That he had left Sissy behind in Devina‟s realm killed him.
Opening his eyes, he realized it was morning; over the top of Dog‟s fuzzy head, the alarm glowed with red numbers. 7:52.
Rise and shine, he thought as he gingerly rolled over onto his back. On the other side of him, Adrian was out like a light, the angel breathing deeply, his eyes jogging behind his closed lids.
Given the glower on his face, he clearly wasn‟t having a good time in dreamland.
God, what a night, Jim thought. After Colin had left him, he‟d assumed it was just going to be him and Dog. But then someone had come through the other room, and he‟d assumed it was Eddie—the nursey-nurse shit was clearly more up his alley.
But no. Adrian had been the one to come in…and stay.
At the moment, Jim didn‟t have the strength to deal with how any sympathy was going to make him feel, so he carefully pulled a blanket around himself and quietly stood up on legs that were about as strong as pencils. Limping over to the laptop, he was dizzy as all get out, and he just barely made it to the chair in time—although, fuckin‟ A, that ass-plant hurt like a bitch.
In spite of the fact that he had to piss like a racehorse, he fired up the Dell and waited impatiently for the Internet browser to get rolling. To pass the time, he took a gander at the ligature marks around his wrists. The pair of them were a pattern of brilliant red, twisted lines that were shiny and raw, and the tangible reminder of where he‟d been and what had been done to him tantalized his mind with a field trip into PTSD. Except that was one permission slip he refused to sign.
Dragging himself into focus, he started to type, although because his fingers were numb, it took forever to get to the
Caldwell Courier Journal
‟s site and put in a search for Cecilia Barten…
Up came an article from some two weeks prior, and Sissy‟s picture brought a sheen to his eyes. She was smiling into the camera while standing in the center of a bunch of kids her own age. There was no telling how long it had been between when the photo was snapped and when she‟d been taken by Devina—but the fact that she‟d had no idea what was around the corner for her made his unreliable heart get even flakier on the job.
Probably good that she hadn‟t known.
And he was so going to get Devina for this.
The only other article was one that reported she remained missing a week later—and the two together made him realize why his first search of the database had failed. He‟d only told the computer to look for murdered or dead blond girls. Not ones who were MIA.
Stupid fucking mistake.
And the details were as she had told him: She was a fresh-man at Union College in Albany, and home on spring break in Caldwell. The last anyone had seen of her was when she‟d left at 223
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nine p.m. to go to the local Hannaford for groceries.
No pictures of her parents. He was going to find them, however.
“Did you see her,” Adrian said in a voice that was mostly gravel.
“Yeah.” Jim stared at the picture of his girl smiling with her friends. Then he blinked and saw that blond hair matted with blood. “How do I get her out of the wall?”
The other angel‟s exhale was the kind you made when there was no good news to be had.
Anywhere. And you were aching from that. “You can‟t.”
“Unacceptable. There has to be a way.”
“Not that I‟ve found.” There was a curse and then a creaking of the mattress and a variety of cracks, as if Ad was stretching. “I‟ll be right back.”
As heavy footsteps headed for the other bedroom, Jim didn‟t acknowledge the guy‟s exit.
But when Dog‟s muzzle nudged against his bare leg, he looked down.
Big brown eyes stared up out of a face of strawlike fur. “Do you know how to get her out?
She doesn‟t belong there. She shouldn‟t have ended up there.”
Jim took the little whimper to mean the animal agreed—and also needed to go out to use the facilities.
“Two secs,” Jim said, bracing himself to get to his feet. “I need a shower.”
Heaving his deadweight up from the chair, he let the blanket fall from him and went into the modestly sized bathroom. Closing himself in, he flicked on the light, stood over the toilet and wondered whether his cock still worked on any level.
The pink stream he pissed out answered that one. And also suggested that his kidneys had been damaged.
