by Paige Tyler
He would have preferred to lay there and groan for a while, but the clown was already heading for Rachel again. She stood there immobilized, terror in her eyes.
Scrambling to his feet, Knox sprinted across the room and tackled the clown from behind. The thing quickly squirmed free, backhanding him across the face hard enough to crack his jaw. How the hell could anything Delacroix’s size be so frigging strong?
Knox grabbed the clown around the waist as the thing tried to get away. Luckily, Diego showed back up, throwing himself on the clown’s legs to help hold it down.
Trying to restrain someone as strong as the clown without hurting the body the thing was using as a host was like fighting with one arm tied behind his back. Every time he and Diego got it pinned down, a fist came flying out and another bone in his body or Diego’s would crack. It didn’t help that the damn clown laughed like crazy the entire frigging time they fought. The sound was so disturbing it made goose bumps run up and down Knox’s spine.
Then Rachel leaped into the fray and got her hands on the clown’s face. Greasepaint smeared everywhere as Rachel shouted at the clown to leave Hadley alone. It seemed like a ludicrous demand, but suddenly, it was like a switch had been flipped and all the fight went out of the clown.
Knox was lying across the clown’s body, pinning one of its hands to the floor, so he couldn’t see its face very clearly, especially with Rachel now entirely blocking his view, but a moment later, he heard Hadley ask what was happening in a soft, confused voice.
Figuring it was safe to release her, Knox sat back on his heels as Diego did the same down by Hadley’s legs. To his relief, the clown was gone and the therapist was back. Eyes glazed and a dazed expression on her face, some of her dark hair that had been up in a neat twist was hanging down around her shoulders in complete disarray.
“What happened?” Hadley asked again, scanning the room, a frown furrowing her brow as she focused on the three of them again. “How did I end up on the floor? And why are you all looking at me like that?”
Rachel glanced at Knox and Diego but didn’t answer. Knox couldn’t blame her. How could anyone explain anything that had just happened?
Chapter 13
Rachel buried her face in Knox’s pillow, breathing in his scent and letting it lull her back into that fuzzy place where things weren’t nearly so complicated as her real life seemed to be right now. Of course, no matter how much she’d rather lay there in his comfortable bed and continue to forget her problems for a few more hours, there was a part of her that knew it wasn’t the mature, adult thing to do.
Sometimes, being an adult sucked.
Sighing, she shoved the blanket down a bit and rolled onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling for a while before glancing at the clock on the nightstand. She blinked when she saw that it was a little after 9:00 p.m. Crap, she’d slept for more than eight hours. She thought for sure it hadn’t been more than an hour or two. Then again, watching your therapist turn into the clown from your nightmares and kick the crap out of you and your friends was somewhat exhausting.
Rachel considered reaching over to turn on the lamp beside the bed but then decided against it. She might be awake, but that didn’t mean she was ready to get out of bed yet. She still needed time to think about and process everything that had happened.
She could hear soft murmurs from outside the bedroom as Knox and Diego talked. While she was grateful for their support, she wasn’t eager to face them yet. So instead, she lay there reliving the morning’s events and letting herself believe the warmth provided by the blankets was actually Knox’s arms around her.
If she weren’t a cop, she would have been shocked at how fast law enforcement and paramedics had shown up at Hadley’s office after the clown disappeared. Then again, the psychologist provided trauma counseling for quite a few cops and paramedics over the years. They’d recognized her address and gotten there quickly.
She and Diego had immediately identified themselves as fellow DPD officers, saying Knox was private security currently working for the DA’s office. But when the responding officers had seen the freaked-out receptionist, not to mention the big dent in the wall, the questioning had become intense.
Hadley had been so dazed she was barely able to say anything, which was probably good. As far as the doctor could remember, one moment she’d been talking to Rachel, the next she was on the floor with Rachel, Diego, and Knox holding her down. Diego—a master of creativity—suggested Hadley had suffered from a violent seizure, and it had taken the three of them to restrain the woman. Rachel hated implying Hadley was somehow responsible for everything that had happened, but the cops and paramedics seemed to buy it, so that’s the story they stuck with. The officers who’d responded to the call spent a little more time taking down everyone’s statements and contact information but left soon after paramedics had taken Hadley to the hospital.
That had left Rachel with Knox and Diego. The three of them had stared at each other, none of them eager to be the first to talk about what had really taken place in Hadley’s office. Finally, they’d all decided to take the conversation to Knox’s hotel room, figuring it wasn’t something to talk about over lunch at a restaurant.
But other than confirming they’d all indeed seen the clown taking over Hadley’s body—and kick their asses without breaking a sweat—their conversation hadn’t yielded any solid conclusions. In some ways it was nice for Rachel to discover she wasn’t alone in her insanity, but the thought that perhaps she’d somehow infected Knox and Diego with her condition didn’t make her feel very good.
