Fallen Angels 05 - Possession (32 page)

And she wasn’t sure she needed to know any further details. She had been hoping that information would lead to some kind of understanding, even if it was painful. It did not, though. She was here where her death had taken place, and had some broad brushstrokes about the event—mainly Jim’s reaction—and she wasn’t any more grounded.

The only thing she felt was that anger deep inside her. Even as she embraced Jim, and honestly felt commiseration for his suffering, that fury burned.

Jim shifted his position, wrapping his arms around her, holding her in return.

Closing her eyes, Sissy tried to reach a place of peace. Or … resignation. Or … something.

She could not. But it was strange … being close to Jim like this?

Now, that was not weird. At all.

In fact, she became acutely aware of his body, his heft, his masculine scent. And that did bring something else out in her. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was better than the anger, that was for sure.

A torturous slide show was playing in Jim’s brain.

Well, not a show as in a series of images. There were only two. One of Sissy. The other of his mother.

One was in this bathroom. The other in a farmhouse kitchen. Both were heavily tinted in the color red, in the former case, in the tub, and in the latter, all over a linoleum floor.

He was not an emotional guy. Never had been—well, not since he’d been thirteen.

The event that had spawned that second slide, namely him finding his mother half dead and near-totally desecrated on their kitchen floor, had zipped him up but good. And he’d assumed that was a permanent thing … being here, though, reliving his part in Sissy’s passing, feeling the horror and the rage at the waste of it all, along with his impotence as he tried and failed to save her … it cracked open his vault, busting through the layers of not-going-there-ever, splintering the wall he’d built up.

“Who?” Sissy said.

Jim pulled back and swiped his palms over his wet face. “What?”

“You said a name.”

“Nah.”

She nodded, her eyes locking on his. “Who was she?” When he didn’t answer, she reached up and put her soft hand on his cheek. “Who did you lose? Other than me, who did you not get there in time for?”

“This isn’t about my past—”

“Actually, I think it is. I always used to believe things happened for a reason. Maybe we came here … for you.” As he started to shake his head, she cut him off. “This didn’t get me what I was looking for. I don’t feel any better. So at least … maybe we can help you.”

Jim frowned. His mother’s death had in fact been the first of the uglies in his life, the starting gun of his race to what he’d become in XOps. If that murder hadn’t happened, would he have ended up in a different place?

Yes, he thought. Without that, he would have been a farmer out there in the Midwest, working the land, using his hands.

It was totally foreign to speak of it all, but for some reason, the words came and could not be denied. “We lived out on the plains. My mom and me. Alone. It was a small farm, surrounded by huge farms. So when these men broke into the house and … hurt her … nobody heard her scream. I came home and found her in the kitchen, she didn’t have much time left. So much blood, the blood everywhere … God …” A choking sensation made it nearly impossible to go on, but somehow, he had to. “She told me to run—she whispered it. They were upstairs, taking what little we had. I wanted to stay with her, but she made me go. I ran out to the truck—I didn’t have a license, I was too young, but I knew how to drive. I got in and floored the gas—I can remember looking in the rearview mirror and seeing the dust boiling up behind me on the road. Later, I came back. After all the police stuff was taken care of, I buried her myself, dug the hole in the pasture by the ridge. There was no one else to mourn her.”

Sissy exhaled slowly, as if an echo of all his pain had gone through her chest, too.

“I can’t imagine being out in the world alone,” she said. “You must have been Chillie’s age—when having a paper route is a stretch of responsibility. What did you do? Where did you go after…”

“The military.”

“They don’t take people that young, do they?”

He was not about to tell her that he’d been recruited into XOps because of the way he’d slaughtered the three men who’d killed his mother. Those murders had been so violent, they’d hit the national press—but he’d never been caught.

XOps had put it together, though. And they had come looking for him.

Sissy pushed her hair back. “You must have had a couple of years on your own.”

“Well, eventually, they accepted me.” After he’d been properly screened for sociopathic tendencies—and found to have enough to qualify him. And then he’d gotten through a form of “basic training” that was so brutal, people had been known not just to quit, but keel over dead from it.

“You and I have a lot in common,” Sissy murmured. “Hell takes a lot of forms, doesn’t it.”

“You’re too young to know that.”

“Not young anymore.”

He was beginning to really believe that.

“Do you want the rest of the story,” he said gruffly. “Yours, that is.”

“Yes.”

Jim felt like he was sinking into quicksand again as he chose his words. They might as well finish this, though. “Devina came while we were here. My boys had to knock me out by force—they knew if they’d let me stay, I would have fought her and probably lost. It was early times for me—shit, it feels like a million years ago. But I did return. By then? She’d cleaned the place out. Everything was gone, even you.” He rubbed his eyes like they hurt. “We found you later.”

“Where?”

“The quarry.”

Sissy frowned. “The one out by—”

“Yeah.”

“Dear Lord …” she whispered. “My poor parents. My sister. My grandparents.”

Her hand went to her stomach and she made an expression like she was nauseated. Couldn’t blame her.

After a moment, she said, “When you were little, and you got punished … did you ever picture yourself at your own funeral? Because I did—I used to imagine that my mom and dad were in tears, regretting every ‘meanie’ they’d ever done to me. That was such a wrong thing for me to do.”

She grimaced as she shifted around, and he was reminded they were on a cold, hard floor—except then she rubbed her belly as if it hurt.

“Are you okay?” he said. “You want to get out of here?”

“I feel like I have indigestion.”

“Why wouldn’t you.”

Jim got to his feet and offered a hand. As she took it and he pulled her up, she grunted, and couldn’t seem to straighten.

