“I’ll do it,” Gavin agreed reluctantly. “She’s off in twenty minutes.”
“You want to talk about what’s going on with you two?”
“Fuck no.” He picked up the papers, folding them before shoving them in his pocket. “Shit. I didn’t make any promises. She knew what this was before it even started.”
“All right,” Caleb said, holding up his hands. “Just keep in mind if the two of you aren’t on the same page with this plan, it’s beyond worthless. It’ll put both of you right out in the open for Sinclair.”
“I know. It’s all good.”
Caleb’s hard stare had Gavin squirming in his seat. He didn’t blame his brother for the obvious doubt. Hell, things between him and Cora were about as far from good as possible.
“I’ll fill the others in, and we can start setting up some sort of schedule rotation.” Caleb stood to leave and paused in the door to look back at Gavin. “That cheap ass laptop is enough for Noah and Logan, but if you’re going to be working on the Sinclair case, at least have the decency to pick up one of your old computers from the storage unit.”
Gavin grunted as Caleb left. It was a tempting idea, though, after almost a year of sitting in a dusty storage locker, they’d be in need of some updates.
Staring up at the clock suspended above the filing cabinet, he watched as the seconds, then minutes, ticked by. His mind swirled with thoughts of Cora, Sinclair, Lela, and how much he was willing to sacrifice.
A few weeks ago, it had been almost easy to admit ending Sinclair was more important to him than keeping Cora safe. It hadn’t been a pretty thought, but it had been honest. Now, the idea of putting Cora in Sinclair’s line of fire made him sick to his stomach. Yet, he couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t let Lela’s killer go free.
The clock hit the hour, and Gavin let out a long sigh. He needed to talk with Cora before she left for home, but he wasn’t going to try to talk in the locker room. Confining himself in that small space with her, with only the folding screen separating them, was far from a good idea. Noah and Logan seriously needed to get their asses in gear and create separate changing areas.
Ten minutes after her shift, Cora walked past the office door, her purse slung over her shoulder and wearing her leather jacket. Gavin quickly rose from the desk and went after her.
“Cora,” he called as she pushed open the side exit.
She turned back around, but there was a hesitation as if she had to consider her options before talking to him.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Not really,” she answered, and the tone in her voice told him he was pushing his luck. “I’m meeting up with Eve.”
“Where?”
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back until it thumped against the door. “What do you want, Gavin?”
“To talk. We figured out what to do about Sinclair.”
“Fine, you can talk while we walk.”
“I can drive,” he offered, then held up a hand as she scowled. “Or we can walk. That’s fine.”
He followed her outside, and they walked through the parking lot in silence. When they reached the sidewalk, he launched into a description of the plan. She didn’t say much, simply nodding and making the occasional humming noise. It was unnerving to not have any clue as to what she was thinking.
“We can go over the details tonight,” he said as they arrived at her building.
She moved to the side so a couple could pass by. “I told you, I’m busy.”
He gritted his teeth, pushing back the familiar searing in his muscles. How could this not be more important than going out with Eve?
“Sinclair is out there. We need to do everything we can to stop him.”
“I understand that, Gavin, but I’m not doing it now. We can talk about …” Her words trailed off as she gazed past him, staring at someone walking along the other side of the street.
Gavin twisted to see who she was looking at, but despite the bright street lights overhead, he didn’t recognize the guy.
“That’s him,” she said, her hand lifting to point at the man.
“Who?”
“The guy who ran me off the road.”
The tension within him exploded and a furious roar burst from him, echoing along the quiet street. The man turned at the sound, and across the street, Gavin saw his eyes widen right before he took off running.
Gavin ached to give chase, but his body was beyond his control as he underwent the shifting from man to monster. Adrenaline pumped through him and he heard the sound of his shirt tears at the seams. A fierce growl erupted from him as his muscles settled and with a last twitch gave way to fury.
He surged forward, running after the man and rapidly closing the distance. Feet pounding the concrete, he ignored the curious looks from the few people he raced by. He was dimly aware of Cora calling his name, but it did nothing to quench the hunger inside him. The only thing that mattered was catching Sinclair’s henchman.
The sidewalk ended, and the man stumbled over the uneven ground. Gavin reached out and gripped the back of his shirt, pulling him back up. The man spun around, his arm swinging toward Gavin.
Gavin let the feeble punch fall, and it glanced off his jaw, little more than the pawing of a puppy. It was enough, though, to prod what little humanity Gavin had left to step back and give the monster full rein.
His fist smashed into the soft belly of the man, causing him to double over and placing his face in the path of Gavin’s other fist. He flew backward, landing on the ground and then attempted to scurry back. Gavin pounced, falling to his knees, and punched the man’s face.
“Where’s Sinclair?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” the man cried out.
Gavin hammered his face once, twice.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” The words were garbled as blood trickled from his mouth.
With a hand wrapped around the guy’s neck, close to the jaw, Gavin lifted until only an inch separated them.
