The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (15 page)

That surprised him, almost as much as any of the bewildering things he’d learned since arriving. He’d pictured the people here as strangers, united in a common cause. Her assertion that they’d been friends before the . . . well,
before
 . . . tilted his perceptions.

“When did it happen?” he asked, trying to sound sympathetic but unable to keep the note of suspicion from his tone.

“Last month,” Karen said calmly.

“Where?”

“Harvey, North Dakota. It’s where we lived, me and her.”

He shot April another glance. She didn’t stand taller than five-four or five-five to begin with, but as Karen had been talking, she seemed to withdraw, making herself smaller. Even her fingers had curled into tight, little fists.

Reece said, “You’re a long way from home.”

Karen made a small humming sound, and he turned back to catch her eyeing April with displeasure. As soon as Karen felt Reece’s gaze on her, she masked the look with another smile.

“Can you tell me about it?” Reece asked. “What happened to your family?”

“Sure. Like I said, the demons killed them. I wasn’t home when they came. Probably why I’m still alive, you know? But I saw what they did. I saw what they left behind.”

She folded her hands in her lap, staring at her linked fingers. “We never did find my sister. No one knows what was done to her. She’s dead, though. Isn’t another way it could be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. Praying to a God he’d never had much time for that he wouldn’t be recounting a similar tale someday. If Gary had told the truth, though, his sister had been taken by a demon disguised as a cop.

Mentally, he rolled his eyes and slapped his forehead. It didn’t come much crazier than that.

Karen gave a sad shrug, pulling his attention back. “I’m luckier than most. I’m alive. I’m here to fight another day and all that.”

He leaned forward and touched her hands. Her fingers moved under his and gripped him tightly, startling him with their strength. As if realizing it, she let go and gave a small laugh.

“We’re just so glad
you’re
here, Reece.”

Yeah, Gary had told him just how
glad
everyone was. They had expectations of him that boggled his mind.

“What about you, April?” he asked, pulling his hand back and turning his attention to the other woman. He caught
her watching him and held her gaze before she could look away.

“She was home for the whole thing,” Karen said. “Gary got there just after they killed her daddy. Everyone else was already dead. Her three sisters and her brother, Jeremy. He used to play football. Isn’t that right, April? Jeremy played for UND, didn’t he?”

April nodded, her gaze still prisoner to Reece’s. Her eyes were big and so dark that he could see the light reflected in them. Her lashes made an outline around the whites, turning the brown into a rich and vividly expressive chocolate. She had the kind of eyes that spoke, though he had no idea what they said to him now.

She blinked and looked away.

“You saw them, April?” he repeated.

“I saw them. I saw what they did,” she said, surprising him. He’d come to expect silent responses.

She had a low, musical voice that made him wonder if she sang. Trying to picture her face alive with music and joy, he crossed the room to stand in front of her. Blocking her from Karen’s view with his body, he willed April to look at him again. He could feel her reluctance as she lifted her chin, focusing on a point just past his left ear.

“What did they look like?”

The question hung like a mist, obscuring things he didn’t understand, blanketing the space between them.

“Big,” she said after a moment. “Pale. So white they glowed. And their eyes . . .”

A shudder went through her body, and Reece found an answering shiver creeping down his spine. Flashes of memories he couldn’t believe were real crowded in. Had he seen something like that the night of the robbery? He didn’t know. He felt like he’d been pumped full of some type of hallucinogenic that clouded his thoughts and blurred the lines between reality and imagination to the point where he could no longer tell one from the other.

“What about you, Reece?” Karen asked, suddenly standing right behind him. He jumped and turned. “Have you seen them?”

“No.” He stepped back, moving away from both women. “I’ve never seen anything even remotely close. I’ll be honest, ladies. I don’t know what happened to your families, but this whole idea of demons . . . well, it just doesn’t sound believable or right. I guess I’ll have to see it for myself before I can get on board with it. Sorry.”

