Jim shoved his hand into the bag, pulled a reveal on the sandwich, and peeled back the cellophane with one hand. Then he cranked his jaw around the thing, bit hard, and chewed with his mouth closed.
Which naturally caused Isaac’s gut to go two-year-old and start howling. “What kind of cookie.”
Jim talked around his mouthful. “Chocolate chip. No nuts. Fucking hate nuts in chocolate-chip cookies.”
“I’m much obliged,” Isaac said softly. Holding out his left palm, he took what was offered and ate with efficiency.
“Cookie?” Jim murmured.
It pained him to say it, but he had to: “You take a bite first. Please.”
That big mitt disappeared into the bag again and came out with something the size of a car wheel. Unwrap. Bite. Chew.
“Thank you kindly,” Isaac said as dessert changed hands.
“I have a bottle of water in my back pocket.” Jim took the thing out, made a show of cracking the lid, and grabbed a healthy swig.
Isaac leaned forward, and accepted the FIJI bottle. “You’ve saved me.”
“That’s the plan,” the guy muttered.
Inside the kitchen, Grier started to make dinner, and damn, she was vulnerable as hell over that cooktop—all the glass turned the room into a TV set that stayed tuned to the Childe Channel twenty-four/seven.
“I’m leaving her undefended if I take off.”
“You’re making her a target if you stay. You shouldn’t be here now. You shouldn’t have spent all day in that house across the street.”
Isaac looked over sharply. “How did you know?”
Jim just rolled his eyes. “Remember what I did for a living for over a decade? Look, be realistic. Let me watch over her once we get you settled.”
“FYI, I know you a little too well—so this Boy Scout routine’s kind of hard to buy.”
“You can choke on the shit as far as I care. Just take advantage of it—”
A cold breeze wafted in from an indiscernible direction . . . and Isaac felt a chill run up his spine that had nothing to do with air temperature and everything to do with instinct.
Beside him, Jim stiffened and looked around—
Two huge men came out of the shadows behind him.
Isaac was quick on the draw, palming his other gun and leveling a muzzle at each of them. But it turned out they were just Jim’s boys, the one who was pierced like a pincushion and the other who was the size of a mountain.
“We got company, my man,” Mr. Needle Fetish hissed to Jim. “Bad company. ETA about a minute and a half.”
“Get him into the house,” the one with that rope-thick braid said. “He’ll be safe there.”
Right, time to cut in, boys: “Hi, my name is Isaac. This is Lefty . . . and Bob.” He lifted his guns accordingly to make the introductions. “And none of us take orders well anymore.”
Jim’s eyes burned as they shifted over. “Listen to me, Isaac . . . get in the house . . . get in the fucking house and stay there. No matter what you see or hear—do not leave. We clear?”
From out of nowhere, the guy pulled a knife that made no sense. Damn thing was made of glass . . . ? What the—
A low whistle started to hum through the air, and Isaac glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the sound. It was the kind of thing that had to be just the wind. . . . There was no other explanation for it. And yet he didn’t feel any breeze on his skin.
“Get in the house if you want to live,” someone said.
Jim grabbed his arm. “You can’t fight this enemy, but I can. If you’re inside there, you’ll be safe—and you can protect that woman. Keep her with you and keep her safe.”
Well, that was one order he could follow—
All at once, Grier’s house seemed to glow with an ethereal light, as if it had been hit with red floodlights from the foundation up. As his eyes struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, a buzzing on the back of his neck grew so intense he worried his head was going to play 7-Up and pop off his spine.
Isaac didn’t stick around.
He tore across the backyard as the unholy wind got louder and louder, praying he got inside and to Grier in time.
Grier hated fighting with her father. Absolutely despised it.
Flipping her omelet in the pan, she centered the thing and then stared at the cell phone she’d just tossed across the island.
Their first call had taken place about an hour after he’d left, and he’d done the dialing. Naturally, he’d discovered her little sleight-of-hand trick and that had led to all sorts of trouble—none of which had been resolved, because she wasn’t giving the stuff back and he wasn’t taking no for an answer and they’d had to cover that rocky ground in code because God knew who was listening.
After going around and around for a while like boxers in a ring, they’d taken a time-out; she’d tried to work while her father had gone into that shadowy world of his.
Although she was just guessing at that part. It wasn’t as if he told her anything concrete.
Still.
Like always.
Second trip through the phone park, and her fingers had done the walking. Her intent had been to make some kind of peace and find out what he was doing, but that had quickly devolved into more half-assed accusations in a language that appeared to be one part pig latin and one part charades.
The former working only slightly better than the latter over the connection.
As her omelet sizzled softly and she took a sip from her wineglass, a gust of wind hit the back of the house, whistling through the shutters, and fondling the wind chimes by the door. Frowning, she looked over her shoulder. Hell of a breeze, she thought, the subtle music of the clay pieces for once not calming her.
Which was what happened when you were being paranoid. Everything went creepy, even the—
A huge shape jumped up to the back door and filled the glass panes. As she let out a scream and leaped for the panic button on the security system remote, Isaac’s face was illuminated out of the darkness by the motion-activated light he triggered.
He started pounding with his fist, but he didn’t do that for long. He wheeled around to face the backyard, flattening against the house as if something were coming at him.
As she rushed over, she disarmed the system, and he all but fell into the kitchen when she opened up. He was the one who slammed them in together, locking the dead bolt and then putting his body against the panels as if someone were going to try to get in.
Between breaths, he commanded, “The system . . . put it back on. . . .”
She did so without hesitation—
Everything went dark.
Except for the blue glow of the flame under the pan on the stove and the yellow halo of the light over the stoop, the kitchen went utterly black—and it took her brain a second to catch up to the fact that he’d canned the lights.
The gun he brought up by his chest didn’t throw much reflection or shadow, but she knew exactly what was in his palm as he shifted over and settled against the wall by the door. He didn’t point the weapon anywhere near her—he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were trained on the rear garden.
When she tried to come over to look, he put his heavy arm out and held her back. “Stay away from the glass.”
“What’s going on?”
A blast of wind hit the house, the chimes going haywire to the point where they were twisting around on their strings, all but screaming in pain.
And then a strange creaking noise beat out the racket.
Bracing herself on the counter, she looked up to the ceiling and realized it was the whole house. . . . Her family’s brick house, which had stood without budging on its solid foundation for two hundred years, was groaning as if it were about to be torn off from its hold on the ground.
Her eyes went to the glass wall. She couldn’t see anything but shadows moving because of the wind . . . except they weren’t right. They didn’t . . . move right.