Rachel sat up in bed and ran her fingers through her hair. Lying there reveling in Knox’s scent was a guilty pleasure she didn’t have time for. She needed to figure out what the hell was going on with her. Getting up, she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt over the bra and panties she wore, then shoved her phone in a pocket and stuck her feet in a pair of mule sneakers before heading into the living room.
Knox and Diego were sitting on the couch, staring intently at a laptop. They glanced up as she entered the room. Soda cans, junk food wrappers, and pieces of notebook paper covered in writing littered the coffee table. As she got nearer, she looked at the papers curiously but realized she couldn’t read the scribble no matter what. Both of them had atrocious handwriting.
“How are you feeling?” Knox asked, concern evident on his handsome face. “You slept for a long time.”
Rachel didn’t say anything as she opened the fridge to take out a Diet Coke, thankful Knox had bought her some so she wouldn’t have to overdose on sugar by drinking the Mountain Dew he preferred. Back in the living room, she stopped by the open bag of Hostess powdered mini-donuts and grabbed a handful. She could eat donuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then mix in a few for snacks in between.
She flopped on the couch beside Knox, wolfing down one of the powdered donuts before answering. “I feel good. That fight this morning in Hadley’s office must have worn me out. Or maybe I finally had a chance to catch up on all the sleep I’ve been missing out on over the past few weeks. Either way, I feel as good as new.”
Knox and Diego exchanged looks but didn’t comment, so Rachel wasn’t so sure they believed her. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
“What have you two been up to while I was napping?” she asked, biting into another donut.
“Research,” Diego said. “We’ve been trying to find anything that might help us understand what the hell happened this morning.”
Rachel raised a brow at that, not sure how a person would go about researching a complete mental breakdown involving four different people. Were there chat groups for something like that?
“Have you learned anything?”
“Well, to start with, Horace Watkins is dead,” Knox said.
Rachel stopped chewing, the previously delicious donut suddenly dry and tasteless in her mouth. “Why would you
even check on something like that? It’s not like Horace Watkins slipped into Hadley Delacroix’s office and changed into her clothes when I wasn’t looking. Or into my apartment. Or the basement of the courthouse.”
Knox exchanged another quick glance with Diego before turning his attention back to her. “We know that, but what happened this morning wasn’t some kind of mental breakdown. That thing was real. It attacked all of us and damn near killed us. The fact that Horace was made up as a clown when he attacked you, and now you’re being terrorized by a clown that looks exactly like him isn’t something we could ignore. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. The prison said he hung himself while in solitary confinement ten weeks ago.”
The idea of Horace Watkins somehow being personally involved in these episodes seemed insane. But then again, seeing her nightmare come to life and throw one of her pack mates through a wall was also more than a little insane. So, maybe it was time to suspend her disbelief for a while and try to accept the craziness of this situation.
“Are they sure it was ten weeks ago?” she murmured, trying to understand why that time frame seemed so important. “Why was he in solitary anyway?”
“They couldn’t give us a specific time of death,” Diego answered. “I got the feeling the guards hadn’t been checking on him as often as they were supposed to. Apparently, Horace had gone completely ranting, raving, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy and attacked the guards dozens of times.”
“Why are you so interested that it was ten weeks ago?” Knox asked. “Is that significant?”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but ten weeks ago is about when my nightmares started up again really bad. Before that, they’d almost disappeared.”
Knox frowned and grabbed a piece of notebook paper already covered with scribbles and wrote down something that looked like the words ten weeks and nightmares.
“What else have you two been doing?” she asked. “There are a lot of notes here.”
Knox picked up a stack of papers and handed them to her. “We surfed the web, looking for other accounts that sounded anything like what happened this morning. Some of them are probably bullshit, but a few seem legit. It’s kind of scary, but there’s a lot of weird crap going on out there in the world—even weirder than vampires.”
Diego continued, “We dug some more, and when we realized there might be a legitimate explanation, we got in contact with Davina DeMirci to see if she might know something. She said she’d do some digging and get back to us. We figured we’d keep looking while we waited.”
Rachel nodded, not bothering to do more than glance at the pieces of paper, since she couldn’t read them anyway. Davina was a rather odd woman they’d met out in LA. She owned a nightclub that served an extremely unusual clientele of the supernatural variety. The woman definitely knew a lot about things that go bump in the night. It probably wasn’t a bad idea to talk to her.
She opened her mouth to ask how they’d described the clown attack to Davina but was interrupted by a buzzing coming from her butt. Reaching back, she pulled out her phone and found a text waiting for her.
“What’s up?” Knox asked, looking up from his laptop and a chat loop dedicated to the creatures frequently appearing on the TV show Supernatural. She had no idea why he’d be looking there.
“It’s Addy. Her parents got in a huge fight earlier, and now there are a bunch of lawyer types at the house. She thinks they’re talking about getting divorced and wants to know if I can come over and hang out with her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Diego said quickly even as Knox nodded in agreement. “After this morning, I think you should stay here, where we can keep an eye on you. Besides, doesn’t she know you’ve been taken off her security detail?”
