Southern Cross (25 page)

It
wasn’t meant to be cruel—Diggs never means to be cruel. It still stung, though.
There was a challenge to his eyes that told me he expected me to fight him on
this one thing, at least. We’d get riled up, the heat would spark something…

Instead,
I turned around on the bed calmly so I could face him, pulling my legs under
me. I was very, very tired.

“Do
you remember what happened the day you found out I was marrying Michael?” I
asked.

If
he’d expected me to scream and shout, I definitely expected some kind of
deflection from him. The flicker of regret in his eyes was impossible to miss
when he nodded.

“Michael
announced the engagement at that faculty thing we all went to at BU,” I said.

“I
told you I remember, Sol,” he said quietly. “And he only did that because I was
there. He was a forty-five-year-old, smooth talking, womanizing prick. You were
twenty years younger, and you were gorgeous. And the friendship between you and
me drove him nuts.”

“I
know,” I said. I wasn’t so sure about the gorgeous part, but the rest of the
story certainly held up. “And as I recall, I apologized for that. Michael and I
fought. I left the party; Michael stayed.”

“To
go home with his best friend’s wife,” Diggs pointed out. Correctly, as it
happened. He closed his eyes. “Do we really have to relive that whole night?”

“I
just want to make sure you remember the same things I do. Because the way
George was talking the other night made it sound like
I
was the one who
broke
your
heart. And that’s not how I remember it.”

“Fine,”
he said. He scratched his head and blew out a lungful of air. “Go ahead.
Michael stayed at the party. You left.”

“And
at midnight, you showed up on my doorstep. Drunk. High as a kite. Any chance at
all you remember what happened next?”

“I
told you not to marry Michael.”

“Because?”

“Because
he’d gone home with his best friend’s wife, and he was a womanizing prick who
didn’t deserve you.”

“Exactly,”
I said. “And we kissed.”

His
eyes darkened. “If that’s all you remember, your memory’s even fuzzier than
mine. We did a hell of a lot more than kiss that night, kid.”

I
felt my cheeks warm. “I was getting to that part,
kid
. We had sex.”

“We
had bone-melting, burn-the-house-down, once-in-a-lifetime sex,” he said. Images
from that night blew past me in a way I hadn’t expected: my body pressed to
his; the things he’d whispered and the way he’d whispered them; the heat of his
mouth on my… everything; the way it had felt afterward, wrapped in his arms,
like all the pieces of my life suddenly, out of the blue, fit.

He
watched me like he knew exactly what I was thinking. My cheeks got warmer. I
persevered.

“Remember
what I told you, after?” I asked.

That
regret flickered in his eyes again. “You told me you wouldn’t marry him. If I
was serious about you and me—if I wanted to give us a shot, you’d tell Michael
it was over.”

“And
we fell asleep in each other’s arms,” I said. I was still surprisingly calm.
Maybe I was having a breakdown. A very, very zen breakdown. “And when I woke up
in the morning…”

He
wet his lips. Scratched his head again. “I was gone,” he said.

I
stood up, too tired to fight anymore. “And the next thing I heard, you’d moved
to Kentucky and married Ashley Durham.”

“I
know.”

“So
you don’t get to act like this is all my fault, Diggs. Like I’m some stone-cold
bitch when I’m not ready to jump back in bed with you just because—
right now
—you
think it’s what you want. I was protecting you last summer. I’m still protecting
you. But also? There’ve been way too many times when I’ve thought we were about
to ride off into the sunset together, only to wake up and find a note on the
pillow and a fucking twenty-dollar-bill on the dresser.”

He
sat there, his eyes burning a hole through me. Regret and fatigue warred on his
face, but behind that was that intensity I’d never trusted in the way he looked
at me. Historically, whatever it was—love or lust or some combination of the
two—had been too easily forgotten the moment I began to trust it might stay.

He
nodded slowly. I started for the door. I was almost there when he spoke again.
I stood there, my hand on the doorknob, and didn’t turn back.

“I
know I’m not perfect, Sol,” he said. “But you talk about evolving… What the
hell do you think I’ve been doing for the past four years? There’s something
between us. I’m through running from it. Juarez is a good guy.” I heard him get
off the bed and start toward me, his voice low now. “He deserves better than
being your security blanket because you’re too scared to put yourself out there
anymore.” 

When
he spoke again, he was directly behind me—his hand around mine on the doorknob,
his body warm against me. His breath on my neck.

“Tell
me I’m wrong, and I’ll drop it. No harm, no foul.” His mouth brushed against my
ear with the words. My knees had turned to mush.

“You’re
wrong,” I said. I couldn’t turn around, and I couldn’t quite say it with a full
voice, but at least I got the words out.

Diggs
kept his hand on mine and turned the knob. Opened the door for me. “Liar,” he
said, low in my ear.