“You work for Sinclair. So where the fuck is he?”
He hit the man again and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch of a broken nose. His arm drew back, intent on delivering another blow, but hands grabbed his biceps, yanking at him. He refused to be stopped so easily and tried to yank away from the hold.
“Gavin!” Josh said from behind him. “You need to calm down.”
Pulling his shoulders forward, Gavin strained his head to the side, fighting the urge to turn on Josh. Another set of hands joined Josh’s, dragging him away from Sinclair’s man.
“Let me go,” he growled.
Blood covered the man’s rapidly-swelling face, and the sight spurned his monster on, feeding his hunger to end the man in front of him.
“You need to get control. Now,” Caleb ordered him. “This is not the time or place for this.”
He gripped Gavin’s jaw, forcing him to make eye contact. Then with a sharp push, Caleb turned Gavin’s face so he could look at Cora.
She stood a few feet away, and the look on her face was all it took to harness his animal. He stood and stepped toward her, but she retreated, fear and horror masking her pale face. His heightened senses picked up the slight tremble in her hands, the quivering of her lower lip, and the sound of her thumping heart.
It was at that moment he realized that while he had long ago accepted what his body could do, the monster was more a part of him than he’d ever wanted to accept.
Chapter Twenty-Two
AS SOON AS GAVIN took off running in the direction of the pub, she’d pulled out her cell and dialed Caleb. The man had already been bloody by the time she got there, but Gavin hadn’t stopped. He kept up the assault until Josh and Caleb pulled him away.
When he moved toward her, she hadn’t seen the Gavin she’d loved for so long. In his place was a monster that looked ready to destroy anything and anyone capturing his wrath. And his eyes were on her.
Fear is such
an ugly word, almost as ugly as it felt. Yet there was no other way for Cora to describe what her emotions as she watched Gavin beating that man in the middle of the street.
Instinctively, she took a step back, and he froze, the creature he’d become began to retreat. The heavily muscled frame faded back to Gavin’s familiar form, and the pronounced angles of his face softened.
He was Gavin again, and she could almost believe she imagined the whole thing. Except the blood smeared along his hands and splattered across his face and raggedly torn shirt refused to let her forget he’d been moments away from killing someone.
“Cora, are you okay?” Caleb asked.
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and nodded, not trusting her ability to form a coherent response.
“Holy shit,” Josh said, ramming his fingers into his shaggy hair. “What the hell were you thinking, Gavin?”
Gavin didn’t respond, simply continuing to stare Cora. She flinched under the constant weight of his eyes, and he turned to his brother.
“This is the fucker who ran Cora off the road.” His hands clenched into fists and took a few steps away, distancing himself from the unconscious man.
“How sure are you?” Josh asked.
“It’s him,” Cora said, hating the tremble in her voice. “I’m positive.”
“Soon as he realized we’d seen him, he took off running,” Gavin said. “Piece of shit wouldn’t tell me where Sinclair is.”
“What the fuck are we gonna do with him?” Josh nudged the guy’s leg with his foot.
The four of them stood there, gazing down at the man. There was a part of Cora that looked at him objectively and wanted to offer aid. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t dismiss the fact he easily could’ve killed her. Who knows, whatever he injected her with may be doing just that.
“All right,” Caleb said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Josh, you need to go back inside before Keeley and Janet start panicking about not having a bartender. Gavin, you need to go home, get yourself cleaned up.”
“What are you going to do?” Josh glanced at him.
“Call for an ambulance. I’ll tell them I found him on the way to my car.”
Cora released a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Somewhere in the back of her mind, there’d been the thought that they intended to kill him. She had no sympathy for the guy, but killing him seemed far from reasonable.
“The cops are going to question him,” Gavin pointed out.
“True, but do you really think he’ll want them digging into why you beat the shit out of him?” Caleb shook his head. “There’s no way for him to report you without giving himself and Sinclair up.”
“Good point.” Gavin nodded. “Cora can come with—”
“I’m going home,” she interrupted. The thought of going anywhere with Gavin alone right then was terrifying. All she wanted to do was forget last thirty minutes had ever happened.
She tried to read his expression, but her own emotions kept getting in the way. They had her believing what she saw there was more than regret.
He reached a hand toward her, and she took another step back, unwilling to fall under the spell his touch would inevitably cast over her.
“Cora—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off again. “It’s not up for debate.”
The brothers started to protest, but she didn’t stick around to listen. She turned on her heel and walked down the street to her apartment. With every step she took, images of Gavin enraged and covered with blood flashed through her mind.
At the SIEGE lab, she caught a glimpse of what he could physically become, yet nothing had prepared her for what that truly meant. The absolute fury marring his face, the way he so viciously attacked that man—none of it resembled the Gavin she knew, and when he looked at her afterward … she hadn’t seen him anymore. Those few seconds when he moved toward her, all she’d seen was the monster.
