Oh, dear Lord . . .
“Everyone’s okay,” Jim called out across the lawn, as if he’d read her mind. “It’s all done.”
The relief was so great she excused herself briefly, ducking into the kitchen, putting the gun down, and bracing her arms on the table. From the other room, she heard the deep voices of her father and Heron, but she doubted she would have tracked the conversation if she’d been standing next to them. Isaac was all right. He was okay. He was all right. . . .
It was over. Done with. And now, just as Isaac would be taking off in relative freedom, she could try to move on as well.
Man, she needed a vacation.
Somewhere frivolous and warm, she decided as she went over and picked up the dessert plates. Somewhere with palm trees. Mai tais and umbrellas. Beach. Pool—
Tick . . . tick . . . whir . . .
Grier frowned and slowly looked across her shoulder.
Over by the refrigerator, the back door’s dead bolt was shifting from right to left at the same time the old-fashioned latch lifted up.
The voices out in the living room went suddenly silent.
Too silent.
This was wrong. All wrong—
She dropped the plates and lunged for the gun she’d left on the counter—
Grier didn’t make it. Something bit into her shoulder blade, and then an electrical charge slammed through her body, throwing her into a backward arch that knocked her off her feet and took her down hard onto the floor.
CHAPTER 47
Back in Beacon Hill, Isaac walked up the town house’s front stairs, paused at the second-floor landing and then kept going to Grier’s bedroom. In her private space, he paced around the bed, and felt like he was losing his ever-loving mind.
He checked her alarm clock. Walked to the French doors. Looked out onto the terrace.
Nothing moved outside, and there was no one else in the house but him and Jim.
Time was passing, but nobody was showing, and no matter how many times he went down to Jim and then came back upstairs again, he wasn’t able to jump-start the next sequence of events.
It was like a director with no bullhorn and a cast and crew who didn’t give a shit what he had to say.
The inescapable fear that drove him was that they were in the wrong place. That he and Jim were cooling their heels out here while the action was happening elsewhere. Like Grier’s father’s farmhouse.
On a vicious curse, he headed back for the staircase and jogged downward, expecting nothing else along the way or at the bottom other than a short pause in the kitchen and another trip up.
Except . . .
When he came to the landing, the front door down below creaked as if it were being opened. Palming his guns, he was ready to pounce—until he heard Jim’s annoyed voice rising up.
“What are you doing here?” Heron demanded.
“You texted us.”
Isaac frowned at the sound of the pierced man’s voice.
“No, I did not.”
“Yeah, you did.”
At that moment, the Life Alert went off with a subtle shimmy in Isaac’s pocket.
All instincts firing, he ducked quietly into the guest-room he’d stayed in. Holding the transmitter in his palm, he activated the device, and this time there was no delay in response.
Matthias answered right away. “I have your girl at her dear old dad’s place. Get out here. You have a half hour.”
“If you hurt her—”
“Time’s wasting. And it goes without saying that you come alone. Don’t keep me waiting, or I’m likely to get bored and have to fill my time. You won’t like that, I promise. Be here in thirty.”
The light went out, the transmission ending sharply.
When Isaac wheeled around to leave, he jumped back. Jim had somehow made it up the stairs and through the closed door to stand right behind him.
“He has her,” Jim said flatly. “Doesn’t he.”
“I’m going solo or he’ll kill her.”
Shoving the man out of the way, Isaac jogged downstairs. The body in the front hall had been frisked for weapons before it had been gift wrapped, but car keys were another thing.
Bingo. Front pocket. Ford.
Now to find the bastard’s ride.
When Isaac stood up, he realized everything was totally silent and nobody was in the front hall. Glancing around, he had the feeling he was alone in the house even though he hadn’t a clue how they’d moved out so fast.
Whatever—fuck it. And fuck them.
Isaac lit for the door—but at the last minute, he pivoted in the archway and went back to the body to strip it some more. Then he shot out into the darkness.
The unmarked that he’d watched from the Pinckney Street house the day before was parked a block up, and the dead guy’s key got him in. Engine started just fine and the GPS was functional, so he quickly plugged in the address Grier’s father had given them all.
“Bat out of hell” described the trip.
He went flat-out on the Mass Pike, pushing the speed limit until he busted the fucker into pieces. Even still, it felt like he was moving in slow motion—and that got worse when he left the highway and tried to get through some town that was filled with stop signs and curvy roads.
Fortunately, the GPS took him exactly where he needed to go, his destination fronted by a pair of stone markers that sat on either side of a pale, glowing drive.
He canned the headlights and hung a right, downshifting from rush, rush, rush to slow, slow, slow. Cracking his window so he could hear better, he inched along, hating the sound of the tires crunching over a million seashells. The only good news was that the perma-glow of the city didn’t exist out here in the semi-sticks, and the moon was covered by clouds. But how much you want to bet they had motion-activated exteriors on the house and/ or trees?
Isaac rolled up behind another unmarked that had to be Matthias’s car. A K-turn later and he was facing out. Taking the keys with him, he jogged along the fringes of the lawn, his senses alive, his rage an inferno in his blood.
Matthias would die if he laid even a finger on Grier. One hair out of place on that woman and that bastard was going to get slaughtered.
As he approached the house, he searched out the doors. The front was open and he couldn’t see the back.
But then what did it matter—he was expected. And on that note, he should just fuck the DL ninja shit and announce himself.
Coming up to the farmhouse’s entrance, he kept his guns hidden and his eyes sharp as he curled up a fist and beat at the wooden jamb.
“Matthias,” he called out.
As he stepped inside, the resounding silence was more terrifying than any scream or pool of blood. Because God only knew what he was walking into.
Jim had had a plan as he and the angels had flashed to Grier’s father’s place. He hadn’t wanted to leave Isaac on his own back in town, but all they would have done was argue, and God knew the canny bastard could take care of himself.
Bottom line, Devina was playing deadly games, and that was something only Jim could deal with. And having a delay before Isaac arrived might not be a bad thing: If Matthias had done anything to that Grier woman, the soldier was going to be impossible to control.
Yup, as Jim landed and went gunning for the open door of the farmhouse with his wingmen in tow, he was prepared to take care of things.
Nigel, however, derailed him.
The archangel appeared right in his path, and this time he wasn’t in his tuxedo or his croquet whites or a nice little dapper-ass seersucker: He was nothing but a glowing form, a wavy silhouette of rippling light.
And he spoke only one word: “No.”
As Jim hauled up on his momentum, he would have punched the fucker if there had been anything solid to aim for. “What the fuck is the matter with you!” First the mislead over Isaac and now this?
“The die is cast.” Nigel lifted his barely-there hand. “And if you intervene now, you will ultimately lose.”