At
that point, I should have turned around, looked him in the eye, and told him he
was full of shit. Instead, I jabbed him in the stomach, hard, with my
elbow—partly because he deserved it, and partly because any ability I might
have had to come up with some kind of intelligent retort had flown out the
window the second his lips hit my earlobe.

He
let out a sort of
oof
and pulled back, but he was grinning when I looked
back at him. It was an evil grin, too. No wonder half the people in Justice
thought he was the antichrist.

“I’m
going back to my room now. To sleep. With my boyfriend.”

“You
do that,” he said, all cool and arrogant and stupidly… hot. I walked away. He
closed the door.

Private
Abbott nodded his head in an impressively military fashion as I made for the
stairs. I passed the vending machine again on the way back to my room. Still
not working. Twenty candy bars mocked me from behind the glass.

Stupid
Apocalypse.

<><><> 

Juarez
was in bed when I got back to the room. He rolled over
when I slid in beside him, naked beneath the sheets. His hand found the hem of
my t-shirt and pushed it up, his knuckles brushing against my stomach.

“Sorry—have
you been back long?” I asked.

“A
few minutes. It’s all right. I knew you’d be along.”

Usually,
Jack is a pretty straightforward guy, but there was something cloaked, sad,
about the way he was looking at me now. I traced the line of his jaw, thinking
of the nights we’d spent together over the past three months.

“Something’s
wrong,” I said. “You’re not happy.” He kissed my fingertips, pulling me closer.
His hand slid down my thigh and wrapped around my knee, draping my leg over his
hip. I could feel him, naked, hard, pressed to me.

“I
don’t want to talk right now,” he said softly.

I
nodded. “Okay.” I kissed the corner of his lips. His right hand was in my hair,
his left burning trails of fire along my side, tracing the line of my breast
through my t-shirt. “We don’t have to talk now,” I said.

He leaned
in, taking my bottom lip between his teeth as his hand moved to the small of my
back, holding me still. He drew back and watched my face, his dark eyes nearly
black, as he pressed inside me—just barely, hardly moving. My breath hitched
and my eyes sank shut, heat coiled tight somewhere low in my belly. 

Since
we’d started dating, I’d learned some things about Jack Juarez: the way he
liked his eggs (over easy); which part of the paper he read first
(international headlines); how he took his coffee and which sweets he couldn’t
pass up and the few things in life that would make him postpone (but never
skip) his morning run. I’d also learned that there were parts of Jack that he
never quite unleashed—even when we were in bed together. I always got the feeling
he was holding himself back, maintaining control at all cost.

Now,
his fingers curled into my side. That tenuous control was slipping; I could see
it in his eyes. Feel it in the way his body tensed beside me, nearly shaking
with some kind of need he wouldn’t give into.

I
hitched my leg up higher, pulling him deeper. Leaned up and took his earlobe
between my teeth.

“You
don’t have to be so careful with me,” I whispered. I kissed his neck, dragging
my teeth along his sweetly salted skin. “Take what you need, Jack.”

His
fingers twisted in my hair. Another second passed, taut and silent, before he
gave in. His kiss was rough, nearly bruising, as he rolled me to my back and we
began to move.

9:45:00

I was
sure I wouldn’t sleep after Solomon left. I was wrong. I woke at quarter past
two from a light coma, sore and still tired. My file on Mitch Cameron was still
on the bed. I thought of Solomon again. There were things I could have said to
her, pushing the issue of the two of us a little further: I’d changed. She’d
changed. It was written in the stars. Maybe I was full of shit, but I actually
believed some of that. But at the end of the day, it didn’t change the fact
that Jack Juarez was waiting for her—a good guy who would give her everything
she deserved: less scars, less turmoil, less heartache.

Assuming
we all survived, I should just go back to Costa Rica when this was all over.
Surf and write and, maybe, meet someone else.

Put
all this shit behind me.

I
opened the file on Cameron and stared at his beady eyes. He was proof positive
that Solomon truly had turned over a new leaf. Not once in the past few days
had she asked to see the folder.

I was
more disappointed by that than I cared to admit—it didn’t say good things about
me. I should be happy for her and her new life. A new life in which she was no
longer a woman hell-bent on getting answers. Instead, she was some stranger who
patched people up and listened to everything her boyfriend said. I thought of
Juarez’s words on the subject:
If you think anything just slid off Erin after last summer, you don’t know her as well as I thought.

I
knew that—I did. I was beside her while Rainier tracked us like dogs, after
all. I watched while he whispered God only knew what in her ear, that belt
looped around her neck. We’d both known for a long time that the world is a
scary place, but I don’t think either of us ever had a clue just how dark it
got until Black Falls.

Maybe
it really was for the best that she was moving on from all that.

And
maybe if I told myself that story enough times, I’d start to believe it.

I
went into the bathroom and set my shiny new gun and my virtually useless cell
phone on the counter, then turned on the shower. The water was cool, but I’d
had worse. I stripped down and stood under the spray, letting the cold wash
over me.