April started to shake her head, but Karen’s quick glance stopped her. He wished he could figure out what was going on with these two.

“Don’t be sorry,” Karen said, running her hand up and down his arm. “And I sure hope you never have to see what we’ve seen. God, no. I hope you . . . I mean . . .”

Her pause felt weighted, and Reece braced himself.

“I mean, what about your sister?” she finished softly.

“What about her?”

“Gary says they have her. They took her.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw April watching him again. “I’m not entirely convinced Gary isn’t a lunatic.”

Karen smiled at that, and the expression was so sweet and genuine that Reece let his guard down, just a bit.

“I didn’t believe him at first either,” she said. “Even after I saw the carnage they left behind, I managed to talk myself around to thinking that it’d just been bad guys, out on a rampage. You hear about them on the news all the time. But Gary showed me pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“In the Bible.” His blank look made her smile again. “Seriously. Ask him to show you. The Bible talks of Satan, and there’s pictures in the one he has. They look just like . . .” She paused and swallowed. “I’ve seen them since, and when I think of them coming for my family . . . I’ll do whatever I have to do to stop them, even if it means dying.”

Her impassioned words resonated inside him. Whether bad guy or demon, he’d do whatever it took to save his sister, too. Death notwithstanding.

Without meaning to, he looked at April again. “You’ve seen these pictures?”

She shrugged.

Karen tugged at his arm, leading him back over to the bed. “I know it probably sounds like some religious mumbo jumbo if you haven’t seen what you’re up against, like we have. But it’s God’s truth, Reece.”

She believed it. He could hear it in her voice. But that didn’t make it true. She sat on the bed and tugged him down beside her, then inched over so she was practically in his lap.

“You should eat something,” she said.

But he wasn’t really listening to her. Instead he focused on the questions buzzing like a hornet’s nest in his head. Finally, one slowed down enough for him to grab it. “Why?” he asked. “Why
your
family? Either of you. Why were they targeted?”

He could feel April’s gaze drilling into him, but Karen spoke first. “Convenience. Harvey’s a small town. Even if everyone in it got up in arms to fight back . . .” She shook her head. “They’d still win. We both lived out off Hunt Street.” She laughed. “Wasn’t much of a street, wasn’t even paved. Our house was the last one. April lived two up. Everyone else who lived there’s gone now.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus didn’t have a thing to do with it,” April blurted.

Watching her, Reece asked, “Why haven’t I heard about this? Why wasn’t it on the news?”

Karen said, “Gary and the others, they killed the demons who did it. Then they lit the whole thing on fire.
Burned it out all the way to the Coopers’ house, but that place had been abandoned for years. Wasn’t no one home to care. But even still . . . for every demon they kill, there’s another taking its place. It’s a losing battle.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. There’s too many of them.”

“And more come every day. That’s why Gary was so excited to get you. He wanted—”

She stopped with a stricken look on her face. In the sharp silence that followed, he glanced from Karen to April, trying to fill in the holes between what they said and what they meant. It almost felt planned, those blurted words. Bait that he couldn’t resist.

With doubt edging his awareness, he said, “Gary wanted . . . what?”

Karen stood. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s got shit for brains,” April said unexpectedly.

Karen didn’t look offended in the least. “It’s true. I’m not as smart as some people,” she said.

“You seem smart enough to me,” Reece responded.

Her smile could have powered a small village. But Reece couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being played any more than he could say why he felt that way.

“I won’t tell him you said anything,” he went on, watching April from the corner of his eye. She shook her head and turned, grabbing the doorknob.

“Where you going?” Karen demanded.

April threw a speaking glance over her shoulder, yanked open the door, and let it thump loudly behind her. Reece had no idea what had set her off, but the tension in the room eased with her exit.

“You’ll have to forgive April. She’s been through a lot.”

“Sounds like you both have.”

“That’s for sure.”

Karen sat next to him again, just as close as before.

“Do you know what Gary wants from me?” Reece asked.

She looked down at her feet and said nothing.

