: his mother dying in a pool of her own blood, as she had told him to run as fast as he could, as far as he could . . .
He totally got the whiplash Adrian was dealing with, the horrible realization that the pylons you’d depended on to keep your sky from falling had turned out to be made of paper instead of rock.
“Bombs happen.”
There was a period of silence, and then a soft ticking sound over the floor. Dog, who had mostly stayed out of the way, was limping over to Adrian, and when he got to the guy, he sat on the angel’s combat boot, and lay his head against the angel’s shin.
“I’m not mad,” Adrian said finally. “I’m not . . . anything.”
That was going to change, Jim thought. The question was when.
“Stay here with him,” Jim said. “I’ve got to go out into the field. I don’t want DelVecchio on his own.”
“Yeah . . . yeah.” Adrian bent down and picked up Dog. “Yeah.”
The angel walked over and sat on the couch, putting the animal on his lap and keeping his eyes locked on the crawl space’s door.
“Call me,” Jim said, “and I’ll be here in an instant.”
“Yeah.”
God, Ad was like an inanimate object that breathed. And Jim’s last thought was, Devina was playing with fire. Adrian was going to wake up from this stupor . . . and then there was going to be hell to pay.
After closing the door, Jim paused to light up a cigarette and look at the sky. Clouds were boiling up over the garage, and he found himself looking for an image or a sign in them.
None came.
He finished his Marlboro, and just as he was about to take off, he heard a radio inside the apartment get turned on.
A cappella. Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory.”
How appropriate.
Jim took to the air, following the beacon that was DelVecchio. And he was about halfway to his target when he realized . . .
He didn’t own a radio.
CHAPTER 28
“ Here, let me help you.”
Reilly braced her stance between two boulders the size of wing chairs, and then bent down and reached her hand out.
Veck looked up at her for a moment. “Thanks.”
Their palms met and clinched, and then Reilly cranked back, putting all her weight into the lift. Even with the ballast, he was like pulling a car up out of a ditch, and she had the ver
y clear sense that if he hadn’t jumped, he would have gone nowhere.
As he joined her on the plateau, they looked around. They’d been working the quarry’s long slope for a number of hours, shining flashlights into shallow caves and outcroppings of rocks. The search and rescue officers were tackling the steep side and the other CPDers were far over on the left or going around the rim with the dogs. Minutes passed slowly, agonizingly, the sheer expanse of what there was to cover overwhelming her.
And the undercurrents with Veck, the things unsaid, didn’t help.
God, she hated this whole thing. Especially the fact that they were trying to find the body of a young girl.
“There’s another cave over here,” she said, jumping off a boulder and landing in a crouch on the muddy ground.
The terrain had looked rough from the rim of the quarry. Up close, it was an obstacle course, the kind of landscape you wanted to wear hiking boots to tackle—so good thing extra outerwear and backup evidence kits weren’t the only gear and supplies she kept in her trunk. Good thing also that the rain from the night before had stopped or this would have been beyond grueling. As it was, the tops of the rocks had already dried from the sun so at least they had some firm footing; the puddles and mud in the low spots slowed them down enough.
“You ever been here before?” Veck asked after he landed next to her. As usual, he didn’t have enough clothes on—
Hold up, let’s rephrase that, she thought: As usual, he wasn’t dressed warmly enough, and his footwear was more office-bound than Outward Bound. Not that he seemed to care: Even though his shoes were no doubt ruined, and his black windbreaker had all the insulation of a sheet of paper against the cool breeze, he was soldiering on, sure as if he were perfectly comfortable.
Then again, they were working up a sweat.
Wait, what was the question . . . ?
“Like most people, I’ve known about the quarry forever.” She glanced up to the rim. “But this is my first visit. Boy, it’s like something ripped a giant divot out of the earth.”
“Big something.”
“They say it was created by glaciers.”
“Either that or God was a golfer and the pin he was aiming for is in Pennsylvania.”
She laughed a little. “Personally, I’ll put my money on prehistoric ice. In fact, this is just called “the quarry”—it’s never been one, just looks like one.”
They surmounted another boulder, jumped off again, and pressed onward toward the dark maw of the cave she’d spotted. The one they were heading for looked larger than the others they’d been to already, and up close, its entrance seemed tall enough to get through without bending down—although there was no way Veck’s shoulders were going to fit unless he turned sideways.
Shining her light in, there was nothing but a whole lot of rock wall and dirt floor, and God, the stink. Dank, musty. They all smelled the same, as if the place had one and only one kind of body odor.
“Nothing,” she said. “But I can’t see the end of it.”
“Let me go in further.”
Now would have been the perfect time to modern-woman it and hit him with a Hell, no, I’ll take care of this. But heaven only knew what was in there, and she was not a huge fan of bats. Bears. Snakes. Spiders.
The great outdoors was the one area where she skewed solidly chick.
After she stepped aside, Veck pivoted and squeezed into the thin space. The fact that even his chest was a tight fit reminded her of just how much she knew about his body.
Glancing away, she tried to find the next target. Desperately.
“Nothing,” Veck muttered as he reemerged and made a red X with spray paint on the stone.
“Wait, you have—” She rose up on her toes and brushed the cobweb from his hair. “There, much more presentable.”
He snagged her hand as she went to turn away.
When she jerked in surprise and then looked around quickly, he said, “Don’t worry, no one can see us.”
