Jim cocked his head. “You know, demon, anger suits you. To a T.”
There was a long moment of tense silence, and then she seemed to get herself under control, the fake beauty covering up the evil underneath once more.
“I will never trust you again,” she announced.
“Sounds good to me.” He lifted up his hand and waved. “Bye-bye, Devina.”
“This is not over.”
“Predictable parting shot. Just what I’ve come to expect from you.”
He was aware he was pushing his luck, but flush with winning another round, he didn’t give a crap.
Devina, however, was finished playing, apparently. She tilted her chin down and looked at him from under her carefully sculpted brows. “See you soon, Heron.”
And just like that, she was out of there, ethering away.
In the aftermath, Jim shook a cigarette from his pack and lit up. On the exhale, he laughed again, enjoying the buzz going through him. It was kind of like he’d just had sex—the good kind.
Turning to the garage, he strode over to the stairs, figuring he’d check in with Adrian before he went—
As he exhaled, he frowned and wondered if he was hearing things. But no. That radio he did not own was playing again. . . .
An a cappella version of Train’s “Calling All Angels.”
What the hell?
Mounting the stairs quickly, he put the cigarette between his lips as he pushed open the door. . . .
Sitting on the floor, with his back against the crawl space’s entryway, Adrian had his head in his hands. With soft, perfect pitch, he carried the lyrics slowly, beautifully . . . as if he had been born for the microphone.
“I thought you couldn’t sing,” Jim said.
Adrian didn’t lift his head, but he stopped and shrugged. “I just did that to piss him off. You, too, matter of fact.”
Jim exhaled a steady stream of smoke. “You got a nice voice.”
Funny that he preferred the off-key, annoying shit.
When there was no reply, he said to the angel, “You going to be okay if I do a quick errand?”
“Yeah. We’re fine. I’m just going to sit with him.”
Jim nodded even though there was no eye contact. “You need anything?”
“Nah. We’re good.”
Staring across at the massive figure of the angel—whose heavy legs were curled up, and powerful arms were resting loosely on the knees—Jim was beyond ready for the next round: Adrian had seemed alive again for a while tonight, animated, engaged. This resolute stillness, on the other hand, was too close to Eddie’s condition for his liking.
“I’ll be back.”
“Take your time.”
The separation wasn’t good, but Jim had to do this. Some things were a choice . . . others were a matter of necessity if you had any honor at all in your bones.
Turning around, he went out the way he’d come in, quietly closing the door behind him. Before he left, he put his palm on the wall of the garage and closed his eyes.
With hard concentration, he called up the memory of Adrian and Eddie in their hotel room at the Marriott, the pair of them arguing back and forth, and trading potshots. He imagined them doing that again, seeing Eddie’s red eyes squaring off at Adrian’s theatrics, while the other angel threw his arms up in exasperation.
They were back together again in this vision he created in his mind.
They were safe and whole.
They were both alive.
When he opened his lids, there was a subtle glow around the entire building, a phosphorescent illumination that threw no shadows, but was more powerful than stadium lighting.
Just as Jim retracted his hand, the first snowflake fell from the sky . . . which was his cue to disappear into the thin, cold air.
CHAPTER 50
It was two and a half hours after Veck arrived at St. Francis Hospital before he was finally free to go see Reilly . . . two and a half frickin’ hours.
Then again, when de la Cruz had pulled up to the entrance next to the emergency room to drop him off, he’d thrown open the car door and found that he wasn’t able to stand up.
Kind of a rate-limiting issue.
So instead of going through the revolving doors of the inpatient building and heading up to Reilly’s room—which he had the number of thanks to a call into hospital information—he’d ended up in the ER himself. Where, of course, they wouldn’t give him any details about her or her condition.
Damn HIPAA rules.
And, man, they crawled all over him.
After he’d been poked, prodded, and X-rayed, they’d tried to suggest he needed an IV for fluids, but he’d shut that one down and informed them he was leaving. By way of compromise, they’d wrapped an Ace bandage around the thigh that hurt more, thrown another mummy special on his opposite ankle, and told him to go home and expect to feel worse the following day.
Thanks, Doc.
The cane was helpful, however. And as the elevator dinged and he stepped off onto the seventh floor of the inpatient building, he used the thing to help get his sorry ass out into the corridor.
He looked in both directions. Had no idea which way to go.
At random, he picked right and figured that at some point he’d run into a staff member or a map or the unit he was looking for.
As he hobbled along, he glanced down at his clothes. Filthy. Sweated out. Torn. Hell of an outfit, but it wasn’t like he was going to take time to go back home and change.
And when he got to the nursing station, he had no intention of being hit with any kind of no-visiting-hours, comeback-later crap.
Reilly had told him she loved him.
And he’d shut his woman down.
Yeah, okay, he hadn’t been the one to actually slam the door in her face—technically, that had been the medics. But he’d let her go—and that was the sort of mistake you wanted to rectify as soon as you got the chance.
Even if you needed a cane to get there and looked like you should be hosed off.
Turning another corner, he faced off against a long corridor that had directions in both English and Spanish, as well as a lot of arrows, and a map. Too bad none of the shit made any sense—and not just because he was exhausted. Did they purposely make patients hard to find here—
Down at the far end of the hall, a huge, dark figure appeared and began striding toward him.
Closer. Closer still. Until Veck could make out the leather pants, and the shitkickers, and the black coat.
Instantly, a sharpshooter drove through his brain. To the point where he wondered whether he hadn’t thrown a clot with all that running up the quarry slope.
Except . . . as he looked up into a hard face, he knew who it was. This was . . .
Veck cursed and listed into the wall as the pounder in his head wiped out all thought.
And meanwhile, the man just kept approaching. Until he stopped right in front of Veck.
As Veck focused through his pain on that incredible face, he knew he would never forget it.
“I’m going to make it right,” the man said in a foreign accent that wasn’t quite French, wasn’t quite Hungarian. “Worry not, my friend.”
God, those rolling Rs were pleasing in the ear, curiously smooth and aristocratic.
And then Veck realized who the guy was talking about: “Kroner . . .”
With a gallant, affirming nod, the foreigner resumed his walk, the footfalls of his boots a death knell if Veck had ever heard it. And then halfway down the hall, the figure flat-out disappeared . . . like a ghost.
More likely, though, he’d just turned another corner.
To go find Kroner . . . holy shit.
Veck rubbed his eyes, thought about the cave, and realized he’d missed a piece in all of this: He’d seen the serial killer hanging in front of him, except that hadn’t been anything but an image, had it. An image projected onto his Reilly.
That was the only explanation. Because she had been the one hanging from those cuffs after the dust settled, and God knew there hadn’t been time to switch the pair of them.