She was almost at her building door when she realized Gavin followed her in his Jeep. Not wanting him to stop and try talking to her, she picked up her pace, almost jogging the last few feet to her door. She entered the foyer and turned to close the door behind her, spotting Gavin as he drove by.
Up in her apartment, she collapsed on her bed and curled into the fetal position with a pillow clutched to her chest. She tried to reconcile what she knew of Gavin with this new side of him that was beyond his control. It terrified her how quickly it all happened. She wanted to believe he wouldn’t have hurt her, but she couldn’t be sure.
How much of Gavin was left when the monster came out?
What scared her even more was if Sinclair did this to Gavin as a child, what might he have done to her?
The ringing of her cell phone dragged her from her thoughts, and she rolled over to grab her phone from the nightstand. Eve’s name flashed across the screen.
She’d completely forgotten about their plans to go see a movie. She hesitated a moment, trying to think of an excuse to get out of going, before accepting the call.
“Hey, how’s it going?” she asked.
“Good as can be expected when you have a six-year-old projectile vomiting all over your bathroom,” Eve answered.
“Oh, God, that sounds disgusting.” Cora nearly gagged at even the thought of the mess Eve was dealing with.
“Yeah. Needless to say, movies are out. I’m so sorry. There’s no way I can leave him with his dad.”
“I totally understand,” Cora said, a little relieved she didn’t need to lie. “We can go another night.”
“I’m just hoping this round of the flu bug is the last for the year,” Eve said with a heavy sigh.
“Has he been getting sick a lot?”
“No, that’s what’s so weird,” Eve said. “Up until maybe May, I don’t think he’d ever been sick before. Now, every other day he’s either vomiting, got a fever, coughing, or something else. Every time I take him to the doctor, though, they say the blood work comes back perfectly fine.”
“That sucks. I hope he feels better tomorrow.”
“Thanks. If he’s not, I’m going to try taking him to a different clinic. Are you okay? You sound a little strange.”
“I’m good.” As good as could be expected after seeing the man you love change into some hulked up monster and nearly kill someone.
“Are you—Crap! I gotta go.” Eve hung up as Cora heard the sound of retching in the background.
Cora placed her phone back on the nightstand and lay back down, throwing an arm up to cover her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Gavin. She wanted to go back to when the most complicated part of her life was accepting he didn’t love her.
She rose and went to the bathroom in search of her sleeping pills. When the visions first started, she bought the pills, hoping they’d keep her asleep through them. They hadn’t helped with the visions, and in the end, she gave up on them when she found getting to sleep without them was harder.
Dreams, though, provided no escape for Cora as her subconscious only delved further into the horrors of what Sinclair did to Gavin and what might happen to her. Gavin became the beast, stalking her as she ran through the cemetery. She fell across Lela’s grave, and her body began its own transformation, shifting her bones and muscles until she took a form so grotesque and terrifying even Gavin’s beast ran from her.
Cora’s eyes flew open at the sound of knocking on her front door. In the dark, she scrambled to get out of bed and turn on the light. She stumbled down the hall to the door and lifted up on her tiptoes to peek out the peephole. Gavin stood there, leaning against the opposite wall. She sank back onto her heels and took a deep breath.
Gavin noticed the peephole darken as Cora pressed her eye to the other side and then lightened again when she pulled away. Coming to her place might not have been the greatest idea, but the fear he’d seen in her eyes and the way she retreated as if expecting him to attack her haunted him. He couldn’t let her go on thinking that.
The door opened and revealed a slightly mussed Cora. “What are you doing here, Gavin?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“I would’ve come earlier, but I knew you were going out with Eve.” He gestured toward the apartment. “Can I come in?”
She pressed her lips together before nodding with a sigh and stepping back to let him in. His shoulders sagged as the tension they’d been holding faded. He sat on the couch and rubbed his hands along his thighs. Cora went to the window and peeked out the curtains before turning around to face him. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the window sill.
“Why did you come here?” she asked.
“I …”
Why the fuck had he come here? His knees bounced with nerves, and he pushed off from the couch to pace the small room. It shouldn’t matter if she was scared of him. She was just another lay, a body to pass the time with and relieve the natural urges of his body. It shouldn’t matter.
But it did. Because as much as he wanted to put what they had neatly into a little box labeled “Sex", that’s not where she was. Somehow, she’d snuck through his defenses and the further in she got, the harder it was to justify keeping her out.
“I never would have hurt you,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her. “You know that, right?”
She didn’t say anything, and his chest tightened.
“Even when I’m … like that, I would never hurt you. Please tell me you know that.”
“How can I? I’m nothing to you,” she said, turning her face to the side.
“That’s not true. And I’m a complete asshole for ever saying it.”
He gazed down at the top of her head. Short frizzy strands poked out in all directions. He cupped her chin, tipping her head back to look at him. When her eyes met his, he melted into the blue depths.
Darken (Siege #1) Page 20
