Son of a bitch. Sarah’s jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder her molars didn’t crack. “The first three rounds are completed,” she said, her tone clipped. “This is the control group.”
“My apologies. I meant no offense.” Angelo took a step closer, moving deep into her personal space. “Please, allow me make it up to you. How about tonight, over dinner?”
She had to give him points for persistence. When it came to feminine conquests, the man was more tenacious than Pepe Le Pew. Still, she had no intention of becoming another notch on his bedpost. Even if she’d found him attractive—which she didn’t—she held the firm belief that sleeping with the boss was tantamount to career suicide. “I can’t,” Sarah said automatically. Her brain flipped into overdrive, trying to think of an ironclad excuse. “I uh …”
“Hey Sarah,” Jackie called out from across the lab. “Phone call. It’s your grandmother. She says it’s important.”
Never in her life had she been so thankful to get a call from Grandma Pearl. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to take this.” Sarah maneuvered around Angelo and crossed over to the main office. She set the clipboard on the counter and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“She’s dead,” Pearl said by way of greeting. Her reedy voice filled with the sound of vindication. “Just like I told you.”
“What do you think they’re doing in there?” Adam asked.
Through some minor traffic miracle, they’d arrived at their appointment fifteen minutes early, in time to see a beautiful forty-something brunette welcome a much younger Latino man into her home. The blinds were drawn and the music was loud enough to be heard from across the street.
“Exactly what you think they’re doing,” David replied.
“Lucky bastard.” Adam let out a wistful sigh. “God, I miss sex.”
David shot an incredulous look in Adam’s direction. The kid stood on the razor’s edge between Heaven and Hell, and all he could do was think with his dick. “You’ve been dead for less than two weeks.”
“That long?” Adam grinned. “Damn, I can’t remember the last time I went this long without any action.”
David remained silent, feeling no desire to share the length of his current dry spell. He’d locked down those urges a long time ago, right along with his sense of humanity and a host of other inconvenient emotions. With those out of the way, he found the job a lot easier to swallow.
Still, there were times when the emptiness clawed at him with shocking ferocity. The worst times were in the dead of night, when his inner demons came out to play, reminding him of the things he had lost, the things he’d abandoned, the things he’d hoped he’d forgotten.
He slumped back in his seat and tried to envision his family: the father who saluted him the last time he’d been home on leave, the mother who hugged him so hard he almost lost his breath, the brothers and sisters who idolized their big brother, the soldier. The memories had faded over time, reduced to grainy pictures with generalized features. Damn. It wouldn’t be much longer before those memories were lost to him, too.
The image of his next-door neighbor was the next to crystallize in his mind. She appeared the way she was the night before, in her pajama bottoms and stretchy pink tank top, her dark hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. Her brown eyes glimmered with a mixture of compassion and determination as she doggedly tended to his wounds.
He had to admit Sarah intrigued him, and not just because he couldn’t mold her thoughts. No, there was something about her, an elusive quality he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She was a riddle he couldn’t unravel, a puzzle he couldn’t solve with a cursory glance. If he thought he’d be around long enough, he’d invest the time and effort to crack the mystery.
“Can you sense anything yet?” David asked Adam, shifting his focus back to where it belonged. Already, he could sense death descending upon the opulent two-story house on the corner of Shep-lin and Mays. He gauged the strength of the signal, using the knowledge to determine how much longer he’d have to wait for mortality to strike.
Adam sat silent for a few beats. “I can feel it,” he said with a nod, his features sharpening as he locked onto the low, insistent pulse. “It’s getting stronger by the second.”
“Very good. Keep focusing on it until you feel it in your bones.”
Less than a minute later, a silver Mercedes with dark tinted windows pulled into the circular driveway. A middle-aged man stepped out of the car, a briefcase in one hand and a dozen white roses in the other. With a smile on his face and a spring in his step, he bounded up the brick walkway toward the house.
“I think I know how this one’s playing out,” Adam said, his eyes fixated on the man as he unlocked the door and disappeared inside.
It didn’t take long before the house erupted into chaos. The music suddenly cut off and the woman screamed. Glass shattered, and then gunshots pierced the peaceful tranquility of the affluent suburban neighborhood.
Adam moved to open the passenger side door but David stopped him.
“Not yet,” he said, never taking his eyes off the house.
The front door burst open and the young Latino man ran from the house. Clad in nothing but a pair of loose-fitting red boxers, he sailed over the front steps and hit the yard at a full run, his arms pumping like his life depended on it. The older man was hot on his heels but quickly losing ground, his stout build and two-pack-a-day habit putting him at a distinct disadvantage. Back at the house, the statuesque brunette in a pink satin robe stood in the doorway, screaming, “Donald, no!”
Out of breath, Donald faltered to a stop at the end of the street, his hands braced against his knees as he gasped for air. He watched, powerless, while the young man rounded the corner of a nearby home and disappeared from sight. As soon as he regained his composure, Donald stalked back to the house, his face the portrait of unfiltered rage.
“We can stop this,” Adam murmured. He licked his lips as he reached for the door handle. “If we get out of the car right now, we—”
“No, we can’t,” David interrupted. In case his apprentice got any bright ideas, he hit the auto locks. “These two have an appointment with Fate.”