Guess that was true: They were down in between three massive rocks. But that was hardly good news, because privacy was not what they needed. Spotlights. A stage. Bullhorns strapped to their faces, was more like it—
“Look, I know this isn’t appropriate,” he murmured in a voice that made her heart pound even harder. “But that shit that Kroner said—about knowing me?”
Reilly exhaled in relief. Thank God it wasn’t about them. “Yes?”
Veck released his hold, and paced in a little circle. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew the smoke away from her. “I think on some level, that’s what scares me most in this world.”
Feeling like a fool for freaking out, she eased back on the sun-warmed flank of a boulder. “What do you mean?”
Veck stared up at the sky, the shadow of his strong chin falling on his chest and giving the appearance of a dark arch cut out of his torso. “Like recognizes like. . . .”
“You really think you’d tried to kill him,” she said softly.
“Look, this is going to sound crazy . . . but it feels like my father is always with me.” He put his hand up to his sternum, right at that black shadow. “It’s this . . . thing, that’s a part of me, but not me. And I’ve always been terrified that it’s going to get out—” He cut himself off with a curse. “Oh, Christ, listen to this bullshit—”
“It is not bullshit.” When he looked over, she stared right back at him. “And you can talk to me. No judgments. No other audience, ever. Provided you haven’t broken the law.”
His mouth twitched bitterly. “I haven’t done anything that can get me arrested. Although I really wondered if I had with Kroner in those woods.”
“Well, if you have a fear that you’re like your father, and there’s a bloodbath in front of you, and you can’t remember a thing—of course you would.”
“I don’t want to be like him. Ever.”
“You aren’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
His hard expression put a chill through her, in spite of the fact that her feet were dry and toasty, and she was wearing a parka and gloves. And he was so sure of being a stranger to her, that she wondered why the truism hadn’t stopped them in time the night before. Then again, sex and sexual attraction had a way of making you feel close, when in fact it was just about two bodies rubbing together.
How much did she really know about him? Not much other than what was in his H.R. file at work.
She was certain of one thing, however: He had not, in fact, hurt that man.
“You need to talk to someone who’s a professional,” she said. Because of course there had to be psychological repercussions to having a father like that. “Get this burden off of you.”
“But that’s the problem . . . it’s inside me.”
Something about the tone he used made that chill return—tenfold. Except now she was just thinking crazy. “And I’m telling you, you need to talk it out.”
He resumed looking at the bright blue sky with its passing white streaks of cloud.
After a moment, he said, “I was relieved when you left so quickly last night.”
Well, wasn’t that a slap in the face to bring her back to her senses. “I’m happy to have obliged,” she said with an edge.
“Because I could fall in love with you.”
As her mouth eased open and she blinked like a fish, he tapped his cigarette and exhaled, the smoke rising up into the chilly spring air. “I know that’s not helping anything. Both the fact that I said it now, and that it’s true.”
Too right. And yet, she couldn’t help going there. “But last night . . . you told me you would never take me to your bed.”
He shook his head, his upper lip curling in distaste. “Absolutely not. That’s where I’ve been with women who don’t matter. You did—you do.” He cursed, low and deep. “You’re not like the others.”
Reilly took a deep breath. And another.
And she knew that now would be a good time to set them bo
th straight with something along the lines of, “I’m really flattered, but . . .”
Instead, she just stared at him as he turned the cigarette around and looked at the little orange tip. Tracing the harsh and beautiful lines of his face, she tried to fight the pull toward him . . . and then gave up: In this pocket of privacy in front of the cave, with the breeze whistling between the boulders, and the sun on their faces, the gears between them started to slide back into place again . . . and she realized the true reason she’d left his house so fast.
Screw the job issues: She felt the same way he did, and it had scared her off.
“But it’s tied up in all the shit with my father.”
“I’m sorry, what?” she heard herself say.
“This stuff with you . . . it’s tied up with him as well.” His eyes flashed over to her. “He was in love with my mother. And even so, he sliced her up while she was still breathing and made a heart out of her intestines on the floor beside her. I know, because I was the one who found her body.”
As Reilly gasped, her hand went up to her throat, and she instinctively took a step back . . . only to find that she was trapped against the rock she’d been leaning against.
“Yeah . . .” he said. “So that’s my family history.”
Way to romance a woman, Veck thought as Reilly went snow white and tried to back away from him.
Taking a hard drag on his cigarette, he exhaled away from her. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Reilly shook her head—maybe to clear it. “No . . . no, I’m glad you did. I’m just a little . . .”
“Shocked. Yeah. And that’s only one of the reasons I don’t talk about this shit.”
She brushed a loose strand of hair from her eyes. “But I meant what I said. You can talk to me. I want you to talk to me.”
He wasn’t so sure she’d feel that way when he was through. But for some reason, he found himself opening his piehole.
“My mother was his thirteenth victim.” Man, he envied those guys whose “bad history” stories involved beer bongs, the defacement of public property, and maybe pissing in someone’s gas tank. “I was on summer vacation from high school, staying in a rental house on Cape Cod with friends. It was the last night we had the place, and I was the last person to go home, so I was alone. He brought her into the living room and did it there. Afterward, he must have come upstairs and checked in on me—when I woke up, there were two bloody prints on the doorjamb to my room. That was the only clue something evil had taken place. He’d put duct tape over her mouth so I never heard a thing.”