I
thought of Solomon kneeling over the little boy who’d almost died today. That
thought led me to Jessie Barnel’s terror-filled eyes as she wielded a shotgun
and defended a grandfather whom, I suspected, she didn’t even like. Why? And
what the hell was Barnel’s endgame in this? What did he honestly expect to
accomplish? Or did he really believe he was getting orders from on high, as
Jessie had suggested.
He’s goin’ back to the beginning... Back to where it
all went wrong.

It
seemed a safe assumption that Barnel wasn’t going all the way back to Eden. It had to be something more personal than that. Billy Thomas seemed like a safe bet:
the psychopath who’d raped and killed those three girls before allegedly
killing himself and—according to legend—stapling the inverted cross on his own
chest. It didn’t seem presumptuous to assume that Billy hadn’t, in fact, done
that at all. Which meant someone else was behind the killing and the stapling.

Jesup
Barnel wasn’t a man to be trifled with; I’d learned that the hard way almost
thirty years ago. As a young man just starting out on this path, what would he
have done if one of the boys he’d supposedly purged of demons turned around and
did the unthinkable?

I had
no doubt that Barnel would exact revenge for that.

So,
all I needed to do was figure out where Barnel considered the beginning to be,
where Billy Thomas was concerned.

Before
I could continue with that line of thought, I heard something in the other
room—a shuffle, then a bang like something had fallen. My heart skipped in a
way I’d become accustomed to since Black Falls, that breathless moment of blind
panic before I got my wits back.

“Solomon?”
I called out. “That you?”

I
turned off the water and wrapped a towel around my waist. Reached for my Glock,
waiting on the counter.

Except
that it wasn’t.

Neither
was my cell phone.

I
swallowed past the rush of distant thunder in my ears. “Juarez?” I called.

No
answer. The bathroom door was ajar, just as I’d left it. I pulled on shorts
without bothering to dry off, biding my time.

In
the other room, I heard the door open and close softly.

I
pushed the bathroom door open all the way.

The
room was empty. Cameron’s folder was still on the bed. My dirty clothes were on
a chair in the corner, right where I’d left them.

My
cell phone and gun were on the dresser now, though. I looked around the room.
There was no one in sight. The steady pounding of my heart in my ears and the
weak-kneed fear running through my veins reminded me that just because I
couldn’t see them didn’t mean they were gone.

I
went to retrieve my gun and phone, still on the lookout for someone in hiding.
There was no one, though. I saw no sign that anything had been taken, but it
was obvious after a cursory look around that something had been left behind:

A
Latin cross in red lipstick, on the full length mirror mounted on the closet
door.

My
heart stuttered. I picked up the Glock, then reached for my phone and hit
number 1 on speed dial, already on my way out of the room. I’d pulled open the
door a quarter of an inch, no more, before someone kicked it the rest of the
way and pushed me back inside. He was well over six feet tall, in black from
head to foot, with broad shoulders and a hard, lean body. I whirled with my gun
raised, but a second man—this one built like a fire plug, short and hard and
barrel-chested—came at me from behind. He smelled like cheap aftershave and
sweat, and when I moved to take a swing at his buddy he hurled himself at me,
drilling me back against the wall. The big guy jammed a needle into my neck,
deep, and I heard myself shout as my knees went out from under me.

The
room swam.

“Repent,”
The Giant whispered to me. He smiled through his ski mask with gleaming white
teeth.

I
fought harder, trying to keep my head above water. My gun was empty—I pulled
the trigger and it clicked. They laughed. Fire Plug took the gun away and
dropped it to the floor. I still had my cell phone… all I had to do was hit
Send.

The
Giant took my phone before I ever got to the magic button, dropped it, and
smashed it beneath his behemoth black boot. Then he pushed me down and followed
me to the ground, where I swayed on hands and knees. I couldn’t feel my body.
Couldn’t make sense of anything.

“Your
time has come, Daniel,” Fire Plug said. He knelt in front of me and looked me
in the eye, still smiling. I thought of that summer at Barnel’s camp, at twelve
years old. Water gushing over my head. The smell of sackcloth over my mouth and
nose while I tried to get free. The sizzle of my flesh and the rush of searing
pain as the world went dark.

“Repent,”
Fire Plug said, echoing The Giant. His voice was a million miles away, like the
buzz of ants underground.

“Fuck
you,” I said. I slammed my head down on the bridge of his nose, then used his
body for leverage to stand, my hands curled around his meaty shoulders as I
pulled myself back to my feet. I stumbled, slamming against the wall as I tried
to reach the door. It was like I was made of liquid, a store of molecules with
no way to contain them. Nothing was working.

The
Giant caught me and pulled me back before I could get away. He was pissed—his
hold tighter now, Fire Plug’s mask wet with blood. He wrapped his forearm
around my neck and held on tight while I thrashed, gasping for air.

My
legs went out from under me again.

Everything
went bright white for an instant, and I thought of Solomon and of Danny and of
Wyatt.

I
closed my eyes, and fell.