“Can’t they reschedule? It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Yes, it does.” David gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “Remember the rules, Newbie. Always collect your appointed souls. Do not alert humans to our presence. Do not question Fate. And for the love of God, do not alter destiny. Follow the rules and you’ll save yourself a shitload of trouble.”
Outside, the couple fought bitterly, their voices rising with each exchange of insults and accusations. Angry words turned to shouts, and shouts turned to shoves. The brunette told Donald she didn’t love him and wanted a divorce. Donald called her a whore and a gold digger. She slapped him hard across the face. Caught in a current of fury and despair, Donald’s arms shot out, his hands wrapping around his wife’s throat. She let out a startled cry, her fingers clawing at Donald in a desperate attempt to break his hold.
David shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the memory of his encounter with Samuel still fresh in his mind. He pressed a hand against his throat, remembering what it felt like to have the air stripped from his own lungs. The shock. The pain. The anger that came with being helpless at the hands of another. For the first time in over a decade, he felt a sharp stab of compassion toward one of his clients. As soon as he recognized the sensation, he tamped it down mercilessly.
Meanwhile, back at the house, the brunette lay lifeless on the front porch, her husband crouched beside her. As the adrenaline rush subsided, shock set in when Donald realized what he had done. With a look of panic, he gave her a hard shake and then checked her wrist for a pulse. Finding none, he bent over his dead wife and pressed a tender kiss against her lips. Then he stood and walked inside the house, sobbing, leaving the door open behind him.
“Wait for it,” David murmured, the buzz of new death pulsing through
his veins like a hot bolt of lightning.
Inside the house, a single gunshot rang out, and then all was quiet again in the cozy little neighborhood where nothing bad ever happened. At least that’s what they’d probably say on the evening news.
David hit the button to unlock the doors. He kept his face purposefully blank, determined to show no trace of sympathy for two lives lost, two lives wasted. “Come on. Let’s roll.”
“I was right.”
“You guessed right.”
“No. I knew. I told you Dolores was going to die.” Pearl braced her hands on her hips and tipped up her chin. “Admit it.”
Sarah pressed her fingers against her throbbing temples. She’d made the trek to Auburn Green Retirement Community as soon as her shift ended. Once there, she’d found Grandma Pearl holding court in the main social room, reading palms and boasting of her accurate prediction of Dolores’s untimely demise. “You live in a retirement community. People die here all the time. It was a fairly safe bet.”
“But I knew the exact person and the exact date.”
“It was probably a case of self-fulfilling prophecy,” Sarah reasoned. “The poor woman was so frightened after hearing your prediction, she gave herself a heart attack.”
“Say what you want. I was right.” Pearl eyed her granddaughter contemplatively. “I had another vision of you last night.”
Oh, goody. Just what she needed, more mumbo-jumbo from the Great Beyond. “Really?” she said, preparing herself for the king-sized load of malarkey coming her way. “And what did you see this time?”
Pearl’s eyes narrowed as she regarded her granddaughter. “I saw you with a man. The one I told you about the last time you came by.” Her features softened, her lips curving into a quirky smile. “You were smiling, like you used to when you were a little girl.”
Sarah’s heart twisted into a knot. “I never stopped smiling, Grandma.”
“No, but you lost something when your mother passed away.” Pearl settled into the rocking chair by the window, her frail body engulfed by the large wooden frame. “You were never quite the same.”
Losing your mother at the age of seven tended to take the spring out of a young girl’s step. Not to mention the hushed whispers between older relatives who didn’t realize the youngest Griffith was listening from the security of her closet fort. She’d been horrified to learn about her mother’s psychosis, and the fact that mental illness ran deep in her family. The knowledge had haunted her ever since.
“But in my vision, you looked so happy,” Pearl continued, her voice becoming more animated as she spoke. She pushed back against the floor and the chair began to lightly rock. “And I was able to see the man more clearly this time.”
“You did?” Sarah said, taking the path of least resistance. Besides, she wanted to see how far Pearl was willing to take her latest delusion. “What did he look like?”
“Well, he was a handsome young man,” Pearl began, her eyes turning distant as if she were recreating the image in her mind. “Rugged, with blond hair and the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Blue eyes, you say?”
Pearl’s thin brows knitted. “No, not quite blue. Actually, they were closer to a pale gray. Most striking.”
That got Sarah’s attention. “And what was this man doing?”
“He was holding you in his arms, looking so happy his heart might burst. Your grandfather used to hold me the same way.” Pearl smiled, and the creases at the corners of her eyes fanned out and deepened. “His name started with a D. Danny, Don, Darren …”
“David?” Sarah’s breath caught in her throat.
“That’s it!” Pearl’s face brightened. “David. He’s going to make you a very happy woman.”
And at that moment Sarah realized she’d fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. As a child, she’d seen Pearl use cold readings during her sessions, had watched her use a variety of vague, generalized statements and questions to draw information from her clients to use in her predictions.
For a fleeting moment, she’d bought into the facade, hook, line, and sinker. Even worse, she’d wanted to believe it, had secretly yearned for the knowledge that there was someone out there destined to be hers.