Rachel felt her gums and fingertips tingle at the idea of Knox and Diego thinking they were going to keep her there for her own protection. She appreciated their concern, but she was a big girl who could take care of herself. Okay, maybe she couldn’t exactly take care of herself—at least not when the clown showed up—but she’d made Addy a promise that she’d be there whenever the girl needed her. Rachel wasn’t going to go back on that promise now. She just needed to stay away from any dangerous, adrenaline-filled situations—or ones that involved her thinking about the clown. Neither of those scenarios should come up during a girl-to-girl chat in the safety of the Lloyd mansion.
“Addy doesn’t need a security guard. She’s scared her parents are getting divorced and she needs a friend.” Rachel stood and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I’ll be fine going over there.”
Knox immediately got to his feet. “I’m with Diego on this. What if that…thing…comes back? Why can’t Zane or Trey sit and talk with her?”
She lifted a brow and put her hands on her hips. “For one thing, Addy can’t talk to Zane or Trey because DAPS is guarding the house tonight and they aren’t there. For another, no teenage girl on the planet is going to talk to a bunch of guys about her parents’ impending divorce. And lastly, the clown isn’t going to make an appearance as long as I don’t think about him and stay calm. That seems to be the only time he shows up.”
That whole speech might have constituted the equivalent of whistling past the graveyard, but it was either believe she had at least some control over her life, or check herself into a mental facility.
Going into the bedroom, she picked up her small backup weapon and strapped the holster around her ankle underneath her jeans, then grabbed her jacket, slipping it on as she walked into the living room.
Knox looked dubious, trading yet another glance with Diego. “Are you really willing to take a chance on that with Addy in the room?”
Rachel sighed, knowing Knox meant well. Reaching out, she caressed his stubble-covered jaw. “I agree that I’m better when I’m around you, but I refuse to let this thing—this fear—control my life. Addy needs me, so I’m going to go to her. And before you ask, no, you don’t need to come with me. I’ll run over there and talk to her for a while, get her calmed down, then come right back. I’ll only be gone a couple of hours.”
When Knox looked like he still wanted to argue, she stepped closer. “Knox, I need you to trust me on this because I need to be able to trust myself. Okay?”
Knox finally nodded. “Okay. But if you start feeling weird, call me. And please, text me when you get there so I know you arrived safely, okay? And let me know when you’re on your way back here, too.”
“I will.” Rachel leaned over to kiss him, stunned at how touched she was at his concern. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
* * *
Rachel’s phone chirped again as she pulled out of the parking lot of Knox’s hotel, so she checked it at the next stoplight. As she suspected, it was Addy.
Are you almost here? A bunch of men from that security company my dad hired are walking all over the house, including the jerk who owns it. He keeps staring at my butt and totally perving me out. Why couldn’t that cute one, Ethan, be here tonight?
Rachel snorted at the comment about Ethan. She hadn’t really noticed, but she supposed she could see why Addy would think he was cute.
I’m on my way, but it will be at least 20–25 minutes. If any of those DAPS guys bother you or you don’t feel safe, find a place to hide, okay?
Addy sent back a thumbs-up emoji.
Rachel put her phone away, then waited for the light to turn green, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake in leaving the hotel room. Maybe Knox was right and she was putting Addy at risk by meeting with her. Rachel knew she was prone to episodes where she lost time and became violent. Now, here she was going to help a teenager whose parents were having a nasty marital spat. This was probably a really dumb idea. But the moment the thought popped into her head, she dismissed it. Screw that noise. She was stronger than this and refused to let fear keep her from helping a friend.
She drove several blocks down the street until she found a place to pull off. Killing the engine, she hopped out of her Fiat 500X SUV and moved quickly toward the house, wondering if she was being silly. But the closer she got to the Lloyd property, the more unsettled her nerves became. Her gums and fingertips tingled like they were on fire, and she couldn’t help thinking something was wrong. Even so, she didn’t mention her suspicions when she texted Knox to let him know she’d made it to the Lloyds’ safely. There was no reason to alarm him.
Rachel stopped in the shadows of the high stone wall along the south side of the residence to text Addy and let her know she was almost there.
Hurry up. The fighting is getting worse.
Rachel cursed. This was obviously what had her inner wolf so restless. It sounded like this potential divorce thing was turning nasty.
Where are you now?
Under the bed in the last guest room at the end of the hallway upstairs.
Stay put. I’m coming to get you.
Switching her phone to vibrate, Rachel slipped it into her pocket, then moved along the wall to a place where she knew the security cameras couldn’t see and hopped over. Dropping into the shadows on the other side, she knelt there for a moment, waiting to see if there were any guards on this side of the house. She wasn’t sure if she was happy or concerned there was no one out here at all.
