“Fair enough,” Eddie murmured, like he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
And Jim wasn’t going to worry who was next in the game. As he’d learned with this particular assignment, the souls were going to find him. So he might as well follow what the center of his chest was telling him: namely that it was about time for the Barten family to have their daughter’s body to bury properly.
Jim was just the angel to make that happen.
Unfurling his great, luminescent wings, he took one last stare through the kitchen windows. Isaac Rothe was working with grim purpose, handling things with the same kind of competence and strength as he always had.
He was going to be fine—provided he was smart enough to hang around with that attorney. God, if you were lucky enough to find love like that? Only a fool would turn that shit down.
Jim took to the night sky as if he’d been born to it, his wings carrying him through the cool air, the wind hitting his face and fingering through his hair, his team of two right behind him.
Next battle he was going to be quicker on the dime. And he was going to use his new weapon against Devina to its fullest advantage.
Even if it killed him.
CHAPTER 52
One week later . . .
As Grier got undressed in her closet, she hung her black suit up along with the others and found it impossible not to remember the way everything had been arranged before. Suits had previously been to the left of the door. Now they were straight ahead.
In just her silk blouse and her stockings, she padded around, touching her clothes, wondering which had been rehung that afternoon by her . . . and what Isaac had done after she’d left.
Closing her eyes, she wanted to weep but didn’t have the energy.
There had been nothing from him since the all-clear that night a week ago—which, incidentally, he’d sent via text instead of doing in person or over the phone.
After that? No calls, no e-mails, no visits.
It was as if he’d never existed.
And he’d left nothing behind. When she’d come back to this house, the business card that Matthias had given her as well as the strips of cloth from the muscle shirt and the file full of dossiers had disappeared. Along with both bodies and the two cars out in Lincoln.
Foolishly, she’d looked for a note, just as she had the first time he’d “left,” but there hadn’t been one. And sometimes, in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, she went searching again, checking her bedside tables and the kitchen counters and even here in the closet.
Nothing.
The only thing she supposed he’d left behind was this closet put back together. But that was hardly something she could keep in her diary and take out from time to time when she was feeling melancholic.
In the intervening seven days, work had kept her going, forcing her to get up in the morning when all she wanted to do was pull the covers over her head and lie in bed all day: Every morning, she’d gotten up and gotten herself dressed and had her coffee and become stuck in traffic on the short drive to the Financial District, where their offices were.
Her father had been great. They’d had dinner together every single night, just as they’d been in the habit of doing before. . . .
The only thing that was even close to a light at the end of the dark tunnel she was in—and it was just a match strike, not a bonfire or anything—was that she’d followed through on the vacation idea. Next week she was going to get on a plane and go to—
Grier froze, a tickle on her neck cutting into the woe-is-me routine. “Daniel?”
When there was no answer, she cursed. In addition to looking for Isaac’s nonexistent note, she’d been hoping to see her brother’s ghost, but it was as if the two of them had both left her high and dry with no good-bye.
Turning around, she—
“Daniel!” She grabbed her chest. “Christ! And where the hell have you been?”
For once, her brother was not dressed in Ralph Lauren. He was in a long white robe, looking like he was about to graduate from college or something.
His smile was warm, but sad. “Hey, sis.”
“I thought you’d left me.” She was about to run forward to hug him when she realized that wasn’t going to work—as usual he was mostly air. “Why haven’t you—”
“I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Oh.” Her eyes closed of their own volition and she took a deep breath. “I was kind of waiting for this, I guess.”
When she reopened her lids, he was right in front of her, and all she could think of was that he looked so healthy. So relaxed. So . . . curiously wise.
“You’re ready for this now,” he told her. “You’re ready to move on.”
“Am I.” She wasn’t so sure. The idea of not seeing him again threw her into a panic.
“Yeah, you are. Besides, it’s not a permanent kind of thing. You’ll see me again . . . Mom, too. It won’t be for a good long while, but you have something to live for now.”
“Myself, right. No offense, but I’ve been doing that for thirty years and it’s kind of empty.”
Now he grinned and his glowing hand went to hover over her belly. “Not exactly.”
As she looked down at herself, she wondered what the good goddamn he was talking about.
“I love you,” her brother said. “And you’re going to be just fine. I also wanted to tell you that I think I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“I thought I was stuck in the in-between because you wouldn’t let me go. But that wasn’t it. I was the one who couldn’t let you go. You’re going to be in great hands, though, and everything is going to be all right.”
“Daniel, what are you talking about—”
“I’ll give Mom your love. And don’t worry. I know you love me, too. Say hi to Dad for me sometime if you can. Let him know that I’m okay and I’ve forgiven him long ago.” Her brother lifted his ghostly hand. “Bye, Grier. Oh, and Daniel would be great. You know, if it’s a boy?”
Grier recoiled as her brother disappeared into thin air.
In his absence, she stood there, struck stupid, wondering what in God’s name—
Her feet started moving without her giving them an order, and a split second later, she found herself in the bathroom. Ripping open the drawer where she kept her makeup and her . . .
Birth control pills.
With a shaking hand, she picked up the square bubble pack and started to count.
But it wasn’t like she hadn’t remembered what she’d forgotten . . . to take.
The last pill she’d swallowed had been the night before Isaac had come into her life. And they’d had sex two . . . maybe two and a half times without protection.
Grier stumbled out of her bathroom and promptly realized she had nowhere to go. Falling onto the foot of her bed, she sat there in the dimness and stared at the packet as rain started to fall outside.
Pregnant? Was it possible she was . . . pregnant? Was she . . .
The knock was so quiet that at first she thought it was just a function of her heart pounding, but when it came again, she looked to the French door of the terrace.
On the other side of the glass, a huge shape loomed, and for a split second she nearly went for the security system fob. But then she saw there was something other than a gun in the man’s hand.
A rose.
It sure looked like a single rose.
“Isaac,” she all but yelled.
Bursting up, she raced for the door and yanked it open.
Her MIA soldier was standing in the drizzle, his hair getting damp, his black muscle shirt leaving his shoulders bare to the droplets.
“Hi,” he said in a small voice. Like he was unsure of the reception he was going to get.
Grier tucked the birth control pills behind her back. “Hello . . .”
Her mind whirled into a frenzy as she wondered whether he’d come to tell her that there had been a problem with the cleanup . . . or was he here to warn her that someone else was after them all? But then why would he bring her a—