After he was finished, he grunted as he leaned over to hit the flusher and then twisted to the left to turn on the shower. Soap. He needed more soap than the half-used bar that was in there—
Jim froze as he saw himself in the mirror.
Bad. Very bad.
Much worse than he‟d thought.
His mouth was purple and swollen from all the shit that had been shoved into it, and his chest and abs were nothing but raw meat. As for his cock…The damn thing was hanging off his hips like it had lost the will to live. And he didn‟t want to know what the backside of him looked like.
Used and abused
was the term.
And his only thought, his only…anything…was that he hated that Sissy had seen him like this.
As his stomach flopped around in his pelvic girdle, he remembered the horrified expression on her face as she had looked at him. That poor girl…He‟d been trained for this shit. He‟d been through it before—well, not exactly what Devina had done to him, but he‟d certainly been worked over a couple of times with fists and knives. Even a bullet or two. But Sissy…
He barely made it back to the toilet in time.
As his body clenched up and nothing but bile came out of his mouth, his eyes watered from the strain.
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Damn it, Sissy had seen him like this. Sexually violated, bloody, beaten—
More vomiting.
He wasn‟t sure exactly when Adrian came in, because round three of heaving hopped up the bunny trail when it dawned on him that he didn‟t know whether she was safe from what had been done to him. After all, she was captured. She was stuck there in that hellhole. And Devina had plenty of things that were male-like.
“Here,” Adrian said, passing over a cold washcloth.
Jim couldn‟t wipe his face because it hurt too much, so he patted at it, feeling the cool dampness like a balm against his flaming cheeks and burning lips.
Hanging his head, he noticed that he‟d left fresh bloodstains on the creamy tile from the wounds that had reopened on his knees.
Yeah, immortal didn‟t mean embalmed; that was for sure.
Adrian sat down next to him, his face far too pale as he stared across the toilet seat. “You want me to get you into the shower? That‟s what helps me when she…”
As their eyes locked, it was survivor-to-survivor.
“Ah, shit…” As Jim spoke, his voice was rough and his throat felt like it had been hit with a plumber‟s snake. “She saw me like this. Sissy…she saw this.”
He couldn‟t believe he said it, but keeping that inside was a no-go.
Unable to retain eye contact, Jim squeezed his lids shut and eased back against the flank of the tub. As the water fell like rain in the shower behind him, and the hard floor bit into his ass, he whispered, “She saw me ruined.”
It was the last thing he said before he passed the fuck out.
225
Y
ou wouldn‟t have thought that a six-thousand-square-foot town house with three floors—
four, if you counted the basement where the wine cellar was—could be cramped as a shoe box.
But as the morning dragged on and bloomed into noon, Grier felt like she couldn‟t get enough air…or any alone time with Isaac. Her father was a pacing, eagle-eyed presence who seemed to fill every room, even when he wasn‟t in it. And Isaac was just as bad, constantly moving around, glancing out windows, going up and back from the front of the house to the kitchen.
By two o‟clock, she couldn‟t stand it any longer and went to organize her bedroom closet.
Which was ridiculous, because it was already tidy—although she found a quick cure for that.
After standing in the middle of the room and doing a three-sixty on the rows of clothes hanging by category, she took each and every blouse, skirt, dress, suit, and pair of slacks off the racks and tossed them into a pile on the floor. Ostensibly, she was reordering the various sections. In reality, she was giving herself a mess to clean up so she could enjoy a slice of control.
Hanger by hanger, item by item, she set about righting her wardrobe.
God…Isaac.
If she‟d heard him right, down in the kitchen, by the coffeemaker…he‟d said that he loved her.
Come on…of course she‟d heard him right. And his incredible eyes had confirmed what her ears had struggled to comprehend.
There were a lot of
buts,
however, that the lawyer in her wanted to lay out. The thing was, the woman under the attorney-at-law didn‟t care about any of that: she felt something equally as strong.