“Sissy?”

“My stomach …” She lifted the hem of his shirt, pulling it up—“Oh, God! What is that!”

He had no fucking clue, at first. But then, he knew: Across the flat, pale stretch of skin, there was a pattern in the flesh, a pattern that was glowing as if lit from within.

Devina had carved it there as part of the ritual.

“Get it off me …” Sissy started rubbing. “Get it off me!”

Jim captured her hands and bent down. That red illumination was all wrong, he thought. It was emanating from within her…

He carefully lowered the shirt back into place. “Let’s get out of here. And then we’ll see what we can do about it, okay?”

Sissy grabbed onto the shirt and held it in place, a look of stark terror distorting her beautiful features. “What if she’s inside me?”

Jim shook his head, even as the back of his neck tightened. “Not possible.”

And then he said the one thing that, later on, he would come to regret: “You’re mine.”

Cait spent the afternoon counting down the hours.

After leaving her date with G.B., she went home, sat at her desk … and checked the time about every twenty minutes or so. She did get some work done, however, although it was the difference between walking at the side of the road and being in a car going sixty-five.

Forward motion, but only in a relative sense.

She and Duke were meeting at six, and so, after some tense negotiations with her Guilt-o-meter, she decided to give herself an hour to get ready—which was outrageous, but seemed necessary. And then considering she needed fifteen minutes to drive into town, she was therefore allowed to get up out of her chair at four forty-five.

Don’t wear a bra.

Putting her pencil down, she had to close her eyes as her body responded—

Her phone went off next to her, ringing loud in her silent house. As she grabbed for it, her heart pounded. Please, please, let it not be Duke canceling…

Unknown phone number. “Hello?”

“… Cait?…”

As the male voice sank in, she sat up in confusion. “Thom?”

“Hi.” Her old college boyfriend cleared his throat as the greeting came out funny. “Sorry, hi.”

“Well, ah, hi. How are you?” In her head she did the math. The last time she’d spoken with him had been about six months ago—and he’d been very sure that he and the girlfriend were pregnant. Three plus six equals nine.

“I’m good, thanks. And you?”

They were both stilted, but then, come on. They’d nearly gotten engaged—up until he’d cheated on her. And now he and the woman were pregnant—actually, had no doubt just had a healthy, beautiful boy or a girl.

“Good, good, thank you.”

In the silence that followed, for some reason, Cait remembered exactly where she’d been sitting when he’d rung her phone for their previous call back in November. She’d been upstairs in her bedroom, ironing clothes, and she’d kept it together during the five- or six-minute conversation. Had also been honestly glad he was telling her in person before the news got out within their network of buddies.

After she’d hung up, though? She’d turned off the lights, gotten into bed, and cried for about six hours.

Next day she’d joined the nearest Bally Total Fitness.

“I just wanted you to know … that we had the baby. Early last night.”

As she reclosed her eyes, her first thought was that she was thrilled she was meeting Duke in about an hour and a half. To hear this news without having her date to look forward to probably would have resulted in another day under the covers.

Her second? Was that, as before, he didn’t come across as if he were gloating, or showing off his good fortune. No, Thom seemed almost apologetic, just as he had when he’d told her about the pregnancy—he was clearly trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation.

“I’m so happy for you.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the other woman’s name. That hadn’t changed even with Duke on the horizon. “I really, truly am.”

“I wanted you to know before, well, everyone else does.”

“What’s his or her name?”

“We’ve named him Thomas, after me.”

“That’s great. You must be so excited.”

“I am. I mean, this wasn’t planned, but … sometimes life is like that, you know?”

Tell me about it, Thom. “Yes, I know. When’s the wedding?”

Because surely he would marry the woman now.

“Not for a while. We have to get through the first couple months with him—well, Margot does. I’m working around the clock.”

“Wall Street will do that to you.”

“Sure does.” Pause. “Are you okay?”

Cait bristled at that. What, like she’d been sitting around pining after him forever?

Okay, maybe that had been true for a little while. “You know what? I really am. I’m in a good place, work’s fantastic, and my personal life is …” She didn’t finish that part with any details. Seemed too much as if she were trying to prove something. “… going well.”

The relief that came across the connection was palpable. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear that.”

And you know, it was funny; she believed that was true for him. In this moment, sitting with the phone squeezed to her ear and the awkwardness on both sides making her want to end things quickly, she realized … Thom was a good guy.

“Can I ask you something?” she blurted.

“Anything. I mean that, Cait.”

“When you met …” Okay, time to man up. For God’s sake, at this point, the pair of them had been together longer than she and Thom had. “… Margot, was it a love-at-first-sight kind of thing? Like, an overwhelming, no-going-back free fall?”

She was, of course, thinking of Duke. Even though that probably didn’t make a lot of sense. She barely knew the guy, after all.

Thom cleared his throat. “Are you sure you want me to answer that?”

“Yeah, I really am. Although maybe this is not the right time. You’re probably still at the hospital, right?”

“No, no, it’s okay. They’re both sleeping, and the parents have all gone home for showers.”

She could just picture him in some kind of white corridor, leaning a shoulder on the wall and crossing one loafer or wingtip so that it balanced on the toe.

Thom blew out a long breath. “I saw her in the library, across a distance … and I can’t explain it. I just stopped dead, right where I was. It wasn’t in my nature to have that kind of reaction, and still isn’t—and just so you and I are clear? I walked away. I didn’t talk to her, I didn’t ask anyone about her, I didn’t take a seat and stare at her for hours. I just turned right around and left.”