“I swear I won’t repeat it. Anything you say.”

She took a deep breath. “You promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

“Gary thinks you and your sister are chosen,” she said, laying her hand over Reece’s heart.

Pretty much what Gary had told him, but Reece had let it roll off. They thought he’d been chosen to fight evil because of his inability to stay dead. As explanations went, it was out there. But in all his twenty-five years, Reece had yet to hear a better reason for the fact that he kept coming back. That still didn’t mean he believed the bullshit.

“He says you can’t die because you’re meant to save us.”

Somehow he’d hoped Karen would tell a different
tale. Because Gary was off his fucking wheels. Reece couldn’t save himself. Hadn’t saved his sister.

He shook his head, looking into Karen’s hopeful eyes. “I’m sorry, but that’s crap. I
can
die. Chances are, I will again sometime soon. And maybe it will be the last time. Maybe I won’t be lucky enough to have some surgeon on standby when they bring me in.”

“He said you’d say that. That’s why we aren’t supposed to talk about it. I just get so excited when I think . . .”

He stared at her, waiting for her to finish that thought.

“He says with you and your sister on our side, we can’t lose.”

“Gary seems to be living in some fantasy land, Karen. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what happened to your family. But I don’t believe there are monsters—”

“Demons,” she whispered.

“
Demons,
” he corrected. “I don’t believe they’re out walking around killing people. I think there’s crime. I think there are people who are so fucked-up they act like monsters.”

Sometimes he feared he might be one of them if he ever let himself go.

“But they’re just humans with a lot of wires crossed the wrong way. That’s all they are.”

He paused, looking away. Feeling the acrid bite of disgrace in his throat. Talk about fucked-up wiring.

“I wish you were right. But you’ll have to see them for yourself, I guess.”

His skin got cold at that, but he didn’t let his gaze stray from hers. “I guess I will.”

She nodded, looking very young and more than a little bit scared. “You promise you won’t mention this to Gary?”

“I promise.”

She searched his face, as if seeking the lie in that. He gazed back, trying to appear reassuring.

“Thank you,” she said and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek.

The action startled him, and for a moment he didn’t move. She stayed where she was, leaning across the gap that separated them, her breasts pressed against his side. Then she wound her arms around his neck and wiggled closer, trying to push him back against the bed.

“Whoa,” he said. “Karen, whoa.”

He managed to grab her wrists just as she reached for his fly.

She looked up, gave him a siren’s smile, and said, “What’s wrong?”

He found his feet and moved to the other side of the room before she could lay another kiss on him. She was nice, beautiful, and sexy as hell. But nothing about this encounter sat right with him. He felt as if he’d been led into a dark alley—one he’d entered willingly only to call himself every kind of fool when he was jumped.

He heard her move as she crossed to his side. He held out a hand, keeping her at bay.

“What else did Gary tell you to do?” he asked. “Bring me food, settle me in, and . . . ?”

Karen faltered, the big blue eyes blinking at him.

“Did he tell you to make me feel at home? Did he tell you to show me a good time?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He saw it there in her face, and for a moment he was disappointed. He realized he liked her, this fair, freckled woman with her big eyes that fear shadowed now.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell him what we talked about. I gave you my word. If he asks, tell him you did your best to . . . you know. Tell him I’m an asshole and it’s going to take more than—” He stopped, unable to voice the scathing words that he wanted to throw in Gary’s face. This girl was obviously a pawn. It wasn’t her fault that Gary had manipulated her.

Reece moved to the door and held it open for her. “It’ll be all right,” he said as she walked out. She gave him a wounded look, one that held a gleam of trepidation. It was so stark, so unmistakable, that he almost stopped her. But common sense halted his instincts. She was playing him. Just like Gary had played him.

Before he turned back to his room, he caught a movement in the shadow at the top of the stairs. April stood watching him, the look on her face unreadable. But there was something desperate in those dark eyes.
Something that touched him, that beseeched him. Something he would be thinking about long into the night.