Pathetic.
If she didn’t watch herself, she’d end up nuttier than a jar of Planters, just like the rest of her family.
David swung into the parking lot of Shackles Bar & Grill a few minutes before five, just in time for happy hour. Only a few cars filled the lot, but he knew that would quickly change as people got out of work and sought solace in the form of cheap beer and stale nachos. Without a doubt, he could relate. God knows he was looking forward to a few rounds of liquid relaxation after a grueling afternoon of doom and gloom.
Adam hadn’t spoken for over an hour, ever since he collected the soul of the woman strangled by her husband. He sat motionless in the passenger seat, his eyes staring straight ahead and a sour expression plastered across his face.
“We’re here,” David said as he cut the engine. He nodded toward the building. “Come on. I’ll buy the first round.”
Adam’s gaze flicked over to the bar, then back to David, and then back to the bar. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it with a shake of his head. Without a word, he stepped out of the car and walked toward the building with the grace of a catatonic zombie.
Once inside, they wove a path through the tables, settling on the one in the back corner near the bathrooms. Adam took the chair by the wall while David signaled the waitress for a pitcher and two mugs.
“Congratulations, Newbie,” David said as he sank into the chair opposite Adam. Since the kid was in such a shitty mood he decided not to make a big deal about Adam taking the chair against the wall, his preferred choice in seating. “You bagged your first Hell-bound soul today.”
The news snapped Adam from his funk. He blinked twice, gave his head a quick shake, and shot David a look of utter confusion. “I did?”
“Yep. Think back to what they taught you in Sunday school. Adultery is a mortal sin.”
“She’s damned because she was getting a little action on the side?” Adam frowned. “That doesn’t sound fair.”
“Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just clean up the mess.”
The waitress sauntered over and placed a pitcher of Bud and two frosty mugs on the table. She had a swing in her hips and several buttons opened at the top of her shirt. The latter was probably intentional, since she made a point of bending low while she poured the first round. “Anything else I can get for you boys tonight?”
“No, we’re good for now,” David replied with a cordial smile and a silent message to go about her business.
Once the waitress moved safely out of earshot, Adam asked, “So when do I get something easy, like a little old lady who dies in her sleep?”
“Not our department,” David said, his tone even. He’d been wondering how long it would take the kid to ask. He stretched his legs out under the table, making himself comfortable in preparation for the upcoming onslaught of questions. In the past, he used to lay all the information out ahead of time, before the first soul was bagged and tagged. Now he preferred to let the trainees ask at their own pace, as each question formed in their minds. It seemed to stick better that way. “Deaths generated by natural causes pass through on their own. They don’t require our help.”
“Oh. Damn.” Adam’s expression darkened with disappointment. “I was hoping to catch a break for a change.”
“Don’t we all?”
Adam picked up his beer and took a healthy swig. He set the mug down, his mouth fixed in a grim line. “Great. And here I thought you might offer some comforting words of inspiration.”
“You want inspiration, go to St. Mary’s,” David said, patience wearing thin. It had been a long, shitty day and he wasn’t in the mood to coddle a rookie with an attitude problem. “I’m here to tell you the truth and get you trained.”
&n
bsp; “Gee thanks, I feel better already.” Adam picked up his glass and chugged the rest of his beer. He set the glass down with a hard thud and picked up the pitcher for a refill. “Got any more pearls of wisdom you care to share with me, boss?”
“Yes,” David said, his voice clipped with tightly leashed annoyance. He leaned forward and locked eyes with Adam. “Be thankful someone, somewhere, judged your soul redeemable, or your sorry ass would have shot straight to Hell when you died.”
That shut him up for a minute. Adam slumped back in his chair, his brows furrowed in silent contemplation. He looked up, and then his focus quickly shifted to something directly behind David.
“What is it?” David asked, a split second before a strong hand clamped down on his right shoulder, pinning him to his chair.
A deep voice, thick with contempt, growled, “You got a lot of nerve, showing your face in here tonight.”
chapter 6
“Evening, Dmitri.” David twisted his neck just enough to catch a glimpse of the big Russian in his periphery. Yep, he looked as mad as he sounded.
He’d known Dmitri longer than any other reaper—a few years shy of fifty. Back in the day, Dmitri worked the opposite side of the fence, stealing secrets and dealing death for the KGB. Cold, calculated, and efficient, he’d been among the best of his kind, committing unspeakable acts for the glory of the motherland. It had taken him a long time to adjust to his new environment, and even longer to learn how to play nice with his American counterparts.
“Cut the crap,” Dmitri snapped, his Russian accent becoming more pronounced with anger. His jaw muscles clenched as his grip on David’s shoulder tightened. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t knock your teeth out.”
David had known the other reapers were going to be pissed when they got their assignments for the upcoming week. He’d cut their schedules to the bare bones, giving the jobs to Adam in order to train him as quickly as possible. And while no reaper relished their duties, they all held a basic understanding of the job at hand. Each reap brought them one step further from Hell’s abyss. Lighten the load, and you were effectively delaying their chance for salvation.
Grave Intentions Page 7
