In the pause that followed, he thought of Sissy. And as she came into his mind, the black hole in the center of his chest became filled with a ringing, nearly crippling, pain.
The demon took a step forward. “You and I can both leave here together. But only if it’s to do what I want.”
From out of nowhere, a full-body flush of total-nasty hit him hard. Which was a new one: In all the course of his life in XOps, he’d never had a problem with any kind of torture. He’d been subjected to it once or twice, and hadn’t dwelled on the shit. And the same had been true in this war with Devina. Whatever she’d done to him, and what he’d done with her out of hatred—none of it had stuck in his head for even a moment after they’d parted.
This, however, was going to kill him. If he went with her now, if he did what he knew she was going to ask of him, he was going to die a little on the inside.
Funny, he hadn’t been aware of being alive.
Sissy had brought that to him, however. She had opened him up—and that was why this was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“Where,” he heard himself say.
“I think the Freidmont Hotel. Yes, I’ll get a suite there, and I think that would be perfect for what I have in mind.” There was a long silence between them. “So are we leaving. Or perhaps you would like to have me here?”
Yes, he had made a mistake in overfocusing on Sissy in the beginning. Yes, it had caused terrible, unforeseen consequences. And yes, to make amends … this was what he had to do.
“Fine,” he said.
Now the demon truly smiled, her red lips parting, her eyes lighting with an unholy joy. “You first, angel mine.”
What. The. Fuck.
From G.B.’s position across the street and down a couple of houses from where he’d followed Cait to earlier in the night, he couldn’t believe what the fuck he was looking at. Duke had come to her front door and she’d been all pissy and shit—fine, good. But now, inside the house, spotlit in that front window, she was hugging him like that?
“You gotta be kidding me,” he muttered.
Maybe Duke’s powers of persuasion had improved with age. And that was going to prove to be very unfortunate for Cait Douglass.
Moments later, his cocksucking brother got into that big-ass truck of his and took off.
Goddamn it, G.B. hadn’t wanted it to go down like this. But if there was even a chance Cait was going to take that fucker back? Well, he was going to have to once again create a situation where Duke had to live with a reality he couldn’t bear.
G.B. had been thrown out with the trash, forced to go and get roughed up at that juvenile detention center for fucking years. Meanwhile, golden boy had gotten to go to high school, and get a scholarship to college, and have that girl of his. Guess the first payback hadn’t been hard-core enough, though—otherwise, the guy would have stayed clear of anyone G.B. had been seeing.
He was happy to raise the stakes.
With a resigned shrug, he reached into the black bag he’d brought with him on a just-in-case. Taking out another pair of black industrial gloves—because they’d worked so well with Jennifer—he pulled them up his forearms and got out of his car. He had a knife with him, holstered at the small of his back, invisible under his loose coat. With a black baseball cap on, and the black trousers he’d worn to the funeral, he was a walking shadow as he crossed the pavement, being careful to stay out of the pools of light cast by the streetlamps.
He sidled around to the back of her house, keeping flush with the clapboards, grateful that she wasn’t much of a gardener and hadn’t put bushes everywhere around the foundation. In the back, there was a glass-enclosed porch with no doors … but he found a rear entry on her porch.
Locked.
Cupping his hands, he leaned into the nearest window. The kitchen was simple and neat … and he could see through to the living room. She was leaning back in a chair, head resting on the cushions, a bottle of water in one hand.
Was she asleep? That would certainly make things easier.
A little farther on, he found a storm door, but that, too, was secured. So was the door into the garage.
Damn it. If he had to break in, this was probably going to get messy before he wanted it to.
Heading around the rest of the house, he was all the way to the front again when he frowned and ducked over to the main entrance. There was no possible way—
The handle turned beautifully. Which meant there was probably a dead bolt—
The door opened in total silence.
And there she was. Eyes closed, breathing evenly, looking for all intents and purposes like she’d passed out.
He shut the door before some change in scent or temperature or draft alerted her.
Unlike Cait, he was careful to turn the bolt.
Moving slowly, soundlessly, he walked close to the walls, assuming that the floorboards were less likely to creak that way. He went past her and kept going, making a fat circle so that he could come up directly from behind her.
He didn’t kneel or anything. He needed to be free to jump when it came to that—
Cait lifted a hand and rubbed her nose; then sighed as she resettled her arm on the chair. “Damn it,” she whispered.
Reaching forward with his gloved hand, G.B. touched her blond hair, stroking the ends. Great hair. It had been what he’d first noticed about her back at the café.
Wasn’t it weird that that chance meeting had brought them to this?
“Wake up, Cait,” he said loud and clearly. “Time to play.”
With that, he turned off the lamp next to her.
Chapter
Fifty-six
The sound of a man’s voice directly in her ear jerked Cait to attention, a surge of terror throwing her upright as the room went dark—
Rough hands locked on her hair, digging in, latching on, yanking her so violently to the side that her body flipped off her feet and she slammed face-first into the hard wooden planks of the floor.
Momentarily stunned, she watched in the dimness as a pair of nice black shoes came into her wonky vision.
G.B.’s voice was even. Almost bored. “I can’t believe you fell for his sob story, I mean, really—I thought you were smarter than that.”
He grabbed her head with both hands and dragged her back up, holding her with such vicious strength, she was convinced he was going to snap her neck.
As she struggled, he kissed the exposed column of her throat, running his tongue up to her ear. “But I guess you’re a typical dumb blond. Kind of a shame, I actually liked you.”
With that, he threw her into the wall headfirst, the impact enough to knock her framed diploma off its mounting. The glass shattered, and she stepped in it, pieces cutting through the socks she was wearing.
“I even killed for you.” He banged her again into the Sheetrock. “I mean, I wouldn’t have wasted time on that Jennifer thing—but she almost got you hurt. She ditched that ticket and you were terrorized in that garage. Remember?”
He grabbed on again and cranked her head back to meet her in the eye—and that was when she knew true terror: He was totally placid, his face almost pleasant.
“Remember?” he repeated, retightening his grip on her hair. “Sort of ironic, isn’t it—given how this is going to play out.”
She braced herself for another vertical impact, but he had other ideas. He ripped her back to the floor and pinned her facedown. As he mounted her from behind, his weight settling on her lower body, she cried out—
The knife was about six inches long, and had a blade that was cared for so well, it gleamed white in the distant light of her office.