Naturally, logic told her not to trust the emotion in either of their cases, pointing out that it was all a matter of the circumstance, the drama, the tension, the sex—God, the sex. Except her heart had a different theory. She‟d felt the spark between them the instant she‟d laid eyes on him, and his decision to come forward and do the right thing about his corrupt, dangerous boss…well, that was even better than the amazing orgasms.
It made her respect the hell out of him.
As she retrieved one of her black pin-striped suits, she briefly entertained a fantasy where they ended up together on some safe, remote island with nothing but what to have for lunch and dinner to weigh on their minds. The
Gilligan’s Island
daydream with all its tropical never-going-to-happens was a nice diversion, but she wasn‟t fooling herself. Isaac was going to disappear.
The government was going to take him and hide him until whatever congressional hearings or judicial procedures rolled out. And if he didn‟t end up in jail for war atrocities here in the States, 226
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he might well get extradited to some foreign hell.
Which was why he‟d said what he had. It was his good-bye.
“Wow.”
Grier spun on her heels, the suit in her hand flaring out in a circle around her body before settling back down—as if it had momentarily forgotten its reserve, only to regain its composure.
And didn‟t she know how the damn thing felt.
Isaac cursed himself. “Sorry, I really need to learn how to knock.”
Grier eased up a little. “I‟m also jumpy as hell.”
Cocking his brow, he measured the pile in the middle of the creamy carpet. “Lot of clothes.”
“Probably too many. I need to give some to Goodwill.”
He came forward and picked up one of her gowns. It was long and black, like all of them, because she wasn‟t a sparkles or color kind of girl. “Where does this go?”
“Ah…” There was only one section with the bar set high enough for full-lengths. So she‟d dumped them for nothing but a rehang. “There. In the corner, please.”
He carried the evening dress over and set it where it had been. Then he went back for the next one, straightening the padded shoulders on their padded satin seat. Before he put it in place, he surprised her by bending down to put his nose to the neckline.
“This smells like your perfume,” he murmured before placing it on the brass rod.
Didn‟t that just send a shiver through her—in a good way. Unfortunately, the tingle was overridden by everything that was hanging over them. “Have you heard from…them?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do if they don‟t get back to you.”
“They will.”
He didn‟t say anything further, just picked up a taffeta gown with a velvet bodice and a broad tartan sash. “Christmas dress?”
“Yes.”
“It‟s pretty.”
“Thank you. Isaac?” When he looked at her, she said, “I—”
He cut her off. “What‟s that sound?”
“What sound—”
The suit fell from her hands as she recognized the subtle beeping and she scrambled to take the fob to the security system out of her pocket. Sure enough, a red light was flashing.
“Someone’s in the house
.
”
She cut the noise and started for the phone by the bed, but he caught her arm. “No. No police. We‟ve got enough innocent lives caught up in this already.”
His gun came out and so did a tube about as long as her fist. As he screwed the silencer on the end of the muzzle, he looked around and then stalked over to the grated crawl space where the mechanicals of the security system were.
Keeping the weapon in hand, he popped off the metal face. “Get in there. And do not come out until I—”
“I can help—”
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J.R. Ward
The expression on his face made her take a step back: His stare was cold and utterly foreign—like she was looking into frosted glass…with no hope of ever seeing what was behind it.
“Get in there,
now
.”
Her eyes flicked to the gun and then returned to his harsh and unforgiving face. It was hard to know what was more frightening: the idea that someone was in her house, or the stranger standing in front of her. And then it dawned on her…
“Oh, my God, my father!”
“I got him. But I can‟t be effective if I‟m worrying about you.” The weapon pointed at the black hole he‟d opened up. “Go now.”
Putting her faith in him, Grier ducked out of view, crouching down and breathing the musty air of the eaves as Isaac put the grate back in place. There was a shift,
click
, shift,
click
as the thing was locked to the wall, and then through the slats, she watched him leave at a jog, quiet as a passing shadow.
She checked her watch. Listened hard.